Displaced

Chapter 100

"Looks like somebody had a late night," Sofie observed to the already seated Arlette a moment after entering the meeting room. "So, did you go all the way?"

Arlette cocked an eyebrow, clearly unamused as she sipped her tea. "This is the most upbeat I've seen you in a good while," Arlette observed in return, pointedly not addressing the Earthling's provocation.

Sofie sat down in the chair beside Arlette and scooted the seat closer, propping her head up in her palms with a mischievous glint in her eyes as she grinned back at the ex-mercenary. "Heh! Nice try changing the subject, but it's not going to work. It's my job as your female friend to gossip with you about men. I mustn't be derelict in my duties. So, was he good?"

Arlette sighed and rolled her eyes. "Can you not? I haven't even had my morning tea yet; I don't have the energy for whatever torture this is," she groaned.

"How big is his dick? I bet, with his blood manipulation abilities, he can do some wild stuff with it."

Gabriela Carreno couldn't hold back her smirk as tea sprayed from the Scyrian's mouth all over the table as Sofie cackled like a madwoman, her mirth so great that she nearly fell out of her chair. Gabby couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy as the two continued their friendly bickering, Sofie gleefully getting raunchier and raunchier the more embarrassed Arlette became. She'd never really had a friendship like that. She'd had very few friendships at all, really. Just being an orphan was enough to make her an outcast of sorts, and she'd never really gotten along with the other girls her age at the orphanage either.

Part of her, the part that wasn't trapped in the mire of her sorrows, wanted to try to interact with them more and perhaps forge her own small facsimile of the bond they shared, but she could never get very comfortable around either of them. Arlette always tensed whenever Gabby spoke to her or even when Gabby just focused on her. The soldier tried to hide her nervousness, but Gabby could still see it. It was clear to her that Arlette didn't feel safe with her around.

Gabriela didn't try to overcome the Scyrian's skittishness, however, because of its source. The two of them had never talked about it, but Sofie had told her once that Arlette had been at Crirada during the war. To make it even worse, Gabby had apparently been just a moment away from killing the ex-mercenary at one point in the siege, not that she remembered seeing Arlette while there. Faced with this knowledge and the shame it brought to her now, Gabby just didn't have it in her to face a survivor of her deeds face to face.

Sofie, on the other hand, didn't fear Gabby one bit. She always treated her with a warm smile and plenty of kindness, but she treated everybody with a warm smile and plenty of kindness—with the notable exception of Blake for some reason. Though Sofie probably didn't mean for it to be this way, it reminded Gabby of the way retail employees back on Earth would greet customers when they opened the door.

What really bothered her, though, was the pity hiding behind that smile. Gabriela didn't want to be pitied. It just made her feel worse and dragged her back to the underlying misery that was the core of her current existence.

Gabby didn't know which was worse: to be pitied or to be feared.

Strangely enough, the only person living in this fortress that she felt comfortable around was Blake. Perhaps it was because he didn't bother hiding his opinion of her. To say the two of them had gotten off on the wrong foot was the understatement of the century, but the inferno of hatred she'd felt about him before, back when he'd represented everything keeping her from going home to her children, had disappeared a long time ago. Now, after interacting with him for a few months, their relationship had settled into an equilibrium that only two equally miserable people could maintain. She still didn't much like him and vice versa, but at least they could be honest with each other about it.