Arin sat down with his back to the mesa, dust kicking up from where his butt met the ground. Frustrated tears ran down his face and he did his best to wipe them away with the back of his hand. He knew he shouldn't be so upset about what Amelia had said. Could he really be so jealous? Could he really overreact so much when she didn't even know how he felt? Maybe he shouldn't have a crush on her. Did he really want to be in a relationship right now anyway? What if it led to him having kids with her?
I don't want to raise children in a world like this anyway, Arin thought. I should probably just give up on love for now.
There was a sudden, low growl that came from in front of him. He looked up and saw a four-legged animal with its feet firmly planted in the ground, keeping a defensive stance. When their eyes met, it growled again. Arin squinted in the dark and could make out clipped, pointed ears and a long tail. The stars cast a silvery shine on the dog's short gray fur. Yes, it was definitely a dog. A pitbull, at that. Arin vaguely remembered that there was some sort of negative stigma that people pinned to this breed. The dog's ears pressed against the side of its head as it threatened Arin with another growl.
"Come here, boy," Arin said, beckoning the dog with a gesture. "Come here."
The dog bared its teeth at him.
"It's okay," Arin said. He made a kissy noise and the dog stopped. Its ears perked up at the noise. Arin smiled. "You like that? It's okay. Come here."
He made the noise again and the dog wagged its tail slowly. It cautiously walked over to him and sniffed his face. He made the kissy noise one more time and the dog licked his cheek affectionately.
"Aw! Good boy!" Arin said. He rubbed the dog's side and felt that its stomach was bulging slightly. The dog growled a little. He looked at its belly and saw sagging teets. That was why it had been so defensive in his presence. "Oh. Sorry I called you a boy, sweetie."
He rubbed her head and noticed that it was chapped and dry. He also noticed a metal beaded chain jingling around her neck. There was a military dog tag on the chain with the name Missy crudely scratched into it. "Your name's Missy, huh?" he asked. Missy licked him more and whimpered a little. It must have been a long time since someone had said her name to her.
"Arin?" Jon called as he came around the other side of the mesa. Natalie and Amelia followed. "We thought we heard you talking to someone over here."
Missy startled to growl as she rested her head on Arin's shoulder and stared at the oncoming humans.
"Guys, I found a dog," Arin called over to them gently. "She's scared and pregnant, though, so call her by her name to comfort her. Her name's Missy."
"Missy?" Natalie said. "Hey, Missy! Come here, girl!"
Missy wagged her long tail at the sound of her name and she sauntered over to Natalie who knelt down to take the dog in her arms. "Oh, poor baby! Her face is all dry out here. Looks like it hurts." Missy licked Natalie's nose.
"We have to take her back down with us," Arin insisted.
"What?" Amelia said. "No, we can't. She could be carrying a disease. That's why we don't have pets down there already. She could also be dangerous."
"Amelia, look at her," Arin said. "Does she really look dangerous?"
"You never know," was all Amelia could say to that.
"She's pregnant out in the desert with no one else to take care of her," Arin said in a firm voice. "I'm sorry, Chief Oates, but without your permission I'm going to rescue Missy and take her back down to the facility with us."
Amelia sighed. "Okay, fine," she said. "Do what you will, but don't call me Chief Oates anymore."
It wasn't hard to sneak Missy back into the facility. The only difficult part was keeping her on Arin's lap while they descended in the elevator. She was very nervous about it but Arin was able to keep her calm enough. Arin insisted that he would keep her in his room and he'd cook her breakfast and dinner every day. Jon seemed excited to have a dog in the facility and Natalie adored Missy. Amelia was ambivalent, though. She thought Missy was a cute dog but having a dog could use up more of their meat supplies than necessary. It would only get worse when she had her puppies. If Grant found out, all four of them would get into trouble.
Amelia finally got back to her apartment and went straight to her room. She fell onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. She still needed to tell Arin that she wasn't interested in a relationship with him. Hopefully it would be easier to tell him now that he had his new, pregnant dog. He would be so preoccupied with her now that maybe he wouldn't care too much that she didn't want to date him. There was the possibility that she might give him a chance in the future once the world was taken back from the aliens. She wished she could have been able to start out their friendship with them just being…..Well, just being friends. She felt like she didn't really have any friends right now since Arin just wanted to date her while Jon and Natalie were on his side. If only she had someone on her side.
"Amelia?"
She sat up and turned to look at the door she had left open. Doug was standing there in sweatpants and a white undershirt. He looked at her with tired eyes but his body language was restless.
"Hey, Doug," Amelia said in a flat tone. "What are you still doing up?"
"I can't sleep," Doug said. "Um….I was wondering if you'd actually want to watch a movie with me. If you're not too tired, that is."
"No, I'm not too tired yet," Amelia said. She got off her bed and led him to the living room. "Help yourself to a drink while I pick out a movie."
She wasn't in the mood for any certain genre in particular. She browsed through her movies with extreme disinterest until she came to one of her childhood favorites called the MirrorMask. It was about a British teenage girl whose dad owned a circus. She just wanted to live a normal teenager's life, but instead, she gets thrown into an adventure in the land of light and shadows. Amelia hadn't been able to relate to the main character when she was little, but now that she was living in an underground facility in hiding from the alien overlords she could understand the desire to live a normal life.
