Blaze-37 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rekindledtitan) wrote2021-01-25 12:20 am
rekindledtitan) wrote2021-01-25 12:20 am
Entry tags:
Fragment: Dawning Realization
The snow is starting to drift down again, painting over the slick-freezing patches of meltwater, the rucks of churned snow and mud. The scattered armor and the still-smoldering corpse. The alien stars above prick weakly past the warm glow of lantern lights drifting up and away. A solitary point of light descends past them, outshining their glow as the little Ghost returns to his Guardian.
A flicker of shimmering blue light illuminates the snow as he sweeps a scan over the body lying there. Cataloging the damage in a snapshot. Recording the details. The price paid.
Minor abrasions: anterior cranium; right scapular plates.
Superficial burns: face, covering upper mandible and mid-face.
Three (3) inter-plating wounds, non-critical, detailed:
One (1) laceration to anterior throat, fatal, detailed…
Organic contaminant detected: sputum, human-
It takes a moment to see. Another moment to store away in his memory, in the spark of Light at his core. Its twin calls up from the corpse beneath him: he reaches out, kindles it to life again-
Restores.
She sits up in a rush, golden eyes flitting over nothing: he knows once again she’s parsing where and when and who she is. Only a moment. A hand goes to her face, but the warm spatter of contempt is gone: he's already wiped it away. Ghost hovers close, anchored tight by concern as she focuses on him.
“Well,” she says simply, “’least that’s that.”
“...Maybe not.” He tips his shell; her eyes follow his down to a dagger, lying in the snow beside her. It's covered in a pale fluid, catching a shine in the twin glow of their gazes. Blaze pinches the blade between thumb and forefinger as she picks it up. Her brow plates are drawn together.
“She, uh. She really doesn’t listen, does she? I told her this goes no further.” Won’t take the truth for an answer, won’t talk to Steve herself, won’t understand final is final.
“Guess we’ll have to give it back to her.” The blunt matter-of-factness in her tone specifies it’ll be handle-first. They’ve got no further obligation to play along with Amelia’s version of reality.
“Let me store it, Ghost says, and it disappears in a transmat shimmer at her nod. He’ll keep it safe in containment. “Are you… all right?”
“I’m fine, Ghost,” she tells him, of course. “Not the first time I’ve had my throat cut.” She lets out a ‘heh’, adds softly, “Not even the first time it’s been her.”
But this is different, he thinks. The thought aches and grates like rusted wire beneath his shell. Guardians get used to being torn apart, burned, beaten, broken, maimed. But this isn’t the same as fighting a monster for the sake of innocent lives, or a clean fair death in the Crucible, or even the dark dreams she means now. Ghost knows that all violence leaves marks, but all violence isn’t interchangeable.
“You catch much of that?” she asks, looking up at him direct now. Unsure how far away he was hiding.
“No.”
Another nod. Ghost studies her expression: relieved? She pushes to her feet, marches toward the diminished pile of armor nearby. The black parts make a scatter of sharper shadows in the snow. “You didn’t miss much. Steve and Nike?”
“They went back to the Tower a few minutes ago.” He’s known her from the moment of her raising. He’s never heard her say a fight wasn’t worth being there for. “Did you hurt her?”
“Didn’t get a chance. Tossed her around some, set off a steam explosion in proximity- not too close, I guess, I didn’t see any burns. She kinda went to pieces soon as we got up close.”
She unbelts her mark, folds it respectfully before setting it aside. Ghost stares at her back, his points twitching. “…And then she slashed your throat open?”
Blaze shrugs. “Well-“ She lifts the chest-piece, voice muffling a second as she pulls it over her head, “I guess ’having a breakdown’ and ‘violent’ aren’t mutually exclusive.” She stoops, twists round, pulling on greaves, rerebraces, cinching her pauldrons into place. Reassembling the Titan, albeit a little damper.
“Good news is,” she says, hunting down her gauntlets and boots, shaking snow off them, “she wants nothing to do with Steve. Might hassle him anyway, but he can handle himself.” Ghost relaxes a bit. It should be regrettable, another door closing on someone Steve used to care about. Someone who might have been a friend to him again. But after this… Steve has enough dangers to contend with.
There’s no going back to making cocoa and telling stories, a while yet before they have to meet Adia and Caspar. The lights and sounds of the Dawning celebration reflect down the street as they head for Blaze’s preferred bar a block away. It’s quiet, tonight. She steers past the mostly alien clientele to sit at the counter and orders one of the two things on the menu that she’ll drink. Ghost trails along after her.
