All We Know of Heaven

[Alain]

Alain stood on the bridge and looked out over the expanse of the Antarctic landscape. The bridge was one of the few places on the ship where you could see the breath taking view and one of the places he rarely got to visit. Most of the time if you were up here you better have business up here but it was the day before they left and everyone seemed a bit reluctant to tell him to leave, especially since he wasn't getting in anyone's way.

Alain put a hand against the see through material that was separating them from the elements outside and expected it to be cold like glass or plastic might. Instead, it was room temperature and slightly malleable like rubber. He pulled his hand away, running through known yeerk building materials in his mind. He'd never been involved in building space ships, at least not their hulls.

He turned when he heard Seiya's door open. He'd inquired about the where abouts of Suji. Officially no one knew where she was. Apparently Seiya had gotten wind of some of the activities of younger crew members and had given out orders that no one was to disturb their guests. It had had the effect of making them officially invisible on the ship as everyone pretended that they weren't in the room when they were, just to ensure they weren't breaking the rules. But officially invisible and actually invisible were far from the same thing and someone had been able to tell him where Suji was easily enough so he'd come to wait for her.

They'd be leaving first thing in the "morning" though their hours of departure had more to do with what time it would be where they were going than what time it was where they were. Either way, Alain figured he was running out of time to set things right before he left and he didn't want to go off into a war with angry words between the one person he counted a friend besides for Nineteen.

"Uh, Suji," he called, when she said her goodbyes to Seiya and had turned around. "Can I speak to you?"

[Suji]

Suji wouldn't have said that it was an ambush. Well, she wouldn't have said it aloud. As soon as she turned around, Alain was there. Suji quickly looked him up and down, did her best to assess the situation. He didn't seem angry right now, which was a good sign. Was she angry? Suji searched her feelings. No, not angry. Apprehensive, maybe. Wary.

"Yeah, sure." She walked over towards him slowly. Even if she thought she was coming to terms with Alain joining the war, seeing him standing here was showing her how wrong she'd been. They had their marching orders. The farewell party was resolved. And just as quickly as Suji had heard about his recruitment, he'd be shipped out to start fighting. Him, and just about every other friend she had. She'd be all alone with a bunch of kids fresh out of Animorph grade school. Which was, admittedly, better than all of the kids who didn't go to Animorph grade school at all.

"So, Rio huh?" It was painfully awkward small talk, and Suji winced, coming to a stop a few feet away from him. "Excited?" Ugh, she was just making this worse.

[Alain]

Alain smiled at Suji's attempt at small talk. For some reason her almost nervous chatter made him relax. He had been expecting the cold shoulder which, when it came to Suji, could be quite quite frigid. He had tried to come up with ways to get past that shield if she chose to raise it but he'd been coming up blank. But now he didn't have to worry about it and the knot in his stomach relaxed just a little.

"Not really. Should I be?" he asked, looking at her from under his newly cut back bangs. He hadn't quite given in to the pressure to cut his hair down to nothing, but he had gotten a hair cut because it had started to get ridiculous, even by his own standards. He pulled at his new morphing suit. It wasn't so skin tight as to be embarrassing but he was wearing a pair of jeans over it anyway, allowing it to serve as his shirt. "It's starting to sink in a little."

[Suji]

The tension was cut, and Suji was relieved. There were plenty of things to worry about that didn't include whether or not she was parting on bad terms with anyone. Not that Suji was the most obliging person, but she'd lost enough friends and could-have-been friends to know that it just wasn't worth it in the end.

"No, you're right. I don't think excited is the right word. Terrified is more like it," she said dryly. Suji looked up at him, tried and subsequently failed to keep her expression neutral. She looked away, out over the tundra. "Don't worry. Drake's a pro. He'll take care of you." Suji swallowed thickly, and then added: "Aubrey too. Tell you the truth, I'm more than a little jealous. Miami's gonna feel a little empty."

Suji rubbed the back of her neck. Lonely. Miami is going to feel lonely, is what you meant. Yeah, it was, but she couldn't say that. Animorphs didn't get to complain about stuff like that, especially not Faction Leaders. She smirked, and looked back over. "Bags all packed?"

[Alain]

Alain heard the note of loneliness in Suji's voice and felt the urge to comfort her. It was the same thing he'd felt when she'd feared she had been what had driven him to the war and the feeling was a bit frightening. Somewhere along the way Suji had stopped being someone whose company he enjoyed and who he got along with really well and started being someone he cared about, either as a friend or something more. He hoped it was as a friend but he feared it wasn't. But neither of them really had the luxury of such feelings so he just looked out the window and tried not to think about Suji in a city alone.

He cleared his throat to bring his own thoughts back to the conversation at hand. "I didn't come with much and Drake told us not to take much so," he patted his suit, "this is all I really have. This and my newest book." He put a hand a little protectively over the pocket that bulged out with a rectangular shape. "Did you, uh, did you like Ender's Game?" he asked, a little unsure of himself. He'd given it to her on a whim. It had seemed like something she might like and he liked it and had wanted to share. Now it seemed a bit foolish considering they were fighting a war. Surely a book wasn't as useful as some sort of weapon might have been.

