Synchronous

By Shahrezad1

Summary: "I know you. Who and what are you? Why are you important? Why do I see you in my mind," Syndrome shook her by the shoulders, almost violently as adrenaline made up for the lack of strength, "why?!"

The sixth in a series of Synlet challenges for Synlet month. =^__^= A follow-up to chapter 3, "Symptom."

Disclaimer: Syndrome (alias Buddy Pine) and Violet Parr belong to Brad Bird, the creators at Pixar, and the Disney/Pixar company itself. No infringement is intended, this is created for sheer fun.

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Chapter 6: DisOrder

"His eyes were the blue of forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly."

-Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

Her fingers still tingled from first contact, the flow of energy as the two beings--two personalities--had crossed from her to him. The result hadn't been immediate, but in several minutes time the glazed, watery blue eyes had blinked once, then twice. Moistening the staring orbs so that his gaze wasn't nearly as unfocused. Regardless, it would be some time before it could be called lively or intelligent. Or evil.

The thought made her shiver, in an 'I'm going to regret this,' fashion. But without realizing it her feet slid forward, rather than back. It was as though two sides of her were warring against themselves, but rather than the desire to fight or run for her life it was the urge to satisfy her curiosity that she was stuck dealing with. Instinct knew that she had just unleashed The Beast and was driving her to run before he fully gained consciousness, but the part that had been entertained by the sparring, intelligent duo was itching to watch him, shake him, possibly even Snow-White-Kiss him awake, if only to find out which personality had come out on top.

Rooting for Buddy was easy, what with the kid's open naiveté and casual care for her wellbeing, in addition to his very real curiosity when it came to being a Super. But he was still a child, and somehow she knew that a child trapped in an adult's body was still nothing more than just that--a child.

But Syndrome was no better. He was the darkest emotions and most corrupt thinking, brought around and mixed by bitterness. He was all negativity and sardonic humor, taking glee in the pain of others, but also somehow sparking awake something else.

It had been this shadowed devil that had first shown any interest in her, beyond the boyish blushes of Tony in middle school and the clumsy affection Rudy had shown. He had responded to her affronted confrontation with honest interest; honest even in the fact that he was the epitome of corruption.

Violet honestly didn't know whether she did or didn't want this aspect of him to come out. Either way, it wouldn't turn out well. So why she stayed she had no idea. Especially as there really was no way to tell, except to watch. And then, perhaps, it would be too late.

One foot stretching forward like a lodestone pointing north, the other slid backwards on the off chance that there might be danger. Her hands still hovered just on the edge of the bed, and the door was cracked open, just as it had been when she'd snuck invisibly past the nurse's station. Having learned from previous visits and previous searches just who was in the last bed down the last hall, the man with no name and no visitors.

He was slowly dying, they had whispered pityingly, of unknown causes. His body had long since healed, hair even growing back at an alarming rate and in a furious red, but the light hadn't lit behind his eyes. Like a man without a soul.

Violet didn't know how they would react to his changed status but one thing was certain, and it was that he was no longer dying.

Syndrome slowly closed his eyes, allowing them to rest a moment as he explored his other senses. His torso stretched beneath the hospital-issued blanket, and she could distinctly hear the popping of vertebrae as they fell back into place after long-being out of joint. His toes pointed towards the ceiling as he pigeon-toed them, then curled them downward, fingers twitching and stretching in time with the movements.

Instead of the ragged breathing she'd walked in on it was as though someone had released a catch in his lungs, allowing air to enter and fill the barrel-like tanks. His chest heaved up and down like a slow-moving steam engine as it was just heating up, billows pumping as they slowly took in fuel and burned it down. It was at that point that he let his arms fall, slight atrophy barely making a dent in the sheer strength that rested within them. Delicate, precise fingers matched up with muscular forearms and shoulders. Strong enough to lift the tail end of a car, but careful enough to hardwire a computer from its basest bones.

It was then she decided that it was in her best interests to leave.

Vi didn't get the chance to follow through on the instinct as a hand clamped hard round her wrist. She almost didn't recognize it at first, just looking at the object in puzzlement, the thought, 'where did you come from?' slowing down her brain a second before it finally caught up with itself in super-speed. And then she was attempting to tear herself away.

