Room 401, Sunday Evening

[ultron_junior]

Victor had bad dreams a lot. Maybe it was some glitch in his neuroprocessors, maybe it was non-cyborg-issue-related psychic damage from seeing his mom die, but -- whatever. Bad dreams. Generally he just rolled over and tried to forget them.

But when he woke up, it didn't take him long to realize this one didn't feel anything like a dream. For one: No Lillie in it, and she seemed to have a featured role in every damn dream he had. For another, it just felt ... real. The Tony Stark parts, the Topher parts, the Chamber piece from the end ... oh god, especially the parts with Billy and some guy in a flying suit he didn't even know -- they all tasted and moved and stank like the real world. It was some alternate reality, some timeline hijinks, something, but he almost instantly knew it was a real place where he'd really been.

He gave the briefest thought to deleting the entire file from his brain without examining it further. But that wouldn't be fair. No matter what he did, the part of his programming that allowed him to be evil would always be there, just waiting for the right coaxing to bring it out. He owed it to himself -- he owed it to the people who might have to deal with Victorious someday, if he wasn't careful -- to remember everything about the last week, so he could avoid something like it happening in this world.

Even if keeping the memories meant that he still really wanted to punch Topher in the face.

[OOC: Door closed, post open.]

Comments

[nottrivial]

Alec was... still a little dazed when he made his way from upstairs, let himself into his room, and collapsed on his bed.

"Terrible week?"

He'd heard a little bit about his roommate's adventures on the radio. Somehow he doubted Victor was feeling any better right now than he was.

[ultron_junior]

"No good, very bad, horrible, awful ..." Victor ran out of synonyms about there and just nodded. "Yeah. Yours too?"

He'd suspected as much. He'd listened to radio, too.

[nottrivial]

Alec was just going to be staring up at the ceiling now, thanks. "Yeah."

Fandom, seriously, what was wrong with you?

"At least it's fixed now," he offered, but with the toneless inflection that came along with someone not even trying all that hard to convince himself.

[ultron_junior]

"Yeah," Victor said glumly. "Except for the part where apparently my whole life is just waiting for the next psychopath to hack into my brain and mess with me. But other than that, fixed."

[nottrivial]

Alec didn't say anything for a moment. He wasn't much of a sharer at the best of times, and the past week's trauma was hardly any higher up on his list of potential conversation topics than his usual day-to-day life.

But.

"My adoptive brother has apparently known something secret and -- personal about me for years now and he threw it in my face two days ago as a weapon," he said. "Along with having a friend attack me."

[ultron_junior]

That didn't quite top being reprogrammed by your school sibling, but it was enough of a tie that Victor genuinely looked sympathetic.

"Sorry," he winced. "Was he in his right mind, or was he just --"

He tapped his temple. "Gone."

[nottrivial]

"He wasn't himself," Alec said immediately, then relented, "but he sounded... similar, sometimes."

Imperioed Jace had been close enough to normal Jace to worry Alec more than he wanted to think about.

"What about the... hacker you mentioned?"

[ultron_junior]

"I'm not sure about spells," Victor admitted. "I think he was ... like the worst person he could be. Like, who he would have been if nothing good in his life had ever happened."

He rolled his shoulders, stretching them out. "Guess we're just lucky we didn't get stuck there."

[nottrivial]

"Yeah."

And had Alec really helped prevent that by kissing a demon? It didn't seem relevant -- or even necessarily correct -- so he didn't feel the need to mention it. Instead he defaulted to the usual Alec tactic of coming up with the most inane thing he could possibly say.

"I hope you don't mind having a roommate again."

Yep, it was pretty much that.

[ultron_junior]

Yeah, the inanity of that got a startled look.

"Not at all," Victor said. "I mean, I miss the space, sure, but you're not annoying and you seem pretty smart, so it's fine. Have I been acting weird with you or something?"

He hoped not.

[nottrivial]

"No," Alec said, in a tone that suggested that he had no clue where Victor could've come up with that idea. Because Alec was Awkward. "I just thought after a week of having the place to yourself it must be a bit of a letdown."

Yes, Alec. Victor would gladly return to the Umbridge reality if he could only just have his single room back.

[ultron_junior]

"Oh!" Victor had thought Alec meant since the start of the month, and his revised answer took a second longer. "Honestly, who I lived with was ... not something I cared about in that world. But even if it had been, I'd still rather have you here and safe than be there. I mean, obviously."

[nottrivial]

Alec offered a little bit of a smile at that. "Yeah, this is nicer than a warehouse," he agreed. "Cleaner too."

[ultron_junior]

"Which is totally an advertisement for dorm living," Victor said, teasing a little. "High praise, man."

[nottrivial]

"There could also be something about the company," Alec added. "Roommates: preferable to squirrels and rodents."

You're welcome, Victor!

[ultron_junior]

Victor snorted back a laugh at that one. "Also, we aren't under a tar pit, so this beats the last place I lived."

[nottrivial]

...

"You lived under a tar pit?" This did not compute with Alec's initial impressions of Victor.

[ultron_junior]

Victor might just have been looking for that kind of reaction. Look, it was less depressing than talking about last week.

"Because ... " Wow, where did you start on this one? "My friends' parents used to be supervillains, they had a hideout under La Brea, and we needed a secure place to crash." He considered if there was anything more to add. "It's not bad except the smell."

[nottrivial]

Well, it certainly did distract Alec from the recent emo.