[Suji]

"Oh, yeah." She laughed. "It would have been a guilty pleasure, if I'd read it in the proper age range. I wasn't really into spaceships when I was younger." Suji smiled slyly at this, and didn't bother emphasizing her point by looking around at their surroundings. "Harry Potter was about as close as I got to childhood fiction, and even that was just to fit in." Shame those books were never finished, really. Worrying about authors dying before they penned the last few tales in a series had always been at least a latent concern amongst avid readers. Worrying about the author being taken as host to a parasitic alien? Not as much.

"I should give that back to you," she added. "I have it. I, um, I also found a book for you. Kind of a going away present. And by that I mean, I stole it from the library here." Before he could give her a disapproving look, Suji held up a hand. "Don't worry, there were two other copies. I checked first. It's The Hobbit. You said you never finished it, right?" They'd had some kind of discussion about Lord of the Rings back at the camp. That had been something she'd read and never told her clique about in Highschool and Junior High.

Originally, Suji had been planning on giving the books to Aubrey to give to him, depending on if she worked up the nerve to talk to him again. To be honest, she hadn't really expected to. It wasn't worth it to leave on a sour note, maybe, but part of her hadn't been convinced that Alain would want to talk again... ever. And she wasn't going to force that on him.

[Alain]

Alain laughed a little when she said she had a book for him. "Well you're better than I am," he said quietly. "I didn't check to see if there was another copy before taking this one," he said, motioning to the book in his pocket. "I suppose that may be a bit criminal in today's world," he said, giving it some thought for the first time. He'd never had a trouble finding books until he'd gotten to the free human camp, part of the perks of being a pampered pet scientist. When he'd come to the Academy he'd had a library to draw from. So, for him, the lack of reading material had been more of a drought than a new reality. He didn't think of books as things that needed to be guarded for future generations. Hopefully they weren't at that stage yet. There had to be old book stores and libraries and even publishing warehouses full of books still. But the fact that he hadn't even considered it bothered him. He wondered if he should go put his book back but then decided he'd just make up for it by shippping books back to the Academy whenever he found them.

"Listen, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for the other day," he began quickly before he lost the nerve to do so. It was so easy just to talk about every day things and he knew he would let the pleasant conversation go on if he didn't force himself to say something. In other situations he may have wondered at the wisdom of forcing things but he felt like this was something that needed to be said. "I was angry but not at you, not really, but I took it out on you and I'm sorry."

[Suji]

Suji shifted uncomfortably, but forced herself not to break her gaze. Relief melted some of the extra weight she'd been carrying around these past couple of days. She wouldn't have necessarily said she deserved an apology; or if she did, it was likely that Alain deserved one from Cassie more than she did from him. Suji didn't really know if Cassie knew that she'd told Alain; she hadn't been confronted by the Resistance Leader or anyone on her behalf. If Cassie knew, she wasn't reprimanding Suji for it. If she didn't know, well, Suji wasn't really inclined to inform her.

"It's okay," Suji said, nodding. Okay didn't really describe anything about the situation: definitely not the topic, nor the gut-wrenching emotions it left. Still, she wanted him to know that she wasn't angry at him. She'd have probably done the same thing in his situation... or worse, really. She had called him a son of a bitch in front of a group of people, which included the Academy's Headmaster. "It probably wasn't the right time. I mean, I'm sure there could have been a better time."

Maybe. Even as she said it, she wasn't so sure. If nothing else, at least she'd erred on the side of not keeping it from him. In the long run, that had to count for something.

Long run? Something inside of her snickered. Who gets a 'long run' these days? The longest you've got is probably a couple dozen more hours.

Suji did look away, straightening imaginary wrinkles in her morphing suit. Unlike Alain, she hadn't bothered with the extra layer of clothing. She'd gotten used to it by now. When she looked back up, her expression was gentle. "Do you want to talk about it?" Please, she wanted to tell him. Please, because when you go, you're not going to have anyone else who knows. Who understands.

Really though? Is that what she thought? That she understood? Was it false to think that, a disservice to what he'd gone through? Hypocritical even, because she was so ready to forgive him, even though if she were in his shoes, she could have never forgiven herself? Besides, she doubted he wanted to be forgiven. And she knew better than to come out and tell him that.

[Alain]

Alain looked sideways at her because he couldn't quite manage to look her straight on. He thought about her offer to talk. It was never something he'd planned on talking about. He didn't want to burden anyone else with his problems even if he could some how justify seeking solace for this particular problem. This wasn't a failed test or a drunken mistake or even an arrest, all things he'd suffered in college.

His actions, or in this case, inactions, had led to the death's of so many people. You didn't just get forgiven for that, nor did you just go talk it out over a few beers. He sighed and turned to look directly at her. He had heard what so many had been saying after Dallas was destroyed. The yeerks had blamed it on the animorphs, their interference, their rebellion. Alain had been so caught up in his own guilt and his own pain up until now that he'd never looked to see if anyone else was hurting besides for him.

"I've been pretty selfish lately," he said, looking at Suji. "And hard headed to boot. I'm not sure if I want to talk about it, yet," he added. "But do you?"

