Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2015-03-05 10:02 pm
edenfalling) wrote2015-03-05 10:02 pm
[Fic] "The Company of Trees" -- Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Trek: AOS
Summary: This was Gamora's universe, but she acted more out of place and isolated than Gaila. She held herself clenched tight like she was in enemy hands and opening would be to invite poison into her veins. Fortunately Gaila had years of practice forming out-nets and in-nets with aliens. (1,600 words)
Note: This ficlet was written on 3/5/15 forsamparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek AOS, Gamora/Gaila, tenderness. It is a sequel to both Rattle the Cage (wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab) and Following the Girl (wherein the Enterprise's cross-universe rescue attempt mixes oddly with the Guardians' attempt to retrieve the Tesseract). There may be one or two more ficlets in this sequence.
[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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The Company of Trees
---------------------------------------------
Gamora was nearly silent when she walked, but nobody else on this planet smelled quite like her: a mix of metal and plastic embedded in flesh that evolved around a distant star. Gaila looked up from her tablet computer (not as versatile as a padd, but a lot more advanced than she expected for Terra in this time period) and smiled at Gamora's approach.
As always, it was eerie to see Nyota's face on a stranger's body, painted in human colors rather than Terran brown, but Gamora was very much her own person: a master of combat rather than communication. In another time and place, Gaila could gladly have called her 'sister' in her own right.
She still might, if Gamora let her.
"Welcome to my humble abode, also known as the fourth most comfortable sofa in Stark Tower and its associated lair," Gaila said, gesturing around her borrowed lab with a deliberately careless sweep of her free hand. "Are you and Natasha done beating each other to a pulp in aesthetically appealing ways?"
"For today, yes," Gamora said, and let the door swing shut behind her as she made a circuit around the room.
Her words reached Gaila's brain as if spoken in fluent Taulo, the accent a muddled mix of Northeast Continent vowels and Great Continent pacing: Nyota's experimental subcutaneous translator working on levels it was never designed to touch. The disconnect between the welcoming openness of the perceived sounds and Gamora's physical and emotional reserve was still disconcerting a full six days after the other woman appeared practically in Gaila's lap while she munched tortilla chips and complimented JARVIS on the parts of his source code he was willing to let her study. (She might be under effective house arrest by an only tenuously legal espionage and disaster response team, but at least it was an interesting house arrest.)
Tony, Bruce, and Jane obviously knew something about Gamora's method of transport -- a glowing blue cube that itched oddly in Gaila's sun-sense, as if it were far more massive and energetic than it seemed -- but they were staying stubbornly silent around Gaila. Which was fair enough. She wouldn't want to give away all her universe's secrets to a random alien if any of them popped onboard the Enterprise.
Gamora was staying stubbornly silent on that topic, too, which was sad. Of course, she was stonewalling everyone else at the same time. She'd discuss galactic politics at great length and in surprising details, but not a single word about her own history and associations, or how and why she'd come into contact with the blue cube. Watching the Terrans's frustration at Gamora's flat non-answers to even tangentially personal questions was starting to get more painful than silly.
Gaila locked the tablet computer, set it onto the workbench she'd commandeered as a drink and snack table, and levered herself into a vaguely upright seated position.
She patted the cushion beside herself and smiled at Gamora. "Sit down and stay a while," she said -- in Taulo rather than English, just in case anyone besides JARVIS was listening in. "My sofa is your sofa, and JARVIS ordered a sampler box of donuts we can share."
Gamora sank gracefully onto the far end of the sofa, leaving a cautious arm's length between herself and Gaila.
The thing was, Gamora couldn't exactly get away from Gaila. Whatever translation mechanism she used allowed her to understand English (which was interesting, since it suggested that either she was using might-as-well-be-magic, or there were Terrans in space long ahead of schedule and without their home planet's knowledge), but it didn't translate her own speech back to anyone else. So Gaila had been drafted as her interpreter, since her translator really was using might-as-well-be-magic.
That shouldn't have been a problem -- Gaila had spent more than enough time around Nyota to learn basic translation protocols -- but Gamora was clearly uncomfortable relying on anyone but herself. She also seemed to find Gaila more disconcerting than she found any of the Terrans (which supported Gaila's Terrans-already-in-space theory, but made establishing any kind of openness harder than it needed to be).
This was Gamora's universe, but she acted more out of place and isolated than Gaila. She held herself clenched tight like she was in enemy hands and opening would be to invite poison into her veins.
Fortunately Gaila had years of practice forming out-nets and in-nets with aliens. The key trick was patience. Well, and honesty, but that was important with everyone, not just aliens. Forests didn't grow in a day, or even a year, but with sun and luck, even the tiniest seed could brush the edge of the sky.
