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CHARACTERS: Sloane Lynfield & Maryle Bone
WHAT: Sloane and Maryle, despite Maryle's continued moping, have a conversation about Dom, Apollo, and how everything is bad.
WHEN: Sunday, 1 Feb, evening
WHERE: Sloane & Maryle's room
WARNINGS: Nope!
WHAT: Sloane and Maryle, despite Maryle's continued moping, have a conversation about Dom, Apollo, and how everything is bad.
WHEN: Sunday, 1 Feb, evening
WHERE: Sloane & Maryle's room
WARNINGS: Nope!
Over the weekend, Maryle has barely emerged from her bed cave, too emotionally fragile to deal with seeing or really interacting with anyone. It feels like her entire worldview has been shattered, again, and though she's been only claiming she's sick, she does actually feel that way. Her head is throbbing and she's sick to her stomach, and she can't bring herself to do much of anything beyond drink water and stare into the darkness that is the underside of Sloane's bed.
It's nighttime, though, time to sleep more even though she's been in and out of wakefulness since Friday evening. She drags herself up to get ready, which at this point just means splashing water on her face and brushing her teeth, before she crawls back into her bed and pulls the curtains shut.
Sloane is suffering now. She returned to the room officially on Saturday, but since then hasn’t been at all sure what to do about her roommate’s depression. She knows that sadness is an emotion that has to be processed with time and care, and she’s trying to give Maryle just that. But to let it sit unanswered has started to feel wrong, too. She doesn’t think her roommate has got up once, to eat or anything. Yesterday, Sloane started to bring pieces of her meals from the mess hall into Maryle. Plain bits, and things that she thinks sound enticing. They go untouched at the foot of the bed. The despair in the room remains, heavy, sitting on her skin like a wool blanket dipped in warm water.
To that point that when she finally hears movement, Sloane puts down The Secret History which she had not been able to concentrate on, anyway. She opens her mouth. Then she has no idea. It’s not like she’s ever had to comfort anyone like this.
“...Did you see the food?” She asks, soft voice floating into the air against all the fog.
It takes a few moments, but there is a reply, the first words that Maryle has spoken out loud since Friday.
"I did. Thank you." Seen it, yes, but not touched it. Her appetite has been non-existent, and it didn't feel worth the effort when she knows that tomorrow she'll have to be up and functioning and can eat then.
Maryle sighs, tired of herself and her feelings, and she pulls her blanket over her head as if that will somehow protect her from both.
"Sorry. I'll get over this… cold." Even she doesn't sound like she believes her lie.
Sloane’s mouth twists at the ceiling. It’s good to hear that Maryle is still alive. But now that she’s started talking, it seems more difficult to stop.
“I know it’s not a cold.” tumbles out, for instance.
Another long silence follows this, but once again, Maryle responds.
"Yeah, you don't seem like an idiot, unfortunately for me."
The blanket still pulled over her head, she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment as they start to sting. The only comfort she's ever found in moments like these has been with Dom, and this realization only makes her eyes sting more.
"...did you talk to him, or just infer, given the series of events leading up to this?"
“Talked to him.” Sloane answers, laying very still on the top bunk, resting her book gently on her sternum so that she can feel something solid rise and fall. It’s not a bad place, she thinks, to talk like this. Less pressure than making eye contact and seeing waves of emotions concoct or explode there.
“After you’d been in the room alone for a while. That’s how I knew to sleep in my plane that night.”
This earns a laugh that maybe sort of almost sounds like it's mixed with a sob. Maryle presses a hand against her eyes, as if it's possible to block out even more light. It's embarrassing that Sloane spoke with Dom, and that she's so pathetic that her roommate felt like she couldn't even come back to their room.
"I take it back, you are an idiot. Did you think I was going to bite you if you came in here?"
“I mean. Yeah. But human bites don’t carry much of a rabies risk in space, I think. So. I just thought if this was me, I’d want the room.”
