how am i supposed to know what's true?
"Is it just me or is this aunt thing like... the most paternal shit in the world, he's /eighteen/."
"Yeah, that.." he shakes his head. "It's not a mentality I can deal with, personally." He looks at her, ignoring the chatter in there, for now. "...I imagine it gets you a bit more, being from the 21st century."
"I think it'll get to anybody," she says, wry, rubbing one hand over the opposite's knuckles, "But yeah, it's...stupid as hell. So it's not as bad, now?"
"Not as bad, no," he says with a sigh. "I remember reading in feminist studies, it was popular for a while to talk about how it took twenty years to destroy womens' rights and it'll take a thousand to rebuild it? That's pretty much reality."
"Feminist studies." She briefly thinks that's the kind of thing you take in college, and she will never probably take it, and she's probably missing out. "It's worse if you're a girl who's- y'know, not white- but it's not all that easy regardless, I guess. I fell in with some real macho types, got a full view."
"Now /that/... ended up all but vanishing. Racism, that concept. The second we made contact with non-humans, it was like, instantaneous." He snaps his fingers, gesturing as he talks. "Like somebody set a bomb off in humanity. We were done. It was crumbling before that, but those were the last nails in the coffin." ... He shrugs a little. "But all species have genders."
"Mmm. And the God forbid women make their own goddamn choices thing in this case. The whole property thing - the entitled thing... I didn't see a lot of that growing up with my mom, but it got in there anyway."
* Kirk watches her a bit before speaking. "My mom raised me. She had some issues... that she didn't need to have. Looking back on it, it was just... I don't think she would have had a lot of those issues if society hadn't told her she should have them."
* stellllaaaaa watches him back, and inclines her head, nodding. "Some things you're told you need. And you don't." She waits a beat, considering her words. "Ii...didn't really just 'leave' home. I got paid off to leave town because- uh, my stepdad thought I was doing something bad for me, and I wasn't! But try tellin' him I know what's best for me, right?"
* Kirk laughs, short. "Fuck stepdads. And yeah."
"Fuck stepdads," she echoes, meaning it, settling back against the cushions - chat is forgotten for now. "That 'something' is in the army now, so I guess he got his way."
"Do you like where you are now?" It's quiet.
* stellllaaaaa thinks about that, sliding a hand through her hair. She's different when she talks about this: putting her words together with a quiet carefulness, like one turn of phrase might betray her. "I never, like, thought of what I wanted to do. Or be. Honestly, I was kinda surprised I made it to eighteen. So... overall, I don't know. I'm a waitress, I'm probably gonna get fired, and the main things I'm good at are stealing, dancing, and kissing."
* stellllaaaaa isn't all 'poor me' about it - she's kind of wry, actually. "Which aren't bad things, but ain't all that great for, y'know, more than that. But right now? This, um... doesn't suck." She smiles faintly.
"...So, this is going to sound super corny." He nudges her knee with his knuckles. "That okay?"
"I guess so." She eyes him, curious.
"I have experienced any of the things you listed, and I think you're pretty fucking smart. Not anybody could have rolled with the insane shit that's gone on this week."
* stellllaaaaa tips her head to the side, giving him a bit of a half-smile. "I don't really like it when my drinking buddies get stolen, it's a thing."
"Yeah, well, it's a pretty good thing." He makes a face at her. "I spent some time in juvi. You've got one up on me, waitressing."
"Girl's gotta pay the bills...why were you in juvie?"
"Fighting. Stealing. Maybe you're better at that one than me, I kept getting busted."
* stellllaaaaa shakes her head. "Kind of had back-up. Man, no wonder I like you." She displays her knuckles to him. "Means Almighty Vice Lord Nation."
* Kirk leans in and looks. "You ran with a gang?" He doesn't sound particularly scandalized.
"Thirteen to around seventeen. My mama 'bout skinned me a couple times over it, but..." She shrugs. "People can leave. I mean, they talk like you have to die to get out, but you don't, always, if you've done your time and keep your mouth shut. People can always change, right?" Which it sounds like he did a lot of, she's thinking. "You like where you're at now?"
* Kirk nods. He was never in a gang, personally - too much of a loner - but he's familiar enough with the packs that skulked around Riverside. "Oh, yeah. I mean.. I love it. I think I'd be dead without it. I actually don't like thinking about it at all, really."
"Yeah, I have to say... you seem so natural here - uh, not in the medbay, but you know what I mean. It's really where you belong, isn't it?"
"I think so." He looks up at the ceiling, the bulkhead. "As soon as I imagined myself here, nothing else was good enough. I knew I had to."
