Week 66, Very Early In The Week: Bunking Up

Hugo was able to find the Oracle HQ eventually, and was a little glad he could lead Silvia there. He remembered just as he was about to tell her how ridiculous that was; Silvia surely knew. It was what she did. So he was mostly silent. While Silvia was busy with doctors and medical checks, though, he had gone out and bought a bunch of food, so at least he felt somewhat useful.

He chewed a block of halva as they walked upstairs. He looked thoughtful. The trip to the HQ had passed mostly in silence, though Hugo was acting.. differently. He was staying close to Silvia, slightly closer than he would have under other circumstance. He looked around constantly, ignoring the people who crossed the street to move away from them, searching for danger. He only seemed to relax once they entered the HQ. "...Every-everything go okay, with the.. doctors?"

"Not too bad," Silvia replied, still fairly quiet and unresponsive, but at least turning her head and giving Hugo a small, weary smile. "I mean...not exactly good. What with the...starvation and asphyxiation and...all that." She hesitated, realising belatedly that Hugo probably wouldn't respond well to that. "But...it's okay. I mean, I'm tough. So long as I spend some time recovering, it'll be fine. And there was nothing...too bad. It'll all recover. So long as I spend plenty of time resting."

Hugo shuddered, resting a gentle hand on Silvia's back. "I saw the cells they had you in... ...so small." He was scowling, but.. He didn't seem to react poorly to hearing about what happened to her, just looked more concerned. He took his hand away after only a moment, seeming kind of embarrassed. "You're, you're very strong. Like, mentally. Much more than me. And.. And.. and we're here to rest. You can rest as long as you want. And I'll.. hang around. Keep you safe." He was getting quieter the more he spoke, the last words were just a whisper.

"They...they were," Silvia said with a shudder. She liked open spaces and the freedom to explore...being trapped in those cells had almost been the worst part of it. She hauled herself back to the now with a deep, slow breath.

"I...I think resting here is a good idea. I...might spend quite a while here. Away from...everything. You don't have to stay all the time if you don't want to, but it...it would be nice to have your company. If that's...okay by you," she added, hesitantly. "However you want to...I mean, just your company as a...a friend is fine. That...that would be helpful."

Hugo's brow furrowed a little at 'just as a friend', not quite sure what she meant with that... But it was hard to focus on that when she was asking him to stay. It made him feel hopeful. "...I, I would like that. A lot. ..I mean, I have to help Ace with the Fed mission in Yellowknife, but... It seems.. secure here. O'd like to come back. Quiet, even if people don't really like us. I might get another safe house somewhere around here, maybe."

As they entered the barracks, Hugo shrugged and looked around. "Everything here seems.. simple."

"It is," Silvia replied, evidently on more comfortable territory now. "It's...I like that. I'm used to simple. If things get too complex it just...feels wrong. Puts me on edge. Here...I think I could find some calm here. Like the wilds," she added, apparently unaware that most people would find a trip to the wilds anything but calming. "Gives me time to just...sit. Think. Meditate."

Hugo moved into the room, picking a bed almost all the way across the room. He removed Una from his back and hung it up on the rack; with his increased size, there wouldn't be much room on the bed if he slept with it. His mule-tech was mostly full of drugs and mission equipment, and he hung it off the edge of the bed. "The stuff about it being complex, is that.. since the.. we got you back or.. since forever?"

He didn't want to mention anything that happened, and he cleared his throat awkwardly. He gave Silvia a nod and a sort of questioning look. "Which should I, or, which.. which bed do you want?"

"Since forever," Silvia said with a sigh, her eyes wandering down the beds. "I mean, it's one of the reasons I went into being a Shinjitsu Agent in the first place. A chance to...get away from it all, you know? And it's why I spend so much time in the garden at home."

It was her turn to pause in awkward silence for a moment, before sitting carefully on the bed next to the one Hugo seemed to have selected. "I'll go here, if you're going there. That way we can keep each other company, at least."

Hugo looked thoughtful, nodding as Silvia picked the bed next to him. He moved so he sat on the edge facing her. After a long moment he murmured, "And people are the most complex, huh? They're not.. easy, like guns." And that seemed to be some form of agreement.

A tired smile touched Silvia's lips for a moment at Hugo's words. "Yeah. People are...difficult. I never know how to deal with them. It's...so much easier when it's just you and...the places." With that, she lapsed into silence, her eyes focused downwards and hands at her sides.

Hugo looked up as Silvia stopped talking, and took a second to take in how she was sitting. He frowned, and reached forward to put his hand on her knee. He stopped halfway, and then moved much, much slower, not so much squeezing her leg as barely resting his hand on it. "You don't do too bad with people, picara. You just get scared halfway through. You gotta.. just go for it."

He tried another smile, this one much more successful than the last few. "And if they care that you mess up, you, you know, if you mess up, you can just punch 'em." That was some Hugo advice, certainly.

"Have you even seen me when I try to talk?" Silvia raised her eyes to meet his and her tone of incredulity matched her face. Still, at least it was a reaction. "I mean, I just open my mouth to say something and then it comes out wrong, or it's something stupid and...and I can't blame them for reacting how they do because, you know, I said it and it was stupid. And I do it without even thinking. And I do it to important people too, like I did to Ace when we first met him." She shook her head, crestfallen. "Ken'ichi used to say I did more damage to myself with my words than any of the others could do to me in combat training."