"Sorry I didn't stay to watch your fight, but I figured you have enough words and sign language to manage 'start,' 'stop,' and the typical insults of each other's skill and endurance, and I don't have the right background to appreciate all your secret moves," she said. She examined Gamora more closely, noted the satisfaction present underneath her reserve. "You're in a good mood. Did you win?"
Gamora smiled -- only faintly, in the set of her shoulders and the corners of her eyes, but clear to anyone paying attention. "I did. All four bouts. I had an advantage -- swords are not Natasha's chosen weapon -- but she learns fast and is a master of misdirection. They were good fights."
"Cool," Gaila said. "My day's been much less dramatic. I spent the morning reading history articles on Wikipedia and the afternoon staring at star charts."
"Wikipedia?" Gamora repeated, and because she didn't recognize the word as a word, Gaila could hear a trace of her own mother tongue and accent instead of what Nyota's translator had picked as the Taulo equivalent. It was throaty and rich and Gaila wished she could hear it more often.
(Next time she tested anything for Nyota, she was going to make sure it had an off switch.)
"An online encyclopedia, free access, anyone can edit it," Gaila said. "Not the most reliable source--"
Gamora made a soft sound of amused agreement.
"--but I've been trying to catalog the differences between this universe and my own and Wikipedia's a convenient starting point. It's weird because this version of Terra has a lot of superficial similarities to mine, but the skeleton under the surface isn't the same at all and the differences are starting to accelerate. As for the rest of the galaxy, I've spotted at least a dozen discrepancies in basic star charts and I don't know half the species you've mentioned. I doubt my people are around in this universe, and I'm pretty sure your people don't exist in mine."
Gamora flinched. It was subtle, and she covered well by leaning forward to choose a donut from the brightly colored cardboard box on the workbench, but to Gaila it might as well have been a scream.
She wanted to wrap Gamora up in a hug, to kiss her and get her naked and rub circles on her skin until she calmed. She'd never seen anyone half so skin-starved, nor so reluctant to admit the problem or take steps to soothe that ache. But no matter how similar she looked on the outside, Gamora wasn't human. Aliens tended to read human methods of comfort as further attacks on their sense of self. Gamora would drown under everything Gaila wanted to share.
Patience, she reminded herself. Let the seed sprout in its own time.
So she backed off. "I'm sorry for whatever part of that hurt you. We can talk about something else." Gaila edged a little closer to Gamora and pointed at the dark, sugar-crusted donut in her hand. "I never understood what Terrans like about chocolate. Cinnamon and ginger are awesome, but cacao and its derivatives taste like contaminated mud to me. Of course, Nyota tells me half of my spices taste like metallic garbage to her, so the net result is that we don't steal each other's desserts."
Gamora stared blankly at the donut for a long moment. Then she set it carefully on the sofa's arm and braced her body as if preparing for a blow.
"My people don't exist in this universe either," she said. "I'm the last one."
"Oh," Gaila said.
She reached across the empty space between them and rested her hand on Gamora's shoulder: gentle, light, easy to remove. Her culture didn't have words for that kind of loss; they shared grief in more tactile ways. But the Federation was broad, and Nyota wasn't her only friend and teacher.
"I grieve with you," she said, and then, "You do them honor."
Gamora's skin was alien-hot underneath the fabric of her borrowed shirt. Blood and tension hummed through her motionless flesh.
Gaila moved her hand, stroked one finger against bare skin at the nape of Gamora's neck.
After a long moment, Gamora breathed out.
"Thank you," she said. "For not pitying me."
Gaila edged closer across the sofa, easing the strain in her arm. "I think you're amazing," she said. "Losing family, being alone -- that's my people's greatest nightmare. You've survived that. You are surviving that. And I don't want to take the place of whoever you've tied new in-nets and out-nets with, but until they come here to bring you home, I want to show you that you're not alone. In whatever way you'll let me."
She brushed her thumb across the corner of Gamora's mouth, lightly, to make her meaning clear. Then she pulled back, settled her hand safely away from skin, and waited for Gamora's choice.
Slowly, Gamora reached up and covered Gaila's hand with her own.
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End of Story
---------------------------------------------
That was one of the more frustrating things I've ever written! Not because the characters or scenario were particularly difficult in any objective sense. The words just did not want to come.
I think I may have had a mild blue funk over the past week or two, actually. I have been doing the obsessive reading and sleep-schedule-what-sleep-schedule things, which are fairly reliable symptoms of a depressive episode, and a funk would explain my sudden creativity lapse. I just haven't felt particularly gray, or at least not as compared to how I've been feeling normally over the past few months. Mneh.
