I'm really sorry for the delay in getting this up, you guys. Last week was just laziness, and this week was sickness/GREs/bad internet. BUT here's Gaz's chapter, kindly proofread by the lovely Alohilani.
This one gave me trouble from day one. I'd like to thank Hercules3000 and PuddingNinja for suggesting how water could be tied into Gaz's emotional state and though processes. EarthGeeksMustDie on Tumblr also suggested relating Gaz to body of water, which was super cool of her.
I really wanted to relate this to ice somehow, as Senri recommended, but I brainstormed for days and days and this was what came out.
Element: Water
Humor: Phlegmatic
Associated Traits: Lazy, passive, flexible, even-tempered, reliable
Of course their dad would buy a boat.
Gaz didn't really pay attention to why. That sort of thing wasn't her concern. Maybe the Professor had wanted to get something that would motivate the three of them to spend more time together. Maybe he just wanted to blow a ton of money on something useless and high-maintenance (Gaz had to admit that she'd preferred a boat to a girlfriend in that regard, anyway).
Dib loved the stupid thing. He loved running radar scans through the lake for monsters and he loved fishing for radioactive fish off of the side.
On the drive down, she tended to just keep her headphones plugged into her Gameslave. It was all she could do to tune Dib out because he would ramble on and on at full-volume with no one to discourage him.
"Man! I am SO EXCITED about the checking the readings on those water-testing probes that I left last time. According to this article, if the ammonia levels in the water have risen more than 0.05%, then that means there's definitely some kind of multi-ton organism living in the lake. Here, Gaz, look at this awesome chart!" Dib gushed, leaning across the leather car seat towards her with a handful of text-heavy papers.
She recoiled from him, pressing herself against the car door, feeling the handle dig into her side uncomfortably. "Stop it, Dib. Geez. I don't want to read your stupid paper."
"Are you sure? I have one here about the circulatory systems of vampires that you might like." A few of the papers fell onto the seat as he started pulling folders out of the bag he'd stored at his feet.
"No, really, I'm good." The volume on her game was turned all the way up, but Gaz could still make him out through the water level's panicked music. Water levels were the worst.
"Here it is! Look at all these sources! I even think that Dr. Summers might have helped research this one," he said, as if that name was supposed to mean anything to her.
The next thing she knew, Dib was waving papers under her nose, blocking her view of the Gameslave screen. She heard the disappointing , bleeping tone through her headset that meant she'd just lost a man. Growling, Gaz grabbed her brother's wrist and shoved him forcibly back onto his side of the seat, ignoring his pained "nngh!" sound.
"I. Don't. Give. A. Tiny. Rat's. Butt. About. That. Paper. Got it?"
For a second or two she held his arm at the weird angle, like disciplining a dog. When she finally let go of him, Dib squished himself as far away from her as he could get, rubbing at his hand.
"Okay, alright. Sorry. I just thought-"
"Well, that's never really been your strong suit, has it?"
He hunched his shoulders a bit. "Just forget I said anything."
"No problem."
Gaz returned to her game, to the obnoxious water level. She got very close to re-entering her "Zone," the button-mashes coming to her like reflexes as their car bumped along the country roads. Finally, just when the boss battle loomed ahead, she heard their father acknowledge the little scuffle.
"Are you kids doing alright back there?" The Professor asked, only half-turning as he kept his gloved hands stoically in the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock positions on the steering wheel.
"Actually, I'm-" Dib began.
"Yes." Gaz spoke over him.
"Good. We're almost to the lake, you know."
Glancing out the window, Gaz saw that they were getting very close. The power lines and smoggy sky of the city had given way to saws of trees and a cloudy white overcast, dotted with blue. Off in the distance she could make out craggy mountaintops, barely moving as their station wagon bumped along the badly-maintained country roads.
It was enough to make her sick, all this nature.
The next thing she knew, their dad had pulled over next to the docks. The car shifted ever so slightly around them as the Professor threw the car into "park," but even that wasn't enough to get Gaz to turn off her Gameslave. She started another level, even as Dib was piling out of the seat next to her and her Dad popped the trunk and started unloading the cooler.
"Daughter, I packed you peanut-butter and honey. That way it's a complete protein with a natural source of carbohydrates!" he called to her from outside.
"Okay."
"Don't you want to come help us load up the boat?"
"Not really."
"It will be a good source of cardiovascular exercise AND a valuable source of family bonding time!"
"I'm good," she called back, still wedged in her seat, as she listened to Dib and her Dad shifting boxes around outside. Occasionally one of their heads would bob by the window, carrying rope or gasoline or food or soda back and forth to the boat. These stupid trips were never her idea – let them do all the work. If she'd had her way, they would have stayed home and watched movies and ordered pizza.
