RadiumV

She really does but she wishes this man had more self-awareness of who he is and why exactly he can't just - "drop you off. Its raining and I'm already here, Robin. It's not adding to my commute if I let you out at the door."

"That's not the issue."

"Oh, so you don't care about the gas I’m wasting picking you up for school?"

She gives him a flat look, "No."

"Ungrateful youth."

"Okay, Grandpa," She cracks a smile. "It's not that I think you'd mind. It's that everyone else will mind."

Steve raises an eyebrow, "Why would anyone care that you get dropped off??"

"No one cares that -they'll care who is dropping me off?"

Steve is silent for a second - contemplating and also merging into the drop off lane - and then he asks, "Literally why would anyone care about that?"

"Because you're you??!"

"I’m me," He nods slowly. "Your coworker. Your friend. I’m not seeing the problem?"

"Steve 'The Hair' Harrington-"

"Hate that nickname."

"-starts dropping off a nobody girl from band and you think that's not going to disrupt the high school ecosystem? People will think we're dating."

"I don't even go to this school anymore??" Steve says. "Rob, I love you. Tectonically, or whatever. But no one is paying that much attention to other people."

"They are," She insists, "To you."

Steve shrugs.

He then reaches across her and pushes open the passenger side door because, "- oh look at that. The front door. Of the school. Where I’m dropping you off and, gasp. The world didn't explode."

Robin gives him a very flat look, "Don't say gasp."

He grins.

She grabs her backpack and her trumpet case, and tells him, "You're the worst."

"Feeling like the best right now."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

Robin got a cut on her knee during the final battle that won't stop bleeding and Steve is just...broken.

"Awe, don't say that," Steve complains with blood pouring down his chin from his reopened split lip. "I'm just..."

"Tired," Robin finishes for him when Steve trails off. He's doing that with frequency now. Robin thinks his injuries might be worse than he's admitting so, "Let's rest."

Robin's not sure where they're at but Steve says they're halfway to his house so, a little rest is fine.

She finds a door that's unlocked and a house that's empty, and that feels like a good enough reason to enter it and - "Find the first aid kit. I'll patch up your knee."

"On it."

Steve slowly sits down and Robin disappears down the hall. She scrubs off as much grim as she can in the bathroom sink, returns with the first aid kit, and joins him on the couch when the door opens and -

"...What's happening here?"

"We're...." Steve starts, stalls, picks back up to say "intruders" at the same time Robin blurts out, "Your friends! Here for the surprise part - did you say intruders?"

"What?" Steve, who definitely did, responds. "No. Why would I say that? I-"

"Hey," Eddie Munson cuts in. "What the fuck are you doing in my house and why do you look like roadkill?"

First of all, "Rude."

"To roadkill, maybe," Eddie crosses his arms. "Again, I’m asking-"

Second of all...

"Dude, shut up," Steve snaps at him. "I'm tired and everything hurts, and you're fucking loud. I’m trying to concentrate."

Eddie gives him a condescending gesture to continue but it's pretty clear that Steve doesn't remember what he was trying to do.

Robin jumps in to take over but..."What are we doing?"

Steve sounds so tired when he says, "I don't know."

"Eddie," She says, feeling the night hit her all at once and finally.

He knows that they don’t feel physical pain. Most likely because they don’t have nerves since that seems an easy thing for the dimension with dementia to forget to add.

Same with them not being very expressive on a facial level. Due to well… Being a physical guesstimation of a person. All that overlapping biology would definitely make traditional emoting impossible. Too many eyes, brow bones, noses, etc. might not even have enough muscles for it. The one he tore into seemed made mostly of just pure fat.

But they’re alive regardless. They’re reactive and respond to stimuli in ways they understand how to.

Not just in red haired creature running and shrieking in fear. That’s easy to read. But also the lampshade one rapidly turning its lampshade on and off.

That’s a panic response from something that can’t flee because the chair is a part of its body. Doing the two things it knows it can. Turn on the light and turn off the light.

But the one he doesn’t undermine the interiority of? At least not as much? The captain. His copy.

He try’s to reason to that one. Talks to it like it understands him. Despite it looking the least real. It looks like a puppet over a man.

Okay. But its going to consume you.

"We don't have to change"

Okay. But it's going to consume you.

Eventually you have to leave. Eventually you have to run. And its painful and it's so much harder than staying in the comfort of what you know. In that house that stopped being a home years ago. Living memories you've replayed so many times over and over that the details are warping and becoming hollowed out corpses.

And it will consume you when you least expect it. You'll rot right there along with the building foundations and distort right along with your memories.

You'll have to run eventually, even if that's not how you're wired.