silentspringlogs | [ota] February/March Catch-All

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[ota] February/March Catch-All

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?

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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.

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.

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?”

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 ?

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.

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.)

She’s not one of the locals, then. That or she’s a very good liar. He much prefers the first option, though, and thus far none of the locals have pretended to be newcomers, so he’s going to assume she’s being honest. It’s easier that way.

“Not everyone,” he says simply. “Most of us are, as far as I know, but there’s a handful from before now.” Now being the middle of the twentieth century.

As though he hadn’t been the one to bring it up, he lowers his voice and adds, “it’s best not to talk too much about it, though. Bad things happen to people who step out of line.”

She leans in as he lowers his voice, and nods solemnly before writing.

DON'T WORRY I WON'T TALK

It's possible she's fucking with him. Her deadpan is pretty good, though. Hard to say.

As she's showing him her response, though, another housewife comes bustling up to the freezer case. Chell immediately hugs her notebook to her chest, stepping back, her self-consciousness flooding back. The housewife greets Chell with an overly loud "Hello there, hon," and a smile -- a smile that disappears when she glances at Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov glares right back at the housewife, not making any effort to hide his distaste. If she doesn’t conceal her dislike, why should he? It isn’t as though there’s anything he could do to make her like him, save perhaps change his name and pretend not to be Russian at all.

“Good day,” he says to the woman, folding his arms belligerently. She replies equally curtly, a sharp, dishonest greeting, and opens the freezer to grab one of the sausage packs he’d been eying.

Unable to resist antagonizing her, he pointedly turns away and says to Chell, “they don’t like Russians much here.” The woman makes a sound somewhere between a cough and an offended gasp, but he ignores it. “The war with Russia has all of the Americans in a foul mood, you see.”

And now Chell is faced with a dilemma: follow Bucky's advice about pretending to be a God-fearing American, who apparently should dislike Mr. Rodeo? Or follow her own inclination to band together with a fellow outsider and do the opposite of what she's told, just because she's been told?

It's hardly a choice, when you get right down to it, of course. Chell glances from Raskolnikov to the local, reaches out to grab Raskolnikov's wrist, and tugs him away from the freezer. Fuck the locals. And fuck shopping. (Easy for her to say, with her empty cart.) Maybe they can go talk outside, if it's not too cold, and let the townsfolk be judgmental if they want.

He gives his abandoned shopping cart with its cabbage and potatoes a morose glance as she drags him away, though he can’t bring himself to be upset with Chell. It isn’t her fault that the townspeople are all horrible (and incredibly suspect, in his humble opinion). Still, he doesn’t love the fact that he’ll have to return to the supermarket later, with its confusing foods and irritating customers, and his mood significantly sours.

Chell yanks him along until he manages to get in control of himself enough to free his wrist from her tight grasp, and he pulls it free as they pass the registers. He jerks his thumb at the doors, and says with more force than is strictly warranted, “Outside.”

His annoyance seems entirely warranted to her, though she's pretty sure it's all directed at the woman they left behind. Outside, she scribbles on her notebook.

FUCK THEM

Okay, Chell, very supportive but maybe not super helpful in the long run.

Okay, fine, he laughs when he sees the swear.

“Yeah. Fuck them.”

The smile fades, though, when he realizes what she’s done. Antagonizing the locals? It’s hard to say whether or not that’ll get her an appointment with the good doctor, but it definitely will make her life harder. “You shouldn’t have done that.” Before she can respond, he holds up a hand. “They don’t like me because I’m Russian, but they have no reason to dislike you. Well. Until now.”

Don't care, she signs with a shrug and a grimace.

THEY IGNORE ME

Sometimes pointedly, sometimes not. At least that's what it feels like to her -- and it hasn't occurred to her yet that acting out might remove that convenient invisibility, rather than be hidden by it.

AND I'M AMERICAN I'LL BE FINE

“They ignore you now,” he says. “They might not if you keep this up.” He shouldn’t even be saying this. What does he care, if the locals dislike her? It isn’t as though it impacts him! If she wants to be foolish enough to be seen with one of the dreaded Russians, so be it. It shouldn’t bother him.

It does bother him, though. He isn’t sure why.

“Besides.” A smile breaks across his face, cold and cruel and humorless. “I know for a fact that they’ve been re-educating Americans. That isn’t enough to protect you.”

Re-educating is one way to put it, yes.

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[ota] February/March Catch-All

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sorry for the delay!

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