Sloane answers, still honest and even. It hadn’t been a bad night. She’d curled in her cockpit and looked out the big windows, pretending she could see the stars, and reveling at the fact that she felt fear and awe at being so close to them.
“Since I’d also be this mad, too. If it was me.” Sloane nudges one step further.
"You're so fucking weird," Maryle starts quietly, but there's no judgement in her tone despite her words.
This strange set up of talking to one another from their respective beds, cloaked in their curtains with a mattress between them, does feel much more comfortable than seeing each other, but that doesn't mean any of this is easy. She doesn't really know Sloane, and even before being Veiled and then unVeiled she'd struggled with her feelings.
Maryle pushes down a little harder on her eyes with her hand.
"Don't even know if I'm mad anymore. I'm just…" Feeling betrayed? Or feeling less-than? Or maybe just feeling so pathetically stupid that it's impossible to put into words? Her sadness prickles at the edges, waiting for something to morph it into any other emotion.
"Tired. It feels like a rug's been pulled out from under me."
Sloane rolls on to her stomach. She’s never been lied to for years by someone she cares about. She hasn’t ever had someone she cares about like this, and that reality’s depressing enough. She thinks she does understand, still. She remembers waking up, and how the pit in her stomach fell so far when she learned the truth that she thought she’d dropped out of her own consciousness completely. She nods slowly.
“That’s basically what happened. Right? You thought one thing was reality, and then the next moment it wasn’t. And that was from someone you trust.”
Maryle's initial reaction is a cross between a scoff and a hiss, her defensiveness kicking in suddenly as an escape from her sorrow. Like Sloane knows her. Like she has any right to psychoanalyze her. She doesn't understand that Maryle hadn't asked for any of this, that she misses being Veiled probably more than she should, that this is more than just her reality, it's her anchor—
"You should talk to Ronen, maybe he can ordain you as a therapist." It's not kind, but it's mild, all things considered.
After this she is quiet, unsure if she's feeling bad for lashing out a bit at someone who is clearly trying their best, someone who, honestly, doesn't have to try their best. Her hands come out from under her blanket so she can ball it up, press it to her mouth, and scream into it.
Sloane turns towards the wall at this outburst, her own irritation rising into her chest. Whatever. She’s not here to make friends, anyway, Sloane reminds herself. Other people’s emotions aren’t really her responsibility, as loud as they are. She’s here to fight. That’s it. She pulls the book back towards her, intending to not say anything else tonight. But the scream makes her smile. Not out of cruelty. It’s just finally something she understands.
“Yeah.” She commiserates, with the longest sigh she’s exhaled since being here.
After her scream, the silence stretches on before Maryle suddenly barks out a bitter laugh, nearly diffused as quickly as she was set off. She wants to scream again, just a little, but stops herself for now. She's sure she'll need it later.
"Fuck. All of this is terrible. Dom's been fucking up my life since I met him."
And then she lets out her own sigh, long enough that her chest feels tight with the vacuum of her empty lungs.
"....I just wish he trusted me. And I'm so afraid we're not… what I thought we were." She doesn't want to have to try to explain that again, and sort of hopes Sloane doesn't ask.
Sloane doesn’t.
“Have you considered the alternative. Where he was just seriously being an idiot and didn’t even know how to confide in the people he trusts.”
She proposes, light and gentle, so it’s not necessarily an opinion. Just an option.
"I know he's an idiot."
Maryle maybe sounds the tiniest bit defeated at this, because it doesn't really make her feel that much better. Dom being stupid sometimes is a known. She pinches the bridge of her nose, considering, surprised at how much she's willing to say.
"We're supposed to be different."
“You probably are. But people can be stupid all on their own.”
This isn’t very comforting. Sloane wrinkles her nose, trying to think of something better to say.
“He kinda went around the question with me. I didn’t press. But I’d guess he was trying to protect you. Probably because he does trust you. See. Stupid on his own.”
