Hi everyone! Happy to post something again. It feels like my fics are getting longer and longer but this is shorter than my last one... This one really stuck in my head and I really couldn't get it out until I wrote it. :/ I meant to not spend a whole lot of time on it but it just got out of hand...XD;
This fic does not have any pairings in it whatsoever, so, if you're looking for that, I'm sorry but you won't find it here. D: Although, if you're a Noah/Rex fan, please keep an eye out for my next fic. It may either be a bigger multichapter story, or another oneshot. Either way... I don't know how long it'll take. XD;
Obligatory plug:
If you enjoy Generator Rex and want to find other fans to talk about it, how about checking out Providence Playground? It's a small, but active fan forum and we're always happy to have new members! Check it out! providenceplayground. proboards. com
Enough stalling. Thanks for clicking! I hope you enjoy this fic.
Her heels clicked excitedly against the glossy floor of the hallways. She walked, jogged, and ran to the second lab, clipboard in hand, almost out of breath.
"Report," she said.
"Cure successful," a lab assistant read back, "Subject was triggered psychologically."
Dr. Holiday leaned over a monitor and scrolled over the results of today's battle. The screen was covered in numbers, readings, and statistical comparisons from this fight compared to others. She noted it on her papers.
"I see," she murmured as she looked again, "That's good."
Machines beeped, screens evolved as data was sorted into information, and fingers clacked against keyboards. The lab was abuzz with activity, and aside from the occasional mutter of direction from Holiday, no one said a word.
Soon, the lab door whooshed open again and Rex strut in, "So Doc, guess what? I'm awesome."
She lifted her head as Six and Bobo followed him through the door. Rex walked over and handed her a vial and grinned, "Here's your present. Trust me, it wasn't easy to get."
Holiday looked at it and smiled back, "Excellent. Thank you, Rex."
"I did a good job, right?" He leaned over the table and flashed her a debonair smile, "So, does that mean I get a reward?"
She marked down results that were still reading off the screens, stopped, and looked at Rex.
"Hmm," she thought for a moment, "Yes. You do, Rex. You deserve one."
"What? Yeah?" Rex lit up, like a goofy little child, and followed her as she walked over to a desk and unlocked it, "Tickets to a show? Reservation cards to a swanky restaurant for two?"
"Something like that," Holiday smiled as she reached into a drawer.
Rex couldn't hide the excitement on his face as Dr. Holiday placed something in his hand.
The smile was wiped away.
It was a motorcycle shaped eraser.
Rex stared, speechless. Bobo laughed behind him, "Better than that gold star sticker you got last week."
His face tinted red, remembering that embarrassing occurrence with his underwear all that time ago, and that sticker, "Gee, thanks, Doc. These rewards really inspire me to give it my all." And he sulked out, Bobo following behind with another quip as Holiday chuckled.
She examined the vial in her hand again, red to the brim with an EVO blood sample. She handed it off to another doctor, who sent it to another lab for initial evaluations, and turned to Six.
"Readout said that it was psychologically triggered," She leaned against a counter, "So, how'd Rex do it?"
"Rex didn't do it," Six said as he started to fill out his report, "The kid's brother did."
"Brother?" She turned to the readouts once more and scrolled through them. She put a hand on her chin, "Hmm."
Dr. Holiday and her crew worked into the evening. When the reports were done and filed away, as well as the first batch of data, she watched the news, alone, in the quieted lab.
The familiar face of a female news anchor stared out from the screen, "Providence came to answer another EVO call today when..."
Rex came in, mouth stuffed with chips, and ate another piece from a bag, "Ey Doc. Wa'thin' 'ow coo' I am on thuh toob?"
She chuckled and looked back at the screen, "Sure, Rex."
The camera changed to Rex, shielding himself as a towering granite EVO clumsily smashed him into a wall after his first failed attempt to cure it.
"Okay," Rex cringed, "Maybe not my best moment."
Rex bound the EVO with his smack hands and tried to control it. They went back and forth in a seemingly matched battle. Rex would push it back, and the EVO would throw him away. It was huge, slow, and heavy, and its reactions were simple and predictable. But, its density trumped whatever Rex could throw at it. In their fight, buildings continued to crumble around them. As the EVO walked, the camera shook.
