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Who: Niko Bellic
When: After the exuo event and the intro log.
Where: In the corridor on Mero Deck, heading for his room.
What: Basically him being cranky, and hopefully resolving post duct-tape aftermath threads. Also possibly interacting with roommates maybe.
Warnings: It's Niko so he'll probably swear and be hateful and tags will mention awful things that happened in his past.

☄ Mero Deck
[He might have taken it well, comparably to how he tended to take it when people attacked him. There were far worse things that happened to him aboard other ships he'd served on, but he was still very cranky over having a fight picked with him. Things were going a little bit better, and he'd reacted far less badly than he could have. But then no one could accuse Niko Bellic of being the pinnacle of logic and irritated he remained.]

[He was just coming back to his quarters from duty, scrubbing at that piece of shit device on his hand with his fingernails because his skin itched and generally glowering at nothing in particular. He'd try not to be too grumpy around his roommates. Fuck if he knew why, it wasn't as if they knew him any better than the man in the moon.]

[Not even affected by whatever that substance had been or still was (stored away as he kept it), but his expression remained hateful. Of course he had the tough-guy version of "resting bitch face" so it couldn't be avoided, but it was genuinely meant this time.]

[He considered going a few doors down and seeing if- nah, he shouldn't bother anyone else with this. He intends to just slip into his quarters and hope that one of his roommates wasn't lying dead on the floor or something. At least for working against his will this ship was far better than the previous ones he'd been aboard for having a low body count. And... a nice cushy weird round bed instead of a closet to sleep in.]

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"Yes, I did notice." He didn't mind flippant, but he didn't know what to do with the apology. Those usually didn't happen for him. Nor did... rumbling packages, he supposed. He quirked his mouth to the side, and wondered how one responded to someone after that. The truth was, he'd been through a lot worse when someone was under the influence of something.

"Don't worry about it. I just assumed you were drunk at the time anyway. I did not realize anything worse was going on. Did your brother find you or did you find him?" He hadn't known what exactly was going on. Didn't ask. Family business was family business.

He held his hand out to take the package, while he was at it. Might as well see what the fuss ~~inside of the present~~ was about.

Miles blinks. That was...a little easier than he was expecting, truth be told. He hadn't thought Niko the type to easily forgive. Generous of him.

"What? Oh -- er, no. Gregor didn't come for me." Good thing, too. Miles would've had a heart attack if their covert Emperor had gone rushing off into that mess. "A fellow named Eggsy got me out. We came back with guns." He bares his teeth in a small, tight-lipped grin, but it eases up as he hands the bundle over to Niko.

"Consider it a gift," he offers, his smile softening into something more companionable. The wrapped-up blanket seems to shiver in its packaging. "Go on, open it."

"So it is something that needed guns?"

He took the package and hesitantly opened it, hesitant. But... then it was just a blanket? A slightly squirmy, rumbling, blanket?

He held it out in front of him, brow furrowed near comically. "Why does it do this?" At least he was so confused his actual irritation appeared to be long gone.

"Oh, yes. A lot of somethings, in fact."

Miles' smile takes on a dark look for a moment, but it quickly shifts into something knowing and wry. He nods at the softly purring blanket, which currently seems like it's trying to wind itself comfortably around Niko's arm.

"Congratulations, Niko. You're now the proud owner of one of GalaTech's finest live furs. Don't worry -- no animals were harmed in the making of this product. It's all genetic engineering, really." Miles sticks his hands in his pockets and grins encouragingly at Niko. "You can give it to Tali, if you like. It'd make a nice gift. Girls love those things."

"You gave me a bearskin rug that never had a bear?" He asked questioningly, before spreading it and holding out in front of him.

Then came the most important question, the most relevant of all. "This is not going to need a litter box or to go on walks, right?"

"Cat, actually," Miles amends, watching Niko shake out the cat blanket with barely constrained amusement. He's glad to be getting rid of the thing; he swears it's tried to smother him in his sleep. His girlfriend had just about begged him to get it while they were in London -- well, no. Elli never begged for anything. But she'd asked, and who was Miles to say no?

