"If it's not for you, then who is it for?" It's simple undisguised curiosity, nothing dreadful or weighted or suspicious.
Though for his other question, her face slides more toward neutrality. "Drugs. The United Earth citizens are all addicted to a drug they believe helps keep them healthy. Which I guess it does -- people don't live through withdrawal so well."
"What? A mind control drug? That's..." Give him a second to process that information, Collette. It's completely insane, and as far as he knew, impossible. He doesn't even need to make the effort to dodge that question about the food, because he's already forgotten that she asked. He's too busy trying to scrape together his understanding of the world -though maybe he'd better stop thinking in global terms now that they've gone extraterrestrial...
No, that isn't helping. Stand by for reboot. He's going to need to take a minute, here.
"Well, I guess it makes them more open to suggestion. The addiction's bad," she says, more soft as she watches Stan fail to process. "The withdrawal's pretty killer. Basically don't shoot this stuff up unless you've got freaky healing powers, you know? There's juice in the big container over there."
"Right." Juice. Juice is a suggestion he understands. He stands, still dazed, and pours a glass. Which he tries to hand to Collette, but...loses his grip on? Misjudges the distance? He's not sure what happens, because it happens without intent. Like a time jump, or a mini blackout. Whatever happens between picking up the full glass and the puddle of juice on the floor is lost on him.
He stares unhelpfully, baffled at how it could've gotten there. Sorry, Collette. This friendly interrogation/heads up isn't going as smoothly as he'd planned.
"Towels are in that drawer," she says, indicating one by the nearest refridgerator like wall installation. He looks so confused, and she figures it must be an overload. Besides, spilled juice is just spilled juice. Limited resources or not, it isn't the sort of thing she can be mad about.
So she smiles, making a dismissive gesture with her hand. "We should probably keep the floor from getting sticky. I wonder if all these glasses are so hard to break? What can survive in space-cold, anyway?"
"What?" No, he's not really following all of that. But he heard towels, so he wanders in that direction -through the juice puddle, whoops- and finds one. Unfortunately he's still a little dazed, so this thing he also tries to hand to Collette. There ya go, it's that towel you wanted.
She looks from the towel in hand to the puddle on the floor. "Uh... you might want to wash your shoe," is the first coherent spoken thought she manages. "Or else you'll track juice everywhere... I'm not sure if we have a mop here!"
She looks from him to the juice puddle, then makes herself go closer. Leaning out, she does manage to get the towel out over most the spill.
This suggestion...sort of...registers. Instead of washing his shoes, Stanley slips them off, though. And then he sits down beside the juice puddle and stares at it for a moment. Sorry, Collette. It's been one of those weeks. He thought he was handling it, but now that there's juice on the floor things are somehow unbearably overwhelming. Would it be weird to take a nap in the kitchen?
Before he goes for it anyway, there's a soft padding of small feet. A little girl emerges from her hiding spot inside a cupboard and climbs right into his lap, with a degree of familiarity that suggests she has no reason to think she doesn't belong there. She pets his long, silky hair a few times, and then casually pickpockets the cheese he'd tucked away for later. She's either the tiniest, boldest, most reassuring thief around or she knows him, and well.
Collette personally opts for knowing him well, and to no small degree because he doesn't react to her presence, and she knew which pocket held the cheese. "That's who he was saving extra for," she says softly, giving a slow shake of her head. Collette flashes a smile at the little girl, giving her a small wave with her fingers before directing her attention to the puddle. Stan and girl she lets sort themselves out as they like -- she's not much for staring overtly at things which aren't really that astoundingly odd.
"I didn't know Stan had a friend with him. I would have said hello! My name's Collette," she continues, everything conversational as she does her best to clean up the juice spill.
At least her energy's back on the rise. If it weren't, Collette would hate the creeping, fearful insecurity of her life right now even more, in the ephemeral sense that she ever hated anything. (Internal railing that it's unfair, pouting at the wall, breathing out and then tackling the world. No one here was paid to listen to her whine. Sadly.)
"Stan, can I grab you anything to drink? You or your friend."
"What? He blinks, slowly coming to his sense again, wrapping an arm around the little girl gently and getting to his feet. "Oh. This is Peace. Sorry, she's not good with strangers, ya know? And she's not on the official guest list."
That statement is coupled with a serious glance, that errs a bit on the side of pleading. He didn't tell people you were a bloodthirsty pack animal, you owe him keeping this little girl's secret. Okay? Peace, for her part, doesn't pay a lot of mind to Collette. Just a cursory, curious glance. But she's not afraid of teenagers the way she is around adults, and Stanley isn't tense, so she doesn't perceive Collette as a threat to them both. She just enjoys her cheese and plays with his hair some more. Her own hair is dark and kinky, but it's been carefully pulled away from her face and secured with a strip cut off of a hospital gown.
