dvd commentary: the liberation of katie holmes, part six

May 24, 2006 20:42



The eerie quiet that accompanied them on the long trek down to the compound still surrounds them as they step through the open gates.

Kristen isn’t sure what she was expecting; armed soldiers or something? Maybe. She definitely wasn’t thinking that they could just stroll onto the property without a problem.

“Uh-” She tugs on Josh’s sleeve, hissing in his ear. “I thought this was supposed to be hard?”

He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Trust me, this is the easy part.”

They sneak in undetected through a loading dock on the shadowy west side of the building. It leads them into yet another Scientology storeroom, but instead of clothes, like the warehouse, this is filled with shelves and shelves of boxes.

miss deviant: Do you feel like we got lazy here, making the compound pretty easy to sneak onto?

buffyx: Probably a little. But. There was a lot of breaking in, and it's hard to write each one as interesting without getting repetitive. So, for the sake of the story, it worked.

"Supplies for the apocalypse," Josh notes, examining the inside of one. "Water, canned goods- they're all stocked up here."

“Can we focus?” Jason prompts as he gestures toward the entrance to the actual Center.

A red and white sign is hung above the door in bold lettering, reading CAUTION: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. He punches a code into the keypad next to it, and there’s a buzzing sound before he yanks the handle open. They spill out and onto the first floor of the main building. The fluorescent lit hallways smell like tenth grade science class, heavy with formaldehyde and acetone. The walls and linoleum floors are institutional grade white, and the overhead bulbs buzz with the insistence of a trapped fly.

Jason leads the way, stopping them before the first corner. He peers around it carefully, then motions to them in what Kristen assumes is a gesture saying that it’s clear, staying close to the wall as he jogs up to a white door with a plaque labeled STORAGE CLOSET stuck to it.

He punches another code in and opens the door, ushering them in before closing it behind him.

miss deviant: Again, I demonstrate my obsession with apocalypses. For a while, it was my dream to move to Texas and start my own cult/commune. Hey, I accomplished half of it!

buffyx: Heeeee.

“Hang on.” Kristen jumps-damn her height-and snatches the chain above her, pulling down and switching on the dim bulb above them that casts a warm reddish light.

The closet is full of general supplies: protective goggles, bottles of antiseptic, gauze and bandages, brooms and mops. Josh goes to the shelf and rummages around, pulls out a stack of folded white lab coats.

“Here,” he says, pitching one to Kristen. “Put that on.”

She shakes it open and slips into the long sleeves; she’s swimming in the bagginess of it, but in a pinch, it’ll have to do. Josh and Jason each don coats of their own, and then Josh is passing out rubber gloves and laminated badges.

miss deviant: Did you write the red light stuff before or after seeing the Pulse trailer?

buffyx: Before! I totally did not know. But it works awesomely.

miss deviant: You tricky tricky bitch. I think one of the things we ended up dropping was the whole rubber gloves thing.

buffyx: Oh, crap. That was my bad. I SHOULD NEVER HAVE BROUGHT IT UP! Let's just imagine that they took them off after the bomb planting.

miss deviant: Sounds good to me!

“All right, I’m headed to the northwest wing.” Josh is strapping on his gloves and patting his pockets lightning-fast as he says this. “Dohring, you and Bell take the east side, levels one to three. The higher-ups clock in in approximately-” he pauses to glance at his watch-“twelve minutes, thirty-two seconds. The rest come in two hours later. Let’s try and be done with this before then, shall we?”

“The codes,” Jason reminds him. “We need the codes.”

“Of course.” Josh removes a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “For the entrances where the general code won’t compute-well, let’s just say this should be enough to get you where you need to go.”

“Wait-where are we going to meet you?” Kristen asks. She can’t help the panic edging into her voice; once Josh steps out that door, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever see him again.

“The roof. We meet there. No later than an hour and a half from this exact second.” Jason holds up his wrist watch pointedly. “Let’s make a pact right here. In an hour and a half, we bail. It doesn’t matter who’s up there or who isn’t. That’s it. No waiting.”