In her head, Holiday noted the details she found. Even the most mundane things that occurred within this fight could prove useful later.
In the middle of the fight and out of the debris, a child came running up, tears in his eyes and shouted to Rex and the EVO. The sound quality of the video was bad, but through the static and grainy audio they could hear the little boy yell out.
"Cody! It's me!"
The boy wiped his nose on his dirty sleeve and cupped his hands around his mouth, "Stop this! I forgive you! Don't do this anymore! I'm sorry!"
The camera zoomed in closer as the ground shook and the boy fell to his knees. Cuts and bruises, as well as dirt and grit covered his arms and legs, "I'm sorry!" He yelled again, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"I didn't mean what I said! I'm glad you're my brother! Just stop this!"
He sobbed into his hands, "Please!"
Rex charged again and managed to get his smack hands around the lumplike head of the EVO as it thrashed. Rex shouted as the creature lunged forward and Rex hung on as tightly as he could, "Kid! Get away! What're you-" The EVO threw him off.
Rex got a grip again and as he struggled, the EVO finally looked at the boy, and it paused.
The boy still cried, and looked at the EVO.
It paused.
It slowly turned towards the little boy, and despite Rex trying to keep him back, it lumbered forward. Rex strained to contain him, and the EVO stopped.
In this hesitation, Rex thought he might have an opportunity. Something actually got to him. Maybe that kid got through at this moment, because it seemed to have calmed.
A glow came from the EVO's back as Rex tried again to cure it, but this time, it worked. Limbs twisted, and the ground shook again as mass reformed and restructured. The creature shrunk, its rough skin softened, and the rubble from its face faded away. A small child stood in its place, face smudged from dirt and scared and shaken, with tears in his eyes as well.
Rex stood behind the little boy and held his shoulders, trying to keep him up as his knees started to buckle down. The older boy ran to his brother and hugged him. They cried.
"Heh," Rex chuckled softly at the screen and turned to Dr. Holiday, "Know what the deal was? What he forgave him for? His little brother broke his video game."
Holiday smiled. The gravity of children's worries was an impossible reality away from adults', wasn't it? What was so insignificant to them fueled the destruction of everything to a child's eyes. As that picture filled the screen again, that replay of the two siblings embracing, Holiday rethought.
No, it wasn't insignificant... The details were silly, but at the core of it, what they cried over, what had kept the little boy from accepting Rex's cure in the first place- it wasn't insignificant at all. Holiday's smile dropped as short, quiet, and uncontrollable memories suddenly burst and flickered rapidly in her mind.
The words that little boy called out to his brother echoed. They fought then, they hurt each other deeply, but they found the courage to reach out and forgive in the end. Because they loved each other.
At the center of their struggles, it all came down to that they desperately wanted to do right by someone they loved, especially after they did them some wrong. It was an idea that children easily understood, and maybe understood too well. But, it was a notion that adults, those all-knowing adults, sometimes unfortunately forgot.
That image of them, the two boys, floated in the background of the news screen as the woman continued on about the children, the day, and circumstances that surrounded them. Holiday stared, focused on them, the little ones, holding each other close as they reunited. She remembered herself in a picture so similar. Sure arms surrounding her and keeping her safe, and a little body to envelop close to her own. A little body made so well, so perfect to fit into her arms, illuminated in her memories.
Clasped hands. Wet eyes. Warm expressions. Tired voices that yelled from joy and anger. April memories, faded but sweet, soaked slowly into her thoughts.
Dr. Holiday looked at Rex, who stared at the monitor screen. He was unfocused and glassy-eyed, a world away from the present. When the news broke to commercial, he found himself.
He looked away and back to the screen, then over to Dr. Holiday and laughed quietly, "Bet me and my brother were like that, huh?"
She smiled. So he was thinking something like that, too.
"I'm sure you were."
He looked back at the monitor.
"You think I'll ever find him?"
She wanted to say yes, say that there wouldn't be a doubt he would, but that just wasn't true.
