sixthiterationlogs | think it over

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think it over

WHO: Vasquez
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: October 10
OPEN TO: Stephanie Brown
WARNINGS: Mind Sharing

If you ask Vasquez, everything happening so far this month has been a headache. People are shouting and confused, there's talk about things he doesn't understand, and the idea of sharing your thoughts and mind with anyone is enough to make him glad that he mostly spends his days hiding out and smoking when he isn't getting his lay of the land. He thinks maybe it would be a good time to start heading out to the fields and tending to the animals when he heads downstairs for the day, but it turns out his luck isn't so good.

Truthfully, his luck hasn't been very good for a long time, but now it's just rearing its unlucky head again.

It's on his way down that he bumps into Steph, grimacing when he thinks he hit something on his device. When he goes to check it, he's cursing in Spanish in his head, because this isn't what he'd meant to do and he thinks maybe he's already on thin ice with her, which means that this isn't something that he needs right now.

"Sorry," he says bluntly, even as those thoughts flicker in his mind. "Did I hurt you?"

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Steph is lost in her thoughts (as she so often is these days) when someone just about slams into her. They can't have seen her at all, judging by the force. She looks up to see who it was and finds a very disgruntled looking Vasquez muttering Spanish under his breath.

Fortunately the ice he's on with her is actually quite thick, and she only raises an eyebrow.

"Nah, you're fine." Wait, she thinks, he was speaking English. Why did I think it was English?

He gives Stephanie a wary look when he hears the flit of words through his head that sounds like she's wondering about the language he's speaking. All that being fine goes away quickly after this, because he's not sure what's happening.

Of course I was speaking English, I only speak Spanish when I don't want someone to understand me.

Only, then, he looks at her warily. "What did you just say?"

That thought confuses her, and it takes her a moment to remember what she did just say.

"Uh... you're fine?" How much Spanish does she know, anyway? ¿Buenos dias, cómo estás?

There's the alarm in his head again, because he'd heard the words from her mouth, but he also heard the ones when her mouth hadn't been moving and that's a very not-normal thing.

¿Puedes oír mis pensamientos? he thinks at her, the question of whether she can read his thoughts blunt, in Spanish, and if the answer is yes, then he's going to suddenly be alarmed.

She's frowning vaguely in his direction and he's looking vaguely concerned in hers and this is all very strange and uncomfortable. We should be talking, right? Like normal human beings? And yet the question that comes first to her mind is,

"What's 'pensamientos'?" It's been more than a year since her last Spanish class.

"You can read my head," he says, or thoughts, but she's inside of his head. Vasquez takes a step back from her, like somehow this strange thing happening to both of them is only her fault, even though he knows that's probably not true.

"I asked if you could read my thoughts, only, in Spanish," he says, but he's grateful to know that because she can't understand Spanish fluently, he can probably still think safely. "Why can I read your thoughts?"

Isn't 'head' cabeza? But no, he means head as in thoughts. If she ever gets home she should really brush up on her Spanish. Just because it isn't a GED requirement doesn't mean it isn't a good, practical skill to have.

"Dunno," she answers with a small shrug. "Why can you read mine?" And how long before I think of something really weird? Don't think about pink elephants, don't think about pink elephants.

"Thoughts," he says, and grimaces, because he wishes that he could just use Spanish all the time in his head and not have to translate and delay himself for English. Fucking Americans, he thinks, and their race to take over everything they see because they're assholes.

"I don't think pink elephants are real," he tells her, with a sinking sensation in his stomach that something bad is happening now.

Fair, she thinks, with regards to the comment about Americans.

"They aren't. But now all I can think about is pink elephants." Which was the point. Better pink elephants than thinking about the horrible way she died, or Japanese tentacle porn, or memes.

That didn't take long.

"This is so weird. It's like having two different conversations at once."

His head already hurts and Vasquez isn't sure why this is happening. Nothing has happened to him like this before, which means that it's something he doesn't know how to deal with. You can't exactly shoot a problem that's making you talk to another person.

"All I can think about now are pink elephants," he complains, even though he knows there's worse things. "Can you think of something else?"

"I'm not sure that's a good idea..." Listen, Vasquez. She is a modern teenager. Her mind is a dark and dangerous place. A place which manifests her anxiety about thinking weird stuff as thoughts of tentacle porn, followed immediately by memes about tentacle porn.

"What, you want to try my head instead?" he suggests, with an equal level of incredulity. He's not so good with restraint, which is how his brain drifts from pink elephants to horses, to Red Harvest and his painted war horse, the liver Sam Chisolm ate, and a flurry of blood and bullets.

And then, grief, just a flicker, as his mind flashes over how he'd found Faraday's body in the field. He moves on before it digs in deep, but she'd have seen or heard it.

"See?" he says hoarsely. "No better."

Blood, bullets, bodies. Steph's body goes rigid for a moment, which might have gone unnoticed if they weren't reading each other's thoughts.

