Valentina: Her footsteps were all she could hear while she made her way through the empty halls. Valentina still didn't know if it was a good idea to check on Aidan; she still wasn't used to caring for people, but felt like she had to go and see if he was alright, especially after what he had told her the other day. The fact that he had trusted her with how he was feeling had overwhelmed her and she still felt like she was the wrong person for him to trust because she felt unable to help him - but she had told him that she would listen and she would keep that promise.

Aidan had found himself in what had become a familiar position, sitting on the floor against his bed with his notebook propped on his knees. Names, dates, places, experiences. He'd started a table of contents in the back, in a desperate attempt to keep track of it all, mostly by date. It had gradually become more linear--in the beginning, his memories were painfully sporadic, but now they seemed to follow a sort of pattern. It gave him some hope for a return to normalcy on that front--his hallucinations, on the other hand...

Valentina's knocks fulfilled the air, as she swallowed once more and prepared to explain why she had come, especially so late at night. She knew that the boy didn't sleep very well - just like her - and she also knew that at night, people usually felt the worst. Was it weird that she had come, would it be uncomfortable for him? The recruit began chewing on her lip, as always when she was nervous. By now, it was chapped and she had bitten it to bleed a couple of times, but she could not stop the habit, especially not when she had to face her commitment issues.

Aidan froze at the knock, then stood, notebook clattering to the floor. Either it was another recruit, come to visit, or Division was in some state of emergency that required them to rouse him in the middle of the night, or he was in some kind of trouble. He hadn't done anything worthy of isolation, not recently, and the compound seemed too quiet for any bunker-wide catastrophe. Another recruit, then. He opened the door a crack, and then wider when he saw who it was. "Hi, Valentina."

Valentina heard noises inside the room, like something was falling to the floor and remembered how she let her papers and pens fall whenever someone was intruding. All the words she had laid out for herself were gone once he opened the door. "Hey, Aidan. I- um, I kind of just wanted to come by, if- if that isn't weird." Valentina threw a small smile at the ground. Just two months ago, she would have never done something like this. She had been too closed off, and she still believed that that had been for the better - but Division had gotten to her more than she had hoped.

Aidan smiled, opening the door for her and walking back inside, retrieving the notebook from the floor and placing it on the desk. "No, it's not--I couldn't sleep anyway," he glanced at the floor, "And I'm glad to see you. How have you been?" Aidan looked back up at her. He wasn't sure why, the last time they'd spoken, he'd decided to burden her with the knowledge of his apparent insanity. Regardless, aside from Maya, she was easily the person he trusted most in the bunker.

Valentina: Hesitantly, Valentina walked into his room. "Same for me. We sure have that in common." She turned around and smiled at him, awkwardly standing in midst of the room, afraid to mess something up. The pressing urge to run away from socializing overcame her again, but she forced herself to stay and accept the trust that he laid in her - just like she did with Maya. "I'm- okay." She lied. She didn't know what good felt like anymore - but she guessed she felt as good as it could get. "I think." she added, then she looked him right in the eyes. "What... about you? Any progress?" She stumbled over her words.

Aidan shut the door, in case any guards happened to wander by, though curfew had never been enforced in a particularly strict manner. "I think Division exacerbates it," he mused. "No one wants to be unaware for any period of time," and no one wants the nightmares either, he thought. There were probably very few people there who didn't suffer from bad dreams. "Th-that's good. I'm glad." He hoped Valentina could get out of the bunker soon. It wasn't a healthy environment, not for anyone. "Well," he commented, dryly, "If I stab myself with a pen, it usually goes away."

Valentina: "Yeah. And then they don't even grant us caffeine." She buried her hands deep into the pockets on her sweater jacket that she barely walked around without, and watched his movements, then jumped a little. "You're kidding, right?" She understood the urge to hurt oneself sometimes - for her, it had become something painfully comforting, as she had been used to constantly getting hurt the first half of her life. "I mean- ah, shit. I was hoping for a different answer."

Aidan: "Chocolate technically has caffeine," he mused. "But I think I'd need a lot more of it to have any kind of effect." He moved to the desk and started rifling through the journal again. "I mean--ahh, no. That's not what I meant. I mean, if I can distract myself, she vanishes. I used to, if I didn't have anything else, I used to dig my nails into my palm to stop panicking. So...same concept." He glanced at her, trying to judge her reaction.

Valentina smirked. "The sugar could help. But I'm not really one for sweets, like Maya is." The recruit moved to lean on the wall and overlooked the room, as she didn't want to intrude as Aidan skipping trough his notebook. Her face took on a kind of pained, kind of understanding expression. "I- I now what you mean." She thought of how she always began to draw patterns on her bedsheets whenever she tried to get out of a panic attack. Pain, however, seemed to intensify her anxiety. "What's that?" She asked quietly, gesturind towards the book.

Aidan smiled faintly. "Yeah, she showed me where the storage closet was. She told me her handler showed her where it was so she could take chocolate." He still had the chocolate bars he'd stolen for her, he realized. He hadn't seen her since he went to the storage closet with Jason. "...yeah." He trailed off, but started talking about when she mentioned the journal. "Oh, this? I'm writing down everything that I remember, so that if I forget again..." he shrugged.

Valentina: A little smile went over Valentina's face. "Gosh, Bennett. Yeah." She took a minute to think of her handler, but didn't allow herself to mourn the fact that he had been gone for the longest time. The woman took a few steps in his direction, but didn't dare to come as close as being able to read anything. "Right, um, I heard that you forget things." The words suddenly got stuck inher throat and she stumbled on them again. She wasn't made for situations like this; she didn't know how to comfort people.

