fic: What's In A Name? (R, Susan-Talia)
OK, here goes. :)
Title: What’s In A Name
Author: chanter
Characters/pairings: Susan-Talia and barely there Talia-Sinclair
Rating: R
Summary: I have a thousand names for her. Talia Winters reflects.
786 words
Spoilers through second season at least.
Disclaimer: I only play in this universe, it doesn’t belong to me no matter how much I wish it did.
I have a thousand names for her.
Really, between the C and C details and the dealings with God knows how many ambassadors and the conversations in the shower and wherever, whenever the hell else in between I swear there’s a thousand of them.
But it wasn’t always that way.
At first she was just commander, or name and title--I was new, I wasn’t exactly Lyta Alexander and they were all wary of me. I didn’t blame them, seeing as I was associated with everything non-telepaths didn’t normally touch... that and the fact that the entire senior staff still had that near-miss of a tangle with a changeling net hanging over their heads and their last commercial telepath almost cost their CO his career. I didn’t call her anything else at first, just commander. Small C. It took me weeks to progress to Ivanova.
When I did, it wasn’t familiarity I was signaling--not really. I was getting used to her then, being around her and reading her normal array of emotions, letting them gradually blend into that much more background noise. I could tell from the start that she was an incredibly intense woman, too fiery to be strictly military and possessed of an iron will that could probably get the better of just about anybody. Commander with a capital C was a given at that point; that came with trust, and she had mine. And it took a while, but she ended up getting the better of me, too, and the funny thing was she didn’t even have to try.
I’m not sure when she first started getting under my skin. It could’ve been a couple months, maybe three after I joined the station’s staff... I’m honestly not too clear on the details. Nobody else had really attracted me till then and sure, Commander Sinclair was pretty damn good to listen to talking at the opposite end of a quiet hallway, but that wasn’t anything I’d ever have acted on. Daydreams were one thing.
She was entirely another.
I’m not sure of exactly when it was that I stopped taking her emotions as just that much more background sensation, but one day out of the blue I caught myself listening for her and realized oh, great. My subconscious was ahead of me. It didn’t take me long to switch from subconscious to conscious notice, not scanning, just an awareness of when she entered a room I was in while my back was turned or brushed past me while I wasn’t looking. That was around the same time I started to realize that hey, I liked her hair and that oh my, that voice wasn’t something easily forgotten.
That was when I started thinking of her as Susan.
I didn’t call her that to her face right away--not even close. That took a few more months, a drink or... several, and being called the enemy at least once to my knowledge though probably more than that out of my hearing. It was a slow process, the progression from being drunk and sharing drinks to being sober and getting drunk, to using each other’s first names, to chatting in the hallways and being seen together and learning each other’s lock codes. And her seeing me in my mightgown. And me seeing her taking out her earrings. And me watching her pilot a starfury and her watching me putting on makeup in the morning one-handed.
And her backing me up against the wall of her quarters and kissing me. And her telling me her story, and me telling her mine, no omissions, no glossing over. And the two of us learning what lying skin to skin felt like.
That slow progression was well worth the results.
I have a thousand names for her. She has a thousand names for me. Some of hers are gently insulting, used when she knows I’ll be able to tell she doesn’t mean anything by them and some of mine go back to my days in training, nicknames among telepaths that I only bring out when no one else is listening the better to preserve what she’s not telling the universe at large. Some of hers are a whisper, a surge of emotion as much as speech when I know she’s doing her best at sending to me and some of mine come out in a tumble of borrowed Russian and fragmented references centuries old. She asked me once what two of them meant, and the only reply I could think of that sounded anywhere close to reasonable was “You’re a legend, Susan Ivanova.”
I have a thousand names for Susan.
She has a thousand names for me.
At least.
Title: What’s In A Name
Author: chanter
Characters/pairings: Susan-Talia and barely there Talia-Sinclair
Rating: R
Summary: I have a thousand names for her. Talia Winters reflects.
786 words
Spoilers through second season at least.
Disclaimer: I only play in this universe, it doesn’t belong to me no matter how much I wish it did.
I have a thousand names for her.
Really, between the C and C details and the dealings with God knows how many ambassadors and the conversations in the shower and wherever, whenever the hell else in between I swear there’s a thousand of them.
But it wasn’t always that way.
At first she was just commander, or name and title--I was new, I wasn’t exactly Lyta Alexander and they were all wary of me. I didn’t blame them, seeing as I was associated with everything non-telepaths didn’t normally touch... that and the fact that the entire senior staff still had that near-miss of a tangle with a changeling net hanging over their heads and their last commercial telepath almost cost their CO his career. I didn’t call her anything else at first, just commander. Small C. It took me weeks to progress to Ivanova.
When I did, it wasn’t familiarity I was signaling--not really. I was getting used to her then, being around her and reading her normal array of emotions, letting them gradually blend into that much more background noise. I could tell from the start that she was an incredibly intense woman, too fiery to be strictly military and possessed of an iron will that could probably get the better of just about anybody. Commander with a capital C was a given at that point; that came with trust, and she had mine. And it took a while, but she ended up getting the better of me, too, and the funny thing was she didn’t even have to try.
I’m not sure when she first started getting under my skin. It could’ve been a couple months, maybe three after I joined the station’s staff... I’m honestly not too clear on the details. Nobody else had really attracted me till then and sure, Commander Sinclair was pretty damn good to listen to talking at the opposite end of a quiet hallway, but that wasn’t anything I’d ever have acted on. Daydreams were one thing.
She was entirely another.
I’m not sure of exactly when it was that I stopped taking her emotions as just that much more background sensation, but one day out of the blue I caught myself listening for her and realized oh, great. My subconscious was ahead of me. It didn’t take me long to switch from subconscious to conscious notice, not scanning, just an awareness of when she entered a room I was in while my back was turned or brushed past me while I wasn’t looking. That was around the same time I started to realize that hey, I liked her hair and that oh my, that voice wasn’t something easily forgotten.
That was when I started thinking of her as Susan.
I didn’t call her that to her face right away--not even close. That took a few more months, a drink or... several, and being called the enemy at least once to my knowledge though probably more than that out of my hearing. It was a slow process, the progression from being drunk and sharing drinks to being sober and getting drunk, to using each other’s first names, to chatting in the hallways and being seen together and learning each other’s lock codes. And her seeing me in my mightgown. And me seeing her taking out her earrings. And me watching her pilot a starfury and her watching me putting on makeup in the morning one-handed.
And her backing me up against the wall of her quarters and kissing me. And her telling me her story, and me telling her mine, no omissions, no glossing over. And the two of us learning what lying skin to skin felt like.
That slow progression was well worth the results.
I have a thousand names for her. She has a thousand names for me. Some of hers are gently insulting, used when she knows I’ll be able to tell she doesn’t mean anything by them and some of mine go back to my days in training, nicknames among telepaths that I only bring out when no one else is listening the better to preserve what she’s not telling the universe at large. Some of hers are a whisper, a surge of emotion as much as speech when I know she’s doing her best at sending to me and some of mine come out in a tumble of borrowed Russian and fragmented references centuries old. She asked me once what two of them meant, and the only reply I could think of that sounded anywhere close to reasonable was “You’re a legend, Susan Ivanova.”
I have a thousand names for Susan.
She has a thousand names for me.
At least.