A bar in Baltimore- Wednesday

[notconflicted]

Sia didn't typically cop to things like needing a break, but privately at least she had to admit that the last few days here had been really helpful. Turns out that being surrounded by war and politics all the time might be detrimental, especially when you didn't actually want to be doing it. Who knew.

Well, okay, Atton knew, and had been telling her that for a while, but that was not the point.

She was out with him tonight, hitting up some bar off island, and that felt really needed, too. For a lot of reasons. So once they got there and found a table, Sia asked, "So what drink are you having me try tonight?"

[For Atton!]

Comments

[notconflicted]

"Have you never found out new information about a person and thought 'oh, that's why they act like that?'" Sia asked.

[suitably_heroic]

"No," Atton said frankly. "Nobody reacts to anything the way anybody else would. Some people get traumatized and they go evil, some decide to do good. Most people just do something, and then reason out why they did it afterwards."

[notconflicted]

"I'll grant you that a person's motivations might not be obvious at the time something is happening," she said. "But if they reason out why they do something, couldn't someone else come to the same conclusion about them?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Sure," Atton said, shrugging. "The question is, how much does that mean? They could do the complete opposite thing next time and still figure out some way to have it make sense to them."

[notconflicted]

"How often do you see that as opposed to patterns of behavior, though?" Sia asked, picking up her drink.

[suitably_heroic]

"Ah, but a pattern of behavior is something different than people behaving rationally," Atton pointed out. "Patterns of behavior aren't all that rational, most of the time."

[notconflicted]

"Sure, if you're not looking very hard at their motivations at the time," Sia said. "I'm just saying, my job for the last couple years would have been much more difficult if I couldn't appeal to people's sense of rationality, or predict when something would or wouldn't work based on their past behavior."

[suitably_heroic]

"That makes you the princess and me not so much, I guess," Atton said, "...And save me the precious cracks. But in my experience, expecting beings to behave rationally is a great way to get killed."

[notconflicted]

"So as someone who you say could stand to be less rational, does that make me the exception to the rule, or something else?" she asked, genuinely curious.

[suitably_heroic]

"You're... mostly rational. Almost all of the time," Atton allowed.

He'd been around her during sex pollen week, and he wasn't sure whether to count that.

[notconflicted]

She had to ask about that now, you know.

"When am I not?"

[suitably_heroic]

"When you're flying high on hormones or raging mad?" Atton offered.

[notconflicted]

"The hormones are an extenuating circumstance and should not be counted. The rest-" She'd argue about the second point, but she had just had Astraal talk her out of going back to fight Sith soooo. "All right, fine. Maybe sometimes."

[suitably_heroic]

"Sometimes is still a lot better than most people," Atton said. "If you think rationality is a virtue."

[notconflicted]

"I'm not sure about a virtue, but it's generally helpful," Sia said. "I'm not sure I'd have made it this long without it."

[suitably_heroic]

"If irrationality got you killed, I'd have been dead a long time ago," Atton pointed out.

[notconflicted]

"Someone else's irrationality actually did get me killed," Sia said after a long pause. Ugh, he was going to win this debate and she hated it, but it didn't feel right to gloss over that like it didn't happen.

[suitably_heroic]

"... Okay, is my memory just complete poodoo, or is this a story I haven't heard before?"

Equal odds for both, really.

[notconflicted]

"I had a very bad weekend," Sia said, sipping her drink. Twice.

[suitably_heroic]

"Do I want to ask, or are we gonna talk around this and pretend nothing happened?" Atton said, picking up his drink. "I'm good with both."

[notconflicted]

Sia shrugged. She'd had enough conversations about it already that she wasn't avoiding it. "A Sith hunted me down at the Mission. Killed my Master, I only got away because we ran into my version of Cade- which is why I'm here. They were using me as bait, so we were fine as we were, except that my idiot boyfriend decided to mount a completely unnecessary rescue mission, and drew many more Sith out to attack us. I took a lightsaber to the chest."

And, not that she was wearing anything very revealing, but there wasn't any visible damage.

[suitably_heroic]

Okay, the first question out of Atton's mouth really needed to be 'So how are you still alive?'

But it was, in fact, "You have an idiot boyfriend?"

[notconflicted]

She wasn't sure how to feel about that being his first question, but there was definitely some sort of feeling about it.

"For the moment. We'll see if he survives the argument I'm going to have at him," she said honestly.

[suitably_heroic]

"Okay," Atton said slowly. "So... you don't look dead."

[notconflicted]

"Cade knew how to help," she said vaguely. "If he hadn't, I wouldn't be here."