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Sho turns the doorknob with more force than necessary, and then she doesn't open the door.
There's faint noises coming from down the long, long hallway, where everyone else is – something like celebrating, they all seem to be just fine even though it's been less than three hours and Sho is still reeling and they shouldn't be fine. She knows they're not, really, but they're all celebrating, and she's standing in front of a door and doesn't want to look at someone she bowed to scant hours ago.
She feels like an idiot.
She knocks on the door, very softly, and only once.
"There's food. You should come eat."
The Cadent's response is either so muffled Sho can't hear it, or there is none.
Sho lets go of the doorknob, wipes her hands on her skirt, smooths down the skirt, gets angry at herself, and turns the doorknob again to push open the door.
Even the captain's quarters on this ship are oddly shaped, but the room looks like someone made it a home once, and it also looks exactly like a room someone left behind. There's some things left on shelves and stuck to the walls and something that hangs glittering from the ceiling, but there's so many empty spaces, and there's a bed without bedsheets on which the Cadent is sitting, head bowed and eyes closed.
"There's food," Sho says, "You should come eat."
The Cadent tilts up her head and opens her eyes to look at Sho, slowly, and frowns just a little bit.
Sho looks back at her.
"Are you alright?" the Cadent asks her, in her soft sure voice, like that is a reasonable question, like she can see something on Sho's face.
"There's food," Sho says.
The Cadent frowns at her.
"You seem angry and sad, Sho Salon."
"I'm not," Sho says, not because she thinks the Cadent will believe her, but to have the satisfaction of being dishonest to her Cadent and the Cadent knowing it.
It's a childish thing to do, she knows.
The Cadent's mouth pulls just slightly into something disappointed, and then she pats the bed next to her.
"Sit down with me?"
Sho doesn't know how to refuse. She leaves the door hanging half-open and goes to sit on the bed.
For a minute, they both stay silent, and the silence sits there uncomfortably between them, where all of Sho's admiration and respect and belief should be and isn't anymore, or is still but tastes wrong now, all torn apart.
The Cadent looks at her until Sho can't keep her face from moving anymore, and then she keeps looking.
Sho never thought to look at the Cadent as anything other than the Cadent, but she's close enough now and disappointed enough now to look at her and see just a girl who has her hands tucked inside her wide heavy sleeves and is sitting with her legs up on a stranger's bed.
"You're disappointed in me," this stranger says, "because you think I should've done something differently, are you not?"
Sho looks away.
"I am the Cadent," the Cadent says, "I have to be the Cadent."
"Then be the Cadent differently," Sho snaps, and gets up from the bed, and then she puts her hand in front of her mouth and stops and stands there in the captain's quarters with the Cadent behind her and wants to apologize.
It makes her angry that she wants to apologize.
"I'm sorry," the Cadent tells her, very matter-of-fact-ly, "that I was not what you wanted me to be."
"I just wanted you to be the Cadent," Sho says, and she keeps facing away from the bed.
"I am the Cadent."
"You're not what the Cadent should be," Sho says. She can feel her voice getting higher and sitting in her mouth like it does when she's about to cry, so she spits out her words and presses her fingernails into the palms of her hands and stubbornly repeats herself. "You are not what a Cadent should be."
"I don't think that we have the same idea of what it is a Cadent should be."
Sho turns around and glares, badly.
"You have a very bad idea of what a Cadent should be."
The Cadent stands up from the bed quicker than any movement Sho has seen her make today.
"You," she says, "have no idea what it means to be the Cadent."
"I know!" Sho says, and she's starting to cry, "I know, but I know what I need my Cadent to be, and it's not what you are."
The Cadent looks at her and doesn't say anything.
Sho laughs.
"I'm angry at you and I'm sad that I have to be."
"I know," the Cadent says, "I know."
Sho wants to yell at her properly, and Sho doesn't know what to do with her because there, again, she's just a girl, and she's looking at Sho and she's looking more and more helpless, and it occurs to Sho that it's because this has nothing to do with any kind of protocol anymore.
"You're not even old enough to be my boss," she blurts out, like that'll help the situation, and then she's crying more and hiccuping and still standing just two feet away from the Cadent, who doesn't seem to know what to do with any part of this situation.
"Clearly someone decided that I am," she says, finally.
Sho hiccups again, because she wants to laugh and she's still crying.
"Do you... need a tissue?" says the Cadent, who sounds like she's never said something like that before in her life, and then puts her hands in her pockets and seems to realize that on top of everything, she doesn't have any tissues.
"No," Sho says, angrily.
She starts wiping at her face with her sleeve, and the Cadent looks at her helplessly.
They're still just standing there. It feels absurd. Sho thinks she's still angry, will be angry and sad for a while, but standing in front of a girl her age who doesn't know how to respond to anything she does or says and knowing that that's someone she looked up to for years is just absurd.
The Cadent frowns gently and lifts her hands to Sho's face to wipe off the tears.
She's careful and slow about it and looks entirely too determined.
It is very very strange.
Sho doesn't push her away, because there's no use.
There is no way to make any of this less uncomfortable, but at the very least, she thinks, it can't get much more uncomfortable.
They're standing very close, and Sho is angry and upset, and the Cadent, whom she is angry at and disappointed in, is still wiping carefully at her face with her thumbs, her other fingers settling very gentle against the sides of Sho's head.
"I hate you," Sho says quietly.
The Cadent stops moving her hands and makes eye contact with her, both hands still hovering right where they were.
There's a noise from the door, and Sho startles just as much as the Cadent.
"Shit, sorry, fuck," Morning says, "Sorry, I was looking for you because of the food? I'm gonna... leave you to it. You can go back to having your moment, or whatever."
"There was no moment!" Sho calls, but he is already gone, and she looks at the Cadent, and resigns herself, for now, to this.
The Cadent lowers her hands and tucks them back into her sleeves.
"You should come eat," Sho says, again, and leaves.