orendalogs | IT'S YOUR DESTINY!!!

"Aren't all gifts supposed to be that way?" he asked, tilting his head a bit to look over at Aoba curiously. Well, biased maybe a little, at least in the sense that some gifts were supposed to convey more meaning than others. His gifts for Aoba would naturally be different from gifts he'd send to Aoba's grandmother, but that was because of personal feelings. When he looked at a thing and felt something in his chest acting funny and started thinking about Aoba, then he knew it was something he needed to get for the man. Would he feel the same about a gift for his Grandmother? He didn't think so...

Aoba was different.

"I'll try to pick something nice and useful, but not to blandly utilitarian. Pretty without...being a frippery? You think that would work?" Like what...slippers? That seemed kind of too impersonal. He'd have to find something lovely without being pointless. Like framed art. Art felt mostly pointless to him. He liked looking at beautiful, real things. Nature. People. Some artifacts that he admired for their age and purpose. Mac was a magpie. The things Declan picked up were different from the nonsensical baubles the Warlock liked. He retrieved things that made him think of other things, like Aoba. Something was beautiful because of the emotion it elicited, not because of the feeling it was designed to convey.

“Well there’s gifts you get because you’re expected to give one, because it’s polite, or traditional, or a holiday or something. A lot of times it’s really generic and boring, both getting and receiving gifts like that, because either no thought or only really shallow thought went into it.” Aoba shrugged, jostling his hammock-cocoon a bit. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. You sound like you have the right idea, anyway.”

With a bit of squirming, he freed one arm and held a hand out, roughly twenty centimeters below the top of his own head. “She’s about this tall against me, if you’re thinking clothes. She does basically all the cooking, and she’s a retired doctor that still does house calls for the neighbors sometimes.”

And bringing her up…this time, it didn’t hurt at all. There was no homesick heartache at the mention of her, just the happy imaginings of a…long-distance introduction between her and his new friend.

"Hm. Okay. I'll look around and see what I can find. It has to be something that people wouldn't get suspicious about, too. So nothing too technologically advanced or that would be insanely costly in your time. Like gold and diamonds aren't really worth anything anymore, but back then I understand it was quite limited. Hm. Well, maybe something not too mad. Does she wear jewelry? Awoken are fond of ornaments," he muses, gesturing with his fingers vaguely, a motion he intends for sparkling things.

"Hm. I know our main goal on Venus is information about Chosen Ones and portals to other places, but is there anything else you want to know while we're there? With Ren and Ghost scanning the files at a make higher rate than ourselves, we can spend time exploring other topics of interest if you like? I'm going to learn about Japan." Yeah, he already decided that. He's gotta be culturally sensitive, Aoba.

“She’s a pretty practical lady,” Aoba responded to the first, chuffing at the thought of presenting her some kind of expensive gift. He didn’t imagine she’d be completely unappreciative, but she might act skeptical or throw in some lecture about the value of money, first. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with more than a simple necklace and a hairstick.”

The second, on the other hand, was another of those left-field changes in topic. Or it was until Declan ended with his desire to learn more about Japan, bringing a brief tightness to Aoba’s chest.

“I—I don’t know, I didn’t think about anything like that,” he faltered briefly, flattered or a little embarrassed or somewhere between the two. Should he learn about Ancient Rome, then? No, that had no bearing on anything at all. Declan was just a person, now.

"Hm...would it bother you terribly if I spent a little time reading?" he asked, reaching up and rubbing one earlobe lightly, brows perked in questioning.

"I don't want you to be be bothered or bored. It would be terribly quiet if I just sat there in silence for a few hours. Hm. Maybe...I shouldn't. I'm supposed to be spending this time with you, not indulging my curiosity. There are a lot of displays and things still intact at the library. We can look through those? It's sort of like a museum at this point..."

“You don’t have to be talking to be good company, Declan,” came another amused chuckle, Aoba waving a hand dismissively before tucking them together, thumbs hooked in the hammock. Without gravity to hold them down, he had to be all the more conscious about where his arms were drifting off to.

“Just because nothing’s coming to me off the top of my head, that doesn’t mean I won’t think of something while we’re there. I could just grab something random and browse around. You don’t have to act like you have to entertain me. If I can look over to where you are and see you’re enjoying yourself, that’s still spending time together.”