Anyway, I got enough sleep last night and I seem to be somewhat more together today, so hopefully if I can get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and tomorrow that will give me the boost I need to finish hauling myself back up to somewhat more stable mental ground. *crosses fingers*
Oh. Right. And I should remember to eat regular meals. That helps too. *wanders off in search of extremely belated dinner*
Note: This ficlet was written on 3/5/15 for
samparker, in response to the Three Sentence Ficathon prompt: Guardians Of The Galaxy/Star Trek AOS, Gamora/Gaila, tenderness. It is a sequel to both Rattle the Cage (wherein Natasha Romanova discovers Gaila imprisoned in a HYDRA lab) and Following the Girl (wherein the Enterprise's cross-universe rescue attempt mixes oddly with the Guardians' attempt to retrieve the Tesseract). There may be one or two more ficlets in this sequence.[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
---------------------------------------------
The Company of Trees
---------------------------------------------
Gamora was nearly silent when she walked, but nobody else on this planet smelled quite like her: a mix of metal and plastic embedded in flesh that evolved around a distant star. Gaila looked up from her tablet computer (not as versatile as a padd, but a lot more advanced than she expected for Terra in this time period) and smiled at Gamora's approach.
As always, it was eerie to see Nyota's face on a stranger's body, painted in human colors rather than Terran brown, but Gamora was very much her own person: a master of combat rather than communication. In another time and place, Gaila could gladly have called her 'sister' in her own right.
She still might, if Gamora let her.
"Welcome to my humble abode, also known as the fourth most comfortable sofa in Stark Tower and its associated lair," Gaila said, gesturing around her borrowed lab with a deliberately careless sweep of her free hand. "Are you and Natasha done beating each other to a pulp in aesthetically appealing ways?"
"For today, yes," Gamora said, and let the door swing shut behind her as she made a circuit around the room.
Her words reached Gaila's brain as if spoken in fluent Taulo, the accent a muddled mix of Northeast Continent vowels and Great Continent pacing: Nyota's experimental subcutaneous translator working on levels it was never designed to touch. The disconnect between the welcoming openness of the perceived sounds and Gamora's physical and emotional reserve was still disconcerting a full six days after the other woman appeared practically in Gaila's lap while she munched tortilla chips and complimented JARVIS on the parts of his source code he was willing to let her study. (She might be under effective house arrest by an only tenuously legal espionage and disaster response team, but at least it was an interesting house arrest.)
Tony, Bruce, and Jane obviously knew something about Gamora's method of transport -- a glowing blue cube that itched oddly in Gaila's sun-sense, as if it were far more massive and energetic than it seemed -- but they were staying stubbornly silent around Gaila. Which was fair enough. She wouldn't want to give away all her universe's secrets to a random alien if any of them popped onboard the Enterprise.
Gamora was staying stubbornly silent on that topic, too, which was sad. Of course, she was stonewalling everyone else at the same time. She'd discuss galactic politics at great length and in surprising details, but not a single word about her own history and associations, or how and why she'd come into contact with the blue cube. Watching the Terrans's frustration at Gamora's flat non-answers to even tangentially personal questions was starting to get more painful than silly.
Gaila locked the tablet computer, set it onto the workbench she'd commandeered as a drink and snack table, and levered herself into a vaguely upright seated position.
She patted the cushion beside herself and smiled at Gamora. "Sit down and stay a while," she said -- in Taulo rather than English, just in case anyone besides JARVIS was listening in. "My sofa is your sofa, and JARVIS ordered a sampler box of donuts we can share."
Gamora sank gracefully onto the far end of the sofa, leaving a cautious arm's length between herself and Gaila.
The thing was, Gamora couldn't exactly get away from Gaila. Whatever translation mechanism she used allowed her to understand English (which was interesting, since it suggested that either she was using might-as-well-be-magic, or there were Terrans in space long ahead of schedule and without their home planet's knowledge), but it didn't translate her own speech back to anyone else. So Gaila had been drafted as her interpreter, since her translator really was using might-as-well-be-magic.
That shouldn't have been a problem -- Gaila had spent more than enough time around Nyota to learn basic translation protocols -- but Gamora was clearly uncomfortable relying on anyone but herself. She also seemed to find Gaila more disconcerting than she found any of the Terrans (which supported Gaila's Terrans-already-in-space theory, but made establishing any kind of openness harder than it needed to be).
This was Gamora's universe, but she acted more out of place and isolated than Gaila. She held herself clenched tight like she was in enemy hands and opening would be to invite poison into her veins.
Fortunately Gaila had years of practice forming out-nets and in-nets with aliens. The key trick was patience. Well, and honesty, but that was important with everyone, not just aliens. Forests didn't grow in a day, or even a year, but with sun and luck, even the tiniest seed could brush the edge of the sky.
