Alive

By: Aviantei

11 mph


We don't drive anywhere close to long enough for me to fall asleep, but the smooth ride does lull me into a state of relaxation. I don't even tease Alexander for asking me to keep my eyes shut after we park. He stopped for a bit to pull down his window, so we're in a parking garage of some sort. The echo as my feet hit the concrete (with Alexander's help) confirms it. He takes the basket, I take the blanket, and Alexander leads me with a hand on my arm and occasional words of guidance.

I could be a little shit and peek, but it's been a while since I've felt excited about a surprise, so I go along with it. Our path takes us through the parking garage (empty by the lack of noise), up some stairs, then back out into fresh air with sunlight warming my skin. There's more stairs, this set heading down, and the creak of a metal gate before we're walking along a flat surface that sounds like asphalt for longer than we should be able to keep up a straight line.

Alexander stops us, and I take the bait. "Can I look?"

"You don't wanna guess?" he chuckles.

"I honestly have no fuckin' idea." Not getting told otherwise, I open my eyes. "Whoa."

The IGPX track is an impressive sight, no matter what. Any stretch of pavement that can withstand four-hundred miles per hour giant robots on it has to be. If you fly overhead, you can see the track stretching and looping through and almost out the edges, a massive course they had to build a whole damn city in the middle of the desert to have room for it. From the stands, you can't see the whole thing, just loops in the distance, and the monitors are critical to enjoying the race at all.

It's even bigger standing in the middle of it.

The track is wide enough you could put five of Alexander's car across it bumper to bumper and still have room. Maybe ten. The stands, the hangar building, the IGPX headquarters—they all look so distant.

No one would think to look for Alexander here. No one could get here. It's the off-season and use of the track for practice runs is regulated—IG teams get simulators to train with, too. It's an isolated, beautiful place I've never been before, and I can't tell if the track or the sky will swallow me whole first.

I close my eyes again and try to imagine being in a mech. With the memory of Alexander's cockpit for reference, I try to envision the size, the viewpoint. It still feels too small. A breeze whips up my hair, and I try to imagine the speed, the adrenaline—

"Hey, Kirsten, you comin'?" Alexander calls. I look, and he's gone farther down the track, though we're not even close to the next bend. I jog after him, and Alexander sets down the picnic basket when he gets to the finish line. Catching up, I shake the blanket and spread it out. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

He smiles, and all I can do is nod. It's the same smile he had when talking to Takeshi the other day. I sit down and busy my hands with unpacking the picnic basket, contemplating my own actions over the past weeks. Was I stupid, thinking he needed to be forced into enjoying life? Did I do something as dumb as projecting myself onto him?

He steps onto the track, and he smiles.

Alexander sits down and helps me unload the dishes. I made too much, but that's because I wasn't sure what would work and what wouldn't. In no time we have an array of sandwiches, pasta salad, watermelon, pudding, breads, snack mix, cookies, and at least three different juice cocktails I pulled together the night before.

"It's nice to have this place feel like home again," Alexander mumbles.

"Oh?" I press, not feeling it in me to dive in and go over the top. I felt okay before, when we were in familiar territory, but now I'm scared. I'm scared of asking too many questions and figuring out he's done with me.

Alexander takes a deep breath and opens up one of the Tupperware with a pop. I smooth out my skirt and start unsticking paper plates from each other, trying to keep my hands busy. "You were right about me," Alexander admits, and I don't look up, I don't want to see this moment drenched in grey again. "Everything you said about me being bored. You were right."

I glance at him through my bangs, though they don't cover my vision as much as I like. Alexander's not quite looking at me, either, still sorting out the picnic in front of us, so I have a moment to fake my smile.

"Of course I was right," I return, without haughtiness. What if that self-awareness is enough for him to recognize what's going on with me? I dig in the bottom of the basket for silverware. "If I wasn't right, you'd have called security on me back in the hangar. I would've been arrested, but you gave me a chance. If you weren't looking for something exciting, something different, that wouldn't have happened."

Just like I wouldn't have broken into the hangar in the first place, like I wouldn't have asked Mariya for info, like I wouldn't have latched onto this stupid bet.

"Well, yeah, but that's not what I mean." Alexander's brow furrows, and it's not from trying to figure out what to eat first. I shouldn't have cooked so much; we won't be able to eat all of this. "Can you… Okay, let me talk and see if I can get this to make sense, alright?"

I don't object and snatch a sandwich, then start spooning pasta salad onto my plate.

"I've been bored for a very long time," Alexander says, his voice slow, each syllable dipping towards his lower register. I stop loading up my plate and set it aside, not feeling an appetite. Alexander picks up one of the thermoses and rotates it in his hands. "Ever since I was a kid. And when I got into racing…do you know about that?"

"Kinda," I lie. I know the facts, but I don't know how he felt about it. Some things even Mariya can't dig up.

