thisavrou_log | [ miles catch-all: one-way train to crazy town ]

Usually, Frisk is as far away from being a troublesome child as one can get. Oh, sure, they get into mischief and go poking at things they shouldn't, but they never mean any harm and always do their best to clean up whatever mess might result. The only fights they've been in are ones that got picked for them, and they're so constantly cheerful you could almost wonder if there's anything that can upset them at all.

But then, if you give any kid a pair of rocket boots...

The excited hollering is the only thing that preceeds the small blur zipping through the Moria's halls, a shrill stream of delighted laughter that can only lead to something going wrong. Frisk is nimble and coordinated enough to have figured out most of how to steer, but that doesn't mean they're amazingly precise. They only have a few moments of warning, spotting Miles up ahead, before they yelp and careen off to the side into a wall, turning off the thrusters and trying their best to tumble with the momentum.

"Look out!!"

Cordelia and Miles had planned to get dinner together in the mess hall tonight - a sort of family bonding meets get-to-know-you. After ten minutes of sitting in the mess hall alone, she's starting to get worried. Was Miles usually late? Certainly, she and Aral would have emphasized punctuality and respect for others, but maybe he was naturally a little scattered?

After fifteen minutes, Cordelia fires off a quick text message on her comm.

Miles, were we on for dinner tonight? Let me know you're all right, please.

Five minutes after that, Cordelia can't wait anymore. She walks back the way Miles would have come to the mess hall, the most direct route from his dorm. As she rounds the corner to his section of the hallway she spots him, and picks up the pace.

"Miles, did you--"

And then her brain catches up with her mouth and she realizes something is very wrong. Cordelia stops in her tracks, giving Miles a generous personal bubble.

"Miles?"

Recently, Lara's days seem evenly split between the Cargo Bay, mucking about with her army of small, largely useless robot vacuums and the library. She does have to say that the library does not feature this: the glittery, garish vehicle parked at one end of the cargo bay. Normally just something that she glimpses and briefly wonders at, but not a strong source of curiosity. She chalks it up to the mail and leaves it as it is.

Today's a little different. Her eyes track over the increasingly familiar sparkly bulk then snap back at a much more familiar figure dangling from it. Miles?

"What on Earth are you doing?" The question is softened by the warmth in her voice. The last time they spoke had been... difficult, but still, she's pleased to see him.

At some point Miles had decided he needed a glass of water. At some point in the last -- few hours? Minutes? Either way, he finds himself thirsty in his office, and then he finds himself with a glass of water in his hand in the corridor, and then he finds himself asleep.

Sort of. More like a waking doze, his eyes still half-open but glazed over, feet planted to the ground but he's swaying gently. It's only for a moment -- he's pretty sure, anyway -- and then there's his mother, giving him that concerned look that somehow looks exactly the same on her face now as it does twenty-some-odd years into the future. Miles blearily blinks himself back awake and his gaze focuses slowly on Cordelia. He looks -- well, he looks gaunt, with a day or two's worth of beard growth stubbled over his jaw. He blinks at her again in greeting, squinting slightly.

"Oh -- hello, Mother -- sorry -- didn't see you," he says, words tumbling with just the slightest slur. It sounds convincingly like someone who's had just a drink and a half at dinner, although Miles hasn't touched a drop. He rubs at one cheek absently, at the circles under his eyes. "What's up?"

Ah, now there's a voice he likes to hear. Miles is in the middle of mucking around with the undercarriage of the lightflyer, wearing a harness attached to a rig on to one wing of the flyer so that he can leverage himself vertically as needed, with no -- well, relatively little risk. The lightflyer isn't much bigger than your average two-person plane, but a fall from even that height would be bad news for Miles. He doesn't seem all that worried, though, with the way he's dangling at an angle just to get both hands in the undercarriage. But then he hears Lara and he swings away from the body of the plane with a neat little twist to face her, still dangling midair, but right-side up this time.

"Making improvements," Miles chirps, his face electric. It is obvious he has not had much sleep lately, but he's sharp and alert, grinning wildly. There is also something very...different about his voice. "Hello, Lara. Come here often?"

