At this point, Vitali was a little conflicted by his thoughts. He had only ever really thought of her as a close friend, and never actually viewed her as a romantic target. In a flash, however, it had seemed like everything had changed. There wasn't the sort of emotion that he had associated with this sort of thing cropping up. Rather, he was confused and he didn't know how to handle it.<br/><br/>Eventually exhaling, he looked back up and tried to focus on Mariya. Perhaps the reason she had been acting so strangely was the fact that she had been attracted to him. He knew only all too well that lovesickness could cause an individual to act strangely. For sure he had seen it before, and that sort of emotional behavior had gotten more than one cosmonaut.<br/><br/>Other cosmonauts had acted more dishonorably, and used their position to curry favors with women. Vitali would never have done that, and he didn't want to misuse the fame that he had been given. He still had a plan to use it to bring more attention to the plight of his people. Focusing on her again, he though about the words that she had been saying. "I appreciate you getting it all off of your chest."<br/><br/>With that he let out a big sigh before smiling. "If I'm the only person that you have in your life left, then would you perhaps like a big hug? Would that make everything all better?" It was a softer side to Vitali, and not the snarky one that the two of them had been used to seeing thus far. Looking around for a moment, he saw that they were alone.<br/><br/>He would have been more than happy to embrace at this moment. Honestly, if he was going to really give into what he wanted, than he would have been happy to do a bit more than embrace as well. Whether that was actually smart or not, though, was a completely different question.<br/><br/>Perchance it would have been much better to instead let things play out naturally. From her point of view, this new distraction would surely have helped her to move closer and get the information that she had wanted out of him. At this point he would have been disarmed.