"Got it on Earth. But no, it doesn't need any caring for. Let's see, uh..." Miles gingerly picks up the end of the live fur, ignoring the way it immediately tries to snuggle against his hand, and checks the carefully embedded care tag.

"An electromagnetic net in the cellular level passively gathers energy from the environment, such as holovid carrier waves. Every month or so, if it seems to be running down, you can give it a boost by placing it in your microwave for a few minutes on the lowest setting. Cultured Furs cannot be responsible, however, for the results if the owner accidentallly sets it on high," Miles reads, and then grins facetiously up at Niko. "There you have it. It's pretty warm, too."

"I will probably give it to Tali. I do not think she has had a pet before, and this is pretty cute." A gift meant for one girlfriend going to another. At least that indirectly told Miles the Tali he'd met had been the one Niko knew.

He stares at the bizarre product of mad science in his hands (like many products of mad science, actually a novelty) and sighs out his nose.

"I know she does not want me to be telling what we had to do, but it is a lot worse. I once complained about what it is required of immigrants in America, the place where I once lived. But the truth is, I am okay with being a nobody as long as I don't have to do the worst of the shit I have been asked to do.

"Between that and being reminded of the war, maybe I should have not taken it so personal."

Miles' faces sobers as Niko sighs, rocking his weight back slightly onto his heels as he listens. "No, you had every right to take it personally, I'm afraid," he sighs, shrugging his shoulders and casting his gaze downward. Niko's alluded to some of the nastier things he's done for work in the past, and with no amount of pride, either. "I knew you had plenty in your past that you're not proud of. I crossed a line, saying what I said. It was an insult to your character and your honor."

He looks back up at Niko with a look that isn't so much apologetic as it is full of respect. "For what it's worth, I don't feel that way about you at all. You're a good man, Niko. You try, which is a hell of a lot more than most men do. That deserves some respect, at least."

"I assure you, I am no good man. But I am glad for the apology anyway."

The things Miles had said had reminded him a great deal of the war, of his various jobs that had followed. Maybe part of it was that now he remembered what a shitty person he had come, desensitized and brutal, and maybe that's what made him angriest. Ironically, for a while, because the Nehada had been so terrible he was happy to discover that he still had emotional limits as to what he could kill.

Now he was here and he was that same cold, ruined soldier. No matter what sort of friendly face he put on it, or emotion he could throw on after the fact. Miles just... reminded him. That's all.

Miles looks up at Niko and lets out a breath, shoving his good hand into the pocket of his uniform trousers. He seems to be considering his words. "There's something my father said to me once," he says, lips twisting. "If we were all judged on our past actions rather than our current ones, then not only would we never have the chance to learn and change, but there'd be no one left to judge in the first place."

He pauses, withdrawing his hand from his pocket to scratch at the back of his head. "I had this...bodyguard, growing up -- since I was an infant, actually. As you can imagine, I rather needed one for a variety of reasons. He was one of the Armsmen sworn to our family, he'd served directly under my father before he was discharged from the Imperial Service -- but he was...how shall I put this." Miles frowns.

"He was a little...crazy. Disturbed, I mean. He'd always been that way, as far as I understand. Now, you might question the wisdom of assigning what some might call a berserker lunatic to bodyguard your infant son -- ha -- but the old sergeant never once did me harm. In fact he saved the hell out of my life a few times." And once Miles from himself, at that. He doesn't think of that incident as often as he used to, distanced from it by ten years now, but he could never forget it. "He died when I was seventeen. It was -- his past, it seemed, caught up with him. There was a war shortly before I was born -- a short and unsuccessful one. But while it lasted -- some terrible things happened during the invasion attempt. The sort of grisly, debasing acts that usually occur during a war. Bothari had been party to some of them -- although not of his own will, as I understand. His mental illness made him easy to manipulate into that sort of thing, I think."

