Illusion is Reality
Chapter 129
-History's greatest sages-
Lee let out a long breath, and scrubbed his hand across his face, only after he was a good full step into the first of the private areas in the tent.
And then he turned his head to look to his left side, and- yup, there was Blue. Standing there, leaning up against the wall of the 'hallway' there, like Lee was expecting. (Heh.)
"Sooooo…" said Lee, stuffing his hands in his pockets and already fighting down a grin. (Blue was glaring at him, crossed-arms and everything.)
"You. Are NOT. Supposed to use. The same tea bag. TWICE!" Blue complained at him, following him with both his eyes and his head as Lee walked towards him, turned around, and leaned up against the wall next to him, hands still in his pockets. (Yep. Most important stuff first. He got it.)
"Uh huh," said Lee.
"I have told you this before," Blue told him, eyes narrowing further.
"Yup," said Lee.
"You heathen," Blue nearly spat out at him next (though it was really more of a scoff), as the demon turned his head away from him again. "Tasteless. Thoughtless. Anything-but-terrible. Completely-"
"-Why'd you use the 'heathen' for the first one, this time?" Lee said, not able to stifle the grin anymore, as he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and wrapped his arm around and over Blue's shoulders next to him. (Blue wasn't really that mad at him; his pupils were still pretty darn round, not doing that 'thin slits' thing that Blue did when he was payin' attention while really upset.)
(And given the fact that Blue didn't even try and give him a look for doing it, just let out a huff of breath and said…) "I'm changing it up a bit. Because priorities with you, apparently." (...with something of a chin-up air to it, yeah. Lee felt like he was on the money here.)
"Seriously, man. Why are you not out there yet?" Lee asked him.
And that got him a turn of Blue's head away from him, and a mutter of: "...still probably start yelling if I go out there right now."
Lee didn't completely stifle the sigh. "And you care about that right now why?"
And Blue turned his head up towards him, looked up at him, and said, "Big brothers don't yell."
Ugh. "Pretty sure they do," said Lee, while thinking of (his own twin) Ford.
"Not if you want your little brother or sister to come to you and talk with you again, when they need to," Blue said, and Lee pulled in a hard breath.
It took Lee a few moments of breathing in and out, before he managed to get out without strangling himself on it, "Yeah? What's the worst that could happen?" (Like he didn't already know.)
Blue didn't even blink at him. "They run away crying and don't ever want to come back." (And now Lee wanted to punch something.)
(Blue was looking at him.)
Lee could've said, 'I didn't run away crying.' Instead he said, "Pretty sure that's what he wanted." A long pause. "...right. And you don't."
"Yes," said Blue, "I don't want that."
Lee forced himself to pull in a deep breath. Turn towards Blue.
Lift his hand up and muss up his hair a bit, until he complained.
And then he told the devil-demon, who was (still, still) somehow less of an asshole than his own twin brother was.
"C'mon. You and I both know that you're not gonna yell at her in there."
And Lee started to walk forward, turning him to pull him forward, except… Blue resisted the motion a bit.
Lee stopped.
"...okay," said Lee. He looked the demon over. "What's going on that I don't know about?" Silence. Lee frowned. "This got something to do with how you and older-Ford seem to be running hot and cold every other day over there?" Aaaand Blue's shoulders tensed. Okay. This was probably bad. "You know I've been trying to leave that alone for you, right?" Lee tried there.
"Yes."
"You want to tell me what's going on?" Lee asked him. Sort of an odd twitchy head-tilt. "What. My level's not high enough?" He'd seen something almost like that one before. Blue let out a huff of breath and… didn't quite lean into him. More stood away and up a bit, almost moving away from his arm across his shoulders.
Lee was still frowning, puzzling this over, when the devil-demon said, "I haven't told you yet."
"...Yeah?" Lee said slowly. This was a bit new.
"I haven't told her yet, either," Blue said next, like he was laying the groundwork for something, Lee knew that tone.
"...Okay?" Lee said. "So, what. She higher level'd than me?"
"-No," Blue said immediately, even as he grimaced. "She leaks information like a sieve."
Lee frowned at this. "So what's the problem here?" Blue was keeping something to himself that he wasn't sharing, because 'operational security'. The sun rose in the east. What else was new?
Except then Blue looked away from him and said, "I haven't told you yet first."
Lee frowned down at Blue for awhile.
And then Lee blinked. And a bit of a chill went down his spine.
"You're thinking if you go out there…" Lee stopped. Pulled in a breath. "You're gonna say something you ain't sure we're gonna keep to ourselves." A nod. ...Well, shit.
Lee thought this over for awhile, looking down at this very uncomfortable-looking standoffish demon, standing there right beside him.
And then Lee asked, "So? What're you gonna do about it?" in his usual, 'yeah, I'm ready you punch 'em in the face; why ain't you?' voice, when they weren't (yet) taking on trouble.
And Blue swiveled his head up towards him and stared.
And started to laugh.
And laugh.
And laugh.
...And yeah, it was that demon HAHAHA one, but it turned into those chittery-giggles of his in the middle for awhile.
Blue had a hand just barely fisted in and hanging onto his right lapel by the end of it. He had those slightly more-dark bruise-looking circles under his eyes again, too. (Must've been thinking pretty hard there, running things through. He usually did, during those laughs - Lee had figured that one out pretty quickly.)
"Oh, sure!" said the demon. "Absolutely, surely, certainly why NOT?!" Blue was almost breathing out by the end there, pretty forcefully though on the last of his breath. He knocked his forehead into his breastbone for a moment. (Lee stood there and waited, half a smile on his face.)
"-whynot-whynot-FINE let's just DO it! Why not!" Blue worked himself up to it, (almost just the) same as he always did, his eyes looking a little more cracked this time than usual. "Let's- let's just- why not," Blue rambled off, running a hand through his hair rather haphazardly, front to back, "What could I POSSIBLY have to LOSE," said Blue, half turning to say over his shoulder back to him, "Besides EVERYTHING," Blue turned away from him and dropped his hand, facing forward towards the tent flap to the guest-room there, "Just like always anyway," Blue just about snarled out, both tired and more than a little bit (directionlessly, aimlessly) angry. (All but searching for a target.)
Lee took one half-step forward, and held his right hand up, curled fist upwards. Looked down at Blue, at his side now, again. Because he'd stepped up. (Hell, it wasn't like Blue was trying to stop him.) "Partners. Yeah?" Lee asked. And he waited.
And Blue reached up with his left hand... "Partners. Yes." ...and wrapped his fingers over Lee's own.
And then they both faced front together, and took that next step, stepped forward together.
Partners, yeah.
"Then, if you do this, you can just flip it around, cut it and everything stays on with no issue." Miz was finally back in her humanoid form, in the kitchen with Ford as she showed him how to make a basic maki roll. (Ford had showed off his cooking skills to make her a tuna fish omelette, which had gotten such a wonderful look of delight out of her, that it had made Ford feel tremendously proud of himself. And after, Miz and Ford had eaten that together, Miz outright saying that they could share it. -Which was a lot for her to give up for his sake. To share food that was meant for her with someone else? Ford didn't fully understand how much Miz had just given him. -And then Miz had started showing Ford how to make sushi. Because if he wanted to learn cooking, then she wanted to show him some of her favorites. So that he could make them for her in the future.)
And then, Blue and Lee came out, and Miz looked up, a bit of a shy smile breaking out. "Hi big brother." She was feeling better now, less worried about not being good enough for Blue. 'Cause what Lee said made sense, if Blue just needed her because she was willing to love him. She could do that. Even if she wasn't good enough for anything else.
Blue nodded to her, slowly dropping Lee's hand (as Lee did), and Lee spoke up and said, "Hey, ya know you're doin' it wrong if it takes longer start to end than five minutes, right? Pretty sure you go longer than five minutes from starting on cookin' somethin' to eating on food and you're gonna lose him," Lee teased (just about half-seriously) before walking over.
Miz just looked confused, as did Ford. Their identical expressions were pretty damn funny.
"Lunch lines," said Blue, stepping forward only a little bit to lean sideways against the side of the 'fresh' stasis-cabinet, to which Lee promptly waved off behind him at him and said, "Doesn't count. He can think about science-y stuff while waiting in line. Cookin' requires actual drawn-out attention. Yeah?" Lee directed at Ford. (And, just in case Ford wasn't getting the joke…) Lee then sent Ford a quick wink.
"I have been paying attention." Ford blinked. "The knife work for making the fish slices the right shape is harder than I thought."
Miz tilted her head. "He needs to hold the knife differently. But he's doing really well." It seemed the two weren't getting the joke here.
Lee let out a sigh and gave up tryin' to tease.
"Yeah, Ford I know you've been payin' attention to stuff," Lee told him. "We've been spendin' hours on stuff every day." Lee walked in closer to him. "Was kinda tryin to make a joke. -If you can't approach this all science-y, I'm pretty sure you're gonna get bored, soon as it stops bein' something new. Which means fast recipes that won't feel mind numbin' to repeat like times tables through a hundred, every time." Lee came to a stop a little to the side of him, up behind him.
"Oh." Ford blinked. "Well, we did end up talking about how exactly the curing process for raw fish works. Fascinating how we can just pull the liquid right out of the meat without using anything fancy. Chemistry is amazing!" (Miz giggled. "You just like the idea of slathering the meat with sugar.")
"Yeah, exactly," Lee said. "And you're probably not gonna forget it, right? So if you do this again, you'd need somethin' different to talk or think about while you're doin' it."
"Right. We can talk about my projects next time!" Ford said in delight.
"If you're always doin' it with her," Lee pointed out patiently. "And when ya talk about your projects, you get so excited you forget what else you're doin'. -Dillon had to take over for you last night, remember?"
"Right." Ford coughed, looking a little embarrassed. "Shouldn't… forget about leaving the stove on…" Miz gave him a raised eyebrow. "That's super dangerous."
"Or…" Lee said. "You can do somethin' short, quick, and easy, and it won't matter if you get distracted anymore, 'cause you'll be done first, before ya get distracted. -Believe me, I ran into that little problem all the time out on the boat. Burned a lot of meals before I figured that one out right."
Ford nodded. Then he glanced at Miz. "So, I make the quick meals, and you can work on the longer ones?"
Miz giggled. "Yeah, some stuff takes a real long time. Like when I'm marinating the meat for several hours to get the taste soaked in." She paused. "And boiling the carrots until they're soft." She nodded solemnly. "But at least for that you can just leave 'em in the stew for long periods without issue." But she liked her marinated meats. And she also liked making her stuff from scratch. Kneading and rolling out pasta was fun. Sure, it took a long time, but Miz liked food prepared by hand. Psychic remnants of the people who made the food was left behind in it sometimes, which really enhanced the flavor in a way that only psychic creatures could actually enjoy. Machine made processed food was fine, it just didn't have that extra kick to it that she loved.
It was part of why she loved sushi, and these fish slices that had been touched by Ford's hands (along with the rice and seaweed he rolled into this maki roll) were absolutely delicious. She popped another one into her mouth and moaned softly. "Your sushi is wonderful~"
Ford looked proud of himself at how she was enjoying it. "I mean, this is just raw fish," he said with a shrug. "Anyone could cut up some cured fish and roll it up like that." He was also quite sure that his avocado slices weren't the same size as each other, and rather lumpy.
But Miz just shook her head. "Yeah, but these ones were made by you." Because that was the difference here. She could go out to any restaurant and have sushi, but these ones tasted like Ford, she could 'taste' the emotional echoes in freshly made food. Who had made them, how they felt… Miz sighed as she leaned against Ford's side. "I love them."
Ford blushed.
"Filter it properly, little sis," Blue complained at Miz, as he pushed off the 'fresh' stasis-cabinet, running a hand through his hair as he meandered over to the pillow circle to collapse down onto it in a huff, largely out of view. (And then there was some rustling and shifting over there, as Blue used the controls to turn it into (read: replace it with) a more-pillowed couch under him, instead.)
"I do~" Miz pouted, "I just like the taste." (Ford looked down at the sushi, "You need to filter it? Did we not clean it well enough?") "That's not the problem Fordsie," she assured him, patting his arm. "And it isn't a problem," she added (even as her brother gave out a sort of groaning mutter at this).
Ford relaxed at that. "I just worry about you or anyone else getting sick or something from improperly prepared food. Eating things raw is… hazardous."
Miz waved him off, "I can sear away bacteria and parasites, if you're that worried."
"So… what are you filtering then?" Ford asked. Miz blushed, looking away. It didn't seem like she was going to answer.
"Dead emotions," Blue called out, in a tone of voice most humans would use when talking about eating some other person's dead skin. (Lee glanced over at the devil-demon at that one. Then Lee sighed and started walking over, grabbing two salads and a plastic fork from the 'unlocked' and open display case along the way.)
"Dead what?" Ford blinked. Miz made a sound of complaint, "It's not that bad! It's not the same as hair!" ("Hair, what?" Ford was very confused.)
"It is a thing, which you exude or extrude, which is no longer connected to you in a way you can control," Blue noted. "Dead skin cells, dead hair cells, dead fingernails, dead emotions which you should NOT taste on-or-in your FOOD." Blue poked his head up a bit over the end of the couch. "I taught you the idea of filtering in the first place to allow you to avoid those problems with emotions anymore, little sis," Blue told her, only his eyes and upper head visible over the back of the couch.
"If you put it like that, it sounds gross." Miz complained. ("YES!") Then she turned to Ford, "You know that saying when they go like 'put your love into your cooking'? Well, it's a real thing." then she huffed and glanced back at her brother. "I'm fine with some emotions for the tasting thing, I filter it now so it doesn't affect me. It's just a flavor thing now. It's fine." (Blue grumbled at this and disappeared back behind the edge of the couch, as Lee rounded it and thrust the two salads with plastic fork at him.) "And I like the way you taste," she told Ford, to which the man paused.
"I'm… a little afraid of the fact that you apparently like the way I taste…"
"I'm not gonna eat you." Miz complained. ("You are a little bit there!") "Why does everyone assume that? Just 'cause I'm curious about how humans taste… and tend to eat a lot… and might nibble a bit of the stuff you all let out, in a way that wouldn't harm you at all-"
Ford twitched. "That's… not all that reassuring…"
"Could just make a human vessel that's close to what you were and eat that. Then you would be what you ate! Causality!" Blue cheered, sitting up, then ended up letting out a burst of sounds and disappearing down out of sight again as Lee sat down next to him on the couch and he got his hair mussed for that. (...and half-tickled on his stomach there, first. ("-Betrayal!" "Nah." "Almost-mostly-betrayal!" "Heh." "rrRaGHraghrraH!")