"I'm glad. That you found this, then. Not just 'cause the uniform is cute on you, either."
* Kirk grins at her, though it's less shit-eating than his normal one, half-genuine. "I do try to make good in /all/ aspects of my career."
* stellllaaaaa grins right back. "What's the best part about it?"
"Oh, man." He laughs quietly. "I'm always busy, and it's worth that means something. I could be busy in an office, or in construction, sure, but this is what humanity is meant for - discovery, furthering knowledge.."
"Yeah. That's--yeah, that's kind of the thing, I know society needs...your basic jobs, but I don't wanna do something that's just- paper. Which is every under 30 complaint /ever/, I realize, but yeah." There's a pause. "Weird question, if that's okay."
* Kirk shakes his head. "Society /needs/ a whole lot less than you'd thing." He looks at her. "Yeah, sure."
"They don't have magic here, do they?"
"Not to my knowledge. Though somebody did tell me once that there's a theory that all science and magic, when pushed far enough, are indestinguishable from each other. So who knows." The ease in which he responds to that just attests to how nuts his job is.
"They do where I'm from. It's kinda how I was looking for you."
"Oh?" that gets his attention. "You mentioned something like that earlier, huh?"
"Info spirits, yeah. You make deals, give them something they want, get something you want." Sometimes the price is pretty high, but not this time.
* Kirk reflects on this, considering. "I've never really put much stock in spirituality. Is it... sentient entities?"
"Yeah. Something like that. I mean..." She tries to think of how to put it. "The idea is there's two layers, the layer we can see - touch, whatever, /this/, and the layer that's unseen. Where spirits are at. Most people do other stuff, channel it other ways, but I like things you can talk to. Makes more sense."
"We believe that phenomenon like that are the result of quasar irregularities - studies have gone on over the years where spirituality is pretty much extinct on earth." He tilts his head. "Is it common where you're from?"
"No. Actually," deep breath, wry smile, "I'm not supposed to talk about it. But it doesn't matter here, does it?"
* Kirk shrugs. "Don't think so." Despite his general disbelief in that sort of thing existing in his world, he doesn't seem skeptical or judgmental, just curious.
"Kind of a weight off. Here it doesn't happen, so nobody's worried, so nobody's hunting anybody. Also, um...quasar? Like electromagnetic energy?" Behold: high school education.
"Yeah, it's like... the energy that we think creates galaxies, before there's a galaxy there. It bounces around through space, especially deep space where there's no solar systems to dictate gravity paths. They cause all kinds of weird shit, to put it in layman's terms." A pause. "Hunting?"
* stellllaaaaa is actually pretty attentive about that - science was one of her better subjects in school, in as much as she... had any, frankly. "Yeah, it's a whole... 'people who do magic are evil deviants who have to be hunted down, experimented on, and killed unless they give it up and are memory-wiped' thing."
* Kirk frowns at that, quiet for a while, searching her face. "...That's not right."
* stellllaaaaa looks back, steady, aware that this is fucked up. "When I was a kid it was paramilitaries and cocaine cartels. Least this time I can fight back, right?"
"I guess so. Still kind of bullshit, though."
"It is," she agrees, wry. ...aaand then she steals one of the remaining cherries, because they probably have a ton.
* Kirk laughs quietly.
* stellllaaaaa smiles at him. "You're gonna be sick of me soon, I've been hovering forever." 'Hovering' is perhaps not the word for it.
"You're fine. Just you wait until I'm back on my feet and start hitting on you again." Eyebrow. "I know better than to pull that when you're in striking range and I can't run, see."
"You're a wise man," she tells him, sagely, "Although I wouldn't hit you for hitting on me. ...have done before, though. One time there was this guy in a bar in Minnetonka who was, like, old enough to be my dad and I poured ice down his pants." STORYTIME WITH ESTELLA.
"Ew, that's a little old." Says the guy who'd crash a PTA meeting on Betazoid. "And I already have you in my bed, I'm either getting lazy or way better than I thought."
"I like how you think this is you coming at /me/," she teases, "Maybe I'm just luring you in."
"I am going to tell you a secret, Estella," he says, grave. "I am really not that hard to lure."
"If you were not all injured I would pinch you. And good, that means my cunning plan is working." Also very serious. WHO WILL CRACK FIRST no it'll be her.
* Kirk picks up a cherry. "Heeyy want another cherry?" He bites it just slightly and leaves it there between his teeth, giving her an intentionally really bad, ridiculous look.
* stellllaaaaa leaaans over him... and snags the cherry away by the stem. "Yes." :D
* Kirk makes a tsking noise, but his suitably ridiculous ploy did involve picking a cherry with a stem to begin with, so. "Stella, you took my cherry." ... Shut up, Jim.
