Doesn't like dice games with sharpies and frauds

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

((Occurs sometime the week after Bad Fanon Day and the subsequent fallout. Closed to Una and Starbuck.))

Despite occasional temptations to do so, Una had still not cracked open the bottle of moonshine that John Crichton had sent to her back when she'd first arrived.

Given events of the last several days, the temptation was now overwhelming.

She hated drinking alone, though, and being in one of those moods where she wanted to blame the entire male gender for everything that was wrong with the universe, she had absolutely no desire to drink with any of the men or male beings of her acquaintance.

She'd done a fairly crap job of making female friends in this place. She liked Psyche, but there was something eerily not quite right about boozing up with a goddess, especially one who could see through a person with alarming accuracy. Which—

Of course. Starbuck. They'd scarcely seen each other at all since Una had arrived, more was the pity, and that needed to be remedied. And this was as good an excuse as any.

Starbuck,

So I'm not at all sure why I haven't written or visited sooner, as I did enjoy talking to you when I arrived here. Can I make that up to you by offering a drink? I'm afraid it's only the local moonshine, but it's better than nothing. Your place or mine?

-Una Persson

((ETA: Rated PG-13 to R for not especially moderately explicit, but and pretty unmistakable femmeslashiness.))

Comments

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

She raised her eyebrows a bit at the mention of the Master not waiting. So perhaps more than a little crazy....

"I don't think anyone would know what to do, if they've known each other as long as you said. I mean, can't even fathom living for 900 years, let alone knowing one specific person that long." She had always assumed she'd die pretty soon, anyway. No loss to anyone there. "How do they know each other, anyway?"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"They were students together, I think the Doctor said." She really needed another cigarette. And another drink. She took care of both as she continued talking. "Somewhere along the line they fell out, and it's been war across the galaxies and Time ever since. And now here they are, tossed together through no design of their own, still at war, but..." She paused, considered a moment. "But they seem to need each other, somehow. Perhaps it's something about being the only two of their kind here. People who know each other from before do seem to stick together, and I can't blame them. God knows I'd do the same, if I had Jerry or Catherine or Oswald or any of the others here."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Starbuck cringed a little. "I dunno, there are a few people from my area who I wouldn't be happy to see at all. You probably couldn't pay... well, not pay me, but barter or beg me either, to spend more time with them." One had already showed up, but that was neither here nor there, and she really couldn't bring herself to talk about it just then.

"'Course if they were friends, I guess...." She frowned. And she was very good at lying to herself and pretending that she wasn't seeing Sharon's face right then. "There's always the redemption thing. And the 'good old days' thing. And the 'needing whatever you had there back' thing. I'm not a 900 year old alien, though, so who knows."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Nor am I, which the Master does not hesitate to point out to me at every opportunity," Una said, with a sardonic snort. "But you're probably on to something, anyway. I expect it's a little of all of those things, mixed in with—" an expansive gesture that startled Sador and elicited a concerned little whuff, "everything else. Sorry, girl." She scratched the dog behind her ears.

"Someone asked me once who I'd wish to have with me here. I said I couldn't make such a wish in good conscience, because I wouldn't want any of my friends trapped here as well. Wouldn't wish it on my enemies either. And naturally not wanting to see hide or hair of them again is part of that. But still, some days..." She trailed off, gaze somewhere in middle distance.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Sador's tail started going at the attention this time, and she panted happily.

"Doesn't want you snooping, huh?" Weird. "So they're either gay, or whatever happened in the past several centuries is so epic in scope that we're just not equipped to handle it. That must be loads of fun to be stuck in the middle of." She raised her cup to toast Una's fortitude and was suddenly pretty close to finishing her second glass.

She knew that look, though. Lots of people around here got it, and she was sure she did too, though the idea didn't make her happy. "It would be nice to just have a moment, you know? Everyone once and a while. Like... being able to make a call for a few minutes. I guess that might mess up space and time, but I'm sort of bad at setting store by rules I don't understand."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una very nearly choked on her drink at gay, because there was a millefeuille's worth of layers of irony to that. When she'd recovered, she raised her own glass in acknowledgement. "Oh, is it ever, believe you me." She shook her head, still chuckling.

