fighting_mad | [OOM] Simulator Room

[OOM] Simulator Room

Plourr may be on vacation -- (vacation; the word is still a foreign one, but this is the first break she's gotten since well before she left the Rogues, and she isn't about to begrudge herself it) -- but that doesn't mean she won't take any opportunity possible to fly, even if it's in a simulator. When the grand entrance of the country estate opened on Milliways rather than the front gardens, she'd grinned broadly and stepped right through.

Thus, upstairs in the simulator room, a pilot-turned-empress sits in a sim with the seat cranked back and the curtain drawn open, her hair pulled into a loose braid and a once-lovely flower forgotten and drooping behind her right ear. She's tan and her cheeks are awash with color, as is the norm these days, and she wears a loose tunic with the sleeves rolled up, wide-legged trousers, and her favorite battered boots.

Grinning from ear-to-ear, she sends the little image of 'her' X-wing into a tailspin through the space battle.

This is the most relaxed she's been in what feels like years.

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"You look like the pink-cheeked wife of a dirt farmer on some backwater planet." Aeryn said by way of greeting.

It was, in fact, the longest sentence she had said all week. Not intending to see Plourr for a while...she didn't know if the surprise was pleasant or not, there was a lot going on in her head.

"You bitch," says Plourr, without looking up from the screen as she throws her 'X-wing' into a serious of dizzying rolls.

(The insult lacks the necessary heat.)

"You look like a bantha's ass." A second's pause as she throws the image on-screen through the tiny gap between two colliding capital ships' shields, and then she says, "I'll tell you what I told Janson -- I hear one fat joke and you're done."

"Frelnik." The peacekeeper grated back, any real venom lost from her voice when she stepped to the side of the simulator.

"Why do I think he tried it anyway?" Wes never had any notable level of common sense; it was a fair assumption.

"Because he has no instinct for self-preservation, and because you," she says, "are a very smart woman." She lets go of the controls and lets her X-wing go nose-first into an approaching TIE fighter. The screen goes black, and she deadpans, "Oops."

Not smart enough by half

. Aeryn shut down the train of thought before it could properly complete itself. It was a habit she was glad of. Don't think, get the job done; survive.

"Suicide mission?" Queried with a raised eyebrow, gaze still fixed on the screen. As her eyes traveled downwards over the bump and back up again to rest on Plourr's face, she frowned slightly.

"Heard about your offer. You're serious?" As if she'd known Plourr to be anything but.

"Anything you want, it's yours," she says, swinging her legs out so that she's sitting sideways in the sim, and looking up at Aeryn. "What the hell's a royal armory good for if I can't use it?"

"There might come a day when I need that offer. Just the weapons, nothing else."

Her meaning was clear, especially when she didn't break her gaze. No matter what happened Plourr wasn't to get involved. She wasn't expendable anymore. Her war was over.

"I --" She shut her mouth again quickly, words straining at her throat. There was going to be a war. But she wasn't going back to her timeline...she was going with John. He simply couldn't be allowed to leave alone, again.

She raises a hand to the back of her neck, exhales, and she says, "I know. Just the weapons." The frustration, the burning want to help, is clear in her voice -- but so is her resignment.

She can't go.

She can't help.

All she can do is sit here and wait for word.

It fucking sucks.

"'You'?"

"I think you need to clean your boots." She nudged them with one of her own, a brief moment of contact when their legs knock together. She still felt that little electric jolt around Plourr, that sense of connection and she doubted that would ever change.

But it wasn't the same. They were both glad of that; moving on. It had been a long while since she'd considered such things.

"John went back. Without me. He returned, but I feel..." She shook her head, mouth clamping down firmly over clenched teeth. A soldier didn't talk about feelings, they weren't important and the subject was too awkward for her to continue with.

"Yeah," says Plourr, after a long moment in which it became clear that Aeryn wasn't going to go on. "I talked to him when he came back. Figured you wouldn't be too pleased that the idiot left without you."

Her eyes hold steady; she isn't going to let Aeryn get away with clamming up. "You feel what?"