"Did you find a movie?" Doug asked as he came back into the room.
"Yeah," Amelia said. "I'd forgotten about this movie. It was written by one of my favorite authors."
"Who's that?"
"Neil Gaiman."
"Really? I've read a couple of his books."
Amelia looked up at him. "You have?"
"Yeah," Doug said. "Good Omens and American Gods. He's got a unique style. Actually, I wonder if he's even still alive."
"There's no way of telling," Amelia said. "Unless we work really hard to track him down, but we've been focusing all of our resources on Aperture. Didn't you want a drink?"
"I have water boiling on the stove," Doug said. "I'm going to make green tea. Do you want any?"
"Yeah, I could go for some tea."
"Okay. I'll go check on the water."
Doug returned to the kitchen and Amelia started up the DVD. Too impatient to wait through the previews, she skipped forward to the main menu. It took a few minutes before Doug finally came back holding two cups of tea.
"Oh, I could have gotten my own cup," Amelia said apologetically.
"It's no problem," Doug said. "I didn't want to make you get up." He gave her a tired smile and she smiled back. "I forgot to ask earlier, but did you have fun with your friends?"
"Sort of." She looked down into her cup of tea. The mug burned her hands a little from the heat of the tea. "Apparently, Arin 'likes' me a lot."
"Oh?" Doug asked. He didn't really sound interested or surprised.
"Yeah, but now I have to break it to him that I don't feel the same way."
"Oh." This time, Doug did sound surprised. "I was beginning to think that you two were already a couple."
"Why would you think that?"
"Well, I don't know. He seems pretty jealous and protective toward you."
"I guess I never thought that that meant he liked me like that. How should I break the news to him?" She looked at Doug and noticed that his brow was wrinkled in frustration. "Are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Doug murmured.
"Is it the voices?"
"Yeah." He gave her a weak smile. "I'm sorry you have to put up with me."
"I'm not 'putting up' with you. I'd like to consider you as a friend. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you! We snuck up to the surface and we found a dog."
"A dog? Really?"
"Yeah, and she's pregnant."
"Huh," Doug mused. "I haven't seen a dog in so long. It's amazing that you found one. And it's pregnant, too. What a deal. So do you want to start the movie now?"
"Sure." Amelia hit 'play' on the remote and the movie started.
Helena was just a teenager in Britain who worked as a juggler for her dad's circus. Between performances, her mother inexplicably collapses backstage. Later on, Helena visits her mother in the hospital and Amelia felt a sense of dread settling into the pit of her stomach. Somehow, she'd forgotten about this part of the movie. She felt tears sting the corners of her eyes and she bit her bottom lip as it started to tremble when Helena's mother told her that they were already prepping her for surgery. Amelia always regretted not being able to spend more time with her mother before she died. Why couldn't she have been able to say goodbye? She swallowed her emotions until the movie really picked up when Helena woke up in the once beautiful land of light which was being engulfed by darkness.
The movie ended and Doug found that he was tearing up a little. He enjoyed happy endings. He'd never expected himself to get such a happy ending to his own tale. With the way things had been going in Aperture he had been sure that he would have ended up dying there of either starvation or one of GLaDOS' traps. He looked toward his rescuer but she had fallen asleep next to him. He smiled and picked her up in his arms. She stirred a little but she just ended up resting her head on his chest. Doug carried her to her bedroom and laid her down on the bed.
"Why don't you lie down next to her?"
Doug was about to scold the voice in his head, but then he looked at Amelia's face as she slept. Her eyelids fluttered a little as she dreamed. She looked so peaceful and sweet as she rolled over onto her back.
"You know you want to."
That thought shouldn't be as tempting as it is, Doug thought. He couldn't help imagining himself spooning—Is it called spooning? he thought—with her in her bed. She would be so warm and soft. And real. The one thing that Anna hadn't been.
Amelia murmured something and Doug leaned down to hear what it was. She mumbled again. Doug noticed that his face was only a few inches from hers now.
"Kiss her."
I…can't, he thought.
"Do it. Kiss her. She's asleep so she won't know."
Doug's stomach knotted as he leaned in a little closer and could feel her warmth. Their lips were almost touching. Just a centimeter away….But at the last second, he chickened out. He shut her door quietly and returned to his own room.
"I'm so stupid," he said to himself. "Why would I kiss her? I don't want to. I really don't." His speech started to become more rapid with each sentence. "She's too young for me. She wouldn't want me to kiss her. She'd probably find me repulsive. I probably still stink, too. Why did I want to kiss her in the first place? I don't like her like that. I don't! I don't! This is so stupid! W-Why am I even thinking about this?! Even if she were my age, she'd be out of my league. She's too good for me. Such a sweet girl. Such a beautiful, caring young woman. So lovely with that sweet smile and those pretty eyes and that supple body…No! Stop it! D-Don't say things like that about her! And don't talk so damn loud!"
His gaze suddenly stopped on his bottle of pills on the nightstand.
"You idiot," he muttered. "You forgot to take your pills hours ago. How could you forget something so important?"