Open Log [8]

[kallig]

WHO: Altair & Open
WHERE: Hospital, beach, transport station, power plant, & possibly other places
WHAT: Altair's back from walking his anger... Partially off.
WHEN: 22/5 - > to the end of May
WARNINGS: Angry Sith Lord? Will add if anything pops up.

[Hospital (22/5, in the evening)]

Much as he didn't want to return, he kind of had to- after all, he had set up his own little office in one of the rooms, and had kept some of his things there. Not a lot. And maybe things he should have just abandoned, at least until his mood lightened. At least until then.

But no- even if it was just some of his sewing supplies, and the beginnings of a crocheted scarf, he wanted to get them, so he could continue working on them somewhere else.

Somewhere that wasn't the hospital. Somewhere far away from the hospital.

He still felt the need for distance.

Probably would for a while.

[Beach]

It had been a long time since he'd gone out to the beach. He was more used to ruined city or untamed wilderness, even at home. The beach and the ocean, they were something new. Something he hadn't really been able to enjoy. Not that he was necessarily enjoying it now.

He sat on the sand, watching the waves out at sea, listening to the sound of them, and the sound of the wind.

Normally being in nature soothed him completely.

Right now, well. He was half-way soothed at least. The quiet did him some good, sitting in rather a secluded spot.

Perhaps he would meditate. Once he was done just sitting there.

[Transport Station]

When all else fails, go for a change of scenery.

That was what brought him further away from the places he usually went.

It reminded him a little of the stations on Corellia, or perhaps the ones on Iokath, somehow still functioning after the death of the species that had once populated the planet. That reminded him a little of this place, he supposed. Except there was no crypt of billions of dead, no ARIES or rogue droids. No thrones or superweapons.

He wondered if dealing with TYTH and his fellow machine gods was something he'd have to do, once they were all done in this place. Probably.

Perhaps this place just made him nostalgic for being able to travel someplace else. That was something he missed- not just traveling from city to city, but planet to planet too, according to his own whims, rather than someone else's.

RE-1 chirped from where he was examining something, Altair following the scout droid.

Though the place was as in ruins as every other place, he felt his mood lighten just a little.

[Power Plant]

There was no place like home.

And home was where he mostly wanted to stay these days. Though at night, he retired as usual, and spent his time with Hux, he tried to stay out of his boyfriend's hair during the days, unless his presence was specifically requested.

So he wandered the place.

Or meditated outside.

Kept himself occupied some way or another.

[Wildcard]

(want to run into darth sulk somewhere else? go for it. places he might visit include the greenhouse, hotel, the hangar, & the department store.)

Comments

[kallig]

"Just because I'm in here doesn't make it mine," He said, sighing. He was still angry. But he also realized that fighting each other wouldn't get them anywhere. His anger served no one, besides making him more powerful in the Force.

And he didn't need that right now.

It was why he put a lid on it, because it wasn't necessary right now.

But it would be later.

"... What were you doing?"

Not an offer of peace. So much as extending the same offer of making conversation.

His stance and body language was still tense, but. Well. Altair supposed he'd forgiven worse people than people who'd insulted him. Or at the very least, learned to work with them.

[in_extremis]

Tony wasn't the one that needed to be told and he pursed his lips, but his prickly departure was stalled enough for him to drop a hand to his hip again and take another look up the tracks, squinting in the sunlight. He knew what Altair meant, it was a gracious enough gesture, but Tony didn't have to show it. They weren't really in a place for Tony to start thanking him for allowing for neutral ground.

"Found a hole to stick myself in," he explained, and they also didn't know each other like that, but it wasn't an untrue statement even if Altair wasn't in on the joke. Tony indicated the tunnel with a sway of his body back its way and continued, "There was this basement thing, on the other side of the city, that I thought could maybe be some kind of subway platform-- doesn't matter, I didn't find much. There are tracks down there, too, but it might just be their terminus system." It wasn't enthralling news to deliver, Tony knew, not a grand discovery yet, but he also couldn't turn the question back on Altair now. He'd already bitten his head off for it, he wasn't about to try again. Instead, Tony gave another awkward sway and said, "Would have been decrepit, anyway."