"...I don't know, Rex," Holiday confessed, "But I hope you do. We can only hope something will come up. Until then, only time can tell."
He nodded, thinking, but absentmindedly, "Yeah..."
Rex crumpled his empty chip bag and turned around, quickly breaking away from that quiet, "Okay, well, see ya, Doc!" He waved and left, suddenly leaving Dr. Holiday to herself.
She watched the door cleanly close behind him and she turned back to the screens, although she no longer paid any attention at all to what was actually happening. Sounds, noise emanated from the speakers, but all she could hear were the muffled, garbled mumblings of fuzzy information.
The lab was hushed to her, hushed in her own thoughts. A haze filled her and she felt something that was so bitterly sweet.
April memories, pastel and time-worn, gently started to blossom.
The Base was always so eerily quiet at night, when the clamor of the day calmed and the elusive night crew took the reins. Even while night was indiscernible from day under the buzz of the halogen bulbs within the enclosed hallways, the transition of life to sleep was unmistakable within Providence. Although, it wasn't so easily felt within the doctor's room.
Holiday didn't want to sleep. She didn't want to see tomorrow, but she didn't want to keep living in today. She seemed endlessly stuck in limbo, between needing to be here and now, and crawling away from it all- to desperately clinging to a notion of time to think for herself, and working away any personality and thoughts she had left, any trace behind the name of Holiday.
She wanted to think. She wanted to be mindless. She wanted to rest. She wanted to work her fingers to the bone. She wanted the past again. But, she had to move forward.
Thoughts, dizzy and in an array, chaotic and organized, centered around a vertex.
Warm hands, whispered secrets.
These childish recollections.
She pulled herself from her covers and washed her face in the warm water over her sink. She could feel the circles forming under her eyes as she pressed her face into the soft towel in the dimness. She sighed, the heat from her breath warming the terrycloth against her face. She turned and walked away, leaving that neglected mirror behind her, once again unchecked and unseen.
The dim lighting in her room buzzed in her eyes. In the shiny ceiling she could roughly see her face outlined in the dark, and she tossed to the side in her bed. She wanted it all gone, this struggle and this painfully slow crawl of possibly imaginary progress.
Endless whys and unexplainable hows demanded impossible answers in her head. They rang out, unable to let her go and let her sleep. Holiday tucked her head down, and clutched her pillow close.
She clenched her eyes shut, trying to push through to sweet unconsciousness, but it was pointless. As long as the thoughts in her head raced, turning the gears and clacking into questions, processes, and conclusions, she would stay awake regardless of how hard she kept her eyes closed. There was no use in trying so hard for something so unobtainable.
Her vision focused in the low light, and she swept across the walls of her room. There were few things that truly belonged to her here. A plain but feminine journal laid on her nightstand, a small photo frame with a family in it sat on the side of a dresser, and a little stack of books and papers were spread out across desk in the corner of the room. These few things were the only evidence that someone alive lived within this little enclosure. They were the only things she felt she could stand to keep within the clean, antiseptic confines of Providence.
Providence. How ironically appropriate that name had become for her. The good guidance of an institution overseeing the world; an institution that had become her shackles, and a path to salvation. Without her, Providence could never meet the combat needs of the planet's EVO disasters, and without Providence, she would never have the resources to be able to find a cure. A coveted cure for her sister.
Her thoughts stopped for a moment.
Sister.
Holiday buried her face within her pillow, reluctant to let her thoughts continue. But they kept flowing without her consent.
Sister. The seed from which these bittersweet memories bloomed. The central point from which these thoughts branched from. The anchor from which her life centered around and spiraled out of control from.
Those hands, once clasped in her own, shook violently in her memory.
No. A revisitation would mean she would never get to sleep, not tonight, and not for days. She needed rest. It was her duty, her responsibility, to be able to be alert for the chaos which came to her in the many ways it manifested. Lives depended on her, lives that didn't even know they depended on her.
It was the solemn responsibility she agreed to.
But her true duty, the work that was supposed to be for the good of all the people in the world, was actually for one person.
Her sister.
