I Know Something About Pain You Don&#39;t

Ben knocked quietly on the door. "It's me," he said, knowing that she would've figured that out before he even got to the door but needed something to say.

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She did know, of course, but the verbal reassurance was nice.

"Hey," Tahiri said, looking tired and a little pale when she opened the door to let him in. "Come on in -- Tara should be here soon."

Her side of the room was fairly neat, which was easy when you didn't have much in the way of possessions, and her comlink and datapad were nowhere in sight.

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He leaned in to give her a hug. "It's going to be okay," he promised.

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"I keep saying that." Tahiri leaned into him and exhaled slowly. "I mean, it can't be that bad, right? If it was bad she'd probably be scared of me."

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"Exactly," Ben said, squeezing her. "And you're little. Nothing to be scared of."

He was pretty much just trying to get her to smile.

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It worked, at least for a moment or two, if Tahiri didn't think about how he'd insisted she could probably take half of Fight Club . . . to pick an innocuous example. "Yeah. Glad you're here, though."

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He kissed her forehead. "There's nowhere I'd rather be."

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"Except maybe flying the Falcon," she replied, trying for a joke. "Or at Chilly Boulder -- oh, I got ice cream."

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"Everything is easier with ice cream," he said with a quick smile. "You sure you want to do this?"

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"Yeah, I'm sure," Tahiri replied, and in case she'd been about to reconsider, there was a knock on the door.

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Tara wasn't afraid of Tahiri, but she was confused by Tahiri and a little reluctant to go into such hard memories.

Still, it seemed like the least she owed Tahiri -- and Ben -- was the whole story. She tapped lightly on the doorframe. "Tahiri?"

[OOC: Starting a new thread so I don't interrupt you guys -- let me know if you need me to delete or move this.]

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Tahiri managed a smile when she opened the door and stepped back to let Tara in. "Hey. You made it," she said, sounding a little relieved about that. "You've met Ben, right? I wasn't sure."

[OOC: That is perfectly fine. :D]

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Ben gave her a quick smile. "Hi."

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"Hi," Tara returned, with a tiny waggle of her fingers and a slight, crooked smile. "I -- I don't think we've talked? But I've seen you around and everything."

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Tahiri picked up on Tara's uncertainty, but she remembered the reaction she'd gotten last time she'd tried to offer reassurance through the Force and instead said, with an awkward gesture toward her desk, "There's cookies, if you want them?"

How did you start a conversation like this? Sometimes she wished she had a better sense of social skills.

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Ben gave Tahiri a tiny smile and reached out to squeeze her hand. "There's also ice cream," he added.

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"I can always take a cookie," Tara said, trying to sound relaxed.

... she was Tara. She didn't do so well with it.

"And ice cream. We don't want it to melt, right?"

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"Unless you like ice cream soup." That was a subject Tahiri could talk about with some confidence, sadly. "Um . . . help yourself, sit down, and everything."

And because this was Tahiri, the occasional urge to blurt things out with no lead-in whatsoever couldn't be suppressed forever. "I meant to thank you for the flowers. And see how you were doing. It's just been, well, things have been a little crazy."

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Ben was content to kind of fade into the background now, keeping his ears open and tuning into the Force to tell him what he needed to know.

...he also took some ice cream, though.

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Tara took some ice cream,dipped her cookie in the ice cream, chewed, and swallowed, not really tasting anything except sweet. She turned to Tahiri. "I'm not sure where to start," she admitted. "What do you remember?"

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Tahiri glanced out the window briefly, her eyes going the slightest bit unfocused as she tried to put things together. "I remember leaving the picnic, vaguely. Everything goes fuzzy after that until I was in the shop and you were thanking me for something, and I didn't know what it was. What was she -- what was I acting like, when I got there?"

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Tara hesitated, eyes stuttering to Ben quickly in case he wanted to interject. "Angry," she said softly. "She was swearing at my dad, right away. It sounded like swearing. It wasn't English."

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Well, that wasn't starting off sounding too promising, and Tahiri bit her lip, snapping a cookie in half between her fingers. Tara had said she, not you, though, and that was . . . a good thing? Maybe? "No. It wouldn't have been. Sorry about that. What do you think set her off?"

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Tara had said she because the girl in the shop had been as different from Tahiri as she could imagine. The physical body matched; nothing else did.

Also because Tahiri said she first.

"I don't -- we were arguing," she admitted. "My father was trying to get me to come home, and, uh, we were talking to Illyria about -- whether he was right about something. And then you, she -- you came in. Swearing."

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