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[his smaller, thinner feet get swallowed up faster, and when he wobbles twice, he finally reaches out to her; not her hand (he hasn't held hands, not even with him, since he was old enough to walk and scowl at the same time), but her forearm, nerves sparking well enough this time to grip maybe a little too hard]

-- Shit! They're pullin' me in!

[his backside's already wet; his frontside is looking perilously close to joining]

There's stuff living in everything, out here.

[the grip on her arm is sudden and unexpected -- she doesn't flinch at it, but she thinks she might have a fingertip-wide bruise or two later. without her powers, without her healing. bruises are something carol has long since grown unused to.

she turns to steady him, ruining her own sinking again in the process, catching him under the elbow with the arm not presently being clung to.

normally she'd have let him fall, splat facefirst into the water to sputter and swear, and she'd laugh, because falling over in the water and looking like an idiot is a part of the experience.

now, though, she feels compelled to stop him. all those bandages, she's worried about whatever the hell's happened to his hands and his eye (especially his eye), what getting sand and grime and salt-water in those wounds is going to do to them.]

Whoa, kid, relax, that's kind of the point. Didn't I tell you? Quicksand.

You didn't tell shit! You were gonna let me drown like a ass.

[in less than 2 inches of water??? okay so maybe he's a little flustered]

[and as soon as he steadies himself (not that she helped, no, that was incidental thank you), he snatches those all-put-back-together limbs away from her, arms going out instead to the sides to steady himself]

[Badou isn't thinking about salt or grime or his wounds; mostly, he's just thinking -- ]

[look, see, I can do it just as good as she can...]

[she snorts at him gently and lets him draw away, watching to make sure he doesn't lose his balance again.

he doesn't, though, and she smiles and sticks her tongue out at him, feeling dumb and immature but not caring too much as she turns her face back out to the line of the horizon.

the sun's disappearing pretty quickly now, a blur of blinding orange-gold just keeping its head above water off to their right. a breeze kicks up off the ocean and tugs at carol's hair, and she reaches up to push it out of her face.

suddenly, she remembers something--]

Hey. You hungry, shortstack?

[he's never been asked that question more in his life until this place; it would figure it would take a kidnapping to start getting the number of meals a day he'd actually want]

[it's strange, but he hasn't said anything yet partially to encourage the habit that followed the question, which was to offer him food]

[unfortunately, his mouth always moves faster than his brain]

I was until I heard that lameass nickname. Don't call me that.

[a pause]

'Re you gonna grab fish outta the water with your hands?

[he's seen it in multiple movies; he's always wondered how applicable it actually was]

[wobble, wobble, steeeeadies]

[she can't help but laugh a little at him, low and unaffected.]

No, dorkus, I brought food. Wait here and try not to fall on your ass.

[with that she pulls her feet up again, swishing them around in the water a little to dislodge the worst of the sand clumps. as a parting shot she kicks up a splash aimed at badou.

then she's off back up the beach at a jog, and bending down to unzip the bag, rummaging around inside it. she yells back over her shoulder]

You want pretzels or Doritos?

[which is all she brought. carol has a distinct lack of experience in what teenage boys like to eat, but that seemed close enough to her.]

Doritos!

[the answer comes immediately; Carol's teenage boy intuition is spot on]

[he pulls his feet out of the gloppy sand likewise, but he doesn't make his way back up to where she is. instead, he sits right back down on his soggy ass slightly higher than where the tide comes up (soak him twice, shame on him)]

[a few contemplative moments (those cogs working too studiously again, for a boy at the beach), and he promptly goes digging in the gloopier sand for sea life. in only a couple swipes, he finds tiny white sand crabs wiggling all over, popping out of their holes and diving away]

[so it wasn't nothing, out there; it wasn't emptiness, but fullness -- stuffed to the brim, even]

[he flops backwards onto the sand after that, not seeming to mind sand in his hair; he can hear it, all that water full of stuff, even when he closes his eye(s)]

[carol returns with the food and a jacket for herself, now that the temperature's starting to go down. the bag of doritos gets dumped unceremoniously on the kid's skinny chest.

stuffing her own snack between her teeth, she pulls on the jacket (a shitty, puffy number in an atrocious olive-drab) and flops down beside him, sitting up with her legs stretched out in front of her.

the packet is opened with a loud crinkle and carol stuffs two pretzels in her mouth at once, crunching down on them.]

