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[Cassandra glances over before focusing on her wind up music box, and begins slowly turning the handle. Music starts to play, a tune that may be familiar to people from Earth. She's not doing this to play music for everyone though, so she stops after a handful of seconds, looking thoughtful.]

It's funny. You hate home until you've been gone from it long enough, and then you get homesick and home is all you can think about. No matter how shitty it is, you forget about all of the bad things and only care about the people you left behind.

[The music box is picked up and clinched in her hand.]

Do you think it's possible to get a message back to someone? Has anyone tried communicating outside the ship yet? If things like this - [She drops the music box in her hand on the table she's sitting at.] can come through the Ingress to us, we have to be able to send things back through it.

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I would've let them figure it out themselves.

[Cassandra wants to be good but she is too true neutral for that. It makes life really hard sometimes.]

What if it had left all of them dead, and taken more people with them?

[L could almost be neutral good if his working methods and mentality didn't lean so far towards chaotic neutral so often.

It isn't even that he has a problem with breaking the law without punishment -- he does it whenever he needs to. Something being illegal doesn't make it necessarily morally wrong, and morality can be flexible in context, but he hasn't typically done any more harm than he needed to.

In the case of the trials, it's the endangerment that bothered him.]

[She feels like this is somehow a test, and only barely resists squirming. That doesn't stop her from looking him in the eye to answer.]

Dying sucks, but you have to be able to fend for yourself to survive. If they had taken other people out with them and gotten themselves killed, there wouldn't be anyone left to punish.

[Or get revenge on, really.]

I guess their people here would've found a way to get even.

[At least she looks him in the eye. And he understands this mindset coming from someone who's lived in the circumstances she says she's lived in -- he would understand an extent of it coming from someone who had lived in his own most recent circumstances prior to the Moira.

In any case, he doesn't sound too troubled by her answer. When he responds, his tone is cool, as if the conversation is more academic to him than anything.]

But where would that end? Also, at what point does a survivalist mentality serve us? It may not be necessary here, even if the basic tenets are always worth keeping in mind.

It doesn't have to serve everyone.

[She says it quietly, forcing that detached voice back to the surface.]

It serves me, and I'm not going to force anyone else to think that way. It's not up to me to decide where other people's mentality leads them.

[She doesn't like discussing things like this, because it reminds her too much of Black Summer, and all the arguments she had made that first summer after the world went to hell against the lifestyle Tobias and the others forced her into.]

Oh, [(he waves the tines of the fork in the air)]... I was speaking of each of us, not everyone on the ship.

[This is all deceptively casual; he's aware that he's touched a nerve. Continuing to touch it doesn't serve him, at the moment. And he rarely shows his ruthlessness when it's not necessary to do so... that's better as a surprise.]

I would ask you what kind of punishment you voted for, but I suspect you may not have voted at all.

[He doesn't seem disapproving.]

I wasn't going to.

[Her voice is barely a whisper, and she idly picks at the remains of her cake.]

I thought that maybe there was a chance Peter would get the least amount of time if I did.

[She voted, but only because Peter is her friend, and she didn't want him to have to go through being confined. In the end, her vote was meaningless, which ensures that the next time she votes will only be because she wants to get revenge on someone for doing something to her.]

Can we talk about something else now?

Of course.

[He's about to put another bite of cake in his mouth, but he stops, and smiles. It's a concession, because he'd rather she didn't run off, and it seems like she might if he persists. The smile itself is a little bit sickly.]

What would you like to talk about? You could tell me what your favorite thing is on the ship so far.

[She very visibly relaxes as he obliges, but she never fully loses the posture of someone that's like an animal that's ready to run if necessary.]

I like getting to talk to people.

[She smiles as she says it, making eye contact with him once again. It sounds stupid to say, but she likes that she gets to talk to so many people. Back home, conversations had to be short and to the point. Here, she gets to talk just for the hell of it.]

And the pool is great too. And having a real, actual bed?

[Her smile grows as she makes a noise that clearly indicates that she loves having a bed. Even if it is dangling from the ceiling.]

It's even better than having food to eat every day.

[She finally eats the last of her cake, and while she's chewing, she thoughtfully adds on,]

I like getting to talk to you.

[He nods, seeming equally thoughtful, but he doesn't immediately address her comment about him except for renewing his smile.]

You like having the opportunity for leisure. I would, if I were you.

[He doesn't point out in any way that this means that they aren't currently in a survivalist context. Cassandra is a trauma victim of some kind... he supposes he is now, too. If she's able to blossom from that, it will come in time.]

Are you enjoying the cake? You liked the coffee better than the tea.

Of course I like the cake, but I never said -

[And in that moment, she realizes just how observant he is. It makes her laugh, because she can't help but blurt out a question.]