"Really? Hm." he asked, glancing over curiously before smiling faintly and looking back to the stars. That was...really nice to hear. Declan talked a great deal with Aoba, far more than he ever did with other people aside from Mac, and that was because the man harassed him incessantly. The Titan liked being in places such as the bar, but he didn't want to talk as much as listen, watch sometimes. He liked reading and being quiet and just sharing space. The times Declan didn't feel alone at home were when he tucked himself onto the cushioned nook against the balcony window at home and read something he'd found in one of his many patrols. He liked Little Women the most, but he'd read a lot of pre-Golden Age literature just because he could. The world wasn't so silent and lonely when filled with the words of great authors, and while he was a little slow at reading and retaining things, once he did it stayed.

"I wish I lived in your time," he stated abruptly, sighing softly. He didn't elaborate on the statement, just making it and leaving it at that, but he thought that if he had, he'd very much have liked Aoba to find him. Maybe whoever he was before could have used a friend, too. Especially one like the other man. He wondered, would the other him have been such a coward with his feelings? In the past, was he brave and bold? Or just as alone? Sometimes he pondered those things, but he never wanted to know badly enough to ask Ghost, and he knew Guardians weren't supposed to, anyways. Still...he wondered if the Declan of before were a better man that Aoba may have looked to, romantically.

See, it was comments like that which could leave one wondering just how the train of Declan’s thoughts worked sometimes. A long enough discussion on one topic, and then bam, non sequitur. But it wasn’t bad, just…curious. Quirky.

He slowly nodded, thinking that yeah, that would have been nice. No war. No being raised from the dead over and over. Cramped conditions, turf wars, and an island you couldn’t leave, but—no Darkness. And maybe even the Traveler would visit in their time and render all the things that Aoba could complain about obsolete. If they were both in his time together, he wouldn’t know anything about the time of Darkness that he would never live to see.

Except if Declan wanted to say that being brought back by the Traveler was worthwhile just for the chance to meet him, then it was equally true that-

“Except, if you were, you wouldn’t be here to help me right now. You’d be stuck back home without me.”

"It seems I suffer misfortune and absence no matter the course," the Titan mused, smiling vaguely and tilting his head enough to look sidelong at Aoba before closing his eyes for a time, drifting in space and thought.

"But, in either scenario, I still get to welcome you back." Because they weren't going to consider that Aoba wouldn't be able to return. Positive energy into the void. That thought in mind, he reached out, gripping the edge of the grating and pulling himself out of his hammock.

"Hm. I'm going to turn the gravity back on and rest a while. If you're tired, you can go ahead and take the bunk and I'll rest in the cockpit. I want to make sure I get some sleep before I take over the controls. Navigating contested territory can't be done by the autopilot, and I took patrol assignments in all the locations we're visiting to make sure I'm relieving posts properly. Rest between will be more sketchy for me."

Aoba considered that, imitating Declan’s movements to squirm out of his hammock as well. No sense staying in it if the gravity was coming on, he’d just get slammed onto his head!

“If you need to sleep, you should take the bunk. I don’t want to think that you were sleeping upright in a chair when you could have gotten better quality rest than that.”

It hadn’t been all that long since he’d gotten up, technically, so Aoba wasn’t tired on any sense of it being late into the day, but…he didn’t feel too drained after the emotional turmoil of the night, either. And even if he did, Aoba was just a passenger. A weapons-carrier at best. Declan, the actual Guardian, had no business giving up the only proper bed to him.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll stay up with Ghost and Ren.”

"If you're sure?" he replied with a dubious tone, nodding once. "I have to go on patrol as soon as we arrive on Venus. It's for the best, anyways. I took the rotation around the academy so a group of us can clear it out before I take you there. I should ask where you'd like to land, actually," Declan mused as they made their way back up to the main deck.

"There's a few different places around the academy, but I want to land on a spot you'll enjoy looking out at while we're camped. So there's the The Cinders, The Endless Steps, and the Ishtar Cliffs. The Cinders are big steel gray rock formations and black-wood trees, and sulfur pools of gold and blue and green that look like gemstones scattered in the dark ground," he made a sprinkling motion with one hand.

"The Endless Steps are white stone monoliths and Vex ruins reaching out of a vast jungle, and the Ishtar Cliffs, on the Shattered Coast, are just outside the academy and look out across the sea at the volcanoes. They have blue flames," he added the last with a look, knowing Earth volcanoes weren't gaseous.

