#au where cam keeps joe in his lane

[honestfutures]

When You’re Alone, You’re So Alone

1700 w

Cameron Howe/Donna Clark, Cameron Howe/Tracy

ao3

who the fuck is tracy you may be thinking. well tracy is the space bike booth babe with two lines because i can't do anything normal

At night sometimes she crept out of bed and wandered through the streets of Tokyo, a stranger to them and to herself. She wondered, dimly, if feeling detached was part of growing up.

The flight from Tokyo was nine and a half hours. Atari was paying for first class (it was nice; free champagne), and, for the first time in a while, after the hectic crunch time for Space Bike IV, Cameron had time to think.

She was doing okay, or at least she thought she probably was. She and Tom didn’t ever fight, after all; instead they seemed to orbit each other, living in the same space but on different planes of existence. Oh, they talked, they shared a bed, but there was a degree of separation she just couldn’t quite get around. Part of it was work, both of them so busy since moving to Tokyo, hell, working on a game a year was enough to overwhelm most people on its own, but part of it was something else. Cameron didn’t get as sad or angry (or joyful, or excited) as she used to get, either, emotions like big gaping wounds in her chest. Just a little hollow, a little numb. It was better than the alternative, she supposed.

At night sometimes she crept out of bed and wandered through the streets of Tokyo, a stranger to them and to herself. She wondered, dimly, if feeling detached was part of growing up.

Because she was, now. Grown up, that is; she had a nice husband and a job working on her own successful franchise, and if one was dull and the other more out of her control than she would like, well, that was adulthood was about. Giving up risks, to be safe. It would be childish to want more. Immature, as Tom often told her, when commenting on her clothes, her hair, her attitude (though that had diminished as those things had changed, little by little), like he had married a woman unfinished. It was okay; he meant well. Either way he would not take away her name; she had done away with so many things but that she would not give up.

By the time the plane landed, she hadn’t yet managed to decide if she was happy.

When she got to the booth it was impressive, a far cry from her haphazard spray painted construction at Comdex 83. There was a futuristic cardboard bike, a large Atari banner, and behind the whole thing, a backdrop of space.

There was a girl too, next to the bike, dressed in camo and a pair of aviator goggles.

“Hi! I’m Tracy,” said the girl. For a second Cam just stared. She knew Space Bike was about her, it had always been, but seeing it come to life- someone dressed, essentially, as her younger self- it was weird, kind of.

“Hi, Tracy.”

Tracy leaned in, conspiratorially. “They told me not to sit on the bike, ‘cause I might crush it.”

 Despite herself Cam laughed. It did look pretty flimsy. “Probably good advice.”

She sat down at the booth and the next few hours were a blur, signature after signature for teen after teen. Every time she saw a girl clutching her copy of Space Bike among the sea of boys, Cameron felt a pang, because- that was her, or it could have been, in a different time.

And then suddenly someone tossed a Parallax diskette down in front of her. She looked up (and up) and-

“Can you make it out to Joe?” he said.

Somehow she’d known he’d be here. What she didn’t expect was the relief- she hadn’t been sure how she’d feel but she didn’t hate him anymore, the scars healed over into something closer to pity, and she was homesick enough that a familiar face, even his, felt like a port in a storm. Slowly, she smiled.

Before leaving she shoved through the teenage boys and took a picture with Tracy, who scribbled her number on the Polaroid.

Joe, though he would never say it, was looking for absolution. She wished him the best, she really did, but God, the guy needed badly to unfuck his whole life before he hurt someone else. Maybe some people weren’t meant to be around others; ticking time bombs who blew up in your face as soon as you got too close.

Still, for all his faults he was still Joe MacMillan, engaging and familiar, and she’d loved him, once, so she walked with him and they talked for a while. It was- it was fun, actually, easily falling right back into that rhythm. They’d always had a kind of natural affinity, maybe just the mutual understanding of two deeply fucked up people with dead parents and lonely childhoods, but like this it was safe to enjoy, chaste and platonic.

It felt good to let go of anger. She told him so; absolved him as best she could of his sins so maybe he could start again fresh. After all, seeing him like this with dark circles around his eyes and no future in sight- well, it was sad. He was just a man, and he had no one.