Her order comes in a thick glass, the liquid inside glowing softly. Ghost doesn’t bother to scan it. Blaze has a few swallows, nurses both the drink and her buzz for a few minutes, deep in her thoughts.
“Are you okay, Ghost?”
His points twitch as he looks up, jolted out of his own ruminations. Where to start? How to give a shape to the things that claw at him? What has he a right to share?
He settles on the guilt. “…We brought Steve to the Tower together. Your decisions were mine, too. If people are angry, we both bear the responsibility, but you’re the one getting hurt.”
“Course I am. I’m your Guardian, remember? That’s what I do.” Her hand closes warm and protective over him, pulling him closer to her chest. “I take the lead, so I take the fire. And there’s no way in the multiverse I’d let you be her next target.” He can feel the warmth rolling gently from her, the fire within burning bright again. The steady whisper of telemetry signals from the sensors in her chestpiece…
“Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about sharing punishment,” Blaze is saying. Sitting on her thoughts has never suited her. Once she’s started talking through them they all come rolling out. “I don’t think that’s what that was, exactly. I mean, that’s what it sounded like. She got hurt and she wanted to knock my head, lay into me for it. Seemed fair to me. Hell, I thought maybe once I’d heard her out she’d even cool off and listen. And you know, I thought… I know what it’s like to be mad at something you can’t do anything about. Sometimes it feels like a fight is the only thing you can win. Even if it’s the wrong one.”
She knocks back the last of her drink, lifts the glass to request another with a frown. “But the way things went out there, none of it sits right. I know it’s Amelia, but that just wasn’t… hey, Ghost, what’s wrong?”
He’s moved away from her, folded in on himself and looking into space. It takes him a minute. “I pulled the audio telemetry from your armor.”
The armor. The armor left sitting ignored and nearby In the darkness as she chased Amelia through her wall of fire. “Oh. Shit. How much did it, uh-?”
“There’s… there’s enough.” The points of his shell are trembling. “The way she talks to you- and…” Blaze leans over him anxiously as he struggles with his words. To process it. To contain himself.
“She talks about Steve as if he’s not even a person.” He can hear his voice shaking. “As if he’s… some thing that belonged to her. She… she doesn’t even care what he would have wanted, or if he wants to find out where he comes from, or what he’s feeling! All… all she talks about is how she’s entitled to know about him. She- she never even asks if he wanted that. And she acts as- as if she’s the only one who- as if we didn’t care about him just as much!”
He shuts his stuttering outburst off, shuddering with a weight of unfamiliar emotion. He’s always the quiet one, the subtle one, the careful word to Blaze’s full-throated challenge. Her eyes don’t leave him as she sits back, lifting a hand for him to bump against for comfort. The barkeeper ventures close enough to set down her order, then beats a hasty slither elsewhere.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Blaze’s voice is rarely so soft. “Amelia wants him hidden away from her, but you’ve been there every single day, watching over him. Keeping it all in, never saying a word. Watching him be someone new.”
“We- we all have,” he points out, quiet with embarrassment. “You, and Thor…”
“Ain’t the same, though. He meant so much to us, but he and you… if you had any more of a connection I’d have been out of a job.” It’s the wrong time to joke, she sees that as soon as he flexes in alarm, and she closes her fingers over him with a low sound of reassurance.
“Hey, it’s okay, I’m kidding.” Mostly. “But if I’d gone first, and you survived… he’d have been the right choice, is all I’m trying to say.” There was a time not long ago when she was sure it would end that way, and if not for Steve… She strokes Ghost’s shell with her thumb, feeling his Light flutter against her palm even through the hardened mesh. “I can’t weigh what Amelia’s feeling; I don’t know her that way. But we both know she’s not the only one whose heart got broken.”
“…He was my second friend, ” he whispers finally, lost for the words to encapsulate all of what he’s feeling, the unspoken truth she’s finally called out.
“First one you didn’t dig up yourself,” she agrees- teasing a little, but it matters. The first friend not bound to him by shared destiny. She was still new when they met Steve. Much less sociable. No fireteam to run with, so new to patrolling populated zones or meeting anyone outside the Tower besides a fellow Guardian - or a hostile alien.
The memory crowds in on her readily: Ghost as he was then, a terminally shy presence at her side, focused so intently on his Guardian alone. He’s gotten quieter since the Fallen took him, quieter again since Steve died. But he’s never gone back to that.
