Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

Bright side: Atton had actually managed to get off the planet, and had subsequently even managed to catch a nap on the ship, which made him feel a lot better. Bad side: spending several hours tooling above an evil Sith artifact had not been good for him, and now he was trying desperately to remember the name of the blond guy he hated so much. It was something with an N, right?

It'd come back to him. Some things already had. The emptiness in his gut was shrinking again; it was just a matter of time and exposure now.

It was just a pain in the ass.

Anyway, Blond Guy With An N looked livid when he set the Hawk down by the Temple, but Atton had said he had an important meeting coming up (which he did) and he didn't have the time (which he didn't). At which point Blond Guy With An N had decided to invite himself along on the jaunt to go pick up, uh, what was it again? Glitter?

Damn it.

"You should not be doing this," Blond Guy told him again. "In fact, you should not have gone in the first place, but right now we should give you medical attention, perhaps some scans..."

"I'll be fine," Atton said, rolling his eyes as he pushed open the door to the Portalocity station. "It's temporary memory loss. It comes back, I know that, it's come back before. Just got to, you know--" He pulled a face, then snapped his fingers as Blond Guy let the door shut behind him. "--what's the phrase? Work itself out? No."

Blond Guy, Blond Guy, B-- Mical? Mical. Mical was right. Mical sighed. "I don't even know if you are dodging my questions or you genuinely don't remember," he said. "If there is a threat out there--"

"No threat," Atton said. "Well, there is a threat, not just from this planet. I don't know if the Sith seeded badness there just to get me killed, or they shot me down above the planet because they knew it would make things worse and I'd, you know, get my ass killed, but where I went, there's nothing left with two brain cells to rub together."

Mical rubbed at his forehead. "Can we again touch upon how utterly stupid this was and how you should be in medbay?"

"I can't spend every Saturday in medbay."

"No, but you are doing your utmost best."

And so it was an arguing set of Lost Jedi who waited in the Portalocity lounge, attracting some small amount of attention.

[[ for sparkle ]]

Comments

[myownface]

Oh man, Atton. Sparkle already felt weird enough about whatever might happen when he got here after the whole... thing... last weekend. One look at two arguing Jedi when he stepped into the Portalocity lounge had him momentarily tempted to turn on his heel and head back the way he came.

"I'm, uh, beginning to wonder if you just really want me to spend some quality time with the other Jedi too," he noted, after a moment of just standing there awkwardly. "Is this a bad time?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes and pulled away from Mical's side. "No, Mical here was just leaving," he said, "Now that he's got his whatever it is out of his system."

Mical looked like he was about to say something; then he shut his mouth, sighed, and turned away.

"Hey."

He'd barely remembered anything of the weekend on Monday. He remembered even less right now.

[myownface]

Sparkle, meanwhile, had mostly remembered 'prison,' and 'awkward,' and he was good at running with those with an iron grip when he had a mind to.

"Hey," he replied, nodding. "So, uh, what's up with the escort, then?"

Because that was weird, right? Like, even for Mical?

[suitably_heroic]

"I might have gone off, and, uh," Atton rubbed the back of his neck, "...wound up bumbling into a planet full of weird Sith poodoo. Mical's just being a mother hen about it."

[myownface]

Sparkle needed to take a moment to squint at Atton at that, kind of falling into a sort of pseudo mother hen mode about it, himself. After all, he didn't care for the Jedi because of their pretentiousness. He didn't care for the Sith because they had just outright tried to get their murder on.

He'd outgrown the bogeyman and wasn't terribly likely to run into many more vampires as long as he lived, but the Sith were doing an admirable job of taking their place.

"Now you know I have to wonder what the damage is," he pointed out. "Like, he usually at least lets you come here without a babysitter, never mind personally escorting you himself."

[suitably_heroic]

See, and here Atton had been hoping to squeak out of having to explain this part. He wasn't sure how, considering he still wasn't entirely certain he had the kid's name down right, but he had been intent on trying.

Trust this one to not enable his dancing-around-the-point skills when he needed them enabled.

"Kind of weird, life-force-memory-draining... thing," he said, pulling a face. "I mean, it's coming back to me, just not as fast as he likes. I'll be fine."

[myownface]

...

"Don't you kind of need your life force?"

If the memories were coming back, then fine. Okay. Sure. Sparkle would manage to not fret too much while still sort of wondering just how much Atton had forgotten. He was here to get him pretty much like clockwork, after all. But life force sort of seemed important??

[suitably_heroic]

"Like I said, it's coming back to me," Atton said, waving vaguely. "Better than, uh. What's it called? The other place I went to. Completely drained of everything."

The details were a little fuzzy, but it was hard to forget that part.

[myownface]

Sparkle chewed his lip.

"The place you went where you scared the shit out of all of us, you mean? July last year?"

Really, Sparkle still remembered that voicemail, and the ensuing 'sobbing at Kenzi and getting spectacularly drunk' that followed. And the... more fretting. A lot of fretting. So much fucking fretting.

It was hard to forget the fallout of Malachor V.

