[ota] February/March Catch-All

[aperturesubject0001]

Who: Chell and her new neighbors!
When: Some February, mostly March
Where: Around and about!
Open/Closed: Noted in starters
Applicable warnings: Feb TDM warnings may apply; descriptions of agoraphobia. Anything that comes up will be in the comment headers.

a. The Errands - OTA, early February

Once the smoke clears, and people are allowed out of their houses again, Chell is faced with a brand new test: grocery shopping.

It's not like she's never done it before. She knows she has. Her memories of life before waking up in Aperture may be hazy in places, but she certainly knows that she used to go to the store and buy food and probably even make it sometimes, although she also has a feeling she used to eat a lot of microwave meals. That's not an option here. And her household has gone through most of the easy-to-prepare stuff like canned food during the lockdown, so now she needs to go restock.

And the thing is -- the thing is, Chell has faced down giant mashy plates with spikes and arrays of turrets training their sights on her and bombs and floors covered in toxic waste. A grocery store should be no problem. And yet, faced with the aisles of food, the people, the constant mechanical whirr and ching of the cash registers, Chell is finding herself uncharacteristically overwhelmed. She can't see the exits when she's trying to pick between oatmeal and cream of wheat. Everyone else seems to be moving with certainty and purpose where she's a welter of indecision and nerves. What if she picks the wrong thing? What if everything is poisoned? What if something comes through the door? What if she throws up? What if--?

All of which has resulted in Chell standing in front of the freezer case for at least five minutes, looking more like a deer in the headlights than a shopper. She moves out of the way when other customers need to get past her, but she doesn't seem quite able to shake herself into either picking something or moving along herself.

b. The Zoomies - mid-March, OTA

It's been several weeks of adjustment, and the idea that Chell doesn't need to be running for her life and probably isn't going to be put into cryosleep unexpectedly is starting to sink in. That hot urgency that propelled her through testing chamber after testing chamber is being replaced with a cool, prickly unease that never entirely goes away.

Unease, and boredom, particularly as the weather gets nicer and there's reason to be outside. Mid-March finds her in the park pretty regularly, despite the masses of pigeons, power-walking laps around the pond and the edge of the park. Occasionally -- very occasionally, and usually only if she thinks she won't be observed, because she's already gotten some odd looks for it from the locals -- her energy gets the better of her and she breaks into a sprint for a few dozen meters, her skirt fluttering indecorously and her jacket flapping behind her. Then she brakes to a walk again, breathing hard.

Who'd have thought that a whole town could still feel as enclosed as a salt mine?

Comments

The Wake-Up Call [closed to freakymagoo]

[aperturesubject0001]

The elevator hitches to a stop, the strains of the singing turrets still echoing faintly in Chell's ears. The hatch in front of her unlocks with a scrape and thunk of metal. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, preparing to step out of Aperture Laboratories.

Opens them, and finds herself staring at a ceiling. Waking up. Not for the first time. A generic ceiling, a comfortable bed, a cotton pillowcase. Her hands are folded on her stomach over the covers. She blinks foggily upwards, confused -- how'd she get here? Where's here? Did she get Party Escorted again?

She hasn't even noticed that the mattress has another weight on it beside her. Never having woken up next to another person, it hasn't really registered yet.

[freakymagoo]

Bucky doesn't get much sleep, even on his good days. And when he does, it's most certainly never on the bed. Sometimes he loses consciousness on the floor. Sometimes he's on the couch. The only time he's awakened on the bed, something's happened the night prior.

Eventually the sinking feeling of the too-soft mattress threatening to swallow him whole like sludgy quicksand wakes him up. And he definitely notices that someone is there. For a moment he's not sure he's in the same bed? But he recognises the room at least even though he hasn't yet noticed the updated photographs.

His hand slips under the pillow in search of his comfort knife, but it's under the pillow on the floor that he usually sleeps on, not under this one. He turns his head half over his shoulder silently. He can try to move very slowly, but there's no elegant way to get out of a soft bed without alerting the silhouette of the stranger lying there.

