Officer Aeryn Sun (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
do_your_duty) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ten_fwd2015-05-16 04:25 pm
do_your_duty) wrote in ten_fwd2015-05-16 04:25 pm
Entry tags:
DECK 12; THE GYMNASIUM
She's not very social.
It's not that she hasn't ever been.
She had good compatriots in her regiments on the Command Carriers. It wasn't the same on Moya. It was a small ship, but there were spaces she could not ignore nor avoid. Not remove the knowledge it was populated with only a handful of escaped criminals. (That she's just as much one of them now.)
The Enterprise is different than both. Larger than Moya, but much smaller than a Command Carrier. More than the small crew of prisoners, but crawling with civilians. On a mission of 'peace,' yet laden with weapons. But it does have some things in common with Moya.
The first. They each have a good training room.
The second. Aeryn Sun spends a lot of time there.
The third. There is only so much time you can do that.
Even if "time" is a weeken or a quarter cycle. Half a cycle. Which is why she's sitting on the floor now, looking at the empty room, every still, waiting apparatus. (The hum of the ship, beneath her, under it all, is different, too. She can tell, because the sound she's looking for, that something in her is feeling for, isn't there.)
(She knows that makes her more different than those three now, too.)
It's not that she hasn't ever been.
She had good compatriots in her regiments on the Command Carriers. It wasn't the same on Moya. It was a small ship, but there were spaces she could not ignore nor avoid. Not remove the knowledge it was populated with only a handful of escaped criminals. (That she's just as much one of them now.)
The Enterprise is different than both. Larger than Moya, but much smaller than a Command Carrier. More than the small crew of prisoners, but crawling with civilians. On a mission of 'peace,' yet laden with weapons. But it does have some things in common with Moya.
The first. They each have a good training room.
The second. Aeryn Sun spends a lot of time there.
The third. There is only so much time you can do that.
Even if "time" is a weeken or a quarter cycle. Half a cycle. Which is why she's sitting on the floor now, looking at the empty room, every still, waiting apparatus. (The hum of the ship, beneath her, under it all, is different, too. She can tell, because the sound she's looking for, that something in her is feeling for, isn't there.)
(She knows that makes her more different than those three now, too.)
no subject
He stops short with a mirthless chuckle, looking at her like she's the crazy one for a change. But as it starts to dawn on him, he sobers up. Brow furrowed, he licks his bottom lip in thought, going over her words in his head again.
"Is that what this is about?" he asks, unable to contain a wry smile. "Aeryn, I'm not leaving. Yeah, these are 'my people'. But this isn't my home, this ... this ship, as amazing as I think it is, isn't where I'm from. It's not the right year, hell, it may not even be the right dimension. Even if I went back, my family, everyone I've ever known, would be dead."
Or worse: they may have never existed. "Did you think I would leave you behind?"
>_> Hilariously the keywords: "you can watch me bleed"
Aeryn knows it shouldn't feel good, but it does when he gets angry.
When he actually gets on the offensive, even if her expression is dismissive of nearly everything he says about it mattering. Or not learning. The first few words seizing on the admission that they are his. These people are his. A line between this and that as finite as the void of space, between every planet without the ability to leave their ground and the next star.
But his last question is the one that strikes clearer than any other, because something in her chest somehow actually hurts at the question like a solid blow taken straight it. Even when her face barely changes, before she actually looks away from him not sure anything is staying now. Because she can't keep looking at his face. His blue eyes. That expression. It's a weakness. She shouldn't care. She hadn't. She hadn't been thinking about this when she sat down. Or even when he came in.
But suddenly it's there. Everywhere. In this room. In her. That faint whisper of,
wow not okay
Yeah, it's been a year and change since then, but he should have remembered. Especially here, given everything that's happened. He'd take her back to Earth with him in a microt, but it's not her home. She can't go home.
"Aeryn," he starts, again, quieter on the name now. He takes his time with her, lips cocked humorlessly, a chuckle on his next exhale that betrays both his sincerety and his nervousness. "You remember what I said? Back on Moya? I know these people are ... alien to you, but they're doing their best. Just give them a chance. No matter what happens, you and me are gonna leave this ship together. Okay? We can figure out the rest later."