“No waiting,” repeats Josh, somber.

Kristen is silent for a long beat as they wait for her answer.

Finally, she swallows hard and agrees. “No waiting.”

“All right. Now that the morbid, depressing crap is out of the way-” Josh shrugs into his coat and runs a hand through his hair. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a revolution to begin.”

miss deviant: Hannah wrote the tagline, which, you know, pretty much informs you of EVERYTHING.

buffyx: Awww, Josh! He might be my favorite to write. I meant to write his exit with enough weight to make you wonder if he actually survives. Hopefully that was conveyed?

miss deviant: I think we succeeded, judging by comments we got on that section!

buffyx: Though we already knew then that without a doubt he'd stick around. I mean, please, he's Josh!

miss deviant: And the dynamic pretty much works best with the three. It would be like killing off Keith Mars!

He reaches for the door knob, then pauses, looking back to Jason and Kristen. She thinks his eyes might be shining, but it could just be the funky lighting.

“Dohring. Bell.” He nods at both of them. “It’s been an honor and a privilege.”

With that, the door opens and he’s swallowed into the white light.

"He says that like he's not coming back," Kristen says to Jason once Josh is gone.

Jason doesn’t look her in the eye as he replies, "Without her, he's not."

miss deviant: I think I'm gonna take credit for the "without her, he's not" line.

buffyx: Yeah you are! It was all yours. And it was awesome.

miss deviant: Like the sex.

buffyx: Hell to the yes.

Okay. They really need to stop talking like the world is about to end. It’s starting to freak her out-more than she already is.

“Look, just, say nothing,” he instructs, stuffing the codes in his pocket. “To no one. Don’t look at anyone. Use your radio only-and I mean ONLY-when necessary. Just look… look like you’re busy and have somewhere to go.”

“You mean, this actually involves acting?” She mock gasps. “I don’t know if I can handle that!”

“I know you aren't quite up to my caliber,” he says, taking the badge from her fingers and looping the long strap around her neck, “but do your best.”

“Oh, so NOW you joke,” she huffs.

“Who said I was joking?” He cracks the door open, peeking out. “All clear. Let’s move.”

The starched white coats they have donned are supposed to serve as camouflage, but it is almost as though they don’t need them. They make their way inconspicuously into room after room as poorly postured men scurry by, their eyes glued to clipboards or mumbling six syllable words into handheld digital recorders. The men look like they have been borrowed from a 1960’s NASA research lab. They almost universally sport thick horn rimmed glasses and pocket protectors.

buffyx: Okay, I did the acting joke. One of the only times I actually managed to be funny.

miss deviant: Oh, it was a good one! Wasn't that kind of from the Marsathon too - the whole "fuck you, I'm a better actor" comment from Jason?

buffyx: Yes, that is where the joke came from!

miss deviant: Jason really does think he's the shit. But I guess with good reason.

buffyx: Ann did the description of the lab and it is so awesome. I feel like I'm transported in the fifties or something when I read that. Very Cold War-ish, almost.

miss deviant: The medical center is really like something out of time - or a sci fi movie.

“You’ll be my lookout,” Jason instructs, whispering out of the side of his mouth as they walk shoulder to shoulder down the long and narrow corridors. “I’ll need someone to keep an eye on the situations in the halls while I plant the-“

Kristen shoots him a pained look that halts his sentence.

“While I take care of things,” he finishes. He brings a curled hand up to his mouth, runs his knuckles over his lips, looking to the room number on the door before them. “Here. This is the first one.”

He hefts the duffel bag he’s still carrying onto his hip as he consults the scrap of paper that Josh gave them. A few numbers pressed into a keypad later, and with a whoosh of pressurized air, the door opens. (Pressurized air? Kristen ponders. What the hell are they doing in there that requires pressurized rooms?)

Jason exits the room remarkably quickly. “Okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” she responds, as though the only thing she is able to do is parrot his words.

“A few more dozen times, and we’re done.”

miss deviant: This section originally cut off here and picked up with the hour and a half line. In fact, it was posted over night that way until we realized we hadn't explained why their mission was so involved.

buffyx: ...I do not remember that. In other news: I have the attention span of a gnat fly.

miss deviant: That's okay. Because what you forget, I take credit for!

