Grakk's Diner, Near The Jedi Temple, Coruscant, Tuesday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

It'd been a decent couple of days - training Sparkle, avoiding Brianna, finding new places to leave rude things scribbled on the walls of the Temple that Mical probably wouldn't find out about until he was fifty - but all decent things had to end. For one thing, most of Atton's stuff was on the island, and for the other, he didn't actually want to miss the couple of quiet days there before the next term.

Why squander a perfectly good place without people he hated?

"All right, portal leaves in two hours," Atton said, pushing open the door to a charming local diner that screamed GRAKK in offensively neon-and-glittery words from the rooftop. Inside, a plethora of people of various species were hovering or sitting in their seats, but there were still a couple of booths open, including one facing right across from the diner's four-armed cook, so hey, Atton would sit down right there.

"Stick to the blue part of the menu," he said, "The white part's living food. Yellow's not for humans, and red... let's just not talk about the red."

[[ for sparks! ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

"Everyone gets maybe, I won't argue with you about that," Atton said. "But maybe in return you'll do me the courtesy of not arguing with me on something I know a lot more about than you do."

He didn't sound combative, oddly enough. Just tired.

"It feels real, sure. And I'm not any happier seeing some ghost take you for a test drive for a week than I'd be if it was permanent. But don't think it's the same as looking back and realizing there's actually fewer people in the galaxy because of you."

[myownface]

Sparkle was quiet, dead quiet, for what was probably a full half-minute before replying again.

He hated, hated, hearing Atton sound that way. Hated even more that he was the reason he did. It took him about that long to come up with a reply that wasn't knee-jerk argumentative, though. Sparkle didn't handle 'guilty' well.

"There are people who do it all the time and who don't feel sorry about it, aren't there? Hell, there are people who revel in it. Why are they so different?"

It wasn't an argument. It was an honest question. And maybe a bit of tired was sneaking into Sparkle's own voice, too.

He masked it as boredom well.

[suitably_heroic]

"Oh, I didn't give two pounds of bantha poodoo about killing people, once," Atton said. "And if they were Jedi, you're damned right I enjoyed it."

Don't mind if he took the volume down a notch. Never knew who was listening. He still sounded bored, though.

"Of course, before that, I was just some stupid, scared kid who let both of his best friends get killed before I worked up the guts to shoot someone," he said mildly. "But you do it enough times, you wind up shutting down the part of your head that sees people as people. Suddenly it's just collection of body parts. Maybe a collection of body parts you really hate, sure, but still."

[myownface]

Sparkle was quiet again, remembering how fucking terrified he'd been as the psychos closed in on himself and on Alec, and then, afterwards, the way he'd clung to Alec (and kicked him for dying, that asshole) and yelled at him and laughed hysterically and cried.

And those things had barely had any humanity left in them in the first place.

"Easier to say you'd do it and wouldn't care, I guess," he allowed, sighing and closing his eyes. "The world is better off without some people, but, ha, I am so fucking not the person to be getting rid of them. People are just... still... too people to be reduced to people-parts. Even the ones I hate. I dunno."

[suitably_heroic]

"Stick with that thought," Atton advised. "It's better that way."

At least then you wouldn't hit Atton's level of existential confusion on the matter.

He was glad to be interrupted by the droid bringing in their orders, anyway. Eugh, heart-to-hearts.

[myownface]

Sparkle was mostly just sort of surprised by it. He'd gotten so invested in the conversation (and in making his glass make noises) that he'd almost forgotten he had a soup and sandwich on the way.

"Oh yeah. Sandwich."

With nerf in it, which was good, since he knew he liked nerf, and cheese soup, which... you could probably dip a nerf sandwich in, and if you couldn't, he'd find out quickly enough.

"What'd you get?"

This was much easier conversation than casually discussing the ethics and emotional repercussions of murder, go figure.

[suitably_heroic]

"The sliders," Atton said casually. "I've been getting them every day since we moved to Coruscant. They're pretty good."

And pretty predictable, which worked for him.

"I think I'll survive Coruscant, even if it's not Nar Shaddaa."

See, this conversational segue was 100% casual and a co-production to boot.

[myownface]

"I liked Nar Shaddaa," Sparkle volunteered, reaching for a spoon and idly mucking in his soup for a moment. Yep. It was absolutely soup. "I mean, it smelled, a bit. But it was fun."

