ten_fwd | BackDated - New (Year's) Cycle's Solar Day

Entry tags:

BackDated - New (Year's) Cycle's Solar Day

[Morning after John's New Years Party]

Aeryn is awake, and upright. This might be all that can be said for it.

She is awake. Upright. Also, there is a cup in front of her.

She didn't even argue when Guinan looked at her, walked away and then brought it back. The women speaking in low, soothing tones, that would have annoyed Aeryn if the world would stop pulsing so violently for her to be annoyed longer than the half-micron of trying to think about being annoyed. But the pain was ruthless.

Which is why her eyes are half-closed and she's barely touch the drink.
It is morning. The room hurts her eyes. She is upright, awake, sitting.

And nothing happened last night. Nothing.
Definitely not any kissing. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Which made him like every other arrogant, assuming other person on the ship, but Aeryn was used to that. It wasn't something she wanted hidden. (She had some of those. McCoy had gotten to see that violently up close and personal.) She didn't want to be thought of as a human. She didn't want to be one of them.

... No matter how much John's words plagued her mind.

(You can be more.

You would have fit right in.)

"If this is what charm feels like--" She meant the pounding pain. She had meant the pounding pain. She really had when the words were coming out of her mouth. Why was it that was the second she remembered kissing John, again? "--I'll pass on everything involved."

It still fit, and she didn't have a single clue, nor want to have one, nor want to think about it, to parse that out.
"You all have too many celebrations all the time as it is. It's wonder you keep them straight, or get anything done."

He shrugged. "Maybe you'll like humans once you get to know them." Maybe. "And all our celebrations."

He tried some more of his drink, which went down a bit easier this time, now he knew what to expect.

"Life is hard and sometimes you just need an excuse to party." Or get very drunk, in both their cases.

"I've already been here over a cycle." Aeryn's look at her drink was too bland and blank for the deepest both emptiness (and everything that is not emptiness) at how long she has been here. It still rankles. Being trapped. Being a prisoner here more than she ever was on Moya. She tilted her head to look at him, instead of letting any of those thought crystallize and form firm, and it made her eyelashes shiver as she had to make her focus settle and clarify his face again.

"The Peacekeepers encourage recreating, but they would not approve of those." She lifted her cup, gesturing with it, even though her movement was not entirely steady. "It's a waste of resources, and manpower. If there is time for that, it could be better redistributed across a roster."

"There's probably no hope for us, then." He chuckled, then frowned, rubbing his forehead. Since this drink didn't seem to be making him feel worse - if that was possible - he kept sipping it. Maybe it would work.

"It's good to have some time off. And sometimes we all need it." Apart from the unlucky people who had to keep a skeleton crew. "You don't have to take part, if you don't want to."

There's something bothersome about that thought, too, but Aeryn can't quite identify what it is. Not through the pounding of the room, so instead she raises the glass to her lips and gulps down two more big swallows, nearly to finishing her glass. Frowning at the last finger or two in the bottom. "There's not that much to do here."

"No," he agreed, looking down into his drink. "You'd think we'd been here long enough to trust us by now." If he was less hungover he'd be more articulate on that front. And probably more annoyed about what he wasn't allowed to do.

Aeryn downed the rest of her drink, before looking over at her odd compatriot, who she still didn't hate as much as she hated the space between her ears. In her head. The reason she'd done (as well as the fact it had caused the other thing, she didn't want to be thinking about). Her body seemed only too glad to punish her for the indulgences of her weaknesses.

"I'd have stolen a shuttle by now." It's honest, and beyond that there's no guilt in the admission even.

He'd have gotten a look at the shuttle by now, if he'd thought of it before Jackal had mentioned it. And hadn't gotten too drunk to do it last night. He was not going to do it hungover.

"Why haven't you?"

John. The name shoves itself into her mind, and onto her tongue. Heavy and hot. Maybe even a touch bitter, twisting into the image from last night, and twining too far away. The Command ships, and her Prowler. Conversations in the gym, where he talked about playing nice to get herself to one if they did need it.

"That's a good question." It was. It went well with another one,

Why had she never taken her prowler and flown away from Moya at the beginning either?

"It's this ship," Trip concluded. It was the only explanation for why they'd felt the need to behave. "They all trust that you won't do something like that, so you don't."

"I'm not that kind of person."

Maybe it would have been funny, coming from anyone else.
It's entirely deadpan. Entirely honest. Almost disgusted with the notion.

Not of not being that kind of person, but of being the won't who wouldn't because.

Her own crew did not look at her and see anything other than a Peacekeeper Commando. They didn't trust her. They hadn't chosen her. It'd all been random and at the time. They would all scatter like ashes in the wind when it came time. It probably made them just as surprised as it made her unsettled that she hadn't just flown off in her ship at the beginning.

Except she was Irreversably Contaminated. In lie, and in truth now. After what she'd done. Her desperation. Folly.

Somewhere at the back of it pulsed those other words, too. ("You can be more.")

"If you say so." He shrugged. His head hurt too much to argue, and she seemed sincere. Or at least that was not the sort of person she wanted to be.

Aeryn pushed the empty glass across the bartop counter and out of her hands. It's clinging remnants of the concoction still slowly dripped back down to the bottom. It was more than she really liked to think about. Especially since this place had told she'd been changed. It was in her DNA now, the purity of the bloodline tainted, putrified, and from time to time, the stillness, lifelessness of the ship, bothered her. More than she knew how or where to point to.

A silence she couldn't fix. An awareness of that silence that she couldn't just tear out from her own.

Aeryn closed her eyes pushing that away, too. In the pile. John Crichton. Parties. Alcohol. Moya. The Crew.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

BackDated - New (Year's) Cycle's Solar Day

John & Trip totally should commiserate about their anti-emotion alien not-girlfriends.

They totally should

I would be so be a fly on that wall. Those boys need drinks for that, too.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

I am coming to love this so much more than I thought I would.

Me too!

Re: Me too!

no subject

no subject