"We can visit every spot, of course, that's not an issue. But we shouldn't constantly relocate. It may disrupt the wildlife. Or draw unwanted attention," he pointed out, waving lightly to Ren and Ghost before floating over.

"Would you be alright with me holding you while we turn gravity back on?" he asked, holding his big hand out for the Allmate, his other hand gripping one of the ship frame beams as Ghost drifted over to the controls. Whether Aoba or Declan held the dog, a moment later the gravity was back on, their collective bodies all weighing down again. That was the strangest sensation of all, to the Titan. Being forced to recognize the great bulk of himself.

Declan had thrown Aoba for a loop again. At first it began with having to puzzle through what Declan meant by clearing out the academy—only to realize on his own that a patrol meant looking for enemies and routing them if necessary. He’d learned that well enough when Declan had been making his calls home, offering vague but nevertheless eye-opening descriptions of what it was he did out in space as a Guardian.

That was when Aoba also realized that a patrol meant the Academy wasn’t what he’d envisioned at the word. They weren’t going to some outpost or far-flung place of learning tended secretly by the space equivalent of monks in the mountains. The City was The Last City. There were no other human settlements! Declan was taking him to do research in abandoned ruins. Why else the gear he was clad in? Why else the weapons for him to carry? God, what was Aoba, stupid? He kept being given pieces of information and failing to put them together into a meaningful whole!

So Aoba didn’t say anything sensible at all. He barely was able to register the way Ren kicked off his shelf and landed in Declan’s hand, looking like nothing so much as a tiny black puff in the Guardian’s safe grip. Instead, clever man that he was, Aoba blurted as gravity returned and he grabbed at his handholds:

“You have to patrol for hostile forces and you’re worried that camping might disrupt wildlife?”

What about battle, what about gunfire? But camping was disruptive??

He’d be touched as per usual by the Guardian’s gentle soul in a moment or five. Right now, it just sounded like absurd priorities.

"Well, yeah? When you fire a weapon you hit what you aim at, and they're low environmental impact. The hostiles don't care about the environment but I try to, and landing a ship can crush a lot of things. I landed on a bird nest once and wouldn't land for weeks after that. Ghost transmatted me to the surface every time. I still feel terrible when I think about it..." He shook his head, shoulders hunching a bit as he leaned and placed Ren gently on the floor. Ghost floated over to whisper to Aoba.

"He crushed some eggs and cried. I tried to tell him they were still in the nest because they were infertile, but it was the principle of it, he said."

"And food in some areas is scarce so it's hard to pick a nice-looking landing spot because if it looks nice it probably tastes nice for the local fauna," Declan added, pacing back and forth in the cockpit to check readouts, read through messages from the Vanguard, and review his bounties. It was highly unlikely other Guardians worried as much as he did. Particularly to being driven to tears over a smashed birdnest.

There it was. The foot-in-mouth moment. Silenced Aoba right quick.

Left standing awkwardly in the space behind the seats, Aoba spent the moments necessary to gather his thoughts in finger-combing his hair carefully back in place, ponytail split in its usual halves to either side of his neck. He couldn't imagine crying over crushed eggs, himself, but he didn't hesitate in thinking he'd most certainly feel bad if it happened.

"... You're too kind a soul for war," he thought, words voiced without real intention.

He stopped what he was doing, looking over his shoulder slowly to gaze at Aoba a moment, bright eyes blinking. After a second he smiled, shrugged, and looked away, heat creeping.

"War doesn't care who you are, just what you stand for," Declan replied quietly, tapping his finger on the ship screen before straightening and turning. He raised a hand, reached out almost to touch Aoba's face before looking at his fingertips like they were independent and out of their collective minds. Clearing his throat and smiling again, the Titan shook his head and moved past the trio of onlookers.

"It's sad, though, don't you think?" he asked, turning briefly on his way to the bunk room. "That the universe is so absent of people that think like me, that you think I'm special somehow? It shouldn't be so rare for someone to just...care."

…Again. There it happened again, and this time Aoba was more conscious of it. A hand extended, veering away. This time it even bubbled up in his thoughts to think, Declan wanted to touch him? But when he had before already, what was it about that particular reaching that Declan kept stopping for?

