etrayamemes | TDM 001

Entry tags:

!tdm

TDM 001

⏵ arrival⏴
Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in the pristine, new hospital, greeted by Aurora and potentially getting a rundown of what's happening depending on their approach to being dropped somewhere new. The door to their room opens, and new arrivals are left free to explore their new environment.

Or what exists of it anyway. Exiting the hospital will show that there isn't much of anything just yet. Generally, Echo can build new facilities before new arrivals awaken, but it appears that this time… well, it didn't happen. The apartment complex exists, standing just beside the hospital, and there are a few facilities that are half constructed, companion bots carrying around rebar and other necessary bits and pieces, but they're not quite ready. Oops. But maybe, just maybe, one of those half-built facilities is familiar - a childhood home, a favorite supermarket, the run-down garage they worked at as a youth, a grounded spaceship in the middle of one of the massive bridges connecting land over rivers.

The companion bots will offer quiet apologies if approached; they were expecting new arrivals to touch down, but not quite this early. They'll be ready soon! A few more days at most, they promise. In the meantime, do not stray too far from the hospital. While most of Etraya looks habitable, they have not finished verifying that it's safe for its new inhabitants.

The apartment building and hospital are safe, and the land directly around them is fine, but beyond that? Stay away. But hey, the hospital's cafeteria is fully stocked with cuisine from across the multiverse! Please feel free to settle in, choose an apartment, and get to know your new friends.

⏵ water you doing?⏴
Decide not to listen? Well, the companion bots had offered their warnings.

Etraya is a new establishment, one that received newcomers before it was ready. And as such, the land has not quite been prepared for their arrival. Wandering off the land the apartment building and hospital are settled on comes with very, very poor results. Take a step down into the river below, and you'll find yourself uncomfortably hot. Or cold. Or hot and cold, because whatever that 'water' is, it wasn't meant to be played in. The only way to resolve the temperature regulation issue, as Aurora informs, is finding a buddy to cuddle up with. Those who are lucky may have a nearby friend they're familiar with and don't mind leaning a shoulder against. Those that don't? Well. . . have fun having a very uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, asking them if it's alright if you lean into them or hold their hand for a bit. Any physical contact will do, as long as it's directly skin-to-skin.

Except that's not where the contact stops. Characters will find that, for the next several hours, they'll feel everything that their companion feels. Frustration, anger, amusement, homesickness that comes from being so far away from their families and friends - all those feelings? They're not your feelings, they're our feelings now.

No explanation is given for how the empathy bond and the temperature regulation are related, but it may have to do with how since they had decided not to listen, it was time to test how well they could cohabitate with their new friends.

⏵ bonding bingo ⏴

Maybe it feels a little too much like Obi-Wan had when receiving Leia's message, but all new arrivals are their universe's only hope. Except they're not the only ones arriving, and not the only ones who are trying to keep their worlds safe. Instead, they've arrived with several others who carry the same weight on their shoulders. And they aren't meant to go through this alone. The people they've arrived with are both their new companions and their competition. Both comrades to fight beside and enemies to battle against, depending on what the specific mission of the month is. But currently?

They're here to bond. It's important to get to know those who they'll be spending the next unspecified but lengthy amount of time with, isn't it? To that extent, Aurora's hologram waits just inside the hospital's front doors, offering bonding bingo cards to those willing to participate. It's not necessary, but she does specify that this is one way to get ahead: cooperation is important, especially given what they're going to face together. Bingo cards are three long and three across, and offer a multitude of activities you can do to check each box off.

Some examples include:

Learn someone's biggest secret

Get into a fight

Tell someone something that you've never admitted out loud to

Throw a drink on someone

Win a game of pool in the apartment building's recreation room

Cheat on a card game without getting caught

Hug a new friend

Get stabbed

Steal something important to someone

Pull off an elaborate prank on a stranger

⏵ matchmaker ⏴

When the earpiece is put on, a nice green HUD(head-up display) lights up in front of new arrivals. It asks them for their name, which is fairly standard for these.

Except it seems it wants them to put together a profile to help pair them off with other new arrivals. For some, this information may autofill with what Aurora was able to discern about them from watching them in their home worlds. But some lucky individuals may catch their profiles before they're posted live, and have the opportunity to edit out information included in fields, even if they're not able to clear it out entirely.

