A hug. An actual hug. For a second, he was almost positive he was hallucinating or something because hugs were such a rare thing in his life anymore. Sometimes Hummingbird hugged him and Vance would throw an arm around his shoulders but that was about it, and it didn't even happen that often. So when she hugged him, he hugged her back, warmly, gratefully, even resting his chin on her shoulder a bit.
It felt like it belonged there.
It felt so good to be touched again, in a way that wasn't painful. Even aside from the hurt he'd done to himself, so many people had hurt him. The people that beat on him and shanked him in prison. The man that shot him. Moonstone punching him into a wall at four hundred miles an hour...
No one had cared enough to cause him anything other than pain and the people who would've been kind to him, his friends, had no idea where he was during that time.
But aside from the desperate need for human affection, there was something else he gave in that hug, too. He'd thought Rina was cute from the start, and finding out all she'd done to try to save him during the time he was in the kinetic energy dimension had made him flirt like crazy with her back in the day. Maybe it was Darrion Grobe pretending to be him that she'd mostly gotten to know but when he got back and starting hanging out with her, he'd felt...a connection.
It felt like fate or something, that'd thrown them together the first time because of her vision. But then she'd lost her powers and had to deal with that, and he and the others had done the show, and then he hadn't been in a state to talk to anyone for a while...
But she was here now. Again. And if there was a little extra tenderness he put into the hug beyond "thank you for being a source of human affection and still being my friend" he could be forgiven for it, right? After all, this was the girl -- the woman -- who'd bent over backwards trying to save him. And now that he valued his life even less, it made her actions in trying to do it matter even more in his eyes.
Then she pulled away from him and...and caressed his cheek. Wow. And said things that very few people had said to him. Also wow. (He couldn't really take them to heart yet, but...wow.)
So by the time she got to talking about putting her hair up into the cinnamon buns, he was actually able to give her a genuine smile, wide and practically radiant. It was one of his old smiles.
"I still think that'd be a good look for you. Not that there'd be many bad looks for you."
And there he was, cheerful and goofy and even a little flirty. Apparently, he was there under all the pain and guilt and sadness and it was still possible for him to be him once he got past each of these dark moments.
He finally looked around again, thinking back to what the Timebroker had said.
"I don't think we're going to know what he meant until we look around. 'Undo the injustice at the heart of Omelas' is about as vague as the directions that come with cheap Swedish furniture. We have to find out what - or where - Omelas is."
no subject
It felt like it belonged there.
It felt so good to be touched again, in a way that wasn't painful. Even aside from the hurt he'd done to himself, so many people had hurt him. The people that beat on him and shanked him in prison. The man that shot him. Moonstone punching him into a wall at four hundred miles an hour...
No one had cared enough to cause him anything other than pain and the people who would've been kind to him, his friends, had no idea where he was during that time.
But aside from the desperate need for human affection, there was something else he gave in that hug, too. He'd thought Rina was cute from the start, and finding out all she'd done to try to save him during the time he was in the kinetic energy dimension had made him flirt like crazy with her back in the day. Maybe it was Darrion Grobe pretending to be him that she'd mostly gotten to know but when he got back and starting hanging out with her, he'd felt...a connection.
It felt like fate or something, that'd thrown them together the first time because of her vision. But then she'd lost her powers and had to deal with that, and he and the others had done the show, and then he hadn't been in a state to talk to anyone for a while...
But she was here now. Again. And if there was a little extra tenderness he put into the hug beyond "thank you for being a source of human affection and still being my friend" he could be forgiven for it, right? After all, this was the girl -- the woman -- who'd bent over backwards trying to save him. And now that he valued his life even less, it made her actions in trying to do it matter even more in his eyes.
Then she pulled away from him and...and caressed his cheek. Wow. And said things that very few people had said to him. Also wow. (He couldn't really take them to heart yet, but...wow.)
So by the time she got to talking about putting her hair up into the cinnamon buns, he was actually able to give her a genuine smile, wide and practically radiant. It was one of his old smiles.
"I still think that'd be a good look for you. Not that there'd be many bad looks for you."
And there he was, cheerful and goofy and even a little flirty. Apparently, he was there under all the pain and guilt and sadness and it was still possible for him to be him once he got past each of these dark moments.
He finally looked around again, thinking back to what the Timebroker had said.
"I don't think we're going to know what he meant until we look around. 'Undo the injustice at the heart of Omelas' is about as vague as the directions that come with cheap Swedish furniture. We have to find out what - or where - Omelas is."