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

[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?"

[aphelionix]

Bentley paused, the hand still on his chest.

"I do," he said, his hand lowering slowly. "There still... things that he doesn't talk about. Your brother's very good at changing subjects when he wants. But I guess I can't talk, I don't discuss some things either."

Evan's friendship was something that had sneaked up on him. He didn't understand it at first, why he continued to hang out with some doctor he kidnapped as part of a job. Before he knew it though, it was routine, and Evan had become someone he called a 'friend'.

"It's times like that, I think, that it's lonely." Bentley rubbed his mechanical wrist nervously, staring across at the opposite wall. "And knowing things will never be like they were before, and that I can't go home."

[tactician]

Viana crossed her arms over her stomach, still curled up into herself. She was well aware of how expertly her brother dodged certain topics of conversation. She had an inkling of things he didn't share, simply because she had been with him so long, but sometimes even Viana wondered too. Did maybe Evan resent the path he had chosen? Sometimes, when no one else was looking, even Evan looked sad.

"You want to leave that badly?" she asked shortly. "You could ask Boss after this deal with Gladsheim is over. People have left the Circle before."

[aphelionix]

Bentley quieted there, still mindlessly running his fingers over the grooves of his metal arm.

"...A-and lived, right?" he asked, looking over suspiciously.

[tactician]

Viana curled her lip over her teeth. It was't as if she personally managed the Circle's reputation within its members, but she had been with them long enough and they had done enough for her and her brother that there was a certain sense of protectiveness over the Organization itself.

"You've been here for almost a year now, and you still think like that?" She scoffed. "No wonder you're lonely. You haven't even accepted your situation."

[aphelionix]

"That was a bit of a joke," he said, sighing. "The Circle turned out to be... much less like a mafia than I thought."

[tactician]

Her impatience flared short for a second. "You can leave if you want to! You don't have to stay here and try to be friends with people if you didn't want to! Evan would tell you the same thing!"

[aphelionix]

Bentley's eyebrows raised, and he looked startled again for a second.

"I didn't say I want to leave, though," he said. "I think it'd be a shame, actually, leaving the only place I have friends."

[tactician]

She blinked at him, eyes wide, before collapsing in on where she sat again, shrinking up like a hedgehog into a protective ball. "I was just...saying. That's all."

[aphelionix]

He blinked at her, before shaking his head, smiling.

"I'm probably staying," Bentley said, a realization seeming to settle in. Maybe Viana had gotten a couple things right, after all. Some of his loneliness was self-imposed, through a belief that he didn't belong and couldn't trust people. It was nice to have someone remind him that it wasn't necessarily true. "It's not my first home, but it's... Well, think it's a good one."

[tactician]

"It is," she agreed, much softer than Bentley had probably ever heard her speaking. Her eyes were still focused on something far across the room, but the tone was gentle, introspective.

She swerved her eyes to him then, gaze sharp. "As long as you keep that mouth of yours shut when you're about to say something stupid."

[aphelionix]

His nervous laugh returned, and Bentley leaned just a little away under that ever scary glare.

"You're right," he said, his lopsided smile staying in place. "I-it is better when I don't say stupid things."

[tactician]

Apparently satisfied with that, Viana let off with a curt nod and settled back. Though she stayed in the same place, the tension in her body language and sitting position seemed to loose and once again, she looked just like a girl sitting on a bench like any other.

"What were you doing with that idiot, anyway?"

[aphelionix]

"Who, Danny?" Bentley leaned forward, one elbow on his knee, resting his chin in his hand. "He wants to meet up tomorrow to give me a gift." (It wasn't entirely a lie.)

[tactician]

Viana looked just as surprised as Bentley had at that piece of factual information. She looked like her brother when she did that - silently react and then slowly school her expression back into something more neutral, like she was soaking the information up like a sponge with water. (She only did it when it was something that wasn't infuriating, of course.)

"I hope you like being gaudy."

[aphelionix]

Oh. Right. Danny had the most infamous tastes on the ship.

"He doesn't... dress that gaudy," he assured, more to himself than Viana. "But in any case I'm just happy he thought of me."