what's up space girl [for chiron_survivor]

[super_cool]

After parting ways with Adia, the dazed cop headed towards the Shopping District to find a motel. Freddy remembers the walk as a series of sidewalks and brightly lit stores passing by in a blur, viewed through hazy tunnel vision. The next thing he recalls with any real clarity is wandering into the lobby of an old and slightly dilapidated building marked HOTEL with a flickering neon sign.

Since then, it’s been slightly reminiscent of when he first moved to LA-- only a lot weirder, and experienced from under the shadow of everything that went down with the heist and in the warehouse. He has no job, no friends, few acquaintances, and so most of his time is spent either alone in his hotel room or wandering the Nexus.

Today, he’s in his room. Adia’s contact information is on the coffee table, next to a bag with the laundered clothes that he still plans on returning to her. He keeps meaning to send her a text message, since that seems to be the preferred mode of communication, and today he actually does:

yo, adia. it’s freddy. what’s up? i have your clothes ready. text me next time you’re in the nexus, and we can meet up.

Comments

[super_cool]

“He seemed like a nice guy overall. Just stressed and out of sorts.” He doesn’t mind Adia messaging Jim. He’s not familiar enough with smartphones to know how problematic it is when someone’s texting while you’re trying to talk, and in this case he gets that it’s important to find Felix. Their interaction had been brief, but his impression was that he’s somebody with a good heart but who’s possibly a little bit foolish.

“Maybe he had his reasons,” he says, tapping the ash from his cigarette and watching it flutter toward the ground. He doesn’t mean to stick up for Caspar, but he can’t help feeling for the guy. Learning your entire identity is a lie has to be a mindfuck, and Freddy can imagine why letting other Cylons know about his feelings for Adia might be a bad idea. “Do you think you’ll ever see him again?”

Adia may be open-minded, but he still feels there’s plenty people could judge him on whether it's falling for another man, falling for a criminal, or just failing to be professional.

“Not good,” he sighs. Freddy’s own poker face is well practiced, so while it's clear he's regretful, with his sad eyes and floppy hair in his face, there’s nothing to indicate how devastating a confession it had actually been. “I should have told him sooner.”

He can't trust himself to say more without his voice breaking though, so he decides to back up in his story and confirm that he hadn't been lying for fun. “I lied to get in with this gangster, to get information so that we could catch him red-handed at a crime scene.”

At least Adia no longer has to do the mental gymnastics of trying to picture Freddy in actual police uniform, although of course he’s worn one before. It’s just easier to understand how he might have actually been good at undercover work, if only he wasn’t simultaneously terrible at it.

[chiron_survivor]

With the tacit approval to go ahead, Adia pulls out her PINpoint and starts typing away at the tiny keys. She tries to be quick about it, but she's never been one for texting shorthand or emojis. Besides, is there even an emoji for someone acting stressed and out of sorts?

Freddy's willingness to defend Caspar doesn't go unnoticed. She might even look a little appreciative about it. There is no love lost between Caspar and the rest of her ship. "I know," she admits quietly. "I just wish he hadn't been such a jerk about it..."

She finishes up her text and hits enter, then swings her gaze up to Freddy's face, wide-eyed and upset. She blinks, and the look softens in its intensity. "If you had asked me that even a week ago..." She sighs. "The Cylons are going through a civil war. The rebels defected to our side. But not Caspar. I think the odds of me seeing him again are pretty slim."

Oh, so he was undercover. That explains a lot, actually. "If you had told him sooner, wouldn't that have blown the case?" Of course, ideally, he shouldn't have become friends with the guy in the first place, but that's the last thing she'll ever judge someone for. "That must have put you in a really awkward position... I'm sorry."

She's kind of curious why a hero-obsessed cop would care about a hardened criminal, but there's no polite way to ask that. Instead, she shifts a little in her seat and says, "Some of my friends here are... um, morally questionable. But I've always tried to see the good in others. We can't always help who we like."

[super_cool]

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked. It’s none of my business. I know your world’s complicated.”

He keeps his tone level, but is pretty mortified at almost making her cry again. Even once it's clear she’s not actually on the brink of shedding more tears, he’s still choosing his words carefully and watching to make sure she’s not getting upset again.

