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CHARACTERS: Tali'zorah & whomever
LOCATION: One of the passenger-quarters lounges!
WARNINGS: Quarian eating?
SUMMARY: Tali's taking a break from work to have some dinner. Yep.

Tali is currently relaxing on one of the modest couches in the lounge, carefully turning down the edge of her nutrient-paste tube. It isn't as if she can't just eat at her station in Engineering, but coming up to the common area to eat reminds her at least a little of the Normandy, and that's not something she can pass up. Besides, eating over the computers seems rude, even if it's grossly unlikely that she'll actually spill anything.

She's tapping her foot absently while she has her meal, thinking about the implications of having new people arrive here. If -- whatever brought them here -- is trying to repopulate the ship, why would people have left this jump as well as arrived? Had someone judged the original arrivals unacceptable? The idea made her uncomfortable. Quarians weren't exactly well-liked in her universe -- it was almost refreshing to see that people here didn't have the same biases past thinking that she looked a little strange.

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If Megamind knew he was compared to Jack -- or knew what that meant -- he would have been gravely insulted.

Still, he's-- released a moment later, hands up, like he might've--been trying to figure out should I hug back what do I do by the time she left him, and just looks at her as if she'd abruptly burst a second head from her shoulder or something.

He cocks his head, still trying to connect the dots A to Hug, and failing. The only logical answer is that she actually cares and that can't be true. Does that mean it was a trick? If so, it was quite cruel.

"..but why?"

She shrugs her shoulders. It's an easy, practiced motion.

"Because I know what it's like to be around a bunch of strangers that you don't know and wondering if you can or can't trust them." It had been like that on the Normandy at first, that first mission with Shepard and the rest of the crew also staring at her like she'd grown a second head.

"And even though I'm sure we've got plenty of differences, we've also got a lot in common."

"I don't know that we do," Megamind said, wary. "You have a people waiting."

He--

--He doesn't know.

He hopes. This place, being out in space--it gives him hope. Oh, the news has been bleak, the information that Kasumi brought him saddening, but-- really, humans were a dim race. Who knew if they really had the big picture?

"That might be true, but I also have a crew -- and those people are ones I can trust that I wasn't raised with. Sometimes we have to -- improvise."

She shakes her head. "Anyway. I should probably be getting back, I just wanted to make sure you were doing all right."

"Improvisation is a talent of mine," Megamind replied, stepping backward, getting his space back, perpetually wary and bewildered now. "But people are not."

He tried. He really did. But nobody cared. He was a freak, and freaks don't get anywhere.

Lapsing into silence, Megamind lets Tali go her own way, giving her space in case anymore weird hugging urges took her. She could go. He'd watch her leave, and ...try and figure things out on his own.

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