"What are you doing with those socket wrenches, Alexandra?" came his question, neutral as ever.
She was building him a new ride. A better one, one that didn't have to go so slow and could outpace crazies who tried to fire off a shot at her daddy when he went down the street. From scraps she'd hauled out of the junkyard herself. Pleased, and perhaps missing warning tension in his stance, given the fact she'd wedged her head and half her upper body under the hovercraft, she started, "I'm--"
"Shut up and get out from under that piece of trash. You're a lady, not a fucking mechanic's whore."
It was usual to hear her upstanding father say nasty things when the cameras were off. Under the auspice of his words, she'd watched her sisters and half-sisters go from making decisions to playing dress-up and leaving forever with men, women, and aliens who'd made her nose wrinkle. Why would someone want to move in with a person who wasn't very nice? Even if they were nicer than the man who towered over her grease-streaked face with a scowl that could turn into a smile his family never saw outside of the vidfeeds, that brought entire continents and poverty-riddled, rioting moon-bases to heel?
But it was the first time since she'd discovered tools that he'd nosed into her private affairs. Which meant she, too, was probably heading for the dresses and due for an absconding via stranger. Unfortunately for her father, that was a life young Alex had decided she had no interest in--and he'd waited too long to begin focusing on molding her into anything that might resemble a meek, obedient waif.
"It is not trash," she said quietly, her head hanging low over knees brought up to her chest, red hair scraping free of its clip to drape over her like a shroud.
"Did you just talk back to me?" He reached for her arm and hauled her up, her back smashing against the hood of what would have been his hover. "What did you say, Alexandra?"
"I said," she said with far more force, and this managed through the hiss of unfamiliar pain that she realized must be another part of having his attention, "it is not trash!"
She regretted ever trying to build it for him, though, and had she had it to do over at this point, she would have made it slower and more laser-susceptible.
In her temporary unconsciousness, she would thrash weakly and then go preternaturally still at this point of the dream/memory, because here her 8 year old self had rebelled against the family's system for the first and last time before her eventual grand escape--or rather, before the Agency "relocated" her. She'd flailed as any child would in a temper, except her hand still clutched a spanner and thus she swung it toward his head while yelling something about doing what she liked and not marrying anyone who didn't think she'd made a fucking piece of art. His fist didn't plow into her nose until she cursed.
When she came to, it was on something that cushioned her like a cloud--not at all the biotank she was used to after that part of the memory.
Not at all the Diem Vuong, unless they'd moved her for a different kind of torture. Well, they weren't going to get anything new out of her than the memories she'd already fraggin' shared...
Alex rasped in a breath, blinking blearily to take in her surroundings as she struggled past memories of her father and his staff's attempt to create a sycophant out of a daughter who, once noticed and discovered inept at every single fraggin' thing they'd thrown her way--except metal and wires and tinkering and tools--and despite how very, very hard she tried, was marked a lost cause. Better to have never been noticed at all, happily tinkering, than to have been put through the increasingly disappointed expressions and increasingly creative methods of berating. It had taken the Agency a long time to get her to show confidence in her work--but once it emerged, there she excelled.
...the ceiling was higher overhead and far more open-plan than it should be. The overall aesthetic wasn't sterile and pristine and spotless-military, either. She couldn't have been moved to someone's personal quarters so where...
Her head swiveled restlessly to the side, taking in piles of junk and sprawls of things, and it took her a moment for her eyes to communicate to her brain what--who?--was sitting in front of her. And then a moment longer for the past several hours to reconnect to her short term memory. Which hastily shoved her damaged past back into its box.
She wasn't lying dead at the bottom of a maintenance shaft, nor had she been shot.
That was nice.
"Ya mus' be Cat'n. K. Puh! Tunnn." Swallowing was difficult.
Everything was difficult. Her chest felt like it had been squeezed in a vise. Her back felt less like it lay in a trough of fire than usual though. That was nice, too.
"Shinnny." She tried swallowing again. Words came out a little better, but she couldn't tell if she was imagining herself speaking slowly or if it'd actually come out that way. "Thisumm drek, eh?"
Whether that was in reference to the disaster area of a--living area? Common area? Bio-hazard waste deck? How did one person go through so many cigarettes?--she now found herself in, her unintentional rescue from the Diem Vuong, the wreckage of said ship, or the voyage that led her to this point...she'd leave that up to him. Probably if her brain was working right, she'd have applied it to all of the above.
Shaking her head, she froze as the room coalesced around her, wavering in then out like some sort of multicolored gravity function was in play. Then slowly she faced--him, her, it? Stars, she had so many questions and her throat would not work right!--again and made a motion that she thought was universal for drinking but in her present state missed the mark entirely in a decidedly vulgar manner. "Alex," she said, though her ears had to be malfunctioning, because she could have sworn her own voice had drawled out, "I lick. Ssss--" and was cut off only by the unfortunate fact that moving her arm had made her back remember how very much life on her prior method of transportation had sucked.
