Louder, Lips Speak Louder

Morning came too early. She had forgotten to close the blackout curtains, and the sun hit her full in the face. For all that she had once thought she might never see sunlight again...

She had fallen asleep with the datapad in her hand. It must have dimmed down into standby hours ago, then shut itself off completely. She lifted her head from its place, pillowed on her arms, and glared at the open window. Six o'clock in the morning was not a human hour. Six o'clock would have been one of Her hours, had She run on outside time. And it was a particularly hellish hour to be forced into wakefulness by the sun, of all things.

Speaking of sixes, she'd had six hours of sleep, in total. The human body could supposedly run on that much rest with no trouble. Given her current condition, she didn't buy it.

She rose and slid the window shut, pulling the blackout curtains back over the glass. Her room descended into blessed darkness. She sat down on the bed again, contemplating an attempt at more sleep. Her mind was beginning to wake up now, however, and she quickly scrapped that idea.

She laid back with her head against the pillow, sighing. While they were excellent at blocking out light, her curtains could do very little about sound—once again, the problems of a cheap hotel. Now that her brain was rousing itself, she could hear the hum of the city, a constant sound like tinnitus at the bottom of her hearing. Cars rumbled by on the pavement, above a low murmur of voices that had never really gone away. A few people were beginning to move around in the rooms above and beside her (what would possess them all to willingly rise this early?). The city had been in standby mode. Half-asleep. Dreaming. And now it was beginning to wake.

...was he awake?

Well. That hadn't taken long. She covered her face with her hands, letting out a soft sigh. If she was going to think about him, she could have at least waited until she'd had some food.

She stood again and changed quickly from her pajamas into day clothing. Almost as an afterthought, she picked up her datapad on the way out, tucking it into her purse. It was the work of moments to make her way down to breakfast, decide she would rather not risk eating anything provided by the hotel, and step out the door in search of real food.

It was already setting up to be another hot, humid day. Even this early in the morning, the air felt warm and close. Wonderful. Because she didn't suffer enough claustrophobia issues inside. She drew in a deep, calming breath, and set off down the street, keeping an eye out for anything that looked appealing.

Her mind immediately began to wander. She was capable of rigid focus when she needed it (how else would she have survived Her little games?), but she didn't need it right now. So she found herself thinking. Daydreaming, even. Probably not the best idea, but since when had she ever done what was good for her?

...what would she say to him?

If he was there. If he was awake. If it hadn't just been a figment of her imagination.

They said that the human mind was capable of creating all sorts of hallucinations. Out here in the daylight, with hard pavement beneath her feet and open sky overhead, it was easier to believe that maybe it had been just that. A hallucination, cooked up by her subconscious to make her feel better. If it was, then there was really no reason to go back. No reason to feed these delusions, after all.

If they were delusions.

She walked into a fast-food restaurant and bought a breakfast wrap. Finding herself disinclined to sit down inside, she returned to the pavement, her feet carrying her along down the street. That happened to her, sometimes. It was part wanderlust, and partly a feeling that held over from before—the feeling that no matter what, no matter how tired she got or how much it hurt, she could never stop.

She ate as she walked, looking around at the bright, huge signs, and wondering at the tall buildings, apartments nestled on top of restaurants and stores. The city didn't have much room to build outward, so it had built upward. Sort of like Aperture Science. Except they had built downward, deeper and deeper until there was no telling how deep. She couldn't help but think that the entire time, they had been digging their own graves. It was a sleek, shiny, high-tech grave, to be certain, but a grave was a grave, no matter how ornate the tombstone.

It had almost been her grave, too. Several times. And she usually tried not to think about that. She just wasn't doing a very good job of it today.

The thought made her stomach clench, and she had to fold up her wrap and put it away, for fear of being ill. There was only one thing in that entire facility that hadn't tried to kill her. Hadn't even threatened to kill her, not in the entire time she had been trapped in that hell. And that one thing was not the thing waiting for her in the museum.

She chided herself for calling him a "thing"—and then caught herself with a start. Why was she defending him against herself? She wasn't even sure if what she had seen back there was real, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. Wondering. Hoping. Fearing.

Maybe her therapist had been right. Maybe she should have waited a little longer before coming, or maybe she shouldn't have come at all. The things she saw, the happenings, she compared to voices in her head, that got louder and softer as time passed. For a while, they had grown quiet and left her alone. It had been almost a month since she'd seen anything at all. And now—

Flash of blue.

