Disclaimer: Threshold is not mine. Life just isn't that kind.
A/N: For those of you who don't like video games, warning: I focus a lot on Halo…
In Search of Respite
The next hour or so was almost peaceful. Molly had permitted Lucas to set up her own X-box in the den, recognizing that it would be cruel to simultaneously deprive the young man of both his work and his fixation on video games, without having any other distractions. This had led to Ramsey grumbling about favouritism. Which may have had some merit, since she turned a determined blind eye to the suspiciously book-shaped bulges amongst Fenway's luggage. Knowing the doctor, she doubted it was light reading on any of the literary genres spanning romance to action to mystery, and rather more likely to be esoteric, medical volumes. But she overlooked Ramsey's objections, after all, it was not that he wanted to emulate the doctor's example and actually work while they were on vacation- he protested merely due to the principle of the matter. And as for the X-box, Lucas was helping her out as he had offered to unpack the gadgetry from her boxes and install it for her, to save the headache of setting it up later. The fact that he benefited from this arrangement was entirely beside the point. The additional advantage of rubbing Ramsey's nose in it was no one's business but her own.
Cavennaugh had been the lowest-maintenance of the four men, efficiently unpacking the few possessions he had brought with him before joining her in the main living room where she kept an eye on Lucas as he fiddled with the wires and cables. "So, what are we meant to do if we need you for some reason, but you're in the sacred confines of your bedroom?" he asked slyly.
Molly tossed him an amused glance at his transparency. "You're a trained agent, I'm sure I don't need to teach you how to improvise as the situation calls for it. I stand by what I said earlier- no one enters my room under any frivolous pretext. Grown men like you can handle whatever comes up, not that I'm expecting much excitement here." She looked up at the ceiling solemnly, as though in silent prayer.
He snickered. "Don't tempt fate, Molly, you might not like what it throws back at you. But it is probably more likely that we may end up in more danger of turning on each other from sheer boredom than any other more hazardous scenario. Possibly."
"And never was there a more heavily qualified statement than that," she said, shaking her head. "Here I thought I was the contingency analyst."
"Not right now, you aren't," Cavennaugh said. "We're on vacation remember? What could possibly happen?"
"Famous last words," Lucas remarked, sitting back on his heels as he finally finished hooking up the X-box. "There, that should do it…" he fiddled with the remote and succeeded in bringing up the menu. "Excellent…"
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"Caffrey, surely there's something in your protocols about limiting exposure to violent video games designed to stimulate a rush of adrenaline and aggression that-"
"Ramsey, shut up," came three different voices. Lucas just grinned at the support and turned his focus back to his game. Cavennaugh sprawled onto the couch beside him, watching the younger man's progress in one of the various Halo levels.
"What are you up to now?" he asked idly, not out of interest so much as to while away the time til he could return to action. This enforced break was not his idea of a good time, and being required to undertake the time off with the Red Team members left him off balance, bereft of the usual composure he gained from actually doing something useful.
"Well, actually, I've beaten all the levels," Lucas responded with a rather staccato intonation, eyes unblinking as he struggled to master the current battle. "I'm just going back to do them on legendary now."
"Huh?" Cavennaugh asked, not certain what the allusion meant.
"There are four levels- easy, normal, heroic and legendary. This is the hardest- oh, not again!" he dropped the controller in disgust as the soldier onscreen collapsed to the ground, surrounded by gleeful alien creatures waving weapons.
"Hey, Lucas, want to go co-operative?" Molly dropped onto the couch as well.
"Sure, I could use your help," he offered her a grin. "And it is your property."
Ramsey surveyed the three with disgust. "How nice and cozy for you all," he said with immense sarcasm. "Good for you, Lucas, they're all on your side now- what if I want to watch tv? I haven't seen any decent programs in ages!"
"Decent programs for you, Ramsey," Molly said languidly as she selected her player onscreen, "would probably not have any correlation whatsoever to the true meaning of the word- and I don't think that is at all what I would want to be watching anywhere else, let alone in my own house."
"Point taken, but that doesn't detract from the fact that Lucas has shamelessly manipulated you into taking sides."
"When have I been manipulating?" the accused protested.
" 'Oh, Doctor Caffrey, I was wondering if you maybe wanted me to set up your X-box, it would be no trouble at all, and perhaps you might let me play a little…'" he mimicked.
"That's called being considerate," Molly said with approval. "Something you could stand to learn for yourself someday."
"Besides, what are you complaining for?" Cavennaugh dropped the tv guide he had been studying back onto the coffee table. "I doubt 'Judge Judy' holds any appeal for you and 'Big Brother Uncut' doesn't start til after nine."