"Eat myself…" Miz mused. "Would that be too ouroboros?"
Ford twitched. "Maybe just don't eat people? Or yourself?" He looked down at the sushi he made. "...dead emotions are probably okay?" he noted more to himself than to Miz.
"Mm. Wouldn't be a 'person', just an empty vessel," Blue noted, getting his arms up onto the back of the couch and putting his chin on top of them this time. "Eating people is to be avoided almost-always, yes."
"...Miz, I would like to request that we stop talking about eating people, or vessels and such, for now." Ford covered his face as he made another note that, yeah, Miz wasn't human.
"...He only asked Miz," Blue said in very loaded 'mischievous' tones as an aside to Lee, who he was looking at sidelong from there. Lee, for his part, gave Blue a long look back, then reached up with his hand again, held it there for a moment, and then brought it down on Blue's head and mussed with his hair a bit again (this time slightly differently than before), which led to a grin and a series of chittering-giggles from said demon.
"I still don't quite know what I am or am not, allowed to request from Blue," Ford sighed. ("Anything. Requests can be made; responses are variable.")
Miz glanced over at her brother and then back at Ford. She frowned and then said, "Brother? Please don't talk about the eating of people and vessels with Ford until he says he's open to discussing it again." ("Mm. I noticed." "Yeah, ya noticed all right.") Then, to Ford. "I think it's fine to ask Blue, as long as you're not demanding that he do it?" He seemed more… chill, than he was before, in those years he'd spent on his side doing whatever. It was nice to see him more relaxed, almost… happy.
Ford nodded slowly, then looked over at Blue. "Is what she said correct?"
"About what?" said Blue. "Be specific."
"About how asking you to do or not do things is alright as long as I'm not demanding that you do it?"
"Requests are a type of question," Blue told him. "Did I not make this clear last night?"
"Just double checking. To be sure." Ford wrote that down. He wanted to be able to understand demons, both so he didn't butt heads with Blue all the time, and to see how much this applied to Miz. She usually gave him whatever he requested, so Ford was unsure what the baseline was between requests and demands. He didn't think he'd made demands of her, that he could remember or realize were such a thing.
"Double-checking is fine, for being sure-and-certain of things. Details are important." Blue was watching him easily over the back of the couch, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. (Lee picked up one of the salad plates - the one with the fork on it - and raised it up to bump it against Blue's shoulder. Blue side-eyed it, then snapped it out of Lee's hands with a soft "Rah! -MINE." before grabbing the fork up and half-spearing half-shoveling the first bite into his mouth. "Mm.")
Miz took this time to pop another piece of sushi in her mouth, smiling as she chewed on it.
Lee watched the dragon-lady, and glanced at Ford. "So, you two worked some of this stuff out now, between ya?" What he really wanted to ask was, Is she going to sound filter that shit from now on, and put protection on you to keep you from getting hurt during those 'wrestling sessions'. He just wasn't enough of an idiot to bring that up again with Blue just sitting right there, though. (That'd just give the demon a reason to sound off on the two of them over there, if he did it.)
Ford chuckled. "Well, we have a few ground rules and such set out. It's still rather malleable, as we don't have a set of options for every possible situation yet. We're going to be adding to it as we come across them." He placed a hand on Miz's head to pet her as she stuffed her face with rice and fish. "But she knows about the things I'm uncomfortable with now, and I will be being more assertive in the future if she thinks something is fun and I do not, I've got her agreement to ask me first and explain what it is that she wants to do to me, and whether or not I will go along with it, before she does it. And I don't mind the sound thing all that much, so long as it remains inside my lab." (Ford hadn't noticed that Miz hadn't really set her own boundaries, aside from the 'don't capture or trap me'. He was glad to get assurances and was too distracted with his own safety to ask about Miz's own. But that had been intentional on Miz's part, she didn't really want to scare Ford away with her own issues.)
"Is it 'polite' for me to pretend I don't know about exactly what you did or did not say in here, or just 'rude' instead," Blue said next, before shoving another forkful of greens into his mouth. In fact, it looked like he'd done so in order to not say a second sentence after that.
Miz blinked, "I don't mind. So you'll have to ask Fordsie."
Ford blushed. Blue had heard everythin- wait. Of course Blue had heard everything. "I…" Ford paused. "...don't know if it would be considered lying or not for you to pretend so." Ford moved away from the kitchen to sit down on one of the barstools, folding his hands together in front of him.
"Lying, yes."
"Then, you don't have to pretend to not know. I prefer not being lied to, though omission due to you knowing so much more than me is a separate matter." Ford flushed a little. "But you also don't have to bring it up unless you want to, or the subject comes up." He paused. "Is that the correct way to phrase it?"
"It is if it's a statement of fact, not you thinking you're magically granting me the ability to do so just because you said it." Blue took another bite of his salad, chewed and swallowed it, then said (while looking down at his plate and spearing another forkful of food), "You're missing a few things."
"What things am I missing?" Ford asked. Miz was licking the avocado off her fingers, the quiet slurping sounds made the situation less stressful for Ford, trying to figure out how to talk with Blue. Kinda hard to be tense when there were cute little sounds happening nearby.
"For oNE tHinG," Blue began, his voice going up and down the scale oddly, as he gripped at his fork (and Lee put his hand on Blue's head, while Blue closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed). Blue had and kept his eyes closed, as he got out next, rather flatly: "Requesting perception fields that do NOT let out sound or light, and also-fully-mask the presence of the two of- YOU while-doing-things-that-are-NOT-SAFE-to-do-EVER-at-all." Blue ran through the rest of the end bit there rather quickly. He breathed for a moment, reopened his eyes (looking down at his plate still), and added, a bit more normally, "Also, asking my little sister what would make her 'feel bad', or cry, or the bad kind of worse. And have her list off all of those things and also-then define the 'worse' for you." Blue stuck the forkful of food in his mouth. (Lee rubbed his fingers back and forth on top of Blue's head, then slowly pulled his hand back again, to casually drop it down onto Blue's upper arm bicep instead.)
"It's fine, I can handle it…" Miz said quietly. Ford looked over at her, shocked when he realized he hadn't asked her for what made her uncomfortable. "Miz, you should tell me these things." The dragon looked away. "Wanted to get your stuff down first," she mumbled. Ford sighed. "But your needs are important too." Miz looked away, "I'll be fine as long as you don't use binding circles on me." ("NO. That is not enough. That does NOT even leave out the KILLING-of-you at all, at any point later." "Hey, hey. They're workin' on it right now. Let 'em do it.")
"There's a whole range of other things you aren't telling me are not ok, Miz, I don't mind if I have to sit here all day and write them all down. I want you to be comfortable too." Ford got up to head over, dropping down to one knee so he was eye level. "Your feelings matter too." And Ford sent Blue a quick glance before turning back to Miz. "And yes, the killing thing. I know it's a given, since I've already stated multiple times I don't want to kill you, but you should still list that."
Miz looked uncomfortable. "But… if you already know, and aren't gonna do it, why should I have to repeat that?" (She didn't see the point in telling people to do stuff they were already doing, it was a waste of time.) Ford sighed. "Because I care about how you're feeling, and what it is that you want." He pulled her in to hug against himself. "I'm happy you want to know what I don't like, so that you can be more accommodating and respectful of my feelings. But that's not a one way street, I want to be able to do that for you as well."
(Blue finished off the first plate of salad. Lee handed up and over the next one, which Blue also took from him - a bit less 'violently' grabbed this time than last.)
Miz laid her head against Ford's shoulder. "But I'm… really fucked up. And it'll be too much trouble to have to go through every little thing that upsets me-" ("Don't lie." "Blue. Let 'em talk for five minutes, willya?" "...")
"I don't mind." Ford told her. "And it doesn't have to be done in one sitting. We can just… talk. And I will listen to what you have to say, until I know what all your points are, and you know mine. I'm not… I don't want to just take from you. I don't want to upset you either. I'm sorry I didn't notice earlier." ("You weren't supposed to notice, I wanted this talk to be about you.") "Dammit Miz, don't you trust me?" Ford pulled back to look at her.
Miz's lips wobbled. "I do," she said.
"Then trust me to not leave you just because you have some list of demands that you think would be too much trouble." Ford sighed. "If I was going to be scared off by things being too much trouble, I wouldn't have wanted to be your friend to begin with!" Ford chuckled weakly. "You're very needy."
Miz let out a snort, "So are you, you dork." But she relaxed a little. "Are you sure you want to know all the shit that bothers me?"
"At least a few of them, so I can start on making things comfortable for you, as you want to do for me." Ford agreed before grinning cheekily. "I mean, I already upped the cleaning here in the labs and in the shack, because I know you don't like dust."
Miz smiled. "Yeah, I noticed that. Thank you for that."
"Start with the highest-priority-for-you things," Blue called out, before taking a bite of his next salad. "-Also," Blue began, then stopped at the finger tap he felt on his bicep from Lee. "Mm." He shoved another bite of salad into his stupid human-ish vessel's mouth and chewed.
Miz sighed. "Um… there's a… lots of things that make me angry, or irritated, too," she started. (Blue's shoulders relaxed slightly, after she'd said this. He would have added 'things that make her feel angry or help her feel happy' to the list explicitly next. ...Largely because he hadn't realized that 'feel bad' also included Miz feeling angry, and removing the negatives was always higher priority than adding some fleeting positives to him. Blue was very risk-adverse, in this and other respects.)
Ford nodded. "Like shoes in the house, or crumbs on the floor. You care about sanitation." Then Ford paused. "Why?" he asked, since she was a demon who probably wasn't affected by germs, and could digest pretty much anything, and clean things off the ground with merely a wave of her hand, so why was this so important to her?
Miz blinked. No one ever really asked her why before. (Blue blinked and looked up at this. Well. Only Stanley had thought deeply enough to start asking him those types of questions. And Lee sometimes too, of course! -Yes, this Ford had done it once or twice with him, but not on his own and without MASSIVE amounts of prompting on Blue's part, as Blue saw it.) She looked up at Ford, who was watching her patiently, not judging, just… curious, because he wanted to understand her. Miz wiggled. "Shoes that go outdoors can step on all sorts of icky things. Like rotten food, or dead animal carcasses. And if you bring those shoes home, even if you have a mat out front to wipe your feet, it's still really gross. And would mean there's more cleaning that you would have to do," she explained. Ford nodded. "And crumbs on the ground would attract ants or mice. And then you'd have to call an exterminator to kill the ants, which is sad, or put out traps for the mice, which is also sad," she stated. "妈妈 had glue traps, and I had to listen to the cute little mice squeak in pain as they died slowly. And I don't like that."
Ford breathed out and nodded. "Right. And even though you could clean things now, to make it so that wouldn't happen, it's still something that makes you uncomfortable, because of the bad memories involved with them?" he asked. Miz wiggled. "I know it's stupid, since I don't have mice or ants in space, and I can just teleport them out painlessly now… but…" Ford placed a hand on her head. "It's fine. It's not stupid. It's how you feel."
(If Blue had wanted to be 'mean', he would have brought up the 'no ants or mice in the Death Star!' thing. And Blue had nearly laughed at what her 'Hand said next. But the feeling of wanting to laugh had gone away quickly when he'd heard his little sister actually agree with this local-'Hand of hers, here. ...Yeesh. And he'd thought some of her human memories had been causing her problems before...)
(Blue finished off his second plate of salad, shoved it over to Lee - who took it from him, the stack of both plates - and then Blue 'disappeared' on them all by the expedient method of shoving his chin and arms off the back of the couch, to lie down sprawled mostly across the couch cushions instead. -The new couch he'd swapped in was currently facing the front-flap entrance of the tent. Lee casually set the plates to the side to 'float' there out of the way in front of the couch, and just continued leaning against and looking over the back of the couch at this Ford and the dragon-demon, left arm and elbow hooked over the back edge of it there. Watching, without making it out to be any sort of thing that he was doing so...)
"What else?" Ford prompted gently. Miz sighed. "A lot of it is sanitation things. Like, I had a human friend who would put his feet up on the couch, with shoes on." Miz shuddered at that. "And he even wore them on his bed!" (Ford twitched. "Yes, I can see why that would upset you.") Miz nodded. "Um… also, I don't like people touching my stuff without asking. My siblings going on my bed or borrowing my stuff is ok, as long as they give it back."
"Personal property is important, yes." Ford nodded. "So, it's alright for siblings… but not parents or other people? Why is that?" Miz was finally relaxing, Ford kept his hand on her head.
"My brothers and sisters don't throw away my stuff without asking." Miz's response made Ford feel a little cold. He thought about Filbrick, and how he had been about their belongings.
"...did… your parents throw away your stuff, without asking?" Ford asked carefully. Miz nodded. "My human parents did, sometimes. 爸爸 did it a lot when I was younger. Or they would be cleaning and just toss my drawings, since they didn't know that…" Miz's voice trailed off. "I mean, it my own fault for leaving them lying around, I should have put them away in a box or something-"
"Miz, don't." Ford looked a little strained. Sebastian drew a lot, when they were kids. And Ford knew how strongly attached to those drawings he'd been. He knew Miz must have felt the same, even if she tried to pretend otherwise. "They shouldn't have done that. And I will not do that to you." He pulled her in for another hug, and she wrapped her arms around him, he could feel the way she trembled.
"I kept my little sisters' drawings." Miz said. "I kept them all safely in folders in my desk. So my parents wouldn't get to them." She trembled a little. "I saved everything they made. Even when Zeon said that I didn't have to, 'cause they were just old drawings and weren't very good'."
"That was very kind of you." Ford told her. Miz buried her face in Ford's shoulder. "I'm their big sister. It was my job to protect them. I…" her voice trailed off again. "...I died. And I left them alone." She was clutching Ford's coat. "...and… there was a time… when I still thought that being here, being a triangle, and then a demon… was just some really long and scary dream…" she admitted. "...and there was a time when I thought that… if I died, I could wake up… and go home to them…" (Lee saw Blue tense up on the couch at that, pull in his arms to wrap them cross-armed across his chest… but the devil-demon didn't get up, and he didn't say anything…) "But I know that's not going to work now. This isn't a dream. It can't be."
"Oh Miz…" Ford could feel her shaking. "It didn't work, after all. It never worked." Miz sniffled. "I would die… and then I woke up here again." Ford held her as her legs trembled and then gave out under her. "Well…" Ford wasn't sure what to say here. He gave Lee a pleading look, hell, he even tried to give Blue a pleading look. (Except Blue was out of sight again now, and Lee just met his gaze and shook his head at him once- what did that mean?!)