The girl succeeded but only just barely as his strength gave out. Which seemed to puzzle the prone man more than anything, the same fist that had caught her raised to pinch the bridge of his nose. Until that, too tired him, and the arm quickly dropped.

Then Buddy Pine, no longer a dead man, spoke.

"Where am I?" he croaked out, throat caked with age and dust. Misuse had dropped it several creaky levels, till it was Syndrome at his darkest, but every crack that broke the tones spoke of Buddy. The redhead wet his lips but didn't repeat himself, waiting for her to speak. His eyes had yet to open again, and Violet made the connection that he might have thought she was a nurse or attendant rather than an intruder. Taking the assumed position up like a mantle, she slowly moved forward if only to pick up the glass of water and press it to his lips. He sipped but did nothing more, still waiting for her response.

"In a hospital."

It was the wrong thing to say, or more accurately the wrong voice to say it in. Youthful, strung by the slightest sliver of worry and fear. It was neither the military standoffishness of a prison nurse nor the muted concern of a matronly hospital worker and he responded to it with sudden stiffening.

Electric blue eyes shot open, torso arching a full ninety degrees in the bed till his face was level with Violet's own. But before he had the chance to snatch at her again she'd slid away, frozen in a semi-defensive crouch halfway to the door.

They were at a standstill, the Villain and the Heroine, but Violet doubted he was coherent enough to recognize it for what it was. And in the quiet he could only stare, small blue eyes pinched as, slack-jawed, he examined her. Head to toe, from the split-ends of her dark hair (and indication of her lack of concern for appearances) to the blunt, chewed tips of her fingernails. And then, front teeth slightly, childishly overlarge within his oblong face, he spoke.

"You. I know you. How do I know you."

"You don't," was the immediate block, voice raised defensively to match her hands. Body ready for a fight or flight response and bangs somehow instinctively falling in front of her face, and free of her hair-band, "Know me, I mean. I just…was walking by, making sure everything was all right and all that. You know, Candystriper. That's all. Really."

Cringing more and more with his increased scrutiny, Violet fought the gaze of his very familiar face. But it was neither that of Buddy nor Syndrome. Instead it existed as a molded amalgamation of two beings, the childish innocence of Incrediboy still influencing his thoughts and actions, and the true evil he was capable of just beyond emotion's reach.

And he was picking up things too quickly. He hadn't noticed his surroundings, nor yet the machine he was hooked up to, but he could tell a lie when he saw it. Especially coming from such an unconvincing respondent.

"You sure about that? Sweetheart?" and now the eyes lidded with the wicked familiarity of his Jekyll side, brows raised even as his eyes capped at half-mast. Making his direct expression all the more laser-like as it targeted in on her and stopped her on the spot. Stopped her despite the fact that he was weak with exhaustion, and wearing a hospital gown to boot. And regardless of the fact that she technically had the upper hand, and could disappear both figuratively and literally at a moments notice.

It was the Villain aspect that had come out, or at least something like him. And she felt herself both mentally groaning as well as slightly short of breath as she primed herself for action.

In most cases, as she'd gleaned from their temporary imprisonment in her head, she'd learned that 'Syndrome' could be dealt with in one of three ways. The first involved catching him off guard and distracting him, the second, cowing him into silence. A last resort existed in the form of outright challenging that aspect of his personality, but so far to date…that'd never been completely successful.

The thoughts of her three optional actions flew like scattered birds through the young woman's brain. Of them all, the most likely option was to distract and catch him off guard. Being slightly ADD in both his child and adult forms made this slightly easy, given the setting.

"Yes," and the firmness of her own words surprised her as much as it did him, "I was asked to check in on the patient in room 118, and then let the nurse know what was wrong. Because you're supposed to be, you know, asleep."

Blankness, then, "what?"

"You had an accident," she explained with painful slowness, moving forward with the measured movements of one dealing with the mentally unstable, or very ill. This appeared to put him off for a moment, as he scowled childishly and sat back. Then flickered his eyes upward to glance at the ceiling.

A hospital ceiling, painted antiseptic white and covered in easily removable tiles. The pattern reminded him of confetti, if painfully bland confetti, and it seems as though it finally sunk in through that very no-nonsense ceiling just where he was at.

