Mala- Friday

[notconflicted]

If Sia had to go on a goodwill tour of all the places the Sith Empire had ravaged through the years, she really would have rathered skipping the planet where she got stabbed and really should have died. She never addressed it, she played nice, she tried to keep the focus on the battle here instead of on what happened to her personally, partly because she didn't want to be reminded and partly because Atton was dealing with enough and she didn't want to bring this up on top of it.

It was a relief when she was finally able to say her goodbyes and board the transport, heading for her quarters as the crew got them off the ground and on to the next stop.

[For one but open!]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

"Don't think I wasn't tempted to do an obnoxious yet strangely charming rendition of 'Common People' for you at Caritas once or twice," Atton said. He hoped it was clear he was teasing. His voice felt kind of flat today.

[notconflicted]

She got it.

"Now that I know, there's always a chance that I ask for it now," she pointed out.

[suitably_heroic]

"I should probably go back to the island if this drags on much longer," Atton said, and hated himself for saying it out loud. "So you could probably catch me at Caritas."

[notconflicted]

"Of course," she said automatically, though she didn't like hearing that herself.

So she added, "Though you always have the option to stay here, if you wanted."

[suitably_heroic]

But what if Sparkle showed back up on the island and he wasn't there?

... Space.

"Thank you," he said, tapping his glass with one finger, and then gulped back a mouthful.

[notconflicted]

"And if not," she said, "then you know what to expect from my next visit."

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah." Atton stared across the room for a moment. "Poodoo. I'm not going soft on you, I swear."

He'd just been. Worried. About Sparks. Even before all of this had gone down.

[notconflicted]

"So what's happening?" she asked, gently.

[suitably_heroic]

"You ever meet someone several times and still don't know how you feel about them?" Atton said. "Even though there's considerable pressure to think about them one way?"

[notconflicted]

"Like everyone's telling you you should like a person?"

She was in politics, she understood this, even if she knew the details had to be different.

[suitably_heroic]

"Exactly that," Atton said. He peered into his glass. "I've been trying to figure out whether it's me being weird, or I actually have a bad feeling about Sparkle's boyfriend." Beat. "The new one."

[notconflicted]

"What puts you off about him?" she asked, and nodded towards his glass in case he wanted a refill.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton nodded.

"About the guy personally?" he said. "He's very sure of himself, pretty much all of the time. Thinks he's got everybody figured out, even if he's never met them, and he'll tell you repeatedly what they're like. Even if you have met them."

He held his glass out for that refill. "Spent the past few months coming up with all kinds of new visions of torture porn about what Lewis was gonna do to Sparkle in court. I mean, stuff straight out of the holovids, but still. Who does that?"

[notconflicted]

Sia floated the bottle over to pour more into his glass.

"I'd say he's considering worst case scenarios, but it sounds like he really thinks things will go that way." Which wasn't how it worked. She'd once set someone up for a trial that should have been an easy conviction and it hadn't worked out that way.

[suitably_heroic]

"He said he was just trying to come up with the worst the guy could throw at us," Atton said, bringing his glass back up to take another sip. "But he started hitting ideas like 'What if Lewis brings in Sparkle's parents to testify against his sanity and we'll have to bribe a therapist to diagnose Lewis as a narcissist on the stand' and I'm like, what is this? Are you gathering material for your next detective novel, or are you trying to support Sparks?"

[notconflicted]

Sia stared.

"What?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Right?" Atton said. "And this was after he'd diagnosed a guy he never met with like five different mental conditions. Am I crazy here, or is that weird?"

[notconflicted]

"That's weird," Sia confirmed. "And I can't imagine that's easy to hear when you're Sparkle, either."

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah." Atton eyed his drink again. "It'd be one thing if the guy was just weird and that was it. I mean, Sparks sometimes has weird taste in guys, it happens. But Sparkle's been all over the place this year. You know who came to talk to me because Sparkle was upset I hadn't been around much? Not Sparkle. Sparkle's karking boyfriend. He vanishes off the island to go hang out with this guy for weeks on end, comes back with a girlfriend..."

[notconflicted]

"And you're left with the red flags and can't address them to Sparkle because he's not around?"

And Sia had to mentally headtilt at some of that when she'd known Atton's schedule over the last year.

[suitably_heroic]

"I let Sparks run off to Toronto with the guy," Atton said, and space, he sounded helpless again. "And now Sparkle's stuck there with him. Alone."

[notconflicted]

"You didn't let him do anything. He's an adult, he can make his own decisions," Sia told him. "I know that probably doesn't help. But you aren't responsible for him, and if things aren't going to what exactly this boyfriend says, maybe it will wake him up."

[suitably_heroic]

"I don't know," Atton muttered. He looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know if I want to go back to the island," he said. "At least here I feel like I'm doing something for someone."

[notconflicted]

"You are," Sia pointed out with a little smile. "And this isn't a decision you need to make right away. If you want to stay and figure things out while seeing what happens, you have that option."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton's life after Meetra had pulled him out of the dark, soul-sucking void and promptly left him had revolved around two things - being a Jedi, and being Sparkle's best friend. Wasn't healthy, and he'd known that for a long while, but after losing so many parts of himself-- well, it was all he'd had.

And for the first time, it began to dawn on him that, once again, something that had kept him going, that had defined part of Atton Rand, could be wrenched out of him and he had no control over it.

He sat down on the thought. He'd had one meltdown this year and he refused to have another one this early.

"You need someone to look handsome and make sure you don't die of boredom," he said, "That's what this is about."