"Maybe," Maryle replies after a long pause. The more distance she has from the conversation the more she's willing to accept alternative theories beyond 'Dom just isn't as attached to you and doesn't trust you with anything personal, so you actually don't know who the fuck he is at all,' but it doesn't mean she's quick to accept them.
"...are you attached to Apollo?" While it is something of a pivot to get her own emotions time to rest, it does, in her mind, follow from the conversation more than it might appear. All attachment is messy, and she knows her Veiled feelings on Dom had felt strange and confusing when she'd been unVeiled. Real but not.
It’s Sloane’s turn for a long pause. She doesn’t know the answer to this, but no doesn’t come as quickly or naturally as she wants it to. She and Apollo had only been together six months before he’d disappeared. She barely knew all her feelings then, as limited as they’d been. And the person who’d had them is all but dead, now.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She admits, head collapsing on the pillow. “I didn’t think he’d feel familiar at all. But he does, sometimes.”
Sloane's silence feels like an unnecessary victory, and a chance for Maryle to catch her emotional breath.
"It's weird, isn't it? I knew Dom for a while when I was Veiled. Though I guess he was actually unVeiled at the time, so yours is… weirder."
Letting out a little sigh, Maryle slowly rolls over to her side, feeling less like she needs to stare up into the darkness pathetically. She still feels like shit, of course, but at least now she can sort of think about something else for a bit.
"I think it's good to keep that link back to when you were Veiled, honestly. Kind of keeps everything in perspective more. Gives a point of comparison. You'll see how you two really are with each other."
“I don’t want any links to when I was Veiled.”
Sloane clarifies, snappish and sure. Apollo is only here by accident, and the fact that he knows a little about where she’s been is mortifying enough. What Maryle’s saying only matters if this relationship was something she wanted to continue in any capacity, and she doesn’t. Sloane shakes her head, remembering her priorities, calling back to mind the weeks in the stronghold when she planned them. She can’t be diverted.
“I’m really not here to like. Analyze where I stand with anyone or have relationships, anyway. He’s a good coworker. Even though he’s kind of annoying, now. That’s all I have to worry about anymore.”
Just as Sloane's momentary quiet had felt like a win earlier, her snap does too; it makes Maryle feel less like she's the only one filled to the brim with emotions. And, unfortunately, inflicting a little bit of pain is satisfying too.
"Chill, I meant a point of comparison for yourself. He's a constant between now and then, sort of, so maybe it can help you figure out your own shit a bit easier." Maryle thinks that maybe she did this when she was adjusting, but maybe she just let herself be insane until she felt like a person again. Her roommate seems to just be pushing everything down. Her comment on not there to have relationships is a bit odd, but is left where it lies for now.
"What were you like before you were Veiled?"
“I was twelve. So I was like a twelve year old.”
Sloane says very reasonably. She doesn’t think about herself before the Fall. Or at least hadn’t before people started asking her about music, about what she liked. To her, it’s like that person never existed, and the Veiled one had been false and wrong. She’s not a culmination or a product of either of them, just a blank slate who’s working toward a victory she doesn’t see any version of herself existing to enjoy. But even Sloane knows that’s too concerning to say aloud, and so she doesn’t.
“You knew Dom before? When you were Veiled? What was that like?”
"Still a person at twelve," Maryle counters, but now she probably owes Sloane a little break. She thinks back to when she'd met Dom at the university she was working at, and it aches to once again remember that even at that point, he'd been having problems. Veiled Maryle couldn't have known and wouldn't have deserved to know, but…
She presses her face into her pillow for one moment before surfacing to speak.
"He was nice, and we got along, and I was glad we were friends. It felt natural, or at least more than anything else did. Guess it could just be that I'm looking back at it with what I know now, though."
Which is the description Sloane could probably have guessed. Everyone under the Veil was nice. Everyone got along. But the description of that connection, and the natural feeling, makes
her smile sadly to herself.
“And that connection kind of stuck? After you were unVeiled?” She dares to press just a little more.