"A-and when I got Will- an-and he was my little brother an-and I was an older sibling again-" Miz said between her sobbing, "I mean- I never tried to kill myself back when I was a triangle- because I had Will! And I to-told myself I would take c-care of him but-" Ford rubbed a hand along her back. "But I c-co-couldn't and he died and then everyone died and it was all my fault! And I was alone again!" She heaved in a breath. "And I just wanted to wake up and go home..." Ford closed his eyes, holding her as she twisted fistfuls of his coat and soaked his shoulder with tears. He… hadn't expected to dig open this particular wound. He hadn't even known about it.
"It's what makes her 'feel bad'," Ford heard in his ear - in Blue's voice - both tense and curmudgeonly and… something else he couldn't quite name. "If you push her away now, I will take her and kill you. Choose."
"I'm not going to push her away." Ford grumbled, wrapping his arms more securely around her. "I won't," he said, rubbing the side of his face against her head. And he wouldn't. Ford decided that for himself, right here and now. He wouldn't… leave her alone. She'd already been alone for too long, clearly. And her definition of Friends… emotional support. That was all she really wanted from them. From Pyronica, or Xanthar, or Teeth… everyone… that was all she wanted. Everything else was extra, she could take it or leave it. What Miz wanted more than anything, was simply emotional support. Someone she could be near whenever she was sad. That had been what she'd said. Not someone who could do things for her, or give her physical backup when wanting to take on her enemies (as Lee had asked about), or even to cheer her up. She just wanted someone who would be there for her to go to whenever she needed someone, to not be alone. That was it. That was all. It was such a simple desire. But it was so important. (He knew what it felt like to have, and not have, that sort of support, with what had happened to him with Bill here. With how Ford had sequestered himself alone in his house in the woods, avoiding the townsfolk, even as he craved company. With how Stan had supported him on the other side of the portal. With what could have happened to him, had Stan not been there to- It was critically important.) And Ford realized this, and he vowed to himself to be that support for her. "I'm here," Ford told her, as she wailed into his shoulder, coherent words leaving her. "I'm here."
And after those words left his mouth, Ford didn't even have a chance to shiver in place before he felt-
It was that same feeling from the pond clearing, out in the woods, when the gravity had simply cut out. That feeling completely surrounding him of almost-pressure, of electricity under rough leather, of heat below that, and...
The feeling of Miz's brother surrounded him, and he was pretty sure it surrounded and enveloped Miz too, where she was being held there in his arms. And Miz continued crying until she tired herself out, shaking and breathing with little hiccups. And Ford kept holding her, he didn't want to let go. Was kind of afraid to do so, actually.
(Lee was looking down at Blue, who had his eyes closed and his face partially turned downwards into the couch cushions where he lay, now. ...He'd caught Ford's annoyed murmur earlier, and had used his bracer with some unobtrusive stealth to check what he'd actually said. And he was pretty sure Blue had said something to him, but when he'd tried to query that the access came back partially-blocked. ...He'd sent a direct query to Blue asking about it, but Blue hadn't opened it up to him, yet.)
Lee had a lot of thoughts on what had just happened here, but he wasn't about to just toss them all out in the open there right now. So Lee pulled in a breath, and then said:
"Well, that was kinda a downer." Lee pushed himself up onto his feet. "What do you two usually drink for comfort food stuff? I usually go for this sort of odd warm milk tea kinda thing I ran into back in our set, in the Kr'natsha sector of Dimension 89. Tastes almost cinnamon-y too," Lee noted, as he made his way across the tent and back towards the kitchen where they were. (Headed more towards the opposite end of it from where they were, though.)
Ford glanced up from where he was crouched in the kitchen with Miz. "Well… I think warm milk might be good. Do you have any that don't contain lactose?" ("I can filter that out of it, yeah.")
Miz hiccuped. She felt rather exhausted. And embarrassed, to have broken down like that in front of everyone. She usually went deep into the emptiest parts of space for that. HAve her emotional breakdown far away from prying eyes and all that.
"Miz," Lee said, "What do you want, besides more hugs and headpats from this Ford here? Anything?"
Miz hiccuped again, and just shook her head against Ford's shoulder. "...'m fine…" her muffled response was quiet.
"Yeah, no you're not," said Lee. "Gonna make me guess; that's fine." He got the milk out of the fridge, started that up with the filtering appliance Ford had seen earlier that day, and… "Think I might go with tea. -Blue, I'm stealin' your best tea!" Lee called out next. "Deal with it."
"...sorry… I-" she hiccuped again. "- sh-shouldn't have put you all through that. I'm- usually better… at keeping quiet..."
"Didn't hear a stop or no outta any of us in here, did you?" Lee said casually, as he pulled down one of the teapots and started making Blue's 'best' tea while the lactose filtration process was ongoing.
"...being sad doesn't- solve anything…" Miz said miserably.
"Says Blue," Lee told her, his back to her. "Thing he usually leaves out? Lotsa stuff doesn't solve anything, and you can't just snap your fingers and make all the sad just go away."
"...I can't stay angry…" Miz almost complained. "I tried? But I just end up feeling sad again…"
"Sounds like a feature, not a bug, to me," Lee noted almost absently, as he got his own drink together, pulled down a few more mugs, and got the milk warmed (via temperature-setting 'climate controlled' heated mug) and tea mugged as well. Lee picked up the milk and one of the tea mugs, turned, and walked them over to the two of them, putting them down on the kitchen counter a bit closer to them, and then sliding them over to them further. (Then Lee took his time next, going back to get his own mug of warm goodness and the second full mug of tea.)
Miz finally lifted her head up and away from Ford's shoulder. He wasn't sure if he was meant to let go or not, so he didn't. Miz wiped at her face. "...would it be too much for you all to pretend that didn't happen?" she muttered, looking away from everyone.
"Yup," Lee said good-naturedly, leaning backwards up against the kitchen counter, as he picked up his mug. "Pretty sure Blue would be all over my case, if I ever tried to forget anything on purpose, you know?" And Lee gave her the slightest of smiles, while looking down at his drink and bringing his mug up to his lips, to take a careful sip of it.
Miz huffed, letting out a soft squeaking hiccup at the end. "...don't tell anyone I had a breakdown."
"Operational security there, I hear ya," Lee nodded, easily enough.
"No, I just don't want them to worry." Miz still refused to look at everyone. Ford sighed. He was tempted to tell Seb and Wanda, so they'd be able to give her support at home, but if Miz said no, then it was a no.
Lee gave her a slightly larger smile.
"...Like I said. Operational security there, I hear ya," Lee repeated again, a little more slowly, with the slightest thread of amusement in his tone as he looked up at her, and gave her a wink. He took another sip from his mug. (Yeah. That was the good stuff, right there. Better on every next sip that he took.)
"...want to get some warm milk tea?" Ford asked Miz. She nodded, still unable to look up at him. Ford smiled, patted her head, and waited for her to hold onto him before he got up with her in his arm and carried her over to the kitchen bar table. He also snagged the mugs as he went. Good thing about six fingers was he had more hand space to hold things. It was a little tricky to sit with Miz in his lap, but he kept an arm around her waist, and she was still clutching his sleeve. Well, if she wasn't letting go, then neither was he.
Lee walked over (with his own mug and the 'extra' mug of tea) to meet him on the opposite side of the kitchen bar counter. And once this Ford had set the mugs down again, Lee simply reached out a finger, made a few gestures in the air over the bar counter (while concentrating carefully), and pulled the contents of the mug of tea and mug of milk up into the air.
The tea concentrated itself - much of the rather warm water simply siphoning out into a third, medium-sized bubble - and then the tea mixture and most of the milk dropped back down into what had originally been the milk mug.
Lee did the same thing with the remaining milk and the second mug of tea, and tossed the remaining, leftover warm water over and back down into the sink, back in the kitchen.
Miz, still looking rather embarrassed by everything, took one of the mugs, blew on it and took a hesitant sip, before blowing on it again. Ford had the hand that was now free of mugs up on her head for more petting. "...do you… want to talk about anything?" Ford asked Miz, a little cautiously. She sighed. "I dunno." She sipped her drink.
Lee glanced over at the couch again (...yeah, nope…), then slid the second 'milk tea' mug over to Ford.
Almost feeling sheepish, Ford asked Miz, "Is this why you… ah, didn't want to talk about the stuff that made you uncomfortable?" (Miz shrugged. "Was more thinking that it'd annoy you to hear, to be honest.") Ford sighed. "I'm not annoyed. Or… well, I mean. If you want to talk about stuff, I'm here to listen." Miz just made a non-committal noise. Ford rested his chin on her head. "I'm serious." Miz's only response was another sip. Ford glanced around. "...Where's Blue?" He was sure the older demon was here. He'd been strangely quiet aside from that one threat, though. And that left Ford a little… worried. About what Blue was doing in here, instead.
"Back behind the couch. Huggin' himself." Though he didn't call it that. Lee stifled the snort. "Blue's basically got two modes, and flailin' and freezin' ain't either one of 'em." And since there wasn't anything to fight here… the devil-demon was probably tryin' realllll hard not to just shoot over here, grab his little sister, and book it.
Ford frowned, looking back and forth between Miz and the couch. "Miz, would you like a hug from Blue too?" he asked gently, almost prompting her. Miz nodded, sipping her tea. "...only if he's ok with that…"
There was a dark sort of insectile chittering that emanated from the couch, at that.
"Yeah." Lee sipped at his drink. "Probably should go over to him instead of the other way around, if you don't want to end up three dimensions over and half-smothered by him, or somethin'." Lee lifted his mug again. "He's trying real hard to be good, over there."
Miz slid off Ford's lap. She was still holding his sleeve, so Ford got pulled up and followed behind her. "Brother?" Miz asked quietly, walking around the couch, Ford tensed, in preparation for what the older demon might do.
...Miz didn't make it around the couch.
Blue just popped up from the back of the couch, lightning-fast, and pulled her right over the back of it with him, *chrrrrr*ing a bit louder for a moment there still. And Miz squeaked, stiffening in surprise before relaxing into his hold, hugging him back with one arm as Ford stumbled forward.
"...you make it very-hard to not-bundle you up into a necklace, and wear you around my neck…" Blue muttered out at her, a bit annoyed as he 'caged' her in. (While also being pissed off at existence in general right now.)
"...sorry?" Miz mumbled back. "I'm always causing trouble for you…"
"...you are not, everyone else is causing YOU trouble; I will fix that, too…" Blue muttered out next. (He was still holding control over the entire space in the interior here, and had used that to pull her up-and-over without doing it tightly. And while he'd 'caged' her in his arms now, he wasn't squeezing. ...He would find it very hard to uncage her if she asked for it right here and now, though)
Miz laid against him. "I'm the one who needs to get better, so I don't feel like this…" she sighed. "I'd rather be happy." Ford was trying to get into a more comfortable position, seeing as his arm was kind of pulled over the back edge of the couch. (Lee saw this, sighed, finished his warm drink to 'slot' the mug away for washing, and pushed himself away from the kitchen bar counter, starting to walk over…)
"I am making a list."
"...I should make a list for you too." Miz admitted. "But I don't know what makes you happy. You're just angry and stuff, yeah?"
At this, Blue went very quiet. Even his at-the-moment chirring. Miz noticed, but wasn't sure why. "I mean, if you want to be happy?"
And Blue stayed very, very quiet at this.
Lee, who had walked his way over, leaned forward over the couch a bit, to see if he could figure out a way to help out this Ford...
Lee took one look at Blue and stopped in place, pulled back a little bit again, with a casual slowness to his motion. ('Aw, hell.')
"...what's wrong?" Miz asked, looking up at her brother. "Did I say something wrong again?"
"Yeah, uh..." Lee didn't have a good way to put this. "...Blue was tellin' me earlier that there's something that he's gotta tell us, that's kinda… beyond an operational security issue. That he wouldn't tell us for any other reason, except he thinks that he's gotta tell us all, anyway." Not exactly the best way to say it, but Lee figured it probably got the point across.
Miz blinked. Then she thought about what sorts of things Blue didn't like talking about. And his worries over Miz being unable to keep secrets. "...do you need a Deal to keep me from saying anything?"
"-NomoreDeals," Blue said quickly, his shoulders coming up. "I decided this."
"...curse?" Miz asked instead, making Ford tense in worry. That didn't sound like a good idea. Or safe.
Blue let out a short bark of a laugh. (He had a grin going. It looked rather painful.)
Blue pulled himself in a bit closer. Touched his forehead to Miz's, almost. (And he slowly lost that 'smile' again, as he lay there with her, little sister still caged in his arms, and he breathed.)
(Lee let out a sigh and tapped Ford on the shoulder, gave him a 'tumble up and over the thing to the floor there' gesture. Then Lee walked his way around to the other end of the couch, to sit down next to Blue's head. For his part, Ford was trying to give the demons their space the best he could, since Miz was refusing to let go of him. He did climb over the couch, and just sat there on the floor next to them, trying not to feel awkward about this whole thing.)
Miz blinked at her brother, "So… yes? No?" She was fine with Cursing herself into silence, for Blue's sake.
"Doesn't matter," Blue half-muttered out. Then he pulled in a breath and said, rather painfully, "...I screwed up." (Blue was looking down, not into her eyes. And he didn't look anything like happy about it.)
Miz blinked slowly. Then she frowned. And thought very hard about what 'screwing up' would mean for Blue. Well, if it had to do with Liam, he'd be more upset, he loved his big brother more than anything. But conversely, Liam was the only thing Blue would ever feel so strongly about. And… if Miz thought about it, with the fact that Blue probably hadn't fixed everything everywhere yet… but also being all weird...
"...Liam?" she asked. Had he… brought Liam back, before fixing everything?
And Blue let out a breath like he was deflating almost. He looked very tired, all of a sudden.
He slowly moved his gaze up towards her, and told her, "I haven't fixed everything yet."
"Yeah, I kinda thought so…" Miz tried not to add, 'you haven't fixed things here after all'. "Is he… okay?" Looks like he really had brought Liam back.
Blue gave her a pained look.
"-I completely destroyed the old protections in the attic-room," he told Miz next. "I had to remove your access, too. -But-I-have-aroomintheSPACESHIPthatis decked-out inthesameway-?" Blue told her next, very quickly.
"It's fine." Miz assured him. She remembered how he'd promised her that she would always have access to the attic. (Or, well, his space there, but the attic had been that space.) He'd probably thought she'd be mad about that. "So I can't meet him?"
Blue pulled in another breath. "Sixer can go up there now but Stanley can't. I don't sleep up there anymore." (Lee frowned at this. Blue wasn't usually this avoidant. And who the heck was Liam?)