Welcome to Aurora's idea of matchmaking. Have fun getting paired off with a buddy or four, with your profiles exchanged between one another. Maybe they're the perfect match. Maybe this is a nightmare in the making.

⏵ OOC ⏴
Welcome to our first TDM! We're excited to have you here. For more information on character arrivals, click here. For any questions relating to the TDM please reply below. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ There are gaps in the filter Krouse used to sift everything he said to her through, worn away by lack of repetition and torn wider by the overflow of relief at being able to say anything to her at all. He wants to be careful, but his carefulness is being taken up by other things.

After everything, it might not be so bad to just talk. She doesn't seem to mind, and so he doesn't notice his own lapse. ]

They did?

[ It doesn't ring a bell for him, but he hasn't seen everything Noelle has. He almost asks which movie it was, so he can go find it later, and the absurdity of that want sparks off-kilter fizz in his stomach. It's not bad. Just a little funny. ]

And I don't know, exactly. It screws with temperature regulation.

[ This next part, he is mindful of. His thumbnail teases the strands of his grass braid, and then he brings it up to start working on it again, not looking down or breaking his stride. He won't look away from her face. ]

The fix is touching someone else for a while.

[ And he doesn't need to elaborate on why that means they should be careful, and he can't help the flicker of want that comes with it anyway. But there's another reason, besides the ones she already knows all too well, their reminder stiffening in a crumpled heap in a room they won't go back to - ]

It makes you feel what the other person is feeling while it works. Some kind of empathy effect. I don't know why that's linked. I don't - [ he takes a shallow half-breath, shaking his head ] I don't get what's going on here.

[ Maybe he shouldn't admit it, but he can't tell her more lies she won't believe. He's not wasting whatever time they have like that. ]

[ Messing with Noelle's temperature regulation doesn't sound that bad. She can take Eidolon's force field. Being a little cold or a little hot is nothing.

Then Krouse tells Noelle about the fix, and the interest immediately leaves her expression. Her face goes dull, flat, but at least she doesn't look away. That may or may not be better.

Noelle wonders what will happen to its body. She's never had to wonder about that before. Krouse and the team took care of all her pre-rampage clones, and after her breakout, nothing mattered except clawing at a little, worthless scrap of revenge. Do her clones rot? Will someone burn its body, like she was burned?

This train of thought isn't getting her anywhere. Besides, Krouse is still talking. Noelle rallies by the time he says empathy effect, focusing on him so that she has something to focus on. It's good that she does. Krouse almost never admits that he doesn't know something. It's a little frightening that he does so now. It's so much better than a false promise.

The profile was meant to pair them up. The river seems to do the same thing. Noelle is good at spotting pressure - pressure to talk, to touch, to be nice and likeable and good to look at. What this place is doing isn't much different from any other city Noelle has lived in, weird robotech or no. ]

They want us all to get closer.

[ Noelle says, her soft voice not as dulled as it could be, but not thrilled either. Matter-of-fact. As she keeps looking down at Krouse, an urgency creeps into her voice. ]

I know you've told me this before, so you know this already, but - you don't have to play their game.

Edited 2024-03-27 03:22 (UTC)

[ The conclusion is clear enough that Krouse wonders how he missed it. It's not like him to take things at face value, or it didn't use to be. He could pin it on the conditioning, if he wanted to, but the surge of dull aversion that comes with the articulation of the point makes him suspect this is something he obscured all on his own.

He looks at the grass he's weaving, fragile bruised strands melding together in a green-staining cord. Bringing people together isn't that different. Cut them off at the roots, soften them up, and twine them into a whole. He knows plenty about that.

His smile slipped somewhere after Noelle's. He brings it back, a nearly cocky smirk creasing the corners of his dark eyes as he lifts his head. ]

Come on. [ He cajoles. ] You know me. Since when did I ever do what people wanted me to?

[ The joke's cutting edge is turned back on himself, a slit of bitterness that goes against everything he's trying to achieve here. Noelle will be able to see the regret that follows it in the flash of him looking away, getting a grip more reflex than choice.