She remembers watching from above as some 12 gang leaders and their bodyguards open fire on each other, shots resounding in the wide alley, all but two of at least 25 dead on the ground less than a minute later. She remembers smelling smoke, seeing the glow of fires in the distance, shots fired on the streets, gang kids dying, civilians dying, ambulances overturned. She remembers a man she didn't know, her only chance to put an end to the gang war, his throat cut two feet from her face, his blood seeming to burn even through the mask on her face. She remembers a blur of blades, blood, electricity, a power drill, and a terrible face like a burnt skull grinning and laughing as he tore into her again and again for what felt like weeks.

Her breath comes back a moment later with a force like escaping the ocean moments before drowning, but she knows it's too late.

"I should go," is what she says, sounding more confident than she feels as she turns to do exactly that. What she's thinking is you're so pathetic. All of a sudden you can't handle a little blood? It's not like you've never been shot at before. Jesus, Steph, get it together before something really bad happens.

It looks like it's not just him that has a history with violence. He's a little impressed and now he's thinking about their conversation in the water. He thinks maybe she knows more about work and violence than she does about fun, squinting at her as he rides through the thoughts.

"How do we turn this off?" he asks, voice a touch hoarse given how serious the thoughts he'd felt and seen were. "You shouldn't just go off until we can do that, I wouldn't want you getting any of this when you don't expect it."

She stops short, because he makes a good point, but doesn't turn around. Stupid, she thinks furiously, no longer in any semblance of control over her own internal monologue. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stop. Breathe. Use your brain for once in your goddamn life.

"I don't know," she admits grumpily. It's better than sounding shaken, which she is, badly. "It didn't start until we bumped into each other. Maybe we have to do that again." Or you could start a fight and hope one or both of you end up unconscious.

When they'd bumped into each other, what had happened? He's trying to think about that, now. He also is thinking about the fact that she seems not so well, which is his priority to think about. Come sit down, we'll think about something together, he coaxes, and his mind is already thinking about rustling grasses on the trail, of sunsets and the drive of cattle in the midst of nature.

It's a calming, soothing thing. Until they can figure out what's happened, he thinks it's a good thing to fill his mind with.

Steph is most assuredly not well. Great, she thinks sarcastically. Now He’s tryong to comfort me. Somehow I don’t think babysitting a teenager was part of his plans for today. But she nods, and moves robotically to the nearest chair.

He can hear all of this, she remembers with another wave of shame. I should probably apologize for that. But she doesn’t. She’s too deep in her own self-loathing to care.

I can hear it, yes, he reminds her, but he also tries to make sure she hears the part where he doesn't actually mind the fact that he's sitting here with her. After all, maybe he understands her a little better now. He's seen bloodshed and battle, he knows what it can be like.

Settling into a crouch beside her, he leans onto the arm of the chair. "When did all that happen, the things you were thinking about?"

She looks away, reluctant to connect on any level other than the one they're stuck with. His question takes some consideration. How long have I been here?

"Two and... a half months ago, I guess."

That's much more recent than Vasquez's, thanks to time jumping from his time in Cadelle, but he still understands. He still feels the ache in his arm, he still dreams about the bodies, he still feels the pangs of grief. You shouldn't just lock it away. Nothing good comes of that.

"Maybe you talk about it?" he says. "With someone you know?"

I should be dead. What does it matter? She's fine with being alive, as things go, but mostly insofar as things don't physically hurt. The guilt and the nightmares feel more like penance.

"Yeah." Jason, she thinks, Kat. But what else is there to talk about? I watched people die because of me, then I was tortured and killed by a fucking psychopath. That little spark of fury that Jason freed in her weeks ago rises up to engulf her for a moment. She remembers having Black Mask pinned, a gun in his face. Why didn't she pull the trigger? She should have pulled the trigger.

The anger turns inward again almost as fast.

"I hate this. I hate being like this."

"I'm supposed to be dead, too," Vasquez replies, even though he's not so sure if that's true or not. All he knows is that during the last battle, in Rose Creek, he hadn't expected to live past it. He did, though, and he's here.

Some men, they're evil. It's not your fault what they do. He thinks that as firmly as he can in her direction, having come face to face with psychopaths recently, including McCann, who'd started the beginning of the end for Faraday.

"You don't seem so bad to me," he points out.

Her eyes, aimed pointedly in the opposite direction from him before, turn down to the floor now as the anger is replaced with something like defeat. Wishing she could stop herself Steph remembers a computer she wasn't supposed to be on, a point to make, a letter carefully delivered to each gang's lieutenant, watching from a balcony as one by one the now-dead leaders assembled to ask each other who the hell called them here. One man, holding a cigarette, reaching into his coat, shouting, shooting. A point disproved. Voice after voice, one woman, one girl, one man, one boy, telling her to go home, just go home Steph, didn't I tell you to go home?

