I'd been wanting to write this since 2013, but could never get an idea to work. This story is based on the fact that in Whispering Rock's parking lot, we only see Oleander's jeep and a red sportscar, but no third vehicle. Given that the red car is likely Milla's, I wanted to go into why Sasha possibly arrived at the camp with her.
That being said, a few things I wanted to make clear in this: Sasha suffering from photosensitivty and occasional headaches as a result of his powers is my take on why he is always shown wearing sunglasses in the series. This story is also set in an alternate 1960's time period, given how the game has a 60's aesthetic. The "Kennedy affair" is the scene from Milla's memory vault where she dives to retrieve the president's brain. This has no connection to Rhombus of Ruin.
"I may want to consider keeping a lower profile," Sasha Nein commented as he wiped the soot from his sunglasses on his green jacket.
The remains of his car lay scattered in the parking lot of the Psychonauts outpost. The outpost was nestled in a desert biome, and jutted slightly out from a canyon wall, the concrete blending into the side of it. The garage was set onto a lower area. Had it not been for Sasha quickly containing the blast with a shield, the explosion would have collapsed the structure, let alone blown him and any nearby personnel to pieces.
He was sitting on a chair outside of an interrogation room, waiting on Milla. A floor below the upraised room was the garage, which was visible through a glass window. The interrogation room itself was windowless, and currently occupied. Sasha moodily tapped his fingers on the suitcase. Questioning Milla, given her proximity to him as his partner, was standard practice, but there was little need – she was the least likely person to kill him.
"To be fair, Sasha, it'd be hard to find who wanted to do this to you," Oleander ribbed from where he sat beside him, his Pickelhaube in his hands, "considering the amount of people who want you dead."
Sasha found that he couldn't make an argument, but he regardless didn't share the bragging sentiment. As he watched the bomb squad dissecting what remained of his black compact car through the window, he couldn't help but think that there was more beneath the surface of this. Attempts on his life weren't uncommon – he'd had a close brush in Morocco, only to be saved by Milla blocking him from being hit with a sniper's bullet with a mental shield.
This, however, was different. The car had been parked at an area that was known only to the Psychonauts, as opposed to public areas. Someone, or perhaps a group of people, knew where he was, as he had to sign in upon leaving the car.
The only one he trusted enough to talk to about this was Milla, given their storied history together among the Psychonauts. As such, he merely shrugged off Oleander's comments, and told him that he would meet him at camp.
The door to the interrogation room opened, and Milla exited, her suitcase clutched in one hand, her keys in the other with a scowl on her face. It dissipated to by replaced by relief when she turned, her hoop earrings swaying, to look at Sasha. Sasha gave a slight smile. Milla turned to Oleander. "You're up. See you at Whispering Rock."
Oleander stood quickly with a salute and headed into the interrogation room.
Milla's suitcase thumped against her leg, and her foot tapped. She hadn't a need to speak – Sasha immediately rose and followed her out. Their questioning, as well as Oleander's, had been moved up to accommodate their leaving with Whispering Rock. It was better to not squander the opportunity.
"So much for my driving myself," Sasha commented as they descended the stairs to the garage's level. "It's for the best that I go with you."
Milla smiled. "Is my car too loud in color for you?"
Sasha smirked. "I think that I can stomach it for a while."
Milla twirled her car keys about. "We have sixty miles to cover. Should we switch off halfway, then?"
Sasha nodded, and held out his arm. "It's your vehicle. You may decide who will drive first."
Flipping her long brown hair over her shoulder, Milla gestured for him to follow her. "After what you've been put through today, I think that you deserve a rest."
The red car's seats were leather, and relaxing, though close. Sasha grunted as he moved the seat backward to get some amount of relief for his long legs. Milla waved his hands away and reached across to pull the seat backward for him. Sasha blushed at their contact, and she raised her head to smile coyly at him. "I know my car better than you do."
Sasha smirked, and shook his dark head at her. "You seem to know other things."
Milla pulled the car up to the security booth and presented her pass to the guard. The guard waved her along, and the car sailed up the ramp. She tossed a grin over at Sasha. "I have a few mints for you. Check the glove compartment."
Flipping it open, Sasha pulled out the small bag of peppermints, the red and white candy stripes shining in the changing light. "Thanks," he commented with a slight smile at their appearance. While Sasha was prone to a smoke to relieve stress, the smell was too easy to attach to him as a calling card. Milla would laugh and say that she knew that he was still a child under it all whenever he popped a mint to keep his mouth busy.
