a very special spaceship holiday

[tactician]

Partaaay on the First!

Nowadays, it's mostly humans that celebrate the winter holidays this...festively, but luckily for all of you, the leader of Circle 7, the System's most notorious crime mega-conglomerate, is human. He insisted on the celebration on the First, too, said something about morale and good cheer and a shit ton of (most likely laced) alcohol. Something about holiday pranks, too, but that might've just been my imagination.

There's mistletoe hanging everywhere, the suspicious smell of Astorean Norther Fir in the air, jingling bells tied to every doorway, and is it just me, or does that big Santa have a glass eye?

It's gonna be a grand ol' time.

Comments

[tactician]

It didn't even take a good working knowledge of Viana and her infamous moods to know to stay away from the corner where she had planted herself. The atmosphere around here was dark and foreboding, quite the polar opposite of the otherwise cheerful and lighthearted party around her. It was as if the temperature dropped a few degrees within a five foot radius of the girl and all that, in addition to the look on her face that clearly welcomed no company, all but ensured that no one even chanced to wander close.

Evan had spent the better part of ten minutes earlier steering her away into the safety of the corner and trying to talk some cheer back into her mood, but while her brother was good at reading and placating almost everybody, Viana was good at reading him. She wouldn't cause any scene, she had assured him, but she didn't want any more punch, any more cookies, or any more party. When it became obvious that her heart was set on just that, Evan had sighed and ultimately left her to her own devices.

From experience, he knew that was the most practical way to brave that storm.

[aphelionix]

Bentley, however, had much less experience.

Of course, he didn't walk straight into Viana's obvious little blizzard going on. He valued his life, after all. So, he went for a different method.

He did leave the party temporarily after Danny had saved him, but he still felt bad. (And all right, he was determined to examine one of those cookies for traces of anything.) Keeping in the crowds, he saw Viana from afar, and decided to message her instead. He had never actually tried; he had no reason to. They never hung out or talked with just each other. Evan was always there. But Bentley tended to hang out with Evan without her. It seemed a bit... odd, when he thought about it.

Hey, it's Bentley. Are you still mad at me?

It wasn't until after sending it that he slapped a palm to his face. What a ridiculous question, of course she'd still be mad! He quickly added another message.

I mean, can we talk, or will you just, you know, damage my internal organs?

[tactician]

The reply, when it did come (there was a long pause before it did, as if Viana had just dismissed the message and decided not to grace it with a reply), was succinct and rather to the point, much like its sender.

'what do you want'

[aphelionix]

Bentley had grown worried in the wait, wondering if he should give up, when his communicator dinged again.

To say sorry.

[tactician]

At that, Viana stared at the screen, both brows creeping up her forehead. To be fair, Bentley spent a great deal of his existence apologizing for things so really, she shouldn't have been so surprised.

'for?'

[aphelionix]

"My insensitivity earlier," came the answer, Bentley now standing a couple feet from Viana's gloomy corner. He looked nervous, venturing this close (for good reason), rubbing his neck. "I-It was a, um... mean thing to say on Christmas Eve..."

[tactician]

Sticking her phone and her hands into her pockets, Viana turned her head away, drawing her knees up until the heels of her feet rested on the edge of the bench.

"Yeah?" she said coolly, which never was a good sign because Viana hardly was the cool type, and any hint of such was usually just a precursor to an explosion of some sort.

[aphelionix]

Bentley swallowed, growing even more worried. Was this just the calm before the storm..? "I-it was rude of me and I wasn't thinking, so I... just thought I'd say that I'm sorry. In person."

[tactician]

Viana turned to him and sneered. Despite the fact that she was sitting and her eye level was much lower than the doctor's, it had a very distinct sense of a person staring down another in it.

"Yeah?" she ground out, her body drawing inward, her knees and feet closer, her elbows pressing into her sides like she was a coil, winding up and ready to spring. "But you said it anyway 'cause it was me, huh? Who you don't really like 'cause I lash out sometimes, so it's all right to stay stuff like that?"

[aphelionix]

If anything, wouldn't that make it less all right to say something like that? Bentley didn't say that, though.