“Kaolin, the others… they were kind. They were my friends because they were yours-” all that mattered to an anxious Ghost protective of their new Guardian, “but Steve made friends with me.”
“You made friends with him,” she points out, slugging her drink.
“...He saw me differently. Not just as your Ghost. Of course he didn’t really know what a Ghost was anyway, but…” She nods; he doesn’t need to explain it to her. “...When I found you, I wasn’t alone for the first time in centuries. You were the end of my Nightmare. But Steve… was something else. He was… special.” Utterly inadequate. Steve was something he doesn’t have the words for. Something he never tried to examine and now it’s too late. Now Steve is another man, one who has a Ghost and it’s not right to say anything, it’s not right to want to get close…
“He carried the Light,” Blaze says solemnly. She pulls her hand back and pokes Ghost gently, snapping him out of it. “Hey. Remember the picture? Get it out for a minute, would you?”
It’s tucked lovingly into the most secure compartment on their ship. Ghost pulls it into the air between them with the whisk of a transmat, and Blaze takes off a gauntlet to unfold it with care. It’s a page out of a sketchbook, pencil lines in a familiar hand. Ghost drifts close to study it with her. The drawing shows two people: a blonde woman in uniform, confident, direct, ready to go toe-to-toe with the world; and behind her, hand on her sleeve, a shorter man. He’s slightly built, half hidden by his companion, but there’s presence in his curious expression as he looks around them, the touch that could be asking reassurance as easily as lending guidance.
“…Steve was always real good at seeing people for who they were.” She can’t help the wry tone. He called this one better than he could have known. “Remember, the man who drew this isn’t gone as long as we honor his example. Keep his legacy alive. And we're gonna do that for him.”
“...Of course we will. We... made a promise.” He's trying to reassure himself. They never back down from their duty. At least… his Titan never would. He has to ask himself if he can really live up to the same. For now, Ghost huddles closer to her, away from the hollow ache he feels. Blaze shifts her arm, making a nook for him while she drinks and he absorbs himself in pencil lines and memories. A respite before the next battle.
He can’t help wondering how Steve would draw them now.
A flicker of shimmering blue light illuminates the snow as he sweeps a scan over the body lying there. Cataloging the damage in a snapshot. Recording the details. The price paid.
Minor abrasions: anterior cranium; right scapular plates.
Superficial burns: face, covering upper mandible and mid-face.
Three (3) inter-plating wounds, non-critical, detailed:
- Puncture, left rear abdomen, above existing scar, penetration to depth…
- Puncture, right clavicle above plating, penetration…
- Puncture, upper left throat…
- Puncture, right clavicle above plating, penetration…
- Puncture, upper left throat…
One (1) laceration to anterior throat, fatal, detailed…
Organic contaminant detected: sputum, human-
It takes a moment to see. Another moment to store away in his memory, in the spark of Light at his core. Its twin calls up from the corpse beneath him: he reaches out, kindles it to life again-
Restores.
She sits up in a rush, golden eyes flitting over nothing: he knows once again she’s parsing where and when and who she is. Only a moment. A hand goes to her face, but the warm spatter of contempt is gone: he's already wiped it away. Ghost hovers close, anchored tight by concern as she focuses on him.
“Well,” she says simply, “’least that’s that.”
“...Maybe not.” He tips his shell; her eyes follow his down to a dagger, lying in the snow beside her. It's covered in a pale fluid, catching a shine in the twin glow of their gazes. Blaze pinches the blade between thumb and forefinger as she picks it up. Her brow plates are drawn together.
“She, uh. She really doesn’t listen, does she? I told her this goes no further.” Won’t take the truth for an answer, won’t talk to Steve herself, won’t understand final is final.
“Guess we’ll have to give it back to her.” The blunt matter-of-factness in her tone specifies it’ll be handle-first. They’ve got no further obligation to play along with Amelia’s version of reality.
“Let me store it, Ghost says, and it disappears in a transmat shimmer at her nod. He’ll keep it safe in containment. “Are you… all right?”
“I’m fine, Ghost,” she tells him, of course. “Not the first time I’ve had my throat cut.” She lets out a ‘heh’, adds softly, “Not even the first time it’s been her.”
But this is different, he thinks. The thought aches and grates like rusted wire beneath his shell. Guardians get used to being torn apart, burned, beaten, broken, maimed. But this isn’t the same as fighting a monster for the sake of innocent lives, or a clean fair death in the Crucible, or even the dark dreams she means now. Ghost knows that all violence leaves marks, but all violence isn’t interchangeable.