She returns his smile, but it's tempered with a growing concern. It's not just his voice, there's something off about him as a whole, enough that she's a little worried about him dangling from the wing of the flyer.

"Hello, Miles. I do, as it happens." She takes a few steps that would put her in his path should he fall. Their height difference isn't so great that she'd be able to catch him, but she might cushion it a bit at least. "What improvements are you making? Not adding to it's shine, I hope."

"Yes, that is definitely a good idea," Elizabeth mutters to herself, stretching her arms way above her head and then bringing her hands down to rub at her own shoulders. "Move all the encyclopedias today. In one afternoon. No, no breaks! None! God grants shelf space to those who move books to a different shelf."

This called for a lay down, obviously. Just for twenty minutes or so. That much physical labor called for a rest, at least. She heads straight for her comfy chair at the back of the library-- it has a pillow, and a blanket...

...and someone in it. Already asleep. And from the size of him, Elizabeth knows exactly who it is at a glance.

"Miles?"

"Good God, no. If I wanted to overhaul the detailing on this garish thing, I'd need a hell of a lot more than a toolbox." Miles waves his multitool at her, smirking. There's a kind of energy behind it that doesn't seem new, necessarily -- just uninhibited. "And don't think I haven't been tempted. I mean, it's just embarrassing."

If he's doing this Betan wildcat shtick deliberately, he's doing it wtih a totally straight face -- in a manner of speaking. Miles barely skips a beat before he wags the multitool at Lara and then raps it gently along the undercarriage.

"I'm just making things more exciting. Don't worry, I've done this before. Plenty of times. In fact, I could just about fly one of these things blind. In fact, I have."

He twists around on the line until he's upside down, just to grin wildly at her. "And what brings you down here at this late hour, Lara?"

When Elizabeth gets near enough, Miles jolts awake like a gun just went off right next to his head, looking wild-eyed. Was he asleep? Was he sleeping just now? His head feels like it's stuffed full of -- not cotton. Something else. He can't think of the word.

Miles blinks at her rapidly as if to clear his vision. Everything seems too bright, too sharp. Elena...? His look at her turns terribly confused, glancing around like he can't remember how he got here. He can't actually. Library, this is -- Vorkosigan House? It must be. But Elena Bothari hasn't set foot in Vorkosigan House in eight years.

His shoulders drop slightly, but none of the tension leaves his body, strung up like a wire stretched too taut. He looks at her in genuine bewilderment, a parade of emotions playing across his slightly-glazed face. "What are you doing here?"

It strikes her all as... Not wrong necessarily, but not him. She thinks back to the alley in Avelle, his eyes an electric current at the prospect of their potential expedition and amends: not the him she's become most familiar with.

"You know somehow finding out you've flown blind doesn't surprise me," she says, in response to his fast paced chatter and there's another difference. "I was feeling a bit restless. I thought I might come down and tinker a bit." She tips her head as she looks up at him, eyebrows raised, "You as well, I assume?"

The door to the kitchen opens and a motley assortment of pans and serving utensils floats in, all suspended by threads of red light. This isn't unusual; Wanda can make what should be several trips in one so this task normally falls to her.

What isn't normal is for someone to still be here so late. Everything floats to the counter and Wanda's about to start putting things into the dishwasher before she notices she's not alone.

"Miles? What are you doing here?"

Miles' jolt awake startles Elizabeth into taking a step back. He might have been Miles, but old habits regarding sudden movements die hard. But it appears she just snuck up on him and he responded how anyone would.

What makes her pause is the bleary-eyed and tense way Miles stares at her. Was he really that tired that he'd fallen into such a deep sleep in a chair?

"That's my line, Miles," she says with a concerned smile. "Not that I mind sharing my nap space, but I didn't know it was currently occupied."

Miles blinks at her again, but he refrains from reaching up to rub his eyes, instead just squinting at her as he rubs at his stubbled jaw. It's not right, somewhere along in here. Something's not right -- the words, the voice, the face -- Elizabeth's image shifts in front of him, in his mind, two overlaid images that don't quite match up... But his mind's too tired to try to tease out the differences. Miles frowns.

