August 12 | 10:45 PM | The holodeck, open to everyone.

[wise_ass]

It's late, but still a fairly respectable time to be up and about. He passes a few people on his way up to the holodeck but thankfully, when he gets to the door, he finds there's nobody else in sight. He lights up a cigarette and stands in the center of the dimly lit room, a blank page waiting impassively for his command. Bert takes a long, easy breath and sighs; the cigarette smoke is toasty, familiar, divine. The first one he's had in days.

"You wouldn't happen to know Mejis, would you?" he asks. His tone is polite-- it sounds like he's already forgiven the computer for not having the first fucking clue about where Mejis is, but before he can explain himself, the room has already started coming to life.

It flickers a few times through scenes Bert's not sure he recognizes as even from his world, but when it finally settles, he finds himself standing on one of the rolling hills overlooking the little town. The oil derricks, far over the hills to his left, are backlit by a fiercely beautiful sunset. On his right he can see a wide, treeless horizon that tells him he's not far from the Clean Sea.

It must have been a market day. The people below are packing up their stalls and loading up their carts. There's a tense moment where he's terrified he'll see something, someone he'll recognize before he realizes that the computer's brought him to a Mejis about fifty years prior to his ka-tet's infamous visit.

He heads down the hill and wanders a bit, trying to stay out of people's way, but enjoying, as he usually does, the novelty of secret immersion, not even minding when a woman gives him the obligatory small-town stink eye reserved for unfamiliar, unaccompanied young men. In fact, it makes him smile. It doesn't seem to improve her opinion of him any, but he can't help it. He walks through the market with that shit-eating grin, hands stuffed in his pockets, enjoying the alien quaintness of it all with a bizarre brand of contentment he figures can only be enjoyed by holidaymakers in other worlds.

He's in another world even now, though, isn't he? The station? The idea is an uncomfortable but not unwelcome knot at the base of his skull. He's spent nearly all of his time here doing penance, even if he hasn't realized it, but the last month has actually been penance in earnest. Bert had been drinking whiskey when zombi Alain had helpfully suggested he eat a bullet to better cope with his guilt, and mayhap it was a blessing, because the stuff just hadn't tasted the same after that. Or mayhap it was his own self-pity that didn't go down sweet anymore.

Cuthbert wasn't sure what he'd expected to feel, standing in the red dirt of Lower Market, surrounded by the smells and sights and sounds he's spent the last seven or so years trying to smother from memory. And mayhap it'd be different if he'd been dropped in at the right time and seen ole Kimba Rimer or Cordelia Delgado strutting through town. Mayhap.

But right now, the air feels clean, and somewhere a hundred wheels away, Cuthbert Allgood hasn't even been born yet. He closes his eyes and lets the idea sink in.

Behind him, the holodeck door opens, and he smiles-- that wide, idiot grin that says he's actually pleased for company-- and squints to see who it is.

"Hey there," he calls out, his voice warm and animated. "Just mind the cow pies."

Comments

[firstcylon]

Zoe knows it will end badly, even when there is hope. Even when Sue's dressed up and getting them out; it's clear in the way Bert speaks of the boy she killed. It's clear she paid for that, and they all paid for all of it. But it isn't until he explains Reaptide that there is a vague metallic taste at the back of her mouth (the taste of fear), an echo of what is suffusing her lungs.

It was her, she realizes, and feels locked inside of herself. You should have saved me, and flames were licking up her dress. Her Reaptide dress. Sacrifice.

She used to derez back to her safe place, right after Zoe had created her. She couldn't stand sacrifice, and it wasn't even fire.

But you can't derez out of reality.

She keeps listening, as he tells the story she guessed. She saw the ending, and her face in the flickering flames, sometimes replacing Susan's. She keeps listening, and lets him take her hands. She watches him, and she doesn't know what he sees in her face, she doesn't know there are tear tracks on her cheeks. She doesn't know what she's supposed to see inside herself.

When he quiets down, and he just looks at her, she pulls one of her hands from his, shifts, and reaches out to cup his face, on the side of his good eye, so he sees her coming. "Life makes murderers of us all," she says, but she can't recognize her own voice. There is Apotheosis, there is the last time she saw Ben and the pain of death, her first death, one that wasn't hers, and there is the first boy she kissed, not Original Zoe but her, and the sound his head made when it cracked against the wall.

She hasn't even realized it, but she's changed the landscape around them, to the arena in New Cap City, where she first met Tamara. The stands are empty, but the ground is as filthy as if there had just been an evening's fights. She doesn't know how many times they killed her before her angel saved her. Told her the words she needed to hear.

"Are you gonna lie down and pay for your sins?" she whispers, holding his gaze, her voice a perfect copy of her angel's. But she was perfectly alive. "Or are you gonna own yourself?"

