candothat | IC Contact (Drift Fleet)

[Kitty is walking down one of the halls of the Tourist toward Winn's room when she catches sight of someone familiar. She's holding a flower folded out of paper. It looks like it was crumpled a little along the way and folded in some of the wrong places before she attempted to smooth it back out. Still, it's fairly recognizable as a flower.]

Chekov, hey. [She wasn't planning to see him, but that doesn't mean it's unpleasant. She's never quite sure how she's supposed to act now to make things easier for him. Maybe there's just no achieving that.] Visiting Kirk?

[He wasn't exactly planning on seeing her while nosing around his new ship, either. A week hasn't done much to make Kitty's missing memories and current relationship less painful (if anything, he's been making himself more miserable by dwelling on them and thinking about how shocked she had been when he'd told her they were together--as if that's so unthinkable?), but he's glad to see her. Sort of. No, yes, he is, even if it hurts.]

Kitty, hello. No... this is my ship now.

The Tourist is? [As if she didn't understand his very simple statement. Is it bad if she's surprised again? Surprised with a side of worry.]

Yes. I transferred here so that I could serve under Captain Kirk. [Now she's got him worried.] Is that bad?

No! No...no. [Varying degrees of commitment to her answer.] That makes sense that you'd want to be here. So much sense. [Like maybe there was something she should have mentioned earlier, but she was in such a hurry not to talk about Winn a lot around him.] It's a great ship and crew. I'm here a lot. [She twists the paper flower between her fingers.]

They were also lacking someone with a communications augment here. [Why is he trying to justify his decision to move here? It was the logical thing to do, he knows that. She knows that.] Why are you...?

[He notices the paper flower. It doesn't take a genius to put that and her discomfort together to reach a conclusion.] This is the ship that Winn Schott is on.

This is the one. [She reaches out with her empty hand to give his arm a supportive rub.] It's great. I didn't know anyone on the Wonderduck, so I'm glad to know you're on ship of good people. [Not that the Wonderduck crew isn't good. Just unknown.]

I was just here to drop this off for thim. [Holding up the paper flower.] He's a lot better at origami, but I speak Japanese, so I think I win. [Rambling a bit.]

[It is not great and he doesn't want to be reminded of Kitty's coma boyfriend all the time, but he smiles anyway.] I have met Kara and Fenris already, and Kirk of course. This will be good. [There's a certain lack of conviction.]

It's much better than any origami attempts of mine. Do... er, would you like me to leave you alone?

No, it's fine. It can wait. [When she goes in to see him she'll be alone then, but it doesn't have to be now.] Jarvis is an amazing cook. He's actually the pilot, but he's always making breakfast for everyone. Chloe has blue hair and she's in the lab. She was one of the very first people I ever met in the fleet. We arrived the same week and were on the Marsiva together. I've only met Marian once but I liked her style. [She smiles. She really does care about this crew as if they were her own.]

And if it's not too weird to say—but it probably is—I think you and Winn would really get along. [Definitely in an alternate world where neither of them knew her for sure. Under the circumstances? She's still hopeful, but less certain.]

[He's relieved that she wants him to stick around for now. She gets a much more believable smile in return.] I look forward to meeting them... and to becoming good friends with this Jarvis so he'll be willing to feed me.

[That smile falters a little.] Maybe. [It's not inconceivable. Chekov liked Reid (if not some of his behavior) and Jack and, prior to now, he's never been inclined to jealousy. He's also never been in a situation quite like this; his emotions are raw right now and he doesn't trust himself to be at his best.]

I imagine you'll do that quickly and easily with Jarvis. He's a good man.

[She reaches up to touch some hair behind her ear. Not so casually.] Mm...have you told anyone else about...our situation? ["Us" felt too vague and too intimate at the same time, but she has to force herself not to flinch at the term she did decide to use. She doesn't mean for it to sound so negative.]

I like him already.

[Her word choice makes him frown. It's an apt enough word, just... is that how she thinks of it? She had been taken aback when he'd told her about it, as if she couldn't believe it happened. And is she asking because she doesn't want anyone else to know?] No. [He should add more words, shouldn't he.]

[She's not sure what to call it or how to think of it. She's with someone she loves and she wants to be respectful of that relationship while also not hurting Chekov more than absolutely necessary and it's hard to know where the lines are.]