[kallig]

"Bit dangerous, don't you think?" Altair asked, arching a brow.

He had the Force, should something down there collapse, but so far as he knew, Tony was just a regular human. Of course, maybe that wasn't any of his business. After all, he'd left the hospital behind, and didn't intend to return.

"Never mind."

This was awkward. He had an easier time talking to Arcann at home than he did Tony now, and when it came to who'd hurt him the most, Arcann more than won that competition.

"What part of this place isn't decrepit? This place feels like it's one Rakghoul plague off from being Taris..."

Though at least on Taris he'd had stuff to do. Screaming and running, mostly.

"... Wonder what the other cities on this planet looked like though. If they're even still there..."

[in_extremis]

The skeptical expression was mirrored back at Altair, Tony ready to be the one to remind him that kind of fussing might have been acceptable for the doctor that had to clean up the mess, but wasn't as much of a good look on him now. Tony didn't have to do the dirty work, though, and he was glad they both got there with a nod to 'never mind', but it was clearly a habit Altair was going to have a hard time letting go.

Tony only had his guesses with the context at what the proper nouns Altair had offered him could translate to without some equivalent produced by whatever babelfish was freely eating at his brain, and he grimaced an apology for not being able to volley that reference and keeping things awkward. He'd have a topical Rakghoul joke at the ready for next time, surely.

"You wanna go check it out?" he offered, jerking a thumb toward the imposing forest they could see looming distantly beyond the station. "I got nothing going on." That wasn't quite right, it felt like the wrong setback to Tony's workback schedule would be the spark point of a bender, barely manageable with new curiosities delivered to him daily and no one to help him manage the workflow, but wouldn't running screaming into the woods solve that problem? "Except for absolutely everything, but...the checks aren't coming in, anyway."

[kallig]

"... Because that doesn't sound like a way to stab me in the back and leave me for dead," Altair commented, expression completely deadpan. He'd experienced something similar before- of course, Thanaton hadn't been the one outright trying to kill him.

But it had still been Altair going somewhere with no witnesses, and his death being the expected outcome.

... Had Thanaton stabbed him in the back?

Maybe.

Possibly.

Thoughts for another day.

"... Taris is a planet, by the way. The Rakghouls are flesh-eating monsters. They were people once, but a bite or scratch..."

He shrugged a shoulder. Tony was about as good at masking his expressions as Altair himself. Not very good, really.

[in_extremis]

That came so deeply out of left field that Tony looked around at first, trying to figure out what cues he had missed here, before turning his confusion on Altair for the accusation with a raised lip and both hands out, empty of knives and, as far as Tony knew, generally not the stabbing type. He wanted to throw that one at Tony then have a chat about zombies?

"Do we know each other in a different universe?" was the only explanation Tony had for how strongly Altair seemed to feel about him. He had just proposed running away together, even the droid would have taken that as romantic, Tony saw its indecision when Altair called it away.

[kallig]

"... You do remind me a little of Gault, actually."

His inability to take anything as seriously as it should be taken, really. That had rubbed Altair the wrong way once. He didn't really know how to handle that type of person, the personality so at odds with his own.

"Maybe a bit less shifty, and you don't look like you'd con a man out of his last credit."

If that was a sincere observation or a joke, was hard to tell.

"Still, I really don't know what to make of you. You made it pretty clear that you think I lack empathy, so..."

Yes. He was still hung up on that. And Jon repeating it hadn't really helped.