He hears the you. If there's an implication, he's keeping it where he kept the realization about the river. ]

Hey.

[ He brightens, the light only half-artificial, as he nods at a biped rising up from behind a growing brick wall with a bucket and trowel in its metal hands. ]

There's one.

[ Noelle doesn't mirror Krouse's smirk. The eyes in her face crumple at the edges at his stupid fake joke, and when he points out the robot, Noelle can't wait to look away.

She said the wrong thing. She just wanted to help, to take the pressure off, but she keeps fucking it up.

After New York, Krouse was the best to talk to. He was the only one who was gentle with her, and even though he was afraid, he did the best at hiding it. He'd still come see her even when it wasn't his turn. But talking to Krouse was, and apparently still sometimes is, this: Noelle thinks of something. She tries to wrench it from her no-good, loser mouth. It comes out wrong. He doesn't get it. Repeat.

Noelle is grateful to see the robot, at least. It's saving her not-life right now. Something to do that doesn't involve talking about things that are hard. ]

Can you flag it down?

[ Even though the robot is probably more of a computer than a person, it's still more likely that it'll react more positively to an invitation from Krouse than from her. But she does still want to see it. ]

[ There's another unwanted apology at the tip of his tongue when she asks the question, rescuing them both from the start of the spiral. Just because he deserves to beat himself up doesn't mean she enjoys having to see it.

He thinks he used to be better at remembering that. The moments where he'd say something pointed about himself, meaning it to be funny, and she'd twist up with concern it took him too long to realize wasn't for the state of his sense of humour. Where she kept caring, sometimes, well past when she should have stopped. ]

I'll do you one better.

[ His hand comes up to his forehead, fingers brushing past an invisible brim to land on his bangs instead, which he sweeps aside. Then, to his own stupefied passenger seat embarrassment, he winks.

He steps sideways, and then steps through, and teleportation has rarely felt like such a convenient trick. He'd been weighing up the bot as soon as he spotted it, layering mass onto his own skin to match until it felt like a heavy, thick blanket, and he sucks in fresh air as soon as he's on the other side.

Krouse turns around and starts walking back more slowly than he really wants to. He can give her a break for a few seconds. He's better in measured doses. ]

[ Noelle sees the wink through one of the eyes in her lower half. She doesn't turn her upper to face him, but a brief smile does flit across her face. Captain Noelle, ma'am! It was cold outside, but warm in the shop, and when Krouse held her hand, it didn't even make her feel bad.

Then Krouse is gone, with a robot left behind in his place. Noelle lets herself linger in the memory a little longer, her eyelids heavy like someone about to fall asleep.

Welcome to Etraya, chimes the robot, and Noelle's eyes open. She stiffens, and the thing waves at her like it would anything else. Definitely a robot. But she should still check and make sure. Noelle used to read Wikipedia articles late at night when she couldn't sleep, which was often, and the one on the Turing test was always a classic. Make a machine prove it's human. Not that Noelle has any right to do so, with what she's become.

Noelle bends the limbs in the front part of the lower half, pitching herself on her lower hindquarters so she's a little closer to the robot. Several sets of eyes blink. A spindly, blistered limb ending in a three-fingered talon reaches out, palm side up. The robot whirrs and steps closer.

There are so many things she could ask it. Are you afraid of me sticks in her throat like a tumor, but she already asked Krouse that one. ]

Did you bring me back to life?

[ We're so happy to see you, chirps the robot. We didn't expect you so early. ]

Okay.

[ They can disassemble this one. ]

[ Krouse watches Noelle hunker over the robot, bent into an arch like a fossilized spine towering over the cool marble floors of a museum. The full scope of her is somehow easier to see at a distance, her presence up close cut into segments depending on where he looks.

Almost everything about her is changed, warped and rippled from her head to her many toes. He sees that. But what he notices is how her hair falls around her scarred little face, a bronze-shot tumble of messy brown that she was always absently tucking behind her ears when she stooped over anything interesting and complicated she wanted to take apart.

He's glad her attention is elsewhere. He doesn't want to think about what he looks like with his bruised heart a warm, skittish flutter in his throat and a wanting buzz in his palms he tries to wipe off on the rough weave of his jumpsuit.