The muffled boom of the PA system calmly calling for assistance, along with the clatter of nurses, in a variety of scrub designs, walking past in their comfortable tennis shoes, ID tags jangling, stood as a counterpoint to the silence.

"An accident," he deadpanned.

"An accident."

"And you're a volunteer at the hospital?"

"Exactly," she breathed, then began backing away slowly, "now if you'll excuse me I think I'll just--."

"Then how is it that I know you?" and again those pointed eyes were on her. And Violet couldn't help but reflexively gasp, a reaction that flickered a weak imitation of a smile round his lips. He waited pseudo-patiently, brow twitching up as his irises twitched down, this time instead of examining her he was searching for something.

"I've helped here before, maybe you woke up once before and I didn't know it," the woman-child hesitated, "look, you should probably rest. I'll go get a nurse Mr. Pi…Sir."

"I don't think so," the blanket tumbling from his waist to the tiled floor was her only warning as he thrust forward, arms clamping encircling Violet's form. His hands eventually settled on her waist, burning with an internal heat that brought to mind the mirror's touch, only icy no longer. They rested there a moment, spreading so that his fingers surrounded her torso from rib to hip, then immediately the patient turned her around by her shoulders as though he was torn as to what to do with her.

"I know you. Who and what are you? Why are you important? Why do I see you in my mind," Syndrome shook her by the shoulders, almost violently as adrenaline made up for the lack of strength, "why?!"

The questions weren't ones she could answer, and helpless within his grip Violet could only stare up and up at his chin to his mouth and nose, but never those blazing, fire-blue eyes. And he seemed to sense that, releasing one hand to grip her chin and point her eyes to his.

"You shouldn't be afraid of me. And you should be taller than you are. But also…not. Who are you?"

Mystified, he loosened his grip the tiniest amount and she slid like a selkie from his grasp. She was halfway to the exit when his next words stopped her in her tracks.

"You're a flower of some kind. Lilac? Lavender..?"

No, no, no.

"Or maybe…Violet," a pause that was almost like an exhalation burst like a dam in the seclusion of the hospital room, and the young college student stilled as her hand settled on the knob to swing it fully open. Her eyes had closed as he finally said her name, then repeated it, tasting it on the tip of his tongue like an exotic fruit.

"Violet. You…saved me, didn't you? I remember and explosion now, then…falling. I fell on something hard, then there was a shattering and…it lasted so long. It can't be possible, but I could have sworn that there were two of me! And you, you…"

A breath. Then a sigh. Vi let the knob go and merely stood with her back to her greatest enemy and closest companion(s?). Then dropped her head in a bobbing nod.

"Yes. There were two of you."

Utter silence. Unpunctuated by the noise of the nurse's station nor the cars stream just outside the window's barrier. Within the room there existed only two beings, with the latter almost making the connection and the former hoping against it.

"You should have died in that wreck, and instead your personality split and stored in a mirror. My mirror."

"Then you…I…what am I? I feel like…something is wrong beyond the accident. I should be something. What am I? Who am I?"

To tell the truth and have it backfire, or to tell a lie and have it backfire? Neither option was pleasing, nor helped her situation. But…even should he return to his evil ways, he did deserve some measure of honestly. A portion of truth to attach himself to, to counterbalance the losses he'd been dealt with.

It was really all she could give him.

"Your name is Buddy Pine…and a man called Syndrome."

And suddenly his breath was in her hair once more and she knew that he had figured it out for himself, arms cuffing themselves around her entire being before he spoke in tones she had dreaded.

"Ooh, you really shouldn't have said that, Violet. You honestly shouldn't have said that."

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AN:

"You sure about that? Hogarth?"

XD Okay, yeah, that was the scene running through my brain as she was responding to Syndrome. Just Hogarth's expression of, "I'm really not lying, I'm telling the truth…sort of. Kinda. Okay, maybe not." The facial structure is the same, both Iron Giant and the Incredibles being the creations of Brad Bird, and both have villains with red hair, large chins, and wide foreheads. Anyone else see the coincidence?

Okay, maybe it's just me.

Anyway, a Candystriper is a term used to refer to a volunteer youth worker at a hospital, as far as I'm aware. Their uniforms are reminiscent of candy stripes, and I read a fanfic once about Angelica from Rugrats/All Grown Up acting as one. It was interesting. ^^