Her tone makes it easier. No pretending this is anything other than a quick transactional meeting. Their encounter can be exactly as it appears on the surface.
"Just dropping off my survey," he says, brief, as he balances himself against the desk to fish it out of his satchel. He passes it over. FELIX J. GAETA, the survey reads along the top in handwriting so neat it practically looks typed. Considering the whole town was underwater for half the month, he didn't have much to say, but for the sake of his stipend he gamely did his best.
The extremely, extremely catty part of him has the urge to ask for a pen so he can add, overall, satisfactory except for getting my throat cut, but -- what would be the point besides needless antagonism he doesn't even truly feel? Eventually, everyone figured out that the only way to escape the hive was by dying. This woman just figured it out sooner and helped him along.
Taking the paper from him, she notes the name, commits it to memory. Gaeta, huh - Zivia or someone else must have handled his initial paperwork. That would explain why the name doesn't ring any bells. But an answered file means things to mark down, and that she can do almost automatically.
"Are you feeling better now?"
Despite everything, the question is genuine. Perhaps that makes it worse, that after everything, she wants to know that.
"Side effects? Apart from...?" Fever awkwardly gestures at her neck.
Involuntarily, Gaeta makes a strangled noise that sounds like a hysterical laugh caught halfway up his throat. It blends into a cough he stifles against his shoulder. This is a level of surreal he did not anticipate when he stepped off the ferry, which is saying a lot considering all the ghosts, demons, gods, and... whatever.
"No, aside from having to get the bugs bled out of me and spending a whole day as a ghost, I'm fine," he says. Dry as it might be, he can't muster up any real rancor. "At least floating around the ship was easier than walking."
It might be surreal, but it's what one has to handle when the dead don't stay down. She doesn't know how to navigate this conversation any more than he does, and it's why she just ends up blurting out her next sentences.
"Look, just to clear the air, I don't have some particular grudge against you or anything. Weird as it sounds, I really did want to help you."
He'd just been the confirmation that death was a cure. And at the same time, an utter indulgence that had been one bite to something starving.
Gaeta pauses, then sighs. His shoulders slump an inch.
"Yeah." A placeholder acknowledgement as he tries to sort his thoughts. "I, ah. I wish there had been another way to pull us out of the hive. I'm glad you figured it out, gods I'm glad, if I were still on that ship I..."
Well, he wouldn't have done anything, he knows. That was the point of the hive. He would have been a good little worker, a steadfast soldier, unable to comprehend anything was amiss. Gaeta swallows; rubs his forehead.
"I don't like being tricked," he says finally. "I don't know what else you could have done, but it's -- been a lot to process."
Her eyes flick down, accepting the words without bringing up that it had worked, so who cares about the trick involved - the methods, she reminds herself, do matter. But neither can she really apologize for it.
"Two lines of thought behind it. The first is that if I'd tried to do it then and there, I don't think the others would have taken kindly to it. Me versus everyone, I'd just end up like you. And the second?"
Fever's eyes look back up.
"Thought it'd give you a little more dignity if it wasn't public."
Him some dignity. Her the acidic tang of knowing she'd pulled the trick off. It's kind, as much an unwarranted mercy kill can be, which is only so little.
Gaeta nods. "Like I said." Quiet. "I don't know what else you could have done."
He draws a breath, trying to straighten up. "And I appreciate you trying to grant me some dignity, if that's also part of why. As much as you could when, um. You were stabbing me."
Oh gods he can feel that hysterical laugh trying to escape again.
"Besides, it meant the frakking bugs couldn't trick me anymore, so I guess it evens out."
"Didn't realize it'd leave a mark, though. Sorry about that."
That, at least, she can apologize for. There's another awkward pause, because she hasn't had to do this. Or in this order. She has a feeling that perhaps I promise I won't kill you without really good reason won't go over well.
"Gods, this is...can we start over? My name's Fever, I should have led with that."
Gaeta does finally sputter a weak laugh at that -- not because of Fever's name, but at the acknowledgement of just how blindingly awkward this is for both of them, and how mundane it feels. Yup, just two small-town neighbors bumping into each other at Town Hall after an embarrassing murder!
