Subjects

41 - Close Encounter

So it didn't take a day for them to get to land.

They decided to take shifts (there's something relaxing about a structure, don't you think?) watching the... Umm... Sky around them and water below them. At two am it is Ben's shift and he starts to regret agreeing to this when Roger wakes him in the middle of a dream.

As he is sitting on the pilot's chair, Ben is trying to remember what he was dreaming about but fails miserably. It had something to do with Leo, maybe it was Leo coming to Ben's school? No, Leo as a janitor at Ben's school dance. Or maybe...

A sharp scream jolts Ben to life and he falls off his chair right on his head. He quickly jumps up to his feet and looks around, he rubs his head and tries to see if he got injured. It is too dark to see anything so he waits. Nobody seems to be up, which is rather surprising considering the fact that Ben feels like his ears have just been torn off.

"Ben?" It is Eva.

She slowly unwraps her blanket and gets up from her chair.

"Are you okay?" Ben whispers.

"I'm fine," she answers. "It was just a bad dream."

They go to the front of the ship so that they don't wake up the others even though Ben is reasonably sure that if Eva's scream didn't wake them up, it is safe to assume that a little chatter won't hurt them.

"Sorry I got upset with you earlier," Eva says. "Sometimes this side of me just comes out and I don't know what to do."

"I get it, I wasn't being too nice either," Ben says.

In the dark of the night, the only sound they hear is the low rumble of the engine. Ben thinks about that night when they were stargazing, I mean, maybe she was. he wasn't looking at the stars that much, just like he isn't right now. Things were so much simpler then. How can things get more and more complicated all the time? Isn't there a limit at some point?

"Do you miss your friends at home?" Eva asks quietly.

"Hmm..." Ben hasn't thought about his friends that much lately. "The thing is, I don't think they miss me."

"Really? Why?"

"Would you have missed me?" Ben asks.

"How can you ask that? Of course I'd miss you!"

"I mean not now," Ben clarifies. "Before everything went crazy. If you only knew me from the first days of the island."

"Well, if this is how you act around your friends all the time..." Eva says, thinking about how they were constantly at each other's throats. "I guess I can see why they won't miss you," she thinks for a moment. "But I think it grows on you at some point."

Ben smirks, "oh, really?"

Eva keeps a straight face, "yes, I don't think I mind so much anymore," she says. "Because obviously you are not any less annoying."

"Ouch."

"You had it coming, you seemed way to happy when I said I'd miss you," Eva smiles.

They are silent again, but only until Ben says, "I'd miss you too, you know."

"I bet," Eva smiles again.

"Honestly," Ben says.

"I don't think my friends miss me either," Eva changes direction. "Believe it or not, I'm not the nicest person."

"You can be nice when you want to," Ben says.

"That's just it," Eva says. "With most people, I don't want to."