olyabird | [oom] San Francisco Victorian/Milliways Rooms

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[oom] San Francisco Victorian/Milliways Rooms

[ after this ]

She still eats as if it is a privilege, a throwback to the many times when it was. Proteins first, to sustain the body, and yes, while battered poultry is a novelty, she still manages to enjoy it. Carbohydrates next, and fresh baked bread is fresh baked bread the world over. And finally, because it has a strange scent, and it looks to be rather messy to eat, finally she delves into the watermelon slices. Juice ran down her chin and she had a sense memory of eating apples fresh from the cider press, only this was more like pears, she thought. No, not at all like pears. Something completely new and different.

Not unlike the man seated next to her, his startlingly blue eyes glittering with mirth as she chased bite after bite with a swipe of her napkin.

"This should be served in a glass," she murmurs, taking another bite of the almost ethereal fruit. One could eat for days and never fill up. "What are you laughing at, hmm?"

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McCoy's opinion of the people she associates with outside of the bar drops by a fair margin. Idiots.

"Assuming has been what's gotten me into the worst trouble." He notes, settling a little deeper into the couch and steadfastly saying nothing about the cigarettes. "Besides. Why guess on important things?"

She takes a long drag, her thoughts a chaotic ramble behind her eyes. Times like these are when she misses being an owl. Owl mind is so much simpler.

"There was never any time to ask. Free will is an illusion, you know."

She doesn't know where he is, or what he's doing, but she knows, if he turned his mind to finding her, she couldn't stay hidden forever. And she has no one to blame for that but herself.

That hits a trigger that more than a few people have set off, in the course of his life. There has to be something like free will. Flat out has to. If there isn't, the depression that haunts every practicing medical professional will grab him and drag him under without so much as a token fight. It would be a lie to say he remembers all of his patients. He doesn't even remember all of the ones who died - thanks to being on-hand to a couple of the worst disease outbreaks in the last decade or so, when the front line of medical defense suddenly also became the last line, there have been so many he just couldn't save. But there have been quite a number he could, as well.
And it's only because he firmly believes that he can make a difference that he keeps going. Destroy that, and he'll go down like a house of cards.

"We'll have to disagree on that one, darlin'." He replies, but it's terse, his whole body language flipped from relaxed and content to nervy, prepped for a fight.

"Well, for you, maybe it's different." She feels it more than she sees it, feels it scorch her skin like the Gobi sun at noon. "Maybe that is your gift."

She rolls the cigarette between her fingertips, watching the coal burn down.

"If you ask," she says, pausing. "I will stay. But you have to know, it puts you in danger to ally yourself with me. Grave danger. And I may not be able to protect you from the consequences."

He's not so much of an idiot that he scoffs at the danger. He knows full well he's just not cut out to be a fighter, at least not in the traditional sense. Most of the command crew could easily lay him out - though he draws some comfort from the idea that if it came down to it, he could do fairly well against Scotty. Maybe. If the prize wasn't a stack of Engineering technical journals. Kirk, however? Spock? Uhura? It's not even approaching a fair fight.

"Darlin', I serve on board a ship of the line, the flagship at that. By all rights, what we've been through already, I have no right to be alive in the first place. I refuse to live my life in fear of what might happen down the road." His tone is vehement, but part of that is due to the adrenaline slammed into his system just a few moments before.

She looks up at him then, and levels her gaze at him.

"You might be safe in your world," she muses, wondering if Gesar could follow him through a door and knowing enough not to put it past him.

"But here?" She shakes her head. The best she could hope to do would be to hide his existence. And she's not sure she wants to live like that either. "I just want you to make -- an informed decision."

She pronounces the words carefully, and a little of the wry humour returns to her voice. He doesn't strike her as one to make decisions of the heart based on reason. It's one of the things that makes him so attractive to her in the first place.

He doesn't. He really doesn't - if he did, he wouldn't have once married someone who obviously needed more than he could provide, he wouldn't have been surprised when it fell apart, and he wouldn't have blamed himself so harshly for it.

He does a lot of things he wouldn't have, if he sat and thought every thing through. On the whole, he feels it's made his life better, not worse.

"With all that in mind... I'd still regret not having the chance."

She sits back into the couch, glancing around the room again, before returning her gaze to his face. He is very easy on the eyes, and so long as he doesn't expect her to cook, she thinks they might make a go of it.

"You are pig-headed, and rash. And you don't like my smoking in here, do you?"

She has strange ways of showing her affection.

"I've been called both of those before." He notes wryly, standing to collect the debris of their meal. He leaves her the makeshift ashtray. "And do you want my honest medical opinion on that?"

"I don't need it. I can hear your lungs crying out in outrage from here."

She grins at his back, a sudden wash of fondness taking her by surprise. She stubs out her last cigarette, grabs the bottle of vodka and follows him back into the kitchen.

"You need help?"