When the Professor slammed the trunk shut, she started to realize that eventually she'd have to get out of the car.
Dib wasn't patient enough to wait for her – he threw open the car door on her side, ducking out of the way as she nearly tumbled out onto the ground.
"Sorry! C'mon, Gaz, we're getting ready to get on the boat now. Everything's been unloaded. You could have helped a little bit, you know," he told her, planting one hand on his hip.
"Didn't sound like my kind of thing."
He looked at her for a second, head cocked to the side, his laptop half-slipping from where he had it jammed up under one arm. Then he gave a little quiet scoff and turned away, heading toward the dock.
Gaz rolled her eyes and slid her Gameslave into her back pocket as she hopped out of the car. Maybe Dib was finally figuring out that she just wanted to be left alone.
She wasn't banking on it.
The boat that their father had bought was a fairly decent one – it had a little cabin below deck and four engines and a bunch of other boaty-things going for it that Gaz imagined only guys who wore a lot of smoking jackets would care about. By the time she stepped carefully aboard, the Professor had already put on his ridiculous captain's hat. It went very badly with his lab coat.
"There you are, daughter! Are you all ready for our day of lake fun?" He said excitedly, hands on his hips (very Dib-like. Or maybe the other way around).
Gaz tossed a glance up toward him, jamming her hands down in her pockets. Raining on Dib's parade was one thing, but Gaz didn't get to spend sixteen hours a day with her dad. It averaged out to more like sixteen hours a month.
If she hurt his feelings, if she struck him down, it might end up being less.
"Yeah, sure. I guess."
It was the best she could do.
Gaz was lucky to have a father so difficult to discourage.
"Well that's just fantastic! Your brother is ready to go as well. Just let me activate these engines and we can be on our seafaring way!" He rested on hand on her shoulder and Gaz felt a little warm shudder pass through her. A frightening whisper of safety and affection. She was too big now to be picked up like he'd done when she was small.
Gaz pulled herself very carefully away from him.
"Cool."
"Do you want to help me steer the boat out of the harbor? Like you used to when you were a tiny frightening child?" he asked her.
"…I don't think so. I think I'll just go sit by the bow." And then as an afterthought, after she'd already started to walk away: "Thanks, though."
"That's alright. Maybe your brother would like to help!"
Her father and brother suited one another better anyway – they were always talking, arguing, interacting, even if only to hear their own voices. Gaz preferred silence. She cast a wary eye up at the sky as she made her way to the bow of the boat - up towards the front, where a lawn chair was parked tackily along the railing.
The sky was looking a little dark.
Whatever. Not her problem. Gaz settled herself down in the lawn chair, her feet propped up on the railing that ran around the length of the boat.
Before long they'd shipped off. The deck began rocking steadily beneath her chair as the shore faded from view. Gaz only noticed these things on occasion, when she reached a slow spot in her game and bothered to look up.
Soon Dib had hooked his computer up to a few radar devices that he'd installed on the boat and was merrily gathering data. Beyond him, their father was half steering the boat and half eying Dib as he worked.
It was only when the darkness in the sky started washing out her screen that Gaz got up from her chair, clicking her game reluctantly off.
She kept her back to the boys and walked over to the railing, looking out across the lake.
The storm was getting closer. Gaz felt the air getting heavy around the boat, as wind blew foamy waves up against the sides.
Some energy crackled in the air as the storm grew, sinking into her bones, stirring at that glaze of apathy that gripped her most days. Gaz stepped up close to the little boat's railing and took hold of the bars, locking herself in place. The shoreline was getting difficult to see in the haze (not that her near-constant squinting made it much easier).
Dib's screaming broke her trance. She cast a half-glare across the deck, at where he was clustered around a handful of beeping monitors and sonar outputs, her father standing stiffly beside him.
"Look, dad! I'm getting a reading for a multi-ton freshwater organism. Likely reptilian. Judging by sound outputs, I'd guess that it has lungs instead of gills…" Dib rambled on. Gaz got cranky and exhausted just listening to him.
"Those numbers don't seem statistically varied from the control. Let me see what algorithms you're using…"
Across the water, off in the distance, Gaz saw a bolt of lightning shoot to the ground. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three…
The argument between her father and brother was cut cleanly in two by a low rumbling. Thunder crashed, loud with the lake's help, rattling around them, shuddering deep in her chest.
When Gaz looked back around, both of the boys were staring dumbstruck up at the sky. A shot of lightning flashed again, reflected on Dib's glasses and the Professor's goggles. Both with the same slack-jawed look of any scientist confronted with something outside of their field.
"I didn't realize it was so close," Dib said. Typical.