"Felix," he says, and shifts enough to offer her a hand. "Felix Gaeta. And honestly I can't complain if all I got out of it was a new scar."
"Wouldn't blame you if you did. I half thought you were coming in here to do so."
A handshake clears the air - at the least, they can acknowlege that it isn't normal. It's not like Dimitri, who'd all but asked her for it, who'd been overjoyed to be free.
"Right, so the survey - the good news is that the flood didn't completely put us out of commission, so there shouldn't be any delays in processing. That said, I know a few people if your work or home needs another set of hands to get back on its feet."
One of the benefits of working at the desk like this is becoming apparent - you start understanding who might be free to do what. Or at the least, she can make inquiries. Kind of the least she can do for him.
"Oh -- that'd be very helpful," says Gaeta, relieved enough to temporarily forget the awkwardness. "Thank you. I'm on the ground floor, so -- well, the top floors had water damage, too, everything did, but I'm pretty sure half the furniture in the apartment now isn't even mine."
"...2E," she admits. Before the tension can set in again, she barrels on.
"I was already planning on changing some things in the place, but I would have liked to have had a choice in when I started all that business. Definitely know what you're talking about, and I know who's already offered to start helping."
They'll be able to fix up Gaeta's apartment to more or less how it was, but the furniture that is his can be relocated where he wants. And while they're around, they might even be able to help with the trickier bits.
...Oh. They're neighbors. He might bump into his murderer the next time he picks up his newspaper in the morning. Great.
Stop it, he tells himself firmly, and follows Fever's lead as she keeps the subject moving.
"If you want a spare couch or armchair when you're redecorating, and you don't mind the water stains, feel free," he says, too dry to be anything but a joke. "I, ah... I hadn't done much of anything before the flood. I wasn't planning to, aside from fixing the cabinets. Lieutenant Tayrey -- you know her? She loaned me some tools, but maybe whoever you've got on standby could use them better than I could, whenever they come over."
Her expression brightens a little at the name on reflex.
"Tayrey's one of my comrades. A friend."
If she knows Gaeta, enough to offer out tools to him, then it speaks high enough of him. And will complicate things down the line, naturally, but Fever's never known a relationship she hasn't somehow made at least mildly messy, except the grocer.
"Just tell them what needs doing when they arrive. One of them is practically bursting out of his skin to do something useful in a way he couldn't back there."
While Gaeta isn't quite at the point of any friend of Tayrey's is a friend of mine, -- especially considering, well, everything -- he can't help but relax a touch, as if on reflex as well. He knows the weight of Tayrey calling someone comrade, and knows she doesn't trust easily. Maybe, if nothing else, Fever was being honest about the murder: no grudges, nothing personal, just a genuine desire to help him in an impossible situation.
(Maybe he doesn't have to worry so much about it happening again.)
"I get that," he says with a small laugh. "Hard not to go stir-crazy when there's nothing to do. I'll let them know as soon as they're there -- thanks."
A brief pause follows; when he starts again, some of the awkwardness is back. "And, ah, I won't tell Tayrey about..." He gestures to his throat, just as awkward. "If you don't want me to. She's a good friend, too, so..."
He'll give Fever the first chance to broach that subject with her, if and when she chooses.
Her expression grows more serious again, somber, before she shakes her head slowly.
"You needn't lie for me. If she doesn't ask you, then there isn't a need to drag it into her view before I do. But if she does, then be honest and straightforward, as she deserves. I'm willing to talk to her, to explain what occurred the same way as I did to you - and I did do it, I will never claim otherwise."
She had once pressed Tayrey into an intellectual corner, arguing about owning one's actions. Hopefully, her friend will know that this is something Fever owns of herself, as twisted and distorted as it is. The same way she has to claim every other corpse by her hands.
"Glad to hear you and her are friends, though. She's someone who deserves as many as she can get."
If she said what she really thought, that Ari has been through enough pain, and that she's glad that the commander's making new friends because of how nervous she had been before, after everything? She's pretty sure Ari would be aghast at her personal suffering being talked about. If Tayrey ever trusts Gaeta to tell him herself, then, he'll know what Fever means.