“I just thought if it were me, I might not know how you felt, but I’d still want to know how you were doing... and to apologize, even if I didn’t actually do anything wrong. It’d probably take a while, and I’d have to figure out how to go about it, but I’d still want to...” That would be the right thing to do, and he figures that most people would feel similarly. “We don’t have to talk about him anymore, though.”

He actually winces with the mention of the case. “Yeah, of course, which is why I didn’t.” But then what went down was such a disaster, just about any other turn of events would be preferable in hindsight.

He’s bad at talking about his emotions, or else maybe he would try and explain that it’s one thing to like someone, but it’s rare that anyone genuinely gives a shit about what happens to you in return. And it’s not like everyone’s a rotten evil bastard with no sympathy, but just that everyone’s got priorities, and you’re usually not one of them. Which is fair enough, honestly. But then when you meet someone who’s not like that, and you let them down so terribly, whether they’re a hardened criminal or not, it feels really... shitty.

“I know we can’t help who we like,” he says instead. “I liked all those guys I worked with when undercover. I had nothing personal against any of them. Shit, I even liked the goddamn gangster.” He laughs, a little rueful. For someone who's basically a nice person, he sure gets along with scumbags awfully well. But then they’d been such likable scumbags.

[chiron_survivor]

She's quiet for a little while after he tells her they can drop the subject of her ex, even after he speaks more about his own unfortunate friendship. It's only a few seconds of silence, all told, but it feels like an ice age to her. It's her fault that this conversation has turned into an exchange of awkward apologies. She should have kept her own problems to herself.

And yet...

"When, um... when I first met you, you reminded me of him. Because of the blood. It's what he looked like, after he..." she swallows hard before continuing. "The next time I saw him was when he was escorting me out of the detention center, and you know what's funny? All those things you said, what you would say if you were him, that's what I wanted to say. To Caspar. That I didn't blame him for what happened. That I was glad that he was alive again."

She looks up at Freddy, her eyes filled with regret. "But I didn't. I asked him if he knew if Caspar had resurrected because I was too scared to say what I really wanted to. And maybe that wouldn't have made a difference for him, but at least my conscience would have been clear."

It's another moment before she asks gently, "Is that why you came clean with your friend?" She thinks that's rather brave of him, despite it being a foolish thing to do from both a professional and survivalist perspective. "It must have been such a difficult secret to keep."

[super_cool]

It's good to know he’s not the only one who felt a connection, like maybe they’ve been through something similar, but they're also kind of just torturing themselves. Not like he does much else these days, so no surprise there. But Adia’s emotional and not herself, and he’s not helping at all.

He also doesn’t entirely understand why she’s saying all this. As someone who prefers to be one step ahead in conversations, it makes him feel backed into a corner, and unsure of what to tell her.

“Believe me, I do not have a clean conscience.” He can at least set her straight on that much. Maybe she thinks he was able to get something that she could not with Caspar, like find some sort of closure or something. But it was a selfish confession, and it only happened after a lot of bloodshed.

He could spare her as many details as possible about how a bunch of stupid men violently killed each other one afternoon after a diamond heist went wrong, but it still wouldn’t be a particularly uplifting story. “I don’t know if you really want to hear about it,” he admits. “I only mentioned it because I thought you might want to know.”

That Freddy Newendyke lied about his identity and shattered an old thief’s heart.

That cigarette he’d been smoking is still dangling between his fingers. He’d forgotten about it at some point. Now that it’s burning at the filter, he drops it and grounds it out with the heel of his shoe. He’d like to immediately light another, but resists, trying to let his mental clock countdown to when the next one is acceptable.

[chiron_survivor]

This topic of conversation certainly isn't doing either of them any favors. Although now that she has gotten that particular tale of woe off her chest, she seems... not as miserable. Calmer, maybe. Less weighed down.

They were words that she could never say to Caspar, but at least she was able to tell them to someone who she thinks can understand. And she'd do the same for Freddy, listen to his own regrets, but she knows that not everyone can be as open with their story as she can. So when she hears the reluctance in his voice, she smiles at him kindly and reaches out to pat his shoulder.

"I appreciate you sharing with me what you did. You can tell me as much or as little as you want, I've, um... I've seen a lot, and heard worse. But it's up to you."

