MCA #4, Saturday Afternoon

[suitably_heroic]

There was music screaming across Atton's apartment again, for the first time in about a week. He was here much sooner than Mical would have liked, but he couldn't stand hanging around the Temple any longer, and the kolto had healed up the worst of his chest injuries. What was left now was the enduring-- bruised face, bruised insides, and moving hurt, but that wasn't new.

For the sake of not aggravating his injuries, he'd sat down on a pillow on the floor. That was the only concession he was making. He had a job to do, here: rebuild his lightsaber. Maybe build one that suited him better. He'd been running around with a loaner for too long.

Besides, if he had to stay in, he might as well work on his finer Force control.

He let the various segments levitate into the air, taking care to spend some time on each one. It was... more complicated than he'd planned. But that was good. Stretching his legs, so to speak.

He grabbed the bottle by his side and took a long gulp, letting the fizz settle in his stomach. No alcohol for him any time soon, it'd dull the senses. But a sugar rush? That would keep pushing him on.

Besides. It was harder to think when you had sugar screaming through your system and something physical to focus that energy on. It shut out most of whatever this past week had dredged up, except for one thing:

Her face. There is another war waiting, in the Unknown Regions.

Maybe Brianna was right. Maybe he was kidding himself out here, pretending to have a normal life.

[[ door shut, post open for messages or visits or what have you ]]

Comments

[myownface]

Yeah, as it turned out, Atton was kind of shit at convincing Sparkle that he didn't have any reason to be concerned for his well-being. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that Sparkle was sort of a champ at this dodging-a-straight-answer-to-distract-from-the-real-issue thing himself. Or maybe it had more to do with the fact that Atton had been missing over half a week longer than he'd said he'd be, and today was his first time checking in.

Either way, Sparkle was pounding on Atton's door now, having already let himself into the building, and he had a shopping bag in one hand with pop tarts in it.

And broccoli. Which was Atton's own damn fault.

[suitably_heroic]

You know, the unfairness of the whole thing was that the kolto had been so busy keeping Atton's insides from falling out that his face was still so bruised he couldn't whack it into the coffee table like he really wanted to right now.

Note to self: next time, don't text Sparkle. Or make up a story. Or set up some kind of timed messaging system... except that might bite him in the ass if he ever did need Sparks to call in the cavalry.

He let the lightsaber parts drop gently back to the floor, put down the tools he'd been using, and got up... gingerly. "Hey, hey, I hear you, I hear you, let it up already," he called.

He opened up the door a couple moments later, parking his shoulder against the doorway. (He'd leave it cracked, but yeah, that one was a lost cause.)

[myownface]

Yup. That was about what Sparkle was expecting to see in the doorway (provided Atton answered his door at all), too.

"... Looks like your week went awesome," he observed, holding up the bag. "Sustenance. Of the mostly frosted sugar pastry variety."

[suitably_heroic]

"I was going to pop one of the pizzas in the microwave," Atton said irritably. "So I had that one handled."

He got out of the way anyway. Carefully. No point in throwing a fit now.

[myownface]

"Yeah, well, now you have Pop-Tarts. I know it's tough, but you'll have to somehow deal with that," Sparkle countered, stepping inside. "If it'll make you feel any better, I'll hold off on asking questions until after you eat."

Because eating was important, and fit-pitching wasn't conducive to anything good in this situation, really.

"Hell, I'll put the pizza in the stove for you, if you sit back down. Doesn't turn soggy and then harden into a freaking rock that way."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes, shutting the door before he scampered back to his pillow. "Microwave pizza is fine," he said. "Space, who ever thought it was a good idea to let you take cooking classes?"

[myownface]

The obvious answer here was 'Doctor Lecter.'

Sparkle was going to just shrug his shoulders and swan into the kitchen to pre-heat the oven anyway.

"It's all useful stuff to know anyway," he pointed out. "Like, I'm going to have to support myself somehow after high school. The more I know how to do, the better. Anyway, this tastes better. And it'll probably hurt less when you inevitably throw it at my head."