Gaeta nods agreement. "She wouldn't be friends with either of us if she didn't trust us to be honest with her," he says. "That's -- more what I meant. That I wouldn't say anything unless she asked, directly, or before you had a chance to tell her yourself."
It'll hurt Tayrey whenever it comes out that one of her friends killed the other, even if it was a necessary act. Gaeta wants to spare her that pain as much as possible.
"And yeah. She does. I, ah, I don't know all the details, but I don't need to." He shrugs, a little. "Just that it's good she has people now."
Truthfully, she doesn't want Tayrey to ever know. She wants to keep this between them, especially when she can still remember how he looked as he died, how his still cooling corpse fell on the floor. The ecstasy of murder, of snatching his life away and tearing into the body, the way her body aches to not have such a rush right now. A need, not a want. But she must pull herself back. Shake off the slavering desires that always claw in her, out of the mess and brine, and come back to him at present. Breathe. Listen to the quiet, Daisy had said.
"Yeah. She's steadfast, and - did you know she flies in space?"
It's a jump, but she's trying to not dwell on the murder, not linger in those memories, lest she feel the urge possess her again.
"I didn't know it was possible in a world without magic, but goes to show what I know."
"I did," he says. "That's how we got to be friends. I was stationed in space, too -- not the same world as her, not even, ah, the same principles of spaceflight as her, as far as I can tell, but. I'm formerly of the battlestar Galactica."
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"Just dropping off my survey," he says, brief, as he balances himself against the desk to fish it out of his satchel. He passes it over. FELIX J. GAETA, the survey reads along the top in handwriting so neat it practically looks typed. Considering the whole town was underwater for half the month, he didn't have much to say, but for the sake of his stipend he gamely did his best.
The extremely, extremely catty part of him has the urge to ask for a pen so he can add, overall, satisfactory except for getting my throat cut, but -- what would be the point besides needless antagonism he doesn't even truly feel? Eventually, everyone figured out that the only way to escape the hive was by dying. This woman just figured it out sooner and helped him along.
(Dee would've thought it was hilarious, though.)
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"Are you feeling better now?"
Despite everything, the question is genuine. Perhaps that makes it worse, that after everything, she wants to know that.
"Side effects? Apart from...?" Fever awkwardly gestures at her neck.
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"No, aside from having to get the bugs bled out of me and spending a whole day as a ghost, I'm fine," he says. Dry as it might be, he can't muster up any real rancor. "At least floating around the ship was easier than walking."
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It might be surreal, but it's what one has to handle when the dead don't stay down. She doesn't know how to navigate this conversation any more than he does, and it's why she just ends up blurting out her next sentences.
"Look, just to clear the air, I don't have some particular grudge against you or anything. Weird as it sounds, I really did want to help you."
He'd just been the confirmation that death was a cure. And at the same time, an utter indulgence that had been one bite to something starving.
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"Yeah." A placeholder acknowledgement as he tries to sort his thoughts. "I, ah. I wish there had been another way to pull us out of the hive. I'm glad you figured it out, gods I'm glad, if I were still on that ship I..."
Well, he wouldn't have done anything, he knows. That was the point of the hive. He would have been a good little worker, a steadfast soldier, unable to comprehend anything was amiss. Gaeta swallows; rubs his forehead.
"I don't like being tricked," he says finally. "I don't know what else you could have done, but it's -- been a lot to process."
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"Two lines of thought behind it. The first is that if I'd tried to do it then and there, I don't think the others would have taken kindly to it. Me versus everyone, I'd just end up like you. And the second?"
Fever's eyes look back up.
"Thought it'd give you a little more dignity if it wasn't public."
Him some dignity. Her the acidic tang of knowing she'd pulled the trick off. It's kind, as much an unwarranted mercy kill can be, which is only so little.
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He draws a breath, trying to straighten up. "And I appreciate you trying to grant me some dignity, if that's also part of why. As much as you could when, um. You were stabbing me."
Oh gods he can feel that hysterical laugh trying to escape again.
"Besides, it meant the frakking bugs couldn't trick me anymore, so I guess it evens out."
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That, at least, she can apologize for. There's another awkward pause, because she hasn't had to do this. Or in this order. She has a feeling that perhaps I promise I won't kill you without really good reason won't go over well.