"Where's Baz? Why isn't he with you?" Miles blinks again, and mild alarm steals over his features. "Wait -- did something happen with the fleet? I didn't hear anything from Illyan -- you should've gotten word to Illyan first, you know that."

Miles just barely reacts in time, ducking down and to the side to get out of the line of fire -- Frisk just about grazes him with their rock boots as they tumble past, the soles still hot. Miles hisses at the heat -- more out of surprise than pain -- and claps a hand to his arm, but the fabric's still there, nothing burned through. He recognizes the kid, short brown hair, it must be Chara -- no, wait, someone else? Frisk's image flickers before him and he sees himself for a shadow of a second before it settles on a mostly unfamiliar face.

He's been in a hyper-alert daze for hours -- days? -- but that near-miss with Frisk sends his blood pumping into his ears, heart suddenly hammering in his chest as he goes tense, eyes sharp and too-bright. "Shit, kid," he breathes, gaze settling on Frisk even as the din of shuttle engines and the shouts of thousands roars in his ears, "are you alright?"

Miles's kitchen shift ended over two hours ago -- he should've eaten by now, should've sat down in the mess or at least exited the damn kitchen, but time seems to have passed in a blink and Miles doesn't even remember the din of the evening rush. Wanda's voice jerks him out of some waking catatonia and he finds himself on the floor where he'd apparently jammed himself in between a tall cabinet and one of the industrial-sized sinks. He lurches to his feet before the question's even really registered, and he blinks at her in bewilderment -- when did kitchen get so empty? -- and then glances down at his hands. Empty, too.

"Wanda," he says in slightly surprised acknowledgment, his voice a little thin, a little strained. "I, uh -- just came to get a snack, that's all."

He must have, if his hands are empty and he's not even really sure when the last time he ate was. Actually, he's not sure what time it is, so that makes it a little difficult to calculate. He looks like he could use a snack -- he looks like hell, actually, gaunt and thin and wet around the eyes, red-rimmed and a little puffy despite the dark, bruised circles underneath them.

"Owwwww..."

Frisk pushes themself back up gingerly, rubbing at their head and wincing slightly. No stickiness, but it definitely hurts and it takes a moment for their vision to come back into focus. Once it does, though, they scramble to their feet and hurry over to Miles with a worried expression.

"I'm okay! I'm really sorry, did you get hurt?" Dressed in their civvies as they are, the colors at least help to set Frisk apart from Chara more distinctly, but it's still a striped sweater with that eerily-similar face. Though that honest concern is hard to imagine from the other child.

Edited 2016-03-07 20:08 (UTC)

It doesn't take a mind reader to see through the lie or an empath to feel that something is really, really wrong here. But Wanda is both and her expression makes it obvious - she knows.

"There aren't snacks in the sink." But her tone is not unkind and she grabs one of the pans and brings it to him. Fortunately for Miles, there are a few leftover hand pies in it. Cold, but better than nothing.

She's watching him intently, probing for a better explanation. "I didn't see you at dinner."

"...Uh..." Where to start with all of that? Elizabeth instinctively looks around, even though she's fairly certain she didn't come here with anybody named Baz and knew of no one named Baz.

"Are you talking about the pilgrim fleet? Miles we left them behind weeks ago. And I'm fairly sure that I'm not with Baz because I don't know who that is, and I didn't tell Illyan anything because, again, I have no idea who that is either." There's a slight defensive note to her tone only because Elizabeth feels like she's being dressed down for not doing something she had no idea was asked of her. From Miles, no less.

"No," Miles concedes, almost meekly, although it'd only been half a lie to cover up a hole where a real answer should have been. He looks down at his hands again. What did he come in for? His kitchen shift? Sure, right, he worked that, he's sure of it -- at least it feels like he did, but the details are escaping him now. He reaches for one of the hand pies. That seems familiar. He's pretty sure he was helping to make these just a few hours ago.

"You didn't?" He frowns, brow creasing, and he rubs one tired cheek and is surprised to feel his fingers come away wet. Has he been crying? Oh, hell. That tired manner starts to transform into something just as tired but a hell of a lot twitchier. He'd rather leave before he starts getting drilled with questions like why were you crying and is there someone I can call, not the least because they're uncomfortable as all hell, but he's also not sure he has a good answer to either of them. "I, uh -- no, I didn't go, I guess."

