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Reading RPs by Andy and Terri is always a treat and when they do one together? Powerful stuff. As you'll see below.--Maer
The bridge’s door has been shut. Much as she always did on the Gift, Nika rarely closed it tight preferring to keep the open-door policy of her mentor. When the door’s open, everyone feels free to pop in. When the door’s shut it means she’s busy or she’s deliberately choosing not to be involved with anyone else. Nika hadn’t come out of the bridge in nearly 16 hours. She may have napped up there, it’s hard to know with the door closed the way it is. But there were signs of occupancy and motion at least. The coffee pot’d been raided several times and the most recent raid included some of the food from the fridge. The door was cracked now—either she’d opted to allow for it in case someone needed it, or possibly she forgot to close it entirely on her way back in.
The blond was settled into the pilot’s chair, an empty plate next to her on the console. Her head was tipped back, her eyes closed. Music played over the console’s speakers, the melody a faint trail of lighter notes through the deeper back tones.
Okay, it’s been time enough.
Joshua didn’t know exactly what had happened between Rina and Nika. Rina, of course, had given him her side of it as she had seen it, but as much as he loved Rina, he also knew she viewed the world through a very particular lens. The two women had fought, that much was clear, both from the physical and emotional residue. The twinges of the emotional backlash in his head had lasted for hours past the actual event. At least he wasn’t passing out from that. His defenses had improved and that was a small victory.
He walked up to the bridge door and seeing it cracked, opened it a little wider and quietly slid through to the other side, cracking the door behind him again. The music was a peaceful contrast to the emotions rolling off his Captain. She was trying to bury them deep, that was obvious. But they were bubbling up at the emotional surface of her mind. He worried that those caustic emotions were eating her alive from the inside out. She hadn’t been the same person for weeks. No, he admitted, for months, really. If he had been Christian, he would have headed this off a long time ago. But Joshua had long ago come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t Christian. Whether he could’ve done better didn’t matter. Helping Nika now did.
Joshua softly approached the co-pilot’s chair and settled himself in quietly. He couldn’t make her talk and he wouldn’t try. But if she was as bad off as he suspected she’d open up on her own. So he sat back and listed to her music and waited.
Nika said nothing for a long time. That she was aware of his presence was obvious—she’d looked right at him when he joined her. But when all he seemed to be doing was sitting, she closed her eyes again. And to give away the depths of the issue, she was silent for nearly an hour before asking him neutrally, “You just come up for the view, darlin’?” The Border drawl was more than evident. Sometimes a bad sign, sometimes a good one.
He was willing to be patient. Joshua had practice in that. “And to see if you might want to talk,” he admitted quietly. “As your friend, I’m a little worried.”
Nika remained quiet for a few moments, looking at the viewport. The Black was ever so infinite. And peaceful.“Figured she’d send you this way after a bit,” she commented in that same neutral tone. “I ain’t talkin’ any more. Ain’t no point to it, Joshua. It gets me nowhere anyway. There ain’t any answers. There’s just moving forward.”
“She didn’t send me, Nika. When you can read emotions, it’s hard to miss the backlash of that kind of fight. And like I said, as *your* friend, I wanted to see how you were doing.” Nika was down deeper in the dark than he had realized. He, at one point, had told Rina that you couldn’t prevent people from going to the dark places. That you could only shine a light into the dark so they could find their way back. But Nika was in a pit and no amount of light was going to help her get herself out. She needed a hand up. He didn’t know if he was the right one to offer it...but he was her friend and the one there. So he would have to do.
He let the rest of her comments ruminate for a few minutes before directly responding to them. “There may not be answers, but there are people, Nika. And you have a ship full of them who love you. And one of them right here who is worried about you. It’s clear you’re not happy. And you deserve to be happy. I can try and help you find your way to that.”
“Yeah?” Nika asked, her shoulders hunched slightly in self-defense and her tone a bit on the antagonistic side. “How you thinkin’ to go about that, Joshua? You gonna make it so Arden ain’t crazy? Take us back in time to before Kiera revealed herself to be a childish bitch and lost us the Gift and my eyes? Better yet, to before Jake and Rick died? If you have the power to turn back the clock that far, I’d sure love it if we could go a bit farther back and maybe avoid Potemkin altogether.” She smiled bitterly. “Or you just gonna make me less of a self-absorbed bitch and help me get my head out of my ass?”
Boy, she’s pissed. Can’t take this head on...
“What? You didn’t know I could turn back time?” He smirked half-heartedly. “Part and parcel of the Borrower skillset. Blue Sun...is there anything they can’t do?” Then his face grew serious. That last comment of hers sounded like something Rina would say. And probably did. She had probably meant well. Hammering at someone to shake them out works when the other person was solid, like pre-Potemkin Nika, sure in herself and her decisions. But Nika of the now felt fragile, a delicate piece of crystal that needed a softer touch.
“We’ll get Arden straightened out, Nika,” he reassured her calmly, his eyes focused in on her. “But as for everything else...I can’t turn back time. I can say that we control our own happiness. Beggar might call it counting your blessings, but I like to think of it as taking control. Choosing what we allow to make us happy.”