"Man I wish I could put you saying /that/ on youtube--"
"Well, a few people would know I'm lying--"
"A /few/?"
"Iiii am trying to think of how many can access youtube from your time..."
"Mm, good point. Which reminds me: not a lot of people onboard know about the Nexus, do they?"
"Not many. Just the bridge crew, my chief engineer, and Bones."
* stellllaaaaa nods. "I met, um...Spock and Uhura." Spock looks at her sideways. Spockishly.
"I'd heard they popped by." Curiously non-emotional at that, Captain.
"You guys aren't real close, huh." She is not blind.
"We've been through some shit." He shrugs. "It's a work in progress." ... A work that he sucks at, yes.
"Maybe Spock'll come in here, say hi." ... or more likely: check up on things.
"Y...es that would probably happen approximately never, though, he /was/ being nice to me earlier and that was kind of weird."
"Maybe he's warming up. The couple of times I have seen him he's been kind of..." She attempts (badly) to impersonate how Spock looks at her.
* Kirk ... tries not to laugh and fails spectacularly.
"I see you know what I mean."
"He likes the Nexus less than I do, I am sure you being here is just weird for him." He chuckles.
"Tell him I'm harmless! I am even further than harmless, I am like your own personal candystriper."
"Then I'd just have to explain 'candystriper' to him, and then he'd probably ask Uhura, and she'd give me that 'God, Jim, why are you such an asshole' look even more than usual."
* stellllaaaaa winces. "Aww. She strikes me as /really/ -- I don't know, professional, I guess. Though you all are."
"I like her a lot. But she can get kind of spikey and it just gets exhausting." He doesn't /sound/ terribly concerned, though, but this shouldn't be surprising as Jim is severely injured, post-op, on sedatives, and STILL bored and talkative. Exhausting James Kirk is apparently actually impossible.
* stellllaaaaa has that look. That look where she might be plotting. "Saying something, considering you do /not/ tire easy." Look, it bears pointing out in dialogue, too.
"You know, in my head." B|
"Yeah, yeah." She sticks her tongue out, for... no real reason, maybe she likes showing off the piercing! Who knows.
* Kirk just noms another cherry. So there.
* stellllaaaaa settles back against the bed. "What should we get next."
"What, you still hungry? Or are we setting traps for my officers?"
"Yeah, that.." he shakes his head. "It's not a mentality I can deal with, personally." He looks at her, ignoring the chatter in there, for now. "...I imagine it gets you a bit more, being from the 21st century."
"I think it'll get to anybody," she says, wry, rubbing one hand over the opposite's knuckles, "But yeah, it's...stupid as hell. So it's not as bad, now?"
"Not as bad, no," he says with a sigh. "I remember reading in feminist studies, it was popular for a while to talk about how it took twenty years to destroy womens' rights and it'll take a thousand to rebuild it? That's pretty much reality."
"Feminist studies." She briefly thinks that's the kind of thing you take in college, and she will never probably take it, and she's probably missing out. "It's worse if you're a girl who's- y'know, not white- but it's not all that easy regardless, I guess. I fell in with some real macho types, got a full view."
"Now /that/... ended up all but vanishing. Racism, that concept. The second we made contact with non-humans, it was like, instantaneous." He snaps his fingers, gesturing as he talks. "Like somebody set a bomb off in humanity. We were done. It was crumbling before that, but those were the last nails in the coffin." ... He shrugs a little. "But all species have genders."
"Mmm. And the God forbid women make their own goddamn choices thing in this case. The whole property thing - the entitled thing... I didn't see a lot of that growing up with my mom, but it got in there anyway."
* Kirk watches her a bit before speaking. "My mom raised me. She had some issues... that she didn't need to have. Looking back on it, it was just... I don't think she would have had a lot of those issues if society hadn't told her she should have them."
* stellllaaaaa watches him back, and inclines her head, nodding. "Some things you're told you need. And you don't." She waits a beat, considering her words. "Ii...didn't really just 'leave' home. I got paid off to leave town because- uh, my stepdad thought I was doing something bad for me, and I wasn't! But try tellin' him I know what's best for me, right?"
* Kirk laughs, short. "Fuck stepdads. And yeah."
"Fuck stepdads," she echoes, meaning it, settling back against the cushions - chat is forgotten for now. "That 'something' is in the army now, so I guess he got his way."
"Do you like where you are now?" It's quiet.