[suitably_heroic]

See, Atton always knew there was a reason he didn't like that guy. Y'know, outside of the red flags the guy staked out in the Force even for people who didn't have Atton's particularly overdeveloped bad-feeling-'dar.

"It's just food," he said, picking up one of his tools again. He lifted up several lightsaber parts with a gesture of his hand and squinted at it. Where had he left off, again? "You eat it, it's gone, you live another day."

[myownface]

"Yeah, but if you're going to eat it, it might as well taste good. Otherwise you wouldn't care so much about vegetables, would you?"

So there.

"What're you doing?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Building a new lightsaber," Atton said. "Old one got wrecked. That one was on loan anyway, though, so this was past time."

Or stolen from an ancient tomb, but whatever.

[myownface]

"Oh." Sparkle watched with interest for a moment. The whole 'making things move without touching them' trick was probably never going to fail to catch his interest. "How'd the old one get wrecked, anyway?"

Look, he said he wouldn't ask questions, but Sparkle and the truth had a pretty open relationship.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton let out a grunt, just to let Sparkle know how he felt about him breaking that promise. He added a little bit of solder between two parts - space, he missed Bao-Dur and his technical expertise right now - before looking up.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I mean, I think I lost it when I got hit by a terentatek and then a Dark Jedi finished the job, but I was hallucinating at the time."

It'd been that kind of trip.

[myownface]

Sparkle wasn't even going to pretend he knew what a 'tarentatek' was. He was going to give a low whistle anyway before stuffing the pizza into the oven.

"You don't do boring field trips, like, ever, do you?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Kind of comes with the territory," Atton said. He'd shrug, but, well, this was a delicate operation he was involved in here. "Though usually I try to avoid ancient Sith tombs these days."

His foot tapped idly along with the drums of the song spilling out from his iPad dock. Kept him from thinking about other, less pleasant drumming, which was good.

[myownface]

"Yeah, that seems like the best thing for you," Sparkle agreed, setting the timer on the oven, and then making his way over to sit down across from Atton, watching what he was doing intently. "And, like, most people?"

What with having the word 'Sith' right in the name.

[suitably_heroic]

Hey. Hey. Atton's job description used to have 'Sith' right in the name, okay?!

He was about halfway into the laborious process of constructing a new lightsaber. He'd probably be working on it for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the weekend. But it was largely pigheadedness that kept him tweaking while the food was on and Sparkle was here.

At least it kept him from rolling his eyes at Sparkle right now.

"I was tracking one of our own," he said. "Visas has been bouncing around the galaxy, tracking down artifacts from her home planet. She vanished off the map a few weeks ago, so I decided to do some digging, and oh look, Sith tomb on Korriban, what a fantastic holiday destination."

[myownface]

Yeah, and that job hadn't ended super well for him!

"You, uh, ever find her, at least?"

That part seemed important.

[suitably_heroic]

"I did."

Beat.

"Well, technically Brianna did. But we did find her. And her new Padawan."

He'd just spent a lot of time hallucinating, unconscious, or both. Not a great show, all in all.

[myownface]

"And that's a good thing, right? Like... for all the shit you just went through this week, it was worth it?"

Sparkle kind of wished it had been.

Sparkle wasn't generally the 'wishing out loud' sort, though. Which wasn't going to do him a hell of a lot of good today.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, of course," Atton said. "I mean, if we hadn't shown up, she might've been stuck in a tomb with a crazy Dark Jedi for, uh... I don't know how long."

He snagged his bottle of soda and took a quick sip. "This is just a little pain, that's nothing new, it'll go. Wouldn't recommend the Sith hallucinations, though."

At all. Nobody deserved to be stuck in Atton's head, not even... well, Atton. He'd have happily traded out that part for the pain.

[myownface]

"Yeah, I've never actually met a hallucination I liked," Sparkle noted. "Can't imagine the Sith ones would be any better."

