Away From Here- Chapter 16.
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Chapter 16.
News.
The two return to their apartment, alone, and neither of them say a word.
Mara is twitchy in the morning, Whiz notes, dimly, as he walks past her to make some breakfast, and she’s not talking to Shannon. The usually lit screen is blank, not even turned onto the contacts list, but Mara looks like she wants to turn it on.
Whiz isn’t really in the mood to contemplate their relationship (and that word scrapes across his brain like sandpaper, painful and wrong, but what other term can he use for what he saw?) he’s got a pounding headache from too many drinks and his mouth feels dry, so he mumbles a good morning to Mara and wanders into the kitchen.
Mara follows. Whiz is surprised she didn’t stay where she was.
“Good morning, Whiz,” she says, a smile on her lips, bright and cheery and obviously not feeling the hangover he is currently suffering from. “You making breakfast?” She leans against the table top as he reaches for the bread.
“Yeah,” is all the reply he gives, as he pulls out a couple of slices and places them in the toaster, one for him and one for her.
“Are you all right?” she asks him, after a moment, concern dancing her eyes.
He has to wonder how she expects him to respond to that.
No, last night I saw the girl I love kiss the girl I hate under the mistletoe at a party that one of them shouldn’t have even been invited to. No I’m not fucking all right.
And how would she react to that? Grab him round the shoulders and press their lips together, murmuring that she loves him too and why did they wait so long? Why didn’t one of them say what they both felt, oh so deeply? Did he honestly think that he would be able to press her up against the wall and kiss her like there was nothing else in the world that matters to him because he knows that much is true?
No, he doesn’t think that at all.
She proved what mattered to her last night and Whiz is going to learn to accept that. He knows he can, even if he doesn’t want to.
He shakes his head. “Oh I’m fine, Mar.” he tells her and neither of them say anything more about it.
Mara been on edge all day; she can feel nervous energy thrum through her body, coursing through her veins like red hot electricity, coiling through her sinew and muscle. She thinks about going for a run, to see if she can clear all that bundling energy, but she’s afraid that if she leaves the house, she might miss the call.
The call when she gets the okay, where Shannon calls her and tells her that everything is ready to go, that she and Whiz are going to do something different, that the world is going to be open at their feet, that they’re going to-
She pauses. She’s not sure what they’re going to do. But it’s going to be new, and exciting, and different. Something more than this mundane world full of glass and rusted chrome and the nothingness of this world that they swaddle in everything, like that somehow makes it seem like more than it is.
She sits on the sofa, then she stands again, jogging the length of the living room, up to the window, then the door, restless and bubbling with excitement. What are they going to ask her and Whiz to do? She doesn’t know, but it’d be the chance to work for an Agency, and The Central Agency for Spatial Development at that! There’s no limit to what they could be planning.
She’s watching the vid screen out of the corner of her eyes, waiting for it to light up with the telltale glow of a call, telling Mara what’s going to happen. She’d had a message across her PDA from Shannon an hour ago; it had simply read ‘Going to see Miss Ashcroft, call u later.’
Well, it is later. And Mara wants to know.
She almost considers ringing Shannon herself.
But then the vid beeps with the same old telltale ring.
Whiz returns to the apartment after work. It was Mara’s day off so he expected her to be at the Agency, and he’d got off early, so he’d returned to the apartment to change his shirt (some inconsiderate jerk had poured coffee down it) before he went to meet Mara, who’s been acting like nothing had happened last night, so he’s ignoring it too, which is probably for the best.
He unlocks the apartment with his key before pushing it open, the heavy weight of the stiff metal almost heavier than usual. He steps into the apartment, and allows the door to close behind him, only for a fabric clad being to burst out of the living room and launch itself at him, bodily slamming into him, pushing him back against the door, meeting it with a harsh clang.
Whiz blinks in confusion as Mara starts talking so fast he can’t hear a word she’s saying, ratting off so fast that the words turn into one blur, clutching him tightly, her eyes bright and wide, excited even. Whiz is utterly confused.
