let's get crunk! ;; remy, hadley

Traveling to the coal mine was a very strange experience. He wasn't going to let it show to Remy, especially after making a big deal about coming in the first place, but being out in the open, and especially up in that goddamned hot air balloon, was incredibly nerve-wracking without being able to see. He just felt very vulnerable.

Getting around the actual mine wasn't any easier. Nila did her best, but he still stumbled over a few things while following the sounds of Remy and Clara's (Remy had drilled her name into his head on the way there) footsteps. Eventually Remy just grabbed his arm and declared they should walk together.

Great. He must look so dignified right now. "Are you sure?" he asked, trying to play it off like he didn't care that he had to be lead around. "clio might talk, seeing us hand-in-hand."

"I already see someone over there talking about us," Remy said, deciding she wasn't going to let Hadley bully her while she was helping him. "They're saying, and I can read their lips, 'Wow--who knew someone like that could get someone like her! She's beautiful. Gorgeous. Look at those legs!' And I must say, I agree. I do have nice legs."

Clara ignored them, still leading them to the control center.

"Too bad the only clio you really want to impress can't see those perfect legs of yours," Hadley said with a fake lamenting sigh. Remy just made it too easy, sometimes. He probably should stop teasing her, though, at least while they were out in a professional setting. It was just hard to resist.

Remy led him into a few little rocks, hoping he would stumble a little. She stayed silent, fearing that anything else she said would just provide him with more fuel.

"We're here!" Clara called brightly as they came upon the control center. "I just have these papers for you to look over, and then we can head down into the tunnels so you can see it for yourself."

Remy led Hadley over to the table where Clara had fanned out the papers. "What do you think, Hadley?" Remy asked, keeping her tone calm and inquisitive. "Do you think these look okay?" She looked at him with a smile.

Hadley did stumble over some rocks suddenly, and had to grab Remy's arm with both hands for support. He shot a glare in her general direction, knowing she did it on purpose because of his comments. This was further verified when they got to their destination and she started being a blatant smart ass.

"Well gosh, I wouldn't know, would I?" Hadley said dryly, annoyed. "Maybe you should describe them to me."

He completely ignored what Clara had said, figuring she was obviously talking to Remy and not him. Which was annoying for different reasons.

So Remy did. She described how the new wing was going to be dug to the right of the current tunnel systems, and how it would go a little deeper than the left side. Then she looked to Clara to clarify (haha) more accurately on exactly what this was going to mean. Clara talked, mostly to Remy, about all the details. The measurements, the time frame, etc. She looked every now and again to Hadley, and then would uncomfortably look away.

Remy noticed this and wasn't happy about it. Hadley was blind, not stupid. She knew she had been messing with Hadley herself, recently, but that didn't give anyone the right to be uncomfortable around him. Hadley could answer these questions just as well as Remy could. Afew times Remy had to stop her so that she could explain whatever Clara was pointing at--because Clara obviously couldn't do her job right.

To prove her point, Remy didn't say a word in response, but decided to let Hadley answer all the questions that Clara had so obviously actually pointed in her direction. She didn't want to say anything about the obvious discomfort outloud, but the entire time she looked blankly at Clara, unimpressed.

Remy dropped the snarky act and went into professional mode, describing to Hadley the schematics of the tunnel system. She did a pretty good job, and quite honestly it didn't even really seem to matter much. Even when he could see Hadley didn't know anything about the infrastructure of tunnel system. It was Clara's job to figure that stuff out, her talking to them about it was just a formality.

Clara took over explaining the important stuff, like time frame, funds and finances. Now this stuff was in a language Hadley could understand. He could answer all of those questions just fine, although he couldn't help but notice the long, awkward pauses from Clara's end every time he said something. And that wasn't even getting into the number of times Remy had to interrupt to tell him Clara was pointing something out to her.

I can do my job and answer your questions just fine, he wanted to snap at Clara, Just talk to me like a normal clio.

"Well, that's it for that, then," Clara said, sounding relieved that they were finally done with the discussion. "Shall we, uh, visit the site now?"

Hadley had no idea what kind of face Clara was undoubtedly making at Remy, but he could hear the unspoken question in her tone of voice: "Is he actually coming with us?"