He sat quietly for a moment, looking at the saber parts, and then at Atton, and then toward the timer in the kitchen that wasn't going to be going off for a while, yet. And then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Then, hey, good thing it wasn't all for nothing or anything like that? I mean, looks like you still got your ass kicked. But I guess you got your ass kicked for a good cause."

Or... something. Sparkle was bad at this.

[suitably_heroic]

If by 'got his ass kicked' you meant 'nearly died, again', sure. Not that Atton was going to correct Sparkle on that particular detail. Ever, ever, ever.

"Yeah," Atton said. He set the soda bottle back down on the floor. "Just have to take it easy for a while. Asshole broke my nose, probably a couple of my ribs..."

He was also going to avoid that whole exploding part.

[myownface]

Yeaaah, there was no way Sparkle was going to take 'exploding' well.

At all.

Ever.

"Jesus, man. You need those ribs. I don't care how much you think you don't. They do important things like keep your lungs inside."

[suitably_heroic]

At least it hadn't been an actual grenade? ... Then again, if it had been an actual grenade, the chances of Atton actually being able to sit in this room would be very small.

... There were reasons Atton tried to avoid sharing too many details about any of his missions with the Jedi.

He pulled a face. "Hey, it's not like I went up to the terentatek and said, 'hey, you mind breaking my ribs, I'm sick of them'."

[myownface]

Because Sparkle would freak the fuck out?

... That was probably a pretty good call.

"Yeah, well." Sparkle wrinkled his nose all the same. "Still sucks. No more getting mauled by terantatoes or whatever. New rule."

He was pretty sure it was a damn good rule, too.

[suitably_heroic]

Yeaaaaah. The others got into tough enough scrapes, but add up Atton's habit of, sigh, yes, Brianna, playing pazaak with his life-- maybe he should be doing the healing up back at the Temple from now on after all.

"If it helps, they tend to come out when the dark siders are strong," Atton offered. "So the population should be heading down soon enough."

[myownface]

That wrinkled nose wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Not really.

"Yeah? More you take out, the less tomatillos there are?"

Now he was getting the name wrong on purpose.

[suitably_heroic]

"Terentateks," Atton said, rolling his eyes. "And yeah. They're... think of them as giant rhinos, infused with the dark side of the Force. The Sith used them as Jedi hunters. But the less Dark Jedi there are, the less terentateks have a reason to be up and about. Apparently, they just go to sleep if the balance swings out too far into the Jedi direction."

'Giant rhinos' was the best he could come up with, because the actual thing would probably scare the hell out of Sparkle.

[myownface]

"Huh. So, get rid of the worst of the dark siders, and no more Tarantinos. That's kind of... weird. I mean, like, interesting, but these things, like, evolved specifically to work with people who are all... what, attuned to the dark side?"

Sparkle was actually kind of trying to understand, here. Much as he freaked out about it, he did actually care.

[suitably_heroic]

See, for Atton, part of the messed-up thing was looking at Sparkle, knowing he'd been the exact same way when he was 16, and trying to figure out how he'd gotten to the part where all of this seemed normal.

"I'm not the biggest Sith historian in the galaxy," he said. "But I figure the Terentateks are probably a product of Sith alchemy. The ancient Sith really liked to mess with the biology of everything around them. Tweak a few things here, suffuse a species with the dark side, and ta-da - slave species that'll be rabid against your enemies long after you're dead. Makes sure you can be a pain in the ass for centuries yet."

[myownface]

"But only if there are enough of the dark-siders around to warrant them being awake and functional, right? Like, they're not going to be after the Jedi if they're in hibernation?"

Now you were confusing the boy, Atton.

[suitably_heroic]

"No, they're fueled by the dark side," Atton said. "Which means they need dark side power to keep going. The fewer dark side users in the galaxy, the less power gets drummed up, the more the Terentateks are all, 'screw it, I'm going for naptime, wake me up when the next great Sith Lord stands up'. That's how I understand it, anyway."