[super_cool]

He doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s not even sure how to talk about it. But he can’t not talk about it either. “He was taking care of me after I got shot,” he begins, after a long pause. “I still wasn’t going to say anything." Another pause.

"But then the fucking cops were late. So while they’re dicking around doing... whatever the fuck, fighting over the last jelly-filled donut for all I fucking know, my friend and I are bleeding all over each other.”

Yeah, he’s angry with the police for showing up late. But there are also some major gaps in his story, and focusing on being angry at them is just the easiest way to get through talking about any of it.

“By this point, the gangster’s dead. Pretty much everyone involved is dead. I’m about to die, and my friend’s still trying to comfort me-- so yeah... I told him... Of course I fucking told him.”

He’s gone still and pale and has that faraway shaken look that Adia has no doubt seen many times before on many victims of all manner of disasters-- a look that she has probably worn a few times herself. And then he quietly says what he’s been saying a lot of lately: “I’m sorry.”

[chiron_survivor]

She listens silently but attentively to his tale, through all its stops and starts, to the painful but inevitable conclusion. It's made more poignant by how disturbingly similar it is to her last moments with Caspar aboard her ship. He confessed the truth to her, too, when he was at the end of his tether.

At least she didn't have to hold his dying body in her arms. That would have been too much.

It's tempting to tell him that he has nothing to be sorry for, or even if he did, he's already paid his penance. But she's not sure if he'd believe her. If they were better friends, she'd offer him a hug. The most she dares is another gentle pat to his shoulder. "What happened to your friend? You said he was hurt, too?"

[super_cool]

Yeah, dying does tend to make a need to confess more urgent. Freddy, however, had wanted to not only clear his conscience, but also for his friend to kill him and put him out of his misery.

He lets Adia pat his shoulder, but goes boneless and still, like he's waiting for it to be over. Not that he minds the contact, exactly, but more like he instinctively doesn’t entirely trust it. He’s a little awkward like that whenever just about anybody touches him, save for with casual bro hugs. And it’s fine that she doesn’t do anything more to try and reassure him since he’d view it as either patronizing or pitying.

“I don’t know,” says the little liar, collecting himself. “I blacked out soon afterwards.”

He knows full well that the cops must have shot him. A brief and odd relationship to end in such a way, but there was an intensity of feeling present that neither fully understood until they were dying in each other’s arms. Freddy still can’t understand it. He’s glad she asked about Larry though, and had been half expecting her to, even if he couldn’t tell her the truth.

[chiron_survivor]

Oh, he doesn't like that. She can tell; she's been around enough people who are awkward around physical contact. Even Caspar was like that -- with anyone who wasn't her. She watched him for weeks when they were just friends, making sure to keep a bit of distance between them, respectful of his boundaries. So for Freddy's sake, she folds her hands together and keeps them in her lap so she won't do it again.

"I'm sorry." She doesn't know that he's lying. But he doesn't sound optimistic that his friend made it out alive, either. Now she understands why this second chance is likely bittersweet for the once-dead man before her.

Her eyes soft with sympathy, she hesitantly asks, "Do you want to talk about him at all?"

[super_cool]

The truth is he’s actually too afraid to talk about Larry-- afraid of outing himself, afraid of being judged (still), and there’s also an underlying almost paranoid anxiety that somehow he will further anger, even from beyond the grave, the man that he wronged.

He wraps his arms around himself and gives her a sideways look, like no fucking way does he want to talk about Larry.

“Only that he didn’t fucking deserve that shit.”

Believe it or not, his swearing has actually been significantly toned down around Adia, and most people in the Nexus. It is not his word choice, but the unintended harsh tone that makes him immediately soften his expression.

"I'm a dick, I should have just said I didn't want to talk about it. I was actually planning on talking about things that would make you laugh, but I guess it didn't work out that way. I swear I'll make it up to you."

[[Sorry, I take foreeeever. When IRL stuff has me stressed out, focusing on writing gets difficult. ;;]]

[chiron_survivor]

Bucky swivels his head to stare at Freddy in response to that harshness. Adia automatically reaches up to soothe his ruffled feathers. She looks properly chastened, even after Freddy's apology and subsequent explanation.

