CCup 2

Sophia still wasn’t used to the colored lights that illuminated the room. They weren’t like the gas lamp along the city streets, which painted everything in an ugly shade of orange. The source blended with the walls, a fungus of some sort coating them and glowing. It was off-putting in how sleek it was, how different.

Rey was working in the corner. Pipes and valves surrounded him, a low hiss and thrum echoing from within them. Sophia wasn’t sure how many of those pipes were needed and how many of them were there in case they would be needed. They wouldn’t be, not with their track record.

Plants surrounded him, though she was hesitant to call them that. Wild, exotic mishmashes were perhaps a better term. Half of them had bits of brass and bronzes jutting out from them. One of them was almost entirely pipe, acting as a patch for where a crack had run through the system.

After a moment of silence- not worry, for Sophia didn’t have anything to fear-, she tore a strip of glowing fungus off the wall, crushing it in her hands. It felt squishy and prickly and almost vaguely like moss. The red tinted light dimmed slightly, a hole formed in the wall and revealing a grimy set of pipes.

She didn’t have to do that; she knew Rey knew she was there. She did it anyways. She wasn’t quite sure why she had done it; she wasn’t angry at Rey and she knew that.

“Hey, chill.” He’d barely turned to face her. The fact that he hadn’t turned fully sent relief through Sophia. Relief that soon started to turn towards loathing at the source.

She spoke so to fill the silence. “Maybe try getting some real lights, then.” Sophia glanced at the armchair in the corner. Moth eaten, slightly moss covered, dulled pipes refurbished into legs. It wasn’t because of the slight grime that she didn’t sit down.

Blasto shrugged. She started pacing as the long seconds of silence dragged by. Suffocating to her now, where before it had been nice. Neither of them were overly social and she was fine with it, before. “What the fuck are you working on? We still have...” She trailed off. She knew what was going to say. She *wasn’t* some stuttering indecisive idiot after all. Blasto would know what she meant.

“I know.” The dim lighting didn’t help her read any body language. There wouldn’t be any to read, Blasto never had been overly expressive in the months that she’d known him.

She started pacing along the wall of glowing fungus-lighting, hands scratching away at it, picking at it with her nails. “Then why are you in here and not on the fucking streets tagging?”

Blasto turned the water boiler on to kill one of his plants. Steam rose up, only to redirected by some venus flytrap looking hybrids. “Making decoys.”

So they wouldn’t have another incident. Too late for that.

She punched the dirty pipes. They have a dull ring. Her thumb was tucked into her fist, a slight flare of pain shooting through it from the improperly thrown punch. She scowled and scratched a score of fungus off the wall. “Make it poison. Or toxic or whatever the shit is called. I know you can do it. The more deadly the better.”

Blasto paused, turning to face her, “I can, but I won’t. Why?”

The question felt loaded with ambiguity. Even facing him dead on she couldn’t get a read on him. It was *infuriating*. He’d asked why and there were so many ways to answer that. Why do you want poison? Why are you asking? Why are you ruining the fungus? Why are you here?

Why are you so weak?

“They’re nazis! We don’t need a fucking reason!” The fact that *he* was a nazi was only the icing on the cake, except now that fact filled her with fear and self-loathing and an even more visceral hatred. For a moment, Sophia considered retracting that statement. Except she couldn’t. She couldn’t retract it and look like a loser who couldn’t make up her mind. She’d look spineless. It would be insult to add onto her injured self-

Not her injured self. She couldn’t be injured. She wouldn’t let herself be considered injured, crippled.

Blasto turned to rummage through a collection of plants on a twisted brass side table. “I know, Stalker. Why now?”

Why now?

The cold claw of terror clutched at Sophia. Terror and blinding self loathing. She felt sick to her stomach, a nausea rising over her. She felt dirty. She felt cornered. She wanted to claw her way out. It would be easy to go on the offensive and deflect by attacking. To ask Blasto how much he had to be smoking for him to ask that.

Except she couldn’t. She didn’t been declawed.

She couldn’t step back. Couldn’t stay silent. There was weakness in avoiding the question and she couldn’t let herself become weaker.

Which left the truth. The ugly, painful truth that was akin to stepping back.

Long seconds of silence answered for her.

Blasto stepped out of the mess of pipes, his hands full. “Breathe.”

She didn’t. She wouldn’t be told what to do. She was a... had been...

Blasto took a step closer and Sophia’s hands curled into fists. Thumb curled inside. She knew there was supposed to be a certain way to make a fist. She couldn’t remember it. Her stance widened, but it wasn’t a stance she felt confident in.

It was all a mockery.

She slumped against the cold dingy pipes. She could hear steam blow through the hollow pipes that felt sturdier then she did. She spoke a single word, almost too quiet to be heard.

“Victor.”

Inflection entered Blasto’s voice for once, a genuine sound of worry and care and too many other bewildering things. “*Shit*.”

Things was pressed into her hands. Something organic, rolled. Something metallic and oversized. A length of pipes with a dial and a switch and things she didn’t recognize.

Rey flipped something on the pipes and a steady shower of sparks appeared. “Take it.”

Sophia lit the blunt.