driftfleet | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Anyone who wants to hang on the Iskaulit
Broadcast: nah
Action: Iskaulit mingle, darlings
When: All day every day (at least for the month)

[We're drifting, so it's a perfect time to make use of the many fine establishments on our common ship.]

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[Does she get any points for not asking if he helped destroy it in the first place.]

Good. Were you going to stay after it was repaired?

[That honour goes to Alex Summers in a fit of bad timing. He falls silent at the question, looking away again. There's so much more to the answer than he's comfortable giving.]

No... I left.

...You shouldn't be alone.

[He has to wonder. So often he's thought the opposite, that being alone would at least spare other people the collateral damage of being around him. It's a feeling he tries to quash, because he knows at heart that he's not alone. Raven and Charles had shown him that, though it took him a while to see. In another way... he already was alone. And that was one of the reasons he had left the school.

He looks at Kitty out of the corner of his eye, and his reply is quiet but unyielding.]

There were things I needed to do on my own.

They wanted you to stay. [They didn't say that to her, but the way they are all on the same ship now feels like it's true. The way they defend him to her says they're protective and forgiving. More so than she's ready to be so she uses what she thinks is their voice instead of her own.

Besides, he was alone when he chose Apocalypse, right? It just makes good strategic sense.]

[His jaw tightens slightly, and he can feel nerves skitter along his skin. What she's saying is the truth. "I don't suppose I can convince you to stay?" Charles had said, eyes too bright, but Erik's decision had already been made. To go back to Poland one more time, to get the space he needed (wanted?) to sort himself out. He hadn't asked any of them if they wanted him to stay. None of them had outright said it. It wasn't the way things were between any of them (not anymore).]

It's like I said. And leaving doesn't mean I can't return. [That last is almost too personal, for how things stand between them, but it's not some great secret. He had already come back twice, when it had always seemed he'd never go back.]

No, it just makes it harder.

But you're here now. [And leaving isn't an option. Hiding is about as close as it comes. The place is too small. Too easy to bump into people. You can't really be gone here. Space isn't the place for needing your space.

It seems cruel though. You're practically forced to work out your issues here and then what? Just to be sent home and have all that erased, compounding your memories with choices you might have never made if you could have been the person you became here? Only to get forced to go through it again?]

Edited 2016-10-03 13:00 (UTC)

[Hiding is essentially what he's done, for the majority of time he's been back. It was preferable to facing the questions, the people who would never understand what they had gone through.

As for it making things harder... he could nearly laugh. The last time his life had seemed easy, it imploded on him, proving there's no such thing. So his reply is a little flat.]

Yes. I'm here now. That's how things are.

They care about you even after everything. [It's easier to talk about their feelings than to sort out the conflicted mass of her own feelings.]

Do you honestly think I don't know that? After everything that happened?

[There's more bite in his voice now, some steel creeping back into it. She's meant to hate him. Now she's saying these things instead, and he's not prepared to handle it. He had already returned the book to the shelf, but now he slams his palm into it abruptly, shoving it all the way in.]

Turning on En Sabah Nur wasn't an act I could have done on my own. [He turns away with a jerk, and starts walking off lest his temper get the better of him.]

[She fights the impulse to flinch at his reaction and doesn't try to call him back or follow. Just mumbling under her breath.] That's why I don't want you to leave them. [She abandons the plan to stock up on books and heads out.]

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