"It's okay," she says in a small voice. Not everyone wants to share their burdens, she'd do better to remember that. No matter how much sympathy she feels for this formerly dead man. "I, um... I don't make it easy. To cheer me up, I mean." She gives him a faint smile and resists patting his shoulder again. "You can still try. Did you meet any of your heroes yet?"

That's a safe topic, right?

((Don't worry about it! I'm sorry RL had you stressed out, I hope things are better now. <3))

[super_cool]

It’s not her fault. He’d been willing to answer whatever questions she asked, an open book, up until he wasn’t.

When Bucky’s head swivels, Freddy simultaneously leans back on the bench, as far away from Adia and Bucky as he can. Quick startle reflexes on this one. And he had those before the gunshot trauma, too.

He’ll wait until the giant bird relaxes before scrambling to sit back up. The change in topic does seem to have been a safe one, as Freddy suddenly seems cheerful again.

“Well, I haven’t seen the Silver Surfer yet, which is too bad because this place would be perfect for him. His story, some of it anyway, is that he’s trapped on a planet far away from home, and the people there shun him because he’s different. Normally, he’d just hop on his board and fly the fuck outta there back into space, but he can’t on account of a barrier that's been put up. So he’s always looking for some other way out.”

[chiron_survivor]

Is it possible for a bird to smirk? Bucky seems rather pleased with Freddy's reaction, but he settles down all the same.

Adia listens with a small smile, her shoulders relaxing. If Freddy is still going to go to the trouble of cheering her up, especially after their awkward conversation, the least she can do is try. "I've never heard of him," she admits. Although if he is stuck on some faraway planet, it makes sense that he wouldn't have shown up in the Nexus. "How is he different? I'm guessing it's not because he likes to surf?"

[super_cool]

It’s actually Earth that he’s stuck on, but that word is not getting mentioned. “I grew up around surfers. Trust me, he’s way too good for them. He’s different because he’s the sky-rider of the spaceways. He surfs the skies, and the cosmos.

“Oh, and he’s, like, literally made out of silver because his molecules got all rearranged when he got the power cosmic. You’ve never seen someone like that here?”

He figures that Adia's staying because she needs a distraction, so he'll keep talking. And he'll get to the superheros that actually are in the Nexus in a bit.

[chiron_survivor]

Good call on not mentioning Earth. She's already struck by the parallels of a misfit who can't return home. "No, never. And if he's made of silver then he'd be especially hard to miss... what makes him a superhero? Does he fight aliens?"

Resting against the back of the bench, she's in no rush to return to her ship and the sad, somber mood that hangs over everyone. And if Jim decides to text her back, to ask for more details about Freddy's encounter with Felix, she'd like to be in the Nexus for that, too.

[super_cool]

WELL, since she asked:

“Hell yeah he fights aliens. He also saved his home planet, Zenn-La, from Galactus. While everyone else was losing their shit, he went by himself to meet with Galactus and was able to convince him not to eat Zenn-La. But in exchange, he had to leave it forever to serve as Galactus’ herald. His life got all fucked up after that, but he still has hope.”

The pathos of the Silver Surfer, Marvel's lonely and melodramatic hero. In addition to fairy tales of romance and found-family like the Fantastic Four, Freddy's drawn toward the weirder sections of Marvel's canon, where the Surfer fits.

[chiron_survivor]

Adia's closest brush with Marvel is being friends with Steve Rogers. But she can sort of understand the appeal of the Silver Surfer, especially for someone who's never been to space. All the same, his origin story has her raising her eyebrows a little in surprise. "Galactus tried to eat his planet? Do you mean that literally?"

[super_cool]

"With ketchup and a side of fries."

Comic books are dumb. They're so dumb. Telling her how Galactus actually uses a machine to convert planets into energy that he feeds off of in order to survive isn't going to sound any less dumb.

[chiron_survivor]

This time around, she's better prepared for Freddy's dry humor. Anything can happen in comic books, but that sounds a little far-fetched. A machine that converted planets into energy would have made more sense to her.

"We don't have anything like that in our comic books. Oh, but... have you heard of Odysseus? He was lost on his way home from a war for twenty years. He wasn't a surfer, but he did sail a ship, and he had all sorts of adventures." She frowns thoughtfully. "I have met a few people who are fictional in my world. Or, at least, from long-ago myth. I can't imagine what it'd be like to meet someone from a comic book or a movie."