So he gets out quickly, making his presence known from the rustle of the sheets and the weight distribution shifting across the mattress. He lands on the floor on his feet with a quiet thud and grabs his knife, never once showing his back as he holds it close to his chest and glares at the offensive presence, panting lightly.

[aperturesubject0001]

The movement startles Chell; she half-sits up, propping herself on an elbow and oh holy shit that is a MAN WITH A KNIFE.

She inhales sharply in alarm and throws herself off the other side of the bed with a clatter. Unlike Bucky, she does turn her back on this new danger, because she's scrambling towards the nearest window. She bangs into the nightstand on her side of the room as she goes, knocking a framed photo onto the floor: a man with one empty sleeve, his remaining arm around a woman, both of them smiling brightly at the camera as the woman waves.

When she gets to the window she does look over her shoulder to see if he's following, even as her hands run over the frame to figure out the latch.

[freakymagoo]

That's-- not how this normally goes. Usually she'd be all over him (not in that way) trying to choke the shit out of him (also not in that way) or wrestle his knife out of his hand and turn it on him. Usually she would know that he's a fraction of the man he used to be, tired and used up and struggling along just trying to make it through each tiresome day.

His knuckles go white as his grip tightens on his comfort knife. Is this another test? He squints as he tries to make out her shadows groping around for the little window latch, making no movement towards her. He's too attached to his only form of defence to want to risk throwing his knife at her, especially given how vulnerable he's been since he got here.

Sure, he's got some height and a few pounds on her, but. It doesn't feel enough. Especially if she's HYDRA.

(It's always HYDRA. Even when it's not HYDRA.)

[aperturesubject0001]

Is this another test?

Chell's fingers find the latch, finally. She flicks it open, slams the window upwards with a rattle of glass, and takes a cursory look outside. Ten or twelve feet to the ground? Easy.

She's fully halfway out the window before it occurs to her that her feet are bare, and that usually she takes these falls in Long Fall Boots, aaaaand then she's overbalancing and crashing into the bushes below the bedroom window.

Ow.

Scratched and a little winded, she rolls out onto the lawn and sits up, shaking her head. The early morning light paints the street pink and gold and blue; the grass under her hands and knees is soft and green and fresh. Chell appreciates none of it. She looks back up at the window warily to see if the man with the knife is following her, barely noticing her surroundings just yet.

[freakymagoo]

Oh.

Oh she-- really went out the window?

He hears her land with a thud and somehow he thinks he might not be dreaming after all. Head tilting a bit, looking out the opened window, he doesn't go to check at the window. Instead, he turns to head downstairs, knife still clutched in his hand. He passes the photograph then and notices that it's different now. That she's in it. That they're both having a weird, artificial smile when people ask you to smile to take a photo, but not the kind of smile he would have produced at gunpoint. Which of course is strange since he doesn't smile.

Padding down the stairs quietly, still trying to make sense of it all, he has to leave his knife on the counter next to the door where he normally puts the keys to grab and turn the doorknob. Pushing the door open, he takes two steps outside but lingers in the doorway instead of approaching her. Scowl firmly affixed, glaring, but looking like he's all bark and not much bite for the moment.

"Who the hell are you." And what is she doing in that photograph, with him, in his fake house, with those fake clothes?

[aperturesubject0001]

He doesn't seem to immediately be following, so Chell turns to look at her surroundings. At the sky. Lightening over at the horizon, stars slowly fading, wisps of cloud scudding past. It's huge. She'd forgotten how huge the sky is. When was the last time she saw the whole sky? She saw the moon through the roof, but--

The man speaks behind her and she whirls around, alarmed. She doesn't see a knife, and at first glance, she assumes he must be hiding it behind his back with the other hand.

Who am I? she signs, blinking. Who are you? Where am I? Are you going to kill me?

