He's - exhausted from not sleeping, and heartsick, and he wants to sneak away and hide with Horseriver, in his room that's all velvet and flagstones and like nowhere else he's ever been. Horseriver knows how to be near him without making him talk about anything. They know how to be old and ruined around each other.
Holden's trying to be nice.
He is being nice. Jedao doesn't know why the smell - not exactly familiar, but recognizable enough - makes him feel like a first year going through design critique, makes him want to grit his teeth and blank his face and nod earnestly, shrinking and flinching inside. Why did he even say anything about the stupid bread? It's fine. It doesn't matter.
"It wasn't a big deal," he says, and doesn't let himself mutter or look away like a sloppy cadet. "But you're welcome."
There's something about it that makes Holden hesitate.
Well, shit, really, he's always hesitating around Jedao. About Jedao.
"Not hungry?" he asks, giving Jedao an easy out. "It'll keep. Actually, it'll probably be better the second day." Stews and curries are sometimes like that.
"No, I'll eat it," he says immediately. He tells himself it's just pragmatism, and not petulance, even while he hears echoes of his little sister, changing her mind about a present she didn't like when someone tried to take it away. No, it's mine now.
It's a little bit pragmatism. Starving is harder to forget than most things; he beat the real compulsion after a few weeks - Shuos paranoia could hardly have let the situation lie for long - but there's an still an impulse to say yes to food.
Jim gives him a little smile in response, the kind that mostly is in the way his eyes crinkle at the corners. Not effusive, but real. He really is grateful, and he's much less freaked out about the flood than he might have been.
"Then sit down," he says, and he brings over the pot, the rice, the flat bowls, the sporks. (Apparently, the Martian Navy just felt it was more efficient to have something between a bowl and a plate, and something in between a spoon and a fork, just to save space.)
"Don't know if you realized this," he says, "but there are some headsets with goggles on board, for playing immersive games. Shooters, mostly."
"I saw," he admits, because he did go through every area he had access to with a laser sight, although that was as much a result of insomnia as any kind of Shuos scheming. "I don't usually play shooters - after a certain level, the differences give you bad habits." But something else might be nice.
It occurs to him, suddenly and distantly, that the goggles won't be able to account for his revenant vision. He wonders if that would be disorienting or a relief, being able to play and still watch his back.
"I could ask the Admiral for some of the other kind," he says. "City builders. Station defense. Or just the adventure ones." They're not on the ship, but he's pretty sure the Admiral would have access to it. "Or maybe the library has something," he says, as it occurs to him. Libraries have games, sometimes. Oftentimes.
He passes Jedao a bowl, a spork, sets a napkin in front of him. He can serve himself up. Jim wouldn't dare dictate someone else's curry-to-rice ratio.
"Letting him pick games for me would be cheating," Jedao insists, immediately. Which one of them would be cheating, he isn't entirely sure, but definitely at least one.
"But if you want to go diving in the stacks. Puzzle games, maybe."
He scoops in dollops of each without any of the precise fuss he usually devotes to tea. Food is food. It's at least vaguely familiar and it smells great, which is more than he's used to, on the barge or before.
"I'd pick the kind of game," returns Jim. "And maybe some of the ones I liked when I was a kid." He gestures vaguely at where Jedao would have a hand-terminal if Jedao were a normal person -- "Like the one I broke down to make the game for you." That one was kind of fun, if repetitive and frustrating. You couldn't do anything about Madagascar.
"Sure." Not a hint of worry that Jedao could get into his head from the games -- hell, he already gave Jedao the keys, talking about the protomolecule. How much worse could he do, with some kid's games?
Mostly he just thinks it would be nice. Cozy, in a Shuos sort of way. Informative, yes, but in the way that it's fun to get to know people, rather than for any particularly tactical purposes. Not that there isn't always some overlap.
"I talked to baby Mikodez," he says after a moment. He doesn't think Holden is doing anything like reviewing the Roci's security footage regularly to scrutinize his comings and goings, but that just means that he'll probably end up getting an informative ping at some deeply inconvenient moment.
"I know," he says. Which is - at least some of why he did it.
"But if we're a team, and that team is at least sometimes playing him, which seems...plausible, then it's responsible of me to keep you informed."
He doesn't expect James to be upset. Concerned, maybe. James made it very clear that he was on Jedao's side against Mikodez, if it came to that, which Jedao - appreciates. And he doesn't want to mess that up by keeping James in the dark about exactly how against they are or are not at any given moment.