"She doesn't talk much. She's uh...last time....uh. Her ear got fucked up, you know? Things sound kind of weird to her I guess."
She'd be lying if she claimed that she'd not had similar thoughts, of saving someone, anyone, had she been given the choice. Collette hadn't. Nor had any part of her friends left behind been the sort to really pull someone through like that -- Collette's not sure Caesar went back to Paramjit, though she suspected he had.
It's another young girl, whose only crime had ever been to live in a free, difficult country. Only this one's alive.
Collette's gaze lingers with that thought. When she looks to Stan, she just smiles. "Official lists are boring anyway," she comments. "And my guess is if she's stuck with you long-term, you'll want to look into finding anyone familiar with speech therapy. Just the one ear?" She wonders if her equilibrium might be off, too, but she hadn't seemed to find moving around too awkward. Were the two related? She's not sure.
What she doesn't say are her other thoughts: how, why, what if she disappears and it's because we've changed the past and she's never been born? Those aren't thoughts she wants to feed Stan, no matter how often she's had them. No matter living through times where people she knew had been written right out of history.
"Can they do that?" Oh, god. They said they couldn't fix her ear and he'd just assumed that meant they couldn't help, but maybe it wasn't true. He really has no clue how to be a stand in for someone's parents. It's so much harder than it looks.
"I...yeah. Of course I want to fix it. I mean, I don't have money. Or skills. But maybe I can...uh. There's gotta be something, right?"
"Hearing aids, doctors, therapists who work on this stuff... I mean, all kinds of stuff, for different people, but speech therapy's common! I know we had people who worked on it at the hospital before, so... maybe someone up here did that. Back home."
Or when they all return -- if Peace is around at that time -- he'll find someone else who can help. "It's not a big problem, not at all! Even if she were totally deaf, that's be like, learning sign language and helping her with it. Kids pick new things up like crazy!"
"Sign language?" That's...maybe not a perfect solution. But that could work, until he's able to really fix it for her. In fact, when all his plants grow in...right. No plants. He'll have to think of a better way to pay for it. Maybe he can trade some blood to the vampires at the hospital...
"Yeah. Guess I never thought about it. You're way smarter than Petey." AND hey, he's pretty sure he knows some sign language. Though he can't remember how he knows it. But, yeah...yeah, actually he seems to know a lot of sign language. That he just hadn't needed until now, or something. Must've been from watching too much Sesame Street as a kid, maybe. Huh.
"Petey?" she asks, lifting the towel off the ground and holding it with one hand out to the side. She awkwardly manages to roll herself back slowly, aiming to end up by the sink. She doesn't judge it right the first time.
She grimaces, then tosses the towel toward the sink anyway. Close enough.
To his credit, Stanley stops dreamily making signs to himself, and hops up for a minute, shifting Peace to one hip. Together they get the towel into the sink. Success?
"Thanks. Can you wring it out?" She's not sure if it's more or less rude to just leave it there, but asking her to work with this sink, when it's higher than the ones in the apartments, is kind of...
Anyway, Collette looks back to the stain on the floor. "I think we have some kind of surface wipe... like baby wipes, only for cleaning. Did you need an extra blanket for her? I know we have a few at the clinic."
The statement is casual, it's clearly not something he thinks of as a big deal. She's little, she doesn't take up much space. At Collette's prompts, Stanley wrings the rag out and glances around for the surface wipes. He's not ambitious, it's true, but directions he's good at taking when he's not being stubborn.
"She have enough to wear? For that matter... do you?" Pointing down the length of the counter, she tosses out, "They're down there, I think. Bring me back one and I can help, too!"
He's about to answer, really. To reassure her that yeah, yeah, he traded everything and his soul for cute little tutus and pretty dresses when she got here. He even broke his network silence and asked for help.
But the second part makes his throat tighten unexpectedly. It's...it's the first time anyone's asked him if he needed anything, personally. For some inexplicable reason, it makes a little pang go through his stomach. But he swallows it, takes a breath, and shakes his head.
"No. I mean, yeah. She's got...stuff. I'm not neglecting her, I promise."
What he says and doesn't say, how he says it, the time until he speaks, all of that makes Collette pay even more careful attention. "Didn't say you were," she says cheerfully, though she guesses someone has. "Didn't hear an affirmative from you, either. So... what size shirts do you wear? Pants? Do you have socks? Clean pairs of underwear without holes in them? We've got extra boxers."
His shirt is pretty obviously ragged, so there's no use lying about it. But it's tough to answer. His chest feels heavy, though he wouldn't be able to explain why if someone asked. Instead, he settles for nodding. Yeah. Okay. He could maybe do with a new shirt. A new anything. He doesn't know whose shit she's trying to give him, but he'll leave them some green on the doorstep or something to make up for it. They can sell it if they don't like to toke.