[freakymagoo]

He doesn't need to know how to sign to be able to tell she's afraid of him. For now he reasons that it's a good thing. Even if she doesn't recognise him, the Soldier's reputation is a double-edged sword he's contended with for many decades. Rather she not fuck with him than launch straight into mind games.

He doesn't have much exposure to signing beyond military commands so he isn't able to understand everything she's trying to tell him. He is, however, very comfortable with silence. He doesn't respond, the rusted old gears in his mind groaning as they turn while he figures out what he should do next. She looks genuinely confused, but he doesn't trust her. Should he test her? Try to find some identification? Murder her on the front lawn?

Clenching his teeth, he decides against the latter. He should at least murder her quietly in the basement. No witnesses. No reconditioning program.

He leaves her standing there while he retreats back into the house. He should turn on the radio, check the pager thing. See if anyone's mentioned anything. While he closes the door, he doesn't lock it. Although hopefully she doesn't go wandering around too much if she decides to come back in... in a previous fit of paranoia he's booby trapped the back door and the basement entrance, various other doors and windows.

[aperturesubject0001]

It's almost twenty minutes before the front door opens again. In the intervening time, Chell has determined it is a) way too cold to be outside, b) extremely quiet on the street, and c) not entirely safe to go back into the house with the guy with a knife unless she's got something of her own. Options are limited in front of the house. She finally settled for prying an ornamental rock from the edge of the garden, and has it hefted in one hand as she steps carefully back into the house. It'll be just like a live fire course: if the turret spots you, you huck something heavy at it and sprint for cover.

If she doesn't see anyone in the living room, she'll start for the stairs. There should be clothes and shoes she can take in the bedroom, right?

But a framed photo on the sideboard catches her eye before she can get too far. A photo of her. A photo of her, and knife guy, posed at a party of some kind. Chell stops, arrested, and picks up the photo in her free hand to stare at it more closely.

a

[inaxorable]

Grocery shopping isn’t exactly Raskolnikov’s idea of a pleasant afternoon activity. It’s bad enough that he has to be out and about, surrounded by the American locals that aren’t capable of rational thought. It’s even worse that he has to be in this crowded store with glaring lights and strange foreign food. Even the sheer variety of things to eat leaves him reeling. The freezers have at least ten different types of meat alone!

He isn’t sure exactly what he should be buying, so he puts anything that looks familiar into the little wheeled cart the shoppers use to transport their goods. Cabbage, sliced bread, potatoes…a hearty meal. Much more than he’d been used to back home in Russia. Cart in front of him, he’s walking down one of the isles lined with freezers when he sees some sausages labeled as хот-доги. Those would go well with the potatoes, he thinks, and brushes past a woman standing in the way so he can grab a few packets.

There’s something strange about the woman, though. A tenseness in her body, a faraway look in her eyes. It’s a familiar expression, but not one he’s used to seeing on the townspeople. That piques his curiosity, and almost against his will, he sets the sausages in his cart and turns to her.

“Are you quite alright?”

[aperturesubject0001]

Chell starts as if she's been physically jostled, automatically stepping to the side and turning. That gets her out of the way of the freezer, but it also puts her back towards the wall. Is that better? She can't decide.

She signs in response, touching her thumb to her chest in a jerky motion. Even if Raskolnikov doesn't know sign, her posture doesn't exactly scream "I'm fine."

The expectation around here is clearly to play nice and not draw attention. She gestures at his cart and gives a thumbs up with a stiff smile. Potatoes! Nice. Great choice.

[inaxorable]

She shies away like some sort of frightened animal, and Raskolnikov can’t help but feel an odd sort of pity for this woman. At the same time, he thinks that understands, even if she is a complete stranger. He too is uncomfortable here, nervous and twitchy and paranoid. For different reasons, he assumes, but still. The point remains.