[myownface]

"Oh. So. It's, like, a whole galaxy thing," Sparkle replied, scratching at his head and nodding a little. "It's still weird trying to think of things at that scale."

Toronto kid.

"But there's headway being made there anyway? Less dark side stuff all around, so you could, like, use the big stompy tarantulas as a gauge almost, if it didn't involve getting your ribs smashed up."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton pulled a face. "Yeah, I'd rather not make jaunts to Korriban a regular thing, thanks," he said.

Because Korriban. It messed with your head even if you weren't an ex-soldier with a dark side past.

"We'll probably be mopping up some stragglers of Dark Jedi over the next while, like the guy we ran into here," he said. "But what we did last summer cut the head off of that one. At least, that was the idea. If it's not true, I'm going to be really annoyed."

Things out in the Unknown Regions, apparently. Better not be Sith.

[myownface]

"I think 'really annoyed' is a good start, anyway," Sparkle decided as the timer on the oven went off and he pulled himself to his feet again. "Uuugh, I would be so pissed."

It was easy to announce that he would be so pissed, really. He was never gonna be a Jedi. It wasn't going to ever be his problem.

[suitably_heroic]

... Sadly, also a thought Atton had had at sixteen. Go figure.

Atton let out a snort. "Yeah, me too, kid," he said. "But hey, food."

It was halfway through getting up to go collect said food that he remembered getting up was a bad idea, and he wound up grabbing the arm of a nearby chair to keep himself upright all the way... well, up.

[myownface]

Atton, you were getting such a look.

"I was going to go get that, you know." What with the whole not being mutilated thing Sparkle had going for him, and all. "Sit your ass back down, I'll bring it out."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "I can get it," he said. "Just need to start moving, then I'm fine."

See? Walking to the kitchen went more or less all right.

[myownface]

Sparkle just sighed and rolled his eyes right back before using a rag to fish the pizza out of the oven. On his list of things to sneak into Atton's apartment? Proper cooking supplies, eesh.

"Suit yourself," he sighed, shoving a plate at him. "But if you hurt yourself worse I'm filling your whole apartment with cats."

[suitably_heroic]

"Look, which one of us has more experience getting the poodoo kicked out of them?" Not necessarily a good thing, Atton. He grabbed the plate.

[myownface]

"All the more reason to make this place into crazy cat lady paradise," Sparkle pointed out. "Out of spite. Because god knows you're not going to take it easy when you're hurt, here."

Case in point, Atton being on his feet. In the kitchen. Right now.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton let out a frustrated noise. "I only ever pretended to like sitting on my ass," he muttered. "If I can move, I'll move, all right? There's not going to be some smartass making my pizza every day."

[myownface]

"And presumably you're not going to have busted ribs every day either," Sparkle snarked, looking around for a knife to cut the pizza with. "But since I am here, you're going to have to suck it up and accept that maybe there are people who give a damn and want you better soon."

Really, it wasn't as though there couldn't be a smartass making Atton's pizza every day. At least until Sparkle graduated. So.

[suitably_heroic]

There had been a time when Atton had believed life was sink or swim, and everyone's only responsibility was to be self-sufficient. He'd grudgingly changed his tune on that when it came to helping other people, but he was clinging to it tenaciously where it came to himself. He had to. (Mical didn't get it, either, but Mira did, even if she'd probably be calling him an idiot right now.)

"I'll be better soon," he said, rolling his eyes. "Top drawer, I keep a bread knife."

Some people should probably not be allowed food preparation.

[myownface]

Sparkle was going to keep his eyeroll to himself, this time. Who used a bread knife to cut pizza?

Atton, obviously.

"Cool," he muttered, making his way to the top drawer. A few moments later, and he was starting to unceremoniously hack his way into the pizza. "Soon's still not now, but if it makes you happy, man."

[suitably_heroic]

In Atton's defense, he... didn't really have a lot of cutlery to go around in general. Forks. Bread knives. There was a spoon squirreled away somewhere.