“A few DOZEN? What are you planning to do, turn this place to powder?”

“Maximum damage, minimal casualties,” Jason replies. “We need to destroy as much as possible: testing facilities, laboratories, computers - anything with a record that may help their plan in the days to come. By isolating the targets and using only the amount of explosives necessary to eliminate that equipment and data, we don’t hurt more people than we have to.”

Hurting people. Not just hurting: killing. She feels sick to her stomach. That was going to happen on the mission whether she liked it or not. Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time, someone who arrives for work early, like the men she had seen bustling about the halls, blissfully unaware of anything except their scholarly journals holding the latest medical advances.

Oh, god. What if they did animal testing?

miss deviant: This was the "missing" section - basically, they're trying to blow up things in a PACIFIST manner.

buffyx: I love that her fear is OMG ANIMAL TESTING! I mean-- not that that is awful, because it is-- but still. But it's Kristen, official Sexiest Vegetarian and PETA spokesperson, so what can you expect? And yes, we couldn't have Jason and her and Josh be cold-blooded murderers of innocent people. It had to be targeted not for casualties but for damage to the technology developed.

miss deviant: I think at one point we were going to clarify that most of the people in the medical center - patients and such - were used for such grotesque forms of testing that they would be better off dead.

buffyx: Oh, yes, we meant to put that in there. We did so much brainstorming in IM form, I know there were some things that we meant to translate into the fic but missed. Thankfully, these were mostly unimportant in the long run.

miss deviant: And the ones that were unimportant but still amusing will certainly make it to some sort of deleted scenes extra.

Jason makes eye contact with her before he enters the next room. “It will be ok,” he promises. “An hour and a half.”

“An hour and a half,” she echoes.

You can do a lot of things in an hour and a half. Fly from San Diego to San Francisco, for one. Watch two episodes of Veronica Mars, without commercials. Have sex. Three times, if you were lucky.

Once, if you were REALLY lucky.

An hour and a half, she thinks to herself. An hour and a half. It’s not a long time if that’s all you’ve got left.

miss deviant: Okay, I take credit for the sex line. It's pretty awesome.

buffyx: Ann wrote that because she is awesome.
Totally awesome.

miss deviant: Glad to know you agree with me! I think the amazing thing in the whole story is that it really DOES take place in forty-eight hours. It's like crazy nonstop. And a lot of things can change in an hour and a half - and at the same time, it's really not that long.

buffyx: Which made the transition in all of the relationships kind of tricky. But, we think we pulled it off as plausibly as possible. Considering the premise of the story.

miss deviant: CONSIDERING.

buffyx: And, you know, saving the world bonds people!! IT CHANGES THINGS!!

Only once does anyone in the halls make eye contact. While she stands in a doorway, keeping lookout and waiting nervously for Jason to finish placing explosives, a young man who looks like an orderly barrels down the echoing hall, pushing a long stainless steel table. As he nears her, he slows. Kristen’s hand inches towards the walkie talkie on her belt, ready to call Jason and warn him to hide. Or scream. Or throw it really, really hard and hope that it hits the orderly in a sensitive spot.

She considers these options for what seems like eons, but is probably only two heartbeats. The cart is fifteen feet away. Then ten. Five, almost within an arms length. Kristen goes rigid.

Then, the man winks and passes her by.

“Jason, do we have more people on the inside?” she questions less than a minute later when he emerges, a little sweaty.

He considers her for a moment. “You mean, you want to know if we’re alone in the universe?”

“Someone - looked at me. Just now. He winked.” She leans in. Although they are alone in the hallway, she still doesn’t trust the blank walls with their secrets. Her lips brush Jason’s ear, and she thinks she feels him flinch. “I think he knows we don’t belong.”

She pulls back quickly, scans the hall.

