The Jedi Temple, Atton's Coruscant, 3949 BBY, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

After Sparkle had left last weekend, Atton'd spent one glorious half day rolling around in ignorance for as long as he could. The next day, the then-upcoming date had struck him, and he had hidden away in his apartment and gotten spectacularly drunk. The day after, they had held a small, respectful mourning ceremony, and they had sat together and traded stories about Meetra for hours.

Well, the others had, anyway. Atton had mostly brooded in the back.

On Tuesday, he'd beaten the hell out of holotargets for hours. On Wednesday, Mical had yelled at him for aggravating his healing wounds, and shoved him in a kolto tank. On Thursday, still reeking of kolto, Atton had resumed lurking around his apartment.

Now it was Saturday, and Sparkle was showing up, and while Atton had only ten percent of his usual motivation to do this, he had left his apartment. He was sitting on the steps of the Temple now, smoking an Earth cigarette and glaring at passers-by. A more difficult exercise than it seemed; most foot traffic kept a respectful distance of the Temple itself. Still, he managed.

Somehow.

[[ for the kid, and phone calls, what have you. ]]

Comments

[myownface]

If Sparkle had felt guilty about coming here last week, this week put that to shame. His guts were tying themselves in little knots, though at the very least he could be sure that Raine was applying herself extra hard to preparing a speech for a city council meeting that was taking place tomorrow so that the neighbourhood folks and Lewis could both present their stances on the home.

So he was anxious and worried and maybe a little nauseous. Maybe a lot nauseous. Maybe a lot of that nausea was a hangover. He'd never admit it.

"Hey."

A beat.

"Are you trying to glare at people from all the way over here?"

There was a market not far off that they could sit at, if today was 'glaring at random passersby' day, Atton.

[suitably_heroic]

Yeah, but walking over there would've cut into his important 'feeling miserable and stewing' time, Sparkle.

"Me? Nah," Atton said, looking up and managing, at least, not to glare at Sparkle. Mostly because the anxiety the kid was radiating was already giving him a stomach ache. He took a drag off his cigarette in a futile attempt to settle it. "What's with you?"

[electrocynic]

Sarah probably needed a phone that wasn't from 2005 and probably fried in some interesting way from all the times she'd used her powers on it. Because she was distinctly sure that she'd just said "|call Alex|" and yet, well. Not that she knew the call was headed in the wrong direction, but it was.

(Not being lazy enough to clamp the phone between her shoulder and her ear while she went about rummaging through her fridge so she wouldn't have had to use her powers might've helped too.)

[suitably_heroic]

His Earth phone was ringing, which probably meant Sparkle needed... something or other. Atton wasn't in the mood to check caller ID, which was the entire reason she was getting a, "Yeah?" as he answered instead of "What do you want?"

[myownface]

"Shitty week," Sparkle shared, managing, at least, to keep a sulk out of his voice. "Headache. There's too much sun on Coruscant, did you know that?"

... No more than the usual, really.

[electrocynic]

Which was in turn just vague enough that he didn't get a "... You're not Alex" but rather a "So did she give you a brochure? I swear to Christ if it says there's anything resembling sitting in dirt chanting 'omm', I'm taking back what I said about going."

Sorry.

[suitably_heroic]

"No, there isn't," Atton said, looking up at the sky. "You know they regulate the weather around here? Actual scientists worked this one out. Perfect amount of sunlight for the area. It's kind of annoying, really."

But he found almost everything annoying this week. Or sad. Or both.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton squinted. Okay, that was Sarah's voice, not Sparkle's. Obviously.

"Meditation doesn't usually involve the word 'omm'," he said. "What?"

[myownface]

"That's... really obnoious, actually," Sparkle decided. "Is that something they do, like, normally? All over the place?"

Sparkle was squinting up at the sky as though it had personally offended him, now.

It sort of had.

[electrocynic]

"What?"

She paused.

"You're not Alex."

Good, it had now been established everyone involved in this conversation had workable hearing.

[suitably_heroic]

"Mostly just on Coruscant, because it's such a huge city and the weather here gets crazy without supervision," Atton shared. "You know there's actual guidelines here for when it's allowed to rain?"

[suitably_heroic]

"No, I'm not," Atton said, scowling at his phone. "What?"

Since that sort-of-question hadn't been answered yet.

[myownface]

"... That's so weird," Sparkle decided, looking back Atton's way. "But maybe that's just my all... backwardsy Earth-ness talking."

Sparkle was pretty sure that if humans had control over Earth's weather, the first thing they'd do would be to reverse climate change so that people would stop complaining, and the second thing they'd do would be proceed to turn around and fuck everything up even worse than it had been to start.

[electrocynic]

"Wow, this phone really is a piece of shit." Did that answer the question? "D'you think I could use that as a reason not to go to this bullshit retreat thing?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton shrugged. "It made sense when they were building this place, I guess," he said.

He chucked his cigarette towards the foot of the stairs. "So what's the shitty week?"

They could be miserable together. That sounded like a great idea.

[myownface]

Sparkle chewed his lip for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. God, just opening up and spilling his heart out on the floor was hard. Even with Atton, when it came to things like this.

"Raine visited that miserable old bitch friend of hers to try to talk her into maybe getting the neighbourhood to give us another chance," he settled on. That was big. Bigger than all of the losing his mind that Lewis had been doing. Sparkle had already made up his mind that Raine was the number one priority in this situation, and now he was clinging to that for dear life.

It terrified him a little.

[suitably_heroic]

"What bullshit retreat thing?" Atton sighed. At least he could scrounge up a vague modicum of sounding like he actually cared.

[suitably_heroic]

"And let me guess, it was all sunshine and roses after that," Atton said dryly.

They should probably move, if Sparkle had an actual headache. But Atton was going to need a few moments to drum up the motivation.

[myownface]

"Yeah. A real laugh riot." Sparkle exhaled, and then shrugged his shoulders and wondered how much he wanted to share. And how much Atton wanted to hear. "She lost it. Just... completely fucking lost it."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton winced a little. He pushed himself up onto his feet with some difficulty. "Crap," he said.

For his current state of mind, that was actually a 'crap' he fully meant.

[electrocynic]

The eyerolling was so close to being audible. "Jenny found some fucking countryside retreat thing for capes," she said. "Says it's supposed to help us fucking calm and center ourselves. As if I need to be more calm!"

Sure you didn't.

"Anyway, it sounds like hippie bollocks to me. Dunno why I said I'd go, probably to shut her up."

[suitably_heroic]

"Or maybe you like hanging out with her and you have to justify it by complaining first."

Atton wasn't in the mood for the whole back-and-forth right now, especially not when he couldn't stop thinking about how much time he'd wasted.

[electrocynic]

That shut her up.

For a whole three seconds, anyway. "When did you get a degree in psychology?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes, then realized she couldn't actually see that. "I'm not blind," he said. "Or deaf, in this case."

And had made a whole career out of pretending to be much less perceptive than he really was which he'd never quite managed to shake.

[electrocynic]

"The retreat's still bullshit," she told him, making a face. "And I'd much rather spend time with her down at the pub, like a normal person. Can't believe Don's getting out of going because he says he has a doctor's note that says he's not allowed near therapeutic things anymore."