Lost on Titan

{Part 12}

~Videl~

"Stop wiggling around, V!" Sienna squeaked, trying to keep Videl's hand still.

"It tickles!" Videl giggled.

The glowing pen-tool Sienna was using on her sent weird vibrations through Videl's fingertips, and one touch coated her fingernails with a shimmering, pink polish.

"I'm almost done," Sienna promised, moving on to one of Videl's pinky nails. "Just hold still!"

"I'm trying!" Videl laughed, enjoying Sienna's expression of concentration.

"There!" Sienna chirped, a few moments later, after finishing the last one. She clicked the tool off and set it to the side, so she could grasp both of Videl's hands, and turn them this way and that, to display her handiwork. "What do you think?"

"I love it!" Videl exclaimed, wiggling her fingertips and admiring the way the polish glittered in the light. "You're a wizard!"

Sienna screwed her face up and burst out laughing. Videl was so glad that she had taken up Sienna's offer of a sleepover. Sienna still shared private quarters with her parents, which was supposedly a thing that most families did, until their children wanted to marry. As impossibly huge as the Titan Starship seemed to be, there wasn't an over-abundance of empty rooms, Sienna had explained. Apparently, the children who wanted to move out of their parents' quarters - without marriage documents - had to petition for a waiting list. And most had to share quarters with roommates, once they were approved. Men and women weren't allowed to room together, unless they were married (or related by blood.) Allegedly, the process would be streamlined when the Titan Starship Maintenance Division finished building the new wing, and more people would have an opportunity to live on their own, with the availability of more private quarters.

Sienna told her that she had been on the waiting list for months since she'd completed her schooling on the Education Level. Sienna said that she was hoping that she would be one of the lucky ones that didn't have to share quarters, with a girl she hardly knew as a roommate. Videl wondered for a moment why Sienna couldn't just be her  roommate, but quickly banished the thought. Sadly, in that situation, Sienna would still be living with a girl that she hardly knew, now that Videl was a different person. Videl also wanted to say that she didn't think that it was so great living by herself, but she didn't want to be rude. Videl figured that Sienna didn't really see the possibility as a lonely one, but more like the freedom of solitude after sharing quarters with her parents her whole life.

Videl pondered how long that she had been living without her parents, and what happened to them. The way the nurse had referred to her as having no family certainly made her believe that they were gone in a way that was permanent. Her parents would have been in her contacts, if they were reachable, if they were still alive. Her parents had died, she was sure of that, but how? When? And she must have lived with them, so had she moved out of their quarters when she finished her schooling? Or was she living in her parents' quarters now? That thought sent a chill through her body, thinking about that second door next to the one for her bedroom. She was unnerved by the likelihood that the private quarters she lived in were not only haunted by the ghost of the real Videl, but the ghosts of her parents' lives, as well.

She knew the answers to her questions would assuredly be inside the digital diary she had forbidden herself to access, and she tried to tell herself repeatedly that she didn't really have a right to seek them. That life wasn't hers, and the questions didn't need to be answered. What good could come from it, anyway? Her parents were gone. The real Videl was gone. And as advanced as the futuristic medical science of the world around her was, there was no bringing any of them back. Dr. Sharp had told her that the best thing she could do was allow those she trusted to fill in the blanks for her, and Videl knew that Sienna could tell her more about herself than most. The trouble was, she was afraid to ask - to remind Sienna that she was an impostor wearing her best friend's body. It felt selfish to repeatedly bring attention to the irrevocable way Videl had been changed. And a very big part of her just wanted to pretend everything was normal.