(no subject)

[tachycardiac]

Chiela makes her way down into the bowls of the ship, towards the holding cell, with something like trepidation in her step. Trepidation or possibly terror, and, seriously why does she have to be the one to bring Dioscorus his meals? He could probably crush her one-handed. One-footed even, although Chiela’s not totally certain how that would work. Venka seems like the natural choice, seeing as she actually knows the guy, but Nikolao’s expressly forbidden her from visiting with him, which Chiela figures will last until Venka actually wants to visit him, at which point Nikolao’s probably going to get his ass kicked. Terasu’ll be thrilled - although she actually seems to be with him for once on the don’t-trust-the-strage-alien policy. Well, strange to Chiela. He’s probably more like a blood enemy to Terasu and Nikolao, considering who his father is and what his people have done, whether he was undermining their efforts or not - which no one seems convinced about either, aside from Venka, who’s been flying the ship awful aggressively ever since they brought Dioscorus on board. Never mind visiting him, Venka’s probably gonna kick Nikolao’s ass for keeping Dioscorus in that holding cell much longer. And Pipra hasn’t actually left off his guard-dog impersonation - although probably something more friendly than a guard dog; a lap dog, maybe? - long enough to get his own meals, let alone Dioscorus’, which is why Chiela’s bringing him food as well.

She clatters down the last few steps to the ship’s inner workings - somewhere near the engine room and all the banging and clanking and wheezing down here really does nothing to comfort her about the ship’s integrity. Before she rounds the corner to the holding cell - or what’s been converted to a holding cell at least because apparently this ship had been used to collect garbage before which also does nothing to assure her of its integrity and space-worthiness - she hears voices and the sound of Pipra’s laughter. When she does round the corner, she nearly drops the plates she’s been carrying because Pipra is, in fact, sitting across from Dioscorus, inside the holding cell - playing cards with him, apparently, and looking like he has not a care in the world.

“Uh,” Chiela says, as she approaches the cell, “should you really be in there with him?”

“Pssh, it’s fine,” Pipra says, waving one hand, dismissively, intent on the cards in his hand, and it totally wasn’t going to be fine when Nikolao found out.

“Uh,” Chiela said - she sounded as skeptical as she felt and also like sort of an idiot; a redundant idiot,” if you say so.” And shifted from foot to foot, “I’ve got food for you,” she added, as if that weren’t patently obvious from the plates she was carrying. “You wanna come out here and get it?”

“Oh, you can bring it in here,” Pipra said, as he slapped a card down on the floor - Chiela wasn’t sure what game they were playing, but, judging just from the array of cards laid out on the floor, she’d bet it was complicated, “the door’s not locked,” and Chiela nearly dropped the plates again when she heard that, because, “You don’t even have him locked in?”

“Nope,” Pipra said, and then, upon seeing the look on Chiela’s face, he added, “It’s not like he couldn’t get out himself if he wanted to,” which was probably a fair point, but the fact remained that Nikolao was gonna be pissed when he found out.

“Uh, yeah,” Chiela said, and then just stood there stupidly until Dioscorus arched an eyebrow at her. She flushed and, juggling the plates between her hands, opened the unlocked door to the holding cell - which probably meant she couldn’t refer to it as a holding cell, even in her own head - and skittered over to set one plate beside Pipra and the other beside Dioscorus. He bared his teeth at her in what she assumed was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but totally wasn’t. She smiled back at him weakly and then straightened up.