Miz frowned too. "Does Stanley know?" Because obviously, that Stanford did.
"Doooooooes Stanley know what?" Blue tried, sounding stressed.
"So he doesn't?" Miz guessed. (Blue stayed quiet at this; didn't move at all.) "And that Stanford hasn't told him. He's keeping this secret?" She could deduce some from just what Blue didn't say. He was a terrible liar. Though, he could also just be trying to avoid the subject. She would have to ask that Stanford herself, if such an opportunity arose.
"...Who's Liam?" Lee asked slowly.
"My big brother," said Blue. "Much smarter than me. Still." Blue sounded very strained. And he was tense. (It was making Lee feel a little uneasy.)
"...has Liam seen you?" Miz was getting a little suspicious about how Blue was acting. That Stanford had access, but Blue didn't sleep there anymore? Was he avoiding Liam? Afraid of him getting mad, perhaps?
"Yyyyyyyyes. No. Not-exactly," Blue told her, as if he was dragging it out of himself (finally managing to force himself to give up on holding at least that part of it back, the timing being more present than past).
And then he got out, in full Bill Cipher 'HAHA' enthusiastic-sounding fashion, "-Guess I should've been a bit more careful about that stupid 'Ford getting into things, RIGHT?" Blue shuddered in place a little bit, locking his jaw closed, unable to completely tamp down the rage. (Lee saw this and put his hand on top of Blue's head, held it there. Ford himself was staring.)
"Brother," Miz reached up a hand to the side of his face, caressing him gently. "It's fine," she told him firmly. "He's your brother. And you're not a broken Bill," she said slowly.
"-It is NOTHING like fine, I didn't fix it first," Blue said, and he went from angry to zero and just plain downright stressed, almost knocking his forehead up against her own as he shifted in place on the couch very oddly.
"It will be fine." Miz insisted. "Liam… is he safe? Is he okay? Is he alone? Is he confused?" Questions would make him think, get him to think of something else. And perhaps, if she knew more, she'd be able to help.
"He isn't suicidal, he isn't suicidal, he isn't going to kill himself right now not yet not until-" was what Blue got out next, before snapping his jaw shut on the rest of it, and-
(And Ford stiffened at that. Suicidal? Too?!)
Miz narrowed her eyes. "Is he angry?" she asked carefully.
"Nooo," said Blue, and it was almost a laugh. "No-no-no, no. No, he's not angry, that is not what he does." Blue's voice was all over the place at this.
"...is he sad?" Miz asked next. Because he was… in the attic room, with no one but that Stanford coming up, probably. And Blue might not be visiting him.
"He-is-" Blue paused for breath, "-very-very-VERY-very LOGICAL," Blue then told her, and then, rather stressed all over again, "IdoNOThavemyWORKEDoutQEDtoSHOWtohimyet." (Lee felt a chill go down his spine.)
And then Blue went both silent and tense.
"...so you're afraid to go see him?" Miz sighed. She felt rather worried for Liam, and Blue. The both of them.
Blue shivered, and relaxed only slightly.
"No," Blue said. "I'm not afraid to goSEEhim. I've seen him. I'vetalkedtohim. Sev-er-al times. -WithSIXEReven." Blue let out a breath. (He looked absolutely exhausted now, very dark circles surrounding and ringing his eyes...) "He won't do anything to me," Blue said lowly next. "He knows that I'm perfect, that I can-and-should be. On the outside at least…"
(And while Ford, who had not yet read Flatland even though he'd been meaning to, did not and could not understand the implications of those last two sentences of his, Lee - who had read that book by now - did. And Lee stiffened just a little bit in place, as he got a very bad feeling down in the pit of his stomach, as chills ran across his skin...)
"That isn't what I meant," Miz sighed. "...do you need some food before we talk more about this?"
"-Pretty sure he needs sleep," Lee cut in, stroking his thumb across Blue's temple, which had the demon relaxing just a bit. "Blue. Hey. We're all gonna stay in this set for now for awhile, okay?" Lee told the devil-demon a bit carefully.
"Go sleep." Miz added. "Do you… need me here?"
"-Don't go there," Blue told his little sister. "Don't go there, don't go there without me, you can't see him anyway, I haven't locked that 'Ford out completely out of that dimension there yet because Stanley," Blue told her next, not letting go over her yet. "I just set up something small-and-very-sneaky to have him time-bumped him a little; I set that-one-up."
"I'm not going into your Set without your express say-so. Remember?"
"Promise-me-again, you get very curious," Blue said to her. (He still wasn't looking at her completely.) "They can't go, but you can. You are able to."
"I promise, I won't go to your Set without you with me, and unless you have given me permission to do so."
Blue let out a long breath at this.
"I hear you," Blue said to her. But he still didn't let go of her yet. So Miz nodded, finally, slowly, letting go of Ford. Her brother needed her right now. "Ok. So, do you wanna go take a nap? Do you want me with you?"
Blue didn't answer verbally. He just closed his eyes and breathed.
"...Yeah, I think he's stayin' here," Lee said somewhat quietly. He slowly pulled his hand away from Blue's temple. He looked up at this Ford. "I'm thinkin'," Lee began. "That maybe I'm just gonna show him my private garden, okay?" Lee said as he slowly stood up, and tapped a few things into his (still-unseen) bracer on his left forearm. ("Mm," went the demon.)
"I don't mind staying here, if he wants me here." Miz said. She hoped he did. But if he wanted her to leave, she would.
"Oh," Lee said, looking down at the devil-demon who was not letting go of Miz (or moving to let go of his little sister at all), "I'm pretty damn sure he wants you staying here with him. -I'm just gonna take Ford for a little mini-tour here, okay?" he said down to the (technically, both) demon(s) here. Miz nodded, relaxing against Blue's chest.
Ford nodded slowly. "Yes, I'm… ah… going to go on a tour. Yes." He also stood up slowly to move away. "Not leaving, still going to be here. Just… on tour…"
Miz let out a quiet huff. "Ok. I'll see you later?" ("Yes.")
Lee made a 'come on this way' waving towards him gesture, then started towards the tent flap on the right side of the room. Ford followed.
"Gonna need to give me a half-minute, here," Lee said to Ford, muted and under his breath. ("Y-yeah.") And with that, Lee ducked under and through the tent flap. ...And it was about a good thirty seconds before Lee poked his head and an arm back through and said, "Give me your hand."
Ford ran a hand through his hair. Well. He had… a lot to think about. "R-right…" he held out his hand.
Lee took Ford's hand in his own, and then he pulled Ford right on through.
"Shit," said Lee, once they'd emerged into a short hallway, and he'd dropped Ford's hand.
"Well. That was… well, shit." Ford agreed.
"A mess," Lee said. "It was a mess. -Knew Blue was holdin' somethin' back, but- hell," Lee said, (and Lee was thinking more about Blue than Miz) as he strode forward, and then did something at the end of the corridor - held up his palm, to slap it up against… ah, did that just turn into a circular airlock doorway? -Ah. Security protocols for an inner, private space. Of course.
"What? His brother?" Ford blinked. "Sebastian had a Liam too. But Miz had a Will. They all… um, died." Ford winced. "Was kinda a huge thing with them, on how they turned out the way they did, as people."
"Oh, great," said Lee, with a bit of a nasty bite to his tone, as he started tapping a code into a keypad next to the airlock door. "So everybody knew the guy had a smarter, older brother, except-" 'me'. Lee stopped, even stopped in the middle of inputting his code, and ran his hand over his face.
"Dammit. He knew I'd be pissed off about this." It took Lee a few moments, before he was able to shake it off, and he got back to his keycode input.
"Are you okay?" Ford asked. "Was that… really such a surprise?"
"Blue havin' a big older brother? -Yes. Yes, it was." Lee finished inputting the code, slapped the 'open' key, and the lights above the airlock door cycled from dark orange to green.
"...his brother isn't a demon," Ford spoke up quietly. As if maybe that would help.
"You didn't hear him at all, did you," Lee said rather forcefully, as the airlock door twisted itself out of the way, and Lee immediately stomped his way through, forward and into it. (Ford passed through it a bit more slowly behind him, and…)
...There was a second airlock door.
"All I heard was that Blue considers Liam smarter than him. And logical?" Ford frowned. "Unless those are signs of being a demon?" Ford wondered if that was what was considered a demon over there, that didn't make much sense. "Lee?"
Lee slapped the 'close' button on the first airlock door, and stomped over to the second airlock. He began inputting the code over there.
"...Lee? Are you… okay? You seem a lot angrier about this than I thought such news would warrant?"
"-It ain't you," Lee told him tersely, as he tapped in a much shorter code, and the light above this one went from dark orange to green next. The next door twisted itself out of the way, and Lee stepped through (as did Ford behind him), and... they were in another short hallway. Lee slapped the 'close' button on the airlock behind him, and input... a third code at the airlock?
"...your own twin, then? Or is this something you don't want to talk about?" Ford asked hesitantly.
"Yeah, my twin. And no, I don't really want to talk about it," Lee said, as the lights above them brightened slightly. He turned and started walking towards the wall, which now had a normal-looking door in it. "Pretty sure we've already had too much crazy people drama about past junk today." Lee pulled in a breath, and let it out, as he turned the knob and opened the door.
"...alright then." Ford backed down. "But if you ever want to talk about it, I'm… ah… here?" Ford scratched his head. Then, almost like he was afraid Lee would laugh at him for it, he asked, "Would you like a hug?"
(Uh, yeah he would. Was that even a question?) Lee let out a snort.
"Maybe let's get out into the actual room, first," Lee said to him. "There's kind of a built-in timer in here for 'not okay' visitors, even with me putting in all the right codes. Dunno how long I'd be hugging you for," Lee told him, as he walked through the doorway, and held it open for Ford. "But I bet it'd probably be longer than the timeout in here. -And I'm gonna hold you to that one, too," Lee warned him.
"Sure." Ford cracked a smile. "Then I can give all the hugs, if you're comfortable with some old guy like me giving hugs. Miz says I'm quite good at them, apparently?"
Lee gave him a tired smile back and nodded (he was comfortable with far older guys than this Ford givin' him hugs, well, at least one of them, when the other one of the two of them wasn't standing there looking all upset and watching). Ford walked on through, and then Lee closed the door behind him.
"Maybe put your hand there for a minute," Lee pointed to the door, and a circle appeared as he tapped his left forearm (working at inputting the right parameters into his bracer interface), "So I can register you as a 'cleared guest' to my private rooms, and we don't have to go through the whole 'airlock' rigamarole again. Yeah?"
Ford nodded as he did so. "Lots of security in here. Blue's idea, I'm guessing."
"I helped him pare it down," Lee told him, as the circle cycled through colors around Ford's hand as Lee typed. "He doesn't like getting rushed - that includes people rushin' down corridors right into rooms he wants to consider all safe." The circle flashed green twice, then faded out. Lee let out a breath and dropped his hand, letting both his arms swing down at his sides. "Number of airlocks that show up has to do with how fast you're tryin' to go through them, when you ain't in the system. -Don't get me started on what Blue wanted to do to people who try goin' in without one of us actually pulling them through with us," Lee said, scratching the back of his head, as they both walked away from the door now, out past the overhang, and...
"...so cool." Ford whispered.
Lee blinked at this.
"Oh. Right." Lee turned around and looked around at his 'garden' - a 300 foot long by 300 foot wide 'room' with a fifty foot ceiling, small open 'buildings' inside it that went up various levels, and a section (currently overhead) that showed an artificial 'sun' shining down. It was clearly a room, but it also just as clearly had small directed and segmented-off artificial weather patterns in it, given the different sections and levels with very different flora inside them.
"Yeah, so… the buildings don't do the 'rotating levels' thing here like they do inside our main tent one," Lee noted, tilting his head back at Ford. "Can't do as much with the walls, either. Not that I like makin' 'em look really real in here; feels kinda creepy when I do that," Lee told him. (But Lee was already relaxing a bit, just being in here. He kind of liked it in here.) "You, uh… you want to go sit down someplace? I've got some pretty good shade trees in the section over there. Think I left one of the space-folded picnic baskets over there, too."
"Sure," Ford said, still turning around in circles with his head up to look at everything. "You have a different type of 'sun' than the one Miz made for the Island. How does yours work? I know hers is just a very small miniature star shielded behind multiple layers of filters so that it doesn't release any of the radiation that would harm a person, and it does a thing where it rotates around with another shield that covers it to simulate 'night'..."
"I can show ya, if you want," Lee said, and he typed a few things into his bracer and...
...Ford blinked as Lee turned and showed him his left forearm, which he could now see had a bracer wrapped around it that reminded him very much of the one that Seb had. It also had a holographic display now showing above it. (Lee had changed the security settings to let Ford see it, and the general holographic interface. When need be, it would only 'obfuscate' the sensitive data by leaving grayed out boxes in areas of the screen there for Ford to see, while sending the actual data for Lee to see to the his-eyes-only display built into his glasses.)
Lee showed him the setting for the 'sun' overhead, pulling the 'asset' up on the room's list (organized by location-section currently). Lee tweaked the output down to 'nighttime' for a bit (and the light level dropped immediately down to 'moonlight'), before Lee 'selected' on the location, and changed it to a lower-height one - right in front of them - while having it dim lower and lower as it went. (Didn't want to burn their eyeballs out or nothin' here, staring head-on at it. He also tossed the walls and the ceiling into 'nighttime' mode while he was at it - otherwise, it would get pretty dark in here except for the light coming from the growing levels in the open 'buildings', what with no windows in here.) And while he was at it, Lee 'touched' the schematics tab, and expanded it out in a large spherical semi-circle around him, for Ford to be able to look through inside-out, rather than just outside in once it got down there.
"Did you build it?" Ford asked, reading through the schematics.
Lee hesitated. "...Eh. I mostly just kludged the design from a bunch of other stuff I saw," Lee told him. "The thing's really just a glorified lightbulb," he told him. "I handle the temperature locally in the different sections, mostly. Easier to keep the levels where I want 'em that way."
"It's amazing!" Ford breathed, giving Lee a proud excited grin. "Environmental controls are incredibly complex. The slightest variation would make a wildly different weather pattern. I know McGucket was building a rain machine that ended up making it hail indoors for a while."
"Yeah, well," Lee shrugged. "It's pretty artificial. I broke it all down as simple as possible, 'cause it's that hard to mess with. Helps if you've got the exact growth profiles of the stuff you're tryin' to grow under it, too." The 'sun light ball' came down to hover nearby, glowing at a far more muted level than before, like a dimmed lightbulb. "If you wanna grab that," Lee nodded to it, "We can go sit down and you can take it apart. I can just use the overhead panels instead. The 'sun' here's mostly just for aesthetics. I don't actually need it," Lee admitted, trying not to feel stupid about it.