She was building him a new ride. A better one, one that didn't have to go so slow and could outpace crazies who tried to fire off a shot at her daddy when he went down the street. From scraps she'd hauled out of the junkyard herself. Pleased, and perhaps missing warning tension in his stance, given the fact she'd wedged her head and half her upper body under the hovercraft, she started, "I'm--"
"Shut up and get out from under that piece of trash. You're a lady, not a fucking mechanic's whore."
It was usual to hear her upstanding father say nasty things when the cameras were off. Under the auspice of his words, she'd watched her sisters and half-sisters go from making decisions to playing dress-up and leaving forever with men, women, and aliens who'd made her nose wrinkle. Why would someone want to move in with a person who wasn't very nice? Even if they were nicer than the man who towered over her grease-streaked face with a scowl that could turn into a smile his family never saw outside of the vidfeeds, that brought entire continents and poverty-riddled, rioting moon-bases to heel?
But it was the first time since she'd discovered tools that he'd nosed into her private affairs. Which meant she, too, was probably heading for the dresses and due for an absconding via stranger. Unfortunately for her father, that was a life young Alex had decided she had no interest in--and he'd waited too long to begin focusing on molding her into anything that might resemble a meek, obedient waif.
"It is not trash," she said quietly, her head hanging low over knees brought up to her chest, red hair scraping free of its clip to drape over her like a shroud.
"Did you just talk back to me?" He reached for her arm and hauled her up, her back smashing against the hood of what would have been his hover. "What did you say, Alexandra?"
"I said," she said with far more force, and this managed through the hiss of unfamiliar pain that she realized must be another part of having his attention, "it is not trash!"
She regretted ever trying to build it for him, though, and had she had it to do over at this point, she would have made it slower and more laser-susceptible.
In her temporary unconsciousness, she would thrash weakly and then go preternaturally still at this point of the dream/memory, because here her 8 year old self had rebelled against the family's system for the first and last time before her eventual grand escape--or rather, before the Agency "relocated" her. She'd flailed as any child would in a temper, except her hand still clutched a spanner and thus she swung it toward his head while yelling something about doing what she liked and not marrying anyone who didn't think she'd made a fucking piece of art. His fist didn't plow into her nose until she cursed.
When she came to, it was on something that cushioned her like a cloud--not at all the biotank she was used to after that part of the memory.
Not at all the Diem Vuong, unless they'd moved her for a different kind of torture. Well, they weren't going to get anything new out of her than the memories she'd already fraggin' shared...
Alex rasped in a breath, blinking blearily to take in her surroundings as she struggled past memories of her father and his staff's attempt to create a sycophant out of a daughter who, once noticed and discovered inept at every single fraggin' thing they'd thrown her way--except metal and wires and tinkering and tools--and despite how very, very hard she tried, was marked a lost cause. Better to have never been noticed at all, happily tinkering, than to have been put through the increasingly disappointed expressions and increasingly creative methods of berating. It had taken the Agency a long time to get her to show confidence in her work--but once it emerged, there she excelled.
...the ceiling was higher overhead and far more open-plan than it should be. The overall aesthetic wasn't sterile and pristine and spotless-military, either. She couldn't have been moved to someone's personal quarters so where...
Her head swiveled restlessly to the side, taking in piles of junk and sprawls of things, and it took her a moment for her eyes to communicate to her brain what--who?--was sitting in front of her. And then a moment longer for the past several hours to reconnect to her short term memory. Which hastily shoved her damaged past back into its box.
She wasn't lying dead at the bottom of a maintenance shaft, nor had she been shot.
That was nice.
"Ya mus' be Cat'n. K. Puh! Tunnn." Swallowing was difficult.
Everything was difficult. Her chest felt like it had been squeezed in a vise. Her back felt less like it lay in a trough of fire than usual though. That was nice, too.
"Shinnny." She tried swallowing again. Words came out a little better, but she couldn't tell if she was imagining herself speaking slowly or if it'd actually come out that way. "Thisumm drek, eh?"
Whether that was in reference to the disaster area of a--living area? Common area? Bio-hazard waste deck? How did one person go through so many cigarettes?--she now found herself in, her unintentional rescue from the Diem Vuong, the wreckage of said ship, or the voyage that led her to this point...she'd leave that up to him. Probably if her brain was working right, she'd have applied it to all of the above.
Shaking her head, she froze as the room coalesced around her, wavering in then out like some sort of multicolored gravity function was in play. Then slowly she faced--him, her, it? Stars, she had so many questions and her throat would not work right!--again and made a motion that she thought was universal for drinking but in her present state missed the mark entirely in a decidedly vulgar manner. "Alex," she said, though her ears had to be malfunctioning, because she could have sworn her own voice had drawled out, "I lick. Ssss--" and was cut off only by the unfortunate fact that moving her arm had made her back remember how very much life on her prior method of transportation had sucked.
Dreams come in a size too big so we can grow into them.
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