Week 68: A Romantic Trip From the Hospital

Hugo chuckled low in his throat as he finished checking his possessions. In addition to his filthy clothes and Una, there were two additional 'gifts' from their time on Jictar. The staff had been nice enough to revive the Oracle agents in the same room, (Hugo hadn't considered it was a safety hazard, given how violently both of them at reacted at the end while protecting each other), and he gave Silvia a sheepish grin. "Hey, picara, did you get one of these?" He gestured with a small glossy picture. "Not a bad one of me, but I'm gonna have to get a lot better before the next time we do this."

The picture, of course, featured a team of EI agents posing over the massive fallen agent like he was some prized wild game, wounds on Hugo and the EI agents clearly visible. Despite the morbid nature of the picture, the objectification didn't seem to bother him in the least.

Silvia nodded, rather less enthusiastically. "Yeah, I got one. You do look a bit...dead in it, you know. And you're right, we do need to get better. Uh...not that you weren't good," she added hastily - perhaps a little too hastily. "But...practice. We need practice." She coughed slightly and bent her focus to the picture in her hand. "Well, at least we did some proper damage to them. You can see we made quite an impact."

"It was mostly you and Una that did all the damage. And, you know, the photographer did okay, given that I was pretty dead." He seemed to be taking it in stride, still grinning. He gave the picture another look and added it to his stuff. He scooped up Una, giving her a loving pet... And realized they weren't alone after a long moment, and looked Silvia over. He sighed a little. "And I wasn't good. Not in the jungle at any rate. After I get the rest of my muscles back to normal, maybe I'll be a little smaller. Less of a big stompy bear."

He, moving very slowly and gingerly, took one of her hands. He seemed in high spirits. "We'll do better next time. At least extend it by another day. And now we have even more free time to enjoy Varstaag without being hunted."

"True," Silvia replied with a small smile. "And I'm sure next time will be better. I mean, now we're a bit more used to it." She glanced around her surroundings and her expression twitched slightly. "Shall we...uh...get a move on then? We've got all our stuff, so we may as well...go. Enjoy some of that stuff we came to see." She seemed eager to move, although she didn't make any actual move towards the door, yet.

With a nod, Hugo turned toward the door, and reluctantly let go of her hand. He didn't have many things, and what he did have was covered in blood and grime. He looked down at himself as they moved from the room into the hall. "Or.. we could.. find a hotel relatively close by. I mean, there's other stuff besides hunting on Jictar. We don't have to leave, yet... And we could shower. ...And.. sleep."

His voice was kind of distant, and he reached up to try to untangle the broken twig that had been in his hair for almost two days now.

Silvia's brow furrowed slightly at the mention of a shower, the concept returning to her mind after several days of absence. "That would be...that would be nice," she said, slowly. "I mean...I know we've just been sleeping...kind of...but it would still be nice. To sleep, I mean. This kind of thing always takes it out of you," she added, with the rueful benefit of long experience.

"I don't think what we were doing counts as sleep, picara. More... being unconscious. And dead." He chuckled low and gave up on removing the brier that was not going to be a part of his hairstyle forever. After a second, he reached over and very, very gently took her hand in his. It was a fairly relaxed gesture, made a little more intimate and awkward by how tender he was being. The moved toward the exit, Hugo seeming a tiny bit more.. hesitant. When he spoke, however, his voice was just as jocular. "Sleep'll be good. I don't know how you didn't sleep for six months when you got back, picarita. Food and a nap will be good. And a shower." He gave another little flick to the twig in his hair with his opposite hand, squeezing her fingers affectionately.

Silvia took Hugo's hand with just as much care as he was displaying, her touch gentle. "It...yes, it will be good. And there were...reasons." As transparent as ever, it was obvious that she was suddenly uncomfortable, memories of what had happened when she got back crowding her head. "If...if things had been...different, maybe I would have...rested. I was...expecting some R&R." She looked down, avoiding eye contact, and Hugo could feel her grip tighten to the point where it would have been rather painful if he weren't an Agent.