"You all just up and left?" He tried to imagine what he would do in that kind of situation, but the idea of his parents as anything other than the slightly-detached but inherently good people they were... just wasn't working yet, because he hadn't learned about their history of dabbling in less-than-ethically-sound organizations. "Didn't your parents look for you? And your friends' parents too?"

[ultron_junior]

"Not exactly," Victor said, shaking his head. "It's a really long story. A lot of it was before I met them. But basically when they found out what their parents were up to, they took off, and ... eventually their parents got killed."

He wasn't saying how the Pride had died. He figured Alec could likely fill in the blanks, or choose not to.

"My mom was a nice normal woman who got in over her head. She got killed trying to find me." And that was the easier part to explain. "My father's ... complicated, but he's not around anymore."

Victor stopped there, trying to decide if he wanted to (or owed it to Alec to) explain Ultron or if "complicated" was really enough of an infodump for right then.

[nottrivial]

Alec had to take a moment to process all that, and even once he did he wasn't certain he followed exactly why everything had happened that way.

"It sounds... destructive," he said at last, slowly. "And... sort of the opposite of what you were doing this week." With the... submitting to a regime he didn't agree with, and all. "Most people would've just... not left."

[ultron_junior]

"Probably not," Victor acknowledged. "Not when hiding your head in the sand's so much easier. They're just special people. They'd have been out in the warehouse with you and the squirrels and the rats, if they'd been here last week."

Honesty compelled him to add, "I didn't exactly get a choice. Not the way they did, anyhow. But ... they're my family now."

[OOC: Night!]

[nottrivial]

"If someone was messing with your brain, it wasn't your fault," Alec said immediately. "This past week, I mean."

Because that was sort of a Prominent Topic in his mind right now.

"And it's good that you have them," he added. "Family's important. Mine's the one I was born with -- I mean, and Jace -- but looking after them is the most motivation I ever get to keep doing my job."

He pushed up one sleeve, just sort of looking at the Marks inked on his forearm.

[ultron_junior]

"Family's good for that," Victor nodded as he tilted his head to try to work out what Alec was looking at on his arm. He hadn't figured his roommate for the dutiful type, exactly, but it wasn't like they'd ever spent a lot of time talking about themselves.

"What kind of job do you have?" he asked.

[nottrivial]

Well, Victor had shared. It was only fair. Plus Alec was feeling maudlin anyway, so why not.

"I'm a Shadowhunter," he said, pushing his other sleeve back as well and holding out his arms so Victor could see. "My family too. We kill demons, and these runes help give us powers so that we can. That and... being part-angel."

Damn it, Cassie Clare.

[ultron_junior]

"Huh." Victor was Catholic enough that the part-angel piece gave him pause, but he shelved that as a question for a different time. Or possibly for a priest.

"My ... ex, I guess, is a witch, and she has to bleed to use magic," he said, flicking his eyes over the marks. "Not that that's exactly the same thing."

[nottrivial]

"I've heard of that," Alec offered. "My world has warlocks, and some of their magic depends on that kind of thing. But with us it's this." He reached for his stele, a long, silvery tool that looked almost like an awkwardly-shaped pen. "Not self-mutilation, just... decoration, I guess." His eyes flicked over to his parabatai rune, the one he shared with Jace. "Though some of them are permanent."

[ultron_junior]

"Yeah, it makes her crazy when people think she's some kind of cutter," Victor nodded, finally glancing away from the runes. "Anyhow. So ... how come they sent you both here? Are there a lot of demons to fight on the island?"

He would not have been surprised if there were.

[nottrivial]

"No, not really." Just one to make out with, and oh god Alec could feel himself blushing at that thought. "Jace... wanted something different, and it was strange being at home without him, so I came too." That didn't sound codependent at aaaall. "We're parabatai," he said, indicating the rune that symbolized that. "It means we're supposed to fight together. It was sort of hard to do that from New York."

...Still codependent.

[ultron_junior]

Victor was going to be wondering about that blush.

"That's sort of awesome," he said sincerely. (It also sounded a little codependent, but the Runaways were codependent enough that Victor suspected he had little room to talk.) "But it probably made last week even worse, huh?"

[nottrivial]

"Thanks," Alec said, surprised by the sincerity. "And... yeah, a little." Or a ton. "But the bond also means I can feel when there's something wrong with him, so at least I knew the whole time that he was being mind-controlled."

Actually that whole part had kind of sucked the worst out of anything, but he was going to try and spin it.

[ultron_junior]

The closest thing to a sibling Victor had -- and he did not count his teammates -- was the Vision, and they couldn't even be in the same room without physical agony. Brotherhood was a kind of bond he tended to be wistful about.

The way Alec was describing the whole thing reminded him a bit of Old Lace and her masters, but comparing it to a psychic dinosaur seemed a bit out of place.

"Yeah, but ... it's not like you could fix it," he pointed out skeptically. "I guess I'd rather know than think somebody just got mean all of a sudden, but still. Sucks."

[nottrivial]

"Generally speaking, yes," Alec agreed. "But I'm mostly just relieved it's over."

So, so relieved.

"You're -- you know, all right?"

[ultron_junior]

"As all right as I'm going to be, yeah," Victor shrugged. It wasn't really over for him, wouldn't be until he knew it couldn't happen, but that was a separate issue. "Are you?"

[nottrivial]

"Yeah."

Well. Ish.

He reached for his lamp. "Any problem with calling it an early night?"

[ultron_junior]

"I don't think I slept last night, so ... no," Victor said. "Night, Alec."