“You catch much of that?” she asks, looking up at him direct now. Unsure how far away he was hiding.
“No.”
Another nod. Ghost studies her expression: relieved? She pushes to her feet, marches toward the diminished pile of armor nearby. The black parts make a scatter of sharper shadows in the snow. “You didn’t miss much. Steve and Nike?”
“They went back to the Tower a few minutes ago.” He’s known her from the moment of her raising. He’s never heard her say a fight wasn’t worth being there for. “Did you hurt her?”
“Didn’t get a chance. Tossed her around some, set off a steam explosion in proximity- not too close, I guess, I didn’t see any burns. She kinda went to pieces soon as we got up close.”
She unbelts her mark, folds it respectfully before setting it aside. Ghost stares at her back, his points twitching. “…And then she slashed your throat open?”
Blaze shrugs. “Well-“ She lifts the chest-piece, voice muffling a second as she pulls it over her head, “I guess ’having a breakdown’ and ‘violent’ aren’t mutually exclusive.” She stoops, twists round, pulling on greaves, rerebraces, cinching her pauldrons into place. Reassembling the Titan, albeit a little damper.
“Good news is,” she says, hunting down her gauntlets and boots, shaking snow off them, “she wants nothing to do with Steve. Might hassle him anyway, but he can handle himself.” Ghost relaxes a bit. It should be regrettable, another door closing on someone Steve used to care about. Someone who might have been a friend to him again. But after this… Steve has enough dangers to contend with.
There’s no going back to making cocoa and telling stories, a while yet before they have to meet Adia and Caspar. The lights and sounds of the Dawning celebration reflect down the street as they head for Blaze’s preferred bar a block away. It’s quiet, tonight. She steers past the mostly alien clientele to sit at the counter and orders one of the two things on the menu that she’ll drink. Ghost trails along after her.
Her order comes in a thick glass, the liquid inside glowing softly. Ghost doesn’t bother to scan it. Blaze has a few swallows, nurses both the drink and her buzz for a few minutes, deep in her thoughts.
“Are you okay, Ghost?”
His points twitch as he looks up, jolted out of his own ruminations. Where to start? How to give a shape to the things that claw at him? What has he a right to share?
He settles on the guilt. “…We brought Steve to the Tower together. Your decisions were mine, too. If people are angry, we both bear the responsibility, but you’re the one getting hurt.”
“Course I am. I’m your Guardian, remember? That’s what I do.” Her hand closes warm and protective over him, pulling him closer to her chest. “I take the lead, so I take the fire. And there’s no way in the multiverse I’d let you be her next target.” He can feel the warmth rolling gently from her, the fire within burning bright again. The steady whisper of telemetry signals from the sensors in her chestpiece…
“Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about sharing punishment,” Blaze is saying. Sitting on her thoughts has never suited her. Once she’s started talking through them they all come rolling out. “I don’t think that’s what that was, exactly. I mean, that’s what it sounded like. She got hurt and she wanted to knock my head, lay into me for it. Seemed fair to me. Hell, I thought maybe once I’d heard her out she’d even cool off and listen. And you know, I thought… I know what it’s like to be mad at something you can’t do anything about. Sometimes it feels like a fight is the only thing you can win. Even if it’s the wrong one.”
She knocks back the last of her drink, lifts the glass to request another with a frown. “But the way things went out there, none of it sits right. I know it’s Amelia, but that just wasn’t… hey, Ghost, what’s wrong?”
He’s moved away from her, folded in on himself and looking into space. It takes him a minute. “I pulled the audio telemetry from your armor.”
The armor. The armor left sitting ignored and nearby In the darkness as she chased Amelia through her wall of fire. “Oh. Shit. How much did it, uh-?”
“There’s… there’s enough.” The points of his shell are trembling. “The way she talks to you- and…” Blaze leans over him anxiously as he struggles with his words. To process it. To contain himself.
“She talks about Steve as if he’s not even a person.” He can hear his voice shaking. “As if he’s… some thing that belonged to her. She… she doesn’t even care what he would have wanted, or if he wants to find out where he comes from, or what he’s feeling! All… all she talks about is how she’s entitled to know about him. She- she never even asks if he wanted that. And she acts as- as if she’s the only one who- as if we didn’t care about him just as much!”