"Well, these summer storms tend to have exaggerated energy, and-"
Another crack of thunder sounded. Gaz tightened her grip around the guardrail. Darkness was beginning to slide over them, nightfall in high-speed as the sky seeped black like a bruise. The rushing roar of the water grew louder with the cutting wind.
Gaz felt little stings of water strike at her face, soaking her bare hands. The storm was nearly here.
Behind her, fumbling around in their too-practical world, she heard the boys as they struggled to get Dib's equipment under some shelter. The boat did have a cabin down below deck, and the two of them managed to get the last of the laptops and sensors and hard drives to safety just as the rain picked up.
Or at least Gaz figured as much. She wasn't really paying attention to their scraping and yelping. She was watching the downpour, raindrops shooting from the sky like missiles and exploding into the surface of the lake. The deck bucked beneath her feet and she braced her legs far apart to keep from stumbling. She thought back to all the times that the girls at school had told her that she stood like a boy.
Gaz locked her knees and stayed where she was.
Over the crashing water, the hulking thunder, the hissing wind, she heard Dib calling.
"Gaz! C'mon! You need to get below deck! The storm's going to knock you overboard!" he begged.
In her mind's eye Gaz saw him, his hair-spike plastered down in front of his face, glasses wet and useless, that wide-eyed fearful stare.
She didn't turn to look at him. She only moved to tuck her soaking bangs behind her ear so that they didn't block her vision.
"I'm fine," she insisted.
And she was. Not comfortable, necessarily, because the rain was cold and soaked her to the bone and the wind froze her to the railing and as the ship kicked back and forth she felt her insides twitch warningly. But she liked the look of the lake in storm. She liked watching water meet water so volatile, amidst the dropping air pressure and black-veiled shore.
Gaz remembered her father's explanation of the origin of life. He'd told her that the ancient primordial seas swam with hunks of carbon and nitrogen, floating gelatinous between drops of water. It was water that held them together, and when the lightning bolts of bygone storms struck the surface, it was the beginnings of organic life that were created. That was how water had birthed all life, without acting in a single way of its own accord. Water just did what it always did. It hosted. Water was still and passive. It followed gravity, slid into containers and followed the gale force of winds, but it never exerted itself.
"Gaz!" her annoying brother's voice broke her thoughts, "Gaz! I'm coming to get you!"
"I'm FINE!" she snarled, angry that he dared to interrupt her meditation. Gaz had only ever asked for one thing: to be left alone. She'd never understood how not doing something could be so difficult for him.
Her fingers seemed to creak as she let go of the railing, finally looking over at Dib.
He'd nearly made it halfway across the deck to her. In the sheeting rain his black form was difficult to make out, even with his billowing jacket and his boots braced far apart like a child learning to walk.
"Dib! Get your stupid hide back in the cabin! It's just a storm!" she yelled at him over nature's roaring.
"No! It's really dangerous out here and dad said-"
"I don't care. Leave me the hell alone! Can't you get it through your freakish giant head? I don't want your help! No one ever wants your help!"
A bolt of lightning shot into the water, not too far from their shuddering boat. For an instant Gaz saw Dib perfectly illuminated amidst the rainy haze. She saw his slumped shoulders, his black hair clinging to his face along with his coat, tight against his body like skin. He looked small and fragile and thin in the lightning's shadows.
Then, not an instant later, came the thunder. It crackled in the air and broke over them both like a bomb. Gaz felt her muscles tighten at the storm's sudden rage.
She still did better than Dib. Darkness fell over them once again, and the black lump that was her brother threw himself to the slick deck in a panic.
The boat jerked to the side just as he fell, boots scraping against the polished wood. Before he could catch himself, the stupid boy slid all the way to the edge of the deck and his skinny form slipped under the railing.
Gaz stared at where he'd been. She stared at the black water closing in over his head into a frothy wave until it seemed like he'd never existed at all.
Maybe she heard their father give a strangled cry from the cabin – there wasn't any way to tell in the roaring of the storm.
Thoughts crashed against each other inside her brain. Each second that ticked by was a second that Dib's head failed to reappear on the surface.
Maybe those stupid boots were weighing him down.
Maybe he'd gotten tangled in his jacket.
Maybe he'd inhaled some water and –
She stopped the thought before it started and hurled herself over the railing after him.
The water was freezing, violent, swirling around like a living thing. It forced the air out of her lungs and for an instant Gaz was afraid she'd made a massive mistake. Two skeletons at the bottom of the lake instead of one.
She managed to take a breath, treading water with already heavy limbs, and then dove below the surface.
It was shockingly calm underwater. Still and quiet – at least, much moreso than up above, where the thunderstorm was still raging. She opened her eyes in the darkness and felt the cold water sting at her skin. And there, just a few feet below, she saw light glinting off of Dib's glasses as he flailed around in the depths.