"Can I really?!" Ford almost bounced in place. "It won't explode and kill us both or anything, right?"
"Schematics should keep you outta trouble," Lee noted. "But the thing's got a power source in it that shouldn't blow up too easily."
Ford took the orb, looking like a child in a candy store. "Oh, ah, I can still give hugs while working. I'm quite used to doing that."
Lee grinned; he couldn't help it.
"Said I was gonna hold you to that one, didn't I?' Lee told him, as they slowly walked over to the tree Lee had pointed out earlier, as (at the timed typed command from Lee) the light panel walls and ceiling around and above them slowly lit up in a carefully-staged process that made it look almost like sunrise.
Miz purred as she laid on her brother. She didn't know all the details yet of what happened with Liam, but she would wait for Blue to tell her. Even if waiting was hard. Besides, he looked exhausted. So she just purred and waited for him to wake up on his own.
And, after awhile, in his sleep, while Blue might have been grimacing slightly and unconsciously at the pressure on and across his whole chest… Blue began to hum-purr in that always-rising Shepard tone of his, in range and in tune and in time with her, as well. Miz always found that incredibly endearing. Brother was so cute. Yes, he was her older brother, but Miz had never had an older brother before, before meeting Blue and Seb; she had a younger brother, it was the only way she knew how to interact with brothers. So… she couldn't help but want to protect Blue, in her own way.
Lee was pretty happy here. He was sitting under a tree with this Ford, his knees up a bit, leaning up against this Ford's left side, and... yeah, he was the one with the arm around this guy here as Ford used both hands to fiddle with stuff with the big ol' sun ball's antigrav unit, but this was way more than he'd gotten from his own twin brother in a really long time.
(God, he was pathetic.)
Lee just tilted his head to the side slightly, resting it down against Ford's shoulder, ever so slightly. Underneath the shade of the trunk of the huge oak tree spreading its leaves and branches all above and around them. And Lee slowly closed both his eyes. He just let himself relax in place, right then and there.
And Ford, meanwhile, kept up a quiet chatter of his observations as he fiddled with the object in hand. It was nice background noise, as he spoke softly. (If Miz were here, she'd claim that Ford would make a good ASMR narrator.) Sometimes, he reached his left hand up and over to absently pet Lee's hair. (Miz had trained him well.)
And every time Ford did it, Lee almost wanted to laugh.
(Actually, he wanted to cry for some reason instead; it felt really good, and he kinda liked it. His brother had never done that for him. If he'd asked, his Ford would've looked at him like he was flat-out insane, Lee was pretty sure.)
(If Lee had ever thought to ask Miz about it, she would have told him that this was what siblings were supposed to do for each other, not that he'd really believe her. She would also have told him that you were never too old to have head pats, and Lee would have laughed.)
(His mom had done this sort of thing for him maybe once or twice before, that he could remember, sorta fuzzily, way back when? Sometimes, she had said that she used to do it for him all the time, and then his Pa spoke up and informed him that he'd been getting too old for it, and that he'd told her to stop babying him all the time and she had. But it wasn't really the same; the way Ford was doing it felt really different to him.)
Ford, on his end, found himself wondering if this was what having a son was like? As weird as this was. He had thought of children before, he couldn't not, what with everyone around him having kids and being told all his life that this was what people did once they grew up. But he'd always been afraid of it. (What almost happened with Zach just made it worse.) He was afraid to hurt them. He was afraid he wouldn't have time for them, or would end up ignoring them as he got absorbed in his work. But being with Lee was fun. And even if he was doing cooking instead of work, or just sitting here with a half-dismantled orb that he was already figuring out and putting back together, messing with the anti-gravity generator while Lee laid against him… it was nice. Would having a son be like this too? Well, of course, this would be for when the kid was older. Ford didn't know the first thing about babies. But...
And Ford blushed a little at the thought. Miz liked babies, and had apparently raised four of them. So… if… he had a kid… he was sure Miz would help him with-
And then Ford turned beet red and shook that thought away. It was way too tempting. And impossible! Ford wouldn't even be able to have a son, what with him not ever wanting any sexual intercourse of any kind and- Ford shook his head again. This was nothing more than a fantasy. Nothing more. And… he couldn't just… dump a kid on Miz to raise until they were old enough to talk to Ford. That was… irresponsible. Ford had no desire to end up like his father. Filbrick was the worst father. And Ford didn't want any part of that. (What Ford wouldn't know, was that Miz would eventually declare, "I want a baby!" a few weeks down the line. And then Ford would be flustered all over again.)
Lee wasn't sure what Ford was thinking, but something beyond just science was goin' on in that head of his just then. ...Probably, that he'd been (one-arm) 'hugging' him too long. So Lee stifled the sigh and pulled his arm away, shifting a bit in place and lifting his head up at the same time.
Ford let out an unconscious sad, disappointed sound when Lee pulled away. (Lee blinked.) "Lee? Oh, sorry. Was I being too touchy-feely?"
"Huh?" Lee blinked at him again. Uh... "I thought you thought I was doin' that too much." Being all suffocating or something.
Ford flushed. "Oh, no, that's not…" He coughed into his fist. "I was just thinking of something… a little embarrassing."
"Oh." Lee blinked at this. "Uh, okay." He felt almost weird doing it, but Lee put his right arm back around Ford's shoulders. "So, uh, you want to talk about it?"
And Ford relaxed again. "Ah, well. Only if you don't laugh, or tell anyone."
"Yeahhh, think you're gonna have to give me some kinda a hint there on that one, Ford," Lee told him. (It was one of his private rooms, not one of their shared-private ones. Devil-demon wasn't supposed to go looking or kicking around in here unless Lee gave him the okay for that time period, so…)
Ford looked down and sighed. "I… like the idea of maybe being a father someday. But I don't… well, I have no interest in physical pursuits with a woman, or anyone else."
"...Okay," said Lee. "Kinda knew about the second one," not like he didn't know what asexual was. But… "You seriously want to have kids?" Lee asked him, frowning.
"I… well… I like the idea of… raising a kid, teaching them, spending time with them." Ford shifted in place, waving his hands about.
Lee stared at him. "Uh. Ford. You ever even babysat a kid before?" (He didn't know everything about what had gone down with Seb's kids; just that the twins had been there, younger than they were now, and that Seb had been there, too. To stop this Ford from hurting the one of 'em there.)
"Well, that was sort of the problem. I don't know the first thing about taking care of children!" Ford groaned. "So… it's just… nothing more than a nice thought. I don't think I can trust myself to do something like that for real."
Lee pulled a bit of a face at this.
"Guess you could try actually babysitting once in awhile," Lee said slowly. "With somebody else around. Who you could maybe be the one helpin' out while they take point." Because it wasn't like he didn't remember what this Ford had told him about himself and Seb's kid, there.
"Yes, there would definitely need to be someone else around." Ford winced. "I've… watched over my niblings before, but I don't think that counted as babysitting." Was it bad that he wanted a child...but he wasn't really looking forward to the baby part? Not like he hated them or something… But… was it weird he'd prefer a kid old enough to speak and reason and for him to mentor? Or was that super weird and selfish? But Ford knew that babies required a lot of work and time and he worried it would get in the way of his work, "It was just a silly thought. I… don't think it would ever happen."
"Guess you could do the adoption thing like Dillon and that Phillip guy are thinkin' about, instead of the external womb thing," Lee said slowly. "Kids are a lotta work, though." Lee had been looking into it for awhile now, for what he was planning on doing for Sherm.
Ford shrugged. "Adoption is an option, but I guess I just don't really know. It's… just an idea. Maybe someday in the future…" He gave Lee a lopsided grin. "I mean, I'm still up for adopting you, but that's super weird, isn't it?"
"Kinda not a great idea anyway, even if it wasn't and ya could pull off doin' it," Lee told him. (Not like he was taking that seriously for multiple reasons there, though.) "'Cause I'm gonna be too busy taking care of Sherm on my own in about a year or two."
Ford blinked. "Oh, you're taking care of your Shermie?" ("I will be. Once I get a little older in here," Lee tapped the side of his head. "Don't feel ready for it yet.") Ford nodded at Lee's wisdom. Then he looked guilty. "I was already behind the portal with Stan by then." Ford sighed. "Not like I'd have been able to take care of him anyway." Ford rubbed his arm. "From what I've heard, Shermie was disowned by Filbrick, and that was the final straw. Ma left him and never looked back."
Lee blinked at him. "Sherm got- What, because of the pregnancy thing?"
"Yeah." Ford sighed. "Our father is not a good man." Ford ran a hand through his hair. "I don't think he ever wanted us, any of us."
Lee blinked at this, too. "...Dunno about that," Lee said uncomfortably, pulling his arm back. "'Least not with mine." He'd never really thought about things that way, though. He crossed his arms, feeling a bit… he wasn't really sure what.
"I don't know how things happened in your dimension, maybe your Filbrick was kinder." (Lee let out a snort at that, and he was glaring down at the ground now.) Ford sighed. "But me, looking back, I… don't know if my father had ever loved us. He certainly never showed it. He just kept us because of Ma."
"Hell, I dunno," Lee scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking away from him. "I just… figured that maybe he would've been happy if he didn't have a 'freak' and a 'dummy' for a pair of sons, who wouldn't cause any trouble and make millions for him instead." Lee's voice dropped to something lower then. "Except Ford ain't a freak, and I ain't no dummy. And I've damn well made more than enough to bury him with it all if I wanted to, and I won't." Not ever. Far as Lee was concerned, he was gonna make sure Filbrick lost Shermie instead.
Ford laughed. "Yeah, Stanley's the CEO of his own company. And, well, he sends money to Ma, and supports her in her retirement. But Filbrick's not getting anything. We all left, and we aren't giving him anything."
"Ma didn't leave him in the old men's dimension," Lee told him, leaning forward a bit, to draw his knees up to his chest and wrap his arms around them and squeeze. "Ain't so sure she'd do it in mine. -I'm gonna take Sherm and just book it. Not like they'll ever find us again, when I ain't even in the same dimension as them, for them to go off and finding me."
"If she doesn't have anywhere to go…" Ford frowned. "Here, Ma left. Stayed with Carla and her family. Shermie went to live with Abi's family. They had somewhere to go. I'm… glad they had somewhere to go."
"Ma has her hotline; she could do that anyplace," Lee said, shoulders coming up a bit. "The thing I ain't sure about is-" Lee stopped and grimaced, then shook his head. Because he didn't know that yet. He'd left before he could find out. He hadn't wanted to risk going in, seeing… and then murdering the man right in front of them next. (He was still too angry to think straight, every time he thought about it all still. -Which was part of the reason why he hadn't tried to go back again yet, honestly. As much as he loathed the man now, he didn't actually want to go off and kill the man dead!) "-forget it," Lee muttered out to this Ford instead, next.
"Well, I'm sure Blue didn't do this in your dimension, he doesn't strike me as the kind who would." Ford frowned a little. "But apparently, the reason Filbrick hated Sebastian so much, was because he met our local Bill Cipher years ago, and thought that Sebastian was Bill. -It's not an excuse for what he did, demon or not, you shouldn't hit a child." Ford added quickly, "And yes I know how hypocritical that sounds-" Ford hugged himself as he saw the look of rage flash across Lee's face. And Lee spat out:
"-That don't explain why he'd just go off and hit Shermie! She's two!"
And Ford shuddered, looking horrified. "My Filbrick hit Sebastian all his life, even when he was a baby. Sebastian remembers it-"
"So, what," Lee ground out, glaring up at him. "That makes it okay? 'Oh no, a demon made me feel like doin' it!?'" Lee let out a long and angry curse after that in Galactic, and looked away from him again. "Blamin' Blue for that shit, ha. You can forget that one. -The damn demon didn't do shit in my dimension until I was in high school," Lee told him. "And there ain't any excuse for trying to hit some little kid. Ever." He glared straight back at Ford, next.
(And the only reason Lee wasn't going after Ford on his shit with Zach? Was that at least this Ford knew what he'd done was out and out wrong. And had had a demon in his brain, fucking shit up on him, not too long about before that one had sunk its claws into him.)
(-Ford hadn't been trying to hit a little kid; he'd gotten his brain turned around on him and thought he'd been attacking a demon - that much had been obvious to Lee, from how this Ford had talked about it. And Lee knew from Blue what somebody could do, makin' you see shit that wasn't real. You could have somebody shooting into a crowd and thinking you were downing terrorists and monsters, when you were actually shooting down mothers and infants, with that kind of shit. -But you wouldn't be actually trying to hurt those mothers and little kids. That was the difference. That, and some fucking remorse.)
"Yes. I agree," Ford told Lee firmly, even as he felt a bit sick at what he himself had almost done to Zach. "It's not okay. No matter what, to hit a child." He scowled. "Nevermind, I guess your Filbrick's even worse than mine." He breathed, burying his face in his hand. "...don't let Miz find out, she'll try to kill your Filbrick like she tried here…"
"Miz can stay the hell outta my business, is what she can do," Lee grumbled out at him next. "This ain't some frigging contest about whose Pa can be worse. -They're both full of shit. Why are you tryin' to make a competition outta it." Lee glared out over his knees, straight ahead.
"Agreed." Ford twitched. "Sorry, wasn't trying to…." He rubbed his face. "Ah, I'm terrible at this…" He muttered. "I… was… trying to get a better idea of the circumstances… and…" he said awkwardly, "If… you need any help… like, getting your Shermie out of there, and… maybe your Ma, if you want to, if she wants to… I don't know…" Ford shrank in on himself. "I don't know if I can even help at all, you've kinda… got things all set here? For living situations, at least. I don't know what I'm trying to say… I'm sorry, I really wasn't trying to...make it a competition."
"I've got my portal gun, I've been learnin' how to take care of kids, I've got plenty of money now, and I can easily get more," Lee ground out at him next, paying more attention to the first part than the second, the offer of help just largely washing right past him without leaving him anything but still high and dry on his own little island of angry and self-righteous certainty. "I know exactly what I'm gonna do: I'm gonna walk right back up to that back door, get Ma to give me Sherm for the day for babysitting her there, away from the house for a bit." Lee pulled in a breath. "And then I'm leaving and never, ever fucking looking back again."
"...are you going to tell your Ma afterward?" Ford asked quietly.
