trans_9 | Gift of the Magi (Except with way less situational irony) [closed]

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Gift of the Magi (Except with way less situational irony) [closed]

Hiccup had something bundled and strapped to his back as he made his way through the hallways. He was sneaking, because that something was a present, and he didn't want its intended recipient to know it even existed before it was finished. Fortunately, she didn't tend to hang around Special Weapons that much, if at all.

"Hello?" he ventured quietly as he made his way into the room. "Thanks ahead of time, by the way. The deadlier I can make this thing the better."

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"I'm not saying that I want to pry and know all your deepest private thoughts. It's not my business and I don't really want to know. I have my own private thoughts and problems to think about and deal with."

He went on, "But you don't have to hide yourself away when talking to people. There's a way that people can be out, talking to other people, and still hiding. You tend to do that. And I'm just letting you know you don't have to."

You don't have to spill your guts, Jamie, but...

"You can let your guard down a little."

Edited 2011-08-01 05:20 (UTC)

"Yeah, well, I will when I have an actual reason to." Jamie didn't look up from his chore, to which he was tending with a little more vehemence than was strictly necessary. "Until then there's no point bothering other people with pointless complaining."

Hiccup went quiet at that, because it was tantamount to saying he wasn't a reason to.

"Look, I'm just--I'm actually trying to make friends here. What I've seen of you as a person so far? Makes me want to try. But you're not exactly making it easy for me to even get to know you."

Jamie sighed very quietly, feeling frustrated and annoyed, with himself as much as with Hiccup. "Look. I don't mind having your back, or talking with you, or any of that. You're a nice guy. But as for me? - like I said, there's not a whole lot worth getting to know. That's all."

That sounded almost painfully familiar.

"Why won't you let me be the judge of that?"

Because it was too humiliating to let people think he actually had some redeeming features and then discover what a flawed, awful person he really was.

He turned away, shelving another bin of parts. "Why's it so important to you?"

"Because people are important."

He thought about it.

"Because I was the kind of person other people didn't care about knowing. And it got to where I almost started to think I wasn't worth knowing. Eventually, I just stopped trying."

He'd stopped trying to make friends with them. Resorted to the sarcasm as a defensive thing.

Telling the other kids about his inventions, talking about his ideas, opening himself up, it'd always led to ridicule and rejection in the end. He'd dealt with it a different way than Jamie was dealing with his feelings, trying to prove himself to the world, but the feeling of being flawed and awful had driven it.

"So I know sometimes the ones that hide themselves away--sometimes they might be worth knowing. Sometimes it's worth digging a little. I'm not asking you to--to spill your guts to me or anything. But you have to know a little bit about a person to become friends with them."

He shrugged.

"Isn't wanting to be nice to someone and make a friend a good enough reason for something to be important?"

Some of that sounded suspiciously like what Samson had used on him, and he bristled a little, pretending to survey the bins on the shelf and pick out the next one to work on, but when he turned back to the table with his newest distraction he looked as impassive as ever.

"Well, so you know a little bit about me. You know enough that you think I'm worth talking to." He shrugged one shoulder and glanced at Hiccup, as though to say, "isn't that enough?"

"And I'm not hiding. I just don't have a lot to say."

"I guess, but it's hard to be friendly with someone when I feel like I'm not even allowed to ask questions about them."

Jamie mulled that over for a bit, fussing over the parts in the bin. "You can ask," he responded finally. "You just might not like the answers."

Whether that meant Hiccup was going to find out what a terrible human being Jamie really was, or Jamie was simply going to refuse to divulge anything, was a mystery.

"Why so secretive?"

"Same reason anybody's secretive. There's things I don't like talking about."

"Why do you assume everyone wants to dig deep and find out what those things are when they just want want to know what you think about certain things?"

"Because people never seem satisfied with what I tell them," Jamie said, his look flattening a little. "Asking what I think always turns into asking what I feel and when I say I don't want to talk about it, they get pushy."

"Thinking and feeling are kind of closely tied together, but they don't have to be."

He went on, "Like if I asked what you thought of the Command Crew, maybe I'd just want your opinion on it."