Whatever she's asking, it's too quiet for him to hear. He quickens his steps slightly, anxious over missing anything. ]

Kind of cool, right?

[ Like he'd point out a comic book he thought she might like, or show off a clip of some strategy he'd been working on. Her approval was always better than anyone else's, because he could trust when it was real.

He couldn't have given less of a damn about the robots until he had her to show them to. They're cool if she thinks they're cool. ]

They don't say a lot, but they're complicated. General purpose workers, I think.

[ When Krouse returns to her side, Noelle doesn't turn her head to look at him. The eyes in her lower half take care of that. A few look at Krouse, while a few more scan the rest of their surroundings, while the eyes in Noelle's face continue to watch the robot. Noelle tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear. ]

Mm.

[ Noelle responds, soft and a little absentminded. She's thinking. It's easier not to talk when she thinks.

The robot doesn't walk into Noelle's outstretched palm, so she retracts it back into her mass of limbs. Instead, it continues over to a nearby patch of grass, where it starts to dig a little hole. ]

Is that why you're digging?

[ At Noelle's question, the robot stops what it's doing, spins, and waves its little trowel at the two of them. Yes! We are preparing the city!

Noelle nods, and finally turns her face towards Krouse. ]

It understands questions. It's not programmed to answer anything difficult, though.

[ Why am I fucking here?

Krouse nods, thumbs tucked into the folded waist of his jumpsuit, expression mild and interested. The robot gets back to digging, evidently content with its relocation as long as it has something to do. ]

That and the faces...they're probably trying to get us to anthropomorphize them early.

[ It's a design trick. He's read about mostly in the context of games and getting players to identify with NPCs, but he thinks the extension works. She'd know better than he does, so the pitch is a soft one, undergirded by the slight questioning roundness of his eyes as he glances between her and the robot.

It reminds him of something specific. His smile's still wonderstruck glow gains a little twist of amusement. ]

Like Companion Cubes.

[ That was more of the kind of game he was into before he got interested in the team. Spatial problem solving, figuring out all the tricks of a versatile but focused set of capabilities, and a darkly funny story line. ]

[ Noelle nods in agreement. It's all part of the same system. Manufactured friendliness. If she thinks about that for too long, her skin starts to crawl.

Fortunately Krouse intervenes with a phrase Noelle hasn't heard in years. She looks down at him, a little baffled for half a second before smiling. A quiet huff of laughter escapes her. Noelle schools her face back in line, so she can reply with the gravest and utmost sincerity that Krouse's analysis demands. ]

The cake is a lie.

[ The robot doesn't react. It just keeps digging its hole. ]

Do you want to take it apart?

[ Any sentimentality they feel towards it is just part of this place's strategy. Disassembling the robot might give them an edge. Also, it'd be cool. ]

[ Krouse ducks his head as he laughs, a soft, self-conscious ripple that takes him by surprise twice - that he'd laugh at such a played out reference, even one he helped set up, and that he'd laugh at all without a trace of anything other than humour.

Maybe it's just because she laughed first. He likes hearing her laugh. He'd like to hear it again, as many times as they can coax it out of her. ]

Yeah.

[ Caution thrown to the wind. Whatever he might or might not have to explain, whatever consequences ensue from messing with the local infrastructure, it's something to work on together. He approaches the bot with an easy amble, stooping over its back to get a look at how it's held together. ]

Hey. [ He says, in a tone reserved for strange children and stray dogs. ] I'm just going to take a look at how they put you together, okay?

[ The bot doesn't answer this time, or stop digging when he touches the bolts anchoring a panel on the back of its head. His expression shifts to evaluative distraction, smooth and clear. ]

I need a wrench, [ he assesses, mapping out the distance of one face of the bolt ] can you keep an eye on it while I check back over there?

[ After Brockton Bay and New York and Richmond and every shitty Earth Bet city in between, this place cannot hurt Noelle in any way that matters. What are they going to do if it's a crime to mess with the bots - shoot her? Lock her up? They'll do that on sight anyway. Might as well see something cool before it happens. As Krouse takes a look at the robot, Noelle's heartbeat quickens a little, a feeling that she recognizes depressingly late as excitement.