“Maybe he just thought you were pretty,” Jason replies easily, but she doesn’t miss the way the sinews in his neck tighten.

miss deviant: I'm not sure if it's this guy who causes our revolutionaries to get caught, or if it's something Josh does - but I like that it is vague.

buffyx: Jason is-- I don't want to say he's protecting her, but I think he thinks it's important to keep her calm. Because she spazzes pretty easily.

miss deviant: This whole exchange also reveals that they're kind of IT when it comes to saving the world. Which is pretty weighty. No one is going to step in and help them out.

“You didn't answer my question.”

"I know there are...people. Helping us. I don't know numbers- the way the liberation works, you only know your contact and an alternate. That way, if anyone gets made, they can't expose the whole chain. But today," he swallows, and the edges of his mouth curl down, "we're all we've got."

He glances around and continues down the hall.

Fantastic, she thinks to herself, following hastily. This is just reeking of “suicide mission.”

In the next room, she hovers in the doorway, trying to not look too closely at the way he unpackages the explosives and straps them to the undersides of chairs and tables with black duct tape. He fastens one to the back of the identical flat panel computer monitor that’s placed in every room. Her eyes flicker up and spot a security camera positioned in the ceiling corner.

"We're being filmed?" she hisses to him. “Isn’t that a little-I don’t know-worrisome?”

Jason doesn't look up from what he's working on. "The cameras are disabled. That much the resistance did for us."

"You're going on hearsay! That evidence won't even hold up in court! How do you expect it to save our lives?"

"Faith."

Okay, then, blind faith. That’s not really so reassuring either.

miss deviant: Hannah wrote the "reeking of suicide mission" line. I love it.

buffyx: Jason kind of is like a suicide bomber, in a way-- I mean, if it came down to it, he'd die for the cause in a heartbeat. That is how devoted he is to it. Which is pretty scary.

“Hey, come here,” he calls from his position over by a line of refrigerator coolers. “Let me show you how to do this. I might need your help.”

Kristen reluctantly joins him. Jason opens the cooler door, and she peers inside, confused by the rows of petri dishes on each inner shelf.

“What are those?” she asks, then pauses. “Or is this one of those things I really don’t want to know?”

“They’re embryos,” he tells her. “Human embryos. To be tested on.”

“For what?”

“We’re not exactly sure. But it’s the Center’s biggest project. The funding behind it is mindblowing.” He sets the bag on the nearest counter and begins digging through it. “Anyway, here. Watch, learn, et cetera, et cetera.”

buffyx: I put in this part because I realized that if they were to split up-- which we knew was going to happen-- Kristen needed to know how to plant the bombs by herself.

miss deviant: It's exposition-y, but not overtly so. Plus, it shows that Jason trusts her - she's not just some tagalong lookout.

buffyx: And Kristen is dealing with her "bomb issues" head on. Which makes her initiative in going by herself later on more believable.

She studies the way he slides an explosive from the bag, pinning it to the top of the freezer and ripping off a strip of duct tape with his teeth. He takes a detonator and attaches it to the front, pushes a button of the right side, then steps back.

“Well, it doesn’t look too hard,” Kristen remarks.

He pokes through the duffel and hands her an explosive. “You try.”

So she follows his procedure: stick, strap, attach, button. It’s not as fluid as Jason’s practiced, expert movements, but it doesn’t take too long before the job’s done. Jason leans in to inspect her work.

“Good,” he says appreciatively. “Now, let’s get to the next room.”

They both start to move toward the door, but suddenly they hear the sound of approaching voices; a glance down the hallway and she sees the two figures approaching, a man decked in a ratty labcoat and another in business attire. Jason instantly backpedals, pressing them both flat against the wall behind the coolers.

miss deviant: Man, this is standard action cliche, hiding heroes, eavesdropping important information, but I LOVE IT.

buffyx: Me too! Forcing two people with sexual tension into close proximity of each other is awesome. And ripping things with teeth is always hot.
(Sorry, shallow moment.)

miss deviant: And then later, Jason rips the condom wrapper with his teeth, too! Oh, oral fixations. What shallow, shallow girls we are.

“As you can see, this laboratory is equipped with state of the art technology.” The scientist chuckles. “You might even say that some of the technology here has not even been discovered yet.”