That's odd...it's not all a lie; Miles honestly doesn't remember. Wanda frowns while she eavesdrops on his internal monologue, concern rising. These are not the thoughts of a person who is doing okay.

"We have leftovers," she tells him quietly. No questions, not yet. If she lets his train of thought continue, he'll tell her himself and not even know what he's done. So Wanda gestures and several more mostly-demolished dishes float over and hover in front of Miles, waiting.

"You should try to eat if you can."

"I've done plenty of things blind," Miles says with a glittering grin, still dangling upside-down. "I've done plenty more backwards, some things inside-out and upside-down, and hell, even one or two of 'em naked."

A laugh flashes across Miles's face like a firework as he holsters his multitool and turns himself back right-side-up. He grabs hold of the line and pulls himself up enough to seat himself on the wing and grin down at her.

"More like resettling an old score," Miles says, and tilts his head at her. "I never knew you were a tinkerer, Lara. What sort of tinkering?"

Miles is only hearing about one word in five and struggling to make the connections between them, looking more desperately confused the longer this goes on. Lines of distress crease his forehead as his brain spins rapidly, careening off course and back on and -- where is the track, anyway? He swore he was on it...

"Leave b-- Why did you leave the fleet behind? Is -- is Commander Quinn with them, at least? I could've sworn she was here with..." He looks around them too, distracted, chewing furiously on the side of his thumb. "I left the Triumph in Tau Ceta -- I think -- you didn't leave Tung hanging out there, did you? God, he's probably awaiting orders, I should touch base with Illyan -- I thought I'd have heard by now if the plan's changed -- Elena, please tell me you're here with good news..."

Miles suddenly feels a bit cornered by all the dishes hovering expectantly in front of him, and it about makes him twitch -- get a hold of yourself, boy -- he looks down at the hand pie he's holding and back up at Wanda. "I...think I'll start with this first, thanks."

He surreptitously wipes his eyes on his sleeve under the guise of covering a cough. Whatever he was crying about, his mind keeps shying away from it, and he's tired. He isn't really hungry, but he should eat, because if he didn't go to dinner then when was the last time he did? Mentally Miles tries to recount his day backwards. Kitchen shift, right, and before that he'd been in his office...all day...hadn't he? Yes, he's certain of that -- the twinge in his lower back is testament to the long hours of slogging through the mountain of new personnel files on his desk after the last wave... Doesn't he have staff for this? He absolutely has staff for this. Where's Bel, maybe they can round up Tung and have him dump this load of paperwork on some other poor sod...

Miles glances down at his chrono -- no, MID -- and sighs as he takes a few absent bites of the hand pie, at which point he realizes he is frigging ravenous. He must've passed the whole day without eating -- a few more leftovers probably wouldn't hurt. Scarfing down another few bites, Miles nods at Wanda.

"Hey, do me a favor and comm Captain Thorne, will you?" Somewhere in there his accent wavers and shifts, settling into something that sounds almost American, a dramatic change from the warm gutturals of his Barrayaran accent, sounding distantly Russian. "Tell them to hustle up the old Commodore and have him clear out all this blasted paperwork on my desk, I could seriously use a break."

And a nap. If that isn't already evident.

Important security update: the whale museum gives me the creeps.

How's your room coming along?

Edited 2016-03-09 14:31 (UTC)

This is all gibberish. She understands the words, but strung together they make literally no sense. Elizabeth watches Miles ramble, trying and failing to find something that she can understand. But there's nothing. Triumph, Tung, Tau Ceta, what?

Elena?

"No... it's me, it's Elizabeth," she says, coming closer to Miles. It's gone past confusing and into scary, with the way Miles is going on about things she's certain aren't happening to the Moira right now. Slowly, she reaches out to put her hand on Miles' shoulder. "Miles, I think you need to come to the medical bay with me."

[ miles catch-all: one-way train to crazy town ]

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MARCH 3, text

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