"I think I'll manage - the resemblance really is a bit eerie. Put a view of the bay outside that window and I'd swear I was back on Earth." He grumbles, more to cover his uneasiness on just how Bar got this information in the first place than any real displeasure at the rooms themselves. The smattering of utensils get dumped into the sink, and after a few moments of rummaging he finds a bottle of dish soap to pour into the warm water.

She hums, putting her hands on the island and hopping just a little bit to sit, her heels dangling. She considers getting a glass to pour a drink, and then thinks better of it, taking a swig right from the bottle.

"Good memories, I hope?"

"Can't complain. I'd just joined Star Fleet then, and worked long hours at the hospital. Junior officers tended to get the the worst shifts." A few more moments of rummaging reveals the drying rack, right where he thought it should be. He gives it a dirty look, but sets it up without comment and commences the washing up.

After a long moment of contemplating the sudsy water, he looks over at her.

"So, I'm pig-headed, and rash, and probably suicidal to boot, but... are we going somewhere with this, Olga?"

She frowns a bit, misunderstanding the question.

"I thought we were staying here," she says, and then it hits her. "Oh you mean," she gestures again, a tiny hand movement that indicates 'this'.

"I told you once. If you ask, I will stay."

"Please stay."

He's practically defenseless, and he has a fair idea of just how over his head he'd be of her kind of trouble came down on them, but he does really want this chance.

Her head falls to one side and she smiles at him. It isn't a broad toothy grin, and she'd never be someone they'd pick to sell toothpaste, but for Olga? It's a look that radiates.

She reaches a foot across the gap between them, plucking at the hem of his shirt with her toes.

"Alright. But I don't cook."

"Oh, that I think I can manage." He's no top chef, but he's had to make is fair share of meals. If he says so himself, he's not half bad at it. "I'm a bit rusty, but with the bar close at hand we won't starve."

His grin, bright and sunny and not in the least restrained, is the part that expresses just how very glad he is that she didn't deny him.

Again, she feels it and she can't help but close her eyes, basking in the warmth as if a ray of sunshine had just broken through the clouds.

She chuckles a bit under her breath, a funny thought just having struck her.

"You're from the twenty third century, yes?"

"Yes." He agrees, dumping the now-clean silverware into the drying rack and drying his hands on a towel. "2267, just beginning the new year, for as much as that matters in the middle of vacuum."

She's leaning forward, perched with her elbows on her knees, fingers interlaced. Her heels bounce lightly against the cabinetry.

"I suppose by then they have invented a pill for the man to take. So it isn't always the woman's responsibility?" He hasn't mentioned the subject, and it's hardly as if they've used protection.

If she were also from his time, he'd be straight-up insulted. Only barbarians, or the sort of scum one doesn't want to meet in a dark alley, would loose the threat of an unwanted pregnancy on their partner.

But she isn't from his time. And he knows full well things weren't like they are for his now. (It's one of his favorite rants)

"There is. Injections, actually - most of the crew is on it, for shore leave." His voice is dry as the Vulcan deserts.

He pauses, his head bowed over the sink, twisting the towel in his hands.
"I went the more old-fashioned way." Every medication has risks of failure. After losing Joanna, he couldn't emotionally afford more of those risks.

The wave of loss takes her by surprise. It's as sharp as a winter wind, and it cuts deep. Her brow furrows and she leans a bit to one side, trying to catch his eye.

"Talk to me," she says, her voice gentle and soft.

He knows what she's doing, he's done it himself a time or two (or ten or twenty) - there's no ship's psychiatrist. If someone has a problem it falls on him to get them to talk it out. It's harder to talk your way around someone if you have to look them in the eyes while doing so.

He doesn't particularly want to go further down this road.

He turns, leaning against the counter, his hands still tangled in the towel, a flash of steel in his eyes.

He saw her once, after he left. She was five. She was beautiful.

The memory is so vivid, so perfect in his mind, she can't help but see the child.

His child.

She slips down off the counter and moves to stand behind him, her hand brushing down his back. When she speaks, her voice is pitched low, tinged with a wistfulness that verges on haunted.

"I have told you more about my life, Lyonya, in the passed few hours, than I have spoken of in decades. If you don't want to speak of it, I understand, but please remember -- you asked."

Asked her to stay. Asked her for a chance to be a part of his life.

He did. He just did, understanding what he was getting into. She's right. He doesn't want to do this, but she's right.

"Right before the divorce... we had a girl. Joanna." He remembers standing in the nursery, in full scrubs, holding his newborn daughter and watching the sun rise. "We shouldn't have. We were barely functioning as a couple. But she wanted a child so badly, and I did too."

When he'd arrived home from the hospital that day his world was re-arranged, they were already gone. There had been a lawyer waiting for him.

"Sometimes there are letters." There is a very small locked box he keeps under his bunk, halfway full of letters written in childish script. The last was sent over a year ago.
"I couldn't risk missing out on another life."

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