Hugo cursed himself for his own stupidity, and said nothing as Silvia crushed his fingers. As they left the building, he wondered about picking her up. It might have distracted her, but it didn't seem.. fitting. Instead, he squeezed back with much more tenderness, and stopped to put a hand on her shoulder. Outside Saturn was moving slightly lower in the sky and there was a gentle breeze blowing through the slightly humid air. It was beautiful out. "Well, you can get some R&R here, beautiful. I know it won't be as fun as running for your life, but we'll make do."

He was attempting to be funny, but his voice was much softer than normal.

Silvia's mouth twitched a little at Hugo's humour, but nothing more. "I...thanks," she said, still not meeting his gaze. "I'm sure it'll be...good." She was attempting to convince herself, but her voice made it obvious that at least part of her was still concentrating on less pleasant topics. "There's...plenty to do here, right?"

Hugo gently brushed the backs of his fingers against Silvia's cheek, concern plain on his face. His voice was still happy, though. "Oh, tons. Tons. I dunno what you did on the Worldview, but they'll have spas and pools and stuff, here, and nature trails and BIO zoos and good food you probably pick yourself, I don't know..." He grinned a little more, and took a small step away. "You could pay for anything, really. Or we could go back to Cyberia or Europa, depending on what you wanted to do but... This might be more your kinda thing here... Hey, picara.."

He waited until she looked up at him, and he gave her another smile. "I got my guy looking for your brother. He'll find him, and if he doesn't, we will, okay? We've done harder things. And you'll always have me, okay?" He couldn't comfort her about the people she had lost, but he could try to make her feel better, right?

Silvia nodded, her expression still somewhat serious, but grateful for his assistance. "I...I know. And...thank you. For all that you've done for me. I'm...I'm sure we'll find him." Despite what she was saying, her tone lacked conviction - it wasn't that she didn't think they'd find Yuki, but she wasn't entirely sure any more that she would like what they found. "It's...I'm glad you're here. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Hugo's grin brightened, and wrapped an arm around Silvia's waist. He lifted her up, picking her feet off the ground. "I know what would happen. You'd get a flashbang to the face and there would be no one to pick you up and pull you away. Ooooor maybe you'd have been able to last a dozen nights in the woods, because you wouldn't have a big clunky bear following you around chewing on disgusting roots. Aaand you'd have no one to make you get cake afterward. You'd be sitting here eating nutribars, ignoring the fact we could get some of the best food on in the solar system."

The massive agent kept walking, hefting her over his shoulder. He gave in to picking her up, not even feeling guilty. He couldn't help but want to, especially if she was going to be grim. "Huh. To think, without me you could still be eating those white gross roots, hiding in a swamp somewhere."

"Hey, there was nothing wrong with those roots," Silvia protested as she was lifted over his shoulder, her tone rather lighter. "And it was a nice swamp, as these things go." She made a token effort to resist Hugo's lift, but soon stopped struggling. "And it was good to have you along, really. Especially when it came to, you know, actual combat." She subsided for a moment, and then spoke up again, making an effort at least to be a bit more cheery. "Did you say something about cake?"

Hugo waved his other arm in mock-exasperation, shaking his head as he kept Silvia slung over his shoulder. "A nice swamp she says. Nothing wrong with the roots that tasted like fried crap, she says. Oh, she's hard on herself if she says a word wrong, but if a fetid hole of stagnant water only has FOUR types of biting flies, it's nice. Oh, this girl, everyone. This girl." He turned away from his fictional audience, and kept walking. He wasn't going to put her down. Not even a little. He shook his head and looked up at her, grinning. "And there could be cake, or if you really want, we could get those roots, or some of those berries that were metal and bitter before they ripened. Eh? You liked those."

"It's not like you could feel the flies, anyway," Silvia protested from her position on Hugo's shoulder. "So they didn't really matter, did they?" Her voice was lightening as the conversation moved away from bad memories, and on to rather better and more recent ones. "And it wasn't fetid - trust me, you haven't seen fetid yet. I'll have to show you a proper stinkhole sometime, and then you can talk about fetid. And flies. And there was nothing wrong with those berries," she added, mock-indignantly. "I mean, they're a bit of an acquired taste, I'll admit, but they were nice, really. And the roots, too - I've eaten much worse, and some of it was actually cooked by other people."