[She nods] I, um, I mentioned it to Kurt. Oh! Kurt's awake. You need to meet him. He's blue. I mean he's like one of my three blue friends, but he's the one with a tail.

[It sure is a situation here. At least it's not a dilemma? Those involve decisions and choices. There aren't any choices to made here, just determining how to deal with decisions that were made before the situation arose in the first place.]

Blue with a tail, okay. He's the one from your world, yes?

[no dilemmas. She just wants to tell Winn first. So his ship not all knowing helps. But she doesn't want Chekov in a place where he can't talk about it either.]

That's right. He hasn't been out as long as me. So, he can be a little rougher around the edges, but he's Kurt. [He means a lot to her. It's a good thing that she wants them to meet.]

[To be fair, Chekov doesn't have anyone to talk about it to. He's not so desperate for a friendly ear that he'll go to Kirk or McCoy about girl trouble.]

I would be happy to meet any friend of yours, rough or not. You have good taste in friends, generally.

[Well, that's even sadder even if it doesn't shock her.]

Kurt and I have been together for a lot. So have you and I.

[Yes, well. His life has taken an inexplicable turn for the sad and pathetic. He should probably make some friends.]

Not so long. For you, we only knew each other for a little more than three months. [It felt like a lot longer, but it's a far cry from the time she's spent with the people here.]

Well...maybe it was three months. Or maybe it was longer than three months... [Looking at him. She hasn't had anyone to discuss this with. Oh, she's talked about it with others, but no one else who was in it with her. So, she's not sure if Chekov will just think she's crazy or if he'll see validity in it too.]

I've wondered since I came here if time in MarinaNova was different from what we were led to believe. [And he's glad that she mentioned it because he figured he was just losing his mind.] There would have been no way for us to tell with our bodies suspended and environment fully controlled.

It felt different right away to me, but I didn't really start letting myself believe it could have been different until I was here for awhile. [It doesn't help that her relationship with Winn was one of the things she'd look at. She almost tries to find another way to explain it but finally decides it's something they have to get through and not pretend doesn't exist.] I'd think about how things didn't feel like they were moving any faster or slower with Winn than they did with Reid, but if you go by actual time I've been with Winn so much longer. It just didn't add up unless time was wrong or our attachments or emotions were intensified. I wouldn't put that by them either, but things just feel different now in a way that's easier to sort out.

It would have been simple to manipulate the apparent passage of time. So simple that I'm embarrassed for not thinking of it. [Since pretending isn't the most effective way to actually change things, the example is a fair one. (And maybe repeated exposure to the truth is the fastest way to making everything okay.)] Different how? In the way that the subjective experience of time feels that it corresponds more closely to the passage of recorded time?

[It's also going to be impossible to hide once he wakes up and even more so if Chekov is on the Tourist. And she doesn't want to hide it. She wants to enjoy her love life openly and eagerly.]

Exactly. I mean in the prison at the time it felt like it all made sense but looking back now it feels like I was there years, not almost a year.

[Kitty's attitude towards love is so different here. She was careful about Chekov to spare Reid's feelings for what felt like the longest time and anything but eager to be in love again. Chekov has been attributing that to the fact that so little time passed in MarinaNova compared to here, but maybe not. Maybe he's just as much to blame for Kitty's reluctance and hesitation as time and Reid were.]

There will never be a way to know. Trying to understand a simulation from inside of that simulation... I think that was never going to be possible.

[So much of it was just the change of...everything. She wasn't around Reid or in the places they'd been in love and then been in heartbreak. She didn't have that one last go at it with him only to break up again. In her mind they honestly did part mostly as friends. Things had gone well in that last day as the shared the contents of their discs with each other. And then she had real distance and time apart. More intense distance than anyone might have guessed. Everything was new and then she met someone new. And it was bumpy in those first couple of months. There were so many things about Winn that reminded her of Reid and that scared her. She was scared of falling in love again. She'd only meant to have a fling, but if anyone is worse at that than her it's Winn Schott.]

Yeah. I've never been able to nail down exactly how long I think it really was. And I don't really look any older, but it's also possible those tanks slowed physical signs of aging.

IC Contact (Drift Fleet)

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