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

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"True enough." She chuckled. "Leading various revolutionary causes, advising political leaders, engineering the odd coup ... all of that is quite difficult enough without worrying about what those two are about. If anything, it's a comfort to know that they'll be there again when things slow down." She took a sip of her drink and a thoughtful expression settled on her face. "We have our adventures, our lovers, our hopeless causes; sometimes we've even fought for different sides, Jerry and I in particular. But we always come back. One way or the other."

Pierrot couldn't wake her, you see. Only Harlequin has the power to do that. Pierrot has no power -- only charm. Cheerio, you little bugger. Merry Christmas, Columbine.

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

"Sounds like more fun than what I do," Starbuck said, then paused. "Well, no. I love what I do. Being a viper pilot was just something I needed. It found me. I kinda keep wondering about that here, though. With all these people who come from places where space flight doesn't happen at all. I wonder what someone like me would do on planets like that."

Then again, there were a lot of things that could have made her a different person. Not being able to fly was one on a long list. "So really, no matter how much some people might find your arrangement odd where they come from, you've got more stable relationships than most married people with their kids and car and pool and two cats. Because you always have each other at the end." She didn't know why it had struck her that way just then, but it did.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"You'd have found something, I don't doubt. Different kind of flight, perhaps. Something adventurous." As she spoke, Una heard a faint echo of another speculative conversation along similar lines. "Some of us are born with that drive in our blood, and it will out, one way or the other."

She smiled fondly. "That we do. For all the chaos in the rest of our lives, we're lucky, in a strange sort of way." And a sudden longing for them clamped down on her heart, and she wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the Derry and Tom's roof garden, sometime in 1938, having tea with Catherine and—

Her gaze dropped, and for a moment she almost couldn't breathe.

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

Starbuck was well aware that one of the only reasons that drive had won out was because of her mother. So in that respect, Una was exactly right. She would have found a way to run, somehow. "If you've got a reason to go, you just...."

Wasn't that difficult to tell when people were having an attack of memory. She'd seen her own face in the locker mirror often enough. But she wasn't so good with talking people down from things like that, not really. So she reached over and took her hand instead.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

She felt the contact and with it, her breath returned. She clasped Starbuck's hand between hers and lowered her head, touching her forehead to their joined hands.

She'd been trying so hard, so very hard to keep it together, not just in the wake of The Incident but for weeks now, trying not to break in front of the Time Lords or in front of anyone else. The alcohol was part of it, but it was also the fact of having female company, someone she liked and who didn't judge—

Hell. She was starting to cry.

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

Gods.

She knew what this felt like, the kind of mini-breakdown where you just felt everything slipping between your fingers, and it was better to let it spill out rather than drown it or beat it and scream it away. And it had to be in front of someone who didn't expect anything of you, at least not right then.

She must really miss them. Or--

"They've really been pulling a number on you, haven't they?" she murmured, scooting a little closer and putting her other hand to the back of Una's neck. It was just a guess, but she couldn't really imagine anything being simple there. No matter how much she might be enjoying it.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una leaned gratefully into the touch and nodded, still not looking up.

"My own fault, of course," she said, her voice thick and quavery. "Each on their own is intense enough, but when I'm with them both together, the weight of what they know and they don't, and their own long, long story, all of it ..." She trailed off and took a deep shaking breath. Then another. She turned her head slightly to wipe her face on her sleeve.

"Not sure how I'll untangle it. Or if I even can. And so around them I've got to be on my best game, every minute. Not exactly relaxing." She looked up and her mouth twisted ruefully. "I suppose it's obvious that I've been keeping this rather close to my chest, isn't it?"

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

"So no one's really telling the truth, then," she sighed. It was hard enough when only one didn't (and she would know), but all of them?

She kept Una's hand in her own calloused one, and gave her a half-smile. "Just a little. But then, it's not exactly the thing you can go gossiping about around here. Community being that small means more people would inevitably know than you'd like. And it's something that you're doing for yourself, so most people probably wouldn't get it anyway." She turned her head and noticed that Sador was looking up at both of them from where she was on her stomach, and the dog seemed very unhappy about the whole mess.