Her head snapped up, eyes wide—but it was nothing. A traffic light. Green. Definitely green, because that was the color a traffic light turned when it was done being red. Not blue.

This was beginning to get out of hand.

The happenings were getting clearer. Brighter. Louder. This was the second time in as many days that she had seen something. And that one had definitely been her mind playing tricks on her. But what about the first one? The one that had triggered all of this? Was that a happening, or an actual event? Did it matter? Did she even want to know? Would it change anything?

There was a roaring sound in her ears. She found herself swaying a little, the sick feeling beginning to well up in her stomach again. She stopped walking and put her hand out against a streetlight to steady herself, one arm wrapped across her belly. Panic gripped at her chest, and that only made the sick feeling increase, until her lips trembled and she almost had to drop to her knees. What was wrong with her? What was wrong?

A dark, humorless smile quirked at her lips. That was a long list. Especially if you asked Her.

Several moments passed before the shudders ceased. She straightened carefully, running her wrist across her forehead. Damp and hot. She shouldn't have expected anything else.

Sound still roared in her ears, loud and close, and her head had begun to pound. But she had to keep moving. Lingering here was probably the worst thing she could have done—she had to get out of the heat, before something serious happened.

A set of wide, shallow steps made of beige stone led upward to her right. Steps like that usually meant some kind of big, public building, and big, public buildings always had AC. They usually had vending machines, too. She moved towards them with slow, deliberate steps, focusing on the ground in front of her. The stairs spun and danced in circles that might have been interesting, had they not made her want to retch. It took all of her concentration and plenty of assistance from the railing to make it up. And then she was staggering through the automatic doors, a wall of blessedly cold air slamming into her.

Ignoring the strange looks from the few people around her, she moved across to the nearest blank wall, leaned back against it, and slid to the floor. She rested her forehead against her knees and closed her eyes, breathing deeply. The world still felt like it was spinning around her, but at least she couldn't see it now. That helped a lot.

There was no telling how long she sat there—with her eyes closed, blocking the sunlight from view, time had recovered that strange fluidity that was so familiar. When the rocking sensation decreased to a reasonable level, she opened them again. The light didn't appear to have changed much, but all that meant was that it was the same day as it had been when she sat down. Her sight was still a little blurry, but at least the earth wasn't pulling barrel rolls any more. And her vision was clear enough that she could notice the silver, conical shapes rising up in state just off to her left.

She followed the shape upward, craning her neck back as the cones met and melded into a thick, white cylinder, which then ranked off into a thinner one, and then an even thinner one, and onward until it finally tapered off into a blunted, black nose cone high above her head.

A rocket.

Laughter bubbled up in her chest. She pressed her hands over her mouth as she stared up at it, her shoulders trembling violently with silent hysterics. She was back. She hadn't even meant to come here, had never intended for this to be her destination—and yet, here she was. Back inside the graveyard of humanity's past attempts at piercing the heavens. Back amongst the dead.

She seemed to associate with them quite a lot these days.

This time a little of that laughter escaped her, rebounding off the walls and the exhibits out in the main room. She shoved herself up off the ground, bracing herself against the wall as the room began to dance, and set off as soon as it steadied again. Every other step and she was staggering, using the walls and railings for support. She didn't care about the looks she was getting from the few other visitors. She didn't care about the fact that she was sweating again despite the chill, or about the pale chalkiness of her face, or about the wild, feverish glaze over her eyes. Every fiber of her being was focused on forward motion. The roaring in her ears grewing to a crescendo as she drew closer and closer, her steps and stumbles speeding into a shambling rush and then a dead run through the building, her heart pounding in her chest and the base of her skull, legs aching, a stitch tearing at her side—

THERE.

She stepped wrong, staggered, and collapsed in a limp heap, skidding several feet across the floor. And she was there. The room, that room, the one that curled in around her like a mausoleum, round and cold and close, and right there in the center, right where she had left him—

She laughed again, this time making no attempt to hide it. It bounced around her, far too loud in the silence, high and hysterical. She reached up to the dark blue ropes and pulled against them with all of her strength, until they toppled over with a crash of metal against tile. Then she pulled herself upright, using the console (that goddamn console), and pressed her hands and her forehead against the cylinder, the glass fogging up below her ragged, uneven breaths.

He rolled over and tilted up, his optic (blue, blue, such a wonderful, terrible, familiar blue) constricting in surprise.

"Oh. Er. Hello."