Getting weaker. His eyes half-open, a sick bubble leaking out of his mouth. Gaz reached down through the darkness and grabbed her brother by his arm and wrenched him upwards.
They broke the surface together. Coughing, sputtering, throwing water up all over each other but at least breathing. Gaz felt air rocket into her lungs and warm her up in the strangest way.
"Gaz!" Dib tried to gasp, "I-"
"Shut it!" she rasped back at him, barely managing to keep them both afloat as the wind numbed her face. With a bit of awkward flailing she treaded water back to the boat and grabbed hold of the bottom railing.
To her relief, mild though it was, the Professor was already waiting for them. He leaned over the side and grabbed the back of Dib's jacket and Gaz felt a little lurch as he hooked his other arm around her middle. When she was little he'd picked her up all the time, of course – to carry her around his lab or help her reach something tall.
She'd made the casual assumption that her father wasn't strong enough to pick her up anymore. Clearly, she'd been wrong.
He dumped the two of them onto the deck of the ship – closer to the cabin where the wood was a little dryer. Next to her, Gaz heard Dib panting and gasping and rattling against the floorboards as he started to shake.
She laid her head against the ground, staring up at the bone-grey sky. The rain had let up a bit, falling in a spattered spread. It looked like flying. Then again, maybe she was just exhausted and oxygen-deprived, but the airy lightheadedness settled over her nonetheless.
"Are two alright?"
The Professor's voice hit her, sounding distant and scared and unnatural in how many ways. She didn't like it.
"Yeah."
And then, a few seconds later, from Dib:
"I think so."
Out of the corner of her vision she saw his black form pull itself up, monolithic against the sky. Soon their father was looming over them both, his head tilted to one side, goggles fogged in the humidity.
"That was very impressive, Gaz. Going after your brother like that. The bond between siblings is very-"
"It wasn't anything," she said quickly, nudging herself up onto her elbows.
Dib turned to her, words working their way out between his chattering teeth: "Gaz, c'mon, it was! I could've-"
"You would have been fine."
"But can't I just-"
"Drop it."
She felt suffocated, suddenly. Both of the boys were looking at her – impressed, concerned, affectionate – and it was weird and stressful and if she'd known that ten minutes ago she might have just let Dib alone.
Maybe.
Gaz got to her feet, squeegeeing water out of her hair with a few fingers. She turned her back on them both and stalked over to the side of the boat. Holding tightly to the railing this time.
The storm was breaking up. Soft light leaked down through the broken cloud cover, dancing brightly across the water. Gaz crossed her arms over her chest and shivered even in the sunlight. She was still wet and cold over all that diving overboard business.
Behind her she heard the two of them moving around, stomping their boots. Probably getting Dib a blanket and starting to pilot toward the shore. Finally. Maybe they'd finally had enough of these stupid day trips.
She felt something on her back. Gaz twisted her head around, prepared to punch Dib one if he was trying to hug her. Instead it was the Professor – he'd taken off his lab coat and set it carefully around her shoulders. The collar itched against her face.
Underneath he was wearing a "Membrane Laboratories Cookout – 1994" tee-shirt, apparently. He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and then wandered off toward the helm.
Gaz wrapped the coat around her, tightly, afraid it might blow off. It was warmer than she'd expected. Coated in dad-smell that had always been the same. When she looked down she saw that the bottom four inches or so of fabric dragged the wet ground. It would be alright. He had others.
There was more movement behind her – more boot-stomping – and Dib was suddenly there by her side. Leaning on the railing, staring out at the calming lake, adjusting his wet glasses.
She waited for him to say something. To ramble, congratulate, thank, to add words where none were needed. She'd just done what needed to be done. His commentary wouldn't add anything.
Maybe he was finally getting it.
Dib stayed quiet. Only the sound of his raspy breathing and the washing of the water all around.
The two of them stood in silence alongside each other. It was nice, for once. Just being. Gaz could nearly smell the awkwardness leaching off of Dib as he tried not to talk and instead fidgeted and shook. She smiled to herself, a very small one, well-hidden by the collar of her father's lab coat wrapped around her.
They managed not to talk for the entire ride back to the shore.
"Emotionally stunted" isn't really a quality associated with water, but laziness and passiveness certainly are. I just decided to stretch the definitions into emotional passivity in order to fit Gaz a little better. I'm willing to go with an interpretation of her in which she's so unwilling to make an emotional commitment in any direction (either to loving or hating her brother, for instance) that she defaults to not doing anything at all most of the time.
I guess this is the end, everyone! I want to thank you all so much for sticking around, being patient, and leaving wonderful reviews! These have been really fun to work on. Now we get into the scary part: I'm going to have to start working on another multi-chaptered fic. So it might be a while before you hear from me again. Until then, guys, you've all been amazing!