She’s babbling; words tumble out of her mouth and he misses every single one of them, so he gives her a gentle push, chuckling in spite of himself as she pouts at him. “Okay, what’s got you so excited, Mar?” he asks her, raising an eyebrow. The other woman stops pouting and grins again, she opens her mouth again but Whiz raises her hand. “Slowly, Mar,” he warns. She nods, grabbing his wrist and he tries valiantly to ignore the tingle that runs tup his arm and into his body.
“You won’t believe it, Whiz! It’s amazing!” she tells him, excitedly.
Whiz raises an eyebrow. “Then maybe we ought to sit down,” he tells her and she shakes her head.
“No need to sit down, Whiz! How could you even contemplate something so mundane right now?!” she tells him, bouncing up and down like some kind of excited puppy.
He watches her, feeling slightly dizzy. “Okay, maybe I should sit down, then,” he rephrases. His feet are killing him for spending his entire day leaning over machinery, after all.
She grins and nods, enthusiastically, pulling him into the living room and practically throwing him into the sofa, remaining standing herself. He kicks off his shoes and motions at her. “Okay, let’s try this again, slower, so us mere mortals can understand.”
“It’s fantastic, Whiz! It-it’s something so brilliant!” she gushes, practically jumping.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Mar,” he tells her. “What’s so fantastic it’s got you acting like a five year old on caffeine?”
“We have jobs, Whiz!” she all but shouts, gleefully, looking at him like the lottery has just been won and all the money is hers for the taking.
Whiz stops and looks at her, incredulous. “Yes, Mara, we’ve had them for a while now...” he says, one part sarcastic, another confused.
She shakes her head at him, as if he’s the one acting so weirdly. “You don’t understand, Whiz!” she tells him, pulling him to his feet with both hands. “We have new jobs!” She’s grinning at him, like everything should make sense now, and he should be excited too.
“Mar,” he starts, confused. “I don’t understand...” He shakes his head. “Look, just sit down. Where did all this even come from?” he asks her, a strange sense of unease curling in his stomach. He leads her to the sofa, and she reluctantly sits down.
“It happened last night,” she tells him, still beaming happily. Whiz’s stomach clenches.
It seems a lot of things happened last night.
“What exactly?” he asks. “Who offered you this ‘job’?”
“Shannon!” she replies, as though that much is obvious, and Whiz feel something that used to be so very unfamiliar to him, but is quickly becoming very familiar, twist his insides around at the mention of that name.
Jealousy he thinks vaguely. But it’s overwhelmed with confusion.
“What was she doing offering us jobs at The Agency? They’re fully staffed with techs...” he tries to remind her but she cuts him off.
“She didn’t offer it, she was sent to offer it to us by another Agency!” she tells him.
“Which Agency?” he questions, wearily.
Mara straightens up, looking proud. “I’ll show you!”
She bounces up and grabs to remote for the vid screen, turning off the standby. A screen flashes up, stark black words on the white screen, headed with the words ‘The Central Agency for Spatial Development.’
Whiz reads quickly.
Mara’s read it a hundred times before, memorised it word for word, so she watches Whiz’s expression. It’s unreadable; something unusual for Whiz. She’s not sure what it means, but she’s too excited to care.
He looks away when he’s finished and she looks to him. He just scrubs a hand through his hair and looks at his lap.
“Oh, Mar.” His voice sounds lost, mixed with something she doesn’t recognise, and it quashes her excitement somewhat.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, looking at the screen, as if it might tell her what Whiz is acting so oddly towards the situation.
“Mar, what are we going to do?” he asks, looking up at her.
She blinks, confused at him. “What on Earth do you mean, ‘what are we going to do’?” she asks, utterly confused.
“Well, no one’s ever refused an offer to work for an Agency, it’s just not done, how can we-”
“Wait a damned second!” Mara says, jumping up. “Who says we’re refusing? I didn’t say anything about refusing!”