"Oh, RIGHT, right. Right. Okay, so, let me get this right. Instead of caaake.." he moved Silvia higher up against his body, giving her even less leverage. He was smirking now, using his other hand to gesticulate his amusement. "Instead of cake, pretty picarita, I will find you some bitter berries, sorry, those actually good berries, lots of them, and we will cook them with those roots, and we can eat all of them in a 'proper' fetid swamp, a real one, where the water smells so bad we won't even be able to keep our meals down, with flies that hurt, actually hurt, and we can do that instead of showers, actual showers, and food and cake, real cake. Okay. We'll do that instead."

He was laughing a little as he spoke, struggling to keep his voice serious. He jostled her a little as he began walking off the road, into the beautifully semi-tamed wilds that flooded the streets. He laughed lowly again. "I will be honest, it's not my ideal vacation, but for you, I'll do it. You know, we'll have fun, somehow. Even in the swamp. We'll do it. And I'm sure it'll be better than cake. And you'll sit there saying, Oh, this isn't a swamp, not this, sure, the water is making me puke and I have worms in my skin, but this isn't a REAL fetid swamp, nooo.."

"After the cake." Silvia's voice was trying to be firm, but was getting lost somewhere in amusement. "We have the holiday - where you learn some interesting wilderness lore and how to appreciate good food - after we have the cake. And if you have worms in your skin, you should probably be swimming in that water - there isn't much that can get rid of them beyond a thorough soaking in something toxic." She had drifted back into exposition again, apparently quite happy to keep discussing the best way to de-worm yourself in the wilds.

"So, I shouldn't be walking into the jungle now? I should stop?" Hugo wasn't stopping, clomping merrily through the underbrush, causing a small cloud of butterflies to take to the air. He leaned down, using Silvia to move a bunch of leaves aside. The road was disappearing as he stomped away. "And out of the two of us, you, YOU, you shouldn't be telling me about appreciating food. This from the girl who prefers nutribars to most other food. I mean, really. Really. When was the last time you just had an eight course meal? You're a millionaire who lives like a hobo agent."

"Well, you're the one that doesn't like the place," Silvia shot back. "And...a surprising number of meals turn into eight courses, you know. Not intentionally, just...you keep eating more, the cybernetics need it. And what would I spend the money on, anyway?" she added. "I mean, it's not like I have expensive tastes or anything."

Hugo stopped in his tracks, grinning as he slide Silvia down his body, stopping as her face was about even with his. "Then give the money back. Help your ronin build their businesses. Make friends! Or make your own business. Sell tours of the wilds! Or hire someone to write a book about your time there. I spend most of my money home, to help with the business, help with security. They are even building a new school and training shooting range for the kids. And even then.. Well, we'll find something. Food's a start." He was so strangely amused and proud of himself. He looked about as young as he was. "And it doesn't count as eight courses if you eat same of the same thing. No, I mean, you start with a bucket of amuse bouches, like, little balls of flavor, and then there is salad and soup and meals and bigger meals and bread too, and like a dessert and then another desert and cheese and nuts and fruit, and then coffee and all kinds of stuff, including cake. And then you eat like an agent without eating like an agent. And that's what you spend money on."

He put Silvia on the ground, hands on her hips. He grinned. "And if you would rather eat berries and slosh around through swamps, and don't want to eat cake with me, you could hire someone to spend your money. It'd be the best job for someone. You could make their day."

Silvia smiled back, her earlier spate of bad memories apparently behind her now, at least for the moment. "I have to say, that eight-course thing does sound pretty nice. But...mostly just because there'd be so much to eat," she added, slightly embarrassed. "I mean, yeah my tastes are probably ruined, but most of the time, I only really care about quantity now. When it comes to food, I mean. But...cake is still good. I mean, cake is always good, right?" she added, her smile widening slightly.