Day 68: Sun Room

[his_legacy]

Link took his lunch into the Sun Room, preferring a quiet place to think rather than going into one of rooms he had yet to properly explore. He felt tired, physically and emotionally, but he needed to devise a plan for tonight. Tracking down Soma would be for another day; curing the other patients came before basement exploration.

He settled onto a couch with his lunch, picking out his sandwich and drink. Tuna fish- finally a food he could recognize!

[Soushi!~]

Comments

[redcladidealist]

"Ah!" The noise Lloyd made was more from surprise than pain. Alarm jolted through him when he tried to jerk back, but couldn't because his wrist was suddenly trapped. He looked up at Kratos, eyes too-wide, but before he could form words past the shock, the grip loosened, then disappeared when Kratos dropped his hand.

The last thing he expected then was a lecture. A flush spread across Lloyd's cheeks at the pointed reminder that this wasn't the first time this had happened, that he'd been warned before.

Implying that this was his fault. It didn't occur to him that this was just a distraction, that Kratos was just dodging the topic. He pulled his hand back, rubbing his wrist, and shot Kratos a defensive scowl. "Hey, you only warned me about sneaking up on you! I wasn't sneaking up!"

[forsworn]

There. This was, both ironically and pathetically, a more appropriate thread of conversation. Kratos smiled inwardly as Lloyd scowled at him, totally unappreciative of his unexpected move. "You didn't warn me," he said mildly, raising an eyebrow and allowing Lloyd's dark look to pass right over him, as all of Lloyd's scowls and glares usually did, or seemed to do.

He took a casual bite of his sandwich and managed to choke it down without looking like he was trying too hard. "If you were anyone else, I might have snapped your wrist just now." --or nearly stabbed him in the neck with a fork; that had happened too.

[redcladidealist]

That justification did nothing to mollify Lloyd one bit. "What did you want me to say? 'Hey, Kratos, I'm going to touch your hand'?" If he winced a little bit at the thought of Kratos breaking his wrist, he tried to hide it with another mulish look. "You could see me reaching out for your hand. How much more warning do you need? You're the one who was always lecturing me about paying attention to things."

Then, almost as though to punctuate his words, he bit into his food. With his eyes, he dared Kratos to refute the piece of his own advice that Lloyd had thrown back at him.

[forsworn]

"I don't--" Kratos caught himself, even as his mind finished the rest of his sentence for him: like people touching me, even when I can see it coming. That seemed too juvenile, even though he could reasonably consider it the truth. And even if he was able to appropriately dress it up, it was still too vulnerable of a revelation for Kratos to ever voice: Lloyd knew him only by his strengths for good reason.

"--Or you could just not reach for it at all," Kratos retorted. All of Lloyd's complaints were only serving to make him more self-conscious of his unfortunate habit, and it was starting to make him grouchy. He'd been through too much in the past twenty-four hours to patiently deal with this.

[redcladidealist]

"I was just-" Lloyd cut himself off. He should have figured Kratos would reject any attempts he made at being empathetic with him. Had he forgotten who he was talking to here? Kratos didn't want to be his friend. He might have been willing to work with Lloyd to try to find a way to escape from this place, but that didn't mean he wanted anything more from Lloyd than that. They were enemies, after all.

The reminder still stung.

"Look, just answer the question. Are you going to be okay?" He let irritation mask any other feeling in his voice. "It matters to me, too, you know." Because they were trying to work together. Not because of anything else. That was it, and who needed any more reason than that?

He shoved away the feeling that it sounded like he was just trying to convince himself.

[forsworn]

It matters to me, too, you know.

That was supposed to be reassuring, maybe even relieving - reassuring because it meant that Lloyd wasn't asking just to be polite, relieving because it meant Lloyd still cared even after all he'd been put through by his errant (and still anonymous) father. Instead, it made Kratos want to flinch, to pull away, to sharply remind his son that he had no business caring, not when they were enemies. They had a temporary truce here, true, but it didn't change the fact that they still stood on opposing sides back home.

--Or, at least, so Lloyd was supposed to think. It was supposed to be easy to be cool and detached, not a mental chore that, in his current state, Kratos was swiftly tiring of--tiring of, but still persisting in because the energy and resolve needed to attempt the alternative seemed even greater.

"I'm fine," he said flatly. "It's just a scratch. I've had worse." Three lies and no truths to be found there.

[redcladidealist]

People were always supposed to tell the truth. That was what Dirk had always tried to teach him, and what he tried to live life assuming was always true. It wasn't true, though, and he knew that. People lied all the time, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. Colette had lied, the Desians had lied, Genis and Raine had lied. Even he'd lied, though his lies didn't usually last very long before someone caught him out.

But even though he knew that people lied sometimes, he just couldn't bring himself to look at everything they said to see if they were telling the truth. He'd rather assume the best and be wrong than to assume the worst when they weren't lying at all.

Even so, he stared at Kratos for a very long, hard moment. He wasn't fine. The bandages made that a plain and blatant lie. The rest, though...

He didn't know. He didn't know if he trusted Kratos enough to believe he was telling the truth, and he didn't know if he wanted to have so little faith in someone. The silence stretched for another unhappy moment. Then he took a breath, and let it back out.

"All right." Dwarven vow number eighteen: It's better to be deceived that to deceive. The vows were there for times when he was in doubt, and he took refuge in them now. His Dad wouldn't have steered him wrong. "So, you're fine. What does that mean for you tonight? Do you want to try again?"