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Who: Niko Bellic
When: Dated to after this. Nudity/violence warnings apply there. Forward dated to the 25th.
Where: around the Moira.
What: Niko is released from Med Bay being informed that the fix for his injuries has left him a little odd.
Warnings: Anything one Niko's permissions page might come up. Drug mentions from the outset.

Niko had felt pretty strange since leaving Med Bay. Actually that was an enormous understatement. He'd heard descriptions of how certain drug affects were before; as a smuggler, he had to know them and he'd been careful not to get near the stuff. He wouldn't put shit in his body he didn't know. He saw what addicts were like. But he still was warned and he still listened. At that moment his entire mind felt like it was exploding all the time and his head wouldn't stop spinning.

Right then, he was pretty sure he was high or the nearest equivalent.

Sometimes he would stop in the hallway and look around with the attention of a cat looking for invisible bugs to chase on the wall. Or in the cargo bay, he would climb the boxes in fast bursts to get to the top, throwing himself up practically a full eight feet at a time. Then every damn time he would look surprised with himself for having gotten up so quick to get whatever he was after, then would still ask for help getting down because he didn't want to risk the jump.

He wasn't really having a great adjustment period. Cúrre warned him of what was going to happen when he was treated. He knew it was coming. But fuck if he wasn't confused.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I believe the captains. That we will make it to a place. Maybe not from the CDC. But they want to make it home, so then we can leave."

This time, it wasn't entirely bullshit that he said to give false hope. He did believe it. But she kept talking, and he let his hands drop limply to his sides.

"I didn't want you to." Heal him, he meant. He toed the ground with his shoe, crossed his arms, stared at the floor as if it was interrogating him. He'd done his best to hold her together.

"Okay."

He understood what she meant. Wasn't making promises, because even if he did make promises and he meant them, still was possible he could die tomorrow. It was a fact of his world, his universe. So all he could say was that. He'd keep trying to keep her together, if he wasn't too much for her now.

"You need to think about it some?" So he'd know it wasn't just an emotional reaction. Niko was prone to them so intensely himself, and he knew that... well, he figuring this out... It wasn't easy. At least he wasn't leaving.

She wasn't sure she could believe them. All she could do in response to Niko's reassurance was twist her face, lips pursed, through the tears still running down her face. She believed they wanted to get home - and maybe they'd get there. But at this point she couldn't bring herself to believe again that there was any way out, only to have it dashed again.

Niko was staring down at the ground like he couldn't look her in the face anymore. For a moment all she did was watch him, try to get it beyond the immediate outbursts. This wasn't some kind of new development - she'd thought it was, assumed that between everything that had happened to him before, the CDC, now this ship... But this had been Niko the whole time she knew him. Now... Now either he couldn't hide it anymore or she had just finally, finally caught on.

He'd always been lost, always been broken. But always been able to hide it. She'd thought she'd figured him out straight away, but it had taken her the whole time she'd known him. When a bubble of nausea grew in her stomach this time, it wasn't for her at all.

"You know..." She didn't answer the question. "I've never even seen you get angry. I've never seen you lose control. All I've seen the whole time I've known you is you trying to be better. Learning to be a pilot. Helping people. You learned a new language just because you thought it would make a friend feel better."

And it did, every time she heard it.

"People respect you on this ship. They like you. And--and I know you don't believe it, and it doesn't help how you feel, but... You're amazing." She shrugs helplessly. "You're nothing like anybody you left behind. You're nothing like your father."

She stepped closer to him, reached out to take his hands in each of hers. She was shaking, so teared up her vision was blurrd and she was starting to sound like she had a head cold.

"I can't imagine you hurting people - your family - just for the sake of it."

He certainly tried not to hurt his family, his friends. He did his best. Still, he often managed to accidentally. Roman shot in the gut? Thanks to him. Beaten and kidnapped? Thanks to him. Kate, dead on a sidewalk? Thanks to him. The only reason he'd not been afraid to be with Tali? Because he'd seen her tortured. He'd seen her survive. And that? Well... it meant she could survive him. But that wasn't the best way to think was it?

It felt too true to think otherwise.

"There are some things I can do pretty good." He could admit that. He'd always been good at vehicles, driving. He didn't know about being a decent person. His efforts around people that needed it was "not an asshole." But maybe sometime... sometime he'd just have to let her see him get mad.

Then he didn't say anything else. He knew she was trying to stop crying. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't, but he stepped forward again and hugged her up against him. There weren't many more apologies he could give. Just that.

She didn't doubt that Niko could get angry - and probably had in the time he had known her. But she'd gotten the feeling he didn't want her to see that part of him - and he had more than enough control to never show her that. He'd probably seen her lose control far more often. The whole concept of controlling herself was one Tali just didn't have the explosive personality to need to think about.

Her arms slipped around him, and though he could probably feel her slightly strained breathing, the hammering of her heartbeat, though she couldn't let go off the dark hopelessness slipping over her... She was calm. At the moment.

Cheek pressed against Niko's chest, she scoffed suddenly, not quite humorously. "I don't miss the CDC, but I sort of miss how we were back then. Does that make sense?"

Maybe a strange plus to being back in that was that they never took any relationship for granted. Every second was important. Plus, maybe he had always been damaged - but she hadn't been. Now...

"Please don't talk about that right now. I might have been fucked up before. But all the things they made me do..."

"It didn't help."

It did affect him. Badly.

"I didn't mean--" It hadn't been the smartest thing she could have said right at that moment. Several seconds later, even not meaning to talk about the CDC specifically, she could kick herself. "Never mind - I'm sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned that."

...But it was true, all the same. Somehow, when things had been really at their worst, the two of them had been able to forget all of it together for small stretches at a time. An hour or two of two kind of stupid, almost normal friends just being idiots together. She hadn't felt like that with him or with anyone in a long time.

She only pulled away from him enough to glance nervously at the door - the deck was as abandoned as it had been when they'd entered, but this was the first time it had occurred to her to think much about it - and scrub her shirt sleeve over her eyes, blinking hard.

"This would have been awkward if anybody had come in." It was a feeble attempt at changing the subject, but it was all she had. She felt somehow numb - like she'd cried it all out and her brain wasn't sure what to do with itself anymore.

"No, it's.... No it's fine. I understand what you meant. I just... I don't want to give those pieces of shit credit for why I was happy with you."

Because it didn't matter. She was intelligent, pretty, had a good voice, a sweet sense of humor.

"I go through phases. Sometimes I feel so good I don't even think of it. I'm just having a great time. Sometimes I feel as though I am falling apart." And then he nodded solemnly.

"Yeah, it would have been pretty awkward. I'm sorry I made you cry. I know you don't like this about me, but does this mean you're going to make me go away?" He finally pulled back enough to get another good look at her face.

She was already shaking her head - a dismissal of the apology - when Niko finished, and her head jerked up to stare at him.

"No," she said, and it was firm and immediate - though she then hesitated.

"I've thought... I don't know. I've thought before that I didn't know if I should be with you because...I wouldn't help you. I thought maybe we'd just get each other hurt." Her voice was raw with shame, but she was holding his arms in a tight grasp, refusing to let go.

"But now I can't see us being apart. And I'm happy with that...whatever we don't like about each other." Even standing as tall as she could and holding his arms for support, she was barely tall enough to rest her cheek against his shoulder.

"I just wish I could hold you together somehow as well."