Maryle sighs. Right now she feels a little like she had after being unVeiled, except there's a lot more hurt this time. It makes her frown, but at least none of this part of her story is something she'd be circumspect about, even without the weird half-anonymity afforded by their almost confessional-style arrangement.
"Yeah. I wanted to kill him at first, but… we dated for a year after I got my head on straight enough. Maybe a little before, honestly. I think we were both insane at the time."
“You’re both kind of still insane. From what I know of you.” Sloane provides, deadpan, because it’s more a neutral statement than anything else.
“But you were able to stop the urge to kill him once. That seems like good news.”
"Yeah." Maryle has a hard time arguing with Sloane's initial assessment, and it even dulls a little bit of her sore feelings. The other girl's later words, though, make her scoff.
"That was different." She knows this will get resolved — there's no other option. But even so, she's not quite ready to admit that to Sloane. She lets out a sigh, and then a yawn, despite having slept most of the day.
"Hopefully you and Apollo can be friends. Like, actual, normal friends."
“Different. But it could end the same.”
Sloane presses on, but she clocks the yawn and shifts so that she’s more ready for bed, sliding a blanket over her shoulders. The weight in the room has lifted a little. This is definitely one of the only things weighing her down.
“...I think we could.” She admits, out loud, to lift that a little further. It’s in direct opposition to her attitude a minute ago, and comes out halting. “Maybe.”
Maryle ignores Sloane's first comment with another sigh.
"You'll go insane up here if you don't have friends. And yeah, I think you could too."
This is a concession, but Sloane thinks she might be right. Instead of admitting this again, though, she flips to the front of her book.
“...Wanna hear a story about the danger of friendships, though? Especially in college classics programs?”
"...are you already going insane?"
This time, Sloane lets out a real laugh, if small.
“Proably. But this is a book. I could read some. If it’ll help to keep your mind off your cold.”
Oh, a book. A book that Sloane's willing to read out loud to her. This causes a sharp pain in her chest, memories of forcing Dom to read to her in Laos so she could lie down, close her eyes, and listen contently.
"Maybe next time. I should go to bed. For my cold."
“Okay. Your loss. There’s murder.”
Sloane shrugs, not altogether concerned. Before she opens the book to her own place, she casts one last look down to her roommate’s curtain, which hadn’t moved.
“Feel better.”
"Well, I expect a murder report some other time, then." Maryle follows this with a forced yawn, to drive the point home that she really is soooo tired from her illness. She is actually tired, but not exactly in that way.
"Yeah. Thanks Sloane. Hope you sleep well."
It's nighttime, though, time to sleep more even though she's been in and out of wakefulness since Friday evening. She drags herself up to get ready, which at this point just means splashing water on her face and brushing her teeth, before she crawls back into her bed and pulls the curtains shut.
Sloane is suffering now. She returned to the room officially on Saturday, but since then hasn’t been at all sure what to do about her roommate’s depression. She knows that sadness is an emotion that has to be processed with time and care, and she’s trying to give Maryle just that. But to let it sit unanswered has started to feel wrong, too. She doesn’t think her roommate has got up once, to eat or anything. Yesterday, Sloane started to bring pieces of her meals from the mess hall into Maryle. Plain bits, and things that she thinks sound enticing. They go untouched at the foot of the bed. The despair in the room remains, heavy, sitting on her skin like a wool blanket dipped in warm water.
To that point that when she finally hears movement, Sloane puts down The Secret History which she had not been able to concentrate on, anyway. She opens her mouth. Then she has no idea. It’s not like she’s ever had to comfort anyone like this.
“...Did you see the food?” She asks, soft voice floating into the air against all the fog.
It takes a few moments, but there is a reply, the first words that Maryle has spoken out loud since Friday.
"I did. Thank you." Seen it, yes, but not touched it. Her appetite has been non-existent, and it didn't feel worth the effort when she knows that tomorrow she'll have to be up and functioning and can eat then.
Maryle sighs, tired of herself and her feelings, and she pulls her blanket over her head as if that will somehow protect her from both.
"Sorry. I'll get over this… cold." Even she doesn't sound like she believes her lie.