"That's not why," he said, sighing. "I wouldn't be here now, would I? If I didn't like you."

[tactician]

Viana narrowed her eyes, looking unconvinced. "Most people here don't like me, doc, and they're still here."

[aphelionix]

That was a little... sad, he thought.

"Well, I... can't say I enjoy the occasional beating," Bentley admitted, looking at the ground. "But I like to think we're friends."

[tactician]

Viana huffed, blowing a strand of bright green hair out of her eyes as she turned away. "You don't really think that."

[aphelionix]

Bentley was silent for a moment, glancing up. It felt a lot like talking to a steel, cold wall, but he still took a seat two chairs down from Viana, deciding to brave it.

"I have days where I wonder if you even like me," he said. "And I wonder if I'm wasting everybody's time, trying to be friendly, because I don't belong here, and I don't know if I truly know anyone I've met, and it's lonely, and..." His brow wrinkled. "A-and I'm rambling, but... in short, somedays, you and Evan make me feel better."

[tactician]

Viana watched him out of the corner of her eye as he spoke, expression torn somewhere halfway between incredulity and forced impassiveness. For a doctor, Bentley was one of the most unobservant people she knew. As the ship's doctor, he already enjoyed an elevated level of esteem among its crew. It was hard not to like the person who kept you alive and patched up all your scrapes and cuts, and Bentley's infamous sympathetic ear and mild-mannered disposition only helped that along.

Who did he think he was kidding?

"Lonely?" she hissed. "How are you possibly lonely? You're surrounded by people and friends all the time."

[aphelionix]

"It's not home, I'm surrounded by people I only know through medical records, and out of the hundreds, I only regularly talk to three of them," he said, even the mild-mannered doctor growing frustrated. Was her view of loneliness really so narrow, built on the idea that being surrounded by people made one happy? How many friends did she think he had? "And now someone is asking me how I'm lonely while constantly rejecting my attempt at being friends."

[tactician]

"I'm not rejecting anything!" she snapped, slapping a fist down on the surface of the bench hard enough to shake it against the ground and wall. Bentley was lucky! If he felt lonely, he had imposed that sort of isolation on himself. He already had everything he could possibly require; he only needed to so much as reach out, and he'd find someone's shoulder there.

"And I saw your home!" she reminded, jabbing a finger in his direction. "We were there, we watched you! And at home, you didn't talk to anybody."

[aphelionix]

Bentley jumped at the slam, staring at Viana. It was difficult, not feeding off anger that was thrown at you so blatantly, and so inaccurately. What could she possibly know by watching him at 'home' for a few days?

A frown slowly formed on his face, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

"That wasn't my home," he said. "I was in hiding there. It wasn't safe for me to talk to anyone."

[tactician]

Her eyes narrowed in confusion.

"That location had been the hub of your known coordinates for the past six months at least. If you had another home, we would have found it."

[aphelionix]

"I'm sure you can thank Gladsheim for the confusion," Bentley said. "They probably tried very hard to keep my previous location secret. I'm fairly sure you all arrived just moments before they would have."

[tactician]

"We did," Viana responded, looking back to the rest of the hall. "They were already en route. Normally we would have taken you somewhere outside, so there's no evidence of a struggle in the home, but we were on a short leash."

[aphelionix]

With their conversation becoming unexpectedly quieter, Bentley felt himself calm. He still remembered the events of that day clearly, despite it having been so long ago already.

"You probably saved me from a lot of trouble," he said, smiling just subtly. "Apart from taking away my medication."

[tactician]

"You were fine without it," she argued, huffing at his response. It seemed as though she was cooling down (Evan had the right idea), but it might have possibly just been the calm before the storm.

Who knew? It wasn't as if people really hung around long enough to find out.

[aphelionix]

"I was dying," he exaggerated purposely, hand to his heart as though wounded, sighing.

[tactician]

She merely raised a brow at that behavior, staring long, considering. It was familiar.

"You hang around with hermano a lot," she said, with a lift in tone near the end that might have suggested a question, if it weren't so obvious that she already knew the fact. "And you are still lonely?"