“That would require the government to admit to the existence of extraterrestrial beings,” the suit acknowledges, chuckling along, “Although, I suppose that if the extraterrestrials could produce and synthesize petroleum, the President would have thrown them a parade.”

“Isn’t it a wonder that Mimi brought Mr. Cruise to us when they struggled to conceive? Without her, we would never have discovered the aberrations in his deoxyribonucleic acid structure that prevented him from fathering a child. His true nature could have been hidden from us forever.” The scientist rubs the palms of his hands together. “Why, his entire existence might be described as something divine, as though he were sent from the stars by L. Ron himself.”

At this, Kristen reaches out and brushes the back of Jason’s hand, grabbing his attention.

“‘True Nature?’ ‘THE STARS?’” she mouths. He brushes her off with one brisk movement, his head shaking in a negative response.

“Now that a child has been born alive and healthy, has Mr. Cruise instructed you as to the process of how to address the additional embryos?” the suit questions. “I can’t imagine he would wish them destroyed, after the effort that went into creating them.”

miss deviant: I wrote most of this section and I'm really really proud of it.

buffyx: Ann did a top-knotch job with the scientist. He's so cartoony and amusing.

miss deviant: He's Steve Buscemi at his finest!

“Mr. Cruise is seeking out more suitable host bodies at the moment. Though Kate's eggs were the only ones that would accept the addition of Mr. Cruise’s alien DNA without suffering gross mutations in early mitosis, we have reason to believe that with the proper regimens, the embryos can be carried to term in almost any womb. I hear he has multiple strong candidates lined up across the country," the scientist proclaims in a strident voice. “It’s an amazing feat. Less than ten years ago, any attempts at creating an embryo resulted in complete and utter failure. And now, to have more than a thousand potentially viable embryos on hand, and one living breathing child as a result? It is truly a spectacular time in which we live.”

“It truly is,” the suit agrees, nodding.

AN ALIEN? Tom Cruise is an ALIEN?

Actually, when Kristen stops to think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

“Why, I hear that after your plan takes effect, I may actually be able to publish my research! It will be a joy to no longer be in hiding, for what I do to be at last acknowledged as legitimate science!”

“We do hope it turns out that way, Doctor.” The suit grants him a smarmy smile. There is something terrifying about the display of bicuspids and incisors.

“Would you like to see the children of the future?” the scientist asks shyly, stepping towards the large stainless steel doors of the cooler. “I admit, they don’t look like much now, yet there is still an awe-inspiring magnitude to them.”

Jason and Kristen’s heads whip towards each other, eyes like saucers.

“Prepare to run,” he mouths. Kristen swallows past the lump in her throat, nods.

miss deviant: Another action movie cliche! Will our heroes be discovered?

buffyx: I also like how Kristen is not surprised by Tom being an alien when she thinks about it. SERIOUSLY, IT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE.

miss deviant: I love the scientist. DO NOT BE SURPRISED IF YOU SEE HIM AGAIN.

buffyx: SPOILER ALERT.

miss deviant: Ha ha ha.

The suit glances at his watch. “Perhaps some other time. I have to meet Mr. Cruise shortly to go over the plans for the little one’s naming ceremony. But thank you for the tour of the facility.” He walks and stands beside the scientist and pats the door to the cooler with affection. “I know our children are in good hands.”

The scientist bows his head, ushering the suit out of the room.

“Oh, but I did not even show you the electron microscopes in laboratory 4B312!” Kristen hears him exclaim as he walks out.

Once the echoing footsteps fade off, Kristen breathes out a sigh of relief, slumps against the wall.

“That was a close one.” She looks over at Jason and notices how pale he still is, how his chest is heaving like he’s just run a marathon. “Jason. They’re gone. We’re safe. Chill.”

“No, that’s not-” His eyes focus on her, wide and terrified. “That’s not it.”

“What is it?” she asks, concerned by his behavior. She hasn’t seem him look like this before-so unhinged.

