(Untitled)

[rage_andlove]

Sometimes, he really misses when life was fucking simple.

He's pretty much used to being in pain, by now. The nanobots (fucking nanobots healed the wound into a pretty neat white scar but the prosthetic chafes and his muscles complain. He limps. He falls. He's used to his hands being torn, arms and face being bruised. He stumbles. He feels

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[broken_brushes]

I probably should have been in the bakery. There was still a cast on my right arm and I couldn't do a lot of the work I was used to doing, but Ned was gone. After all that time, he and Chuck were just gone, and Marshall and Peeta needed all the help they could get.

The loss had hit me harder than I had expected, though. I'd worked beside Ned everyday, and he had supported the bakery idea from the beginning. Being there was more difficult than I had anticipated, but I hoped a brief respite would be okay since it was afternoon.

"How's the water?" I called as I settled onto one of the larger boulders along the periphery of the pool. I liked it out here; it was loud, but in a way that made me feel calm and clean.

[rage_andlove]

"Good, so far," he says, still stirring his foot in the water. Now he's just got to talk himself into getting all the way in. He glances back at her and then he glances again because...well, she's pretty fucking hot. Which just makes him more self-concious about his fucking leg. He drags his t-shirt across his knee.

"You gonna swim?"

[broken_brushes]

"Can't," I replied, and lifted my right arm so that he could see the cast there. "I've still got a week left."

He was the one who looked like Nate, I suddenly realized. His clinic time had overlapped with Mace's, but I'd mostly known him by reputation. When a guy showed up looking like a prominent Council member and immediately needed an amputation, it wasn't something easily missed, especially not by me. I wished I could remember his name, it would have made me feel better about the self-conscious way he drew his shirt across his leg.

"You're friends with Mace, aren't you?" I asked instead, trying for a middle ground.

[rage_andlove]

"Shit. Sorry, man."

Scared of not, it seems easier, right then to ease into the water. It seems easier to not own up to being afraid. He discards his t-shirt and shifts on the rock, easing himself down into the water that's shallow enough to only hit him to the waste. The prosthetic feels weird in the water, not yet fully a part of him.

"I don't know if you'd call us friends," he says, crooked smile because, yeah, he probably would. "I only like him about half of the time."

[youlosetrack]

Mace is a hell of a lot better, now; though he's not fully there, he can walk longer, put more weight on his leg, and generally get around the way he couldn't not more than two weeks ago. His leg still hurts and he still has to rest for an hour or two at the rec center when he gets down there, but it's freeing in a way he hasn't felt since halfway through the Icarus mission.

The island isn't much bigger than Icarus II, but it's much more open than the ship ever was. There's the sun.

He's taken to visiting the waterfall now, sitting near the edge of it and letting the cool water lap over his feet a substitute for the beach. That, he's not ready for. Not yet.

He isn't surprised when he finds Tunny there, simply sets his crutches and backpack aside and sits near the water, sun warming his shoulders.

[rage_andlove]

"Hey," says Tunny, after a few minutes when he glances up and finds Mace sitting there. He manages a smile, crooked and looks down at the distorted prosthetic in the water. He clears his throat and idly plays with the wrapping around his stump.

"Is it weird that...I'm sort of scared to get into the water in case I never fucking get out?"

[youlosetrack]

Mace says nothing for a moment, lips thinning. He still can't go into the water himself, and though he'll say it's about his leg, he still can't forget Icarus's mainframe, the way he'd felt himself slowly freezing to death and would have kept on going had he not suddenly been found by Shari.

"Not weird. Just don't expect me to come jumping in after you if you need saving."

[rage_andlove]

"I can swim, fucker," says Tunny, and that's the push that he needs to slide off the rock. The water's shallow enough that it's only hitting him to the ribs when his good foot hits the sandy floor. The prosthetic floats, uncertain.

Tunny takes a deep breath, trusts Hiccup (tries to) pushes away from the wall.

