milliways_bar | (no subject)

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One should always be mindful of the present moment.

This is somewhat more difficult when the present moment includes an oversized, structurally reinforced edition of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Mostly, right now, the gigantic green fellow is busy being mindful of the book. Turning pages quite that fragile is an interesting endeavor when you have fingers as big as his.

Doesn't mean he's not trying, though.

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Well.

That's...new. She's seen taller - but the taller do tend to be blue, and genderqueer beautiful. Which is shallow of her, but true. Then again, the Na'vi kids seem to enjoy Dr. Seuss, not anything by long dead Roman emperors.

And she doesn't mean to stare, really, but for this moment, Trudy really can't help herself.

"Good book?" she asks at last.

"A fascinating one, though I've only just begun," says Fawkes. With great care he inserts a strap of leather between the volume's pages and closes it in front of him. "I'd heard of it before. It was mentioned in a database."

The words would sound nothing short of outright nerdy if it weren't for the fact that... well. Let us be honest here. Fawkes does not have a particularly pleasant voice. Fawkes sounds, in fact, like someone who logically ought to be screening calls for Evisceratrix O'Kittensquisher, Demon Lord of the Sixth Malebolge, or something like that.

Given the large amounts of lung and throat cancer running rampant on Trudy's Earth, particularly among the working-classes she grew up with (which does go a long way with explaining the huskiness in her own voice), his voice doesn't cause much more than a blink.

"One thing I like 'bout this place, y'can get actual, physical books."

"Oh, I didn't mind having to use the terminal," Fawkes says. "Once I figured out how, anyway. The keys were small, and I had to use a stick."

Fawkes was not gifted by either Nature or FEV with particularly slender fingers. Fawkes was gifted with fingers that rather resemble certain German sausages in terms of diameter.

"But having access to actual, real paper- that is something else entirely, and an experience I don't want to pass up."

He'd smile if he could. He hasn't really got the face for it.

"The keys were too small? They weren't designed for you?"

"I'm afraid not." He shakes his head, a slow, ponderous movement. "The terminal, and everything else I lived with for a very long time, was designed for human users. I had to learn to make do."

"Sorry to hear that," she says, eyes narrowing a little bit as she studies him.

"But all of that is behind me," says Fawkes. "The present moment is the important one. And, I think, a vastly improved one at that."

He offers a rather ghastly attempt at a smile before adding, "But where are my manners? My name is Fawkes."

"I'm Trudy, pleased to meet you." Beat. "The present moment more important than the future?"

"Important as the future is," Fawkes says, "it's the present moment that we live in. What we plan for them has all its roots in what we do now."

Even if the words did ring a little hollow over the endless string of present moments that passed in the isolation chamber in Vault 87.

"Hrm. I guess." Beat. "Sorry, been havin' some trouble with the whole 'plannin' for the future' thing."

Then again, given the...man, person, had been reading philosophy...

"Understandable," says Fawkes. "In all honesty, I've only recently come into a position where I can truly plan, instead of merely hope and wait while the future comes to me, myself."

"Yeah? And how's the workin' out?"

"Difficult, as any new experience would be," says Fawkes. "But it's the kind of thing you only learn through experience. I can manage, I think."

"Yeah, I get that. Well, I hope you do manage."

One more person does is one more person who is which means that she herself has a better chance.

Or something.

"Thank you. I intend to give it my best effort," says Fawkes. "May I ask what troubles you about it?"

If the impression is had that Fawkes is speaking smoothly and clearly, the impression is wrong. The greenskin has a tendency to pause or hesitate between words, as if the act of speaking were itself difficult and some effort of will were required to continue further.

And yet, there is a beat to his words, and she's getting used to it.

"Possible plans for once my tour is done - ain't even the plans, just the thought of...well, if I live to the end of my tour, I might actually have a life. Instead of...tours of duty mixed in with off-time. No orders, no missions...been military since I was eighteen, so it'll be...strange."

Edited 2011-03-29 02:56 (UTC)

"Ah, a soldier," says Fawkes. "But a different sort, I think, from the ones I know. For them, the occupation is lifelong. How long have you served, before this?"

"Altogether?" She thinks. "Excludin' the time spent in cyro-sleep, been serving for twelve years. Current tour is six years all up, which is the longest. Normally they are eighteen months, but you can have multiple tours in the same place."

Fawkes nods. "I see," he says. "I don't think you come from my world. I suspect your situation would be very different if that were so. Where has your service been, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Earth, it's been Middle East, Tibet, Angola, and then there was a jaunt down in Venezuela. Now I'm on a moon called Pandora, in the Alpha Centuri system...have you heard of it?"

"The system, yes, as it was in my database," says Fawkes, "but the moon... I can't say that I have. Humans never set foot beyond Earth's own moon before the Great War that scorched the world and locked the Vaults down, and Pandora is a name I only know from stories of ancient Greece."

"Yeah, the name's a nice bit of irony."

Beat.

"Vaults? Do you know an Ellen Park?"

"I do indeed," says Fawkes, and either produces a truly amazing threat display or offers a broad smile. It's a little hard to say which, with that face. "I owe her my freedom, and nearly all of what I've seen of the world above has bee in the course of my travels with her. I take it you've met?"

"Yeah, I met her here. She's a good kid."

Fawkes nods. "For the time being, we travel together, where her orders and the Brotherhood send her," he says. "That may change in times to come, or it may not. I plan to live each day as it comes, and consider the prospect as I go."

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