~Videl~

The night in the Aviary/Arboretum had felt like a dream. She had so much fun that she had completely forgotten about how guilty and embarrassed she felt for dumping her problems on Kane and Dare. She even forgot about Cryo-Level 3, about feeling like some sort of impostor, about everything that was constantly troubling her. Videl had just felt free, and very much alive. Her exhaustion had been temporarily replaced by child-like wonder, excitement and joy. She also found that it was possible to be filled with a kind of fear that was pleasurable, that was thrilling.

Once she was back home and the adrenaline had worn off, however, she collapsed onto her bed, too tired to care that she was sweaty and dirty, hair full of grass and twigs. She passed out instantly, shoes still on and everything. And by some miracle, she slept like a rock, without a nightmare to interrupt her rest, for the first time since waking from cryo-sleep. She slept for 12 straight hours. When she woke up, she felt disoriented. She didn't recognize where she was right away. She sat up slowly, blinking and yawning.

"Oh," Videl mumbled groggily, looking down at her grass-stained and dirt-smudged clothes and shoes that she hadn't bothered to change out of. With a small smile, she climbed out of the bed and decided to take a long, hot bath. When she was all cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes, she gathered the dirty ones from the night before and carried them to the laundry room. There was a laundry basket in front of the strange laundry machine and she dropped the clothes in the basket, but before she began to try and figure out yet another futuristic cleaning device, she realized she might need to wash her pillowcases and blankets too, after laying on them covered in filth, so she went back to the bedroom to strip the bedding.

As she did, something hit the floor with a thump. Curious, she sat down the wad of sheets and blankets, and bent down to see what it was. The thing that had fallen to the floor was a small, pearlescent tablet of some kind, with a matching stylus attached to the side.

"Huh," Videl wondered aloud, plucking the stylus from the magnetic pull that held it to the tablet.

As soon as the stylus left the tablet, the screen blinked to life and Videl froze. It was a digital diary. The real  Videl's digital diary. She started to shake. It felt wrong to hold it in her hands. That strange feeling of déjà vu came back with a vengeance, and nearly sank her to her knees. The Videl of the past must have recorded years of memories on this device, and she wrestled with the urge to read them.

They're her memories, she chastised herself. Not mine.

"I can't," Videl whispered as she hurriedly returned the stylus to its rightful place with trembling fingers.

The screen went dark again, and she made herself set it on the nightstand, and then covered it with a stuffed bear from the dresser like a kid hiding a candy stash from their parents. The fuzzy purple bear was too small to fully conceal it, but it made her feel better anyway. Resolute, she resumed her task of gathering the laundry. She went to the guest bathroom and retrieved her white Cryo clothes, and brought everything into the laundry room. Videl willed away the goosebumps on her arms, and after she had managed to find the release catch to open the laundry machine, she deposited everything in the chamber, surprised that it all fit with room to spare. Once she found the setting to start the washing procedure and initiated it, she eagerly joined Belle on the couch.

Videl pulled her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them, ignoring the protest from her sore calves. Belle's blinking, yellow standby light flashed at her disapprovingly.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Videl muttered, and sighed. "I didn't read it."

Belle just blinked. She only responded to a very limited set of voice commands. Videl felt guilty just touching the device that certainly held a treasure trove of personal information; only thinking  about accessing it. She wondered if she could talk to Dr. Sharp about it, but she knew that he would probably argue that it would be ignorant not  to read the entries. Even still, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was an invasion of privacy. She knew it didn't make sense to feel that way, but she did.

A chiming sound indicated that her laundry was finished washing, and Videl was surprised once again by the efficiency of the technology in the world around her. It had only been minutes since she'd started it up, and it was ready to switch into the dryer setting, like a cleaning Transformer robot. The appreciation that she felt for the advanced machinery momentarily distracted her from her moral conundrum, and she was glad for the reprieve.

~Kane~

Like Kane had hoped, Dare had slept in late, just like him. Kane even made it to the gym a few minutes before him, which had probably only ever happened once. As much time as they both spent in the Gym, they had both agreed it was surprising to be so sore from Hide-and-Seek in the Aviary/Arboretum. While Kane re-racked some weights, Kane reminded himself of his wish to thank him.

"Hey, thanks for yesterday," Kane told Dare, earnestly. "I think you saved the day."

Dare laughed and shrugged. "It wasn't all me, but no problem, man. V's a little sweetheart." There was a short pause as Dare grabbed a different set of weights from the rack. "Can't imagine her as . . . well, you know." He smiled sheepishly, not wanting to say it.

"A raging bitch?" Kane finished for him.

"Yeah," Dare admitted with chagrin.

Kane wanted to agree that he couldn't either, but he had plenty of memories of the old Videl being just that. That's what made it so beyond weird.

"I don't understand how someone could change that much from a cryo-mishap." Dare pondered out loud. "It's freaky. I had to cryo-sleep for a week, to transfer from the Omega Starship to the Titan. I don't even want to imagine waking up not knowing who I was anymore. I think they'd have to physically fight me to the death if they tried to force me into a pod, now."

"Now, that's something I'd pay to watch!" Kane joked.

It was easy to forget that Dare hadn't been born on the Titan. After only about 4 months of knowing the guy, it felt like they'd grown up together. When Dare and about 20 others from the Omega Starship had docked with the Titan, everyone had been practically bouncing off the walls with excitement. No one had any idea they would ever meet anyone from a different Starship, and considering the huge Welcoming Ceremony the Titan Council organized when the new-comers came out of cryo-sleep, it was an extremely rare thing to take place, and cause for a lavish celebration. Dare was basically a celebrity - all the Titan girls were tripping over themselves to nab the new guy.

Kane instantly respected Dare for having self-restraint and not plowing through them all - like Lars surely would have. As far as Kane could tell, Dare did his best to avoid their attention by sneaking to the Gym - knowing any girl he did  decide to mess with would surely be hated by the majority of the other girls for it. And it was lucky for Kane, since that's how they'd met and quickly became "gym bros."

Kane felt kind of bad that V missed the chaos of the Welcoming Ceremony, frozen in a cryo-pod - it was easily the most exciting thing to happen on the Titan Starship in hundreds of years. But then again, it wouldn't have been V who experienced it, in that case, it would have been the old  Videl. And the V, as he knew her now, wouldn't exist. Kane winced. He knew it was wrong on so many levels, but he was glad that the cryo-pod malfunctioned. Videl was angry, hostile, and a monumental pain to be around. Without her memories, she was the complete opposite. She was V - a soft, kind, little flower of a person. He wondered what kind of memories could have turned her into what she'd been before, if this  was how she could have been without them.

With yet another wave of guilt, Kane realized that she must have been through some horrible things to become so sharp and callous. Kane made a mental note that perhaps her attitude had been warranted. The Stars knew Lars wasn't a saint, and Kane standing up for his friend in the past might have been a moronic thing to do. He'd never bothered to hear Videl's side of the story of what happened at the party, never wondered what could have provoked her to do what she did - he'd just taken Lars' story at face value. Kane hadn't gone to that party, because he'd been too exhausted from a boxing lesson.

"Yo!" Dare called from the bench press, breaking Kane free from the path his thoughts had taken. "Can you spot me?"

"What else are friends for?" Kane called back, grinning.