[in_extremis]

"So I'm going to stab you?" Tony finished for him, bewildered. The empathy problem was clearly just the tip of an interpersonal issue iceberg here. He had no idea what Altair was talking about with Gault, but the fact that 'less shifty' couldn't be translated into 'less stabby' clearly only fueled Altair's own claims about the behaviours of his Sith buddies and was not making Tony any closer to thinking Altair had to be the exception to the rule. "Listen, I didn't come out here to exact brutal revenge on some guy I talked to once in my life, we're not there, you don't take up that kind of space in my head. The only things I'm stabbing anybody for right now are a good pour over, and five minutes to enjoy it." It was possible that was the natural exchange for a cup of coffee where Altair was from, Tony realized, and his hands curled in frustration as he tried to wave away that thought, don't think Tony was actually going to kill for the pleasure, go back to the first part he said, they could work on humour later.

[kallig]

"You're surprisingly easy-going then. Well- I probably knew that already."

Probably.

"I don't say that because you don't intend to stab me in the back. It's because you're in this crazy situation, and you're thinking about something like that."

Or maybe Altair was just a workaholic. Taking a break wasn't something he often did. Not at home, not here. A slave, then a Sith, then a Commander, then an Emperor. Now he was just himself, but he was so worried about everyone's survival that he didn't know what to do with himself.

So Tony's attitude sure struck him as easy-going.

From somewhere a bit further away, RE-1 gave an inquisitive beep, before coming running back to Altair, who crouched down to pat the droid.

"Oh, just so you know, in case Gault shows up and tears into me for ruining his good, honest, heroic reputation- he's not a Sith. He's a liar and a cheat and likes to turn the card table into a graveyard, that's all."

He stood again, and sighed, "All that aside, are you sure you want to go out there with a Sith? You may not be interested in stabbing me in the back, but I could stab you in yours, after all."

That was a joke. A very deadpan, definitely without a single hint that it even was one kind of joke. But honestly, Altair wasn't interested in hurting anyone.

[in_extremis]

That wasn't a much better assessment of Tony's character, he was pretty sure-- at least, no one had ever accused him of being easy-going before, but at least it didn't strike the kind of nerve that an accusation of being a killer had. He was almost willing to take it, a nice change from being high maintenance and impossible to pin down, but it was such a dramatic oscillation from the stabbing thing that he was left with a weak mimicry of his earlier gesture, hands out in surrender.

"I mean, I really don't now," he agreed. "It's like you want me to know that you're an awful person, is that how you made all of your other friends? Is that what I'm doing wrong? Okay, here's one: where I'm from, people will leave one square of toilet paper on the roll to pretend it's not really their turn to change it. I don't know why we do it, I do it, too, completely unreasonable, it's not even a minute's worth of effort, but we have no qualms ruining someone else's day to avoid it."

[kallig]

"I was joking. I've been stabbed in the back myself, it's... Not something I'd do to another person."

There was a story there, one he wouldn't go into with Tony of all people. But he had been stabbed in the back before. And it had broken him in a way no person had truly been able to before or since.

Of course, this was more the matter of a physical stabbing than anything else, but still. To do such a thing was to have no honor.

"I think you've already made up your mind about the sort of person I am, anyway."

[in_extremis]

If Tony had thought it was a very serious threat, he wouldn't have stuck around to try to find some common ground through toilet paper, but Altair wasn't even interested in that. Instead, he was quite committed to telling Tony how to think of him, then apparently getting judgemental when it worked. This was going nowhere; Tony could see how Jon might have gotten frustrated when trying to tell Altair about his problem, and really didn't want to be sucked into the same kind of argument.

"You know what-- Sure. I have. You're exactly who I think you are, have a great time with that," he conceded instead. Altair could feel free to think he was an unyielding asshole, that really had no impact on either scraping this city together enough to feel livable, or getting them the hell out of here, unless this was all just a test to see if they could get along. If Altair had any input on the metric, though, no one was doing any stabbing today, so they couldn't have been doing that bad. "I'm gonna go now, should I walk backwards...?" he offered, pointing a thumb over his shoulder and demonstrating a careful step back along the platform to keep watch for any blades that could be coming his way before the character broke for an irritable frown and dismissive wave, Tony spinning on his heel to retreat.