makingitworse | The Last Voyages: Inbox

makingitworse

Hi, this is Bob. Leave a message if you want to.

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From:

makingitworse

"Yeah," he has to agree. "It is. Also a lot less awkward. Do you usually get paired up with... complete strangers like that? The Admiral doesn't, um, focus on people you already know...?" Not that he has too many of those, but still.

From:

musicdied

"For the temporary pairings?" Yelena asks, head canting slightly. "It's pretty common. I only met one of mine before we were paired for the month, and only once. If you mean the flood, those are a lot harder to predict, but usually if you're stuck with one specific person for the whole thing, it's going to be your warden."

From:

makingitworse

"Well. Hopefully there won't be another one of those for a while. You said next should be either a-- breach or a port, right?" He might have been kind of overwhelmed at the time, but he still remembers.

From:

musicdied

"We had a breach just before you got here," she says, with a small grimace at the memory. "So we should be making port next month. With any luck, it will be somewhere we can get out and stretch our legs a bit, and meet people who have never heard of the Barge."

From:

makingitworse

"Are there ports that... aren't like that?" Bob asks. A port should just be a city or at least a village with a dock, right? Or-- maybe it's different for magic spaceships. Maybe they go to weird bubbles in space full of alien manta rays or death lasers. Or both.

From:

musicdied

"'Port' is used a little bit loosely here," she replies, with an apologetic little shrug. "It's shorthand for stopping in an actual physical place. Sometimes it's a town or a city, sometimes it's wilderness. Not quite a year ago, the Admiral dumped us on another, bigger cruise ship so he could do something with the systems here. And didn't bother to check the weather, so the entire thing capsized after the universe's largest surprise tsunami. We ended up spending a month with space pirates, which is not nearly as fun as it sounds."

From:

makingitworse

"Living here sounds really weird," Bob admits, trying to imagine all that. "I mean, I've been a lot of places, and seen a lot of things, and none of them were even a close to this one. And I've only been here a week."

From:

musicdied

"It is so weird," she agrees. "And the way it cycles, you sometimes start to get used to it for a little while, and then something absolutely ridiculous happens, and you remember again that no, this really is incredibly strange."

From:

makingitworse

"You really were okay?" he has to ask, after a beat, because she'd looked so haggard in that video. And it's easy to lie in text.

From:

musicdied

"I felt like shit, but I was okay. I don't know how much the Yelena you met in the future told you about her life, but I do not handle compulsion well. So my warden and I were pushing the rules of the flood pretty hard to figure out just how much room we had, that first day." She pauses, and gives him a crooked little smile. "Plus I maybe went a little too hard on the tequila the night before. It's one of the dangers of girls' night."

Or of handling trauma and existential dread by drinking her feelings, but she's not about to admit that. Not when she gets the creeping suspicion that he'd blame himself for the choices the Admiral made.

From:

makingitworse

Oh, both those things make sense. (So would the existential dread, if he knew about it, though she's probably right about his sense of guilt.) And the explanation does make him feel better. "How far could you go? I didn't really... test it. I didn't want to make anyone even more uncomfortable." It was bad enough that they had to deal with him for so long.

From:

musicdied

"Not very far. About twenty feet before the shakiness started getting really bad." She shifts one shoulder in a shallow little shrug. "We might have had five, maybe ten more feet to work with before one or both of us passed out, but we aren't that stubborn."

Now. She would have been, if the flood had come at this time the previous year. Or, she thinks, any time before San Otrera.

From:

makingitworse

"I passed out," Bob says, since he'd been sure the whole start of things was just his brain playing tricks on him. It was after he understood (kind of) what was happening that he didn't stray from his temporary warden. "I didn't go looking for anyone when I felt the pull. So I'm glad you didn't. I don't recommend it." That's halfway a joke, really.

"You're feeling better now, though, right?" he adds. With the flood over, and no hangover, and all.

From:

musicdied

"I'm fine," she assures, straightening enough to draw an exaggerated 'X' over her heart. "I promise. But I think I should be asking you that question, if it knocked you out."

From:

makingitworse

"Oh, I hadn't slept the night before, that's all, and so I thought I was imagining things," Bob says, embarrassed but not so embarrassed that he won't share. "I woke up pretty quickly when Ulla found me. She took me back to her cabin and made me breakfast and explained what was going on."

From:

musicdied

"That is definitely part of the learning curve here," Yelena says, a little bit ruefully. "Getting used to the part where it's usually not your imagination, even when it makes no sense. It's good you got Ulla. She started here as an inmate, so she's better at explaining things instead of treating us like unruly children who just need to be quiet and follow orders."

From:

makingitworse

"Yeah, she was pretty nice," Bob agrees. "She showed up with her fish tail and had to change back when we got to her cabin." Because she's a mer-person. Even after three days stuck within a couple feet of her, he still finds that pretty cool.

From:

musicdied

"She made some magic charms to let people breathe underwater when we were on the cruise ship," Yelena shares with a little smile. "Probably they saved a couple of people's lives when we capsized, even if no one was expecting that to happen."

From:

makingitworse

"Did you know her magic works by singing?" Bob says with a slightly bigger smile. "She changed her tail into legs and made herself a new outfit and everything, just by singing."

From:

musicdied

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" Yelena replies, dropping back down to lean against the chair again. "There are a few people with some very interesting magic on the Barge. You know, I spent a while reading about magic from other worlds, after my first port."

From:

makingitworse

"Yeah? What did you find out?" He curls his arms on top of his knees, watching her with clear interest. Magic, after all, is not a thing he's ever really thought much about seriously. Superheroes just aren't the same thing. (He doesn't know about Doctor Strange's types.)

From:

musicdied

"That it's so different from world to world that calling it the same thing almost seems silly." She smiles a little bit ruefully. "Also that on a lot of worlds, it's something you're either born with, or you aren't. Or maybe on all of them, and it's just a very common trait on some."

From:

makingitworse

"Tell me about the most weird or interesting one?" he suggests hopefully. The he catches himself, feeling silly, asking Yelena for a story like a child. "Sorry, I mean, you don't have to."

From:

musicdied

"You don't need to do that, you know," she says, straightening to circle the chair and drop down into it, leaning forward a little with her elbows resting on her knees.

From:

makingitworse

He hesitates for a second. "Do-- what." She means apologize. He knows that's what she means. He's annoyed people by apologizing too much before, but he can't quite make himself stop, either. Not most days anyway.