[wise_ass]

Life makes murderers of us all, she says. She moves forward a little when she cups his face and he can see the sheen of tears on her cheeks, too.

He doesn't know what he's touched in her, can't even begin to guess, but for the moment all he can feel is gratitude that she didn't get up and walk away, or sit there with mute, naive pity. Maybe Zoe hasn't been showing most of her hand either, or maybe he simply didn't try enough with her, knowing that if he got to know more about her, she'd ask him for the same in return. Maybe a little of both.

There's a soft blur on the periphery of his vision that resolves itself rapidly-- the scene has changed, and they're no longer in a Hambry field but in what looks to Bert like an vast, empty arena, sitting in bloodied, dirtied sand bathed in a hot, white spectator's light. He begins to form the question where are we? but it dies as he realizes she's about to speak. The intensity of her gaze is almost harder to look at head-on than the spotlights.

"I'm not lying down in here, that's for damn sure," Bert says edgily, trying to break the tension. He's a little worried about Zoe, he's never seen her like this, and he feels responsible for whatever he's brought to the surface. His grip on her hand tightens. "I don't know, Zo'." He looks down, his hair falling into his face. "None of it matters anymore, not really. I can't forget any of it, but I'm not even alive in that world anymore. I couldn't be less relevant, and believe me, that's saying something. The only life I've got is here. I don't want to be anyone's goddamn soldier anymore. And frankly even being the old-fashioned guy is getting a little played out."

He cracks a smile then swallows, trying to reclaim some of the moisture back in his mouth. He's parched, can barely talk.

There's a dozen things he wants to say to her: he wants to ask what she's thinking, he wants to know what she thinks he ought to do with himself, he wants to tell her how much he misses his friends and how he's desperate to be close enough to some of the people here, now, to let them fill the roles that his tet once did. Mayhap some new ones, too. But it's not the right time. They could talk all day but that's not what either of them really need, not right in this moment.

His good eye still running over with tears, he reaches over and scoops her into a hug that's almost painfully tight, holding her head against his shoulder so he can put his face in her hair. It's not romantic, not in the usual sense, but right now he's tired of talking. He just wants to do something that might do for her what she's just done for him. Life makes murderers of us all. It's understanding, not forgiveness. Gods know he doesn't want to be forgiven for what he's done, not by Zoe, anyway. How could anyone forgive him? He doesn't know what she's done to call herself a murderer in stride, and he doesn't care. They're both hurting, and this feels like the only thing that can bridge the painful gap between them, filled by stories they won't tell, can't tell, the gap of completely different worlds and lives.

[firstcylon]

The embrace isn't quite right, but she lets him have it, if he needs it. That is part of being the consoler; being what people need you to be. She embraces him back, less fiercely than he is; warmly, instead. Her tears are not for herself, but for Ben, for Original Zoe, for Tamara, for Philomon, for Lacy, and for him.

She's found her path, even if she's been taken off of it. She knows who she is now, and she knows who she isn't. She still isn't aware that she unconsciously changed the simulation to have them stand in the very place where she had her epiphany, beaten, bloodied and killed, because she has her eyes closed, and she is letting him cling as hard as he needs. There's nothing to say for now, not until he feels that he can loosen his embrace. This is a moment without words; a moment of need.

[wise_ass]

Bert sighs and lets her go after a minute, but not before pausing to touch his forehead to hers.

"So... where the hell are we?" he whispers, side-eyeing the arena for a touch of comedy.

[firstcylon]

Zoe refrains from raising her head to press a kiss to his forehead, at first, and right when she's about to do that, he mentions their surroundings. She knows a split second before she sees it, straightening up in front of him and letting her breath catch in her throat again.

She lets it out in a whisper, "New Cap City. There were fights here." She pushes up to her feet, and holds a hand out to Bert, still looking around. "They liked to see blood."

[wise_ass]

Bert takes her hand and springs to his feet, giving his jeans a cursory dust-off.

"This is---" Not home. "This is where you were from?"

He wasn't sure how he'd pictured Zoe's world, come to think of it... but he hadn't pictured anything like this.

[firstcylon]

"No," Zoe frowns, "and yes." She turns to face Bert; it's about time she tells him. She doesn't want to let go of his hand as she does, but she's completely prepared for him to pull away.

This is so far from the kind of technology he knows; she is.

"There used to be another Zoe," she explains, holding his gaze, her voice unwavering. She is doing this. "She copied her mind to make me, a double, in a virtual reality. This place was one among many, in that reality. This body," she squeezes his hand gently, to emphasize what she means, and knows that this is when he might pull away, "was made by her parents - our parents - so I could exist in the material world. It's cybernetic." She isn't sure whether he knows the word, so she makes it as simple as she can, "A robot."