"I'm not always sure I understand the rules either ... and I travel through time for a living, as it were," she said. "I'd ... very much like to know that my friends are all right. That they're working to fix this problem, or something like that. It's frustrating. Usually I'm the one going in to untangle the temporal knots—'someone's got to do a spot of rubato, Miss Persson'—and being the one who needs untangling is not something I enjoy."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

When Una choked, she blinked amusedly. After Una had raised her glass too, she said, "So not gay, then. Dare I ask?" There was bound to be a good story there, but she wouldn't push for it.

"Damsel status is definitely not a place I'm comfortable occupying," she agreed. "But I'm not sure that anyone knows we're gone." She sighed a little, not sure if this was too much burdening with the information, but if they were going to talk about it she might as well. "I know these two, they're brothers - Sam and Dean Winchester? And Sam got here after Dean, and he is supposed to be from a later period than Dean is. But Sam says that Dean never went missing in the time between both of them arriving. So it's like, if Dean was taken, maybe he was handed right back instantly, no matter how much time he'd actually spent here? And he never said anything about it, so it's like he didn't remember."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una stopped herself from saying not gay except when the park is playing silly buggers and considered her glass thoughtfully. "I may have to have a bit more to drink before I can get into that. Bit of a long story." She grinned; clearly she was tight enough now to be amused by the matter.

She listened to the Winchesters' story thoughtfully, and pushed aside thoughts of not-gay Time Lords to apply what intellect she could to this new gem of information. "There's a precedent for that sort of thing in my experience," she said. "Sometimes when there's a rupture in the megaflow—that's the flow among dimensions, not just linear time—people can get tossed into another time stream, or a future of theirs. And then when the rupture is repaired, they end up back home right where they left off, with only vague memories of where they were before. There was a friend of mine I first met that way, and he didn't remember it when we met again later." Trying to explain Elric and his thousand-year dream quest, however, was not something she could even start to get into with two-and-change stiff drinks in her.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Starbuck gave a short laugh. "Fair enough. Actually, it sounds very very familiar." Since most of her relationships with people of any nature tended to provoke a similar response.

There was something relieving about the fact that Una knew so much about this, that someone could explain it in a way that didn't make her feel slow, that it wasn't all complete insanity to everyone around here. The only part that bothered her about that was, "That's sort of terrible. Knowing someone and being close to them and then having them not remember you at all. I mean, if that's true for everything that happens here then..." then what's the frakking point?

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una bit her lip.

You go back to your universes, I go back to mine, and we never see each other again?

"I don't know," she said. The unspoken question was obvious enough. "And you know, I could be wrong; there could be another explanation altogether, and perhaps it works differently under different circumstances. Perhaps the memories are locked away somehow, or ..." She trailed off.

"Of course," she said after a moment, as she patted Sador absentmindedly, "one might say something like that about life in general. Depending on what one believes."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Starbuck filled up her third glass, switching to juice this time around for her mixer. She glanced down at Sador, who was stretching her legs contentedly. "I never really thought of life as pointless. Maybe individual lives, but not all of it together." She certainly didn't think much of her own existence, but people, they had to keep on going. That was what she had to believe, so that she could know that whatever she was doing was at least the right thing to do.

"Also, I mean, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for who disappears from the park and why, so we have no way of knowing how long we're here. What if some of us never..." Wasn't that a freakish thought. "Why hasn't anyone gone off the deep end yet, is really what I'm wondering. People did in our fleet. Situation was more dire there, but feeling like your in prison is still the same."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Life's never pointless," Una said. "Even if you don't believe in an afterlife, there's still life after ... I mean, anything you do, it affects the people you share your life with, and then affects those who come after. All of it together, as you say." Well, that was much less concise than she would have liked.

"Perhaps it's got something to do with the kind of people here," she said thoughtfully. "The not-going-mad, I mean. Well, more mad, in some cases. Even the most ordinary-seeming people here seem to have something about them. Unusual strength of will all around, perhaps."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

It was just so morbid, but it put her in mind of, "On board the Galactica we've got a hall. Started as a place to tack up pictures of people who were missing, a way to find out if anyone had seen someone you were looking for. And it sort of ended up as a memorial hall. Now there's candles in there by the pictures and everything." Everyone gets remembered in the same place.