He shuts his stuttering outburst off, shuddering with a weight of unfamiliar emotion. He’s always the quiet one, the subtle one, the careful word to Blaze’s full-throated challenge. Her eyes don’t leave him as she sits back, lifting a hand for him to bump against for comfort. The barkeeper ventures close enough to set down her order, then beats a hasty slither elsewhere.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Blaze’s voice is rarely so soft. “Amelia wants him hidden away from her, but you’ve been there every single day, watching over him. Keeping it all in, never saying a word. Watching him be someone new.”
“We- we all have,” he points out, quiet with embarrassment. “You, and Thor…”
“Ain’t the same, though. He meant so much to us, but he and you… if you had any more of a connection I’d have been out of a job.” It’s the wrong time to joke, she sees that as soon as he flexes in alarm, and she closes her fingers over him with a low sound of reassurance.
“Hey, it’s okay, I’m kidding.” Mostly. “But if I’d gone first, and you survived… he’d have been the right choice, is all I’m trying to say.” There was a time not long ago when she was sure it would end that way, and if not for Steve… She strokes Ghost’s shell with her thumb, feeling his Light flutter against her palm even through the hardened mesh. “I can’t weigh what Amelia’s feeling; I don’t know her that way. But we both know she’s not the only one whose heart got broken.”
“…He was my second friend, ” he whispers finally, lost for the words to encapsulate all of what he’s feeling, the unspoken truth she’s finally called out.
“First one you didn’t dig up yourself,” she agrees- teasing a little, but it matters. The first friend not bound to him by shared destiny. She was still new when they met Steve. Much less sociable. No fireteam to run with, so new to patrolling populated zones or meeting anyone outside the Tower besides a fellow Guardian - or a hostile alien.
The memory crowds in on her readily: Ghost as he was then, a terminally shy presence at her side, focused so intently on his Guardian alone. He’s gotten quieter since the Fallen took him, quieter again since Steve died. But he’s never gone back to that.
“Kaolin, the others… they were kind. They were my friends because they were yours-” all that mattered to an anxious Ghost protective of their new Guardian, “but Steve made friends with me.”
“You made friends with him,” she points out, slugging her drink.
“...He saw me differently. Not just as your Ghost. Of course he didn’t really know what a Ghost was anyway, but…” She nods; he doesn’t need to explain it to her. “...When I found you, I wasn’t alone for the first time in centuries. You were the end of my Nightmare. But Steve… was something else. He was… special.” Utterly inadequate. Steve was something he doesn’t have the words for. Something he never tried to examine and now it’s too late. Now Steve is another man, one who has a Ghost and it’s not right to say anything, it’s not right to want to get close…
“He carried the Light,” Blaze says solemnly. She pulls her hand back and pokes Ghost gently, snapping him out of it. “Hey. Remember the picture? Get it out for a minute, would you?”
It’s tucked lovingly into the most secure compartment on their ship. Ghost pulls it into the air between them with the whisk of a transmat, and Blaze takes off a gauntlet to unfold it with care. It’s a page out of a sketchbook, pencil lines in a familiar hand. Ghost drifts close to study it with her. The drawing shows two people: a blonde woman in uniform, confident, direct, ready to go toe-to-toe with the world; and behind her, hand on her sleeve, a shorter man. He’s slightly built, half hidden by his companion, but there’s presence in his curious expression as he looks around them, the touch that could be asking reassurance as easily as lending guidance.
“…Steve was always real good at seeing people for who they were.” She can’t help the wry tone. He called this one better than he could have known. “Remember, the man who drew this isn’t gone as long as we honor his example. Keep his legacy alive. And we're gonna do that for him.”
“...Of course we will. We... made a promise.” He's trying to reassure himself. They never back down from their duty. At least… his Titan never would. He has to ask himself if he can really live up to the same. For now, Ghost huddles closer to her, away from the hollow ache he feels. Blaze shifts her arm, making a nook for him while she drinks and he absorbs himself in pencil lines and memories. A respite before the next battle.
He can’t help wondering how Steve would draw them now.
Meanwhile, outside...
He does, however, glance at Siri as they walk, shooting her a silent message in private.
//If you encounter Amelia Ronsam again... don't let her get you into any position where she has a shot at you. Any chance to separate you from Steve.//
Re: Meanwhile, outside...
"Something easy. Sandwich if Mina's place is open this far past sunset. I don't know about you two but I'm beat." Watching kids and meeting New-Old friends (and some who weren't so friendly) has been exhausting in a way that running patrols out in the Cosmodrome just hasn't been. He wants to sit down and...maybe clean his weapons.
Steve's a little afraid of what might come out if he put pen to paper tonight to draw.