Aidan looked at Valentina. "He was your handler, too?" He wondered what had happened--there had seemed to be a number of handlers, before they all vanished, and then were eventually replaced. "What happened to him?" He shrugged. "Yeah, I...I did. I have. But...I'm remembering them. Which is good. So...I think I'll be okay." He smiled at her.

Valentina's gaze dropped. "Yeah. We a silly idea of a handler that would not vanish and leave us here, but he seems to be gone for good, at least that's what I suppose by now. I- don't know what happened." She felt like because Bennett hadn't been replaced yet, she had hoped for him to come back at some point, but that had been a ridiculous idea. After all, she had pulled herself through without a handler and Ethan was a big help so far. "I guess we all have to mourn a handler-loss at some point. Oh well." The Brunette awkwardly sat on his bed, her gaze focused on the smaller guy. "I guess you also forgot... some bad memories? That can't be too bad.. right?"

Aidan bit his lip. "I don't know...sometimes it seems like they're under as much pressure from Division as we are," he couldn't help but think of Ethan's comments about the number of recruits he'd lost, and that the management would be unhappy with him for Aidan's disloyalty. "I hope I don't," he sighed, "I didn't think I would, but I really like Ethan." He sat down on the edge of the desk. "I hope I didn't," he told her, flatly. "What I can remember is bad enough, thank you. It would suck to think that there's more of them."

Valentina: "I'm guessing you're right. It's easy to blame your handler if you don't do well in Division." She remembered a lot of the other recruits complaining about their handler being gone, but she had never thought of Bennett as actually abandoning his recruits. At Aidan's words, she thought of how Ethan had helped her with her training and smirked. "Ethan is one of the better ones. He helped me out a bit." For that, she was still extremely grateful. She had already noticed how she had gotten better at combat just from the few times they had met. Valentina's gaze dropped to the floor again, her expression pained. "God. I didn't think of it that way."

Aidan nodded. "Yeah, I don't think most of the recruits blame their handlers if they're there, but I feel like Division expects them to have more influence in a shorter period of time than they're capable of." Ethan certainly hadn't been there long enough to have an effect on his, and Ryan's, decision to kill Sarah, but it had reflected on him all the same. "Yeah, I...s-sort of think I can trust him, s-sort of." Any kind of trust in Division whatsoever was already a big enough leap. "On the bright side, if I've forgotten good things and I remember them, it's like they get to happen all over again, yeah?" he shrugged.

Valentina: "I mean.. I'm sure Bennett doesn't- want to be gone. You know?" She began drawing a pattern on Aidan's bedsheet with her index finger. Trust. Valentina supposed that Aidan didn't trust easily either - just as she did -, especially judging by the way he put his words. Trust was probably her own biggest issue. But she knew Ethan, even if not very well, she thought of him as the most humane member of authority she met so far. She looked at the boy again. "Just wait until you know him better. That's what I'm doing." The woman knew that she should do something; lay her hand on his shoulder maybe, to comfort him, but she felt too unsure to do it. "Everything has its good sides, appearently."

Aidan nodded. "I don't think disappearing is ever a good thing, for anyone," he agreed. Especially in Division; in fact, he wouldn't be surprised if Bennett's absence was a good indicator that he was dead. He didn't bring that up; Valentina probably already knew it was a possibility, and it didn't make any sense to rub it in her face. "I mean...I think he knew, before I told him, that I'd helped kill Sarah. I mean, I tried to ask him about it, but I wasn't subtle. But he didn't say anything." He sighed. "I just...I want to trust someone, you know?"

Valentina knew that Division was ruthless, even with their own handlers. "Yeah.. I know." That Bennett disappeared probably didn't mean anything good, neither for him nor for her or any of his other recruits. She let the conversation slide now, not wanting to think about the topic anymore. She examined his face for a second. She knew the feeling of wanting to trust someone; especially after she had not let herself trust anyone or be trusted in years. Slowly, she nodded. "I think Ethan is someone to... work with the recruits, instead of against them. Which is good. Finally." She locked eyes with the younger recruit while biting her lip. "You can get through this, Aidan." she said suddenly, her voice sounding confident.

Aidan sighed. "I wish..." he didn't finish the sentence. He honestly wasn't sure what he wished for anymore; to escape, certainly. To remember everything. To have never heard of Division. He wondered if prison would, truly, have been a worse option. Then again, he would never have met Maya, or Val, or Rin. So perhaps suffering did have a purpose. "I...yeah. He wants us to succeed, I think. Which is...it's good." He nodded. "Yeah, I mean, I promised I would, so..." he took a deep breath, "I'm going to."

Valentina: For Valentina, Division always had been a better option than prison. Obviously because she had been sentenced to die - but also because MDC had been a horrible jail to be in. Division at least gave them hopes, even if it were false ones most of the time. It kept her ambitious. "If he succeeds, you succeed." She nodded. "Did you- promise that to Maya?" she swallowed hard.

Aidan shook his head in response to her question. "No, well, sort of. I mean, I promised Maya that we'd get out of Division and find somewhere to go, and that I'd come back from isolation. But this one, I promised myself." Even if he couldn't get his memories back, even if he kept hallucinating, he wasn't going to allow himself to give up. He'd stayed alive for far too long to die now.

Valentina looked back up at him, half pleasantly surprised, because she knew that he was a strong person and his words proved that, half admiring his determination. A little smile formed on her features as she nodded. "You know, I suck at this." The Brunette bit her lip again. "Human interaction and stuff. I'm just not used to it, but if you-" The words were tumbling in her head again. "I mean.. ah, you know what I mean. I'll try."