"There's always Jerry Springer," Ramsey said. "That's good for a laugh. 'My husband ran off with my best friend, then left the country and changed their names and appearances so that my gun-toting father couldn't hunt them down and kill them on the spot'," he reeled off with mock enthusiasm.
Or was it? Cavennaugh wondered. One couldn't always tell when the dwarf was joking and it was often safer to let well enough alone, rather than investigate further. "Out of luck there, your closest option is Oprah," he shrugged in fake sympathy. "Face it, you were never going to win."
"The world is against me," Ramsey muttered with pathos, but his pathetic bid for attention went unnoticed by an audience firmly otherwise occupied. Molly and Lucas were intent on waging war onscreen, Cavennaugh was starting to develop some interest in their battle simulation while Fenway sat at the dining table with his head firmly buried in one of the few tomes he had smuggled over with his belongings. No one had the heart to rat him out, figuring it would work out best for all of them if he could be kept quiet by reading his way through the ordeal.
"So what is your objective?" Cavennaugh asked the players.
"There's an alien threat to earth…" Molly began.
"Sounds familiar," he said wryly.
"Well, they're a little more tangible than multi-dimensional beings that use sonic weaponry, which helps our cause. We just try to eradicate the threat by taking out every creature in sight and blowing their ships to hell," Molly said. "Simplistic, really, but quite absorbing."
He didn't make any response, noticing that he had lost her attention during her efforts to traverse the long and winding corridors in a manner that would indicate she knew where she was going.
"Are you lost, Molly?" Ramsey asked, nothing more appealing to him than riling someone up. Unfortunately, it backfired as she coolly ignored him. He shrugged and begun to read through the Halo leaflet he pulled from the case cover. "'This was humankind's first encounter with a group of aliens they eventually came to know as the Covenant'," he announced dramatically, then paused to scowl at the page, "Wait, the Covenant? That's the big scary enemy? Who would take the name 'Covenant' seriously? Anyway…'religious elders declared humanity an affront to the gods…waged a holy war upon humanity with gruesome diligence'…well, they wouldn't want to wage a war with pleasant tolerance, would they?"
"Watch out, zombie!" Lucas cried out warningly. The lower half of the split-screen, which belonged to Molly, showed a gruesome looking figure charging forwards, slashing wildly to cause a blood-red hue splashing over the screen. She fired her gun, the rounds knocking the creature back, violently shuddering through its body before it finally dropped in defeat. Immediately another rose to take its place, while a huge monster shuffled forward towards her.
"Oh, no…it's going to blow," she muttered, biting her lip. Indeed, the grotesquely swollen creature did explode, and Cavennaugh made the repugnant discovery that little creatures launched forth from the carcass, attacking both players. "They don't really hurt much individually, but when they all land on you…" Molly trailed off, concentrating on bashing them with her gun. "It's better to swat them, to conserve ammo. Some of the big dudes need a whole lot of shooting before they go down, so we can't afford to waste our ammo on these suckers." As she swung at another, Cavennaugh noticed that the little monsters were actually decapitated heads with tentacles writhing around them.
"They're annoying enough individually," Lucas added. "And together they managed to kill me once before, I was writhing all over with these heads leeching the health out of me- it was not a pretty sight…And that's the lot of them gone," he breathed in relief. "I need a life pack though, I'm almost dead…" The health display was reduced to one solitary red bar, ominously low.
"There's one here," Molly told him as she picked up a machine gun, dropping her plasma weapon, and continued to forage through the bodies for other resources.
"Great," he said, heading for the green arrow that marked the team-mate's position. Cavennaugh noticed a blip on the man's radar.
"What's that?" he said, pointing it out.
"Hmm?" Lucas said absently, looking over-"Oh, damn it, there's something still here! No!" a grisly head filled the screen, latching onto him mercilessly. The last health bar faded, and his screen paled before showing the message:
'Teammate in combat. Waiting to respawn…'
"Dead yet again," he sighed. "So much for my enhanced co-ordination."
"You can't blame everything on being genetically mutated by aliens intent on taking over our planet," Ramsey chided him from his perch on the armrest, which not so coincidentally seated him in close proximity to Molly. She pulled her collar tighter around her throat with overstated modesty, darting a sly look at him.
"The thrill is gone," he muttered jokingly.
"If all the thrill in your life comes from trying to sneak glances down my top, you are in serious trouble," she said without a hint of sympathy.