When she signs, he lets out a slow breath. That is like the hand symbols that the man who could not hear had used. He recognizes it, even if he doesn’t know what it means. He also doesn’t entirely know what she means by gesturing at his potatoes, but the forced smile she gives him immediately puts him on his guard. He doesn’t like smiles that don’t reach the eyes.

Still, it’s best to be polite, especially in public. The Americans already dislike him, and he doesn’t want to cause some sort of scene in this store. He returns her smile with an equally forced one of his own.

“Can you hear me?”

That’s the first thing to deal with. If she can’t hear him, he’ll have something of a problem on his hands — he doesn’t have anything to write on, and isn’t sure how he should go about communicating with her by other means.

[aperturesubject0001]

You know what, at least that's a question that she gets a lot. The normality of it is something to aim herself towards.

Shaking her head, she digs in her bag for her notebook. It seems to take forever to find her pen next, and her nerves start to ratchet up again at the thought that maybe she lost it. It's probably no more than a few seconds of scrabbling before her fingers close around it and she lets out a breath.

Flipping to the first page of the book, she shows it Raskolnikov.

MY NAME IS CHELL
I AM MUTE. I CAN HEAR YOU IF YOU SPEAK.
I USE SIGN LANGUAGE.
I LIVE AT [an address on Haven Street is written here]
I DON'T HAVE A JOB YET.

[inaxorable]

He squints at the page the woman — Chell, her name is Chell — shows him, brightening considerably when he reads that she can hear him. That makes things easier.

“Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov,” he says by way of introduction. “I haven’t seen you around here. Are you new to the town?”

[aperturesubject0001]

Chell blinks at him. If she could talk, she would say "Gesundheit." She tries to fingerspell the first part of all that so that she'll remember and gives up after R-O-D-E-O. Probably good enough, right? Not like he knows the difference.

What he does know is that she's new. Blinking, she nods and flips to a new page to write.

YOU'RE NOT FROM HERE ?

[inaxorable]

More hand signs, none of which he recognizes. She goes back to scribbling on her paper, though, so he waits for her to finish.

“No.” He isn’t sure if she’s asking because of his name, as foreign as it is, or because he had asked her first. “I’m from Russia.” Glancing around to make sure that nobody else is listening in on their conversation, he adds, “Saint Petersburg, 1866.”

If she is new, which he’s almost certain of, then it’s important that he gives her the time he’s from as well. If she’s one of the brainwashed Americans, then she won’t believe him anyways.

[aperturesubject0001]

Her eyebrows go up in surprise. 1866 is a long time ago.

I THOUGHT EVERY1 WAS FROM THE FUTURE

She glances around, mirroring his caution, to make sure nobody sees what she's written. (They are certainly being observed, or at least she thinks they are -- any glance their way from other shoppers feels like it's laced with suspicion, or at best nosiness.)

a

[wwrench]

If he had things his way, Wrench would simply fill a deep freeze with fish from a nearby stream or the shorn carcasses of whatever wildlife he can pick off from his own backyard. He's been warned, however, that it's bad form to firing off a gun in the neighborhood. Such activities might lead to the kind of kidnapping and re-education that several of those around him have already fallen victim to, and he's not in any great hurry to experience that particular welcome to Sweetwater for himself.

As a recently-confirmed bachelor and nearly feral excuse for a human being, though, the grocery store is no more familiar territory for the tall man. He walks the aisles with a sense of confusion mingled with disgust. Not everything is entirely foreign, but it all feels like it might as well be. He can open a can and set something to boil over the stove, or throw a packaged meal into the microwave, but his cooking skills have always begun and ended with the necessity of eating, and all this seems needlessly complex.

When he spots a familiar face he raises his eyebrows at the woman who seems so similarly frozen in front of the cold doors clouded with condensation. He steps up next to her and peers at her equally-empty cart.

You a shit cook too?

[aperturesubject0001]

Chell starts when he first gets her attention, stepping sideways, half like she's getting out of the way and half like she's trying to get a view of the exits. The ferality is strong over here by the frozen foods!