Who knows what would truly become of the world and the horrific problem with EVO transformations? A future in which a wasteland savagely ravages the planet in a plague of transformations, destroying ecosystems, countries, lives, was very much possible. And it weighed down on Holiday's shoulders.
But, a future in which the EVO threat had an option of a widespread cure, an actual cure to control nanites, was possible as well.
A smile formed in her head. Not from a memory, but simulated in Holiday's mind. A future that came from success, which those familiar hands held her own in gratitude, in happiness, in reunion, bubbled through. A smile similar to her own, a face she knew so well, a hopeful imagination that she wished could eventually turn into a memory...
A possible happy future and the sweet happenings of the past merged in her thoughts. A world, without the sleepless nights over worry from an apocalyptic tomorrow, built itself in a bright dream. In that dream, her sister lived there, laughing and smiling with her like they did years ago.
The warm past mingled with the intoxicating wish of the future. From the fond memories of childhood and hope of tomorrow, Dr. Holiday finally found the peace to fall asleep.
The morning came in an early buzz from her bedside clock, and she woke up in the same darkness she left for sleep.
She started her routine. She showered, dressed, and put on her makeup. As she tied up her hair, everything suddenly stopped for a moment, and she looked at herself.
A pause. She tried to smile at herself in the mirror. Once, only once a day she would willingly look at her reflection. And in these occurrences, when she smiled at the mirror, she pretended for a moment that it wasn't actually her smiling back.
Sometimes she could feel how hollow it really was.
In her office, she checked the reports that were completed and compiled in the night. She looked through the printouts, looked through the notes left on the screen, and looked at the results and possible conclusions on several procedures. But, she hadn't actually read any of them. The words were recognizable but had no meaning. Her attention was distracted, and all she could focus on was the mundane little paper calendar sitting on the corner of her desk.
It was today's date that caught her. It was unmarked here but on every calendar she came across, the numbers printed seemed a little bolder, the ink seemed a little heavier, and the date always seemed wrong. Even in computer screens, the numbers looked perfectly fine but almost distorted in some way. The boxes that surrounded the date seemed oddly bigger, although the pixel dimensions were always the same.
That was enough. Nothing in the office or lab had exploded, nothing was flashing in bright red lights or overflowing to the halls. That was all she really had come here for, she had only ended up picking up reports to read out of habit. But when she saw that little calendar on her desk, she knew what she really wanted to do- what she really needed to do.
The Petting Zoo was still asleep in the early darkness. The lights were adjusted to mimic the day or night outside. Inside, Dr. Holiday stepped lightly, trying to elude the paths of any of the nocturnal creatures that were starting to make their bed for the anticipating day.
The walk was long to that familiar hold. She passed the arches and cells to a heavy door and hesitated, rethinking that resolve, that decision to see her again, today. But, there was no way around it.
The door opened and she looked around the dark room. Her eyes trailed to the bare metal floor, the low-glowing lights in the indicator panels, and the darkened computer screens. But what stood out most of all to Dr. Holiday, what almost seemed to pull all light from the room, was the heavily armored door in the corner. In it was a small, thick, reinforced window that was just large enough to get a good look of the entire room through.
Holiday walked up to it and peered inside. She could see her. Her sister, lying against a wall on the opposite side, sleeping.
Finally seeing her seemed to alleviate a deep weight in her chest, but that pain in her heart still reverberated inside.
Her sister, her dear sister, reduced to this. She lived in squalor, trapped within this harsh metal pen. There wasn't a single inch of wall in her sister's room that was left unclawed at. Holiday looked away.
Amongst the readings and indicators, numbers changed and meters flickered. A panel caught her eye; the very one she didn't want to see. But she read it.
DURATION
005 : 00 : 00 : 00 : 12 : 34 : 28 : 45
The numbers sank in.
45 milliseconds.
28 seconds.
34 minutes.
12 hours.
And 5 years.
The clock had rolled over. She had been in this prison for five years, today. Her sentence was indefinite.
Holiday turned away and looked to the window pane again. But she was shocked for a moment, she thought- she thought she saw her sister, normal, again. But it was her mind playing tricks. It was only her reflection. She rested her hand against the door and clenched it.
Why?