"I ain't going back," Lee told him. "I'm leavin' the dimension and goin' right back to the forty-six with the old-us'es in it. The apostrophe-backslash one. Got my boat set up on the lake in the 'Falls already; Blue did that for me, way back when." Lee pulled in another breath again. "I don't need nobody's help. The rest of them can just stay there where they are and all fuckin' rot."
Ford was worried about how the Kari there would feel, having her baby just… taken away like that. But… he… didn't really have a right to say anything, did he?
"Only reason I haven't done it yet is 'cause I don't know for sure that he hit Sherm instead of Ma, or maybe, maybe hit somethin' else," though from the way Lee was talking, he seemed to think that was anything but likely. "And then I'll probably still stomp in and kill him." Lee closed his eyes and his shoulders came up. "I fucking heard that and walked away, because I didn't want to just go off and kill him. -What kind of big brother does that make me there, huh?" Lee said, with a rather unhealthy dose of self-loathing.
Ford nodded slowly, keeping quiet about how they had two demons on hand who could See into and Show past events.
...And Lee most certainly knew that about Blue already. And with the relationship they seemed to have… the fact that he didn't know for certain yet almost certainly meant that Blue knew, and Lee had asked Blue not to look into it for him, or tell him. Lee himself seemed to be trying to avoid potentially murdering the man himself, if he understood what Lee was saying correctly, having left when he had.
"...I think you were just trying not to kill your father." ("Yeah. Not kill him, and leave Sherm behind. Fuck.") Ford winced, looking down at his own hands. "But, if you do get enough experience to be able to take care of Shermie, that's…"
"-What's this if?" Lee opened his eyes again to glare up at him. (They looked a little teary with rage and frustration.)
"When. When you're able to take care of your Sherm," Ford corrected. "Sorry…"
"Fucking hell," Lee said, looking away from him. He rubbed the base of his palm up under his glasses and grimaced. "I was trying to avoid all the big fucking drama, you know. Fuck."
And Ford hesitated before he reached out to pull Lee into a closer hug than the small one-armed ones from earlier. (And Lee resisted for a second or two, until he realized what this Ford was trying to do. And Lee struggled with himself for a minute, before turning and folding himself into it, wrapping his arms around Ford's own back.)
"Nothing wrong with a little drama." Ford smiled softly. "Better than bottling it all up inside, that's… ah, what my therapist told me. If I have something eating me up inside, it's better to tell the people I care about, so that I won't have to let it eat away at me all alone. Because other people are supposed to be there to help support you. Or something?" He looked away. "It sounds very lame, when I say it outright like that."
"I told Blue," Lee told him quietly. "He asked me first thing if I wanted him to get Sherm for me. I told him no," Lee said to him, "Because I didn't want Sherm maybe gettin' afraid of goin' away someplace with a stranger, or Ma trying to call the police." (Lee didn't want to think of what might happen, if Blue screwed up that one. Or what he'd have to say to Sherm afterwards, about not walkin' off with strangers, how hard that would be later, to explain.) "-I want this to fucking hurt," Lee told him. "I want us to disappear, and they can't fucking find us, and it's their own kid just takin' his sister out on a walk off the pier. Nobody ever say what happened to 'em. Coulda been anything," Lee told him. "Just let them all wonder. Them, and the whole neighborhood."
Ford winced. "Ah. I see." Yes, there was that Pines spite. They were all dramatic bitches like that. He had noted earlier that apparently Lee's Shermie was a girl, and well, Ford had accepted that in stride. Really wasn't all that strange. "Well, you mentioned you… um… wanted to know more about childcare, and grow up more, before you did this, yes?"
Ford felt Lee let out a sigh (over his shoulder, upon which Lee seemed to have his chin hooked). "Been doin' that with a couple a' little kids that I know in apostrophe-backslash, from their families. Read a whole bunch'a shit, same stuff Blue read through to get 'cleared' for babysittin' duty by old-man-me there, too. That's different than raisin' a kid up to bein' an actual adult though," Lee muttered out, "Or whatever." Not like being an 'actual adult' was anything to write home about. Lee shifted slightly in place, wrapping his arms around Ford just a little more comfortably. (Wasn't like he'd thrown him off yet. Yet.)
"Well," Ford said sheepishly. "I've got two brothers with young kids, older than two, but still young, who I… have been meaning to spend more time with, and if I ever want my own child in the future, I'll need to learn how to look after them… and I can't do so unsupervised?" (...Yeah, Lee didn't get where he was going with that one there, unless he thought he was commiserating' or something. Like lookin' after Sherm would be some kinda chore or something, instead.) Ford paused and added, "Also, we've got an Island full of children that Miz rescued from an internment camp. There are some adults on the Island, along with some Care Units, but… sometimes we go over to check on them and see to their needs… and stuff." Ford seemed a little embarrassed about all this.
"..." Lee slowly pulled away from him a little bit, 'cause he had to see his face for this, make sure he wasn't makin' shit up or… Lee stared at him. "...What the actual fuck?" Lee said to him slowly.
"...which fuck would you like clarification on?" Ford asked.
"Miz stole an islandful of kids?"
"No, she rescued some kidnapped children from the cages that the US government stuck them into, and built an island for them to live on where they would be safe."
"Why didn't she give 'em back to the parents- wait a fucking minute, did you say the US government pulled this shit?" (Lee had been about to complain about crazy dimension-hopping dragon-demons stealing kids sold into slavery or something, not wanting to send 'em back to their own dimensions and parents again, but- had he heard that right?)
Ford blinked. "Yes, the Shlump administration was very against 'illegal immigrants', nevermind the fact that these people weren't illegal at all, they were refugees seeking sanctuary- that's not the point." Ford rubbed his eyes. "So they thought the 'correct' thing to do was to deport the parents back to Mexico, and keep the children. In literal cages. Without any heating or bedding or SOAP-" Ford had to pause and breath a little to calm down, "Miz found as many of the parents as she could, and put them on the island as well. But it was… well, they didn't have anywhere else to go. So she built the island for them to live on."
Lee stared at him incredulously.
"-The fuck kinda World War II Jap-American bullshit is this?" Lee demanded out of him next, sitting up straight. It wasn't like his brother hadn't shared more than a few little 'gems' out of his library reading with him that hadn't even gotten wallpapered over in their own history books all that well.
"It's very fucked up. Yes," Ford deadpanned. "The whole planet's kind of… fucked up. Blue wants us to build an interdimensional portal and just leave, but that's… I don't even know how to begin with that!"
"Hell, no," Lee said. "Blue don't leave shit. 'Flight' is a fucking strategic retreat because he's tossing a grenade up every last ass. That's getting out of range of the explosions. -He fucking fights." And anytime it didn't look like that was what was happening, was when you really had to cover your ass - not that that helped whoever Blue was after right then, because for them it was already way too late.
"Well, he also suggested for us to 'fix' things here, so that people don't stay dead when they are killed, and can choose what kind of life and person they want to be reborn as, because he thinks that would somehow fix the issue of the FUCKING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THINKING THAT CHILDREN SHOULD BE PUT IN CAGES!" Ford groaned. "I don't… even know… where to begin with that…"
Lee stared at him at this.
"There some reason you haven't had the dragon-demon just… make this guy drop dead of a heart attack yet?" Lee told him mostly seriously. "'Cause it ain't like my own ain't partial to brain aneurisms, if that one's too hard." Because it wasn't like Blue was against the idea of 'murder them now, and I'm bring them back later, maybe, whenever I feel like it after all my fixing is done, eventually.'
"She's…" Ford winced. "She's… trying to be 'good' and respect the 'laws' here… but she's… well, she made the Island because she couldn't stand it anymore. But she kind of… needs our permission to do big changes like that." Ford leaned his head against Lee's. "Miz wants to 'fix' everything, and she's very upset about the stuff happening here. She… keeps herself distracted with stuff, to try and have fun, so she doesn't end up thinking about how much she wants to kill a good chunk of the planet for being the types of people who think 'putting children in cages' is a good idea," Ford explained. "I don't want Miz killing anyone here. And she's been… holding herself back from that. She has her Island now. Rescued the children, and I suspect, though she hasn't told me so, that she's been grabbing any more children that get kidnapped by the government in such a way as well. I swear there were more kids on the Island the last time I went to visit them…"
"This shit ain't tenable," Lee said. (-Yeah, you heard him; three-dollar-words, they were the easy ones there.) "Can't just keep tossing kids out onto an island somewhere. Ain't she read Lord of the Flies?" Lee was pretty sure that was required reading in schools, still. He remembered Dipper complaining about that one before. (And Mabel, but for a different reason.)
"...I think Fiddleford mentioned that too." Ford blinked. "And yes, I'm pretty sure she's read it. But we don't really… know what to do, right now." He paused. "The government is fucked. And the government in a lot of other countries are also fucked. Where would we send these children? And some of them still have parents, Miz tried to find them all, but not all of them…"
"What," Lee said. "You can't fucking adopt them out to people? Make fake papers for them and shit?" Old-man-him was a pro at that junk.
"We'd have to find people to take them in, and the orphanages in America are already full."
"So you find people," Lee told him. "Ain't like Miz has an excuse for that one, when she could just go Looking and find some."
"I think she wants to keep the children, so she would be sure they were safe."
"Yeah I bet she wants to keep 'em," Lee told him. Probably got a lot of 'adoration' outta them, too. "Don't mean that she should."
"And even if we found people to adopt them all, the ones who don't have parents, we won't know if they'll be safe." Ford sighed.
"Not like you know Dillon or Dipper or Mabel are gonna be safe," Lee told him. "Car crashes and mugging and junk happen." And other stuff, too. "-For the island kids, you could always have Miz checkin' up on Lookin' them up later, and stuff." Lee leaned back on his arms, frowning at him.
"...fair point." Ford sighed. "But a lot of the kids are attached to each other, since they only had each other during their time imprisoned. I don't know what would happen if we separated them. I suppose I could ask Miz to find people who would take multiple- this is just, all a huge mess." He rubbed his face.
"Ain't like it ain't solvable," Lee pointed out. "You break it down, take it all, y'know, one step at a time. -Hell, let 'em all stay penpals or whatever over video chat or something, hell, I don't know. Have 'em pretend they were all taken in and raised before getting 'placed'" - or whatever - "at the same orphanage, or somethin'. Not like anybody's gonna ever check that." Blue had helped him with… well, not something like this exactly, before. But there had been a lot of kids, and- look, Lee knew it was possible, okay?
"Miz would want only the best parents for them." Ford realized. "Is anyone even going to live up to her standards?"
"Just ask her if no parents are better than decent ones," Lee told her. "Blue's got some thing about parents, or types of parents or somethin'. Doesn't call 'em that, more like guardians or somethin'? It doesn't translate real well."
"Ok, so if we do manage to get some of the kids adopted… what would we do with the rest? The ones with parents, on the Island with them?" Ford shifted his hold on the hug, pulling out his journal to write this down.
"Get 'em forged papers, let 'em move wherever they want where nobody's gonna know 'em to know any different," Lee shrugged, then frowned. "-You seriously haven't done this before?" Lee asked him, thinking of other dimensions.
"Well, the problem is getting them jobs and homes. Though…" Ford frowned. "I think Miz was planning on something to help with that…"
"What, you need the gold for it? I got plenty," Lee told him.
"We're going to have to forge so many papers…" Ford sighed. "I don't even want to think about how Wanda's going to react to that, she doesn't like breaking the law…"
"So have the demons do it," Lee told him, shifting into a cross-legged position. "Least they can do, really. Ain't like Blue's not a hacking pro; he does that shit when he's bored. And I can print off damn near anything you want, on top of that," Lee told him next, "Long as I have a template for it." 'Which Blue can get for me' remained largely unsaid. "Ain't that hard; it's just paper and ink." Hell, he could probably do it all himself if he had to; Lee couldn't imagine the tech here would be anything but dead-simple compared to anything else he'd had to work with elsewhere before. 2013 to 2018 wasn't that big a leap, and Blue had walked him through making papers and other computer records for stuff for himself over there. (Old-man-him had almost been put out to hear about it all, later. Like he'd wanted to do it, instead. ...Which was kinda weird, but okay.)
Ford looked uncomfortable. "...You're right, I… I suppose I could rely on Miz to do more…" He wrote those down.
Lee watched him do this, and put his elbows on his knees and propped up his head.
"Seriously, What's the problem here?"
"The fact that we need to stop more children and their families from being taken again, even after we've done this for the current ones we have…"
"Oh," said Lee. "Yeah, okay. That one's a little harder there, yeah." He looked away at this and frowned. (Most of the stuff he'd run across and run into had been non-human trafficking and smuggling and stuff. He'd never really tried to go back to the source; it had never seemed to be that widespread, the places they went. ...The places that Blue was sure that they'd be in the clear to go, that he wouldn't be backed into enough of a corner that he'd have to 'drop the mask' and go full-on Bill Cipher, instead of 'just Blue'. Lee's frown deepened.)
"The problem we have to deal with, is that a lot of the government feel that certain humans don't have the same rights as other humans do, simply due to their skin color, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality and religion. And they've made laws to oppress and hurt anyone they deem 'other' and it's widespread not just in America, but around the world. And many of these people, tend to the ones in power."
Lee grimaced at this.
"Thought the whole place was secretly supposed to be some Santa Claus 'jollyocracy' or somethin'," Lee noted next. "Or some other random thing that that Trembley guy is still maybe kinda in charge of, instead. Guy's still kickin' around someplace or another now, apparently." The 'explanation' he'd gotten from Blue on that one had been nothing but completely convoluted and nonsensical to him, the last time he'd tried to ask.
"No. That is like, the opposite of what the state of the world nowadays is." Ford deadpanned. "And we're all breaking the law, by trying to do something about it." He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "It's so… frustrating."
"Heh." Lee couldn't help but chuckle. "Screw the law and the cops; we ain't Nazis, we're Pines. -Besides," Lee told them, "They'd have to freakin' catch you at it first! Eh? Eh?" Lee looked at him, eyes gleaming. "Gotta go sneakin' down chimneys yourself? That's fine. Just sounds like yet another breakin' and enterin' to me. Maybe they'll leave you cookies for it." Lee grinned at him next.
"True." Ford smiled a little. "But where could we send people where they could be safe? What can we do to stop this from happening?" He frowned. "There are so many problems in the world right now. There's the violence and crime happening down south, which is why refugees are coming here in the first place, there's the violence and crime happening here that the government isn't doing anything about, because they call it 'free speech', and whenever anyone speaks up against the violence, they get arrested, maimed or killed-" Ford had a headache even thinking about it.
"Hold on there," said Lee, pulling out his phone, "Lemme check somethin' first, real quick."