[super_cool]

“Odysseus?” That’s a familiar name. “He’s the one who fights a cyclops, but the cyclops thinks his name is Nobody, right?” He hasn’t actually read The Odyssey, but he did pay attention during school.

“That’s from a really long time ago, even for me. When you say long-ago myths, do you mean like the ancient Greek ones?”

Freddy used to spend a lot of time imagining what it’d be like to hang out with movie and comic book characters, but dying a pathetic death in disgrace has shaken his confidence. Rejection from childhood heroes would be a bit much on top of all that, so he actually kind of... avoids them.

[chiron_survivor]

The fact that he knows at all what she's talking about perks her up a little. "That's right," she says encouragingly. "He also sails his ship between two monsters, fends off sirens, and fights a witch. I liked that he used his wits sometimes instead of brute forcing every situation. That's not as common in our stories as I'd like."

She nods when he mentions ancient Greece, although it's with the look of someone who is hearing about a strange coincidence. "Yes. Stories older than the Sacred Scrolls. Our religion and myths have a lot in common with the ones from ancient Greece." She shrugs. "I don't know why. It doesn't make much sense considering we're from different universes. But it's kind of nice, too, to know that I have something in common with some of the people who visit the Nexus."

[super_cool]

“It ain’t all that common in ours either. We got all sorts of stupid shit with nothing but shooting, explosions, and corny one-liners. Ah man, but I love that crap,” he’s more than happy to admit. He means those cheesy 80’s and 90’s action movies, before irony and grim-dark became such big things in Hollywood, the kind you can watch just to rip on and that aren’t taking themselves too seriously.

It’s nice to see Adia brightening, and in return he looks like he’s just gotten an answer right on a pop quiz. He hasn’t read an actual book in years! He may not remember a good chunk of last week, but now there's random details coming back about Odysseus’ story: some he learned in school, some he must have picked up on from references in pop-culture.

“Yeah, that is weird,” he says about the cross-universe shared mythology. “I don’t know shit about ancient Greece aside from stuff that everyone knows, but who did you meet? Not Zeus, right?” he’s joking, even if meeting Zeus probably isn’t entirely impossible.

[chiron_survivor]

"Then you'd like Hercules," she replies easily. "He's from our ancient myths, too, but they made, like, a million movies about him. Ones set in the modern day, even, so you can still have your explosions." Personally, she couldn't stand those movies, where the hero's solution was either to kill something or throw it off a cliff, but she won't go so far as to bad-mouth Hercules himself. Who knows, he could show up some day and then she'd feel bad for talking about how dumb he is.

Freddy's pleasant surprise keeps the smile on her face. It is weird that he should even know who Odysseus is, but like she said, it's nice to have that thread of knowledge in common.

"No, not Zeus." She cringes at the idea. "I did meet Persephone once... she wasn't what I expected." She idly pokes at one of Bucky's feathers as she thinks over who else she's met. "Iphigenia lives in the Nexus. She's from... um, the Trojan War. And Ariadne recently arrived. She's from the myth involving the minotaur. They're both very nice women, I... I tried hard not to let on that I knew who they were. It felt intrusive, y'know?"

[super_cool]

“Oh man, I bet those movies are fuckin dumb if there’s that many," he says cheerfully. He can tell she's not a fan. Adia may have reservations about trash-talking Hercules, but Freddy does not. “I’d watch ‘em, but I don’t know if I’d necessarily like ‘em. I mean you got to understand, there’s movies that are dumb, and then there’s movies that are so goddamn brain-dead and absurd it takes your breath away to realize something so insane and ridiculous could actually get made and be a thing that exists.”

Could the Hercules franchise really compare to the dregs of all that campy schlock from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s? That is a challenge: if Adia’s thinking about those dumb movies, at least it takes her mind off things.

Unfortunately, none of those other names she mentions ring a bell except for the Minotaur, which he remembers as a half-monster, half-man thing. Ancient Greece did have some weird myths, didn't they. Those Hercules movies probably could get pretty bizarre if the creators set their mind to it.

“I did see a comic book character here,” he decides to mention by way of reply. “I wanted to say hi, but...” But instead he panicked and ducked behind a trashcan.