pain_train | SANCTUM INBOX

"I'll let you know if any of them do. I hope you don't have anything to worry about, though."

He smiles at the image of her with purple hair. The pink was quite a look for her as it was. "You like dyeing your hair, then?"

She snorts. "If I do, I'm going out ass-kicking once I'm out of this place." She takes good care of her soldiers. In return, she expects a lot out of them as a fighting force.

"Yeah, I do. Like... no matter what." It's something that she picks. She knows from pictures that even when she's fresh out of compliance she has her hair in some sort of strange color. "It's... mine. It's me." She smiles. "You should see the giant box of touch up dye I have under my bed on the base. If the barracks ever explode randomly, that... might be the cause."

Edited 2014-11-05 21:40 (UTC)

He laughs. "Well, the pink is nice. Brings out your cheekbones."

She doesn't quite blush, but she's definitely feeling warmed by the compliment. She doesn't get a lot of people telling her she's pretty. This might be because most of her encounters with other people involve dislocating their joints. "Wow, thanks!"

She glances up toward her hair; she can see just a fringe of it. "I'm kind of surprised they didn't have to cut it all off but I guess this time my head was the one part of me that didn't get fucked up. The nurses want to cut it off now though. I probably should, cause it's just hair, right?"

But then she'd feel like she wasn't herself.

"You're welcome," he says with a smile.

"They want to cut it off? Why's that?" In any case, nothing much would be happening to her hair until she could raise her head from the pillow.

"Even if I'm just laying here it still has to be washed and brushed. It's a pain in the ass for the nurses." Wry smile. "I don't know why Whiskey didn't just shave it off during surgery. I guess he likes my hair, maybe. Even if he won't admit to liking anything."

It was true, the hair near her scalp was looking a bit greasy. "They have waterless shampoos, don't they? I wonder why they haven't taken the time to do that."

"Probably just too busy and it's too much of a fucking mess to want to deal with it." She probably should just shave her head. "It's all pretty awkward. And... I don't normally like it when people mess with my hair so I... Might have said some mean things to someone who wanted to cut it."

He could offer to help her take care of it, but...it just seems a little much. He's already visiting her daily and bringing her food."I hope you figure something out."

"I'll suck it up and apologize. Or you'll come in one day and I'll have a shaved head." She laughs.

No, she is certainly not asking him to do something like that. It would be way too embarrassing. He already does way too much for her.

"Your hair would be even shorter than mine," he says, passing a hand over his head. "And this is the shortest it's been in a long time."

"If it looks as cute on me as it does on you I'll be in good shape."

He laughs. "You compliment me enough it's going to go to my head."

"There isn't room for it with all the cute hair." She laughs. "What, I just call it like I see it. Nice smile, and hair and pies. So I guess the rest of you can stay too."

"I'm glad," he says. "It'd be hard to leave my smile and my hair behind and go."

"Like a cheshire cat with floofy hair." She remembers Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's one of the few books she has on her reader. She likes the layers of it, the illogic.

"What's that?" His parents had occasionally read books to him when he was young but they'd never gotten around to that one.

"The Cheshire cat?" Because floofy would be petty self explanatory. "You never read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Or Through the Looking Glass? Well... it is kind of an old ebook." She frees her hand enough to stroke his palm with her fingers idly. "There's a young girl named Alice, and in the first story she falls down a rabbit hole, and in the second she walks through a mirror. And ends up in these strange worlds that are... They're like dreams. Edgar Clay did an amazing series of neo-surrealist luminous paintings based off the story. I've got high def scans of them and... Anyway not important. Bit the paintings are... why I decided to read it." Of all the things to remember, though she couldn't say how many years ago this had been. "Because it felt so familiar."

"Anyway, the Cheshire cat lives in Wonderland. He can vanish by fading away, and the last part of him you see is his smile. Well, he only does that when Alice asks him to stop disappearing and reappearing so fast because it's making her dizzy."

Edited 2014-11-06 13:47 (UTC)

"I haven't read anything like that since I was pretty little," he says. "You remember a lot about that." That's interesting to him, since she seems to have memory problems in general. Perhaps things from her childhood are more enduring.

"I have a copy of it. I don't own that many ebooks... Just no time, you know. But I...come back to Alice. I know I must. I guesses i just decide that I'm tired of training manuals and tactics books and then... there she is. I finished reading--rereading the story a couple weeks ago, I guess?

"Then I was going to get my old paintings back out of storage and look them over, but then you guys decided to attack the Hub." She pokes him lightly on the thumb with her finger. "If you're interested, I don't mind loaning it to you."

He smiles. "That's nice of you. I wonder if Theta would be interested in anything like that."

Theta is an AI, so maybe it means he likes math? She'll offer that up. "There's apparently a lot of mathematical concepts in the story. That's what people say. I never really got that, since I kind of suck at math."

Other than 'enemy-head=no longer a problem.'

"If you want, you can grab the reader out of my housing unit next time you're on base. Not like it's doing me any good just sitting there anyway."

Think.

"Oh shit. I think I left like half a sandwich under my bed, too. Oh, ew."

"I definitely think he'll be interested, then. It sounds like a fun story. Thanks for offering."

He laughs. "Ah, so you need me to clean up after you, is what you're saying," he teases. "I'll make sure and take a member of your platoon and a mop and let them tackle it."

Wrath sticks her tongue out at him. "No, I'm telling you that you should go in with full armor and get a flamethrower from Niels cause I don't want you to die." She tugs on his finger. "And the mutated sandwich monster is your own darn fault, you know. I was in the middle of eating when I got dispatched to the Hub."

So nyah nyah. (Teasing is so much fun.)

"So if you want to brave certain death, it's officer housing unit 101. The guest access code is 723599. That will work except at night hours. The reader...it's on the table next to my bed. That's where I always put it."

Oh god. Is there anything else bad in her room? The laundry had all been bagged, right? Shiiiiiit. Too late.

He pulls his glasses out to take note of the access code. "As long as I don't find some kind of vortex inside I think I'll be safe," he says with a smile. "I've dealt with messes before. My sister and I used to share a room and she can...she can make a mess." The thought of his sister reminds him of what he'd seen in the reflection of the bracket. He only falters for a moment, though. He puts his glasses away again, reaching into his pocket. Their hands had separated when he had gotten them out but now that it's free he doesn't immediately reach for hers again. It's nice to be connected like that but she doesn't really need it now, right? He doesn't want to seem too forward, especially since they're just forming this friendship.

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