Stay.
A/N: Dougie did good against a mess of hostiles. Why does he feel so very bad? And can la Outfitter loca and a deep dish pizza help in any way?
Post game, weak spoilers & swears, deeper sorrow & violence. All the deep world of Mira, good and bad, belongs to the geniuses of MONOLITH SOFT, bless them all. And a shout out to the localization team, 8-4, wow, you did good.
He could have stayed that way all night. Warm, safe, mindless. No matter how tired he was, this felt so good, so relaxing. He leaned his head against the tiles, letting the shower rain down on him, past his shoulders. Hell, he could probably manage a nap standing up.
But some things stayed the same. Whether you were in Old Los Angeles or New Los Angeles, you faced a water shortage. Two years of space travel changed nothing, just moved it a few light years to the left. Biahno Purification Plant wasn't coming up to scratch, or rather, they were gaining allies, thirsty allies, "at a rate that was outpacing production improvements," to quote that dark haired, uptight chick from the plant. Great for NLA's continued safety, but it meant that 5 minute showers were still a thing.
Doug sighed and shut off the taps. But he still didn't step out, didn't even move his forehead from the wall. He stood there, letting the water drip off his chin, his elbows, tickle its way down his ribs. He waited to feel a chill, a blessed cool feeling creeping up his back, but that was another thing that stayed the same. Cheap apartments had lousy bathrooms with no ventilation. Or heat. So he was cold when it was cold, and stifled when it was warm. And he still could have stayed put for who knows how long.
Except there was a sound outside, rattling in his front room. He ran through the list of people with keys: Lin? But it was too quiet, not chatty, because she tended to show up in stereo with Tatsu. Elma? Naw, she'd leave him be, never one to drop by without asking. She respected his castle of an off-barracks apartment. And, there was no one else. No one. Not anymore. He sighed.
Except, of course, one last person. One guess, and it better rhyme with Skellexa.
He opened the bathroom door a crack. "Who's there?"
"Ma-non mafia. We got pizza."
Dammit, he was too tired for pizza. Too tired to smile, but there he was, smiling. "Okay, but I'm coming out, so give me a moment."
"I'll cover my eyes."
He joined her shortly, track pants and t-shirt and bare feet. She'd gotten all too comfortable herself, shoes off, feet on his coffee table, pizza already violated. His favorite, deep dish and gooey. A skell video was running on his tv, mercifully on mute. He dropped next to her, still drying his stubble of hair.
"I heard it was bad."
"Who told you?"
"Mara swung by to say hey and gave me a heads up."
"How'd he know?"
"No idea. So, bad?"
"Yeah." He didn't want to go into it. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
"Have some pizza, Doug. It isn't getting any warmer."
"Alexa, I am just too tired to eat. Too tired for anything. Go home."
"Nope. I'm here for the duration. I'll tuck you in and read you a bedtime story. Goldiskell and the Three Grexes." Her voice dropped to a fake whisper. "It doesn't end so well for the grexes."
"Alexa…"
"Or I could tell you about Rumplestilzharrier, but it's not as good."
"That makes no sense."
She wriggled closer to him, and patted his hand. "Or we can watch this hideous video, eat some pizza obtained by a fabulous Outfitter, and I split after an hour or so."
"I'm just so tired."
She sat quietly next to him. She hadn't moved her hand from his. It was almost like she was holding his hand, but not really. He had to admit, it felt nice, having a friend beside him, doing nothing but just being there. Reminded him of those first months on the Whale, except he'd been the one sitting, doing nothing, just being a witness to someone else's misery.
What had he wished back then? That Lao would tell him something, anything, somehow share what was killing him. Doug knew already, but he wanted to talk about it too, just a little, just a lot. And then that had shut down, even the little they had. Gahhhh, why was he remembering it now?
Because it was goddammed Pathfinders, and he'd failed them.
And before he could start remembering any other thing, it came pouring out. "We got a call. A team in Sylvalum, in a panic, but we were deep into one nasty Xe-dom. The thing smacked several groups this week already, really aggressive. Extra strong too, I can only hope somebody learns something from the scrap we left behind. Anyway, we'd finally got one appendage down and an edge on the thing. I'm not sure we could even have disengaged safely, because, honestly, Alexa, we weren't doing so well up until then.