Alexander nods. "Well," he says, thinking over the word. Has he ever admitted this to himself? To anyone else? Am I the first? "I had a good life set up for me. I don't know about you, but my parents were the type to make sure I got the best of everything. And when I started showing talent, they made sure none of it went to waste. I didn't have any trouble living up to expectations, but the act itself…" He shrugs, and even though I didn't have anything as close to that, I understand. "I got fed up with it and bolted from home the second I could. And luck would have it all that talent ended up with me being a natural at racing.

"I love racing, I really do, but—" He cuts off, as if he shouldn't be saying this.

So I finish it for him. "But when you're good at it, when you don't have to try, it becomes dull," I say, voice not much louder than his. Out on the track with no one around, it's nothing but silence. We could whisper from opposite ends and still hear each other. "It's awful, because you don't have to fight for it."

I might have guessed, but he was just like me. He just wasn't fighting the same way for the same reasons.

"Yeah, that's pretty much it." Alexander glances up to the sky, few clouds scattered across the openness of it all. "But I raced against Takeshi, and it became a challenge. A bunch of rookie brats way better than we could've guessed. And racing was fun again."

That's why he's so relaxed around Takeshi; they're rivals, and they understand each other. They're both in the game for a challenge. They can bring out something different in each other.

"And the rest of the world?" I ask, trying to ignore the jealousy rushing to my brain. Alexander frowns. "You said racing was fun again. What about everything else?" I lean forward a bit, not wanting to miss the answer.

Alexander smiles a little bit. I'm thrown off by the expression. Even after all this time, I still can't get a read on him. "I think you know the answer to that." My breath catches in my throat and I have to fight not to throw myself backwards, not to run away, because what if he can tell, what if he noticed— "Before Takeshi, I would get flickers from racing and I clung onto that, threw myself into practice and nothing else. So I neglected everything else. It was a blank slate. But now…"

I hold my breath. He says the wrong thing and I could be screwed. He won't get me arrested, not now. But he could decide he doesn't need me anymore, and, somehow, that seems like it would be much, much worse.

"Well, I don't know if I'm on the level of other people who just enjoy life with no problem. But I do have fun when you drag me all over the place, so it's okay." He smiles a bit more, and his gaze draws mine to it. "A little change of pace isn't so bad every now and then. Thanks, Kirsten."

There, I see it. Not just a glimpse, not like before. Alexander smiles at me, not the track, not Takeshi Jin, but me, and everything explodes in color.

For the first time, I can see him and I drink it all in: his mess of brown hair, the green of his laughing eyes, the dark blue of that stupid baggy button up. Everything else around him is in color, too, from the beautiful sky to the black pavement to the sheer rainbow of food I brought with me, on top of the dark green blanket from his house. But all that, as amazing as it is, is just a distraction and I latch onto the sight of Alexander, trying to memorize the tone of his skin, the way his colors move with him.

"Kirsten," Alexander says, and I try not to get mesmerized by the flick of his pink tongue with the words, "you're spacing out. You can just admit I'm talking too much and tell me to start shoving food in my mouth."

I shake my head, though I'm smiling again, too. Unlike this morning, the color stays, and I laugh, even if Alexander doesn't understand why. "If I didn't know better, I'd say it's becoming a trend for you to have a hard time eating around me." The joke feels good, nice. I have to force myself to eat past the fear of looking away and losing what I'm seeing. "We did come here to have a picnic so let's do it." I snatch up another thermos—bright orange, didn't realize when I bought it—and lean forward to tap it against the blue one in Alexander's hands. "Cheers!" I declare with a giggle, then settle down into my half prepared plate.

Spoiled? Who cares if I'm spoiled? I'll hoard every single second of this and never let it go.

We fall into chatter over our meal. I never knew casual conversation could feel so invigorating. But it felt like this over coffee, too, something real and full of life. In all my years of thrill seeking, I've never felt as fulfilled as this.

In the end, we stuff ourselves silly, but there's still a whole half of a picnic basket left. We pack it up, stuff the blanket in the top, and head back the way we came, though this is my first time seeing it. The staff and racer access to the track is made up of whites and beiges and every dull color in the world, but it's color and it's right before me.

I really did forget how beautiful this world can look, didn't I?

And I hope that Alexander can see it, too.


[Author's Notes]

Hm, a happy closing chapter before setting a story on hiatus? That can't be right...

Well, since I said the word, I'll start there. Hiatus! As mentioned before, I've been trying super hard to get all my stories to a point where they can update regularly. I made it through the queue I had for this story, so I'll be shuffling around to posting other things. And while this chapter may end on a pleasant point, I promise the story's not over. We've still got a ways to go!

So, for the time being, Alive will be put on hold, though I hope to dive into drafting out the next chunk of the story soon. I know where everything's going, just gotta put it into enjoyable strings of words. That doesn't mean I'll be going inactive, though. Next week I'll be publishing an old, never before seen one shot, then the week after that, I'll be posting the next chapters of Reliability!

And that's not all! The summer one shot writing challenge, [Twelve Shots of Summer] will be starting in June! This is our fifth year, and we love having new members. If you feel like you want some company over the next season, do check out the forum and see if it's your style.

So farewell on this story until I return with 12 mph. Please look forward to it!

-Avi

[05.14.2018]