Hugo had to visibly repress his frown at the mere mention of Ken'ichi, but he managed all right. (Pass L&A on the dot.) He did squeeze her knee now, but very gently. "If you do more damage to yourself than anyone else could to you, it's only because you're so good at not getting hurt in combat." He smiled a little, but he seemed more awake, more active, at the mention of some phantom dead man who he disliked for reasons he couldn't articulate. He thought about Silvia's words for a second, and then his brow furrowed. He pulled back a little, straightening, until only his fingertips where on her leg. "Though.. ..I.. I mean, after all that happened that night, you said it was just bad porn and grunting." He was obviously hurt by that, but he grinned a little to hide it, to show he didn't really take it personally.

"See, that's the kind of thing I mean," Silvia said, frustration with herself starting to show in her voice. "I mean, that's not...it's not what I meant. What I was trying to say. It just...it looked...my recorder wasn't really getting a good view and there wasn't much by way of sound that wasn't...you know what I mean." By the end, the frustration seemed to have leaked out of her somewhat and she just ended up rather deflated.

"But I'm sure that, at the time, it was...not like that. I mean, I can tell it wasn't - I can tell I was enjoying it. I just...wish I could remember it."

Hugo looked at the ground, a weird, distant smile on his lips. "Me too, picara. Me too." He sighed. He took his hand from her knee, and slumped a little backward on the bed. "It.. was a good night, even if I don't remember too much grunting." He still wasn't looking at her, and he was still smiling in a strange, almost nostalgic way.

A slightly strange look passed across Silvia's face, and then she shook her head as though to clear it, and leant backwards.

"I...I should probably get some rest. You know, proper rest, rather than unconscious rest." She gestured vaguely towards the bed she was sitting on.

Hugo looked at her now, before smiling. He seemed lighter, more himself, after talking, even if there was no resolution with the thing that had been bothering him. "Well, this is the only room, and... ..I didn't rest as much this week as I should have. I.. could sleep too." He got onto the bed, listening to it creak menacingly. After a second he picked his head up. "Do, do you want to change? I won't look. Or.. Do you even have anything to change into?"

"I...no." Silvia blinked, evidently not having thought about this. "No, I don't. But I mean, it's fine, I'm used to just sleeping in my clothes. And it's, you know, still better than...than the last week has been." Her hesitation was enough to show that she still found it tricky to talk about that time directly. "I'll just...I'll manage." With that, she lay down on the bed and began to settle herself into a comfortable position.

"You, you have to at least get under the covers, and... Er, no, wait..." Hugo sat up and moved to his mule-tech, rifling through it. Eventually he produced a Hugo-sized long sleeved T-shirt. He handed it over to Silvia. "I.. I brought a bunch of clothes, in case.. you guys didn't have much. But so did Coraline, and some others. And... It's reinforced, so it's not super soft but.. it should be better than what you have on. ..For sleeping."

After she took it, he began to take off his plasma burned combat armor, in his own preparations for bed. After the combat armor came off, it was obvious to see that the plasma had turned his clothes to his skin into one large hole with a back and sleeves. He pulled the crunchy thing off and dropped it on the ground.

"Thanks," Silvia said as she took the T-shirt. "Reinforced shouldn't be...shouldn't be a problem. I mean...pretty much everything we wear is reinforced, these days." She sounded...a but disappointed by that.

She was about to turn away as Hugo began to take his armour off, but the glimpse of his clothing she got was enough to stop her. She sat as the full extent of the damage was revealed with her expression getting more alarmed. "Hugo...what...what happened? That looks...nasty."

Hugo looked disappointed in his shirt, and it took him a moment to seem to hear Silvia and respond. "..Oh, some plasma machine gun thing. Heavier than anything I'd seen like it. Did something nasty at the end there. Took my shield and did a bunch of damage after that." He looked up at Silvia, and tried to soften his expression. "It was a nasty piece of work, but Shinobu had my back. And Coraline, too. They were great. She even took the gun as a reward. ...It's my fault, really, for focusing on the rail gunner, but I didn't want it doing what it did in Eden Spire."

His brows knit a little, and his voice got gentle. "They really didn't want anyone getting to you guys."

Silvia continued to stare at the ex-shirt, with a rather worried expression. "You...you should...be careful. I mean...stuff like that...that's how Agents...how Agents get killed on missions." There was hesitation and worry in her words, but she still wasn't back to her normal expressiveness yet. That would take a lot of time and work. "I...I don't want to think about what would happen if you...if that happened to you."

There was silence on Hugo's end of the conversation. After a moment, he knelt between the beds, breaking her view of his shirt. He looked up at her. "Hey, hey, picarita, beautiful, it's okay. I'm fine. It.. was close there, but only for a second." He took her hands in his, looking down at her fingers. His voice got softer. "Besides, I don't think there was anything that could have stopped me before I knew you were safe on Earth, or at least.. Safe off that.. the station."

He looked away from their twined fingers, and tried comforting her with a very Hugo grin. "Besides, you shoulda seen what happened to the other guy. She was.." maybe not the best topic. He cleared his throat. "...A lot worse off."

Slowly, Silvia nodded. "Okay. Okay. But that...that scared me." She let Hugo hold her hands for a moment and then withdrew them and stood. "It's...it's good to know. That you...that you came for me. That you were so...dedicated." She shifted, slightly uncomfortably, and turned her back. "I...I'm going to get changed."

Hugo nodded, and quickly turned away. He slid across the bed and put his legs over the opposite side, so his back was to Silvia. She seemed so far away. It was.. kind of upsetting. He couldn't blame her though. Instead he dragged the mule-tech across the bed and began pulling off the various harnesses that kept Una on his hip and back. He sighed, and then inhaled before talking next. "You.. you knew I would come for you, right? After, after everything..?"

He didn't seem to finish his sentence about what everything was, but his inflection made it obvious he was referring to something specific.