“Lauren’s been talking about having a baby,” he chokes out, stumbling away from the wall. “We got a letter. She got a letter. Asking women, especially women who were planning on conceiving in the near future, to report to a church doctor for physicals. And… and when she came back from the doctor, she seemed really excited. He told her she was in ‘perfect reproductive health.’”

Kristen steps away from the wall and toward him, waiting for him to finish.

He shudders, and his mouth twitches. “She even said said something about being a candidate. For a special project.”

miss deviant: Look - I know we're kind of breaking all sorts of societal taboos by 'shipping two people in 'relationships' - but we never wanted to make it seem like our Jason didn't CARE about Lauren.

buffyx: The truth is that he loves her. It's just a question of does he LOVE HER love her? And he's not sure.

miss deviant: But god dammit if he's not going to defend her.

The impact of that statement hits her like a brick to the stomach. “Oh my god.”

His closed fist flies out, connects with the wall. “Dammit. DAMMIT.” He inhales, a jagged breath. “I should have known. Fuck. I should have KNOWN.”

Jason stops, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut, arms braced against the side of the coolers. Cautiously, Kristen approaches. Sets her palm on the middle of his back. He tenses for a moment, then relaxes under her touch, half-turning toward her.

“Hey,” she soothes, “hey. It wasn’t your fault. There’s no way you could have known. There’s no way.”

He looks to her with plaintive eyes. “I could have done something.”

“You’re doing something now.” A new resolution suddenly fills her chest, makes her feel confident and strong for the first time since she stepped onto that plane. “And I’m going to do something, too.”

buffyx: I like torturedrevolutionary!Jason. I also like resolutebadass!Kristen. We get both here. YAY!

miss deviant: It was going to take something BIG to get Kristen so far on board that she would actually plant bombs. Originally, it was just going to be a time crunch, but I love that we appealed to her instincts as a female.

“What do you-”

“The two intruders-I mean, while the exposition was helpful, it was kind of a time killer,” she explains. “We can’t be on track right now.”

Jason glances at his watch. “Fuck. We should already be on the second level.”

“Then go. Start up there.” She fishes a few bombs from the duffel, tosses it to him. “I’ll finish this floor.”

“But you said-” His eyes search hers in question as his voice trails off.

“Forget what I said,” she says sharply. “If it's a choice between helping you fight them and being an incubator for some genetically engineered Cruise spawn? I'm with you all the way."

Jason studies her a moment longer, and then walks over to one of the long black tables. He grabs a yellow sticky note from a drawer and a pen, copying down some of the codes from the sheet Josh gave him. After he’s passed that to her, he grabs one of the trash cans sitting under the long black lab tables. He peers inside, then upends it, dumping papers and detrius onto the floor. Pulling the opaque plastic lining out of the can, he then hands it to Kristen wordlessly.

She understands, dumping her armful of explosives into the plastic bag, twisting the top tight. Lets it rest at her feet.

miss deviant: True revolutionaries use what the situation provides! Including trash bags!

buffyx: Heeeee. And I managed in a shoutout to my unending love for Post-Its!

miss deviant: Wow, you are even nerdier than I thought!

buffyx: I am super nerdy. And super in love with Post-Its.

miss deviant: Do you think he signed the post-it "Love, Jason Dohring"?

buffyx: He signs EVERYTHING with that. So, of course.

“So,” she says, biting her lip.

“So.” He rubs his neck, clears his throat. Pats his walkie talkie. “If you need me.”

She nods. “Right.”

Jason nods, hesitates, then starts to turn to the exit. Kristen grabs his sleeve, pulling him around and into a tight, short hug. He looks taken by surprise, but then she feels his arm pressed up against the small of her back.

She draws away from the embrace quickly, tucking her hair behind her ear and barely looking him in the eyes as she says, “Good luck.”

Without letting her gaze linger, she hauls her bag off the floor, pushes past him and hurries out the door.

miss deviant: It's a PLEASE DO NOT DIE BEFORE WE HAVE HAD A CHANCE TO DO IT hug!

buffyx: She's not quite brave enough to go for the kiss. But that comes LATER. Obviously!

miss deviant: Also, you are not supposed to do anything hot around explosives. It is true! I READ IT ON THE INTERNET!

buffyx: Hahahahahaa. I should mention that Ann is also missing two fingers on her left hand! TRUE STORY!

miss deviant: I WAS GOING TO BE A HOCKEY STAR, DAMMIT!