Krouse, meanwhile, seems to be really into this. Noelle isn't sure if she's ever seen him focus like this before. Maybe he did during games, but that happened so long ago, to someone else. ]

Sure. [ Noelle nods. Once Krouse has stepped away from the robot, she winds one of her longer tentacles around its periphery, in order to make sure it stays digging in place. ] Good luck.

[ It's not like watching him leave for a mission. This time, Noelle means it. ]

[ There's only a brief moment of half-startled double checking before he blinks it away and renews his smile. ]

Thanks.

[ That good luck has him practically floating back to the worksite, fizzy warmth blending smoothly into technical calm to produce even-keeled euphoria. He's doing what he's supposed to do.

The search doesn't take long. There's an adjustable wrench set next to a stack of uninstalled plumbing. He tosses it for a spin when he picks it up for the mindless satisfaction of the slap of cool weight against his palm. If only his shop teacher could see him now.

When he comes back, he barely skirts her tentacle to get to the robot, focused on the most efficient route. ]

Okay. [ He exhales through his nose and sets the wrench to the first bolt, mechanism clicking as he spins it to fit. ] Here goes nothing.

[ He applies a pulse of steady pressure to the wrench handle, feeling through the feedback. His forehead gains a new, faint line as he nods, then braces his hand on the robot's shoulder as he shifts his grip on the handle down half an inch and pushes, muscles of his arm standing out taut. Nothing happens for a few seconds, and then the bolt twists. Krouse grins.

What are you doing? The bot asks, politely, trowel buried in the earth. ]

Diagnostic check. Don't worry about it.

[ This time, when Krouse leaves, Noelle doesn't talk to the robot. She just watches it go about its business with heavy-lidded eyes, and she tries not to let any of her mouths drool on it. There's something soothing about its repetitive movements, like watching an avatar in their idle animation.

Noelle snaps out of her reverie when Krouse returns, tensing up a little when he approaches her tentacle. He doesn't touch it, which is good. That's what she wants. Whether she misses touch - anyone's touch, it doesn't matter whose - is a separate consideration.

Watching Krouse work is a little bit like watching a robot, a thought that takes Noelle by surprise once she realizes she's having it. Repetitive focus. When Krouse gets the panel off its back, Noelle raises an eyebrow, sizing him up like she used to when he first joined the team.

Huh. ]

I didn't know you were that good with machines.

[ The naked circuitry of the robot forms clean, recognizable lines. Krouse knows instantly that the core understanding of the technology is beyond him without additional context, but the basic anatomy clicks readily into place. Storing processing in the 'head' is an interesting design choice, perhaps reflective of -

He starts when Noelle speaks, the panel he's holding clattering against the side of the robot's shoulder in a way that feels far too loud. A veil of as-yet inexplicable guilt skates over his eyes.

This skill is one of the things that came after. He doesn't want to talk about after, when every minute was one he never wanted and didn't deserve.

She wanted him to have a life. He hadn't known that. It changes things. Contextualizes more of his astonishing selfishness, the luxury of regretting all the time he got that she didn't. Even if what he ended up with wasn't much of a life, it was more than she had. ]

I picked some things up.

[ He smiles, again. He's smiled more in the last hour than he has in the last six months. Every time gets a little bit easier. ]

Had a good teacher. [ And that's a joke just for him. ] Lucky for us. I'm not sure building a computer tower with a guide would cut it here, in terms of experience.

What do you think? [ He touches the robot's open head on the side, away from the components. ] This looks like a central processor to me.

[ The ring of metal on metal isn't that loud. It's still an interruption in Krouse's otherwise smooth execution, and so it draws attention to itself.

Noelle has said the wrong thing again. She's also said something strategically important. It's difficult to reconcile the two. For some reason, she thinks about sending emails in the dead of night.

(The guilt is more familiar. Easier to understand. Noelle wishes it wasn't.)

He picked some things up. That's an evasion. Noelle is fairly sure there are no shop classes in jail, and Krouse sure as hell wasn't the type to take shop back when they went to normal school. There's something that hurts to say, which is why he's smiling, so Noelle won't make him say it. Krouse does so much for her. If she adds another obligation, they'll both be crushed under its weight.