"So we got this call, direct, a group of Pathfinders repairing a probe site, scared of a shadow or something. I ignored it, we'd get to it right away, just let us get this thing done first.
"And that's just what happened. We got a little lucky, we wrapped it up faster than I expected…"
"You get a lot of luck, Doug. Maybe it's something else," Alexa said softly.
"Yeah, sometimes we can be smooth, and we'd done our homework, not that it was a huge help. So, right, we got lucky, tyrant down, high fives all around, booyah!, and I call back the Pathfinders. Except no one was picking up." He sighed deeply. Ah, god, he hated it. "They'd been caught by Marnuck."
"Crap."
"It gets weird, Alexa. Not just bad. Well, bad and weird. They were captured by them, not killed."
Alexa hissed in a breath. She got it. Marnuck, smaller than Prone by a hand, and meaner by a bucket. They killed enemies, all of them. A religious rite, bringing them one step closer to eternity or something. If they didn't, something was just wrong.
Doug went on, eyes still closed tight, trying to unsee what he'd seen. "But one of them, one of the BLADEs, set her comm device to send a tracking signal. Smart kid. We followed, and fast, and caught up to them.
"They were in a temporary camp, a small one, not quite in a cave but tucked under one of those white shelves Sylvalum has. I was worried it was a trap, but screw that, we went in and did our thing, and after an oversized flying bulldozer of a Xe-dom, it was kind of gratifyingly juicy. Sick, right? But it felt so really simple. Find 'em, fix 'em, finish 'em."
He gave his head a few gentle bangs against the back of his couch. "Three of the team were okay, but one of them, ugh." He rolled his head back and forth for a second. "And there was a Milsaadi."
"We do so love them," Alexa put in, her voice acid.
He wasn't in control of the story anymore, not that he was getting loud, but he felt his words start to skitter out on their own. "That wasn't fun, but it was wrong, Alexa. They don't go together, Milsaadi and any other damn thing. And they don't go alone. But it was there, just the one, and he didn't have a weapon, not at first. It was, he was, I don't know, taking notes or something."
"What the..."
"If I had to guess, a scientist, maybe? Somebody trying to figure something out? And making tests on us. Because it was a - experiment, like somebody's freshman bio class, dissection and frogs and, oh god, Alexa, I can't tell you much more. God, Alexa, I just don't know. What comes out of all this? What comes next?"
She leaned against him. After a moment, she asked quietly, "And the BLADE, the one that …?"
"Still alive, can you believe it? All of them. No thanks to us. All four would have been dead long ago if they weren't being used for something else. He's in the mim repair center, but I don't know if they'll ever let him out. Solan looked like he was gonna faint when we hauled the poor guy in. We'd wrapped him in plastic sheeting, kinda to keep everything together, but we're gonna need to hose down the skell that carried him. Then set it on fire, hose it down again, take an axe to it…"
"Easy, easy. So you got them all home safe?"
"Sort of."
"You got them home. And you stopped that Marnuck team. Good." She sounded firm. "And the Milsaadi weirdo. Lovely, well ain't that just what we need. Curious Milsaadi. I'd kill to find out what was going on in his head."
"We captured it."
"What?! Doug, that's awesome!"
"Nguyn insisted. He's the smart one on the team, sometimes. I would have shot it. Kinda wish I did. I can still hear it hissing behind me, all the way back. Saying that the Ganglion wasn't over, that we'd be lucky to be slaves to the Milsaadi but that we'd never get the chance."
"Aw, Doug." And then neither of them said anything for a while. After a few minutes, Alexa turned on the sound of the skellploitation film, and eventually Doug opened his eyes to watch the explosions and screeches and follow her excited running commentary. And Alexa never let go of his hand.
When the video was over, and the pizza put away (still untouched by Doug), Alexa didn't go home. Because when she offered to stay, he couldn't bear to say no. Even if it meant a crick in his neck from another night on the couch. Friends don't get embarrassed when they really could use someone to stay with them.
A/N: I got nothing. I love this pair something fierce. And Lao can eat dirt (unless you need him for some good fanfic/art, then I'm cool). More coming next week.