Whiz looks up at her. “Well, we can’t accept this!” he tells her, shocked. “There’s no way!”
“Actually there is,” Mara says, still confused, but excitement creeping in again. “Because we already have.”
“We what?!” Whiz says, leaping to his feet. “No! We can’t!”
“What the hell do you mean ‘we can’t’?!” Mara replies. “This is an opportunity Whiz, we can’t waste it!”
Whiz stares at her, shocked. “You’re kidding me! You cannot honestly expect me to think that you want to do this!” he says, disbelieving.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asks. “Don’t you?”
“No, of course I don’t!” he shouts at her. “Any sane person would refuse this!”
“Do you even understand what they’re asking of us?!” Mara shouts in reply, disbelieving, how could Whiz be being so dense, so close-minded. Why can’t he understand?!
“I understand it perfectly, Mar. They want us to leave everything behind us, our friends, our loved ones, to go tread around a planet that they believe can withstand human life! They want us to leave our lives behind for the sake of human expansion!”
“Isn’t that a worthy cause?!” Mara demands.
“Not for me!” he tells her. “Let some other stupid fool risk their lives for it, not us!”
Mara growls and pushes away from him. “I can’t believe you! You don’t understand what this means!”
Suddenly she comes up to him, right up close so she doesn’t have to shout anymore. “Whiz, they say it’s like Earth, how Earth used to be, before it got covered in chrome and metal and people, can you imagine that?” she says, her voice soft, looking at him, pleading. “Can you imagine that, Whiz?”
She looks imploringly at him, and for a moment, she thinks she’s sees something in his eyes, but then, as soon as it’s there, it’s gone, and he looks away. “Frankly, I don’t want to.”
Mara stops dead, her heart feels like it stutters, and she steps back.
“Well, Whiz... if that’s how it’s going to be...” she trails off and pauses for a moment, contemplative. “You know, I told them that I wouldn’t leave with you.” She looks him up and down, he doesn’t meet her gaze. “I suppose we can make an exception if this how you’re going to treat what they’re giving us.”
Whiz’s head snaps up. “What do you mean ‘what they’re giving us’?! Do you think this is some kind of second chance at life?!” he asks her, staring incredulously at her. “Because we don’t need a second chance, Mara! We’ve got everything we could have ever needed!”
“Maybe you do! But I don’t!”
This seems to stop Whiz in his tracks, but, Mara doesn’t stop. “You might be happy with whatever this world is now. Maybe all this rusted technology is good enough for you, that all this stuff means a damn, in the end, but it doesn’t! Not to me!”
Whiz doesn’t reply for a moment and Mara is about to say something else when he speaks.
“Get out.”
Mara blinks. “What?” she asks, laughing slightly, but it’s tinged with confusion and disbelief.
He slowly looks up at her, his eyes are cold and dark, and it looks wrong on Whiz. “If all this is not good enough for you- if I’m not good enough for you, even though, god I thought I could have been good enough, if you’d just given me a chance -then maybe you should just leave.” He gives a little laugh, and it sounds hollow, cold and not like Whiz at all and she doesn’t have time to process anything he just said. “Not that I imagine you’ll be hanging around for long anyway.”
Mara takes a step forward. “Whiz,” she says, although just saying his name might change this scene, but he turns way.
“You can tell Shannon and whoever hired her that I’m not coming with you.”
He does look back at her, so Mara straightens her back. “You can’t throw me out of here, it’s my flat too.”
“It’s in my name, it always has been,” he reminds her. “I can throw you out if you want.”
Mara tries to squash everything that’s building up in her stomach, the rolling fear and upset in her belly, she doesn’t have time for it and he doesn’t deserve to see it. So she stands proudly, like it doesn’t bother her at all.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, then I’ll get my things.”
“I think that would be best.”
Neither of them speak again, and Mara wonders if they ever will again.