A nod is all she needs. Collette nods in return, glancing back toward the ground. "Where're you staying here?" Where is about a room number. She figures he'll know that much, without her saying it explicitly.
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Though for his other question, her face slides more toward neutrality. "Drugs. The United Earth citizens are all addicted to a drug they believe helps keep them healthy. Which I guess it does -- people don't live through withdrawal so well."
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No, that isn't helping. Stand by for reboot. He's going to need to take a minute, here.
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She gestures down the counter.
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He stares unhelpfully, baffled at how it could've gotten there. Sorry, Collette. This friendly interrogation/heads up isn't going as smoothly as he'd planned.
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So she smiles, making a dismissive gesture with her hand. "We should probably keep the floor from getting sticky. I wonder if all these glasses are so hard to break? What can survive in space-cold, anyway?"
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She looks from him to the juice puddle, then makes herself go closer. Leaning out, she does manage to get the towel out over most the spill.
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Before he goes for it anyway, there's a soft padding of small feet. A little girl emerges from her hiding spot inside a cupboard and climbs right into his lap, with a degree of familiarity that suggests she has no reason to think she doesn't belong there. She pets his long, silky hair a few times, and then casually pickpockets the cheese he'd tucked away for later. She's either the tiniest, boldest, most reassuring thief around or she knows him, and well.
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"I didn't know Stan had a friend with him. I would have said hello! My name's Collette," she continues, everything conversational as she does her best to clean up the juice spill.
At least her energy's back on the rise. If it weren't, Collette would hate the creeping, fearful insecurity of her life right now even more, in the ephemeral sense that she ever hated anything. (Internal railing that it's unfair, pouting at the wall, breathing out and then tackling the world. No one here was paid to listen to her whine. Sadly.)
"Stan, can I grab you anything to drink? You or your friend."
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That statement is coupled with a serious glance, that errs a bit on the side of pleading. He didn't tell people you were a bloodthirsty pack animal, you owe him keeping this little girl's secret. Okay? Peace, for her part, doesn't pay a lot of mind to Collette. Just a cursory, curious glance. But she's not afraid of teenagers the way she is around adults, and Stanley isn't tense, so she doesn't perceive Collette as a threat to them both. She just enjoys her cheese and plays with his hair some more. Her own hair is dark and kinky, but it's been carefully pulled away from her face and secured with a strip cut off of a hospital gown.
"She doesn't talk much. She's uh...last time....uh. Her ear got fucked up, you know? Things sound kind of weird to her I guess."
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It's another young girl, whose only crime had ever been to live in a free, difficult country. Only this one's alive.
Collette's gaze lingers with that thought. When she looks to Stan, she just smiles. "Official lists are boring anyway," she comments. "And my guess is if she's stuck with you long-term, you'll want to look into finding anyone familiar with speech therapy. Just the one ear?" She wonders if her equilibrium might be off, too, but she hadn't seemed to find moving around too awkward. Were the two related? She's not sure.
What she doesn't say are her other thoughts: how, why, what if she disappears and it's because we've changed the past and she's never been born? Those aren't thoughts she wants to feed Stan, no matter how often she's had them. No matter living through times where people she knew had been written right out of history.
Thinking like that would drive anyone crazy.
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"I...yeah. Of course I want to fix it. I mean, I don't have money. Or skills. But maybe I can...uh. There's gotta be something, right?"
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Or when they all return -- if Peace is around at that time -- he'll find someone else who can help. "It's not a big problem, not at all! Even if she were totally deaf, that's be like, learning sign language and helping her with it. Kids pick new things up like crazy!"
That's what her mom always said.
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"Huh. Yeah. Maybe."
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"Petey?" she asks, lifting the towel off the ground and holding it with one hand out to the side. She awkwardly manages to roll herself back slowly, aiming to end up by the sink. She doesn't judge it right the first time.
She grimaces, then tosses the towel toward the sink anyway. Close enough.
Most of it falls inside.
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To his credit, Stanley stops dreamily making signs to himself, and hops up for a minute, shifting Peace to one hip. Together they get the towel into the sink. Success?
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Anyway, Collette looks back to the stain on the floor. "I think we have some kind of surface wipe... like baby wipes, only for cleaning. Did you need an extra blanket for her? I know we have a few at the clinic."
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The statement is casual, it's clearly not something he thinks of as a big deal. She's little, she doesn't take up much space. At Collette's prompts, Stanley wrings the rag out and glances around for the surface wipes. He's not ambitious, it's true, but directions he's good at taking when he's not being stubborn.
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But the second part makes his throat tighten unexpectedly. It's...it's the first time anyone's asked him if he needed anything, personally. For some inexplicable reason, it makes a little pang go through his stomach. But he swallows it, takes a breath, and shakes his head.
"No. I mean, yeah. She's got...stuff. I'm not neglecting her, I promise."
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She can dig extra pairs up that should fit.
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