Why had her sister been shot down so low? Why was she so dangerous? Why did her nanites activate? Why-
Why couldn't she be cured?
Five years. Five years she had been in this wretched state. Five years she cowered and clawed, confused and scared and angry. Five years, trapped not only within Providence, but within herself. And why? What was it all for?
Why couldn't her own sister, that genius sister of hers, cure her?
Holiday didn't know. Every day she tried to solve that question, every day she worked towards a solution. But she didn't even know if she was ever really closer to an answer.
She looked over her sister again, lying there, still but breathing. The low lights in the darkness reflected off the shiny surface of her body. Her long limbs were pulled close to her, arched perfectly still.
Warm, soft hands reached out in Holiday's memories.
Sister.
Memories flooded again. Childhood laughter, adolescent arguing, grown-up smiles, sunk down, deep into her heart.
Her sister was in there, in that room. The walking stick she leaned on when she was finding the world, and the adamant obstacle to her petty desires. So much of her life was in her sister, her friend, and it was lost right now.
Lost, and what could she do?
Five years, it had been five years, and Holiday still hadn't cured her. Five years of failure echoed into her head. Holiday clenched her fists tighter in anger.
Why couldn't she do anything for her?
What was holding her back?
Holiday looked at her reflection in the glass, and then to her sister in the room. She unfolded her hands and put it against the cool glass. She leaned in, looking closer at her sister.
Sister. Her dear sister.
A drop landed on her hand. And another. Holiday looked down, and realized she was crying.
She didn't know how deep her thoughts ran until now, until she found she could feel her nerves again. Her eyes were warm and moist, filled to the brim with tears, and her reflection looked back at her, surprised to see the streaks left behind on her face.
Holiday reached up and wiped her eyes, trying to keep composure, trying to keep herself under control. She didn't want to cry. It wouldn't solve anything.
But, her chest swelled, her body shuddered and she could feel a lump in her throat rising.
She didn't want to cry.
It wouldn't solve anything.
Her sister would still be an EVO. Her sister would still be trapped in that room. Her sister still wouldn't be free.
It wouldn't solve anything.
Her sister, so sweet and lovely, forced into a cruel, horrific state.
And there was no way of knowing if she'll ever be freed.
Her eyes suddenly filled, hot and heavy, and without her permission, the tears flowed.
They traced cool paths down her cheeks, aside her nose, and along her jaw. They dripped down, slow and weighted, onto her hands and shirt and the floor. Her chest swelled. There was no stopping it. She cried.
She cried, quietly, for her sister.
The girl she grew up with, the kind shoulder she could turn to... Someone had to cry for her. Someone had to cry for the travesty of her transformation, of the obstruction to her cure. Someone had to cry for the time, for the time she still had ahead of her like this, and for all the years, the lost years that she would never be able to get back.
So, it was up to her, then.
She cried.
Warm tears continued to roll down her face, and while her chest heaved quietly and she sniffed her nose, she oddly found comfort in this. It was useless, but it calmed her in some ways. The pain was still there, the feeling of failure and helplessness, but the tension in her heart that had been gathering finally broke.
She looked down and wiped her eyes again, although tears were still flowing. She looked at her sister in the room and laid her hand against the window.
Sister.
Today, she was still incarcerated, still inhuman and base. But Holiday worked hard to change that. She worked hard, every day, with Providence.
Providence. While they were the source of this reality in some ways, they helped. Food, shelter, and most important of all, resources. Because of everything they had at their disposal, some day, hopefully someday soon, Holiday could create a cure. A cure for everyone, a cure for the world. A cure for her sister.
Against the wall, her sister trembled. She curled inward, closer, and calmed. Holiday stroked her thumb against the glass, hoping, wishing, that that some day she could be with her again, like how she was before, happy and completely her again.
Some day.
She pressed her palm into the window and looked away, briefly. The clock on the wall said that she already spent too much time here.
She didn't want to go, but progress couldn't be made if she didn't. She slid her hand from the glass and wiped her eyes once again. Her heart still hung low, weighed down by the numbers in the panel beside her, but she had to move forward. She looked back into the room at her sister and back at her dim reflection from the window. She stared, and from corner of her lips, a smile tugged. She pretended, so desperately, again.