"Kinda freaks me out," she admitted. "The way everyone's got all these terrible or crazy stories. They never drop just some everyday working stiff here. Seems like such a set up."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"It sounds beautiful. Sad, but beautiful." And not just in the sense of how it must have looked, but what it represented, the essential humanity of it. She'd seen similar sorts of things, across the multiverse. In the wake of battles, at the end of a war. She reached over and gave Starbuck's hand a gentle squeeze.

She didn't really feel like digging into the Master's theory that the whole thing was some sort of cosmic lab experiment by someone with a horrendous sense of humour, however. So she simply said, "It's hard to put it all down to random chance, isn't it?"

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." She took another long sip and set her glass down for a moment. "I guess it is. Well, when there's people there. All by itself it's just sort of hollow."

She could see that the drinking had her off in an unhappy place, much as it irked her. Problem was, there wasn't much to get glad about in this place. "Which makes it even weirder." Since she can't figure out why anyone would want her here. "Still, it's nice to have real sunshine. Better than never having it at all."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't mind a little variation in the weather, but it's far better than most alternatives," Una agreed, deciding that it wouldn't hurt to continue nudging the conversation elsewhere. "The snow just wasn't right, though. And I miss stars." She smiled a little. "I should ask them if they ever plan to do that again," she said, half to herself.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"Oh, you must've never been involved in one of the epic snowball fights," she said with a smile. "It changes your opinion on the stuff, for sure."

Ask them? "Wait, you mean... someone was responsible for that? Not this place"

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una nodded. "I suppose they didn't really advertise the fact. It was the Time Lords, in fact. The Doctor and the Master. Their Christmas gift to the park, I suppose."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

One hell of a gift then. She had spent the night up, looking at the constellations that mapped out the planets she knew, the same way she had on the day they had entered Athena's tomb.

"So they seem to hate each other until they get together and make up a little star map for the whole park to tear up over? And you're sure they're not gay?" Sounded like a means toward hate sex to her.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Their relationship is complicated," she said. She paused a moment, reflecting that they very likely would not appreciate her bearing any tales of That Incident, and said, "That being said, I can testify first-hand that they have no objection to the company of women." She nodded sagely, and couldn't stop a smirk from creeping across her face.

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Her eyes went a bit large after a moment. Then Starbuck nodded knowingly. "So it's that kind of 'I need a few more drinks' story." She held her glass up to her lips and tipped another mouthful of it's contents down her throat. "I can definitely relate to those." On several different occasions, in fact.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una chuckled. "Yes, that kind. I seem to gravitate towards that kind of geometry. It's Jerry and Catherine back home, and now here ... well." She swirled her drink in her glass and took another sip. "I expect it's got something to do with my inability to enjoy extended periods of peace and quiet."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

"I don't think I've ever really had extended periods of peace and quiet until--" Whoa there, brain. What was that about, "Jerry and... Catherine?" She tried not to smile at that, it was sort of awful of her to even bring it up in the first place, and it sure as hell wasn't like it bothered her, but she was getting more drunk now and that was making her censor less, and she couldn't help but find it very interesting, all things considered....

"So you...?" She swung her head back and forth, as though that was an appropriate way of indicating it. And then she chuckled softly, somewhere down at in the pit of her stomach.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Blink? Oh. Una smiled. "Well. Yes," she said, not particularly embarrassed by this admission—even perfectly sober, she wouldn't have found it terribly embarrassing either. And it wasn't as if this was the first time she'd made free with the next bit of information with someone she liked: "Catherine's my best friend since ... oh, since forever, really. Jerry's her brother. Which sounds ridiculously complicated, I know, but it's not nearly as much as you'd think. No secrets, for one thing."

[i-have-my-flaws.livejournal.com]

Brother? Hoo baby. "Would have been complicated if I'd tried it," she muttered, but she pushed that thought from her mind real quickly. "It's even complicated around here. I mean, what ever happened to men - or people in general, for that matter - just wanting you for your body? Everyone's too damn noble here for me." She snorted a little self-deprecatingly and leaned back on her hands.

Then a few few loose wires connected and she picked up what might have been meaning somewhere under all that. "No secrets, meaning unlike that secrets you have now? Or just secrets in general?" Because if she was playing that game while the two of those guys didn't know... well, she was a braver woman than Starbuck, certainly in that manner.

Of course, Starbuck felt she made up for any lack of bravery she might have with stupidity. So perhaps she might have done the same thing.