"All that matters is, I should be up and going for class," he said. "Maybe make a trip back to the Temple in the mean time if there's anything going on there, I don't know. I'd been hoping this place would be quiet."

Slink off, deal with his wounds by himself, rifle through his brain until everything got nice and locked away back where it belonged.

[myownface]

Sparkle wasn't even going to point out that class was on Thursday, so there was no need to be up and going now. And if there was anything going on at the Temple, he could only hope that it had more people who would at least try to nag Atton into sitting the hell down or something.

If nothing else, he wouldn't have to do his own cooking there.

Sparkle finished cutting the pizza, set the knife in the sink, and then gestured at the food. If Atton was so hell-bent on being up and getting it himself, then he was more than welcome to.

"Yeah, well, you had to know I was going to come by to harass you after you've been gone a week if you texted me," he pointed out. "It seems pretty quiet otherwise. And this way you get pop tarts."

And broccoli! And concerned grumblings! Lucky man!

[suitably_heroic]

Sadly, the only way anyone was bothering Atton into sitting down was if Mira happened to show up; nobody else at the Temple ever really quite managed to handle Atton.

Which he was proud of, by the way. In a crotchety, kark-you-all kind of way.

"If I'd known you'd jump up and race right over here, I'd have waited another week," he grumbled, stacking on some pizza on his plate and then shuffling off to the dinner table. Gingerly. "I mean, not that I don't appreciate the concern." It was always nice to know people cared.

Just, you know. Not up and close enough to see the actual bruises.

[myownface]

Sparkle shrugged a little. Hey, he'd seen Atton doing far worse than he was at just this moment. He was worried, yeah, but comparatively...

"If you waited another week, I'd see you in class on Thursday anyway, and then probably just be even more annoying then to make up for lost time."

He would have, too.

"I might even be nice and frame it as bitching about how you left Skywalker to teach in your place." He shrugged, content to lean back against the counter. "Depends."

[suitably_heroic]

Yeah, but back when Sparkle had seen him worse, he could still convincingly pull off the normal guy thing. These days...

"What'd he have you guys do?" Atton asked. Mostly to get off the subject.

[myownface]

Sparkle pulled a face, but he let the topic swap slide. He figured Atton already knew how he felt about... about whatever. Sparkle had plenty of feelings.

Funnily enough, the way he viewed Atton hadn't changed all that much since Atton was a student. Which just meant the whole Jedi thing tended to perplex him, and the friendship with Anakin baffled him all the more.

"Run laps," he grumbled. "Jump fences, crawl through mud and pudding and whatever. Wasn't too bad, I guess. It isn't like I can't handle a fence."

[suitably_heroic]

That was, at least in part, because... Well, Brianna had been right, maybe. Atton did pretend to be a whole lot more normal around here than he was honestly entirely sure he was, anymore.

Hence also the not mentioning the explosion part, among other things he wasn't - or hadn't, in the past - mentioning to Sparkle.

"Could've been worse," he decided. "Look, Skywalker's the only one I know who could've covered that class with something useful, so..."

He took a bite of his pizza.

[myownface]

"Could've been worse," Sparkle allowed. "I'm gonna bitch either way, though."

... Sparkle was very good at holding a grudge.

"What's this week gonna be?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Shooting stuff," Atton said vaguely. "It was gonna be advanced holds, but you're bad enough, I don't need the entire class eyeballing me or crawling up my ass." ... Phrasing.

[myownface]

Sparkle's mouth fell open. And then he closed it again.

And then he just... cackled.

Sometimes, you just needed to cackle. Sometimes, shit was just so ridiculous, it didn't take much, and Sparkle's brain was in the gutter already anyway, and. Yeah.

So much cackling.

[suitably_heroic]

Seriously, why couldn't Atton headdesk right now? Or headdinnertable, to be precise.

"Sit down and stuff some pizza in that face of yours," he said irritably.