* stellllaaaaa thinks about that, sliding a hand through her hair. She's different when she talks about this: putting her words together with a quiet carefulness, like one turn of phrase might betray her. "I never, like, thought of what I wanted to do. Or be. Honestly, I was kinda surprised I made it to eighteen. So... overall, I don't know. I'm a waitress, I'm probably gonna get fired, and the main things I'm good at are stealing, dancing, and kissing."
* stellllaaaaa isn't all 'poor me' about it - she's kind of wry, actually. "Which aren't bad things, but ain't all that great for, y'know, more than that. But right now? This, um... doesn't suck." She smiles faintly.
"...So, this is going to sound super corny." He nudges her knee with his knuckles. "That okay?"
"I guess so." She eyes him, curious.
"I have experienced any of the things you listed, and I think you're pretty fucking smart. Not anybody could have rolled with the insane shit that's gone on this week."
* stellllaaaaa tips her head to the side, giving him a bit of a half-smile. "I don't really like it when my drinking buddies get stolen, it's a thing."
"Yeah, well, it's a pretty good thing." He makes a face at her. "I spent some time in juvi. You've got one up on me, waitressing."
"Girl's gotta pay the bills...why were you in juvie?"
"Fighting. Stealing. Maybe you're better at that one than me, I kept getting busted."
* stellllaaaaa shakes her head. "Kind of had back-up. Man, no wonder I like you." She displays her knuckles to him. "Means Almighty Vice Lord Nation."
* Kirk leans in and looks. "You ran with a gang?" He doesn't sound particularly scandalized.
"Thirteen to around seventeen. My mama 'bout skinned me a couple times over it, but..." She shrugs. "People can leave. I mean, they talk like you have to die to get out, but you don't, always, if you've done your time and keep your mouth shut. People can always change, right?" Which it sounds like he did a lot of, she's thinking. "You like where you're at now?"
* Kirk nods. He was never in a gang, personally - too much of a loner - but he's familiar enough with the packs that skulked around Riverside. "Oh, yeah. I mean.. I love it. I think I'd be dead without it. I actually don't like thinking about it at all, really."
"Yeah, I have to say... you seem so natural here - uh, not in the medbay, but you know what I mean. It's really where you belong, isn't it?"
"I think so." He looks up at the ceiling, the bulkhead. "As soon as I imagined myself here, nothing else was good enough. I knew I had to."
"I'm glad. That you found this, then. Not just 'cause the uniform is cute on you, either."
* Kirk grins at her, though it's less shit-eating than his normal one, half-genuine. "I do try to make good in /all/ aspects of my career."
* stellllaaaaa grins right back. "What's the best part about it?"
"Oh, man." He laughs quietly. "I'm always busy, and it's worth that means something. I could be busy in an office, or in construction, sure, but this is what humanity is meant for - discovery, furthering knowledge.."
"Yeah. That's--yeah, that's kind of the thing, I know society needs...your basic jobs, but I don't wanna do something that's just- paper. Which is every under 30 complaint /ever/, I realize, but yeah." There's a pause. "Weird question, if that's okay."
* Kirk shakes his head. "Society /needs/ a whole lot less than you'd thing." He looks at her. "Yeah, sure."
"They don't have magic here, do they?"
"Not to my knowledge. Though somebody did tell me once that there's a theory that all science and magic, when pushed far enough, are indestinguishable from each other. So who knows." The ease in which he responds to that just attests to how nuts his job is.
"They do where I'm from. It's kinda how I was looking for you."
"Oh?" that gets his attention. "You mentioned something like that earlier, huh?"
"Info spirits, yeah. You make deals, give them something they want, get something you want." Sometimes the price is pretty high, but not this time.
* Kirk reflects on this, considering. "I've never really put much stock in spirituality. Is it... sentient entities?"
"Yeah. Something like that. I mean..." She tries to think of how to put it. "The idea is there's two layers, the layer we can see - touch, whatever, /this/, and the layer that's unseen. Where spirits are at. Most people do other stuff, channel it other ways, but I like things you can talk to. Makes more sense."
"We believe that phenomenon like that are the result of quasar irregularities - studies have gone on over the years where spirituality is pretty much extinct on earth." He tilts his head. "Is it common where you're from?"
"No. Actually," deep breath, wry smile, "I'm not supposed to talk about it. But it doesn't matter here, does it?"
* Kirk shrugs. "Don't think so." Despite his general disbelief in that sort of thing existing in his world, he doesn't seem skeptical or judgmental, just curious.
"Kind of a weight off. Here it doesn't happen, so nobody's worried, so nobody's hunting anybody. Also, um...quasar? Like electromagnetic energy?" Behold: high school education.