[first_pink_lady]

She's from Venice Beach, so she's pretty damn familiar with the whole swimming shindig. While the beach is better for lounging and getting some sun - even if she doesn't need anymore goddamn freckles, the waterfall pool has got it made for a nice, cool swim. That's why she stepped out of the trees in a red and white polka dot bikini with a towel in hand, only to stop dead when she saw Tunny.

She hadn't seen him since the beginning of August, with the whole Revenge of the Bodysnatchers gender-bending epidemic. There's a moment when her shock and dismay shows, a split second where her vulnerability is entirely visible before she flashes on a smile and puts a hand confidently on a pushed-out hip. "Hi,"

[rage_andlove]

He feels like he hasn't seen her in a really long time. He swallows, hot, shamed colour burning in his face as he looks up at her. His leg's bent, hanging in the water and he looks down at it dumbly for a moment before he reaches out and snags his t-shirt, covering it.

"Hey, Betty," he says.

[first_pink_lady]

She registers his leg, but is more preoccupied with her name. Her real name, the one she only really cared to hear from Paul or when things were getting hot and heavy - Tunny using it now just reminded her of the feel of him underneath her, and why that never should have happened.

"Rizzo," she said firmly, even as she wonders if she should still be calling him Tunny or Joe.

[rage_andlove]

"Yeah, sorry," he says, clearing his throat, rubbing his face with one hand and stirring his foot in the water. He slides his other down to meet it and keeps the t-shirt across his lap. He swallows.

"Look. You might as well get it out of the way and call me a fuckin' asshole. I can feel you thinking it."

[a_real_viking]

Even having made the prosthetic, Hiccup still felt a little strange about seeing Tunny. The memory of their first conversation and how badly he'd screwed up still haunted him the way the worst embarrassments always did. Sometimes he felt like he'd never forget just how badly he'd jumped the gun in that conversation and now he felt it again, watching him quietly for too long.

"How's it feel," he finally asked.

[rage_andlove]

"Good," he says, nodding as he stirs it through the water. He was a total asshole to Hiccup before, he knows that - there's been water under the bridge since, but he can't help feeling it. "Doesn't feel like a part of me yet; maybe it's never fucking going to, but I'm pretty sure it'll work."

[a_real_viking]

Hiccup nodded, shifting weight onto his own metal leg to glance up in the trees for Toothless before looking back at Tunny. "It gets better. It'll never be the same, but eventually you kinda...stop missing what you had and get comfortable with what's there."

[rage_andlove]

"It feels like it might..." he looks down at his leg for a moment and shrugs, starting to ease himself into the water. "Feels like it might actually work."

[number_unlucky]

My skin had recently decided that salt water was a bad, bad thing--I was left dry as paper and about as comfortable--so I was off to the waterfall for my usual swim. The bikini that the clothes box had deigned to give me hadn't fit as well as I might have liked, but I was pretty sure I'd lost a little weight recently. Not so good, I decided.

Between that and the fact that I couldn't ignore the twitch of my left little finger anymore, I could have been doing better.

Up by the pond, I spotted a figure, and the tats made him pretty unmistakable. The thought physician heal thyself ran through my mind, and so I cleared my throat to let him know I was coming. "Hey," I said. "Nice gear."

[rage_andlove]

Doesn't seem to be any point in being self-conscious around Remy; she's a doctor and she's seen pretty much the worst of him. He looks down at the prosthetic. He very carefully doesn't look at Remy's bikini. Not much, anyway.

"I don't know if it's going to work."

[number_unlucky]

"It might take a while to figure it out," I pointed out. "Not to sound like a grade school teacher, but don't give up on it if you don't get it on the first try, okay? Mind if I sit down?"

I gestured towards the rocks nearby Tunny and shrugged one shoulder.

[rage_andlove]

"Free country, Remy," he says, flashing her a crooked smile as, awkwardly, he starts to lower himself into the water. He finds that if he concentrates on just doing that, he doesn't feel the terror of it so hard.

"I ever tell you how fucking good I used to be?"