So: examining the robot it is. Noelle shifts so that one of the eyes in her lower half is right up against the circuitry. It darts back and forth, and doesn't blink nearly enough. ]

Yeah. Interesting they put it in the head. The face humanizes it for us, but there's less of a reason to humanize it for the designer or the builder. Unless they wanted us to open it.

[ She's letting it go. He can tell by the absence of any comment on the subject at all, and if he could hug her again, he would, with no hesitation over how much more obvious that would make his sensitivity. Since it's a fantasy, he doesn't have to worry about her tensing into a flinch.

He makes do with a look he hopes tells her what he'd want to press flat against her back with his palms, relieved gratitude mingled with second degree pride shining out of his eyes.

Of course she gets the robot. Dissecting how enemy units are constructed is a team captain's job. ]

They probably expected someone to, at some point.

[ Her eye next to the circuits is greenish-yellow, striations of the iris blown up to unsettling thickness. The way he takes care not to get too close to it when he points out an insulated wire peeking through a cluster of boards is mostly about not wanting to poke her in it. ]

That's a power supply. I think there's a redundancy deeper inside, but even so, not making this harder to get at makes me think there must be some kind of alternative secur-

[ There's a difference to how he snaps upright when the hologram of Aurora flares into view a few feet from both of them. His shoulders draw back and tense, feet shifting to give him a more secure base. His grip on the panel changes, subtly, one edge braced against his palm.

But beyond that, he doesn't react as their digital host issues a calm, gentle request to cease and desist from tampering with essential Etraya functions. She flickers out of existence again, and he lets out a breath, dipping his chin. ]

Like that, for example.

[ At first, Noelle doesn't know what to make of Krouse's look. It's still jarring when he looks at her totally without fear or without reservation. Sometimes, it threatens to piss Noelle off: why couldn't he do this the entire time? But that's a chasm laid right in front of Noelle, and if she trips into it, she'll never escape it. She can hang on and keep herself from drowning for a few more minutes, a few more hours.

It's a little bit like the look he gave her when they won that tournament. He hugged her then, and it was nice. Noelle does her best to try and remember that feeling instead, and she tries to let that be enough.

He's sitting right next to her. He's being so careful. They both have to be careful.

When the hologram appears, Noelle's tentacles retract. The heads in her lower half bear their teeth. Arms and claws and spikes reach outward. Noelle hunches her shoulders forward and glares at the intruder with drooping eyes set in puckered skin. ]

Shut up.

[ Noelle hadn't meant to say that out of more than one mouth. It happens anyway, words hot and slick and sizzling. Aurora disappears, and Noelle continues to glare at empty space. Her human hands make tiny little good-for-nothing fists. ]

They brought us here. They designed the robots. Play our game, but play by our rules. Make new friends, but only on our terms. Be a good little pawn, and maybe your world gets to fucking live.

[ It won't stop. The tide rushes in. ]

Fuck them. Fuck them. Asking me to be good, when they couldn't even fucking bring me back right.

[ This is the part where he calms her down.

His body remembers that before his head, the discrepancy a matter of milliseconds. It's his spine that tenses, his stomach that knots into a hard stone, even as his shoulders unhitch into purposeful ease. Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. Deep breaths. Listen to only one voice, human and small.

The hot stench of forever-spoiling meat rolls over him, vehement and wet. He mistimes, gets a lungful of it, the oily cling smearing over the roof of his mouth and flooding his nose. It sinks into him, slipping down his throat to curdle in his bile.

They couldn't even fucking bring me back right. ]

Fuck them.

[ The bolts in his hand and the wrench in the other bite into his palm when he squeezes down. He barely notices, his face screwing up in bitterness. ]

Fuck this. Fuck all of it. Who fucking cares?

[ He's as quiet as he'd be if he were telling her it's okay, voice wrung out to a pale wash of exhausted anger. ]

They can fix the whole fucking world, and they can't help you? Then what's the fucking point?

[ Noelle doesn't know how to answer Krouse's question. Her lower half responds instead, letting out a hot, gurgling roar, the cry of a wounded animal. Noelle doesn't get to be quiet when she's angry anymore, just like she doesn't get to be small, or normal, or any of the other things she thought were prerequisites for people being able to like her.