So tell him it’s okay to. It’s not that hard. came that background muttering, remarkably quiet for the last while but now stirred up again. But before Aoba could decide if he even had the courage to, the Guardian had moved past them. Right. He needed to sleep. Aoba didn’t need to be distracting him with his own idiocy right now. Besides, maybe he held back for more complicated reasons—like, you know, not being comfortable with how Aoba had acted the night before.

The other resident of his mind only snorted at his dig.

But Declan paused, Aoba listened, and in the words was something enough for him to respond to no matter the complications around everything else. Even if things had been one-hundred percent normal, their interactions untroubled by odd thoughts and alter-egos, it would have needed to be said.

“Even if the universe was full of people that think like you, you’d still be special.”

Silence reigned in the tiny space for a moment, Ghost's big blue eye flicking back and forth between the two as Declan stood there, staring at Aoba. It wasn't a hard gaze, but soft. Moved. His large lips parted, pinched, parted again, the bottom compressed a moment in attempt to form a word and ultimately failing. He blinked, shaking his head slightly, as though taking himself out of some trance before inhaling deeply and uttering a notably tremulous sigh.

"If you say so, it must be true," the Titan murmured, cheeks colored and eyes glittering with more than their usual shimmer. Swallowing and puffing a little sigh, he reached up, patting the frame over his head with a few echoing slaps, trying to start his motor again before retreating to the bunk. In the other room he stood in front of the little bed with it's army green blanket, staring through everything. A few seconds ticked by and he slowly lurched forward, collapsing face down into the bed, hands tugging the pillow down to cram his face into it, trying to banish the burning in his skin.

He was going to have a very hard time getting to sleep.

Edited 2018-10-31 22:35 (UTC)

Aoba didn’t even know how to take that reaction. It didn’t feel bad, but it did feel…complicated. Aoba stood in place for a little while after the Guardian had gone out of sight into the bunkroom, squeezing his hands in troubled fists. There was a dead-eyed stare being leveled at him from the back of his thoughts. Funny how he could tell it was so, despite there being no true sight involved. Power of a shared imagination?

Ren sat at his feet, looking up at him with a steady expression. After a sigh of his own, Aoba picked him up and returned to the cockpit, sitting back in the seat which he presumed would have been the co-pilot’s, had someone of the appropriate skills been present. There were those bolted seats by the kitchen area, sure, but this one had the better view.

“I don’t know if I’m an idiot or what,” he murmured to his companion, fingers buried in dark fur.

After a low sigh of his own, Ren answered, “I do not believe ‘idiocy’ is the problem in any way, but I do believe this is proof that it is unwise to let your other side control your actions without mediation. Desires are not meant to be freely indulged. Now you are dealing with the consequences of such.”

And here we go again, went the background mutterings.

Declan only slept for a few hours, leaving Aoba to his own devices in that time. Fortunately Ghost was always awake and more than happy to explain things on the ship to Ren and Aoba both. He showed them the food and the look induction cooktop, showed then the control options in the cockpit that were easy to play with and not relevant to the ship operations. They could play music if they liked, and place calls as well. He also showed them how to access ship logs, listen to anything Declan had previously recorded, record things themselves, explore the vanguard repository of knowledge accessible from the ship and view starmaps. Plenty to stay occupied long enough for the Titan to rest.

Eventually he woke, wandering out groggily with mussed hair, never the best at sleeping in his gear. He didn't strictly have to, but he preferred being in a constant state of preparedness.

Lurching out of the bunkroom and looking around bleary-eyed, Declan offered a vague smile and wave.

"Hungry?"

Alas, or perhaps just ironically enough, the question fell on deaf ears. Ghost’s little tour hadn’t taken all that long compared to how long Declan needed to nap, and Aoba found himself neither particularly in need of ‘staying occupied’ nor even able to compel himself to do so in the form of ‘staying distracted’.

He was roused from the copilot seat long enough to follow Ghost’s tour, but then returned right back to it. Staring out the windows, the slow shift of the stars was soothing, almost hypnotic. He’d professed no need for sleep, but forgot who he was. The zero-G hammocks had been infinitely more comfortable, but it was quiet and comparatively dark. Probably helped that his gear wasn’t nearly so cumbersome as Declan’s own, too.

Declan addressed a dozer, Aoba slumped in his seat in such a way that his shoulder was his pillow, the hood of his Hunter gear pulled up over his head to shade his eyes from what light there was.