"Only the best for you," Milla commented wryly as he stuck one into his mouth to suck on.
The car slowly ascended the levels past the lighted hallways, and humming computer banks. Shadowed figures carrying clipboards and pushing carts moved among them. Sasha didn't make mention of his thoughts, as there wasn't a need – he could see Milla's eyes reflecting her suspicion in the rearview mirror. Any of these internal employees – programmers, researchers, aides, agents, security—could have planted the bomb, and as a result, it felt like they were leaving some sort of hive.
He swallowed down the dissolving peppermint as Milla's car pulled through the gate on the top level. The sun shone in a cloudless sky. Soldiers patrolled the perimeter. An army truck rolled by them.
Milla put on a light samba. "Best you start to sleep, then."
Sasha leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes behind his sunglasses as the vehicle lurched. He'd been in her car a few times, and it was so distinctively Milla. There was the warm red of its paint, of course, but more importantly there were the sweet smells of guava and coconut.
His dreams were disjointed. He felt as if he was running through the streets of his hometown, similarly to when he'd run away from home as a teenager. Sasha had analyzed his own dreams a few times and found that his studies were, for all their usage of science, like the new wave beliefs of the modern psychedelic movement. He supposed that the endless running based upon his concerns as to what a new, unknown year of campers would bring, though he wasn't always sure as to what he was looking for. He could stop at his house, though entering it wouldn't end the dream. He knew that much – he'd done that before.
The blaring of a car horn startled him awake.
Sasha groaned, lolling his head to the side. Lifting his sunglasses, he rubbed at his brown eyes. His head throbbed slightly. "Milla?"
"Oh," Milla shifted near him. Blinking blearily, he brought her into focus. She was framed against the red of flashing lights, and the glare of the late afternoon sun. Horns blared around them. "We're in traffic. There's been an accident. A truck is on its roof." Sasha saw the frustration on her face. Easily, the two of them could have pooled their powers together to pick up the truck, and help, but it posed too much of a threat of their getting caught.
"I see," Sasha raised an arm over his eyes. The splashes of bright lights and sounds continued to hit against his head, making him feel dizzy.
"This isn't irritating you, is it?" Milla asked in concern.
"It will pass," Sasha replied, "Just keep the car steady."
"Of course." Sasha slipped back into fleeting dreams of dancing figures, silhouetted against alternating lights of red and blue.
His dreams were later broken by Milla tapping him on his shoulder, with the car stopped in a quieter location. With a yawn, he commented, "You picked a nice stopping point."
Milla stretched her arms over her head. Lowering her hands, she caught her own yawn in them. "Come on, we should stretch our legs."
On a cliff bearing a picnic bench and overlooking distant houses and office buildings before heading into a wooded area, Sasha stood beside Milla, the smoke from a burning cigarette trailing upward in his hand. From the car's radio, John F. Kennedy's voice came over, promising good things in the future, and asking the American people for their support.
The front, however, wasn't as unified as the radio requested. Divisions along the lines of race, class, and sex caused protests to march across the United States, while wars of imperialism raged. "You think we will see any demonstrations against the camp this year?" Milla asked quietly.
"I would assume at least one," Sasha replied, "I wouldn't take it too much to heart – it's human nature."
"We have children with us," Milla reminded him.
"I don't fear," he said reassuringly, "They have you to protect them."
Milla smiled at that.
As Sasha drove, with Milla dozing in the seat beside him, he thought quietly on their time together. On an assignment in New Orleans, Milla had been quick to hide a Tiffany lamp in the old hotel room from his sight. There'd been one bed then, as there had been on other occasions. It was easier for them to pretend that Milla was his mistress, as it strangely caused less eyebrows to raise. While they weren't strangers to the bed's carnal uses, it made it easier for the two of them, lying up against each other, to strategize telepathically for the next day. Of course, this led to occasions with Milla flicking his nose at a plan she found silly, and Sasha rolling away from her at a plan he found blatantly ridiculous.
Milla's mind, at first, had been daunting to him, with Sasha unable to keep up with the rapidly alternating colors and dance music. He'd stumbled past the dancing avatars, only for Milla to catch and steady him with a look of genuine concern on her face.
"The effect of my powers," Sasha had started, his sunglasses in his hand as he sat beside Milla after exiting her mind, "I assume you read my file?"
