motivation | AD ASTRA 🚀 INBOX

[ dutch has been too angry to be tired for most of recent history, but there are things she's tired of, things she's sick of, things she figures she deserves a break from. things she figured she wouldn't get a break from, but —she's here. it's not what she'd have chosen for herself because she didn't choose at all and she's sick of not getting to do that, of not getting choices, too, but —

well. she's still here and there's alcohol and a cute guy's lips twisting like that. her own curl upward in response, not rueful in the least but with well-practiced cockiness. ]

The best.

Got a pretty high opinion of yourself, don't you.

[ bellamy doesn't sound chiding about it, though: just amused, half-pleased, while he takes another sip of that strange alien liquor. he's still shaking off the dust, trying to remember what it felt like to grin at gina over a table in the arkadia mess hall, what it's like to be friendly and flirt instead of just focus on the day-to-day logistics of survival. the woman beside him is radiating self-assurance, cockiness, and god help him but that's the kind of attitude he always enjoys most. women who give as good as they get, who refuse to back down. ]

That what you always wanted to do, back where you came from?

[ he'd always wanted to be a guard; had grown up pushing himself hard, training day-in and day-out to accomplish it, before it was all ripped away from him and he'd gone plummeting back down, knocked right off that pedestal. ]

[ she considers that for a moment, lips curling upward again. ] Not too high. [ the confidence is well-deserved. and it's a pleasure to let herself fall into it again, because it isn't something she's felt a lot of lately, between d'avin leaving and getting herself locked in a cryo-pod by her mother/grandmother/it's-complicated, all the shit that's gone down as of late. it's a pleasure to hear that note of dry amusement in his tone. ]

No. [ she shrugs. ] I wanted to be a princess.

[ that's not actually a lie, although she'd wanted to marry a prince mainly to get out of the harem, to get away from khlyen. really, she'd wanted to be a child. maybe a dancer.

so she shrugs, after a moment. ] Or a dancer.

[ princess. that one word, that accidental reminder, is somehow the last thing he expected to hear and it's like raw voltage plugged into his nerves. bellamy's face flickers in surprise. looking to you, princess.

and then dutch's second answer makes another one of the bricks in the metaphorical wall tumble away, accidentally shaking something loose. there's a flash of vulnerability in bellamy's face, and those dark thoughtful eyes which always reveal a bit too much. ]

My sister likes— liked— dancing. Me, I'm kinda shit at it.

[ his gaze drops down to his drink for another moment, before lingering on the restrained strength in dutch's movements, the effortless way she carries herself. it's a nice distraction. she's a pretty nice distraction. ]

You look like you'd be a pretty good one, though. Dancer or princess, either/or.

[ his eyes are dark like her own and, for a moment, vulnerable. dutch doesn't want to see that vulnerability there, doesn't want the reminder of how deeply other people feel. it either drags up sympathetic memories of her own vulnerabilities or makes her feel --defective for the way that khlyen taught her to turn her emotions of, hardened her, turned her into the weapon she is today.

it doesn't last, at least. (it still tugs at her, making her itch for --something. a distraction, maybe.) ]

Never made it as a dancer, but I was queen for a day.

[ she studies him for a moment, letting her gaze linger, letting her lips curl up. she's a pretty nice distraction; so is he. could be even nicer, though. ]

How shit are you, then?

[ he's better at biting back his reaction this time, letting it just bounce off him. he thinks back to one of those last parties at arkadia: pounding bass through his bones and jasper drinking and bellamy standing warily at the edge of all the festivities, holding himself apart from the others even while a girl tried to drape herself over him, asking him to dance. his stiff reluctance before he finally joined them in the drinking, at least.

so he laughs, shakes his head in answer. ]

Really shit. You'd have to get me a hell of a lot drunker than this to show off my moves. Someday, though, maybe.

[ it's not entirely a shutdown, instead something of a promise, and he raises his glass in another toast before draining the rest of the drink. ]

What was it like being queen for a day? I was king of a pack of idiots for, like, a few weeks. Not the same at all.

[ it's strange thinking back on it, the power he'd once wielded, the nickname he'd accidentally picked up from murphy. i think the princess is dead, but i know the king's about to die, so who's really going to lead these people, huh? ]

Pretty sure there's at least one more bottle of whatever this is behind the bar. [ but the quip is just that, accompanied by a grin that's all teasing. she's not going to push him to dance if he doesn't want to —and maybe it's better if they don't. dancing is more intimate than sex, as far as dutch is concerned. ]

Well, I wore a pretty, pretty dress.

[ and then her husband had promptly gotten himself murdered, their wedding his death sentence, and she'd run away in the spaceship that'd been her wedding gift together with the thief who'd been trying to steal the ship at the time, who'd become her moral compass and her gravity. ]

Sounds like it comes with territory. How about a crown?

[ his closest concept of actual royalty, apart from reading old stories, is grounder society: the tangled teeth and bone and antlers of roan's crown. ]

Only for a little while.

[ it had been closer to the royalty of old stories than to that of grounder society, but it had ended quickly and with blood. ]

[ he's set his drink down on the bar without quite realising it, his fingers restlessly turning the glass, fidgeting just to have something to do with his hands. he obviously doesn't know dutch well enough yet, but there's something to her clipped responses that makes him wonder. like how other certain subjects are bound to make him clam up and go tight-lipped (his mother, his sister, the blood on his hands). ]

We can talk about something else, by the way. If this topic isn't great.

[ it's a sore subject. it isn't great. but the suggestion that it isn't, the fact that she's been obvious enough for him to pick up on it, that doesn't quite sit right with dutch, either. (if people find weaknesses, if people know about these things, what's to stop them from abusing them? from turning her weaknesses against her, using them as weapons?

it's a dark way to look at the world, maybe, but it's what khlyen taught her. johnny's proof that not everyone will use her soft spots against her, but then, she doesn't know bellamy like she knows johnny.)

she shrugs. ] It was because of an arranged marriage that didn't last long.

[ both of those statements are true. neither of those statements really capture why the memory still hurts to this day. ]

[ it had been a small thing, not a huge tell: just dutch's answers getting shorter, shearing off the words, doling out the bare minimum. bellamy might be all heart and less brain, but that means he's used to watching other people, listening to them, walking on eggshells around the ark's law enforcement and watching for the volatile shifts of their moods.

and he knows what it's like to have details in your history you don't want others to dig into. and so he doesn't pry; just nods, accepting, and refills their drinks. ]

Tell me about your favourite bounty instead.

[ a blunt segue, maybe, but it's the best he's got when his tongue's already loose on this inhumanly-bright liquor. and so the conversation shifts back to safer territory: RAC (mis)adventures, swapping stories, bellamy drinking up dutch's tales like he's listening to a penny dreadful from the holovids.

it's a good enough way to spend an hour on a ship headed to nowhere, talking and drinking and whiling away the time and getting to know each other. ]

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& closed, or yours to wrap!