20 Favorite Character (Reunion, now with Frye)
a/n: The reunion of Neesae and Rosalee continues, now with added Frye.
All the good things belong to Monolithsoft.
Frye Christoph was not Neesae's favorite Interceptor. Something about how hard he'd lived in his 30 years, how battered and hurt he'd become, that all scared her. His path was the best version of where she would have been if her life hadn't changed utterly.
She was fooling herself. Her life had been headed to prison or the grave. She'd have been lucky to become a burned-out drunk.
So maybe it was envy that made her look at this washout with dismay. He was currently passed out in the shade of the tent, snoring his way through the irritated remarks of their team leader. How could he manage to survive, even thrive, when he was such trash? She would have been destroyed if she'd shown that kind of weakness as a kid. Maybe it was envy.
She shook her head and walked back to her skell. It wasn't envy and it wasn't fear of what might have been. It was the fear of being seen. She was supposed to be his age after all. She had worn an aloof polish the entire journey on the Whale and then for months on Mira, trying to behave like her idealized version of an adult woman. Beautiful, sexy, independent. Her mim might be all of those things, but the person inside was fake and fragile. Frye had made a sloppy pass at her one evening and Neesae had run. Ever since then, she was sure that Frye looked at her with calculating eyes, not in a dangerous way but trying to figure out what didn't fit.
He must know by now. Everyone knew everyone's dirty laundry in NLA. Neesae had barely turned 17 on Earth and had hijacked a real slot to get on the Whale. Had been given it, she reminded herself. She'd known that something bad was happening, but how could she have know just how bad it would be? She was to blame for a lot of things, but she couldn't carry that blame herself.
Frye must know, but he still looked at her in the same way. It made her squirm. She almost wished he'd just join the other BLADEs, the ones that refused to team with her. Thank God that Irina wasn't one of those. Or Rosalee. Neesae put the finishing touches on her gear, checking that the first aid kit and the extra ammunition were ready and waiting. She fingered the stimulant kit with regret; she was down to her last tensifier and wouldn't be able to summon that boost except in an extreme pinch. Normally she wouldn't have worried, but here was Rosalee with her aura of concern. Add a team leader that didn't have his head in the game, and a teammate she couldn't bring herself to trust. This mission had switched from a steady reliable burn to an unknown danger.
Back at the tent, Frye had lumbered to his feet, stretching and scratching and making a fool of himself. He'd saluted the leader with his left hand while digging for a flask of unmentionable fluid with his right, then asked Rosalee something that had her swearing and blushing. Neesae rejoined them just in time to refuse a swig of comfort made liquid.
Frye capped his bottle and talked straight over the team leader. "So you gonna spill why we got a nanny on this mission? Because however bad my records look when you read them [Neesae stiffened, but Frye wasn't looking at her], I guarantee that you've got nothing but good quality here. Ictus may be pointy, jumpy, and poisonous ... excuse me, VENOMOUS [the teamleader had been ready to burst just as Frye slipped in the correction] ... but we can handle them."
Rosalee pressed her lips together in a not-smile. "I'm just here to make things run smoothly. You focus on culling the venomous monsters, I'll mind anything unexpected. We ready yet, Carranza?"
The team leader still was angry enough that he didn't reply, instead marching over to his own skell and swinging himself up into it.
"Fun guy," said Frye. "I'm going to hazard a guess and say yes?"
"Thanks for the insight." Rosalee turned to Neesae and laid a hand on her wrist. "Don't worry too much about what I said."
"Only just a little, right?" She didn't want to say more, not with Frye turning his raggedy head from one to the other of them.
"A little will do fine."
a/n: I adore Frye. Fun to play, fun to write, fun to cry over. See Inktober 2018 for the same poison/venom joke (1) and the ugly truth about Neesae (12).
Next up: Training. Maybe I will figure out why Rosalee is worried. A little worried.