All it's cracked up to be so far?

[she asks through the food, hand over her mouth to be polite. not that it matters in front of this kid, but it's a force of habit.]

[sharp elbows dig and lever him up, the chip bag sliding into his lap]

[he doesn't sprawl but contracts, sitting cross legged to dig into the orange-dusted feast]

[and it is imperative, apparently, that he swallow at least four handfuls of chips before declaring]

Yeah. It's really cool.

[another handful]

Why's nobody here? Do people do stuff they don't do in the movies? I saw this one once where there was a big luau on a island an' everybody got murdered. They thought it was the couple who invited 'em all there, like in revenge for a bunch'a affairs an' stuff, everybody's sleepin' with everybody basically you find out, but it was really the guy who ran the resort an' in the end everybody still alive got roasted underground like the pig they had in the beginning that they roasted underground.

I still don't really get how you make somethin' cook in the ground.

[crunch]

[watching a teenager eat doritos is not an experience she would've ever thought of chalking up under "fascinating scientific processes", but that's kind of what it is. she regards badou sidelong as he stuffs them into his maw, carol herself taking it a lot slower with her pretzels.

is he gonna choke? she wonders idly.

she can handle it if he chokes. she knows first aid.

is he gonna slow down, though, is the next question that pops up in her head while the kid chatters away in that way that kids have, and that one she's not so sure about.]

They do it with hot rocks, I'm pretty sure.

[--when he takes a break from his spiel.]

But I don't think I've seen that one. Then again I haven't even seen Ghostbusters 2 yet, so.

[it's a point of contention between her and some friends. but who's got time to keep up with movies when you're out saving the world? seriously.]

[rolls his eye, cheek stuffed, and talks around the chips]

The Ghostbusters movies ain't Bill Murray's best ever. They're really funny, but they ain't that great. [a brief doritos genocide] -- That's just what shitheads who want people ta think they know shit about shit say. Stripes is his best movie ever.

[his hands are stained orange, now (it's a nice change from red), and he wipes them on his jeans]

I wanna look at the rocks over there.

[he isn't asking permission -- he gets up, the bag falling from his lap as if it hadn't been the most important thing in his life about five minutes ago]

[a few doritos fall out, get taken by the sea (hope the fish are hungry for junkfood tonight)]

[and he takes off towards the small jetty, intent to climb and slip and scrape his knees a neon sign above him]

["I liked zombieland" would probably amount to some kind of bill murray blasphemy, if she knows boys who know movies, so she keeps the thought to herself with a smirk as he gets up and runs off.

the discarded packet gets plucked from the ground before it can get too wet and grimy, crumpled into a lump and shoved into a pocket of her coat. this might just be some fake beach conjured up to screw with them, but some habits are ingrained deep.

if you brought it here, take it back with you, carol. things live in the sea.

she doesn't bother to trail behind him -- she's not the kid's mother, after all -- but she does keep one sharp eye on him as he scrambles about.

dusk'll be night soon, and carol wonders idly how long he intends to stay. she stretches her arms out over her head. it wouldn't bother her, honestly, if he wanted to spend all night here; the salt-smell and the waves and the seclusion are making her head feel comfortingly clear.]

[maybe it's too expected, but Badou rapidly finds that he really enjoys the jetty. he's come from a concrete jungle, and it maybe makes sense he would gravitate to the solid and sharp, to the cold hard rock in the sea rather than the tumultuous sand]

[(he's had enough tumultuousness in his life as it is)]

[in no time at all (he may be broken, but he's not done) he's far out along the rocks, investigating the ocean slime and the tiny ecosystems swirling in the dips between the rocks. the smell is different here, less clean and sandy, low tide; he digs his hands into the puddles, grabbing curiously at the things which scuttle and dig in low, dark places, especially interested in the crabs (wow, did they all look so weirdly lopsided like that? what was with the buff claw and the dinky claw?)]