Re: wow not okay
It's not as simple as those words in her head. She's here. She could choose to be here. Like these humans. It's been a cycle, and more. But this isn't where she wants to be. No part of her wants to be here, or to make this place a home. She doesn't want to wear one of these uniforms and she doesn't have the time for any of their careful smiles or the rules about where she's allowed to go and where she isn't. (And. Something sounds wrong. Feels wrong. She can't explain it.) It's a worse prison than the one before.
At least on Moya she could delude herself, if she ever let herself, with the idea of somewhere else.
There she always had her prowler. Being stuck on this ship. Stuck in these rooms. For more than a cycle.
She was more of a prisoner right here, with all his people, than she'd ever been without her own on a stolen prison ship of criminals. At least she could make her own decisions there. But her thoughts stop at the same time as her shoulders stiffen even further at that softer tone. The one that makes her hold perfect still, wishing with every part of herself he was yelling instead. She knew what to do with the yelling. It was easy. This tone was just.
But he didn't stop with her name. Or a handful of words. He kept talking, and somewhere around the third she looked back toward him. Not a steady look. It shifted, impatient and uncertain to the floor between them and his knees and his face. Uncertain if she believed him. Wanted to believe him. Whether he actually understood anything at all.
no subject
He means it. They may not stay on the same path forever - maybe she'll fly off to one of those Sebacean colonies eventually, and fingers crossed he'll end up back home someday - but their paths align here. She's not getting left behind.
He wets his lips, glancing down after a couple silent minutes and tamping back his frustration. She could at least try to make this easy on him.
"So we've gotta figure out how to get a ticket back to Moya, right?" he ventures, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And unless you can get Q in a headlock, the best way of doing that that I can see is opening up a wormhole and flying back. Which we can't do without help, Aeryn."
no subject
"I'd rather shoot him," Aeryn says, first. Mercilessly sharp.
Even though she knows that shooting him would not solve the problem.
It wouldn't make him want to do anything in their favor, and according to rumor it wouldn't even hurt him. But it would make her feel better. Maybe even marginally better if, going with that rumor, she could actually shoot him in the face a half dozen times before he stopped her. Or the ships' security recruits did.
"Do you even know if anyone on this ship has seen one of your wormholes?" It's not helpful, because if he had she's sure he would have been up in her face bragging about it half a cycle ago. "And if you do find one, somehow, while stuck in these rooms, how do you think we're going to get to it?"
Though Aeryn was beginning to wonder how hard it might be to steal a shuttle pod really.
From the people who kept expecting the best of them and laying down hard rules, but not once really hard about them.
no subject
The but it's not gonna happen is unspoken. She doesn't need the reminder, like a white hot coal back between her ribs. In this version of the universe, anything's possible now.
He bites his lip, containing that unquenchable hope of his and something a little harder to read. "Nope, but I know they exist in this universe. Wormholes are... they're basically tubes of spacetime. The theory of the Einstien-Rosen bridge is that they can act as conduits between two different points in the universe, and like a singularity time, relativity, physical dimensions ... shouldn't matter. They're a universal constant."
Connecting ... well, everything. "That's the theory, anyway," he grins. "And getting to one is exactly why I'm telling you that you need to play nice with the locals. On your big Peacekeeper ships you had to wait for one of the higher-ups to assign you prowler duty, right? Well, you want a prowler here? Make nice with the crew.
"It's not exactly a warship, but a shuttle would do the trick. Even at impulse power, we just need something with four walls to get us through the wormhole and out the other side."
no subject
She doesn't want to feel it, but it flushes across her chest, seeping into her lungs and her ribs all the same. A wash of pleasure at his amusement and agreement in that warm, short laugh of his. At the way he doesn't contradict her flippant, angry, but utterly willing to fulfill the want, response. No matter how much it might not help. It would help her for a few seconds.
He bites his lip the way he does when he's about to explode again and then he does.
Starts rambling in that way he does. Words she doesn't understand that her translator microbes scramble to keep up with. Funnels of color, something about surmountable structures being connected that she can't picture, and names that make no sense, sounding wholly like an entire language inserted in themselves, that makes the space between her eyes furrow just slightly in confusion.
She can't understand half the things he adds to what he says on a good day, in the middle of a mission she completely understands, and when begins to talk like a tech or a scientist if it's even more incoherent. Except that his eyes get bright and he's gone excitable, and she's almost frustrated at herself that she has no real clue if he's making sense or not, babbling insanity even for his kind or not.
The end makes sense, again, though. Which she can at least get her hands on. Doubtful sounding.
"You think they are going to let us near anything so large without a large contingent watching?"