[02] Forest Sector

[Kaden]

“You know,” Kaden started as he reclined against the wall. “You can be such a pain.”

He courier wanted to watch Sophia’s double-take, but knew it would ruin the effect. Instead, he let his eyes wander the ceiling of the bunker. It wasn’t particularly interesting, pretty much just concrete, but the spider-web cracks gave him something to trace with his gaze.

“What?” the priestess finally said. Confusion was evident in her voice.

“I try to be alone and you follow me. I try to get some sleep, and you wake me up. Twice. I try to just sit in silence, and you make me talk.”

Leveling his head at Sophia, Kaden held out as long as he could before giving in to a light chuckle. He still had plenty of things to be miserable about, but teasing the girl was too hard to resist. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as realization dawned. She shook her head and fixed the courier with her glare.

“You jerk. That was mean.”

“Oh, sorry. I’ll remember that.”

Letting the mock glare melt off her face, Sophia shook her head at the courier once more. Sadly, Kaden’s smile also quickly faded. His mood had lightened, without doubt, but that was like say there was less sand on the beach because you brought some home in your shoe. Technically true, but woefully insignificant.

It was disheartening how well the courier knew himself. Most of the things that were troubling him would never be properly dealt with. His problems would either be buried or ignored, and that would be the end of it. Eventually he would forget he had anything to feel upset about and he would go on with things. It wasn’t a particularly healthy practice, but bad habits were hard to break.

Unfortunately, Sophia had caught him in the most… vulnerable part of his process: the process of just forgetting. It was usually annoying and whiny and pathetically emo. He definitely didn’t like people to see it, but… he wasn’t about to kick the girl out. Not that she’d listen, anyway.

As Kaden’s eyes wandered over Sophia’s figure, he knew that there were serious problems with his broken system of emotional avoidance. The… side-effects, so to speak, would have to be dealt with some day, but the horrors of that day were not something the courier was really looking forward to. When the priestess cleared her throat very pointedly, the courier snapped out of mental stupor embarrassed that he had basically just been staring.

“I’m homeless,” was the first thing that came out of his mouth.

“… what?”

“You, uh wanted to talk, right?”

“You… want to talk about being homeless?” Sophia considered that for a moment. “I thought you lived outside of West City.”

“Good memory,” Kaden nodded. “I did, yeah. But… I kind of moved.”

“Kind of? How do you kind of move?”

“It’s pretty much the same as normal moving, but you just… don’t have anywhere to go?” Kaden furrowed his brow as he unconvincingly finished his sentence.

“So basically you just left. With nowhere to go. How long have you been homeless?”

“Uhh… a little bit, I guess. It wasn’t really a problem until recently, though. I was… well, there was that whole civil war thing in Central City. Then I got thrown in jail for stopping Belle an—“

“You were in jail?” the priestess looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “For what?”

“Oh… haha… it’s kind of a long story. Basically there was some… property damage and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Kaden had to resist the urge to wince at the horribly abridged version of his recent adventure with Belle. “But it was all cleared up,” he quickly added. “Turns out saving half the city from destruction is barely enough to clear your name.”

“Well… that’s good, I guess.”

“So, when this is all over, I won’t really have anywhere to go.”

That wasn’t entirely true, Kaden knew. Mentioning that he would end up looking for a place marked on a scrap of map by a woman who spoke in riddles for her own entertainment, with nothing else to go on except a coin with the word “Almagest” on it didn’t seem worth the time it would take to explain. Kaden wasn’t even sure he’d be able to.

At the mention of not having anywhere to go, though, the courier couldn’t help but shoot a fleeting glance at the priestess’ halo. He absolutely hated the thought that she would simply be gone once the event was over. There was no possible way for that to seem right to him. She could only be alive during vicious tournaments to the death? What the hell kind of world did they live in? Kaden wanted to say as much to Sophia, but she broke the silence first.

“See? You look better already. You’re even smiling.” The girl tilted her head at the half-smile that had snuck its way onto Kaden’s face. “Almost.”

At that, of course, the courier couldn’t help but smile fully. Talking actually had done him some good. While he wasn’t at one-hundred percent, his surface thought were at least his own once again. It would be nice to be able to look at, say, a rock and not have his mind launch into an epic telling about how the rock really symbolized the corruption and degradation of the human soul as every day was but another step on the long journey towards death that all embarked upon from birth. Or something.

“Given the circumstances,” Sophia continued. “Almost is a pretty good start.”

“Yeah,” Kaden said as he locked eyes with the girl. “A pretty good start.”