“Hey, so…” she started, “I have this Atari party that I have to go to that would be so much more fun if you would come and get drunk with me.” As she said it she wasn’t sure if it was more for her or for him.

“What, so I can fend off your groupies?”

“Exactly,” she said, but her groupies weren’t the ones who had come to her like a man to church.

Cameron hadn’t danced in years.

She still wasn’t good at it at all, but Joe didn’t seem to mind, content to bounce along with her, and she certainly didn’t care what he or anyone else thought. There was good music, and good alcohol, too, at this party.

A girl, slightly tipsy, grabbed her shoulder. “I loove Space Bike!”

“Oh!” She grinned “And I love you!” And there were good fans.

“Cameron!” And then everything ground to a halt as Donna emerged from the crowd, like a ghost from a time Cam would rather forget.

“How are you? How’s Japan?”

Cameron couldn’t move. She felt cold. “What are you doing here?”

Donna’s face fell as she floundered, some excuse about making appearances at the parties. And then- “Okay… Look, I… I came to see you.”

“I don’t know why you would do that.” Even as she said it it felt cruel but the words coming out of her mouth felt a million miles away. She couldn’t do this, she needed to-

Still Donna was talking, begging her to give her a chance, have lunch with her, and her voice was too loud and too close, the room suddenly cramped. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she muttered under her breath. She had to get out of here.

Donna frowned, clearly hurt. “What, you’re gonna tell me that you’ve completely moved on?”

“No.” Suddenly something snapped, and those emotional scars she’d been so proud of having healed over hours earlier ripped wide open again and now they were bleeding all over the shag carpeting. “I think about you and me every day. And it makes me furious.”

“So, let’s fix it.” She sounded desperate now, “I wanna fix it.”

“I don’t.” Cam said. She didn’t want to think about Donna. Nevermind that she was always on her mind- she wanted to think of nothing, right now, she wanted featureless white noise instead of sharp painful thoughts of Donna, Donna smiling and Donna laughing and Donna betraying her, again and again on a loop. She turned away, looking for something, anything-

She bumped into Joe’s chest and he caught her arms. “Everything okay?”

Cameron glanced up at him and for a minute- but then she looked into his eyes and saw it, saw the way he looked at her. “You knew she’d be here,” she said, softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Joe said nothing; he didn’t have to. He’d expected this, her weakness, was here to scoop her up at her most vulnerable. He did not deserve absolution. He didn’t deserve anything.

Cam pushed his arms away and stumbled into the hallway. She walked until she found a payphone, pulled a picture out of her pocket and dialed the number written on it in sharpie. “Tracy, hey, it’s Cameron. You wanna get a drink?”

Tracy, it turned out, was a big fan. She loved Space Bike; had inhaled it, really, and now as she sat across from Cameron in the hotel bar she gushed about the narrative and the visuals and the potential for exploration. She had never even heard of Mutiny.

She was so animated, Cameron thought, leaning over the table and waving her hands around as she spoke. Tracy was an aspiring actress (the cosplay modelling was a temporary gig), and she had those overly ambitious dreams that kids always have, before they realize things don’t ever turn out that way; she wanted to move to Hollywood and make it big, become the next it girl. God, she was so young. What a difference a few years made.

Cam was content just to let her talk, sipping her drink and nodding along.

“So,” she said, the next time Tracy paused for breath. “You wanna get out of here?”

When she took off her shirt, she had a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder (For personal growth, she said). Cameron kissed it, kissed her everywhere, on tanned skin where hers was pale and freckled.

“Hey,” Tracy said, frowning as she ran her fingers over Cam’s wedding ring. “Why…”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied quickly, and it didn’t; Tom wasn’t here, Tom was irrelevant and anyway he wasn’t who she’d been thinking of in the first place. It felt good to be touched by a woman. It’d been a while, Tom was an idiot, and Tracy was soft and gentle. She’d intended it as a distraction, at first, a way to get the hurt off her mind but this was better than that, better than what she would’ve had, no doubt, if she’d gone with Joe instead. It was light and giggly and it was fun and after, in the morning, her mind felt clear, clearer than it had been in a while.

Maybe there was a balance to be struck, between numb and hurting.

Cameron wheeled her suitcase through the hallway and stopped in front of the door. Then she took a deep breath, and knocked.