"Sure." Ford blinked, moving around so he could hug Lee while still allowing the two of them to have their hands free.
"Program," Lee said to the male-human-looking Blue sprite, "Toss me a few lines of transcript, would ya? Blue, tellin' me somethin' about a 'jollyocracy'."
Ford waited patiently as Lee talked to something invisible in his hand, and listened to something Ford couldn't hear with a slight frown.
"Yeah, okay." Lee put the phone away. "Sooooo… guess that's a thing. Maybe." He had an odd look on his face.
"What is?" Ford blinked, rather curious about that invisible 'program' that Lee was talking to.
"Well, uh." And for some reason, Lee looked a little bit embarrassed at… "Wasn't really plannin' on tryin' to turn anything into some B-reel holiday special?" Lee told him next, rubbing the back of his head. "But, uh… might be that we need to rescue Santa Claus? -Unless that's not a thing around here," Lee winced, waving his hands at him next, and starting to blush.
Ford blinked. "Well, from my research into the topic, the being known as 'Santa Claus' gave up his work around a hundred years ago. Since humans were already celebrating and sending each other gifts, and he was no longer needed?" At least, that was what Ford could decipher from those texts. "I read somewhere he'll still fly around at times, but as for actual giving gifts and such? Not so much."
"Yeah, uh…" Lee coughed. "That whole 'retirement' from the present-giving thing might be because he decided to become the, uh, 'current and forever president of the United States', was kinda what Blue called him, that one time over there." Lee looked like he kind of wanted to think of it all as some kind of joke, except...
"You mean Quentin Trembley?" Ford blinked. "I'm… unsure what happened to him. Dipper tells me he rode off over a cliff?"
"Uh, nah," said Lee. "Pretty sure he's just the eighth and a half president… uh, though I guess he might still be the current president, too?" That had been part of the confusing point for Lee before, not that he remembered it, having jogged his memory with his phone there, quickly - that there might've been three different presidents still runnin' around on them all, maybe?
"Well, he certainly isn't here right now." Ford deadpanned. "I'm actually feeling like maybe I should just make another mind-control tie and give it to the current president…"
"Or," Lee said, "-Because it's not like I'm not likin' the, whole, 'give the president who's caging kids somethin' to make more people agree with him' thing-" Lee misinterpreted. ("Oh no, I would be controlling the president. That happened years ago with one of the older administrations, but apparently the shadow government members died off?") "-Right, sure. But maybe we could find the guy who likes kids and get his hot take on the whole situation with the cages and things? For a bunch of kids who never did anything wrong?"
"...you want… to find Santa Claus?" Ford asked slowly.
"I mean," Lee said, starting to blush again. "If the Quentin guy's easier to find, and gonna do somethin' about it, maybe we can go the not B-reel holiday special route, instead?" Lee asked somewhat hopefully. (Not least of which because he didn't exactly like snow, or the cold, so very much himself.)
"Well, considering we're in mid-September right now, I doubt St. Nick would be all that easy to find…" ("Demons," Lee noted.) Ford frowned. "Yes, I could just ask Miz to look. For either him, or for Trembly."
"See," Lee said. "I like this plan. -We have a little talk with the guy who's known for breakin' and enterin' into anyplace and who likes kids a lot, hand him a really big stick, and… yep. Can't see how that one'll go wrong," Lee told him with a firm nod.
"...that doesn't stop all the other people being killed everyday. But at least the children will be alright?"
"Hey," Lee said. "Maybe let's handle the kid thing here, first. Okay?" Lee was starting to wonder if this was what Blue felt like, most of the time.
"Right." Ford nodded. "Would we be able to also take in all the children being disowned or abused by their families around the world as well?" he mused.
"Maybe let's handle this one kid thing here, first," Lee reiterated, slowly pushing himself to his feet. "Make sure we can handle this one thing, with the whole island and US President thing, first. Get us some backup for the rest of the planet from doin' it. Okay?"
"Right." Ford sighed. "Should… we go get Miz? See if she or Blue are feeling up to finding Santa Claus?" Ford felt ridiculous saying so.
(Lee pulled out his phone again and checked the status up in the top left corner of the phone. ...Nope. Blue was still asleep. He shoved it back in his pocket.) "Uh, maybe in a minute." Lee looked around. "Pretty sure I put my picnic basket somewhere around here," he muttered, walking around the tree and peering around and across the ground nearby there, into bushes. (Blackberries weren't in yet; raspberries neither.)
Ford glanced around. "I'm… so tempted, sometimes, to just… let Miz go with her idea, simply banish all the 'bad people' to Mars." He rolled his eyes. "The problem would be knowing what Miz's idea of 'bad people' is." He sighed. "Of course, that would require getting Mars terraformed first. Which, a lot of my staff really want to try doing." Then Ford laughed. "It's rather funny, the difference between you and the older Ford. He outright told us all that we shouldn't let the demons do anything, don't give them the chance to use our own requests against us." Ford groaned. "He seems to be under the impression that Miz has some malicious plans for all of us, and that her desire to help was just some invitation for the lot of us allowing her to kill us all or something."
"Yeah, uh…" Lee frowned. "Pretty sure if she wanted people dead that bad, she'd just do it."
"Yes. That's… kinda the point!" Ford threw his arms in the air. "And that older Ford doesn't seem to get that! He's like 'oh, she's capable of doing it, so you should all assume she will'!" He leaned back with a groan.
"Well," Lee scratched the back of his head. "I mean. It ain't like some demons don't do that? -Older Ford probably just got his wires crossed or somethin'; she don't seem like she's into that type of play." Lee shrugged at him next. Because it wasn't like some of 'em weren't.
"Why can't he understand that Miz is different?" Ford huffed. "He kept hurting her feelings, and she wasn't allowed to call him out on that, since apparently trying to defend herself was considered attacking him."
Lee eyed him. He wasn't sure why this Ford had talked about all of that like he'd been over there, when Lee was pretty damn sure that he hadn't been there.
"You sure she wasn't doin' anything back?" Lee asked him next. Because that hadn't been the impression he'd gotten. "Pretty sure she got him really hard at least once. -You ask him about it? Or only got Miz's side of the story." Because if this Ford was doin' that… then this Ford probably thought he and Miz were friends among over things, the way she'd talked about it. Thinking they were already friends, hell. -And old-man-him had thought him tryin' to cover for his own twin had been bad?
"I haven't asked her about their past together, or him, really. This is simply based off what I've seen of their interactions together, during the time he was here."
"Yeah, well, I saw 'em in my dimension, and I've seen him after when she ain't around, with him around other people," Lee told him, frowning as he (finally!) found the basket over behind a wood pile of fallen branches (the hell? had one of the 'bots moved it there?), and pulled it out. "And I'm pretty damn sure that she did somethin' pretty nasty to 'em, at some point, the way I've seen him reactin'. Just never asked what it was."
"...I'll ask about it. If there was a way I could contact that other Ford, get his side of the story…"
Lee looked over at him as he stood up.
"Pretty sure you could just come back with us if you wanted to," Lee told him. "But that's even farther out than goin' to another dimension or two here. Might be safer, though," Lee noted. "Been lookin' through what Blue's found out so far about places around here. It's kinda high risk; it'd be a hell of a lot easier just grabbin' what you need from our set and bringin' it back over here, once when we're done grabbing it all for ya. Unless you just wanted the specs for it, for your own kinda 'make-it-up-yourself' run."
"I wouldn't mind doing so, as long as I can come home afterward. I've been outside of my Set before. Though, I would feel better if Miz was with me." Ford frowned. "I don't know if she can? She did promise Blue she wouldn't until he gave her express permission."
"Could just ask him," Lee said. "Pretty sure he wasn't tellin' us all about that junk for his health. Otherwise, he would've just said, 'Don't come over yet, I need to fix shit', not 'I made a mistake, don't come over right now' while he's sleeping over here and can't do nothin' about anything over here."
"Well, we can wait for him to finish resting up. I doubt Miz would be happy if we pushed her brother while he was feeling… bad." Ford opened his journal to write down some more stuff.
Lee let out a snort.
"Forget Miz," Lee said, as he walked the basket over, "I ain't pushin' on Blue while he's feelin' real bad." Lee dropped down the basket as he sat down again (more dropped on his butt than controlled his way down all that much). "Lemme see what I got in here, 's been awhile," Lee muttered out next, flipping open the basket.
"Picnic!" Ford grinned. "I'm guessing it's also some sort of stasis for freshness?"
"Heh, not really," Lee told him, as he pulled out a folded-up (the usual way) checkered blanket first. "It's space-folded, but the containers have some stasis-effects on 'em, this time. Got some hot and cold controls on 'em, too," Lee noted. "But the stasis ones are the ones I activated this time." He started pulling out containers, bottles, and bowls, just tossing them on top of the still-folded up picnic blanket.
"...really need to make something like that…" Ford grinned.
"Or we could just get you some," Lee told him. "They sell 'em in a lot of places in my own set."
Ford let out a whine, "I want to build it myself!" Ford straightened. "I want to make things myself. And… that's probably why we're not as technologically advanced as other Sets. From what I've heard from that other Stanford."
Lee gave him a look. "Dunno about that one," Lee shrugged, "Not like the old men have got a ton of portal watches or working portals getting passed around a lot, over there." Lee pulled out a small 'camping' set of utensils and a fold-out cup out of a 'hidden' pocket at his side, next. "So, uh, what do you want?" Lee asked him next. (The containers were labeled with things like 'potato salad' and 'macaroni salad' and 'raspberries mix'.)
"Stancakes?" Ford grinned jokingly. "But I like potato salad too."
Lee looked up at him.
"Pretty sure you're gonna have to wait on gettin' to meet old-man-me for that first one," Lee told him, as he passed him the nearly full container of potato salad. "Don't think I've got enough grey hair for makin' that one."
Ford blinked. "You don't make Stancakes?" He gasped and swooned back, theatrically.
Lee blinked at this. "Pretty sure droppin' hair in pancakes kinda ain't my thing," he told this Ford next with some amusement.
"Hair?" Ford blinked. "Nah, any pancake made by a Stan is called a Stancake!" He declared.
Lee let out a snort, as he reached for the 'chicken noodle soup'.
"Not in my set," Lee told him, with a stifled grin, and the air of a kind of dire warning. Ford blinked. Then he played along. "Is it because you're a Lee, and make… LEECAKES?!"
Lee coughed. (He was kind of glad that he hadn't actually tried to take a bite of his soup yet; he'd only tapped off the 'stasis' hold, and just pried off the lid. It was still steaming.)
"That ain't even a pun," Lee complained at him next, giving this Ford the stink-eye. "Pan-lees, at least. Ya big nerd."
"Or do you have Leefles? Waff-lees!" Ford cackled.
"Waffles," Lee told him with an almost snooty air, and a slight smile, "Already has a 'Le' in the name. Don't gotta go changin' the pronunciation around for no reason."
"Aww~ don't be such a sour Lee-mon~" Ford's grin was playful as he teased.
"Heh. Would explain why the devil-demon likes me so much. He likes sour over sweet things." Lee got started in on his soup. He was smiling.
Ford chuckled. "Hope I don't have to worry about him eating you." He was reaching for the potato salad for himself.
"Yeah, no," said Lee. "That ain't happenin'. Blue thinks life tastes disgusting." Lee tipped the bowl container up, and drank down some more of the broth.
"You lucked out there." ("Don't I know it," Lee said in all seriousness, after he'd lowered his bowl.) Ford chuckled, sticking a chunk of potato in his mouth. "Miz wants to try eating pretty much anything." Ford chewed. "The only thing stopping her from eating people is her own sense of 'right' and 'wrong'."
"Sure, maybe," said Lee. "Or maybe Blue told her that if she did that, she wouldn't be able to talk to 'em anymore. And that all the other alive people would stop wantin' to talk to her ever again, after that, next." Lee shoveled another spoonful of the soup into his mouth.
"Well," Ford chewed another bite of potato. "That other Ford consistently calls her Man-Eater. It seems very… well, she has admitted to accidentally eating people before, which… I admit, worries me. But she doesn't usually eat people who are still alive, has some kind of issue with eating things while they're still alive."
Lee grimaced at this. "You know I'm tryin' to eat here, right? The Donner party's the next hill over, maybe."
Ford blinked. "Ah, sorry." He paused. "Am I weird, for not being more grossed out by this sort of talk as I probably should be?"
Lee didn't look at him. "You ever see a demon actually eat somebody before?"
"Yes, my Bill used to eat children in front of me, to taunt me over not being able to stop him." Ford grimaced. "It was… distressing."
Lee pinched the bridge of his nose, and set his bowl down, as he felt his stomach try to turn itself over. "Well," Lee admitted. "Maybe I ain't been out there enough, to be all as jaded as you about all that shit, yet."
Ford blinked. "Oh, ah… sorry." He looked down at his potatoes. "I am not good at this…"
Lee let out a long sigh. "It's fine." Lee kicked himself back, to lie flat on the grass beneath him, and stare up at the 'clouds' and the 'sky' through the oak tree's large and expansive leafy branches above him. He laced his fingers together over his chest, and just breathed, going quiet.
(Lee did this sort of thing sometimes, in the worst of the dimensions they ever visited, when he could. The garden was one of the places he'd made to just relax on purpose that way, after seeing shit like that happen, right in front of him. Because he could come in here and just relax in the quiet, and remember that not every place was like that, out there. Because most of the places where that kinda shit happened were basically some kind of horrible wasteland, either urban or just open dried up and decayed areas razed to the ground, with not a snatch or snippet of anything green growing at all.)
They stayed like that, in quiet serenity, for a good while. Ford ate his potato salad and wondered if he really was twisted, as Miz said. Well, did 'Twisted' mean 'Jaded'? He wasn't sure what Miz's definition of twisted was. He made a note in his journal to himself, to ask her eventually.
By general consensus, Ford and Lee decided to ask about Quentin Trembly, instead of Santa Claus, when they went back out to the guest-room space there.
Blue was still asleep - or, to be more specific, had woken up for a little bit and un'caged' Miz finally-
...before curling up grumbling and then falling asleep on his own yet again. But Miz was up and about, when they came out of the room there. (Lee had checked to see that Blue was awake first, but the devil-demon had drifted off once again, in-between when he and this Ford had started packing up the picnic basket again, before walking back over to the door and then out again. Maybe five minutes at most, but that had been more than enough for Blue to get himself back to sleep within, apparently.)