What else do you notice about me?

That was the main thing.

[But he pauses, and pulls back to consider her. He presses the tines of his fork against his lower lip. He's sure she doesn't know what she's really asking him, and sure that if he answered her honestly and in full, it would make her feel strange again. That in and of itself isn't undesirable in all circumstances, but it would be in this one.]

You're stronger than people might assume.

[Whether he means physically or mentally, he leaves up in the air.]

[She assumes he means both, and she nods in satisfaction at his answer. If she had a bigger ego, she'd ask him to elaborate on that or list more things. She doesn't though, so she leaves it there.]

Do you know what I can tell about you?

[She glances down at the fork he's been using, then back up at him.]

You really like sweets.

[Although it doesn't take a genius to figure that one out, since most people who eat cake like them. Really though, it's an invitation to play a game. They can go back and forth and say things they've noticed about the other. An inferencing game of sorts.]

[He glances down to what's left of the cake on the plate, as if he needs to verify it, then says,]

Ah. Yes. There wasn't much like this in the last place where I was. Things were a little more utilitarian.

You also like sweets.

But you wouldn't feel right if you tried to relax too much -- to spend days doing nothing.

[She does take pride in being able to be a work horse. And feels wrong if she's lazy for longer than an hour or so every day. Her head bobs in a curt nod, letting him know he's right.]

I get restless if I sit around for too long.

[She tries to think of something else to add about him, her face lighting up a little as she comes up with an idea.]

And you keep weird hours.

[She remembers the library talk.]

Sometimes.

[A little more often than sometimes.]

Your posture is significantly better than mine.

[Hearing that is completely unexpected, and it makes her laugh, loud and clear. Her hand is quick to cover her mouth to muffle the sound, and she looks around to make sure no one else nearby is listening in or watching.]

Maybe I'll rub off on you.

[And then -]

I'm guessing you probably don't meet a lot of people for coffee.

I don't. I'm used to working a lot.

[He sighs. The only personal information he really cares about keeping to himself is the important things, the identifying details... his full name, the extent of his career at home, the name of the government he's now keeping an eye out for. Most of the rest of it doesn't matter.]

I mentioned this earlier, but I ran a technical department on the other ship. We had an office... a work area, with a server room, but we had our own coffee maker. There really wasn't much need to meet outside of it.

So who did you spend all your time with?

[She can't imagine spending that much time cooped up in an office. She gets that he was running an entire department on another ship, which probably means a lot of work. It could also explain the paleness, now that she thinks about it. He was trapped in an office all the time.]

[Cassandra doesn't know the half of it.]

Hackers, spies, politicians, and college students who had some kind of aptitude. There was a teenage boy named Robin for a while, and an inventor who had worked for military intelligence in London. An American senator, and also a senator from the same universe as Leia Organa. A girl named Darcy who had previously been the assistant of a scientist named Jane Foster.

Jane didn't work for us, however. To be honest, we drew people in with the coffee maker and the promise that they'd have time to pursue their own projects, but the nature of the ship itself meant that we had a high turnover.

[While he talks, she shifts to rest her elbow on the table and leans to place her chin in the palm of her hand. She nods as he explains, and she finds herself wondering something. Feeling comfortable enough around him to pry, she smiles.]

It sounds like you had a group there. Even if there was a high turnover. That's important. Which ship do you like better though? This one, or the one you were on before?

[Something in his expression goes entirely flat and veiled, but there's no other sign that he might be rattled by the question.]

In some ways, they're similar. I had a private room there; I preferred that. There were dozens of swimming pools, hologrammatic entertainment rooms, that sort of thing. There was a garden that wasn't unlike the garden here. There were a number of differences, too: the ship itself was nearly empty, and it rarely stopped.

But I have to say this is a better place to be.

No... it strikes me as a safer place to be. But I could be wrong.

[He doesn't like what Loki has told him.]

I think that's something that only time will tell.

[She's very curious about the ship he was on before, and wants to ask more about it, but she knows she wouldn't appreciate a lot of questions about where she was last. So she keeps them in for now, and makes a mental note to ask him more about the other ship he was on when they've become better friends.]

Safe is always good. It gives you time to regain your strength, so you're ready when the next bad thing happens.

Mm.

[It's a soft noise of noncommittal agreement.

He sets his fork on the plate as a delicate frown develops on his face.]

Ideally, that's true... unless there isn't enough time between bad things. One thing I haven't yet been able to determine here -- is it significantly safer to stay on the ship as much as possible? It seems like that might be the case.

Maybe. But what's the point in being here if you're not going to take advantage of getting to see new places?

[She didn't want to come across as lecturing, so she gave his foot a nudge under the table, smirking a little as she did.]

If you start staying here all the time, this place will turn into a prison.

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