Oh -- Wrench, right. Chell lets out a sigh, relieved that she doesn't have to dig out her notebook, and shrugs.

I can turn on an oven and not burn the whole house down, but all that-- Waving towards the produce, the meat, the aisles of condiments and jars and cans and boxes. I'm clueless. I just want to microwave something. Shouldn't we have microwaves by now?

[wwrench]

Despite the obstinate chokehold Wrench appears to want to maintain on his own scowl, he does smirk a little at that. Almost. It comes out more like a derisive snort of hot air, but he shakes his head all the same. Evidently we have universal basic income, but no microwaves. Not that he had either back home, though Wrench is starting to realize how little money has ever meant to him, up to this point. It’s only now that he’s trying to play by the rules of society and keep his actions well within their margins of acceptability that he understands the need for cash on hand.

The tall man scowls at the shelves and shakes his head. Honestly? I’d do better with a campfire in the backyard than a stove. But I think the neighbors might take it as an act of aggression and cart me off. He doesn’t know why he lets this little fact slip; perhaps it’s just the ease with which the words tumble from his hands and are received by Chell. In any event, it’s a fact that’s not out in the world.

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh, a mountain man, wow.

She lifts her rising hand quite high at the end, up towards the top of his head: presumably not the first time in his life someone has joked about his height.

Why not run off to the woods?

Talking to someone seems to be grounding her a little, at least enough that when another person comes up to the freezer case, she doesn't jump like a deer, just moves aside and keeps signing to Wrench.

None of us belong here, anyway.

[wwrench]

Wrench watches as the wordplay transforms Chell’s response. Even though it’s his height most people notice first — the thing virtually everyone mentions, if they gather the gumption to acknowledge him at all — he smirks. This time he doesn’t even try to hide it. The sound is a lot clearer, and a lot more appreciative. The light reaches his eyes even when no smile crosses his lips, and for a moment he doesn’t look quite as pissed off as he usually does.

My partner is here too, he taps the tip of two outstretched fingers against their counterparts on his other hand, obfuscating the nature of the relationship. So there are two of them here, but what that means is left a mystery. Wrench doesn’t give the other one a name, just points to the side, an ungendered acknowledgement of the aforementioned. They wanted to leave as fast as we could, but I said no. It seems smarter to play along while we can. Try to figure out what’s going on.

[aperturesubject0001]

Oh -- Chell blinks, nodding, surprised at herself that she hadn't even considered that anyone here might have someone they were worried about. Sure, the last time she had an escape partner it ended in death traps, but maybe that was an outlier?

They sound smart, bluntly. What do you think is going on? You can't believe whoever is in charge brought you here for a nice vacation with cake and ice cream.

[wwrench]

Yes, Wrench ticks his fist agreeably, accepting the compliment on Numbers' behalf. It's not the first word that would jump to his mind when considering his partner's traits. He's brash, self-confident, and more than just incidentally bitchy. But he's smart, too, and Wrench still wonders sometimes if he should have listened better that first day and followed Numbers to the end of this godforsaken town. He'd been so scared that whatever had brought the other man back to life would lose its magic on the other end of that invisible boundary, though. He's still not sure how long it can manage to hold.

That train of thought is a direct line to self-pity, so he shakes it off and considers the question. No one's offered me cake and ice cream. Did you get cake? He feigns jealousy, then snorts again. We seem more tolerated than welcomed. It's hard to think they want us here.

[aperturesubject0001]

There's never actually cake, she signs, with a surprisingly bitter sigh. Usually it's a goddamn incinerator instead.

Then she snorts, turns to the freezer case, and rummages for a carton of ice cream to hold out to Wrench.

There you go. You don't even need to turn on the stove for it.

And this seems to have finally gotten her back to herself, enough to grab some frozen TV dinners out and drop them into her cart. That should keep her from starving to death.

The town might not want us here, but someone must, she continues. Unless we're just falling through wormholes or something.