Miles coughs delicately. It's difficult to talk about -- not only the delicate phrasing, but these are old memories now that he's dredging up. He doesn't remember the last time he talked to anyone about Sergeant Bothari. His already quick speech picks up in speed, though he tries to slow it down. "We were on a trip off-planet -- halfway across the Nexus, actually -- and by sheer chance we encountered a woman who had...been on the wrong end of things during the war." Miles rubs his hand over his mouth, starting to feel as though he's doing the truth of things disservice by talking around it like this. He puffs out a breath. "She was a rape victim. One of many. She hated him for it, and although I don't think he ever intended her any harm, you could hardly blame her. She killed him for it. I watched it happen. I knew nothing about the unsavory details of his past before we met her, you see. I knew he'd been in the Service, that his discharge must have had something to do with his mental state, but these were not details I was privy to. As you can imagine, it all came as a shock. But I couldn't do her the injustice of calling her a liar. There was a truth to what she said, and I had to acknowledge it. It wouldn't be hard to call it an act of justice, from her perspective.

"But I'd only ever known him as my bodyguard. My crazy bodyguard, sure, but he'd been there all my life. Without him, I probably wouldn't even be breathing right now. I suppose it was redemption for him, but to me he was just...Bothari." Miles looks up at Niko, his face quite serious. "You might be that for someone someday. You never know."

Niko had a hard sort of face, the sort that, when prompted, could settle into a non-reactive state and just stare someone down for quite a while or until it became properly intimidating. As a sort of self-defense, his face settled into that fixed defensiveness.

Rape was reprehensible, and he probably would have killed the guy himself. After what happened to his aunt, finding her on that bed after the soldiers had finished with her, he had to hide the dishonor; after all, he came from a place where women were blamed for the bad acts that they suffered through. Sure, the perpetraitor was responsible, but also the woman was by virtue of being an irresistable force. He couldn't allow people to think of her that way; he'd burned the house with the body in it, blamed it on an accident of the war. There had been so much of that. His brother killed in front of him, his friends.

But Niko had become scum as well. He knew what the horrors were, and he knew afterwards he was willing to sell people to provide for his mother who had been robbed of her land. He wouldn't have done it on his own, but he'd gotten in with men that required that of their employees. Somehow his cousin still called him a man of integrity and principle, one that he admired. It was something he never understood; valued, because he could never find worth in himself, but never understood that anyone could actually do. It was remembering Roman that drew something out in his face. He remembered him, and he'd never see him again. Couldn't stand to see him again.

"Don't take this the wrong way. But if what you say is true and he seemed to care for people, then she probably did him a favor." The way it was said, though, it sounded as though that was meant to be a comfort. A relief from years of hating one's self. He was still waiting for the day someone would do that to him. He wanted the day someone would do that to him, even if no one would ever make it easier. "He was allowed to get away from his own head." He vowed it wouldn't be easy, as he was his mother's only living son and he had to keep trying for her sake. Otherwise one day, someone would do him a good favor, too.

"Ah... but yeah. I will give this to Tali. I don't think she has gotten to hold anything like it before." Well, neither had he, but Tali was more distanced.

Miles doesn't expect anyone to share the same strange fondness for Sergeant Bothari that he does -- even the man's daughter had turned away from him, left Barrayar for good -- so Niko's words far from offend him. He smiles at Niko bleakly.

"I've thought that myself on occasion," Miles admits, and wonders if his mother ever shares that sentiment. Bothari had saved her life, too, as far as he understands. Probably on more than one occasion, as he'd done for Miles. "Knowing what I know now."

But Niko brings a neat end to that conversation, to Miles' private relief. He lets out a little breath through his lips, shoulders slackening with some released tension. "Good," he says decisively, punctuating it with a nod. "I hope she enjoys it. And I hope you -- well, enjoy her enjoying it." He smiles crookedly up at Niko. "Just don't let her keep it at the foot of her bed."

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