Wow. It has been a ridiculously long time since I updated this fic. I kind of forgot about it for a while, but I actually really love this fic. I really need to remember to update this one more often...
I don't own total Drama.
Alejandro, knowing that Heather was already infuriated by his constant presence around her, tried not to push her too far during her first week in the superior complex. She had only been there for a few days, he reminded himself, and obviously she was still adjusting. Her behavior was both frustrating and amusing; she was still skittish and suspicious of anything that she hadn't encountered in her own primitive colony, and refused to embrace any superior customs. Each morning, he would find her stubbornly blinking up at him from the floor of her quarters, while the bed went unused. The floor was cold and sterile, providing less comfort and support than even the dirt ground and sleep mats Heather was accustomed to from the colony, but no matter how much her bones and muscles ached in protest, she refused to sleep on the bed. Meal times were also difficult for both the superior and his charge; if she wasn't thoroughly inspecting the food for toxins or mind-altering drugs, then Heather was complaining about the waste when a portion like this could have nursed five sick inferiors back to health.
Training was also tiresome, though it at least helped him gain more insight into Heather's personality. Heather was required to take basic physical ability and IQ examinations, and while she'd been almost embarrassingly rude and despondent to the superior officials conducting the examinations, they were able to deduce that she was quite intelligent with keen, sharp senses and agility that she had probably picked up from her years as a scavenger. The most preferable career path for her, they had told Alejandro, would be for her to become an officer like he was. Alejandro couldn't help laughing wryly at this; he seriously doubted the chances of Heather accepting that as a career- there was no way she would ever go on outings to 'remove' inferiors from the land. Even though in a month or two, depending on how quickly Heather learned the basic societal customs, they would need to begin career specific training, he wasn't willing to break the idea to her just yet.
However, despite Heather's stubborn aloofness, Alejandro couldn't help finding her refreshing company to be around. She was probably the first female he'd ever met who hadn't instantly been taken in by his appearance- she seemed oblivious to the tan and amazing physique that had other girls swooning within seconds. Instead, she displayed an almost amusing coldness towards him. She didn't respect him at all, and even though he knew that she was supposed to, Alejandro found her stubborn nature quite endearing.
Acting stubborn, however, wasn't going to cut it when he needed to train her. He still had to teach Heather the basics of the society before they moved onto more complicated training. Heather still seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension that she would return to the inferior colony soon, though Alejandro knew that with the extremely advanced security in the superior complex, that was highly unlikely. Whether she liked it or not, Heather was going to have to adapt, or... The alternative wasn't even worth contemplating. For some reason, he found himself resolving to help her adapt. He couldn't let her be exterminated like a mindless creature.
"Try it again," he tried to coax Heather. It was now well into her second week in training, but she had refused to soak up even the most basic customs. He had never trained an inferior before, but he was sure that not all of them were as hotheaded as his charge, were they?
Learning to type on a tablet was usually one of the easiest training sessions, or so he'd heard from other officers who'd been forced to look after an inferior. They already had knowledge of letters and what they meant, so typing was a skill picked up quickly. However, in Heather's case, she refused to even touch the tablet.
"Alright, Heather." he sighed. "You can sit there all you want, but I assure you, you are not leaving this room until you have typed something. It's perfectly simple."
Heather just narrowed her eyes as though daring him to make her type something, her arms folded constrictingly across her chest. Alejandro rolled his own green eyes, leaning back to survey the scowling girl. He tried not to smirk: she really didn't need encouragement, and he really should not have been amused.
"I'm not touching that." she told him through clenched teeth after a few moment's silence. "I want to keep my fingers, thank you very much."
Tablets were officially Heather's most loathed gadget. The touch screen confounded her, and she was secretly terrified that if she touched one, it would burn off the skin on her fingers. Alejandro knew she was apprehensive about it, and touched the virtual keyboard again to demonstrate how safe it was.
"See?" he said, exasperated. "It isn't going to hurt you. Every superior in the complex owns one, and no one was ever been injured by it. Just touch it, Heather."
Heather's lips curled into a tight, malicious smile that immediately concerned Alejandro. She reached out, before tentatively touching the tablet. Alejandro felt his whole body slump in relief, and he gave Heather an encouraging grin.
"You did it-" he began, but Heather's hands curled tightly around the sides of the tablet. She picked it up off the table, holding it over her head. Alejandro was frozen, unsure of how to deal with her. His instincts to rush forward and stop her kicked in a moment too late; she'd already flung the tablet across the room, and by the time he'd lunged forward the appliance was already lying several feet away from her. Alejandro's eyes nearly bugged out in horror, a strangled gasp emitting from his lips. Tablets were created to survive accidents, but he doubted their warranty accounted for being thrown angrily across the room.
"Well, I touched it." Heather smirked, folding her arms again. "Is this training session over?"
Alejandro half-sprinted across the floor to see if he could recover the gadget. It was lying face down, and for a moment he was relieved; there did not appear to be any damage. However, his heart sank when he turned it over to see the vicious cracks running across its screen, warping the pixels displayed. A groan slid from his lips, and he ran a hand through his hair, despairing.
"Heather..." he moaned, at a loss of what to say to her. He looked up, staring across the white expanse of the room and at Heather, whose face was extremely smug.
"Is it broken?" she sounded far too pleased with herself. Alejandro sighed, shoulders heaving.