A thought crossed her mind and she snorted a laugh. "Of course, if you ever need someone to hold either of them while you beat the crap out of them, count me in."

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"I'm not exactly one to kiss and tell, as it were, in any event. And my friend Oswald Bastable once wrote of me that I am not an easy woman to comfort." Dear Oswald and his Edwardian sensibilities...

And then she laughed. "Thank you. That's an offer I'll absolutely keep in mind." She stroked the back of Starbuck's hand lightly, not entirely conscious of the action as she did so.

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

"You could be worse," she pointed out. "You could be the sort of person that can't be comforted at all." Anyway, Starbuck didn't quite see the problem there in any capacity. Some people just didn't want for the same kind of care.

"I figure since the manly folk around here seem pretty incapable most of the time, it's probably better if we start giving 'em hell when they deserve it. That way we won't have any problems later on." She was teasing. Mostly. Also enjoying that brush against her hand, and she closed her eyes then.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"Someone's got to keep them in line, after all," Una agreed, also joking. She sighed a little, amused. "It's not like me, really, to try and blame all my problems on one group—be it gender, nationality, creed ... But sometimes it feels good to do it, even if only for a little while."

Her fingers traced over Starbuck's knuckles, the strong tendons along the back of the hand, and then up over the bones of the wrist.

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

"We kind of have to where I'm from," said Starbuck, eyes still closed. But then, she had said it herself, hadn't she? To Leoben. We created you. Us. It was a stupid, frakked-up decision, and we have paid for it. "Does feel good for a while. Sometimes it helps. But in the end it all comes down to everyone making the same mistakes."

She slowly turned her hand over and let her fingers catch the underside of Una's wrist.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

We are all victims, Mr. Bastable, just as, in other ways, we are all aggressors. At root we are victims of the comforting lies we tell ourselves, of our willingness to have leaders, religions, of our wish to shift responsibility onto others, whether it be politicians, Gods or creatures from other planets.

"Mm." It was a vague affirmative noise, and she was going to continue with some variation on what she'd told Bastable, but then her breath caught at the touch to her wrist, and she found herself staring at their joined hands with a slightly surprised expression on her face.

It always begins with the hands, doesn't it? she thought, even as she ran her thumb along Starbuck's palm.

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

Behind her eyelids, Starbuck reflected that maybe a few alarms should be going off about now. And then she laughed inwardly at herself, because even if the alarms had gone off, she had a tendency to go against them anyway, just to prove they weren't in charge.

She decided what her limits were. And the further away they were, the better off she was.

Besides, this was really what they had been talking about, wasn't it? You get tired of being switched on all the time. Of having to keep it up. Of being on alert. Not having to do any of that was more of a holiday than all the roller coasters and sunshine you could swallow.

So she smiled a little and flexed her fingers against the smooth skin at Una's wrist.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

A sharp little intake of breath. Una felt her face grow warm.

She wondered what her own internal alarm systems were about, since they didn't seem to be doing much of anything except a low-grade caution signal. She thought, but we understand each other, don't we? peace without judgment, calm with no expectations...

Still. She had to ask. "Are you sure you want to keep doing that?" she murmured, her voice low.

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

Starbuck laughed for a moment, then finally opened her eyes. "I don't do anything I don't want to do."

It was perhaps a luxury that it was nearly always true.

So she did it again.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

"You—oh." That really shouldn't be affecting her so much, should it?

And she asked herself very firmly, no nonsense now: it wasn't simply a matter of looking for a Catherine substitute, was it? Because that would be entirely unfair.

No. They were a little alike, both blondes, but not so very much. Starbuck's charms were entirely, uniquely her own.

She shifted her seat, moving closer, and put her free hand, cautiously, on Starbuck's shoulder.

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

She had the benefit of knowing it wasn't a substitute since she'd never exactly tried things this way. Of course, even if Una had been, there was very little chance that Starbuck would have admitted that to herself at all.

Either way, she was fairly clear on what she needed; contact, simple and plain. Contact that wouldn't lead to a long discussion about feelings and demands on her and a lot of suffocation. And if Una needed it too, then didn't that just sort of make sense?

She slipped her other hand around the back of Una's neck, thumb brushing at the edge of her jaw.