Day 59: Sun Room

[witchdetective]

Erika stood back to survey her work, and she had no idea why no one seemed to care.

By 'no one', she was referring to the soldiers who were on guard, who should be looking particularly anxious due to the atmosphere of this place. It didn't make sense in her mind. Someone who just took up a large chunk of the middle of the Sun Room to build a

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[touchedgod]

Billy was running out of stock reactions. He tried to reach back, to roll away time to a period where he would have known how to engage Castiel, and would have done so passionately. He could remember, almost, but couldn't bring himself to do much about it. He acknowledged, though, that despite the rotting food and the strange behavior, it had been... neat. He'd remember that one time he was locked up and had a maggot-filled breakfast with the angel Castiel. It would become a regular in his cycle of entertaining stories to tell over a round of drinks

[doneinthree]

Kirk's stunned disbelief upon greeting the post-breakfast sight in the Sun Room quickly transformed into a grin. It was nice to see the Institute's kids (and, uh, Scott Pilgrim) get to act like kids for once. Reluctantly tearing his attention away from the organized chaos of blankets and chairs in front of him, Kirk went to check out the bulletin. Spock's incomparably neat script was easy enough to find, along with a few interesting notes about their Rec Field shooter and a mysterious "device." He skimmed these, added his own replies, and ten minutes later, found himself with little to do except twiddle his thumbs.

What did the rest of his crew do with all of their free time? Plan strategies. Analyze data. Have very serious conversations about serious topics. He had no idea. It was moments like these which highlighted how painfully ill-suited he was to being a Starfleet officer. Give him things to shoot at, or an enemy to outpace using wits and determination, or a galaxy-saving mission to accomplish, and he would rise to

[touchedgod]

Billy had been staring, rather without shame, at Kirk. It was one of his childhood heroes, after all. This time not in gold, but he still recognized him from the glossy movie posters. Even standing right there, flesh and blood (maybe), he was distant. Removed. He was Kirk, but not Billy's Kirk. He was removed from him and all his nostalgia, although that didn't mean the whole thing wasn't dripping with it anyway. Even if Castiel wasn't really Castiel, he seemed to believe he was. This man probably believed he was Kirk, and who was Billy Harrow to tell him otherwise? How would it be fair at all to tell them they weren't themselves? Maybe they had lost their minds or this was some joke, but let someone else point it out

[doneinthree]

"It's a blanket fort. What more do you need to know?" It occurred to Kirk that this whole display made them seem suspiciously like the mental patients they were supposed to be, which would be pretty distressing to a newcomer who'd just been kidnapped from his home and called by a different name. Or maybe Billy thought he was part of some... top secret military training exercise or... something. Kirk had no idea what the soldiers told people. Knowing them, probably nothing

[touchedgod]

"I was told that," he paused to give the sofa a final shove, "that it used to be some kind of a mental hospital. They told people they'd dreamed up their lives." Honestly, if Billy had experienced that, what would he have said to refute it? No one on the outside would have believed that the things he had seen were reasonable or sane. Not even Billy. He knew now, of course, that it all had rules and explanations, like anything else in his old world, that place of day jobs and paying rent and sliding small creatures into jars. There was no real world anymore, though. It was all real and dangerous, and now that Billy had crossed over, he'd never truly go back. The awareness alone seemed like it would make the lines blur, and allow the magic leak into his life

[doneinthree]

"That's... pretty much it, yeah," Kirk confirmed, in a lighter tone than their situation warranted, as his attention now was taken up by the arrangement of blankets on their side. He didn't bother to ask if Billy had been briefed on the weirder aspects. Patchwork monsters and resurrection and brain surgery, oh my. Running around in the dark and getting shot at by a fellow prisoner already covered the "mortal danger" and "experimentation" parts of their deal.

At Billy's last statement, he looked up from his stolen bedding, eyebrows raising curiously. The sentiment, he didn't disagree with - or at least, Kirk didn't disagree he was "a little high profile," although that seemed to him the perfect reason to be kidnapped. It wasn't as if anyone from his world could find him, even if the whole Federation launched a search-and-rescue for himself and the abducted members of his crew. Why not grab the awesome people you could find in any given universe

[touchedgod]

Billy fought down a smile. It was a pointless, empty smile at the unbelievable and laughable direction his week had taken him in. From staring down the death of the universe and the burning of life as we know it, to trying to think of a subtle way to check if this was really Captain Kirk. Twists and turns didn't cover it. There was some metaphor in here about the snaking, coiling tentacles of a squid, but Billy lacked the energy to bring it to its full potential. Instead he just lingered on the memory of his specimen's undead arms, flopping and curling with unnatural, reeking life. It was no longer an apt description. He couldn't freely apply it to famous painters, or think about going back to his job and carefully arranging each tentacle. It wasn't beautiful

[doneinthree]

"Since you were a kid? Oh. You're one of those people," Kirk realized, but goodnaturedly, his smile teasing. 'Those people' meaning his mother and father, who from the minute they took their first baby steps knew they wanted to be in Starfleet. Like Uhura and Spock - he could imagine their intense little five-year-old faces when they heard about Starfleet's stringent standards and thought yes, that could be me. Only a few years ago, he would've smirked at the cadets in their cute red outfits, all eager faces and destined to die in the cold of space.

Now the thought made him wince. This, he didn't show Billy, because it wasn't the most curious thing the man had said. The Kobayashi Maru? Kirk pushed the armchair in place alongside the couch while his mind turned this information over. Assuming Billy's knowledge of Starfleet didn't come from low-budget television shows, no one but a fellow Starfleet cadet would know about him and the Kobayashi Maru. Assuming it did... Jim had no idea. Did the other Kirk beat Spock's test too?

[touchedgod]

This was a poor idea. He knew it would be, at least abstractly speaking, but Castiel had made it much easier by refusing to engage Billy in his flirtation with inexplicable knowledge. Whereas Castiel had been suspicious, Kirk seemed pleased. Billy was treading dangerously close to getting tangled up in his own lies. Lies that weren't really lies. He had been a fan since childhood. He did know a decent amount about Starfleet, and Kirk as well, and the information had been obtained through completely benign and sincerely affectionate means. Kirk playing along with him was pleasant, because even the rebooted incarnation of Kirk was pleasant company (apparently from somewhat later in the film, considering his demeanor and lack of sullen bad boy undertones that Billy hadn't been a fan of). It was ultimately dangerous, however

[doneinthree]

"The Darwin Center, right? You mentioned that earlier." Kirk had never heard of the place before, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. His aimless motorcycle travels rarely took him out of the country, much less the continent, and he couldn't say he was much of a scientist either, as Billy appeared to be. The only scientific establishment he really knew was Starfleet. That name seemed to point to Earth, at least. But what century? What was it like, this world which would imagine Jim Kirk as a fictional hero

[touchedgod]

"Sorry, right," he muttered dismissively. He was repeating himself already. He couldn't keep track of what he had said, who he had told what. One free hand tangled in his hair as he tried to rub his skull, scratch the fog out of it and get back to a place where he could think. Not that he really wanted to think, because it meant combing over problems that were supposed to have been solved by now. And they were, in a way. Whatever would have happened, it wasn't up to Billy anymore