"Yeah, we should do that," he said, trying not to sound too irritated.

Without warning, Remy slipped her arm through Hadley's again. The two followed Clara into the cavern, and started walking through the vast thing. It seemed so big. And there was so much noise!

Hired Adhbhars were cutting through the rocky sides to the tunnels, chipping away coal and throwing the pieces into large containers that were wheeled out. Giant machines helped--their metal claws scraping against the rock and pulling chunks out of the walls. Remy pulled Hadley closer as she watched the rocks fall from hundreds of feet up. The Adhbhars stopped most of it from hitting the ground, but it still made Remy nervous.

The trio walked through the cavern, down narrow pathways that lined the rim of the coal crater. Remy switched arms so that Hadley could walk closer to the wall.

Finally Clara stopped. "This is where the construction would begin!" Clara yelled. Remy could barely hear her over the ruckus being caused by the digging.

The sounds of the inside of the mine were seriously intense. The fact that they were extremely loud and coming from every direction, echoing off the walls of the cavern, was really throwing Hadley off. Remy was clutching his arm very tightly, obviously worried. She let him walk closer to the wall so he could run his free hand along it, something he did a lot at home when he was navigating the estate. He could feel the wall shaking with all the activity going on. It was all very disorienting.

They finally stopped and Clara announced that they had reached the future construction site. Of course that meant absolutely nothing to Hadley, though to be fair he was pretty sure it didn't mean much to Remy, either. It wasn't like she knew anything about coal mining or construction.

He was trying to pay attention to Clara but the noises around them were way too distracting. He didn't like being down here and wanted to just go back up and sign off on those documents and be done with it. They had already talked about the important things, after all. "Is that all?" he asked loudly so that his voice would carry over all the noise.

Clara looked at Hadley for a minute like he was stupid and then shouted "We can start heading back up!" It looked to Remy like she was muttering something under her breath. Remy wanted to trip her off the edge.

Remy and Hadley followed Clara back up into the light (well, for Remy, at least) and back into the office so the papers signing off on the construction could be signed. Clara handed Remy a pen and the documents.

"The overloridian is here," Remy said to her, not bothering to hide her distaste for the construction manager. "Don't you think he should sign off?"

"I--I, well, of course," said Clara, who looked both angry and embarrassed.

Remy took the papers anyway and laid it on the table. "Come'ere, Hadley," Remy said, taking his hand and setting it on the X. "Sign right here."

Hadley was relieved they were leaving the mine and blissfully oblivious to the look Clara was giving him, because Nila decided it was probably best not to tell him. He walked with Remy back to the surface with a bit of a headache from all the noise, and then waited expectantly for Clara to hand him a pen or something.

Apparently Clara didn't have the same idea, though, because Remy suddenly said:

"The overloridian is here. Don't you think he should sign off?"

Fucking Clara. Hadley was getting to the point where he just wanted to shake her. Remy was right, he was the overloridian, and he was competent enough to sign his own fucking name on a piece of paper.

Remy handed him the pen instead and told him where to sign. He scribbled down his signature before setting down the pen with a little more force than necessary. "Anything else I can do for you?" he asked Clara in a forcibly calm voice.

Clara shook her head, slipping the documents off the table and looking at Hadley's signature.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Remy said when Clara didn't bother saying 'no'. Remy usually tried to remain professional at all times (except when she was working with Hadley, of course), but this was just too freaking much.

"A shake of your head? Really? You think that's the best way to answer him?"

Hadley was ready to just turn around and leave when Clara didn't say anything else, until Remy started yelling at her because her answer had apparently been non-verbal. For fuck's sake. He tugged on her arm, hating everything and just wanting to get out of there and away from Clara, who was trying to sputter out some apology. "We're leaving," he said, fed up.

He didn't care if Remy wanted to stay and argue with Clara, he was prepared to walk right out of there with or without her at this point.

"What an idiot," Remy said to Hadley as she led him back down the path that would take them away from the control center and out of the coal mine property.

She hadn't said another word to Clara, just turned and left immediately when Hadley suggested it. There was nothing else she could say to that woman.