Her jaw clenched. Of all the people on board, Joshua was perhaps the one she was most afraid of letting close to her anymore. Nika turned her head just a little farther from him, her ‘borrowed’…no, ‘bought’ eyes, eyes purchased with blood and betrayal… still on the Black. “Well, when I sort out what it’ll take to make me happy, I’ll let you know,” she told him mildly.
He had his shields down, his mental doors open, and the pain radiating off of her broke his heart. Once upon a time, he would have let her find her own way when she had said something like that. Taken her at her word. But he was a little wiser these days. And he couldn’t stand to let his big sister hurt.
“No, my jei jei.” He said it simply but with completely surety. “You’ve been alone in the dark too long.” She had never left the dark, he realized suddenly. It had just changed from being physical to being emotional.
Joshua reached a hand forward to her. “Take my hand, Nika. Let me be your friend. Let me help.”
When you got nothin’ left to give, baby, the Verse will ask for more. You’ll trip and fall.... and that’s when you’ll understand. For every piece of your heart you give out, you get one back too. And the hands of those you’ve given yours to will catch you when you fall. You just have to let them.
Nika looked toward his hand and for the longest moment she went still, her father’s deep voice so real in her head that she thought for a moment he was standing there. She was dying under the weight of so much hurt, nowhere for it to go. No relief from it. She didn’t know how to let it go, didn’t know how to get out from under it. It was affecting everything.
Oh so slowly, she reached out and slid her hand into Joshua’s, the contact forcing a soft exhale from her. An agony of sobs caught in her chest, tears suddenly overflowing her eyes.
And Joshua stood up, not letting her hand go, pulling her slowly and gently into a standing hug. He didn’t say anything substantial, other than murmuring quietly into her ear that it was going to be okay. The time for words would come later. Right now, it was time for Nika to let some of the pain go, to realize that she still had something other than just moving forward to hold on to.
Vast loneliness, bottomless desolation. Nika let him pull her to him and accepted the hug. And she buried her face in his shoulder, curling in on herself and pulling her arms in tight to her chest to hide in the shelter of his embrace. She could not remember the last time someone offered a haven, and it broke through the dam she’d put around her emotions. She sobbed so hard that her body shook in his hands. It could have been an eternity before it eventually tapered off. And still she didn’t pull away.
As he held Nika, Joshua felt a deep feeling of relief flow through him, like a Damocles’ sword being removed from above his head. And at the same time, that tiny little nagging voice of guilt sat there in his head telling him that he should have done more sooner. But he shushed the voice away and hugged Nika tighter, rubbing his hands across her back. “Take as long as you need,” he said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere. When you need me, Nika, I will *always* be there for you. That’s what family does.”
It wasn’t in her to be so distraught. It was exhausting. And it, too, didn’t fix a gorram thing. When Nika finally pulled away from him, she wiped carefully at her face avoiding the black eye that Rina had given her two days before. She sucked in a shaky breath and said quietly, “Thanks.” The ache was still soul deep, and Nika wearily lowered herself into her chair again. “I s’pose that was nicer than getting my ass kicked,” she murmured, just a little abashed at the torrent of anguish. Now her face felt swollen and she still couldn’t see a way past any of it. It was hard to decide if it was an improvement.
“Maybe just a little bit better,” he agreed. Joshua settled back into his own chair. Nika’s emotions were still a bubbling mix of so many different feelings, but there was a subtle lessening of intensity to it. The motions of an inactive volcano as versus an erupting one. He smiled a little as he pulled a small cloth out of his pocket. Having a cloth on hand turned out to be useful so many ways. A lesson learned from Rina. And now it was getting put to use for Nika, as he handed it to her to wipe her face.
Joshua chuckled a little. “If we were the stars of one of those Cortex serials that I loved so much when I was still at the Academy, this would’ve resolved everything and life would be back to normal just in time for the fruity-oaty bar commercials.” He looked at her knowingly. “But I think we both know that’s not going to be the case, right? No one, especially not me, expects things to change immediately.”
She looked at him with deep blue eyes bloodshot from tears. Nika shook her head. “Not sure anything will change,” she admitted softly, slumping back into her chair. She wiped her face with the cloth he’d offered, her hand coming up to rub at her flushed forehead. “I’ll just keep on keepin’ on. It’s all I can do, Joshua.” She looked toward the viewport. “I need you to be... more proactive at verifying the people we take on board,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t really care if it’s an invasion of privacy. I don’t want to deal with people who can’t be trusted to deal square with us anymore.”
“I’ll do that to the best of my abilities, Nika.” And within the restrictions of pulling jobs for the Browncoats.
He looked at her again deeply, trying to get the feel of her. “But something has to change eventually, because you can’t just keep on keepin’ on. It’s going to destroy you from the inside. You gotta find something worth living for. It can be the Browncoats, it can be the crew, it can be the ship, hell, it could be a small plot of land next to your sister’s farm. I said it before, and I’ll say it again, the only thing that each of us can truly control is our own happiness. I have faith in you that you can reach out and grab some happy for yourself, if you’re willing. It’s there to be had.”