"Sorry I didn't stay to watch your fight, but I figured you have enough words and sign language to manage 'start,' 'stop,' and the typical insults of each other's skill and endurance, and I don't have the right background to appreciate all your secret moves," she said. She examined Gamora more closely, noted the satisfaction present underneath her reserve. "You're in a good mood. Did you win?"
Gamora smiled -- only faintly, in the set of her shoulders and the corners of her eyes, but clear to anyone paying attention. "I did. All four bouts. I had an advantage -- swords are not Natasha's chosen weapon -- but she learns fast and is a master of misdirection. They were good fights."
"Cool," Gaila said. "My day's been much less dramatic. I spent the morning reading history articles on Wikipedia and the afternoon staring at star charts."
"Wikipedia?" Gamora repeated, and because she didn't recognize the word as a word, Gaila could hear a trace of her own mother tongue and accent instead of what Nyota's translator had picked as the Taulo equivalent. It was throaty and rich and Gaila wished she could hear it more often.
(Next time she tested anything for Nyota, she was going to make sure it had an off switch.)
"An online encyclopedia, free access, anyone can edit it," Gaila said. "Not the most reliable source--"
Gamora made a soft sound of amused agreement.
"--but I've been trying to catalog the differences between this universe and my own and Wikipedia's a convenient starting point. It's weird because this version of Terra has a lot of superficial similarities to mine, but the skeleton under the surface isn't the same at all and the differences are starting to accelerate. As for the rest of the galaxy, I've spotted at least a dozen discrepancies in basic star charts and I don't know half the species you've mentioned. I doubt my people are around in this universe, and I'm pretty sure your people don't exist in mine."
Gamora flinched. It was subtle, and she covered well by leaning forward to choose a donut from the brightly colored cardboard box on the workbench, but to Gaila it might as well have been a scream.
She wanted to wrap Gamora up in a hug, to kiss her and get her naked and rub circles on her skin until she calmed. She'd never seen anyone half so skin-starved, nor so reluctant to admit the problem or take steps to soothe that ache. But no matter how similar she looked on the outside, Gamora wasn't human. Aliens tended to read human methods of comfort as further attacks on their sense of self. Gamora would drown under everything Gaila wanted to share.
Patience, she reminded herself. Let the seed sprout in its own time.
So she backed off. "I'm sorry for whatever part of that hurt you. We can talk about something else." Gaila edged a little closer to Gamora and pointed at the dark, sugar-crusted donut in her hand. "I never understood what Terrans like about chocolate. Cinnamon and ginger are awesome, but cacao and its derivatives taste like contaminated mud to me. Of course, Nyota tells me half of my spices taste like metallic garbage to her, so the net result is that we don't steal each other's desserts."
Gamora stared blankly at the donut for a long moment. Then she set it carefully on the sofa's arm and braced her body as if preparing for a blow.
"My people don't exist in this universe either," she said. "I'm the last one."
"Oh," Gaila said.
She reached across the empty space between them and rested her hand on Gamora's shoulder: gentle, light, easy to remove. Her culture didn't have words for that kind of loss; they shared grief in more tactile ways. But the Federation was broad, and Nyota wasn't her only friend and teacher.
"I grieve with you," she said, and then, "You do them honor."
Gamora's skin was alien-hot underneath the fabric of her borrowed shirt. Blood and tension hummed through her motionless flesh.
Gaila moved her hand, stroked one finger against bare skin at the nape of Gamora's neck.
After a long moment, Gamora breathed out.
"Thank you," she said. "For not pitying me."
Gaila edged closer across the sofa, easing the strain in her arm. "I think you're amazing," she said. "Losing family, being alone -- that's my people's greatest nightmare. You've survived that. You are surviving that. And I don't want to take the place of whoever you've tied new in-nets and out-nets with, but until they come here to bring you home, I want to show you that you're not alone. In whatever way you'll let me."
She brushed her thumb across the corner of Gamora's mouth, lightly, to make her meaning clear. Then she pulled back, settled her hand safely away from skin, and waited for Gamora's choice.
Slowly, Gamora reached up and covered Gaila's hand with her own.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
That was one of the more frustrating things I've ever written! Not because the characters or scenario were particularly difficult in any objective sense. The words just did not want to come.
I think I may have had a mild blue funk over the past week or two, actually. I have been doing the obsessive reading and sleep-schedule-what-sleep-schedule things, which are fairly reliable symptoms of a depressive episode, and a funk would explain my sudden creativity lapse. I just haven't felt particularly gray, or at least not as compared to how I've been feeling normally over the past few months. Mneh.
Anyway, I got enough sleep last night and I seem to be somewhat more together today, so hopefully if I can get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and tomorrow that will give me the boost I need to finish hauling myself back up to somewhat more stable mental ground. *crosses fingers*
Oh. Right. And I should remember to eat regular meals. That helps too. *wanders off in search of extremely belated dinner*