[suitably_heroic]

It was hard to forget Malachor V in general, though Atton was not mourning the parts of that experience his memory currently couldn't actually call up. Getting those back was going to hurt.

"No, no," he said, wandering towards the door. "That's the second reason Mical's stalking me. I left for this other planet after he told me not to." He pulled a face. "Like I listen to him."

[myownface]

"Well, yeah. You not listening to Mical is pretty much status quo, at this point."

Sorry, Mical.

"It's what he gets for being shitty at plumbing."

Never letting that go. Ever.

[suitably_heroic]

"And decision-making," said the Chief of Terrible Decision Making. "And life in general. I don't know why he's all surprised that I did the thing."

Mical telling him he couldn't do something was usually a great way to get him to do something. Much, no doubt, to his twenty-year-older-self's chagrin.

[myownface]

"It's like he hasn't figured out what stubbornness and spite are, yet. Or how they apply to you."

A pause, and then he was moving to give Atton a light thump to the shoulder.

"Seriously, though, no more empty-feeling memory-eating Sith planets, asshole."

[suitably_heroic]

"I had a good reason for that one!" Atton protested. "It's gonna come back to me soon, too."

He shook his head. "But hey, what's up with you? Less Sith, I take it."

[myownface]

Sparkle snorted. Suuuure it was, Atton. Sure it was.

"Like that's hard to manage," he pointed out. "If there were any Sith around and you weren't there to save my ass, I'd be dead meat."

Clearly.

"Toronto's not too bad right now, I guess. We have a new girl at the home. Raine? She's okay. Like... Doesn't really want people to talk to her right now, but that's nothing new, I don't think. I think it's a case of 'lost a parent and the other one is useless,' or something like that. Sucks to be her."

Kind of sucked to be any of them, admittedly.

[suitably_heroic]

Yeah, Atton had gotten the impression no one showed up to one of those homes without a sad backstory of some kind. He had trouble crying about it, metaphorically or otherwise, but he was just going to nod anyway.

"Could be worse, I guess," he said, "But still not a whole freighterload of fun. You getting along, at least?"

Wasn't there something about last weekend they either needed to talk about or needed to avoid talking about? He was starting to get that feeling.

[myownface]

That one could probably wait until Atton at least managed to remember Sparkle's name.

"Yeah, I think so. Like, she takes off to visit one of the old ladies that lives on the street from time to time, but she's usually pretty okay about sitting down and just talking. Not like some of the kids, who'll try to throw down with you just because they're bored or they don't like what you wore that day or their ass is itchy and it puts them in a mood."

Nah, Raine seemed more like the other kind. The kid from a family that had started okay and then kind of went to hell the moment things started getting rocky.

[suitably_heroic]

You had to wonder what that felt like.

"Hey, congratulations, then," Atton said easily. "You made a friend. Or at least someone you're not in mutual being-an-ass-to... ness."

Thing. Whatever.

...It wasn't Glitter, the kid's name. But something related.

[myownface]

And if Atton called him 'Glitter' or 'Twinkle' or something, Sparkle reserved the right to try to slug him again.

"Yeah, it's not a bad place to be, that way," he decided. "And Lewis seems happy. The house is nice, the street is... still too fucking fancy, but that's just something to get used to, I suppose."

Just... not too used to it.

[suitably_heroic]

Hey, hey. Atton knew well enough that the best way to play this was to wait until the other party worked his name into conversation somehow.

"Lewis is the guy, right?" he checked.

You know. The guy.

[myownface]

Ha, as if Sparkle was going to make it that easy for him. He was avoiding it on purpose, at this point, because it was starting to dawn on him that there was a chance that Atton might have forgotten.

Sparkle was a brat. That wasn't even in question.

"Lewis is the guy," he confirmed. "The one who owns the house. The one taking in all the fucked-up teens in the first place."

And there was something about him from last weekend that was trying to chew on the back of Sparkle's brain, but he couldn't quite remember. So he shrugged, and decided to just let it go, instead. It would drive him crazy, otherwise.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton eyeballed Coruscant's morning sky as he walked, slotting that detail back into place. (There was another reason behind the phrase the guy attached, there, but he could basically deduce what his brain meant by that and it was not something he was going to seek clarification on. Because awkward.)

"Right," he said. "Ugh, this is a pain in the ass. Anyway, so all's good, right? No big catastrophes I missed or anything?"

Atton, you were the one who lied about that stuff for no real reason.

[myownface]

Sparkle was squinting a little.

"Nah, man. I think you've got the market cornered on the catastrophe thing already anyway."

For the record, Atton. In case you weren't sure.

[suitably_heroic]

"I don't get into that many," Atton retorted.

Though that was possibly because his definition of 'catastrophe' had kind of shifted since he first ran into a hot Jedi in her underwear on the Peragus Mining Facility.

[myownface]

"Maybe you just can't remember them all," Sparkle offered. "Or your perception of reality is all sideways because of this Jedi stuff of yours. Most people would probably figure almost all of this stuff Mical bitches at you about is at least a little catastrophic."