"Discouraged." She used the word with care, raising her eyes again; meeting the battle challenge with one of her own.

She wouldn't admit defeat or anything further, nothing of the kind, simply that one word. She would never add the obvious description of her feelings, the one neither of them would bring up. She felt afraid. Death was a battle she couldn't fight and John's heroism was something she couldn't prevent.

"About what, Aeryn?" asks Plourr, looking up at her. "John making things difficult?" She shrugs, making light, though her expression is still sober. "Tie him up and throw him in a closet."

Because that will clearly fix all the universes' problems.

"He wouldn't stay." John Crichton. Astronaut. Explorer. Great frelling saviour of the Galaxy. One thing she would never understand, was why he had to make everyone elses problems his own.

You fight for a cause, you think it's right and one day you realise how damn wrong you were. Better to take care of you and your family. Let other people handle theirs.

"In the closet, I mean." No gay jokes, please.

"I know," she says. "I don't think I'd like him much if he would."

Plourr reaches out, though, and she lays a hand on the first part of Aeryn that she can reach, which happens to be her elbow. "He'll be alright, Aeryn," she says, quieter, her dark eyes steady. "You'll keep him safe."

She knows how Aeryn feels about Crichton.

She knows she'll fight tooth and nail for him.

And she is certain that there is very little in any universe that can stand against a determined Aeryn Sun.

You've spent your whole life thinking it's going to be one way, you never prepare for the eventualities. What if you fell? What if you found something you needed, more than you thought was possible? You'd just have to be stronger then; you couldn't afford mistakes.

"He's so much. So much more than I ever imagined." If she had ever dared to imagine; even soldiers dream.

John was the type of person she'd always thought of as weak. Naive, gullible, a fool by any account. She loved him. The very heart of her, the very soul; even soldiers have soul.

"I care about him a great deal." She could bare that part of herself to Plourr. Plourr had gotten foolish, Plourr had fallen. She had broken the code of strong women and let a tiny bit of weakness invade her heart. They both had.

'He's so much. So much more than I ever imagined.

What can Plourr say to that, when she agrees for her own reasons and for her own 'he'? Nothing, without coming across as a hopeless sap.

She may be married and she may be an empress and she may be pregnant and she may (though she might not admit it) be happy, but Isplourrdacartha Estillo will never be a hopeless sap.

'I care about him a great deal.'

"I know," she says, her face still upturned to the other woman. "That's how I know he's going to be fine. You won't let him be otherwise."

A curt nod. The moment had passed and like all soldiers, the mask went back on. You fight and die, showing your own feelings only as much as you need to. It was how to survive.

"I feel like shooting something." Aeryn clapped a hand on Plourr's shoulder. That she could admit.

She cocks an eyebrow at her, and starts to grin. "You wanna?"

"Volunteering?" The left side of her mouth lifted in response; a cocky smile aimed at the other pilot.

"Not as a target," she says, rolling her eyes lightly. "But there happens to be this big open space outside..."

"Disappointing." The soldier teased, her eyes lingering on the well-muscled arm.

"I never get to practise on a moving target."

"Two for the price of one, even," says Plourr dryly. "Sadly, I think you might have to settle for a can or a tree or two."

"You're too slow to be worth it." A fast change of mind as she moved to the door, flashing a too-innocent smile at Plourr.

"Practically waddling." You'd never catch Aeryn Sun like that. Not even with foreshadowing!

"Oh you bitch--"

Plourr is, for the record, pregnant, not slow. Slower, certainly, but not slow.

She proves this by the way that she lunges after Aeryn.

"The truth is painful." She intoned with a barely muffled laugh, breaking into a slow jog to avoid the beating Plourr certainly planned to administer.

Just like old times.

Beating? No.

Punching Aeryn in the shoulder, since Plourr can certainly catch up with a slow jog? Absolutely.

But she laughs afterward, shooting Aeryn another fond insult as she falls into step beside her, the two women shoulder-to-shoulder and off to go shoot at unsuspecting targets that don't stand a chance.

Just like old times.

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[OOM] Simulator Room

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