Because maybe he'd be interested in it.

Jamie shrugged, a little peevishly, and decided to refrain from mentioning that that hadn't been the kind of thing Hiccup had been asking about earlier, since he didn't want to give the other boy any excuse to revisit his previous inquiries.

"If you're actually asking, then I think Command is probably doing the best it can with what it's got." Namely a faulty ship and a dysfunctional crew.

"Personally, I think so, too, and I'm not just saying that because I'm part of the Council. This is just a mess that we're in, and I don't really know if anyone else could lead us any better."

Not in a situation where they were so extremely, obviously over their heads. Who really could pull them through all this and do a perfect job of it?

"Frankly I think we're lucky to have any kind of governing structure at all, considering the situation and the sheer number of different cultures here. Getting everyone to agree on that much is a miracle in itself. I'm surprised everyone hasn't just split up into little groups looking out for themselves."

He looked contemplative as he picked some stray parts out of one bin to move into another. "Then again, knowing we're apparently the only thing standing between some space bugs and the destruction of all existence is probably a pretty good incentive to try and get along."

"Is it bad to say, as an elected official, that I'm actually really surprised everyone hasn't brutally massacred each other yet? But you're right. The Ohm are a pretty good motivator for a lot of things."

He went on, "Makes you wonder how much about them is true."

"I don't trust much of anything the Daligig or the GIA tell us. Or Stacy." He paused again, reshelving the bin he'd been messing with. "But the Ohm attacked Zokez II without any provocation. A vacation planet full of civilians." As far as they knew, anyway. "That doesn't exactly put them in a good light.

"I know they got some good data out of the last space fight," he added, his tone carefully neutral. "I guess they're sentient. Or something close to it."

"If they are--"

Then he'd killed things like people, right?

He didn't want to think about that.

Besides, didn't they deserve it? Didn't they deserve it after all they'd done, all the people they'd killed, all the worlds they'd destroyed?

"I wonder what could make someone hateful enough to do what they do. What could twist someone so much that they'd just..."

He paused briefly, leaning back in the chair he was sitting, then said, "I know some of the people on the ship want to understand them--one of the other Councilors does especially. But what if we can't? How can something like that even be understood?"

It was like those monsters that spewed acid and nearly killed them. What was there to understand?

Jamie was having the same thoughts. Had been, ever since he'd read the data that had come out of that encounter. It bothered him that he was having to kill anything in self-defense, but the idea that he might be killing sentients was a great deal more troubling, even if they had destroyed entire universes. It was one of those things he tried not to think about.

Then again, he'd been driven to try to kill a sentient creature before, because he was terrified and angry it was going to hurt someone he cared about. Memories of that incident still filled him with equal parts shame and satisfaction; he both regretted the attempt and didn't.

This was another thing he tried not to think about.

He shrugged pensively. "Maybe we did something to piss 'em off," he ventured - quietly, as though he were admitting something uncomfortable. "Maybe other people hurt them, somehow, just by existing. Or maybe they just think we're vermin, like humans look at cockroaches or something." Maybe to the space bugs, everyone else was a creepy-crawlie.

He sighed a little. "I think understanding the Ohm is a long shot. I don't even know if they want to be understood. Or if there's anything worth understanding other than that they just want us all to die. And if that's all there is to it, well...I guess we just keep fighting until it's over."

Which could be tacitly understood to mean "until we're all dead." Because there didn't seem to be much hope of killing off all the Ohm.

"I don't think we should waste a whole lot of time trying to figure it out. Maybe to figure out their tactics and goals, but that's about it."

"Well. Yeah, obviously." Jamie shrugged, his expression inscrutable. "We sort of have to know that kind of stuff if we're going to put up a decent counteroffensive, but..."

He trailed off. If the opportunity arose to have a nice little chat with the Ohm and figure out what they wanted and if there was any way to coexist with a minimum of death and bloodshed, Jamie was all for that. But that was optimistic and, therefore, unrealistic. It didn't really bear discussion.

"They don't make it easy to even figure out that much," he said instead.

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Gift of the Magi (Except with way less situational irony) [closed]

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