Next Chapter>>
Chapter 16.
News.
The two return to their apartment, alone, and neither of them say a word.
Mara is twitchy in the morning, Whiz notes, dimly, as he walks past her to make some breakfast, and she’s not talking to Shannon. The usually lit screen is blank, not even turned onto the contacts list, but Mara looks like she wants to turn it on.
Whiz isn’t really in the mood to contemplate their relationship (and that word scrapes across his brain like sandpaper, painful and wrong, but what other term can he use for what he saw?) he’s got a pounding headache from too many drinks and his mouth feels dry, so he mumbles a good morning to Mara and wanders into the kitchen.
Mara follows. Whiz is surprised she didn’t stay where she was.
“Good morning, Whiz,” she says, a smile on her lips, bright and cheery and obviously not feeling the hangover he is currently suffering from. “You making breakfast?” She leans against the table top as he reaches for the bread.
“Yeah,” is all the reply he gives, as he pulls out a couple of slices and places them in the toaster, one for him and one for her.
“Are you all right?” she asks him, after a moment, concern dancing her eyes.
He has to wonder how she expects him to respond to that.
No, last night I saw the girl I love kiss the girl I hate under the mistletoe at a party that one of them shouldn’t have even been invited to. No I’m not fucking all right.
And how would she react to that? Grab him round the shoulders and press their lips together, murmuring that she loves him too and why did they wait so long? Why didn’t one of them say what they both felt, oh so deeply? Did he honestly think that he would be able to press her up against the wall and kiss her like there was nothing else in the world that matters to him because he knows that much is true?
No, he doesn’t think that at all.
She proved what mattered to her last night and Whiz is going to learn to accept that. He knows he can, even if he doesn’t want to.
He shakes his head. “Oh I’m fine, Mar.” he tells her and neither of them say anything more about it.
Mara been on edge all day; she can feel nervous energy thrum through her body, coursing through her veins like red hot electricity, coiling through her sinew and muscle. She thinks about going for a run, to see if she can clear all that bundling energy, but she’s afraid that if she leaves the house, she might miss the call.
The call when she gets the okay, where Shannon calls her and tells her that everything is ready to go, that she and Whiz are going to do something different, that the world is going to be open at their feet, that they’re going to-
She pauses. She’s not sure what they’re going to do. But it’s going to be new, and exciting, and different. Something more than this mundane world full of glass and rusted chrome and the nothingness of this world that they swaddle in everything, like that somehow makes it seem like more than it is.
She sits on the sofa, then she stands again, jogging the length of the living room, up to the window, then the door, restless and bubbling with excitement. What are they going to ask her and Whiz to do? She doesn’t know, but it’d be the chance to work for an Agency, and The Central Agency for Spatial Development at that! There’s no limit to what they could be planning.
She’s watching the vid screen out of the corner of her eyes, waiting for it to light up with the telltale glow of a call, telling Mara what’s going to happen. She’d had a message across her PDA from Shannon an hour ago; it had simply read ‘Going to see Miss Ashcroft, call u later.’
Well, it is later. And Mara wants to know.
She almost considers ringing Shannon herself.
But then the vid beeps with the same old telltale ring.
Whiz returns to the apartment after work. It was Mara’s day off so he expected her to be at the Agency, and he’d got off early, so he’d returned to the apartment to change his shirt (some inconsiderate jerk had poured coffee down it) before he went to meet Mara, who’s been acting like nothing had happened last night, so he’s ignoring it too, which is probably for the best.
He unlocks the apartment with his key before pushing it open, the heavy weight of the stiff metal almost heavier than usual. He steps into the apartment, and allows the door to close behind him, only for a fabric clad being to burst out of the living room and launch itself at him, bodily slamming into him, pushing him back against the door, meeting it with a harsh clang.
Whiz blinks in confusion as Mara starts talking so fast he can’t hear a word she’s saying, ratting off so fast that the words turn into one blur, clutching him tightly, her eyes bright and wide, excited even. Whiz is utterly confused.