Siri comes to a full stop rather than answering Steve right away. At first Ghost won't get anything in reply back from her except a sharp burst of garbage data that's as grating as a squawk if she'd verbalized. Belatedly she bobs and gives Steve a distracted noise of agreement.
//What? What exactly happened back there? She knows to target ghosts? She would actually try to?!//
no subject
His gaze drops, flits back to Siri for a moment. //I hope it won't. But I don't know.//
And a Ghost is a much easier target than an armored Titan. To say nothing of the fact that a relative stranger would be easier for Amelia to hurt than any iteration of Steve.
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Siri doesn't even respond right away which says all Steve needs to know about them discussing things without him. He's making such a face unseen right now but isn't about to interrupt and demand answers. They deserve their privacy, it's just irritating when they whisper behind his back.
//Well thank the Traveler a thug like that isn't looking to make friends with Steve again. She tries to take a shot at ME and there's going to be reports filed before she can blink. We've got an entire station of Guardians operating out of there. The Vanguard deserve to know if we're apt to lose Guardians doing so.//
Siri hasn't come this far and waited this long for a Guardian to lose it because of an emotionally unstable human in some weird pocket dimension that isn't even the place they're so focused on protecting. She'll take action if no one else will. She'll have Amelia Ronsam put on a watch list and steered clear of Guardian activity if that's what needs to happen.
//She should already have been removed as a threat, you realize.//
no subject
"Sorry, Steve. We were just... distracted. I'm afraid I still don't know much about where people eat in the Tower. It didn't really come up before."
//She's a civilian, and so far Blaze is the only person she's actively threatened. Blaze believes the threat is over.// He can't be so complacent, especially out there in the Nexus. For most people in the City, harming a Ghost is roughly on par with harming a child. Maybe worse, depending on perspective. But both he and Siri have seen enough of their brothers and sisters die to know plenty of people outside the walls have no such compunctions.
//I don't want to alarm you too much. The Nexus anti-violence field would make it difficult for her to strike you directly in any case. I just needed to warn you not to give her that chance. If my Guardian is wrong, I don't want us to find out the hard way.//
no subject
Siri barely gives her Guardian more than a glance. He'll be fine and this is information that could protect him. Besides, once he gets a meal in him he'll forget all about it.
//I don't care if she's the Nexus' Speaker, that's sick and you know it.// Losing their own to the many enemies of Earth is one thing. Losing them to the very people they're trying to protect is twisted and Wrong in every sense. //I'm not going to hold my data packets on her keeping away either, despite her asking for no contact. She won't catch me by surprise.//
no subject
Certainly it's a lot happier than the tradition of Ghosts making the quiet choice to do what's necessary for themselves and their Guardians.
//I agree. And I understand. We didn't want to pull Steve into the conflict, but you should do whatever you think is best to protect yourself. And to protect him.//
no subject
The mention of a concert though has Steve perking up a bit. He's not had much chance to see the softer sides of their culture much yet. He's caught a few people dancing together in the commons before but then there was no music to go along with it. "I think I'd like to see that."
"Just so long as you don't go humming along afterward for the next six weeks. You think it's a pain to get a tune out of Your head..." Siri's not really grumbling though. It's a relief to see Steve start to relax again. If he's relaxed he's not asking her questions. Siri doesn't have the answers to those yet. She needs time to process everything they've learned tonight. Either on purpose, or from drunks, or now from Ghost.
no subject
With Guardians dropping in and taking off at all hours, and the Tower keeping a constant vigil, there are parts of their home that never really sleep. With the Dawning underway the social areas have a relaxed hubbub going on late into the evening; while many of the stalls have closed up there's a stand selling hot samsas stuffed with festively spiced meat and vegetables. The elderly man working the tandoor is more than happy to parcel up a few for the young Titan - eat them up, Titan, they'll make you strong, eh?
no subject
His detour up to the commons isn't for naught, either. Lucking out to find some hot savory meal options will make the young titan nearly light on his feet to hurry and get in line for. Blaze has made sure he's always had enough glimmer to feed himself well (really she's given him more than he needs but she doesn't exactly know what food costs reliably) despite his not having much in the way of work underneath his mark yet. He's grateful to the man making the food and quick to wish him an earnest 'Happy Dawning!' before leading the ghosts back toward his assigned quarters.
"I can't wait to get back home to tear into these..." Siri was right about one thing. Steve's forgotten all about his huffiness over the Ghosts keeping secrets from him with the promise of hot food and a spot of entertainment only minutes away now.