Hope. That's all she could do for now. Hope, that somehow, some way, they'll make a breakthrough, and things will fall into place.
She leaned against the window and closed her eyes. She solemnly whispered, "I love you," and left.
Her footsteps echoed through the hall, heavy and booming in the silence. But, the weight of them seemed lessened, now.
There was no way to reduce the gravity of the date today, of the history behind those numbers. But, with every milestone passed, every day that had gone by filled with work and research, there was hope that tomorrow could bring an answer.
As she walked away The Hold, she vowed that she would do all in her power so that timer could never roll the years over again.
The day came, and soon went. The evening settled on the horizon, dark, thick, and low.
Holiday tapped at the keyboard, alone in the lab, trying to concentrate, trying to find new progress. Nothing significant yielded. She held her head in her hands.
From the corner, Rex lingered around the opened doors and watched. He frowned, worried. Holiday was acting weird today. She was acting...well, just weird.
He stepped forward but felt a hand firmly grasp his shoulder. He turned around, "Six?"
The agent looked at Holiday as well, and spoke quietly, "Dr. Holiday needs to be left alone today, Rex."
He looked back at Holiday and stared again. There was more to it than that, something was going on, and Rex wanted to know, badly. But from the unusual way Six held him back, and the distracted way Holiday went through her day, Rex let it go for now. He really wanted to understand, to help the doctor for all the times she helped him. But, there were few times he knew the boundaries, and fewer times when he respected them. For this, it was one of those times.
Rex nodded. He let it go, and they walked away from the lab.
The evening went on. Holiday basked in the solitude as the time passed. The whir of the machines hummed to her, and indicators softly chirped. The automated machinations became soothing.
Calm. She leaned back in her chair, thinking quietly of many different angles, takes, and explanations for the information in her head. But, still, nothing new came up.
She looked around, trying to get her mind off it all, trying to break for a moment for a fresh thought. Today...So many things to think of, so many memories trying to push themselves into her mind while she worked. It was too much sometimes, too much to handle, too much to live with. But, there was always more to work towards, and so much more to meet in the future.
All she had to do was keep going.
Keep going, and make the future she wanted.
Just keep going.
In the glossy darkened screen of a computer, she caught herself.
Her face, tired and worn, frustrated and anxious, looked back at her in that reflection. It looked at her, exhausted and pleading, wanting sleep and solace. But, it wasn't what she wanted. Her face betrayed only the toll the days took on her body, but not the tolls and reparations on her heart. In her lap, she clenched her fists again.
Today had gone by. Another day without that answer, that cure. But, they moved closer. As long as she filled the days with work, as long as she tried every day, she could find it. With the help of Providence, and Rex and Six...She'd reach it, and there'd be a cure. She'd reach it, and lives would be helped. She'd reach it, and it'd all be all right.
Her sister would be reunited with her again, and that part she lost would be built back onto what time created. The strange, odd, and beautiful family she had found in Providence, in Rex and Six and others, could feel whole one day. She could feel whole one day.
Hope. That's all she needed. The day was awful, the history was permanent. But, the future was still malleable, evolving, and needing. Her hands would shape and guide it into a future worth living, worth seeing through.
She looked back at her reflection again, studying it carefully in the light. She saw her sister's features traced there, in every mirror, every glossy monitor, every polished surface of Providence. Her sister smiled at her from those reflections, smiled with encouragement, hope, and trust- trust that she'll be fine soon, trust that her sister was working hard to soothe her pain, trust that she'll be herself again soon.
Her sister smiled at her from those reflections, those false portrayals of her in life. But it was all she had, all she could use to keep moving forward. But, they gave her hope. Even though they were lies now, one day, they'd be true. She'd only have to keep working, keep trying, so that every day she'd get closer to that time, the time when she could feel those arms embracing her again, hear that voice laughing again, and see those lips finally smiling again.
Hope...!
Holiday, alone in her lab, exhausted from everything of today, smiled. She smiled this time, not as the pretense of her sister, but as herself, for herself, and for the hope of what the future could bring.