He really believed that. Nobody was immune to the dark, but the flip side of that was that nothing could prevent a person from finding happiness, if they were really interested in looking.
Nika blew out a breath and forced a smile for him. “Used to find my happiness here,” she told him, looking around the bridge. “Could fly in the Black for hours. Could hear the stars.” She paused and then admitted quietly, “Haven’t heard music in a long time.” She once made him a CD with the music that sang in the back of her head from the Black... but now that she said it out loud, the admission jarred her. Her eyes trailed back to the viewport. She was quiet a long time.
“Shyla used to sit outside the bridge when I was up here for a long watch,” Nika said slowly. “She’d keep people off the bridge for hours. She used to listen while I’d pick tunes out on the console.” Her words were slow, drawn out. Her exhaustion was evident in the way she was rambling a little. “Harry....” It makes her laugh suddenly. “Well, let’s just say she was a smart lady. Kept people off the bridge for a different reason when the door was closed a couple of times.” The memory is obviously a good one, thoughts of home. Of a time when she didn’t feel alone, when she felt like she had a true purpose. Needed.
The laughter trailed off and Nika said quietly, “Shyla said to fake it. Fake it til you make it. But I’m not sure how much more faking it I can do, Joshua.” The sadness was pervasive. “I don’t know what it’ll take to be happy. I’m tired of feeling like nothing we do is right. Hell half the time I don’t even know if I feel like what we’re doing is good, much less right. We came out here to do good in the Verse.” She shrugged a little. “And in all honesty, kiddo, I’m tired of being alone. Watching you and Rina play house is about killin’ me.”
She looked at him. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad for you. But it just brings home how ....horribly empty everything is.” She smirked. “And I gotta tell you, I’ve found ways to forget a while,” Captain Arrow anyone? He’s a might fine way to forget! “... I’m just waitin’ for the lot of you to finish up findin’ your soulmates and go ahead and get off this carnival ride. Beggar’s got his girl. You and Rina are gettin’ hitched. Kiera’s got a guy out there somewhere. Arden....” She grimaced. “Let’s leave him outta this for now, cuz I ain’t ever going to be what he needs. And now he’s plumb losin’ his mind too.”
Joshua felt what they were doing was right, but that was faith and no amount of argument from him would restore faith in someone who had lost it. So he changed direction.
“Do you want to keep flying?” Asking that of Nika would’ve seemed stupid months ago...but now Joshua wasn’t so sure. Maybe she needed to step away from it all, go spend some time with her sister, try and recenter herself away from all the chaos of the oncoming war.
“I don’t know,” Nika admitted after a long time. And for a woman as tied to the Black as she is, it’s a tantamount to revealing the very foundation of the Verse is cracked. “Beggar asked me if I would have really turned ‘em over knowing that they’d be tortured.” She paused. “If I believed in the cause, I would have. I’ve done it before. But it’s a whole different cause. Or maybe it's not a different cause -- the words are all the same. Self-determination. Maybe it’s just me that’s changed... maybe it’s just that I’ve lost the belief in being able to change anything.”
She paused and asked him softly, “What’d they die for, Joshua? Jake died... to try to get the truth out there. And what’d it get us? Rick died for what we thought was the same reason. But... what good did it do? I used to believe everything happened for a reason. That by making life better for the people in our own path that we were making the Verse a better place. But it’s going to Hell in a handbasket, if you believe in Beggar’s God and his punishments. It sure looks to me like if there is a God, we’re all bein’smited for our hubris and our arrogance.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t there for the first war, Nika, so I can’t say how this is different. But maybe it’s about not looking at the big picture and looking at the small things.” Joshua smiled as he continued, “Look at me. You’ve made all the difference in my life. You could’ve chosen to leave me behind back then. But you didn’t and you changed my life. Maybe we can’t change the big things. Maybe they’re destined to happen. But we can still make things better for people. Like all the girls we rescued. You think they would think that we can’t make a difference?”
“I want that to be enough,” Nika said. “I’m trying to make that be enough.” She leaned her head back and then asked tiredly, “You up for a watch on the bridge. I think I need to sleep.” She smirked a little. “As Rina pointed out when she kicked my ass, I’m just wallowing. Time to get on my big-girl panties and deal.”
He nodded. “You’re in control of your own happiness, etc etc etc.” He smiled at her a little as he stood up. “But yes, go get some sleep.” And for the second time that evening, he reached out a hand towards her. “Hand up, Captain?”
When she took his hand this time, Nika squeezed it tightly as she stood and tugged him into a hug. She whispered in his ear, “Please don’t let Rina know what I said about the two of you? It would break her heart. It’s my problem to deal with, not hers.”
He hugged her tight and then nodded as he pulled back to look at her. “I may not be a Companion but I can handle discretion. You still okay with being the one to marry us?”
“I’m thrilled to do it for you,” Nika said, forcing a smile. “I am happy for you both, Joshua. You bring out the best in one another. And that’s what it’s all about.”
“Ok,” Joshua said, letting her go from the hug and resisting the urge to say something trite about her finding someone. He believed she would...but that wasn't what she wanted or needed to hear at the moment. “Go rest, Nika. I've got your back. Least I can do for my captain and big sister.”