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melanie fishes (heh!) a shrimp uramaki roll out of the box on the side and seems to pay him no mind as she runs through the latest batch of calculations; they can middle along this portion of the track easy enough, because even at one twenty below, this stretch is closest to the equator. it keeps the train somewhat more controlled than the himalayas or the hindu kush. they've been talking about the latest revolt in the tail section. another attempt to draw out the brakemen, another chance for those who felt hard done by in their half-cocked invasion of a train that was never built to house four hundred people in three utility cars to show how dissatisfied they were with their lot in life. ben is...ambivalent. empathetic, yes, but sympathetic? not entirely. maybe that's the little piece of himself he has learned to surrender after all this time. he no longer sees the divides as anything but necessary. now is that him thinking or is it her telling? you've got to do what it takes to survive. she says it almost apropos. for moment, he doesn't know what to say until he watches her swallow and suck teriyaki sauce off the edge of her thumb. (it reminds him, inexplicably, of the tides in sopelana. how humanity managed to drown the ocean's waves.) "i don't want to survive," he says quietly, watching the changes in her face. the amused frown, her eyebrow raised in question. he lets her sit in the confusion for a moment before he shrugs. "i want to live. don't you?"

she picks, more than anything — jinju brings sushi, wrapped in its own neat little box with a set of stainless steel chopsticks that she's not going to make good use of. sticky rice moulds between her fingers as she takes her rightful place in the chair, one leg tucked up under the other, and the box tucked nicely up to her chest.

the eyebrow comes first, raised, pointed, a silent elaborate... between friends that they've fallen into both recognising. (they have their own silent language — ben shoots her a glance from across the engine room, and it crooks the corner of her lip into a half-smile quickly stomped out with javi's stop talking!)

ben is a dreamer. it's been long enough now that she's realised that — from snowpiercer, to times before, he's been a dreamer. idealist. he is the hope that crowns the edge of her fatalism. he is the solution to a problem that she wasn't even sure she was having. living is different to surviving. surviving makes monsters out of people. living has a nicer ring to it. synonymous, in part, but a drastic difference sits in its true meaning: having somewhere to lay your head without thinking about the trouble that swarms.

"you're not getting philosophical on me, are you?" two fingers press rice into the side of her mouth, and meI shifts a little more to face him fully. he's good company, until he fills her ears with a fantastic want and longing. there is no outside. there is no life without survival. seven years in, and she thought he'd get that by now.

"— what's got you so wisftul?"

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