Milla nodded. "You suffer from photosensitivity and some headaches as a side effect from the Psi-Blast power, don't you?"
Sasha had nodded gravely and glanced down at his sunglasses. "I can live with it, and if we are to work together, Agent Vodello, I'll simply have to adapt."
Milla had frowned at that, knowing that he had been throwing back her own words at her. They'd gotten off on the wrong foot, at first, as while they had mutually respected each other, their personalities had clashed. Sasha had at first found Milla's bright personality vapid, and Milla had complained that Sasha's strictly by the book method was hard to work with. Both had wondered just what Ford Cruller had been thinking in pairing them together.
At his comment, however, she had placed her gloved hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "We both will."
And so, he was more patient with her than he would have been previously, as she navigated the cubic setting of his mind alongside him, notwithstanding a gentle ribbing about the monochromatic style that he had chosen for his mental landscape.
After the fourth year of their working together, Milla had allowed him to see the memories that she had hidden away.
Shutting the chest from where he knelt before it, thus silencing the whispers of "it's burning," and extinguishing the heat of the flames, Sasha had quietly asked, "Has anyone else seen this?"
"Only Ford," Milla had replied quietly.
Rising, Sasha had turned to face her. Milla hadn't been reduced to tears by the memory, rather she had a look of grave sorrow on her face, knowing that she would carry the pain with her forever. He chose not to patronize her, despite the sympathy that he felt. She wasn't fishing for pity and could very well do without it. "Then I will keep this between us. Thank you for letting me look."
"I'll hold you to that," Milla had replied, leading him out of the side room, the chest locked tightly again.
"Where you go, I go," Milla had said to him after the Kennedy affair, washing the clotted pieces of sewer waste out of her hair. They were both going to drive themselves off a cliff, but there wasn't much else for them. They were already freaks, and their own mental damage didn't give them very many other areas to go to.
Such as the camp itself, Sasha thought as he stopped the car at Whispering Rock's front gate. Oleander's jeep hadn't yet arrived. Reaching over, he gently shook Milla, who slowly opened her eyes. "Here already?" She yawned.
Sasha smiled. "Home away from home."
The sun was beginning to set as they unloaded their suitcases from the car, and proceeded through the parking lot, into the green grass and brush.
The distant smell of meat cooking wafted to them from the Main Lodge. Sasha sniffed at the air. "It seems that Agent Cruller is already taking care of us," he commented.
"Why don't we visit him?" Milla asked, "We can eat later."
Sasha nodded, and followed her to the closest hollow tree stump. He braced himself for the speed of the underground cart, while Milla jumped with a cry of jubilation.
"Back for more, you two?" The real Ford Cruller greeted with his hands behind his back, and his eyebrow raised. Screens behind him showed the different areas of Whispering Rock, and their lights caught on what remained of his white hair.
"If anything, Agent Cruller, this is a vacation," Milla replied with a tired sigh.
"What happened?" Cruller inquired, a note of suspicion in his voice as he glanced between them. Noticing the ash on Sasha's outfit, he looked pointedly at him.
With nods to each other, Sasha and Milla set their suitcases down to fill in Cruller on the situation. His facial expression switched from surprise, to outrage, and finally, to frustration. "So, there are a few snakes still within the Psychonauts." He twisted his hands together, "I'd give you names, but I'm not sure how good they will be."
"I'll still take them," Sasha commented, "Any amount of detail is useful."
As Ford began listing them for him, Milla's eyebrow raised. "I haven't even heard of these people."
Cruller held up his hand. "I've been away from the Pscyhonauts for years. Old traitors can leave, or go into hiding, for new ones to appear. Regardless," Ford pointed out, "You're in the middle of a swirling cauldron. It's for the best that you're off-duty now."
"We should probably start checking the cabins to be safe," Milla commented, "In case anything else occurs."
"Just don't forget to come back for your things," Ford said, gesturing to the suitcases, "And try not get yourselves blown up this time."
With respectful nods, Sasha and Milla departed for the camp proper.
The cabins stood quietly in the night. The first needed new sheets, with Milla lovingly turning down the covers.
The second had a baseball left in it. It was soiled, and flat on one side. Levitating it, Sasha commented, "This was probably Ernesto's. Do you recall how he broke a window in the Main Lodge with it?"
Milla chuckled. "Ford wasn't happy with him about it."
The third, however, proved different, in that the door had been left open. As the agents slowly neared it, they were hit with a pungent odor at the doorway.