"There's nothing like the element of surprise, Lucas," Cavennaugh defended him philosophically, ignoring this little byplay. "Must have been a game glitch- it only flashed on your radar a second before it attacked, which defeats the point of having it in the first place."
"Yeah…but I'm still dead. Here, you want to play? I'll get something to drink," Lucas handed him the controller and headed for the kitchen.
"Make sure you bring a coaster," Molly called after him. Cavennaugh glanced at the coffee table, before straightening the tv guide he had carelessly dropped, aligning it with exaggerated care. "Thank you, Cavennaugh," she told him with a heavy sigh. "Don't act like it's such a big deal- I just don't want scratches on the table, okay?"
"Uh-huh," Ramsey said agreeably, watching as she maneuvered her character to a safe place, respawning her team-mate and allowing Cavennaugh to play. "The same way you didn't want us eating takeout straight from the box?"
"Plates were created for a reason, Ramsey," she told him. "To keep sloppy people from ruining the carpet with bits and pieces of food."
"What about the way you freak out if someone picks up an ornament and puts it back in a millimetre out of position?" Cavennaugh asked her innocently. "Or how every power-point has to be switched off immediately after use?"
"If anyone cared to read into it, you would know that even if the appliance is off, there is still an electrical current flowing through and it has been known to cause fires before if the user isn't careful about it," she said defensively, game forgotten as the controller lay unheeded in her lap.
"Molly, I highly doubt anyone would make the mistake of calling you incautious," Fenway contributed to the conversation. "Or reckless. You're the most- organized human being I have ever been acquainted with."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," she protested, looking over her shoulder to the table where the doctor sat complacently. While she was distracted, Cavennaugh familiarized himself with the controls, tracking down her stationary character on screen, developing his skill at moving around and using his weapons. Discovering a sniper rifle, he carefully aimed at Molly, zooming in and out as he located her in his crosshairs- then fired a single shot. She didn't even notice the impact vibrating through her controller, too intent on the conversation.
"All I'm saying is that being a contingency analyst must have its drawbacks," he heard Fenway say in an indifferent tone sure to rile Molly up.
"What is that supposed to mean?" she demanded
"Basically," Ramsey inserted helpfully in the face of her exasperated look of confusion, "If you're trained to see worst-case scenarios day in and day out- heck, you even dream about it these days- then it can't help but turn you into a neurotic, irrational obsessive-compulsive mass of phobias. That's all."
As she turned on him, aghast at his words, Cavennaugh moved onto hand-to-hand combat; ducking, jumping, swinging with his rifle- and having misjudged his distance, he accidentally caught Molly in a direct strike that knocked her out of play. Oops…he thought in consternation.
Lucas returned from the kitchen with a glass of mango juice, oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. "Hey, Molly," he noticed, "How did you die?" Too late he caught Cavennaugh's pained expression. "Or you could just- forget I said that…" he trailed off.
"What?" she looked back at the screen. "There's no one even here- Cavennaugh!" she said as realization dawned. "Oh, that is it-" as she respawned, Molly took revenge, "There, take a grenade or two off my hands," she said in satisfaction, targeting him with deadly precision and watching as the ensuing explosion wiped him out. "Imagine the grand soldier of the team sneaking up behind my back and taking me out in such a cowardly manner!"
"It was an accident," he protested, viewing his dead body with resignation. Cavennaugh made a mental note never to provoke her again…the results could be more permanent the next time.
"Accident?" she said in disbelief.
"Didn't look like that to me," Ramsey said reflectively. "I mean, he shot you just before and that wasn't an accident, he drew a bead on you and fired, that cold-hearted son of a…" he grinned widely as Cavennaugh threw him a dirty look.
"Maybe we should play 'Mortal Kombat' next," Lucas suggested helpfully. "It might help resolve some of these issues…"
"Excellent idea, Lucas," she said, smiling sweetly at Cavennaugh, who casually raised a brow to cover his double-take at the abrupt mood swing. "I'll look forward to a rematch," she told him, still with that chilling smile, her hazel eyes darkening to a brooding green.
"She's lethal in 'Mortal Kombat'," Lucas said good-naturedly. "Usually the female characters are more vulnerable because they lack the size and brawn of the male and monster characters, but her dexterity is amazing, especially the way she wields a sword, and as for her mastery of special powers…"
"I'd be scared, Cavennaugh, my man," Ramsey told him, not bothering to conceal his delight at the turn of events. "Extremely."
Fenway had the last word and he exulted in it as he elegantly drawled with dripping irony, "You definitely shouldn't have provoked her, Cavennaugh…"
