OK THEN

[awakener]

The Awakener had some acquaintance with being suddenly abducted from a planet's surface and whisked off into space by shady and probably illegal personages, so he would have considered himself relatively prepared for this, but last time it had been a lot more personal and he'd been told what was up pretty much as soon as he was conscious. This was just kind of worrying.

It seemed like they were rebels, which was pretty much a thing that he could get behind, but you could never really be sure with border-raiding rebel factions. These ones didn't seem particularly hostile – not now that they were done razing the hivestructures of the unjust oppressor, anyway – but in his experience people who didn't seem particularly hostile frequently tended to become pretty fucking hostile if, for example, his dark glasses got knocked off, even if they did oppose the cruel and unjust caste system that made that a problem in the first place.

He tugged his hood over his head a little more and did his best to make himself relatively inconspicuous amongst the little throng of similarly kidnapped trolls while he tried to take a few deep calming breaths and stock of the situation, but unfortunately he couldn't come up with much better than "Shit, shit, shit, I am trapped on a spaceship with no way off and I am probably going to die."

It wasn't a very confidence inspiring summation of events. He'd dealt with worse and got out okay, but, well, there was a first time for everything.

Comments

[awakener]

"No!" he said, still trying to keep his voice down. "No, it's not, I'm not that guy any more, it'll only make things worse for both of us." He pushed a hand through his hair and made a quiet noise of despair. "Look, when I was eight I was a total piece of shit, okay, I – fuck, no wonder he freaked out, he fucking asked to see the Awakener and then..."

[aerolith]

Starfall didn't really look like she knew quite what to do with the hand of cards she'd just been dealt with this conversation, but she soldiered on sort of incredulously.

"Well, I mean, he did say you were an asshole but he's also been super fucked up over you being dead I guess? Like, he didn't even know about the Sufferer until like two perigee ago, so you'd think maybe he'd appreciate the long lost friend angle more..."

She put up her hands.

"Also, since when is you being less of a dick a bad thing?"

[awakener]

"It's not, but ..."

He trailed off, shaking his head in the manner of one who, put simply, just cannot deal with this at all.

"... You actually think he'd be glad to see me?" He hesitated. "Wait. Wait, fuck, are you saying he's talked about me?" His expression was somewhere between horrified, disbelieving and intrigued.

[aerolith]

"Well...yeah?" she started, giving him a look. "I mean how else would I know that he'd thought you were dead? We've got some good telepaths on reserve, man, but I'm not one of them."

She sighed, and let her hands drop, looking like she was debating something to herself. After a few moments, she flicked open one of the ascenders and guided him inside, with the conspiratory gait of someone who was about to tell a secret.

"Look," she said as soon as the doors closed. "You look like you need some kind of pep talk so I'm going to give you the schmaltzy version." She leaned back, taking a steady breath. "When we first raided his ship, I'm pretty sure he was looking to pull off some kind of murder suicide on our asses. Like, we weren't actually going to do anything bad - I mean, until we got in there we didn't even know anyone onboard was still alive. There were these crazy rumours about this ghost ship fucking around out there, and we managed to track it down, so..."

She batted away the topic with a wave of the hand. "Anyway, point is, I think he thought we were trying to like...capture him or something? So I think he was just going to kill everybody rather than face that, but when I realized how far off the deep end he was, I did the only thing I could think of that might show him we were friends."

She pulled the pendants out of her shirt, dangling them for him to see.

"I flashed him these, hoping that maybe he'd heard of Sufferists before and that it might get through to him. And it sort of did, I guess. He took one look at the Sufferist pendant and stopped what he was doing and let us help him. I assumed he was a follower or something but when I asked him, he was just totally clueless about it."

She gave him a not-quite smile and a shrug.

"He said it was just the sign of a friend he'd had on Alternia, who'd died before he was recruited. I guess it was as good of an omen as he could hope for."

[awakener]

He stared at Starfall as if she'd just told him that gravity made stuff go up.

Then he shook his head.

"But..."

He dropped his eyes, staring with intense confusion at a point on one of the walls of the ascender about level with his knee.

"... I guess I ought to talk to him, then," he said, after a protracted silence. "Fuck. I didn't think..." He covered his face with a hand, and left it there.

[aerolith]

She leaned to the side a little, like she was hoping to catch a glimpse around his hand.

"Didn't think what? That he'd miss you?"

[awakener]

"Yeah," he said, lowering his hand slowly. "He should have been better off without me." He paused, took a deep breath, and seemed to regain at least a semblance of composure. "But," he added, "I guess he was always kind of unreasonable."

[aerolith]

At that, she finally grinned more fully.

"Yeah, I got that impression, oddly enough," she said. "He'll probably want to talk later, though, after it's settled in some more. It was probably kind of bad timing for him, since I doubt being in that engine block again does great things for his head."

"He'll probably be weird about it," she said, after a pause. "But he's weird at everybody."

[awakener]

The Awakener laughed weakly. "Weird is fine. I just ... I didn't want to upset him." He sighed. "I should probably ... is there anywhere I could go on board here to be alone for a little while? I kind of have a lot to think about."

[aerolith]

"Oh, yeah, totally," she said, brushing that off with a wave of the hand. "I can probably get you a block to yourself and everything. The Aerolith is pretty fucking huge - I personally share a cocoon, but that's because one legged, cycloptic pilots are hella sexy, and not due any particular lack of space."

She tapped a few keys on the control pad.

"I'll take you to the habitation blocks and see what we can drum up."

[awakener]

He laughed, glancing not for the first time at the exposed machinery of her leg, but going by his smile he wasn't about to dispute her assertions about the sex appeal of bionic amputees.

"Thanks," he said, with a sort of weary relief. "I mean, pretty much anything would be great, usually I just sleep in people's ablution traps."

[aerolith]

She snickered at that genially.

"Pretty sure we can get you set up better than that." The ascender slowed to a halt, the door leisurely sliding open. "Come on, I'll show you around."