But even in the face of her anger, Krouse doesn't flinch. He makes his own little fist, and it's like they match. Like they're a team. ]

The people who can fix things - they're always like this.

[ The robot has stopped moving. It waits for instructions. ]

Coil was involved with the people who made our powers. He knew them. And he didn't fix me, because he needed me to be a bomb and you to be his servant. And they didn't fix me because they didn't fucking care.

[ She can't crush the robot in her claws. As angry as Noelle is, she doesn't want Krouse to bear more consequences of her destruction. So she digs into the dirt, and hopes the gouges she leaves in their stupid, pristine city are never filled in. ]

Used to think the anger wasn't me. That it was the thing growing in me. But I don't know if there's even a difference now.

[ The old Noelle's long gone. You have her memories, nothing more. She's not Noelle anymore. ]

I think I just hate them.

[ There's too much to take apart, separate into components he can defuse one at a time. Every strand of Noelle's rage is woven into every other part of it, everything that's ever happened to her that brought her to this point, rage bubbling out of her skin with nowhere to go but clawed into the dirt and howled into the air.

She hates the people who could fix things because they won't. Maybe she doesn't hate him because he couldn't. Because he can't.

He can't. ]

So do I.

[ Krouse slaps the panel on the robot's head and slots one of the bolts back in roughly, his hands only shaking because they don't know any better. Metal cries weakly in its socket as he grinds the threads until they shudder home.

He can't even know if it's possible, what it'd even look like. It's just one last surge of denial pretending to be hope. He shouldn't even have thought about it, and he needs to stop. This is it. They're past the end of the line. He's accepted that. ]

And maybe -

[ He bites off the first formulation of what he was going to say, replaces it with the clink of the next bolt slapped into place, and then something kinder. ]

You have a lot of reasons to be pissed, No’.

[ Maybe there never was a difference. Maybe they just wanted to think that she was angry for any reason other than the truth. ]

[ Metal clicks into place. A bolt slides into a lock. The robot is just one more thing Noelle can't touch.

It's embarrassing, Noelle thinks, that she's so far gone that she'll throw a tantrum over not being able to mess with the new city's infrastructure. Of course someone told them to stop.

But it was also going to be fun. Something for her and Krouse to be nerdy about, like they used to. Krouse has a new moveset, even if he learned it in the worst of circumstances, and he doesn't even get to show it off, and Noelle doesn't get to pick it apart.

Noelle stops moving sometime between the first bolt and the second. She holds herself together - literally. Krouse starts to say something, and then he pauses, falters, changes directions. Can't risk upsetting the monster. Even though he says he hates them, he's saying it so quietly. ]

What were you going to say? The first time.

[ The way Noelle says it, it's barely a question. She used to be better at scrubbing the feeling from her voice. Not too much, to where people noticed, but just enough, so that they wouldn't. It's a skill that's hard to forget, like riding a bike. ]

[ Things had been okay. Not great, but okay. They'd been on track to get to the river without talking about any of this, like she asked for, but he just had to try to go one step further.

He wants to kick the robot, or throw the wrench. He wants to sink into a crouch and breathe into his knees. He wants to go back in time half an hour or two years, and he wants a cigarette, and he doesn't want to talk about this. He doesn't want to hurt her, and he always ends up hurting her when he opens his stupid fucking mouth.

But she asked, and he doesn't want to keep lying to her, either.

Krouse steps back from the robot and squares up his shoulders. ]

I was going to say. [ He shakes his head slightly, like a dog with a wet muzzle. ] It's not like you started being angry after this happened, is it?

[ It's hard to make himself look at her now. He does it anyway, fixed calm bolted to his face like he tightened it on with the wrench dangling from his hand, his dark eyes punctures of resignation. He doesn't say it like a question at all. ]

This just made it harder for everybody to keep pretending you weren't. And it's not like we - like I didn't give you a lot to be fucking upset about. Or like you didn't tell me about it, when I did. I just -

[ He scrubs at his face with his free hand, crumpling his eyes shut. ]

It made you so scared, getting mad. Even when you were right. Especially when you were right.