Sloane’s mouth twists at the ceiling. It’s good to hear that Maryle is still alive. But now that she’s started talking, it seems more difficult to stop.
“I know it’s not a cold.” tumbles out, for instance.
Another long silence follows this, but once again, Maryle responds.
"Yeah, you don't seem like an idiot, unfortunately for me."
The blanket still pulled over her head, she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment as they start to sting. The only comfort she's ever found in moments like these has been with Dom, and this realization only makes her eyes sting more.
"...did you talk to him, or just infer, given the series of events leading up to this?"
“Talked to him.” Sloane answers, laying very still on the top bunk, resting her book gently on her sternum so that she can feel something solid rise and fall. It’s not a bad place, she thinks, to talk like this. Less pressure than making eye contact and seeing waves of emotions concoct or explode there.
“After you’d been in the room alone for a while. That’s how I knew to sleep in my plane that night.”
This earns a laugh that maybe sort of almost sounds like it's mixed with a sob. Maryle presses a hand against her eyes, as if it's possible to block out even more light. It's embarrassing that Sloane spoke with Dom, and that she's so pathetic that her roommate felt like she couldn't even come back to their room.
"I take it back, you are an idiot. Did you think I was going to bite you if you came in here?"
“I mean. Yeah. But human bites don’t carry much of a rabies risk in space, I think. So. I just thought if this was me, I’d want the room.”
Sloane answers, still honest and even. It hadn’t been a bad night. She’d curled in her cockpit and looked out the big windows, pretending she could see the stars, and reveling at the fact that she felt fear and awe at being so close to them.
“Since I’d also be this mad, too. If it was me.” Sloane nudges one step further.
"You're so fucking weird," Maryle starts quietly, but there's no judgement in her tone despite her words.
This strange set up of talking to one another from their respective beds, cloaked in their curtains with a mattress between them, does feel much more comfortable than seeing each other, but that doesn't mean any of this is easy. She doesn't really know Sloane, and even before being Veiled and then unVeiled she'd struggled with her feelings.
Maryle pushes down a little harder on her eyes with her hand.
"Don't even know if I'm mad anymore. I'm just…" Feeling betrayed? Or feeling less-than? Or maybe just feeling so pathetically stupid that it's impossible to put into words? Her sadness prickles at the edges, waiting for something to morph it into any other emotion.
"Tired. It feels like a rug's been pulled out from under me."
Sloane rolls on to her stomach. She’s never been lied to for years by someone she cares about. She hasn’t ever had someone she cares about like this, and that reality’s depressing enough. She thinks she does understand, still. She remembers waking up, and how the pit in her stomach fell so far when she learned the truth that she thought she’d dropped out of her own consciousness completely. She nods slowly.
“That’s basically what happened. Right? You thought one thing was reality, and then the next moment it wasn’t. And that was from someone you trust.”
Maryle's initial reaction is a cross between a scoff and a hiss, her defensiveness kicking in suddenly as an escape from her sorrow. Like Sloane knows her. Like she has any right to psychoanalyze her. She doesn't understand that Maryle hadn't asked for any of this, that she misses being Veiled probably more than she should, that this is more than just her reality, it's her anchor—
"You should talk to Ronen, maybe he can ordain you as a therapist." It's not kind, but it's mild, all things considered.
After this she is quiet, unsure if she's feeling bad for lashing out a bit at someone who is clearly trying their best, someone who, honestly, doesn't have to try their best. Her hands come out from under her blanket so she can ball it up, press it to her mouth, and scream into it.
Sloane turns towards the wall at this outburst, her own irritation rising into her chest. Whatever. She’s not here to make friends, anyway, Sloane reminds herself. Other people’s emotions aren’t really her responsibility, as loud as they are. She’s here to fight. That’s it. She pulls the book back towards her, intending to not say anything else tonight. But the scream makes her smile. Not out of cruelty. It’s just finally something she understands.
“Yeah.” She commiserates, with the longest sigh she’s exhaled since being here.