Her whole body slumps as she remembers that dreadful moment standing on a rooftop overlooking the ghastly scene, multiple fires, police helicopters, sirens everywhere, gunshots everywhere, screams everywhere, the terrible, crushing knowledge that it was her fault, and the one desperate thought repeating in her mind: Nobody was supposed to get hurt.

Why can't she keep it to herself? Maybe if she was stronger, if she was better, she'd have more control.

"You don't know me," she all but whispers.

"I'm in your head, and you're not so bad," Vasquez counters, tapping his temple to remind her that it's not about friendship right now. Right now, it's just two people who happen to be survivors who are sharing thoughts. That's all that it is.

He gives her a kind smile, feeling how very young she is compared to him in a way he didn't before.

"Do I have to know you to make you want to feel better?" he counters. "You saw inside mine, you know I understand violence and death."

She glances briefly in his direction, then away again. He does make a good point, about understanding violence.

“You ever mess up that bad?”

All that he can do is think about the wanted poster with his face on it and the $500 dollar reward that's waiting for him. He thinks about it loud and clear so that she can see just how much he'd made a mess of things.

He'd let his anger get the best of him and it had cost him his freedom and probably his life, if he'd stayed back. "See?" he points out. "Plenty of mistakes for me, too."

She sits and thinks about that for a long moment, no conscious thought aside from the image of a $500 bounty. She doesn't know the conversions off the top of her head so she doesn't even try to translate it.

"I'm sorry," she says at last. "I don't want to- It's not like I think I'm the only person who's ever suffered." Especially not if you count all the people who lost friends or family because of me.

"I just... I don't know. I'm not really in control of myself anymore." A condescending male voice in her head says 'still think you're in control? How sweet.'

He can hear the voice in his head, like a muted thing, an underwater little sound that he doesn't entirely understand, but it's clear that she has demons of her own that she's fighting.

"Maybe instead of being in control, you need to let other people help you." Not him, he's thinking, because he barely knows her and she probably has plenty of friends who aren't responsibility-cowardly cowboys. "It's no bad thing, having to ask for help sometimes."

She screws up her face.

"Are you sure? Because it feels like it's awful." Then she manages a wry little half-grin, so he knows she's (mostly) joking.

'Hey Kat,' she thinks dryly, 'how would you like to babysit me and make sure I don't do anything stupid?' That'd be a fun conversation.

"I know Kat," Vasquez interrupts mildly, just in case she wants to stop thinking about that or if she doesn't want a mutual acquaintance to know about the thoughts. "Besides, you don't have to not do anything stupid, but then you have a person to help you when the stupid thing happens."

That's generally his motto in life. He doesn't think too much about things before he does them, which has landed him in a sticky situation or two.

She frowns a moment, trying to figure out if that made sense.

"Yeah, I guess so." Come to think of it, which she does now, I haven't caused any long term damage that I know of. She doesn't count Vergil, but she manages to keep from consciously thinking about that. Vergil is always pissy about one thing or another.

He nods, giving her an assured look now that he thinks that he's settled this once and for all. He probably hasn't, he's really only spackled some paint on the issue, but it feels like fixing. "See?" I'm a very smart man, he thinks smugly, and as he talks, he notices the devices.

Of course they would do it. Gesturing to hers, he thinks maybe they must have bumped or done something when they'd collided. Do you think maybe this turned out thinking thoughts on?

Steph looks at hers in confusion. It only says the time and date. When she opens it up, though, she finds a new app.

"What's this?" She points it out to him in case he doesn't have the same thing.

He shrugs, because he really doesn't ever look at the devices so much as he knows they exist and they're there. So he gives her a confused look and thinks about how her guess is better than anything he's going to offer, because he's not exactly a technology magic man.

"I don't know, it's our watches? Maybe it does something. I don't understand it to begin with, so maybe now it's doing more."

Well he's no help. She pokes around with the app until she finds a very big clue: the words 'Connection Established - Vasquez'.

"Okay, what the actual hell." At least there's a 'cancel' button, which she promptly hits.

"That's what did it, I'd say."

Vasquez waits a moment, then when nothing is in his head, he lets out a sigh of relief, even going so far as to murmur under his breath in content Spanish. "Not to say you aren't very nice," he says when it becomes clear what it might look like.

"I just don't need anyone hearing my thoughts." He's also very sure that she wouldn't want that, either.

Steph snorts a laugh. She's glad that the Spanish is outside her head now instead of in.

"Oh I think we're way past making excuses to get away from each other." They've shared way too much space for way too long already.

He tips his head in deference to her, knowing that maybe it'll seem rude or like he just wants to get away, but it's what he feels. This isn't a situation he wants to stay in, not for very long.

"In that case, next time I see you, I hope we only talk about weather or something else very ridiculous." Nothing as heavy as they did this time, that's the hope.

"The weather," she agrees fervently, "for sure." She's actively planning on it now.

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think it over

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