"Gods, this is...can we start over? My name's Fever, I should have led with that."
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"Felix," he says, and shifts enough to offer her a hand. "Felix Gaeta. And honestly I can't complain if all I got out of it was a new scar."
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A handshake clears the air - at the least, they can acknowlege that it isn't normal. It's not like Dimitri, who'd all but asked her for it, who'd been overjoyed to be free.
"Right, so the survey - the good news is that the flood didn't completely put us out of commission, so there shouldn't be any delays in processing. That said, I know a few people if your work or home needs another set of hands to get back on its feet."
One of the benefits of working at the desk like this is becoming apparent - you start understanding who might be free to do what. Or at the least, she can make inquiries. Kind of the least she can do for him.
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And if the cabinets needed repair before, well.
"I'm in the complex on Goldleaf. Apartment 1C."
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"I was already planning on changing some things in the place, but I would have liked to have had a choice in when I started all that business. Definitely know what you're talking about, and I know who's already offered to start helping."
They'll be able to fix up Gaeta's apartment to more or less how it was, but the furniture that is his can be relocated where he wants. And while they're around, they might even be able to help with the trickier bits.
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Stop it, he tells himself firmly, and follows Fever's lead as she keeps the subject moving.
"If you want a spare couch or armchair when you're redecorating, and you don't mind the water stains, feel free," he says, too dry to be anything but a joke. "I, ah... I hadn't done much of anything before the flood. I wasn't planning to, aside from fixing the cabinets. Lieutenant Tayrey -- you know her? She loaned me some tools, but maybe whoever you've got on standby could use them better than I could, whenever they come over."
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"Tayrey's one of my comrades. A friend."
If she knows Gaeta, enough to offer out tools to him, then it speaks high enough of him. And will complicate things down the line, naturally, but Fever's never known a relationship she hasn't somehow made at least mildly messy, except the grocer.
"Just tell them what needs doing when they arrive. One of them is practically bursting out of his skin to do something useful in a way he couldn't back there."
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(Maybe he doesn't have to worry so much about it happening again.)
"I get that," he says with a small laugh. "Hard not to go stir-crazy when there's nothing to do. I'll let them know as soon as they're there -- thanks."
A brief pause follows; when he starts again, some of the awkwardness is back. "And, ah, I won't tell Tayrey about..." He gestures to his throat, just as awkward. "If you don't want me to. She's a good friend, too, so..."
He'll give Fever the first chance to broach that subject with her, if and when she chooses.
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Her expression grows more serious again, somber, before she shakes her head slowly.
"You needn't lie for me. If she doesn't ask you, then there isn't a need to drag it into her view before I do. But if she does, then be honest and straightforward, as she deserves. I'm willing to talk to her, to explain what occurred the same way as I did to you - and I did do it, I will never claim otherwise."
She had once pressed Tayrey into an intellectual corner, arguing about owning one's actions. Hopefully, her friend will know that this is something Fever owns of herself, as twisted and distorted as it is. The same way she has to claim every other corpse by her hands.
"Glad to hear you and her are friends, though. She's someone who deserves as many as she can get."
If she said what she really thought, that Ari has been through enough pain, and that she's glad that the commander's making new friends because of how nervous she had been before, after everything? She's pretty sure Ari would be aghast at her personal suffering being talked about. If Tayrey ever trusts Gaeta to tell him herself, then, he'll know what Fever means.
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It'll hurt Tayrey whenever it comes out that one of her friends killed the other, even if it was a necessary act. Gaeta wants to spare her that pain as much as possible.
"And yeah. She does. I, ah, I don't know all the details, but I don't need to." He shrugs, a little. "Just that it's good she has people now."
And that Gaeta can count himself among them.
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"Yeah. She's steadfast, and - did you know she flies in space?"
It's a jump, but she's trying to not dwell on the murder, not linger in those memories, lest she feel the urge possess her again.
"I didn't know it was possible in a world without magic, but goes to show what I know."
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"I did," he says. "That's how we got to be friends. I was stationed in space, too -- not the same world as her, not even, ah, the same principles of spaceflight as her, as far as I can tell, but. I'm formerly of the battlestar Galactica."