After her scream, the silence stretches on before Maryle suddenly barks out a bitter laugh, nearly diffused as quickly as she was set off. She wants to scream again, just a little, but stops herself for now. She's sure she'll need it later.
"Fuck. All of this is terrible. Dom's been fucking up my life since I met him."
And then she lets out her own sigh, long enough that her chest feels tight with the vacuum of her empty lungs.
"....I just wish he trusted me. And I'm so afraid we're not… what I thought we were." She doesn't want to have to try to explain that again, and sort of hopes Sloane doesn't ask.
Sloane doesn’t.
“Have you considered the alternative. Where he was just seriously being an idiot and didn’t even know how to confide in the people he trusts.”
She proposes, light and gentle, so it’s not necessarily an opinion. Just an option.
"I know he's an idiot."
Maryle maybe sounds the tiniest bit defeated at this, because it doesn't really make her feel that much better. Dom being stupid sometimes is a known. She pinches the bridge of her nose, considering, surprised at how much she's willing to say.
"We're supposed to be different."
“You probably are. But people can be stupid all on their own.”
This isn’t very comforting. Sloane wrinkles her nose, trying to think of something better to say.
“He kinda went around the question with me. I didn’t press. But I’d guess he was trying to protect you. Probably because he does trust you. See. Stupid on his own.”
"Maybe," Maryle replies after a long pause. The more distance she has from the conversation the more she's willing to accept alternative theories beyond 'Dom just isn't as attached to you and doesn't trust you with anything personal, so you actually don't know who the fuck he is at all,' but it doesn't mean she's quick to accept them.
"...are you attached to Apollo?" While it is something of a pivot to get her own emotions time to rest, it does, in her mind, follow from the conversation more than it might appear. All attachment is messy, and she knows her Veiled feelings on Dom had felt strange and confusing when she'd been unVeiled. Real but not.
It’s Sloane’s turn for a long pause. She doesn’t know the answer to this, but no doesn’t come as quickly or naturally as she wants it to. She and Apollo had only been together six months before he’d disappeared. She barely knew all her feelings then, as limited as they’d been. And the person who’d had them is all but dead, now.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She admits, head collapsing on the pillow. “I didn’t think he’d feel familiar at all. But he does, sometimes.”
Sloane's silence feels like an unnecessary victory, and a chance for Maryle to catch her emotional breath.
"It's weird, isn't it? I knew Dom for a while when I was Veiled. Though I guess he was actually unVeiled at the time, so yours is… weirder."
Letting out a little sigh, Maryle slowly rolls over to her side, feeling less like she needs to stare up into the darkness pathetically. She still feels like shit, of course, but at least now she can sort of think about something else for a bit.
"I think it's good to keep that link back to when you were Veiled, honestly. Kind of keeps everything in perspective more. Gives a point of comparison. You'll see how you two really are with each other."
“I don’t want any links to when I was Veiled.”
Sloane clarifies, snappish and sure. Apollo is only here by accident, and the fact that he knows a little about where she’s been is mortifying enough. What Maryle’s saying only matters if this relationship was something she wanted to continue in any capacity, and she doesn’t. Sloane shakes her head, remembering her priorities, calling back to mind the weeks in the stronghold when she planned them. She can’t be diverted.
“I’m really not here to like. Analyze where I stand with anyone or have relationships, anyway. He’s a good coworker. Even though he’s kind of annoying, now. That’s all I have to worry about anymore.”
Just as Sloane's momentary quiet had felt like a win earlier, her snap does too; it makes Maryle feel less like she's the only one filled to the brim with emotions. And, unfortunately, inflicting a little bit of pain is satisfying too.
"Chill, I meant a point of comparison for yourself. He's a constant between now and then, sort of, so maybe it can help you figure out your own shit a bit easier." Maryle thinks that maybe she did this when she was adjusting, but maybe she just let herself be insane until she felt like a person again. Her roommate seems to just be pushing everything down. Her comment on not there to have relationships is a bit odd, but is left where it lies for now.