**

Going it alone has imbued her with a sudden sense of calm. There is something detached and efficient about the task she is performing. Like stuffing envelopes. Envelopes that could be triggered at any moment and turn her into pink mist, but her mind refuses to register that. It is singular, focused on a set of tasks: Remove explosives from bag. Place in strategic location. Secure with tape. Attach and activate radio frequency detonator. Move to next location.

The lull caused by the methodical nature of the task is broken by Jason’s voice, coming in over the walkie talkie.

“How are you progressing, Mama Eagle? Over.”

“Just dandy,” she replies to herself. Her teeth are clenched around a piece of wire as she uses both hands to affix a bomb to the underside of a table. What she says once her hands are free is, “A-ok, Papa Smurf. This is the second to last room. Are you on a secure channel or something? I thought we weren’t supposed to use these things unless it was an emergency.”

“Just checking in,” he explains. “Look, meet me up on the second floor, okay? There's a secure room near the south stairwell, it'll take me a few minutes to get to, but that will give you enough time to finish up down there.”

“Aye, aye, Deacon.”

She packs her supplies into the trash bag, inches along a wall to the other side of the room and peers out the doorway. All clear.

Just as she’s about to exit the room, her walkie talkie crackles to life again.

She rolls her eyes and holds the transmission switch. “What do you want now?”

miss deviant: Pink mist is obviously a Grey's Anatomy shoutout.

buffyx: Of course. And "Papa Smurf" gets credited to Ann.

miss deviant: * STEVE HOLT! * (I don't know. sometimes I like to say that when I'm proud of myself.)

buffyx: And also-- Jason knows BETTER than to contact Kristen, but he does ANYWAY, which is one of the first signs of how she represents his humanity. And it's kind of implied that the walkie talkies are the reason they get caught.

miss deviant: Right. Anyway, they are not practicing Safe Infiltration. Remember kids, when you're faced with the choice of invading religious strongholds, always do what George W. Bush tells you - DON'T.

buffyx: Listen to the fingerless girl. She knows her shit.

miss deviant: Or does George W. tell you only to invade them if they have oil? I forget. THE WORLD IS SO FICKLE!

“KRISTEN.” It’s Jason, but she can barely hear him over the deafening static and background noise. “KRISTEN, LISTEN TO ME-YOU HAVE-”

“Jason-” she gasps, her heart leaping into her throat.

“JUST-DON’T-”

“Jason, what’s going-”

The static makes whatever he’s saying next indistinguishable, but then she deciphers one word: “RUN!”

Kristen doesn’t hesitate to follow his advice. She chucks her near-empty bag in the closest waste bin, praying that the fact that the last explosive is in a trash bag will be enough to keep it undiscovered for the next hour or so, and spins on her heel, the floor squeaking under her shoe as she makes a run for it. Sure enough, she’s only started running for about two seconds before she hears footsteps behind her, voices shouting and two-way radios buzzing to life.

Oh, shit. The Scientology Storm Troopers are after her. She races blindly around the corner, nearly colliding with another scientist dude. She manages to dodge him and sprints down the rest of the hallway. At the end, she finds an unlabeled, mercifully non-coded door next to the elevators, which she flings open to reveal a set of stairs.

Kristen takes them two at a time, not slowing for a second, and she’s reached the next floor by the time she hears the same door she first entered being busted open from beneath her. She throws all her weight against the door she’s facing now. It flies open, and she tumbles out, almost losing her balance.

“Kristen!”

It’s Jason, ten feet to her left. He tears toward her, drops his walkie talkie and almost yanks Kristen's arm out of the socket as he grabs her hand.