"Yeah, it's like... the energy that we think creates galaxies, before there's a galaxy there. It bounces around through space, especially deep space where there's no solar systems to dictate gravity paths. They cause all kinds of weird shit, to put it in layman's terms." A pause. "Hunting?"
* stellllaaaaa is actually pretty attentive about that - science was one of her better subjects in school, in as much as she... had any, frankly. "Yeah, it's a whole... 'people who do magic are evil deviants who have to be hunted down, experimented on, and killed unless they give it up and are memory-wiped' thing."
* Kirk frowns at that, quiet for a while, searching her face. "...That's not right."
* stellllaaaaa looks back, steady, aware that this is fucked up. "When I was a kid it was paramilitaries and cocaine cartels. Least this time I can fight back, right?"
"I guess so. Still kind of bullshit, though."
"It is," she agrees, wry. ...aaand then she steals one of the remaining cherries, because they probably have a ton.
* Kirk laughs quietly.
* stellllaaaaa smiles at him. "You're gonna be sick of me soon, I've been hovering forever." 'Hovering' is perhaps not the word for it.
"You're fine. Just you wait until I'm back on my feet and start hitting on you again." Eyebrow. "I know better than to pull that when you're in striking range and I can't run, see."
"You're a wise man," she tells him, sagely, "Although I wouldn't hit you for hitting on me. ...have done before, though. One time there was this guy in a bar in Minnetonka who was, like, old enough to be my dad and I poured ice down his pants." STORYTIME WITH ESTELLA.
"Ew, that's a little old." Says the guy who'd crash a PTA meeting on Betazoid. "And I already have you in my bed, I'm either getting lazy or way better than I thought."
"I like how you think this is you coming at /me/," she teases, "Maybe I'm just luring you in."
"I am going to tell you a secret, Estella," he says, grave. "I am really not that hard to lure."
"If you were not all injured I would pinch you. And good, that means my cunning plan is working." Also very serious. WHO WILL CRACK FIRST no it'll be her.
* Kirk picks up a cherry. "Heeyy want another cherry?" He bites it just slightly and leaves it there between his teeth, giving her an intentionally really bad, ridiculous look.
* stellllaaaaa leaaans over him... and snags the cherry away by the stem. "Yes." :D
* Kirk makes a tsking noise, but his suitably ridiculous ploy did involve picking a cherry with a stem to begin with, so. "Stella, you took my cherry." ... Shut up, Jim.
"Man I wish I could put you saying /that/ on youtube--"
"Well, a few people would know I'm lying--"
"A /few/?"
"Iiii am trying to think of how many can access youtube from your time..."
"Mm, good point. Which reminds me: not a lot of people onboard know about the Nexus, do they?"
"Not many. Just the bridge crew, my chief engineer, and Bones."
* stellllaaaaa nods. "I met, um...Spock and Uhura." Spock looks at her sideways. Spockishly.
"I'd heard they popped by." Curiously non-emotional at that, Captain.
"You guys aren't real close, huh." She is not blind.
"We've been through some shit." He shrugs. "It's a work in progress." ... A work that he sucks at, yes.
"Maybe Spock'll come in here, say hi." ... or more likely: check up on things.
"Y...es that would probably happen approximately never, though, he /was/ being nice to me earlier and that was kind of weird."
"Maybe he's warming up. The couple of times I have seen him he's been kind of..." She attempts (badly) to impersonate how Spock looks at her.
* Kirk ... tries not to laugh and fails spectacularly.
"I see you know what I mean."
"He likes the Nexus less than I do, I am sure you being here is just weird for him." He chuckles.
"Tell him I'm harmless! I am even further than harmless, I am like your own personal candystriper."
"Then I'd just have to explain 'candystriper' to him, and then he'd probably ask Uhura, and she'd give me that 'God, Jim, why are you such an asshole' look even more than usual."
* stellllaaaaa winces. "Aww. She strikes me as /really/ -- I don't know, professional, I guess. Though you all are."
"I like her a lot. But she can get kind of spikey and it just gets exhausting." He doesn't /sound/ terribly concerned, though, but this shouldn't be surprising as Jim is severely injured, post-op, on sedatives, and STILL bored and talkative. Exhausting James Kirk is apparently actually impossible.
* stellllaaaaa has that look. That look where she might be plotting. "Saying something, considering you do /not/ tire easy." Look, it bears pointing out in dialogue, too.
"You know, in my head." B|
"Yeah, yeah." She sticks her tongue out, for... no real reason, maybe she likes showing off the piercing! Who knows.
* Kirk just noms another cherry. So there.
* stellllaaaaa settles back against the bed. "What should we get next."
"What, you still hungry? Or are we setting traps for my officers?"