Sasha glanced about the dark cabin, his sleeve held up to his nose at the rank stench. A speck of light caught the setting sun, and something turned to reveal two specks. Sasha froze as the cougar rose. Growling, it conjured a ball of flame.
A force seized Sasha, yanking him backward. Milla's hair blew out as he flew past her, skidding into the dirt.
"Milla!" Sasha cried out, partially in frustration. Struggling to his feet, he ran through the doorway. A Psi-Blast exploded from Milla, knocking the cougar backward onto the bed just beneath the window. A secondary shot from Sasha knocked it out the window.
The cougar growled and retreated, dashing into the forest.
Spinning about on her heel, Milla grasped a stagnant water bucket, and dumped it over the burning sheet. "We told the campers to close the windows and doors when they left," she grumbled.
Sasha folded his arms. "Why did you drag me out of the cabin, Milla?"
She looked over her shoulder at him. "I nearly lost you in an explosion today." Sasha dropped his arms at that, and Milla brushed against him as she made for the open window. "It's nice, you know," Milla said as she shut the window, "No one had to die."
Sasha nodded at that and set about to finding a broom and pan. He didn't want to think about the images that it sent into his mind, of the wrong people dead at the wrong places and time, casualties in the crossfire, or frames. There were also the budding psychics that were killed due to being against American interests.
"We're rearing child soldiers," Milla had posited the point to Truman Zanotto at a meeting about Whispering Rock's progress.
"We haven't much of a choice," he had explained, "While I sympathize with your position, Agent Vodello, the fact remains that we are at war. I will also advise what the patronage of the Psychonauts has given you and your partner."
"Sir, I'd prefer not to be attacked for my opinion," Milla replied in outrage.
Sasha chose to speak up at that point. "We are aware of the parameters of our position, sir, but the ethics are questionable." He left the point that Lili Zanotto herself was coming of age unsaid, lest he be reprimanded for speaking out of line.
"Your opinions have been noted," Truman replied with a note of finality in his tone, "but fact remains that you each have a job to do. See to it. Dismissed."
"I think that's enough for now," Milla commented after they exited the third cabin, "We can wait for Morceau." Sasha didn't contradict her, as he could hear the slight bite in her voice.
The sun disappeared behind the horizon, and the crickets and fireflies were welcome. Sasha was a city boy himself, but Milla had taught him of the simplistic beauty of the forest. They had had their first kiss in it, that third summer.
It had been after the affair in Barcelona, he recalled – they had been needed to root out an infiltrator during a political soirée. It had nearly gone sideways, then, with the infiltrator, a powerful female psychic, luring Milla into a hall of mirrors. Sasha had tailed her, and, utilizing the Psi-Blast, managed to break the mirrors, and isolate the rogue psychic in time for Milla to strike her down.
Milla had looked beautiful standing there among the broken glass in her sultry red gown. Sasha hadn't allowed himself to stare for long, knowing that he probably looked a mess with his tie and tuxedo coat askew, and focused on the mission at hand.
Perhaps it was because of the peace of Whispering Rock, or perhaps it was due to some tension left over from Barcelona that it had happened. It didn't matter, in the end.
Milla had grasped the front lapels of his coat. "Sasha," she had whispered, her voice thick with desire.
Sasha could only nod, and grip onto her shoulders to keep himself steady as she kissed him. He melted into her heat. He knew that it was her that had to initiate. He would've let her walk out of his life by the time that he was ready to even consider voicing his feelings for her.
Milla had taught him several things since then, and about himself, no less. He learned how to deeply kiss, for one, and for another, learned that he preferred being submissive to Milla when it came to physical displays of affection. She occasionally reminded him of the latter when they were alone with a brush of her foot against his.
He knew what was desired of the two of them, and Milla, did, as well. A child of two of the most powerful Psychonauts would be an interesting specimen, and, as such, both were against the idea.
And if setting up this summer camp was the closest that it got for Milla, then that would have to be enough.
Fire slowly rose in the reflection of Sasha's sunglasses as he mentally conjured the flame in the outdoor pit. It burnt over the piled tinder, its fuel sustaining it. It would serve as a beacon to Oleander, who had to have not been so far off, now.
Sitting on a rock before the pit with him, Milla leaned against his shoulder. Sasha laid his cheek against her forehead. Their gloved hands slowly intertwined. They were acting like children but didn't much care. It was all right – they were allowed, for the moment.