Miz looked up from where she was cooking food and placing them in stasis-enabled containers with a sign saying 'For Big Brother'. The fact that Blue could eat meats now had opened up a whole other world of glorious recipes she could make for him. So she had a slow-cook beef wellington in the oven and plenty of other side dishes. Like some buttered rice! And a lot of chopped root vegetables for the bed upon which the wellington would rest, all of it's juices dripping down into it… (She was going rather overboard, to be honest. But the beef had been thoroughly spiced with peppers and herbs, she was still keeping Blue's preferences for spicy food in mind.) For bitter foods, she had a bitter melon, which she had chopped into smaller chunks and was roasting in a pan with some chili oil. For sour, she was making a lemon tart with no added sugar. She hoped he liked them. Well, they were made for him and only him, so… well… Miz wasn't just cooking for fun. She had a lot of confused feelings inside over Liam being back.
(And unknowingly, she let slip some of her emotions into the food, being too unsettled inside to hold herself in as she normally did.)
A part of her was afraid that it meant Blue wouldn't need her anymore, but the part of her that wasn't wallowing in her terrible self-esteem issues? That part of her stated that clearly Blue still wanted her. He wouldn't have been so worried for her otherwise. Right? And another part of her worried over how Liam was doing. And how Blue really felt about it all. He was upset, in some way. Distressed, clearly. And she wanted to help. But she didn't know how. So she stress-cooked instead.
"Hi Fordsie, Lee." Miz greeted them quietly. "Brother fell asleep again."
(Lee pulled out his phone to check, sighed, then put it away again. "Yeah, okay." The twenty-something year old still ended up walking over to the couch, to sit down nearby Blue again, and put a hand on Blue's head, nearby and over his right temple. Blue still had those dark bruise-like circles going, around both his eyes, though they were a bit better than they'd looked before then, when he'd taken this Ford out on that 'tour' of his garden - well. Really just the small section nearby the door of it, but still...)
"...is there anything I can do? To help him?" Miz asked Lee, feeling kind of helpless that she didn't know this sort of thing herself.
"Let him sleep; don't go anyplace," Lee told her. The feeling of 'devil-demon' wasn't as strong in here anymore as it had been before; it had pulled back a lot, either by Blue's own design or otherwise instinctively in some way. (So, probably that first one.)
"I'm not going to leave him to wake up alone." Miz said plainly. "Like, Stanley's not even here, or anyone else…" She looked down at the pan she was cooking in. She only left his side when she knew he was somewhere safe. And this place might be safe, but after what had happened today? She had a strong feeling that Blue wouldn't think it was safe for her if she was somewhere that he couldn't see.
"Old-man-me's still kinda pissed at him; I'm here with him, though," Lee noted just as plainly. "But yeah, don't go leavin' him alone." Lee was pretty sure that was the last thing the devil-demon needed right now.
"...still not used to seeing him so…" Miz waved a hand at where Blue was. "...that. He's… usually more… sure of himself."
"He broke his own rules on his own operational security," Lee told her, glancing over the back of the couch at her. "Pretty sure that's the definition of him not bein' sure. ...Not like he usually puts on a lot of shit surrounding him, when he's got some actual security around him already, anyway." Lee made a half-gesture at the tent around him. "Dunno if you've ever actually seen him all that relaxed or not, but I have. He gets nerdy," Lee told her. "And kinda weird." And excitable on the strangest stuff at the weirdest kinda times, but Lee wasn't going to tell her that one. Tf she didn't already know it herself, then...
"We don't really…" Miz looked rather disappointed in herself, "I'm not good at stuff, enough to make him feel safe…"
Ford was quick to assure her, "-You're doing fine, Blue's just much more cautious than you." Miz huffed. "You don't have to try and lie and make me feel better, I know I'm severely lacking." Ford grimaced. "That's not true… Blue's just… on a whole other level."
"I know." Miz sighed. "...and Liam's probably higher than me too." She poked at the sizzling pan. "I'm never gonna catch up…" She knew she shouldn't be comparing herself with other people, but she couldn't help it. Especially not for something so important to her, like this.
"...Dunno what you're talkin' about over there," Lee called out lowly, but maybe try keepin' it down?" Blue stirred (again) a bit, starting to frown, and Lee did not have the level of access rights to be able to cut off or down on sound for the devil-demon in here. (The hell was she talkin' about anyway? Lacking? Catching up? To what? Blue? -The hell?)
"...sorry." Miz said quietly.
Lee frowned a bit, then just shrugged it off and carefully stroked the pad of his thumb across Blue's right temple, a bit slowly. The devil-demon settled down a bit, and then a bit more, the tension in his body easing off over time, the longer he kept on doin' it.
Miz continued cooking, looking somber. Ford pet her head. "It's fine. I don't think Blue would stop loving you, just because his brother's back." He had a pretty good guess that that was what was bothering her. He knew that Blue was amazing. And Miz was amazing too, just… in different ways. So Ford continued petting her for awhile, until she looked like she was feeling a good bit better.
Lee ended up getting up after a while to open up a (not another room, exactly, but an attached) bathroom-type area off of the guest room that was hidden near the front. It had looked more like a fold and drape of the 'cloth' wall than a flap.
(Lee had tried to convince the two of 'em that Blue had meant not leaving the dimension to go to Blue's 'set, not the tent itself. But Miz hadn't listened, and this Ford had just seemed to want to stay with her. Whatever.)
(And frankly, using Blue's Door wouldn't have led to his 'set anyway. It would just lead back to Blue. Miz knew this, but Lee didn't.)
Once Miz had finally finished up all her cooking, she'd come back over to the couch. Miz sat near Blue, on the other side of the couch from Lee, texting on her Com to tell her parents she was spending the night here with Blue. (Luckily Blue had given her the right kind of access earlier for getting her own communications out.) And Ford sat nearby, doing some calculations in his journal. He… wasn't sure about asking Miz to find Trembly at the moment, being unsure if she could use her Eye while in here. Her Com was one thing, her Sight was another.
Though Ford did ask quietly, "If we brought back Trembly to become president…" and was interrupted by Miz's bitter response of, "That wouldn't stop the rampant racism in America which caused all the issues to begin with," as she pulled up a social media site to set up an account. "Shlump and the government's shit is only allowed to go on because enough people agree with their disgusting ideas to allow for such atrocities to happen."
Ford sighed. "So what would your solution be?" That was met with a, "Banish the white supremicists to Mars." (Ford sighed again. "You're not going to give up on that?")
"They don't want to live on a planet with the 'lesser' folk, so why not give them what they want? Just get rid of them. They won't have to see another person of color again, and we won't have to suffer their bullshit." ("You're still on about that?") Then Miz grinned, "Could also banish the child rapists to Venus," then she looked contemplative. "What if there's overlap between them… What goes as a higher priority? Being a white supremicist or being a child rapist?"
"How about we don't talk about the h-word in front of the demon who's liable to wake up and rant all over you on that thing bein' stupid, yeah?" Lee muttered out at her next. Lee had his head back and his eyes closed, but was still stroking his thumb across Blue's right temple every so often.
"Right, sorry." Miz blinked. "As another note, the people who go into schools and start shooting children, which planet do those kinds of people get banished to?"
"...that's a lot of banishing happening here." Ford said under his breath. ("It's either banishing, or they get imprisoned somewhere forever.") "Isn't that essentially the same result?"
"No," was Lee's two cents on that one. Miz gave him a grin (which Lee didn't see, still having his eyes closed). "So, child murderers, which planet should they get sent to?"
"Someplace you ain't when you're lookin' like that," said Lee next, under his breath. Because he wasn't falling for that one.
"If they go after me, I'm allowed to defend myself." Miz huffed. Ford sighed. "No egging people on to kill you."
"Like, I said," went Lee. "Someplace you ain't." (Demons. Sometimes, Lee swore…)
"...but there is a problem of people going onto a school campus full of children and opening fire. That… is a problem that should be addressed as well." Ford sighed.
"Pretty sure you can set up a filter that teleports bullets into trash cans or somethin', they get that far," Lee muttered.
Miz turned to Ford. "Can I?" She asked. Ford sighed. "Will you actually be teleporting the bullets into trashcans, or into the shooter?" At Miz's guilty look, Ford placed his hand on her head. "Miz…"
She huffed. "Fiiiiine~ no reversing the bullets back into the shooter. Would take me awhile to get every single school…"
"Would also be a problem if they've already got a hostage," Lee noted. "Or some kinda high-powered thing, that just tears through 'em and keeps goin'. Innocent bystanders tryin' to mind their own business are a thing."
"...barrier against malicious intent? That usually works to keep people out and away." Miz leaned against Ford, staring up at him imploringly.
"Sure. That might keep some'a the teachers with pop quizzes out," Lee noted with a smile.
"Only if the teachers are plannin' to kill their students." ("With quizzes.") "I've got plenty of different barriers for all sorts of stuff. I can set it to 'intent and willingness to follow through on killing people who didn't try to kill them first, and children' if I wanted."
"Lot of loopholes on that one, if that's really what you're goin' with there," Lee noted, cracking his eyes opem again, to look over at her with a bit of a frown. "You got anybody lookin' over your shoulder, makin' sure you're not screwin' up?" Blue did that a lot with him. Lee was pretty sure he'd be poking holes all through this one, if he was awake. -It was weird. She kept moving around between stuff that wouldn't work better, to stuff that wouldn't really work at all that was just as bad, if not worse, far as he could tell...
"My powers have an 'intent' thing with them. I… don't really know how to explain it." Miz huffed. "But when I try to get too specific… things get kinda weird…" Ford raised an eyebrow at her. "Really? Isn't it usually the opposite for stuff?"
"So use science instead of your magic or whatever, instead." Lee was starting to get tired of all her shit already.
Miz slumped over onto Ford's lap. "...someone just tell me what to do then. Because I can't get anything right." She thought the barrier against malicious intent worked well enough. It kept many places around the multiverse safe, once she set it up around there.
"Pretty sure I gave you my two cents already, dragon-lady," Lee told her. "Science filter. Bullets when they cross the boundary, into trashcans at zero speed."
"Bullets into trashcans with zero speed wouldn't stop a person from stepping on a child's neck and cracking it…" Miz sighed.
"You were bringin' up school shootings with guns," Lee told her severely. "Don't go shiftin' shit around on people like it's some kinda excuse for doin' nothin' on some other thing instead." Real, real tired of her bullshit.
"Fine. I stop the shootings. Cool. That's step one. I skipped ahead a couple steps in wanting to stop the shooters themselves, probably should have mentioned that, sometimes I forget that other people don't think the same things I do…"
Lee let out a slow breath. He lifted his other hand and rubbed at his forehead, trying to dispel the headache that was starting there. Damn demons. ...This, right here? Was why he didn't like dealin' with them. Kept tryin' to bounce around on you, and treat it like it was somehow your fault they couldn't do shit for shit. (At least Blue could draw out and follow a coherent straight line on him, more than half the time…)
Ford sighed. "Miz? Maybe… just keep quiet for a while?"
And Miz huffed, but kept quiet. She thought it was obvious. Stopping the bullets was just one part of the problem! Even if the bullets were stopped, the fact that there was someone going into a school for the express purpose of hurting people, wouldn't stop that person from going on and continuing trying to hurt people.
"You wanna tell me what you're gettin' all huffy about over there, for?" Lee said, dropping his hand and staring up at the ceiling. ...Because apparently he was a glutton for punishment.
Miz was quiet for a bit, looking up at Ford until he gave her the go ahead to talk again. And then she explained her thought process.
"...Think what you're forgetting here, dragon lady," Lee told her lowly, "Is that most people are kinda afraid to die. Or of gettin' hurt." Lee pulled in a breath, and let it out again, before telling her, flat-out: "Somebody walks into a school with a gun, they can shoot people before they get close, probably. They walk in with somethin' they can't do at-range? The teachers are probably gonna punch and stomp the shit outta them, they think about tryin' anythin' first. Maybe the students, too, if they're old enough."
"...what if they can't? What if it's a preschool or a kindergarten? What if someone still gets hurt?" Miz curled her hand about Ford's pants.
"You either trust some other people some, to want the same things as you, and help you out with getting them, or ya don't, dragon lady," Lee told her, closing his eyes again. "You try doin' everything alone, you might as well stick everybody in their own personal bubble. And that won't work for anybody here, either."
"...but if I can help, shouldn't I do so?" Miz frowned. That was what Blue had said. Hadn't he? So wasn't that the issue here? She had more than enough power to change things, but… she still couldn't?
"Only if you're actually makin' shit better, instead of just that much worse." Lee thought that one was kinda obvious.
"I want to make things better. But I'm always… wrong on stuff. And when I ask my family for what to do, they said to just sign petitions and vote to get people who aren't completely terrible to get into positions of power… which would work, but it's still..."
Lee let out a frustrated breath. "Dragon lady, it's late, and Blue ain't the only one a' us who gets tired and needs to sometimes go off and sleep." (Far as he was concerned, blamin' shit on other people's implied 'not acting' was just plain dumb, no matter who or what you were.)
(Even if that was what Blue ranted about with the 'stupid lizard' constantly. And Miz had picked up on that, and was beginning to blame herself for being like that, and not doing something to help. Which was leading to her current stress over not doing anything to help, even though she could.)
"Oh. Sorry." Miz laid her head down in Ford's lap. "Um… good night?"
"Yeah, sure." (Lee hadn't actually eaten a full dinner, just a little bit of that soup earlier, but - one - he wasn't Blue, and more importantly - two - he didn't care.)
Ford yawned. Right… should… get to sleep… oh, he hadn't brushed his teeth. And the only dinner he'd had was potato salad and that raspberry chocolate cheerio mix, downed with more lemonade. Still, he turned to Miz. "I need to go brush my teeth before sleeping." Miz nodded, crawling off his lap so he could get up.
(Lee just yawned before settling into the corner of the couch a bit more comfortably, mostly just staying in place where he was. He'd fallen asleep mostly upright before; he was good. Didn't even need to grab the other blanket from down the side, really.)
Miz set to work fluffing pillows and blankets to build a proper nest. (Blue hadn't swapped out all of the pillows for the one extra couch.) She even slipped into her dragon form, kneading the fabric around until she was satisfied. Ford came back and blinked when he saw the large golden creature curled around on top of the pillow pile. He chuckled and walked over. "Am I allowed in your nest?"
"This isn't mine, just a temporary nest for tonight. But yes, you can come in." Miz responded, shifting to make room for Ford. He reached out to pet her snout. "Alright. Thank you." And he laid down, letting Miz curl around him. "Good night Lee, good night Miz."
Lee let out a half-mumble half-mutter that could charitably be called a 'good night'.
"Night Fordsie~" Miz snuggled into Ford and purred softly until he fell asleep.