[feet scraping and sliding against wet rock, he haphazardly tracks a crab to the very last rock. he makes a wild grab at, but watches it plunk into the water (another habit of his, maybe)]

Hn...

[there were bound to be slower crabs, he thinks, and before he knows what he's doing he's a hunter again]

[she takes the time to finish her pretzels and enjoy the view, sun slipping lower and lower, glowing brighter in her eyes like a show of resistance, one last hurrah before it's all over.

she knows that feeling. if you've gotta go out, go out blazing.

when the last pretzel has been crunched up, the bag shoved in her other pocket, carol hauls herself up off the sand and brushes it off her ass and legs as best she can (which is not that great), then sets off along the shore at a leisurely amble toward the rocks where badou's lurking, thumbs in the belt-loops of her shorts.

there's no rush; she's content to slip along the wet sand as the wind makes lazy tugs at her hair and birds cry out, far off. content to let the kid do his thing.

that's the point, after all.]

[an orange head pops up from the jagged stones, more sunset sunglare than boy]

[and for once, it's Badou that reaches out to another person]

Yo -- Carol.

[of course, as usual, it's a bit of a double-edged sword (he's never really been a bundle of joy, even in the moments he is allowed to be childish)]

[when he crawls more out of the rocks, it's apparent that he's completely soaked from the waist down, with hefty helping of rock slime smeared down the right side of his shirt; he smells exactly like low tide]

D'ya still got that pretzel bag?

[the hand he reaches out also has a fairly sizable crab clamped onto it, it's claw firmly entangled in the thick wads of cotton and cloth that encase Badou's right hand]

[(if there's pressure on the wound itself, he doesn't feel it)]

[the wet and the grime is pretty much what she expected to see, young boys and their knack for accumulating filth and all, but the crab -- the crab is a surprise.

she winces at the hold it's got on him and digs into her jacket, the pretzel bag emerging a second later and bringing the inside of her pocket out with it.]

What're you gonna do with it?

[she asks as she maneuvers the bag carefully around the crab, working to dislodge that nasty-looking pincer from badou's definitely no-longer-pristine bandages.]

Eat it, keep it as a pet...?

I ain't hadda pet before.

[somehow that statement sounds ominous]

[and it's proved ominous indeed when Badou gets impatient, just ripping his hand free with a sharp tug]

[and, along with it, the crab's left claw from its body]

-- Oops.

[mildly horrified, she scrunches the top of the bag closed and holds it out to him.

staring transfixed at that sad, dismembered claw.]

Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of an amputee crab. You could call him Stumpy.

[if it doesn't die from shock or something. maybe the merciful thing to do would be to just cook it up and eat it.]

I don't wanna name it. Don't be weird.

[he takes the bag, shoving it between two rocks to keep it closed]

[and turns to climb up them again]

...Can we stay until the sun goes down?

[he doesn't say "I want to watch the sun set" -- that'd be girly]

[she leans against the rocks, arms braced up in front of her, to watch him skitter around.]

Sure. As long as you don't have anywhere you need to be.

[raising an eyebrow at him -- but she doesn't really expect that he'd answer honestly even if he did, so it's really a moot point.

besides, carol wants to stay too. if she can't escape earth's atmosphere to get some perspective anymore, this calm and quiet is the best substitute she's likely to get.]

[his face twitches at that, a little bit of that tired reality coming back to a murky green eye; he does have someplace he needs to be, someone else he needs to be with]

[but there's nothing he can do about it tonight, nothing he can do about it yet; all he can do is keep the memory of this place, the Above, and maybe try to share it with him Below]

[this thought in mind, he clambers without another word to the highest, steepest rock, plopping his bony, wet ass down on the dry, cold rock]

[a sand-and-slime crusted hand digs in his pocket, pulling out his mobile; wet, already scratched to fuck]

[with it he takes a photo, more for someone absent than himself, and keeps it at hand -- he's going to catch that sunset, too]

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