thisavrou_log

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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"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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