"Hurry!" he insists, pulling her down corridor after corridor.

miss deviant: BUSTED!

buffyx: SCIENTOLOGY STORM TROOPERS! I love that. WAY TO GO, ANN. BRAVO.

miss deviant: I had to explain to Hannah exactly what role Storm Troopers played in the Star Wars films. Because while she is a nerd, she is not much of a geek

buffyx: That is true. The thing about writing action sequences is this: You have to lay it all out in your mind. Each movement has to make sense from the one preceding it. It's a lot harder than I thought it'd be. But also interestnig, because I have never written something as action-y and plotty as this.

miss deviant: Right. You have to remember who is facing in which direction, where you put the door, and what props your characters have with them - such as rubber gloves. Sometimes, obviously, things are missed. I think we did a pretty good job on most of it, though.

buffyx: RUB IT IN, WHY DON'T YOU?

miss deviant: Hey. I'm about to give you a big fat kudos in about twenty seconds, so HOLD YOUR TONGUE, woman.

Her mouth is parched and one of her shoelaces has become untied during the flight upstairs, but she runs anyway. For what, she can't tell- if not for her life, then maybe for something else, more primal. His hand clings tightly to hers, hall after fluorescent lit hall, one blending into the other, tangling her in the maze that is the Center.

Soon, the sound of the footsteps behind them grows fainter. Jason glances around wildly and tugs open a random door, pulling her into what appears to be a dark cavern, then barricades the door with an office chair he finds near the entrance.

"You okay?" he asks.

She can hear him panting a little, and she uses that noise to locate him in the darkness. Slowly, her eyes adjust, and she can make out the outline of his body, but not much else. The only light comes from the half inch crack under the door.

When she gets close enough, she can just make out the features of his face.

Kristen nods. “Better now that the Storm Troopers are gone.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.” She rubs her shoulder with the heel of her hand. It feels a little wrenched. She leans over, puts her hands on her denim clad knees, tries to catch her breath. When she looks up again, Jason's still watching her, concerned. She realizes her teeth are chattering.

buffyx: See, Jason is like me. Dorky but not geeky.

miss deviant: I wrote this section fairly early on in the process, if I remember correctly. Obviously, Hannah helped me flesh it out and make it so much better.

buffyx: Please. It was already rocking the awesome from the start.

miss deviant: Well, with SCIENTOLOGY CLOSETS, how could it not be?

buffyx: So true.

The spot where his nails dug into her wrist as he grabbed her burns, her tendons ache and her throat feels like someone's scraped it out with an industrial pipe cleaner. The footsteps in the hallway begin to grow louder, and Kristen's blue eyes open wide, and suddenly Jason envelopes her in his arms, pulling her into the room’s darkest corner. Her body shakes and trembles and she wills her teeth to stop making noise.

Her body is still wracked with tremors, but Jason’s arms are tight around her, stabilizing her. They breathe in tandem, chests rising and falling, pressed together like pages in a book.

A really steamy book.

The shakes begin to slow, as do the footsteps, slowly passing the room where they hide, the noise of boots pounding on tile growing ever softer as they move down an alternate corridor, still searching for them.

“Shh, shh,” Jason croons into her hair. His hands rub briskly up and down her arms, which are covered in goosebumps even under her sweater and cotton lab coat.

Her wrist still hurts. Her throat still burns. Her body still trembles.

She has never felt better.

Her face is two inches from his neck. I will not look up, she tells herself. I will not look up.

"What about near death situations in closets?" she murmurs instead. "What do the Scientologists have to say about those?"

miss deviant: Still remembering the plane clause.

buffyx: This section kills me. Ann wrote pretty much the entire thing.

miss deviant: I told you, I LOVED this section. I wrote it when we were still on section THREE or something. I could NOT WAIT to get to this section, because it was SO GOOD. For the record - they were never going to kiss in the closet. Even if it is one of my kinks.

buffyx: Jason wasn't at that point yet, and Kristen wasn't bold enough. It's not until she thinks he's dead and he isn't that she gets the guts to just go for it. SHE JUST CANNOT KEEP IT IN HER PANTS ANY LONGER.

dvd extras, the liberation of katie holmes, dvd commentary

Previous post Next post
Up