[Suji]

Did she want to talk about it? Her eyes moved quickly back and forth between his. She wasn't sure. Now it seemed like an obvious thing to have considered, but she was completely unprepared for the question. Whether or not she wanted to discuss Alain's involvement with Dallas hadn't occurred to her: only that time was running out for them to do it.

But if Alain didn't want to, or wasn't ready to, would it do much good? She wasn't even sure she was ready to; only that she would make herself ready if he did agree to talk about it.

"I don't know, it's just..." Suji hung her head, staring at the floor. "We're approaching zero hour, aren't we? Now or never?" With an uncomfortable laugh she glanced back up, and found herself needing to swallow down a mix of emotions.

It was always never, she thought sadly to herself. That's what made it possible for you to connect with him in the first place. Because at the time you didn't think you had a future, and then when you came back around, you figured at least that he wouldn't be in it. So it wasn't really fair for her to be upset about seeing him go again, was it? If he'd been assigned to her faction she would have been climbing the walls in anxiety already. But still... still, this wasn't in the least enjoyable or relieving. Much like Suji, fate apparently hadn't decided where Alain should fit in her life.

[Alain]

Alain smiled. He kept being surprised at how often Suji made him do that. "You're always so pessimistic. I'm being assigned to another faction, not the moon. Even that isn't that far these days," he added as an aside. "This isn't like this will be the last time I see you." He didn't bother to add that it may be if one of them died. They both knew that and mentioning it wouldn't make it any less real, nor would it add anything to the conversation.

"How about next time we both happen to have leave at the same time we go back to Livre, steal Junayd's boat for a couple of hours and talk about it then? I'll bring the beer, you can bring the music." It sounded almost idealistic but that was half the point. He wanted to have something to look forward to while he was out there. His brother had always talked about how important that was to him, how much he looked forward to spending a Monday night with his father and brothers, just relaxing again. It had gotten him through until he hadn't come home. "And if Junayd tries to come I hear you have a particularly frightening crocodile that he probably won't want to hang around with."

[Suji]

"The moon would probably be safer anyway," Suji said quickly, to hide her urge to wince when he said, 'This isn't like this will be the last time I see you.' Suji wasn't particularly superstitious; she was only the barest believer in fate, and even that was more out of coercion than choice. But at the same time, she wished he hadn't said it. It seemed like an awful memory waiting to happen for either of them. That someone would get a phone call or some such, and then it would be all, Oh God, I remember saying that it wasn't the last time...

She smiled nervously when he talked about Junayd and the memories there. Her eyes moved up to his, away, back again, away again. Part of her was sure she'd never be going back to that colony. For a while it had been a resting, healing place for her soul. But part of her was certain that she was finished with it, and so it would be finished with her. If she lived long enough, she would falter again -- that's how the war went. Hopefully she'd never break as badly, but Suji was certain that she'd never crack along the exact same fault-lines. A different disease would need a different medicine, when that time came.

After a while Suji allowed herself to smile more naturally, and let her eyes rest on him for a few moments, rather than looking away quickly. Her gaze moved over his face, from brow to lips. "You didn't give Junayd any more delusions of grandeur, did you? He didn't decide to become a shape-changing knight for humanity?"

[Alain]

Alain chuckled as an image of Junayd in a suit of armor trying to morph came to mind. He wouldn't know what Jullian would make of a student like the literary teacher and Nineteen probably would have beaten him to a pulp in the first week, or at least wanted to.

"I don't think so. I didn't even tell anyone where I was going." Or that he was going at all for that matter. A couple of months before Suji had shown up at the camp a young woman had chosen to become a pilot in the Animorphs. The entire town had thrown her a party the night before she'd left. There had been talk of trying to build a statue of her somewhere. Everyone had been so proud that one of their own and gone off to fight the war. At least in public they had though many of them had run from that war and thought it was utterly foolish to go back into it. There were those that wished Cassie had never found their small colony but they were the minority, at least for the moment, and most had celebrated Michelle's choice.

Alain hadn't wanted that. He didn't want anyone thanking him for what he'd chosen to do without understanding that it was only his attempt to pay back a debt he owed. He wasn't a hero and he didn't want to be treated like one. So he'd just quietly taken a supply flight out of there and not looked back. He wasn't even sure where to find Livre on a map and, being an ex-controller, he was grateful for that. But he knew it was out there, waiting for him and it helped.

He looked at Suji, holding her eyes for longer than bonds of friendship allowed. He should have looked away but, optimism aside, it may be the last time he saw her and he wanted to remember, more than that he just wanted to be with her, at least for right now.

A pain coming from somewhere he couldn't easily point to creased the skin around his eyes as he realized there wasn't anything left to say. In a moment they would say some sort of standard goodbye and they'd be separated and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Sometimes life brought moments where he would have done anything to stop the flow of time no matter how impossible that was.

"Uh, I guess I should go," he said, forcing himself to look away though that meant he just dropped his eyes to his feet instead. "I know this is stupid," he said, looking up as a desperate fear forced him to say one last thing, "but please be careful. I mean, as careful as, you know, we can be. Just...take care of yourself."

((Drake should probably come in sometime soonish...))