"The screen is, but that can be fixed." He picked both himself and the damaged tablet up from the floor, staring numbly at Heather. "Why, Heather?"
Heather's face lapsed suddenly from the smug little smile to a hard scowl, and he saw her body tense stiffly.
"Why, Alejandro?" she mocked. "Why did you bring me here? Why are you trying to turn me into one of you? WHY?"
With each word she spoke, a greater dose of venom was inflected into her voice. Alejandro saw pain flash across her face, and then she was gone, her boots thudding heavily across the floor. Alejandro followed her frantically; in what was clearly an emotional state she could have been a liability, and he did not want her to cross paths with a law enforcement patrol officer; too many official reprimands would result in euthanasia for an "inferior".
To Alejandro's relief, Heather hadn't run far. When the doors to the training centre slit apart, he could see her form on one of the backless white seats just a few feet away. She was in front of one of the windows in the complex, and although he could not see her face, by her stance it was obvious that she was gazing out the smooth plane of glass at the destroyed world outside. Alejandro, having resided in the complex all his life, had never truly appreciated the outside world. It was unnattractive, piles of charred remnants shadowed by heavy black clouds; a far cry from the 'beautiful' world that history records claimed it once was. However, he realised now that it was Heather's home, and probably as comforting to her as the smooth, colourless walls of the complex were to him.
"Heather?" he broke the silence by uttering her name. Heather didn't move, eyes still fixated on the view before her.
"I want to go home," she told him finally, and there was a shocking amount of defeat in her words. Alejandro frowned.
"This is your home, Heather," he informed her, and saw her hands clench angrily around the white fabric cover of the seat.
"How?" she spat, looking around at the soulless, monochromatic prison she was stuck in. "Things don't make any sense here. There's too much waste, too much want. In the inferior colony, we all knew we would be provided for, but here people can receive food just by pressing a button." she shook her head, repulsed by the idea. "It isn't right."
"It is here," Alejandro said simply. Heather tensed, digging her sharp fingernails into the fabric of the seat so furiously now that they left small marks.
"Then there is something seriously wrong with this place..." she laughed bitterly. "What am I even saying? Of course there is something wrong with this place..."
Alejandro sighed, sitting down beside her. Heather shyed away from him a little, still averting her eyes from him.
"It depends on how you look at it," he reasoned. "Your society were brought up to think one way, we were brought up to think another. We are both doing what we believe is right-"
"No." Heather scoffed, shaking her head sharply, her dark hair swishing against her face like a curtain. "None of our society- 'inferiors, as you call us' have ever killed someone jus because we deem them a pest. Did you know that my parents died because of one of you?" she shook her head again. "Not that you'd care. You'd just think of them as pests who don't deserve to live."
She ascended suddenly, planning to storm away, but Alejandro's fingers closed around her arm and stopped her.
"I don't believe in doing that." he said, keeping his voice low. He had never really thought about it until now, but suddenly the idea of killing inferiors made his skin crawl with unease. It was ridiculous, especially since he usually chose not to care about anyone other than himself, but suddenly as he looked at Heather, the balance shifted in his brain. He had always thought of inferiors as their name; inferior beings who did not compare to their far more intelligent and advanced race. But as he looked at Heather, and saw the storm of conflicting emotions that clouded her face, he could not see any difference between her and the people he had grown with. She may have been brought up in a far more primitive and less prosperous world than his, but she was still a person. A human; he recalled hearing that this was once the blanket categorisation for all people, though now their species was split in two, and the term went unused.
"Don't believe in doing what?" Heather demanded, snapping him out of his thoughts. She had turned back, but he could tell from her the way her body was indicated towards the elevator that any offense he caused her would result in her storming away again.
"Pest control-" all of a sudden, the common term for the practice of inferior disposal left a bad taste in his mouth, and he shook his head, correcting his earlier statement. "Killing people."
He thought, or rather hoped, that maybe this statement would make Heather a little more relaxed, but her face remained hard and untrusting.
"Then why do you do it?" she pointed out, almost venomously. "I know you were part of the patrol. I know you were part of the group who goes out in shifts to destroy my whop civilisation. If you don't believe in killing us, then why do you do it?"
"For the same reason that you once went out into those trash heaps," he gestured to the view of the landscape from the small window. "And collected nearly useless scraps of metal. It is what you are told to do."
Heather opened her mouth to argue, but fell silent. She knew that there was a large difference between the job she had once occupied and the job Alejandro had, but though the semantics were different enough, a small part of her brain actually accepted what he said.
It is what you are told to do. For some inexplicable reason, the sentence seemed oddly profound to Heather. Though she would still rather die than condone the treatment of her civilisation, she had to admit that what Alejandro said was food for thought, at least. Could she really condemn him when he had only been following blindly the rules that his society dictated? The rules and customs were wrong, but if Alejandro had grown up learning that they were right, what was he supposed to think?
Suddenly, she found herself confused. Was it wrong to resent Alejandro, when his whole society was to blame, not him?
She thought of the "horrors" she had encountered since staying at the superior complex, and told herself that it was not wrong. Alejandro had brought her to the nightmarish place that almost seeped waste and arrogance, and she had every right to resent him. However, the earnest expression that had been on his face when he had told her he did not believe in killing people, she wasn't as sure any more.
I know. This chapter was really short and pathetic. Sorry. I just wanted to get something up since I haven't updated this in so long.