She’s babbling; words tumble out of her mouth and he misses every single one of them, so he gives her a gentle push, chuckling in spite of himself as she pouts at him. “Okay, what’s got you so excited, Mar?” he asks her, raising an eyebrow. The other woman stops pouting and grins again, she opens her mouth again but Whiz raises her hand. “Slowly, Mar,” he warns. She nods, grabbing his wrist and he tries valiantly to ignore the tingle that runs tup his arm and into his body.
“You won’t believe it, Whiz! It’s amazing!” she tells him, excitedly.
Whiz raises an eyebrow. “Then maybe we ought to sit down,” he tells her and she shakes her head.
“No need to sit down, Whiz! How could you even contemplate something so mundane right now?!” she tells him, bouncing up and down like some kind of excited puppy.
He watches her, feeling slightly dizzy. “Okay, maybe I should sit down, then,” he rephrases. His feet are killing him for spending his entire day leaning over machinery, after all.
She grins and nods, enthusiastically, pulling him into the living room and practically throwing him into the sofa, remaining standing herself. He kicks off his shoes and motions at her. “Okay, let’s try this again, slower, so us mere mortals can understand.”
“It’s fantastic, Whiz! It-it’s something so brilliant!” she gushes, practically jumping.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Mar,” he tells her. “What’s so fantastic it’s got you acting like a five year old on caffeine?”
“We have jobs, Whiz!” she all but shouts, gleefully, looking at him like the lottery has just been won and all the money is hers for the taking.
Whiz stops and looks at her, incredulous. “Yes, Mara, we’ve had them for a while now...” he says, one part sarcastic, another confused.
She shakes her head at him, as if he’s the one acting so weirdly. “You don’t understand, Whiz!” she tells him, pulling him to his feet with both hands. “We have new jobs!” She’s grinning at him, like everything should make sense now, and he should be excited too.
“Mar,” he starts, confused. “I don’t understand...” He shakes his head. “Look, just sit down. Where did all this even come from?” he asks her, a strange sense of unease curling in his stomach. He leads her to the sofa, and she reluctantly sits down.
“It happened last night,” she tells him, still beaming happily. Whiz’s stomach clenches.
It seems a lot of things happened last night.
“What exactly?” he asks. “Who offered you this ‘job’?”
“Shannon!” she replies, as though that much is obvious, and Whiz feel something that used to be so very unfamiliar to him, but is quickly becoming very familiar, twist his insides around at the mention of that name.
Jealousy he thinks vaguely. But it’s overwhelmed with confusion.
“What was she doing offering us jobs at The Agency? They’re fully staffed with techs...” he tries to remind her but she cuts him off.
“She didn’t offer it, she was sent to offer it to us by another Agency!” she tells him.
“Which Agency?” he questions, wearily.
Mara straightens up, looking proud. “I’ll show you!”
She bounces up and grabs to remote for the vid screen, turning off the standby. A screen flashes up, stark black words on the white screen, headed with the words ‘The Central Agency for Spatial Development.’
Whiz reads quickly.
Mara’s read it a hundred times before, memorised it word for word, so she watches Whiz’s expression. It’s unreadable; something unusual for Whiz. She’s not sure what it means, but she’s too excited to care.
He looks away when he’s finished and she looks to him. He just scrubs a hand through his hair and looks at his lap.
“Oh, Mar.” His voice sounds lost, mixed with something she doesn’t recognise, and it quashes her excitement somewhat.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, looking at the screen, as if it might tell her what Whiz is acting so oddly towards the situation.
“Mar, what are we going to do?” he asks, looking up at her.
She blinks, confused at him. “What on Earth do you mean, ‘what are we going to do’?” she asks, utterly confused.
“Well, no one’s ever refused an offer to work for an Agency, it’s just not done, how can we-”
“Wait a damned second!” Mara says, jumping up. “Who says we’re refusing? I didn’t say anything about refusing!”