Blinking at the lack of reply and squinting, he realized Aoba was asleep, not simply reclining. Snorting softly and wandering over to the seat, he leaned in, eyes roaming Aoba's sleeping face as they'd done in the past. Smiling to himself and looking back over his shoulder at the open bunkroom, he made his decision, gently reaching into the bucket curve of the seat.

He was extremely patient and careful, using his knee to nudge the seat out of it's lean and tilt Aoba just enough to get his hands in there. Any time Aoba stirred, he waited, then went back to work until he had the man lifted up. The Titan princess-carried the other man easily, quietly making his way across the small open space and side-ways through the door to lay Aoba on the bed. Huffing a sigh, satisfied, he tucked the man in snugly before heading back out to go over diagnostics and calibrations on the ship before tucking in at the mess table to read a while, content in the occupied silence.

Though Aoba had most certainly not been moved in such a way since he was very small, Declan’s patience and care served their purpose. The man in his arms wasn’t disturbed even the smallest bit. His midday nap continued on, all the way to being laid down and tucked in to pre-warmed blankets. There was a bit of sound from him at that point, but it was only a contented sleep-murmuring as his head sunk into the pillow.

It wasn’t his proper trundle bed, but it was better than a couch, definitely better than a cockpit seat.

Ren watched all of this, naturally, but instead of remaining with Aoba he followed Declan back out and stayed near the Guardian, perhaps offering his own quiet companionship in place of Aoba’s. Of course, a lap was the most opportune position for such a thing, provided Declan was willing to pick him up.

It was roughly an hour more before Aoba came to again, slowly, getting all the way through a stretch and a yawn before becoming aware of his surroundings enough to fail to recognize them. Bleary confusion faded into understanding when he realized he saw the bunkroom from an angle he hadn’t up until now. Well, there were a couple ways he could have gotten here, but—

Wasn’t me, cut in a yawn. Which meant Declan. Aoba couldn’t remember dozing off—who ever did, anyway?—but it was obvious enough that he must have.

It felt weird, getting out of bed in full gear, but up he got again with rustling blankets and clinking gear-buckles giving away his return to alertness before he himself emerged from the little room, a little disoriented but still hazel-eyed.

“…Fair warning,” he decided on saying, hoping to defuse his own potential embarrassment with a joke. “I will totally turn off the gravity and drag you to the bunk if I ever find you asleep in the cockpit, too.”

"Hm?" Declan hummed, looking up from where he was holding a battered paperback open with one hand, the other busy petting Ren tucked in the crook of his propped up leg. He had absently picked the Allmate up when he was nearby underfoot, spacing out entirely as he slowly made his way through East of Eden.

"And I'll be grateful for your thoughtfulness," he replied with a vague smirk, closing the book and setting it down to focus all of his attention on Aoba.

"I hope you don't mind. You were just...The bed was open, so I thought you should be there."

Finally noticing where Ren was gave Aoba a bit of a start, meeting the Allmate’s dark gaze. He looked as content as he ever did, though. His tongue was sticking out and everything. Suddenly it reminded Aoba of any time he walked out onto his veranda and Koujaku would already be there, with Ren cuddled up in his arms.

To Aoba it said that despite the things that were going wrong or that Ren didn’t approve of, Declan himself was not one of them. Ren would not have allowed the Guardian to hold him so, otherwise.

“Ah.” He refocused on Declan as the other spoke, a little late to his chuff of laughter but still meaning it genuinely. “No, I don’t mind. But at this rate we’re going to have to figure out some kind of rotation, if neither one of us wants to tolerate the other not sleeping in a proper bed.”

Sharing’s always an option. So what if it’s narrow, just get good and cozy and-

Aoba refused acknowledgement.

"...I would offer to share but I imagine it wouldn't be comfortable. I'm very large and take up much space, and my gear is..." He shook his head slightly, ignoring the minor flutter of horror at mentioning the possibility in favor of focusing on the practicality and sensibility.

"And I'd say we could sleep in the hammocks, but zero G isn't good for you for long periods of tiem if you're not accustomed to it. I don't think we'd be in it long enough for you to suffer any bone density problems, but you're not yet fully adapted and treated with our medicine so you may be at greater risk. I'm not a doctor...so...I don't really know." He frowned in consternation, hand stilling in it's rhythmic petting, just his thumb moving, rubbing behind Ren's ear.

"I should have bought a larger ship, I'm sorry Aoba."

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