Two People Talking...

"I can't believe you did that," he says finally. He's worse than Blake - younger, perhaps, but just as obstinate and idealistic, and almost as immovable in his own moral viewpoint.

Oh, and far far more voluble. And to think you have accused Vila of never shutting up.

"I don't believe that after all I said, all your own commander -"

"Blake," you interrupt before he can go on, "is NOT my Commander. We are merely..."

"Fellow travellers?" His eyebrows go up. "At least, that's the expression used in my culture. And of course it explains why you're obeying his orders... not. In any case -" did you mention he never shuts up? "- Your fellow traveller and my Colonel gave strict instructions, we were not to get into any fights -"

"We didn't."

"Because you shot them first!"

"They were mutoids." He looks at you blankly - yet another little fact of Federation life your newest idealist hasn't been instructed on yet. "Ask Blake - if we manage to get out of here alive. You'll have to trust me."

Those eyebrows say even clearer than words how he feels about that. Luckily he is not Blake, and you really do not care if he trusts you, as long as he quietens long enough for you both to get out of this mess alive. Or you, at least.

"- And we weren't to destroy anything belonging to the -"

"Neither the weaponry nor the trivial trappings you were glorying over -"

"Trivial?" His mouth opens to expostulate - then closes. Oh good, you believe you have left him lost for words.

At least for a minute. "Trivial? You really think that another society's culture and history is so - trivial! - that destroying it around them doesn't matter? It may not matter to you, Avon, but to them -"

"To those barbarians we met it would hardly matter since it was never theirs to begin with," you can't believe you're arguing with him, but then you can never believe it when you argue with Blake either. "They just used what was left by dead predeccessors."

"And we could have -"

"Could have?" You smile at him, pleased to see that you am now infuriating him as much as he does you. "My dear Jackson, if you wish to remain here -"

"I could -"

"I'll kill you first." You are not smiling any more. You have your co-fellow traveller's instructions, and his Colonel's yelling, and the thought of what Servalan would do with such a young and eloquent and irritating young stranger in a strange galaxy in mind. "Trust me on that."

Ironically... you believe that for once, he does.

-the end-

(Written for a dialogue challenge)