Fun, and slightly pre-Atton-the-Jedi. Ah well.

"Those can't be all you're eating, man. Am I going to have to start shipping you vegetables through Portalocity whenever you're out here without me?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton wasn't a damned Jedi, all right?

And some days when that one got pressed hard enough, he was tempted to go back to Nar Shaddaa and vanish into the crowd like he used to.

"I'm still upright and moving, aren't I?" Atton retorted. "Space, I'm not going to fall over just because I don't eat green things."

[myownface]

"But they'll get all sad if you don't," Sparkle countered, picking some... sort of green garnish-looking thing from the side of his plate and waving it at him. "I mean, they go through all this trouble to get all green and healthy so that we can eat them, and then you live on sliders for like a week. You need some fiber in you, man. Seriously."

It took a lot of self-restraint to refrain from making jokes about keeping regular, for the record.

[suitably_heroic]

"Did you get a job as a spokesman for the vegetable lobby when I wasn't looking?" Atton wondered.

[[ sleepytime! night! ]]

[myownface]

"Nah, but I'm acting president on the Board of Keeping Atton Healthy," Sparkle replied, along with a grin that was surprisingly cheeky, considering what they were talking about a couple of minutes ago. "They might get me to resign if I slack off, you know."

[Niiight!]

[suitably_heroic]

"I'm not dead and I still have all my limbs," Atton said. "Isn't that good enough for you?"

He still had what they were talking about a couple of minutes ago in his head. Hard to shake, but pretending usually worked out in the end.

[myownface]

"When is anything ever good enough for me?"

Pretending was pretty much how Sparkle got by, about ninety percent of the time.

[suitably_heroic]

Hell, 'I'm not dead and I still have all my limbs' was the definition of health, physically, emotionally and mentally, at least if you asked Atton. Two pinnacles of healthy living, sitting right here.

As it stood, Atton bitchfaced at him.

"Space, what have I done," he muttered, "now I'm going to have some yappy thing with giant hair wandering after me with a basket of carrots. People are going to think we're starting a vegan orphanage around here."

[myownface]

"A vegan orphanage that otherwise subsists on sliders," Sparkle agreed, sticking out his tongue. Maturely. "Anyway, I wouldn't use a basket. That's what my backpack is for."

The carrots would have to survive in there alongside Velcro and whatever the hell he stole from here or there, and a glut of pop tarts. But they'd be fine anyway, right? Carrots were tough.

[suitably_heroic]

"All I'm getting from this is that you need to stop taking all of these cooking classes," Atton retorted. "You're getting weird ideas about food."

Like that it needed to be nutritional and crap.

[myownface]

"I'm taking a baking class this semester," Sparkle replied, smugly. "So I'm going to get you so sick of cake, man..."

Carrot cake.

[suitably_heroic]

"If you're trying to audition for Temple cook, take it up with Mical," Atton said, flicking a bit of sad, sort-of-green leafy thing at Sparkle.

[myownface]

"Yeah, but that involves taking to Mical," Sparkle pointed out. "And wow, cooking here would be an adventure. 'I need to season this nerf, here. Pass me that container of white grainy stuff with the minus-sign V, crocodile, backwards check-mark, and explosion symbols on it, would you?'"

More commonly known as salt.

[suitably_heroic]

"Nah, we'd just give you a droid," Atton said mildly. "We'd program it to translate 'salt' to 'minus-sign V, crocodile, backwards check-mark, explosion', you'd be fine."

The joys of living in a galaxy that wasn't completely ass-backward.

[myownface]

"... You could program it to only understand a Pig-Latin variation of biblical Hebrew and I would figure out a way to make the damn thing work, if it actually meant I got a helper droid," Sparkle decreed. "Like, I would even cook sliders every day for your picky ass."

[suitably_heroic]

"'Get Sparkle a droid so he gets off my ass'," Atton mused. "Now there's a resolution for the new year on Earth."

[myownface]

"It's really surprisingly easy to bribe me with shiny things," Sparkle shared with a solemn nod of his head. "I was probably a magpie in a past life or something."

[suitably_heroic]

"And yet when the island turns you into something, it's usually a stupid-looking dog," Atton said. "What's up with that, anyway?"