Whiz looks up at her. “Well, we can’t accept this!” he tells her, shocked. “There’s no way!”
“Actually there is,” Mara says, still confused, but excitement creeping in again. “Because we already have.”
“We what?!” Whiz says, leaping to his feet. “No! We can’t!”
“What the hell do you mean ‘we can’t’?!” Mara replies. “This is an opportunity Whiz, we can’t waste it!”
Whiz stares at her, shocked. “You’re kidding me! You cannot honestly expect me to think that you want to do this!” he says, disbelieving.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asks. “Don’t you?”
“No, of course I don’t!” he shouts at her. “Any sane person would refuse this!”
“Do you even understand what they’re asking of us?!” Mara shouts in reply, disbelieving, how could Whiz be being so dense, so close-minded. Why can’t he understand?!
“I understand it perfectly, Mar. They want us to leave everything behind us, our friends, our loved ones, to go tread around a planet that they believe can withstand human life! They want us to leave our lives behind for the sake of human expansion!”
“Isn’t that a worthy cause?!” Mara demands.
“Not for me!” he tells her. “Let some other stupid fool risk their lives for it, not us!”
Mara growls and pushes away from him. “I can’t believe you! You don’t understand what this means!”
Suddenly she comes up to him, right up close so she doesn’t have to shout anymore. “Whiz, they say it’s like Earth, how Earth used to be, before it got covered in chrome and metal and people, can you imagine that?” she says, her voice soft, looking at him, pleading. “Can you imagine that, Whiz?”
She looks imploringly at him, and for a moment, she thinks she’s sees something in his eyes, but then, as soon as it’s there, it’s gone, and he looks away. “Frankly, I don’t want to.”
Mara stops dead, her heart feels like it stutters, and she steps back.
“Well, Whiz... if that’s how it’s going to be...” she trails off and pauses for a moment, contemplative. “You know, I told them that I wouldn’t leave with you.” She looks him up and down, he doesn’t meet her gaze. “I suppose we can make an exception if this how you’re going to treat what they’re giving us.”
Whiz’s head snaps up. “What do you mean ‘what they’re giving us’?! Do you think this is some kind of second chance at life?!” he asks her, staring incredulously at her. “Because we don’t need a second chance, Mara! We’ve got everything we could have ever needed!”
“Maybe you do! But I don’t!”
This seems to stop Whiz in his tracks, but, Mara doesn’t stop. “You might be happy with whatever this world is now. Maybe all this rusted technology is good enough for you, that all this stuff means a damn, in the end, but it doesn’t! Not to me!”
Whiz doesn’t reply for a moment and Mara is about to say something else when he speaks.
“Get out.”
Mara blinks. “What?” she asks, laughing slightly, but it’s tinged with confusion and disbelief.
He slowly looks up at her, his eyes are cold and dark, and it looks wrong on Whiz. “If all this is not good enough for you- if I’m not good enough for you, even though, god I thought I could have been good enough, if you’d just given me a chance -then maybe you should just leave.” He gives a little laugh, and it sounds hollow, cold and not like Whiz at all and she doesn’t have time to process anything he just said. “Not that I imagine you’ll be hanging around for long anyway.”
Mara takes a step forward. “Whiz,” she says, although just saying his name might change this scene, but he turns way.
“You can tell Shannon and whoever hired her that I’m not coming with you.”
He does look back at her, so Mara straightens her back. “You can’t throw me out of here, it’s my flat too.”
“It’s in my name, it always has been,” he reminds her. “I can throw you out if you want.”
Mara tries to squash everything that’s building up in her stomach, the rolling fear and upset in her belly, she doesn’t have time for it and he doesn’t deserve to see it. So she stands proudly, like it doesn’t bother her at all.
“If that’s how it’s going to be, then I’ll get my things.”
“I think that would be best.”
Neither of them speak again, and Mara wonders if they ever will again.
Next Chapter>>