"What were you like before you were Veiled?"
“I was twelve. So I was like a twelve year old.”
Sloane says very reasonably. She doesn’t think about herself before the Fall. Or at least hadn’t before people started asking her about music, about what she liked. To her, it’s like that person never existed, and the Veiled one had been false and wrong. She’s not a culmination or a product of either of them, just a blank slate who’s working toward a victory she doesn’t see any version of herself existing to enjoy. But even Sloane knows that’s too concerning to say aloud, and so she doesn’t.
“You knew Dom before? When you were Veiled? What was that like?”
"Still a person at twelve," Maryle counters, but now she probably owes Sloane a little break. She thinks back to when she'd met Dom at the university she was working at, and it aches to once again remember that even at that point, he'd been having problems. Veiled Maryle couldn't have known and wouldn't have deserved to know, but…
She presses her face into her pillow for one moment before surfacing to speak.
"He was nice, and we got along, and I was glad we were friends. It felt natural, or at least more than anything else did. Guess it could just be that I'm looking back at it with what I know now, though."
Which is the description Sloane could probably have guessed. Everyone under the Veil was nice. Everyone got along. But the description of that connection, and the natural feeling, makes
her smile sadly to herself.
“And that connection kind of stuck? After you were unVeiled?” She dares to press just a little more.
Maryle sighs. Right now she feels a little like she had after being unVeiled, except there's a lot more hurt this time. It makes her frown, but at least none of this part of her story is something she'd be circumspect about, even without the weird half-anonymity afforded by their almost confessional-style arrangement.
"Yeah. I wanted to kill him at first, but… we dated for a year after I got my head on straight enough. Maybe a little before, honestly. I think we were both insane at the time."
“You’re both kind of still insane. From what I know of you.” Sloane provides, deadpan, because it’s more a neutral statement than anything else.
“But you were able to stop the urge to kill him once. That seems like good news.”
"Yeah." Maryle has a hard time arguing with Sloane's initial assessment, and it even dulls a little bit of her sore feelings. The other girl's later words, though, make her scoff.
"That was different." She knows this will get resolved — there's no other option. But even so, she's not quite ready to admit that to Sloane. She lets out a sigh, and then a yawn, despite having slept most of the day.
"Hopefully you and Apollo can be friends. Like, actual, normal friends."
“Different. But it could end the same.”
Sloane presses on, but she clocks the yawn and shifts so that she’s more ready for bed, sliding a blanket over her shoulders. The weight in the room has lifted a little. This is definitely one of the only things weighing her down.
“...I think we could.” She admits, out loud, to lift that a little further. It’s in direct opposition to her attitude a minute ago, and comes out halting. “Maybe.”
Maryle ignores Sloane's first comment with another sigh.
"You'll go insane up here if you don't have friends. And yeah, I think you could too."
This is a concession, but Sloane thinks she might be right. Instead of admitting this again, though, she flips to the front of her book.
“...Wanna hear a story about the danger of friendships, though? Especially in college classics programs?”
"...are you already going insane?"
This time, Sloane lets out a real laugh, if small.
“Proably. But this is a book. I could read some. If it’ll help to keep your mind off your cold.”
Oh, a book. A book that Sloane's willing to read out loud to her. This causes a sharp pain in her chest, memories of forcing Dom to read to her in Laos so she could lie down, close her eyes, and listen contently.
"Maybe next time. I should go to bed. For my cold."
“Okay. Your loss. There’s murder.”
Sloane shrugs, not altogether concerned. Before she opens the book to her own place, she casts one last look down to her roommate’s curtain, which hadn’t moved.
“Feel better.”
"Well, I expect a murder report some other time, then." Maryle follows this with a forced yawn, to drive the point home that she really is soooo tired from her illness. She is actually tired, but not exactly in that way.
"Yeah. Thanks Sloane. Hope you sleep well."
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also i think they should fling all of the boys into space because then dislinked can actually get some shit done
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