"Oh, step over here," Remy told him, swerving quickly around a rock. "Sorry."

"Apparently she though I was the idiot," Hadley said irritably, just annoyed and angry and embarrassed all at the same time. He'd never been treated like that before. He had felt like he'd been doing a pretty good job with everything the whole time, but judging by Clara's reactions that obviously wasn't true.

"You shouldn't have yelled at her," he added. He knew that Remy was trying to stand up for him but somehow it just made him feel worse.

"You're right, I should have just smiled and thanked her for the excellent tour," Remy said bitterly. "You're not stupid, and it's not even like you made a mistake or were a jerk to her." It would have been one thing if someone back at the estate had acted like Clara, but the fact that it was just a civilian? No.

"And she was hideous. Someone needs to tell her to do something about those bangs."

"She just acted like I couldn't do anything," Hadley said, as if Remy hadn't been there to witness. "Like I shouldn't have even been there." In the past, him making a public appearance to do business had usually been met with respect from the Earalas clio.

Come to think of it, Remy herself hadn't wanted him to go initially. She'd made a small attempt to talk him out of it before giving in, and she might have changed her tune now that it was over with, but even she hadn't thought he should be there.

Remy hadn't wanted him to be there for completely separate reasons than why it seemed Clara hadn't wanted him there.

"She's an idiot," Remy repeated. "And you can do things. You're getting better at stuff all the time. If she lost her sight she'd probably off herself in that giant crater."

She paused, still fuming. "She thought you couldn't sign your name. What a moron."

Hadley frowned. Remy kept saying that Clara was just an idiot, which he agreed with, but he also didn't think that Clara would end up being alone in her opinion of him. It would happen again, with someone else, probably frequently. Every day was just these constant little reminders that this was his life now.

"The giant crater doesn't sound like such a bad option right now," he muttered. Immediately realizing that Remy would probably take that comment way too seriously, he quickly added, "I'm kidding."

"Well it's not funny," Remy snapped. Hadley had been the one dealing with his loss of sight, but Remy had been with him every step of the way. And her emotions had been going freaking crazy about it. Up and down and in circles.

She worried about Hadley, she hated herself for being so worried, she hated him, she couldn't stop staring at him, she wished he was independent, she liked helping him, she worried about him some more, she was going freaking nuts.

And she didn't need him talking about dying. Not even if he was kidding.

"Oh, relax," he snapped back, not sounding one bit relaxed himself. He didn't know why her angry tone of voice annoyed him so much. He knew when he said it that she would take what he said too seriously so it wasn't like her reaction surprised him or anything. "I said I wasn't being serious. I'm just trying to cope with the fact that I have to deal with clio like fucking Clara for the rest of my life."

"You never cared what anyone thought about you before," Remy said. "And you shouldn't care now. Nothing about you is different. You can't see? Big deal.

"They'll get over it. And if they don't, you tell them off. You're blind, not stupid. You never would have hesitated to stand up for yourself before."

Remy didn't get it. He never cared what clio thought of him before because their opinions were based on things he had control over. He acted like an asshole so clio didn't like him. That was fine. Or, conversely, he acted like a charismatic leader, so clio respected him. Now he could do anything--literally anything--and he was always going to be treated the same way. Like a blind guy.

Maybe to Remy nothing about him was different, but to everyone else everything was different. As for standing up for himself, half the time he didn't even know when clio were doing things he should be offended by.

"Well sorry, Remy, but things aren't the same as before," he retorted, starting to get upset. "And they're never going to be the same again and it's all because of--"

Me. He cut himself off before he could finish, forcing himself to calm down and taking a deep breath. He was not going to let himself lose it in front of Remy, at least not more than he just had. "Just...nevermind. It's fine. Let's just get home."

Remy watched Hadley with a pained expression. "Fine," she said. She stopped talking after that, though they were still linked by their arms.

They got onto the ballon, with Remy only talking to the conductor to pay and tell them their destination. Then she stood at the edge of the basket, looking out over Earalas as they floated back to the estate.

She didn't just feel bad for Hadley, she felt bad for herself. The whole situation was so frustrating, and there was nothing she or anyone else could do.