Holden blinks. "Actually, that makes sense," he says. "Yeah. Thanks. What did you talk about?" He asks it as just the casual next question, opening the conversational door, half-expecting Jedao to slam it right back shut.
"A lot of nonsense. It takes him a year and a half to get to the point of anything. His future. History. Dreams. He was terrified out of his little mind but dead set on trying to make sure I wasn't going to hurt anyone. He was a good kid."
"Not - okay, yes. He still wanted to believe that things could be fixed. He cared about....trying, and he was as bad with his little sugar packets as Fives is with hot sauce."
Jedao makes a face, because ew.
"It doesn't matter. He's either crowing about getting me to feel something or kicking himself for revealing what a nervous idealistic infant he used to be, or possibly both. He still doesn't like me and the last forty years of running our faction will have stripped out fairly brutally everything I liked about him. It's just -"
One more person ruined by his fucking world. One more person who wouldn't even have wanted to be saved.
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Holden's trying to be nice.
He is being nice. Jedao doesn't know why the smell - not exactly familiar, but recognizable enough - makes him feel like a first year going through design critique, makes him want to grit his teeth and blank his face and nod earnestly, shrinking and flinching inside. Why did he even say anything about the stupid bread? It's fine. It doesn't matter.
"It wasn't a big deal," he says, and doesn't let himself mutter or look away like a sloppy cadet. "But you're welcome."
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Well, shit, really, he's always hesitating around Jedao. About Jedao.
"Not hungry?" he asks, giving Jedao an easy out. "It'll keep. Actually, it'll probably be better the second day." Stews and curries are sometimes like that.
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It's a little bit pragmatism. Starving is harder to forget than most things; he beat the real compulsion after a few weeks -
Shuos paranoia could hardly have let the situation lie for long - but there's an still an impulse to say yes to food.
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"Then sit down," he says, and he brings over the pot, the rice, the flat bowls, the sporks. (Apparently, the Martian Navy just felt it was more efficient to have something between a bowl and a plate, and something in between a spoon and a fork, just to save space.)
"Don't know if you realized this," he says, "but there are some headsets with goggles on board, for playing immersive games. Shooters, mostly."
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"I saw," he admits, because he did go through every area he had access to with a laser sight, although that was as much a result of insomnia as any kind of Shuos scheming. "I don't usually play shooters - after a certain level, the differences give you bad habits." But something else might be nice.
It occurs to him, suddenly and distantly, that the goggles won't be able to account for his revenant vision. He wonders if that would be disorienting or a relief, being able to play and still watch his back.
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He passes Jedao a bowl, a spork, sets a napkin in front of him. He can serve himself up. Jim wouldn't dare dictate someone else's curry-to-rice ratio.
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"But if you want to go diving in the stacks. Puzzle games, maybe."
He scoops in dollops of each without any of the precise fuss he usually devotes to tea. Food is food. It's at least vaguely familiar and it smells great, which is more than he's used to, on the barge or before.
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"I talked to baby Mikodez," he says after a moment. He doesn't think Holden is doing anything like reviewing the Roci's security footage regularly to scrutinize his comings and goings, but that just means that he'll probably end up getting an informative ping at some deeply inconvenient moment.
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"You can do that, you know," he says. "Talk to whoever you want." Like, is Jedao expecting him to be upset by it? Or suspicious? Or weirded out?
He's still pissed that Mikodez is even a thing, but that's not Jedao's responsibility.
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"But if we're a team, and that team is at least sometimes playing him, which seems...plausible, then it's responsible of me to keep you informed."
He doesn't expect James to be upset. Concerned, maybe. James made it very clear that he was on Jedao's side against Mikodez, if it came to that, which Jedao - appreciates. And he doesn't want to mess that up by keeping James in the dark about exactly how against they are or are not at any given moment.
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Bitterly; it's tragic in multiple ways.
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Jedao makes a face, because ew.
"It doesn't matter. He's either crowing about getting me to feel something or kicking himself for revealing what a nervous idealistic infant he used to be, or possibly both. He still doesn't like me and the last forty years of running our faction will have stripped out fairly brutally everything I liked about him. It's just -"
One more person ruined by his fucking world. One more person who wouldn't even have wanted to be saved.
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He gets that, at least.
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"He was just so young."