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[theotherright]

Cabin 127. No calls, we text like men on our disney cruise phones.

If you send Arthur a message it will be read out loud in one of a selection of friendly automated voices!

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[astrogator]

[She doesn't comment on it, but as soon as he clarifies, Ari lifts her hand from his arm. The expedition was different, she tells herself. Emergency situations are different. She'll learn.]

Sure. I'll go up and get it, I'll be right back.

[And she does just that. It doesn't occur to her that his beer - made with roots? - isn't alcoholic, but it hardly matters anyway. A few moments later, she sets the drink and chips in front of him, and resumes her own seat at the table.

Now the difficult part.]

I'm not any good at this sort of thing, so I'll just speak plainly. We were at odds over... what happened. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was also doing what I always do, holding out even when there's no real hope of success.

[Doggedly defending a plan with no popular support, just as she'd struggled on through the snow despite her injury. She hadn't realised it until she'd heard Arthur's impatient objections.]

I value you too much to just let that stand between us, so - I'm sorry if I made you think poorly of me.

[theotherright]

[ Independence aside, he thanks her when she drops off his order, and closes the last inch or so between himself and the food in order to map the chip basket and the glass with his fingers. It's second nature at this point to run his fingers up the glass and then around the rim, and he does it while he listens intently.

The only part to which he visibly responds is when she says she values him, and he blinks. Your classic 'local man still can't believe everyone else doesn't dislike him as much as he dislikes himself'.

When she finishes, he's silent for a moment, turning it over in his head. ]

Well. I-I can't pretend that I don't understand holding out beyond the point of hope. Truth be told, I, I've made a fool of myself in the same way, in the past.

[ Just ask his fellow raft idiots! Now, to be fair, at the time, he thought he was doing what was necessary for John. Which leads to a question: ]

May I ask why you thought it was the right thing to do? So that I can avoid making assumptions.

[astrogator]

[She wouldn't call herself foolish, so she's fairly sure she wouldn't think he was, either, but Ari lets it go. They probably won't agree, and it's not terribly important that they do.

His question does make her think, and she sips at her beer before she speaks again, taking the time to collect her thoughts.]

Honest answer? I had two reasons. The first was principle. It was an injustice, and an unnecessary one. I still think we all should have refused. If it was genuinely the case that Skulduggery had to die, then that would-be captain should have simply executed him. No murders, no spectacles, no dragging in of everyone else because he was too much of a coward to do what had to be done.

I do think that an alternate solution was possible, at the outset. It probably wasn't by the time you spoke to me, because we didn't have a chance of turning public opinion. I didn't see it, and that's because of the second reason. I had to stand by Oda. I don't know how much you were told, but those were his words I was shouting, not my own. He couldn't do it himself, he'd been very badly hurt, and so had Yato, and people he thought would have supported him either weren't there or actively turned against him. It felt, in the moment, as if I were all he had left, and I have my faults, but disloyalty's not one of them.

[She adds, sadly] It took me too long to realise that it really was hopeless and that he wasn't able to back down.