"with a love this strong it's okay for you to be that way" (martina mcbride)

[starandrea]

Am sad. Whinnie's remaining eye, not looking so good. Wish I had thought to write puppies into this chapter. Love everyone lots.

For previous scenes tagged "straight up,"
click and scroll down (reverse chronology).


control

Ziggy disappeared after the whole satbot thing, which Dillon didn't really notice until he woke up in the lab with Summer standing over him. Then he got distracted by the way he wasn't in the doghouse for disobeying orders--apparently a Venjix death sentence was considered an extenuating circumstance--and the devastated expressions on both their faces. Like they were surprised or something.

There's no cure.

"Doc," he said, staring at a supposedly infected arm that looked the way it always had. He lowered it, catching her eye instead. "Tell me something I don't know."

She and Summer exchanged glances, and he shook his head. "I don't know what Venjix did to me, but I always figured I'd turn on you someday. You can't tell me you're not ready for that."

"I couldn't until today," she replied, and the flash of irritation almost made her expression bearable again. "Until you overrode a remote shutdown of your suit not once, but twice. Now I can. I can definitely say I'm not ready."

"Yeah, how did you do that?" Summer sounded as curious as she was concerned. He figured she had a right to be, after his first "override" had taken out all three of them together.

"Don't know," he muttered. "I just--" But he hadn't thought about it, he hadn't even tried. "I don't know."

"Has that ever happened before?" In the absence of useful information, Summer turned her attention elsewhere. One of his favorite things about her, actually. She didn't dwell.

"You're using the prototypes." The response was sharp and to the point. "If it had happened before, you'd know."

"So maybe there's something wrong with the Series Black shutdown," Summer said. "I mean, if you've never had to use it before--"

"Of course there's something wrong with it; it doesn't work!" She was glaring now. "Why are you telling me things that are patently obvious?"

"I'm just saying," Summer began.

"Don't," Dillon interrupted. "Just--" He put his feet on the floor, getting ready to stand up. "Don't. It's not you she's mad at." Lifting his gaze, he added, "Isn't that right, Doc."

"I'm not mad at anyone," she snapped.

"Okay," Summer said, putting the scanning bar down. "I'll be in the kitchen if you need me. Don't hurt each other."

"Hey," Dillon called after her. "See if you can find Ziggy, would you? I think the whole leaping off a building thing kind of freaked him out."

She waved over her shoulder as she headed out of the training room. "On it!"

It wasn't enough, but it would have to do. He couldn't leave now. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. It was weird to have memories thrown in my face like that, okay?"

"Dillon, the satbot was lying," she said. "That's what they do. You can't trust something like Venjix. It was designed to deceive."

"It wasn't lying," he muttered.

"Yes, it was." She sounded--urgent, somehow. Like it mattered to her that he believed this. "If it makes you doubt, it wins."

"Well, I doubt," he snapped. "That's what I do. What have I got to believe in?"

She didn't flinch. "What have any of us got?"

"You've got... this." He waved around her lab, meaning all of it--the garage beyond and everyone in it. She had a whole city at her back. "Everything."

"You have this too," she told him.

He had, once. He'd had something. And every time he tried to think about it, all he could feel was it slipping through his grasp. A hand in his, fingers sliding through his own... holding onto nothing. "I can't remember."

He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes until a voice that didn't belong to whatever he'd lost was closer than he expected. "Then how do you know the satbot can? What makes you think whatever it told you is real?"

Dillon looked up at her. She wasn't that much taller than him even when he was sitting down. "I sleep sometimes," he said. "I have these dreams."

She turned, sitting heavily beside him. And how someone that small could make it feel like the weight of the world, he had no idea. "Is that what Summer's always asking you about?"

She'd started bringing it up around the others after he'd stopped answering when they were alone. "Here's a hint," he grumbled. "Never tell her you don't want to talk about something."

"Lesson learned the hard way," she said, and it was so unexpected that he couldn't tell if she was agreeing or making fun of him. "So what makes you think it knows any more than you do?"

He turned to stare at her, and she shrugged.

"Maybe it's telepathic," she said. "Maybe it sees your dreams. Maybe it sent them in the first place. Maybe it showed you something so vague you projected whatever you felt onto it.

"The point is," she added, when he didn't answer, "there's always another explanation. For it or for us. It can always rationalize what we say, and we can always rationalize what it says. At some point, you have to decide who you'd rather believe."

She wasn't sitting quite close enough to touch. He thought she could be, though. If he asked. He just knew--suddenly, without question--that if he shifted closer and bumped her shoulder, she wouldn't move. She might even lean into him.

His arm twinged, even though everything in him came up green. There was nothing wrong. That was what it told him, and that was a lie.

"I believe you," he said quietly.

She didn't say anything, so he moved closer and she leaned up against his shoulder. Right now, that was as much of an answer as he needed.