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"Look," he begins, "not that I expect I'd find this convincing in your position, but -" and then the ground shimmers under them and half a second after that it's not there at all.
They fall.
The ground they hit instead is cold and muddy. The stars are exceptionally bright, and close overhead.
" - what?" says Ryan.
Alex doesn't answer him. Alex is looking out into the darkness, horrified.
Hugs do make everything marginally less awful.
M'sorry if it's weird to even talk this much about it with you, I just - I gotta talk to someone and you're the only person I can talk to who isn't Ryan or a dog, so -
Karen, if things help it doesn't matter - at all - if they're weird - also we're barely even talking about sex but if it would help to discuss it in absurdly explicit detail for some reason then we should do that, it's, you know, not like we're murdering a baby -
Yeah it seems pretty unlikely to help, especially since I'd be making everything up, but - in principle. Hug.
She laughs.
Yeah. I'll - figure something out. Probably. And if I don't I hear that panic attacks eventually end, so.
M'just gonna - cry for a bit more and then draw out a calendar so I can mark days and - think about how to do this.
Thanks. For saying it. Thanks for saying it a lot even though I should know it already. It - helps.
Hughughug.
M'really glad you're here. Insofar as that's a thing that makes any sense to say, given all of the - everything. But it'd suck a lot if I were here and you weren't.
I'm really glad I'm here. Hug hug. Not even complicatedly, this is - this is the thing I was supposed to get right, and didn't.
Yeah. I'm - not sure this is right or anything, but - I'm gonna kill him. I dunno if I could do it if you weren't here. But you are, and I'm gonna do it.
Eventually she stops hugging Alex and eats dinner and makes a calendar. She hasn't had a period yet here (which is, uh, good, she should actually probably ask for rags in advance of that, it's gotta be coming up), which means she has at least, what, fourteen more days? Probably a little more than fourteen more days.
In the morning she knocks on Ryan's door again.
"Hi. Uh, it's gonna be about another two weeks.
" - I think we should snuggle. At some point. Not necessarily now. But - maybe tonight or something."
"I'm... within the range of stress that I know how to deal with, at this particular moment. Which, um, I realize is not a very reassuring answer, but it's where I'm at."
"Oh. OK. Well, good.
"....d'you feel like building houses? Building houses is pretty OK."
"I guess I could build some houses. They're not secretly horrible houses where they keep their slaves, right?"
"Not that I know of. I could ask Alex. I think they're probably just houses, though."
"Just can't shake the feeling that if I don't check, with all of this nonsense around, I'll do something terrible by accident. - as opposed to on purpose, which I'm fine with, I guess."
"No, I get that. I am, uh, the sort of person who sometimes breaks into cars and government computers to check whether the government is doing unethical experiments on aliens. I'm mostly just not doing it now because - I am sort of offloading that part of my brain to Alex right now. I guess."
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