[ Like she is right now, curling in on herself until it makes her small, no matter how big she is. ]

[ There's no real point in Krouse looking at Noelle. She isn't looking back at him - at least, not with the eyes that matter. Those eyes aren't really looking at anything.

Were they pretending she wasn't angry, before? Is that what was happening? Only Mars knew what was really going on, before Noelle took that half a vial. It was nice to pretend that the rest of them thought she was more or less normal. Shy, at worst. But if there were signs for Krouse to pick up on, it stands to reason the rest of them picked up on them, too.

It doesn't matter. The rest of them are gone, and Noelle will never see them again, and they're lucky enough to never see her.

It's not like you started being angry after this happened. Noelle clutches the base of her hospital gown, fingers weaving through the fabric and making a fist. The thing inside her shows her a memory, and Noelle takes the opportunity to be anywhere but here.

She'd been angry at herself the most. Angry one night, when she'd eaten too much pasta for dinner, on a day when she hadn't even walked home from school. Angrier still, after she'd thrown it up, leaving nothing but bilious hatred and shame over what she'd done. Relapse is another word for failure.

So she locked herself in her room for the rest of the night, and when she logged onto Ransack, Krouse was already there. Practicing, or something. They played all night, and he didn't ask why she was going so hard on the kids from Australia, or why she was still online at three in the morning, or what was wrong with her. He didn't even ask her to turn her camera on. ]

Yeah.

[ Noelle says, her voice dusty and quiet. She doesn't know how long she checked out for. Krouse still waited for her.

Noelle looks down at him again, finally, and when her eyes crumple in mirror image of his, she realizes she's forgotten how many calories are in a cup of spaghetti. The realization is as light and cool as the breeze in her hair. ]

I wanted to tell you I was sorry. During the fight. That it wasn't your fault. [ Noelle releases her grip on the gown, tucking her arm around her side instead. ] I was scared of being mad because I was scared of being big, and loud, and of people looking at me, and seeing - seeing what I saw, I guess.

[ Noelle laughs, but there's no mirth to it. What she's saying isn't funny. But she doesn't know what to do. ]

And then everyone found out anyway. So I guess I should have just told you from the beginning, huh?

[ When Noelle goes somewhere else, Krouse doesn't try to bring her out of it. He never knows exactly where it is she leaves to when she hands keeping the lights on to the part of her that watches him now, the alien insistence staring out of all of her eyes but the ones she was born with.

Alone with the part of her that she hates the most, Krouse breathes out shakily, scraping his knuckles under one stinging eye of his own. He latches onto one of hers, green-glass clear with an hourglass pupil, and he doesn't know what it sees. Doesn't know what it thinks, if it thinks anything at all, his worst adversary and closest ally. The only thing in the world that wanted her to live as much as he did. ]

Be nice to her. [ He tells it, half-hopelessly, with a crack in his voice he doesn't have to try to patch. ] Just - give her a break, all right?

[ By the time Noelle comes back, the robot is toddling off to the wall he took it from, coaxed to its feet and sent on its way with the wrench closed into its empty hand. Krouse's eyes are reddened and glossy again, and they sharpen into one hard wince when she laughs like that. ]

No.

[ It's not her name, this time, but he says it as gently.

He thought he'd understood, a little, before it all spilled out where everyone could see it. When he tries to remember, what he understands now bleeds over it, tainting the recollection with hindsight. He just knows he didn't know enough. Not enough to get that telling her he always liked what he saw didn't help, and probably just made it worse. He doesn't even know enough now to not want to tell her that here. Only enough to not do it.

He figured out too late that it wasn't about what people actually saw. It's what she says it is. It was always that. ]

Don't. Don't do that. If it's not my fault, it doesn't get to be yours either. You were doing what you had to.

This didn't happen because you did something wrong, or you didn't tell people every little thing about you, or because you got sick. You didn't make any of that happen. You didn't want it. You wanted to get better, and you were trying. You tried so fucking hard. Nobody could have tried hard than you did, after all the shit you went through.

I know you're sorry. And if you need me to forgive you for anything you actually did wrong, I will. I do. But I don't want to forgive you for being a human being, Noelle.

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cw: passive suicidality

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cw: eating disorder, vomiting, ableism, fatphobia

cw: eating disorder