Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own any characters or concepts related to ReBoot. This is a nonprofit work of fanfiction.
This story is set after "AndrAIa," but before "Nullzilla."
Cool waters
"What was it like?"
This he whispered low and close to her ear. They lay there in the dark, side by side on the floor with their heads pressed together over a muted vid window, talking quickly and in soft voices so Dot would not hear them and come to separate them as she had the night before, and the night before that.
AndrAIa tipped her head. "What was what like?"
"You know, in Atlantis," said Enzo. "In the Game."
The light from the vid window flickered across his face, a kaleidoscopic migration of colors and distorted shapes, highlighting the smooth skin of his cheeks and the ridge of bone beneath, then throwing them into shadow. Like light at the bottom of a pool of water, washing over the sand. His shoulder pressed against hers.
"It was not like it is here," she said at last. That was simplest. But: "Mainframe is very dry," she said, "and it is very bright. My eyes hurt sometimes. But I am better now. I am used to it." In the dark she could not see the spiderwebs of lines on the backs of her hands, where the skin had cracked, then bled, and now healed, artificially moisturized with Dot's lotions.
Enzo leaned close to her, his arm brushing her own, his hip a weight pressing into her side. His brows wrinkled, there at the vulnerable spot between his eyes. He said, "AndrAIa," and his mouth drew down, a long and sloping line.
Embarrassed, she turned from him.
"I am all right," she said to her hands. "But it is hard, remembering the rules. Things are very different here. In Atlantis, I did not have anyone to tell me what to do or where to go. I had only myself. Here your sister tells me I am a little sprite and I should not go anywhere alone."
She made a face and turned to share it with Enzo, thinking perhaps he would laugh to see it. He did not laugh or smile, or make a face, too, at Dot's lecturing, her insistence that she knew what was best for little sprites.
Enzo turned his face to the vid window, which spattered him with shades of blue and a virulent green much darker than his skin, and a red that was like bloodied water, washing over him. He drew his shoulders up and so away from her. Their arms no longer touched.
"Do you miss it?"
AndrAIa, too, looked to the vid window. She thought of the ocean currents rolling around her. She thought of the caverns, cool and dark, twisting through the rocks. Of the wolf eels, screaming in the shadows, and the reflecting pools in the shallows where the water warmed and the small fish darted through sea grasses, their scales flashing crimson, then violet, then softly blue.
"Yes," she said. That was true. But: "I am glad," she said, "to be here. You do not know what it is like in the Games. Always fighting. Dying sometimes. Before I met you, I did not know what it means to have 'fun.'" She savored the word, the shape of it as thrilling to her as the concept it represented.
"And it is nice," she said, "to have someone worry about me. To tell me not to go to dangerous places." She flexed her fingers. "To have people who will help me."
Enzo looked to her, the light cast by the vid window slipping from his eyes, his cheeks, the curve of his lips as he turned away from it. She touched her shoulder to his and leaned against him, her hip to his, the length of her upper arm even with his.
"And you are here," said AndrAIa. "So I am glad."
His smile when it came was like a light shining out of a great darkness, like a pool of water cupped in her dried hands.
This story was originally posted at livejournal on 10/14/2009.