Summary: Beka and Rommie talk, and what happens then.
Codes: Beka/Tyr, Dylan/Rommie
Disclaimer: Tribune owns all rights to Andromeda. All I did was borrow it for use in my twisted little tale.
Rating: PG, for mild cursing
Spoilers: I don't think so, but I included a bunch of little nuances from a few shows. Nothing after "Sum of its Parts", though. This is an old fic!
Feedback: Please! I love praise and constructive criticism, but flames will be used instead of flint and stone.
Archive: Ask first, and I'll probably say yes.
Author's Note: I wrote this ages ago, dug it up, read it over and decided to post it. That means that Rommie does not have blue hair, Dylan is not as much of a jerk or a prima donna, there is a brief mention of Rev in the present tense instead of past, and… actually, I think that's about all of my gripes for the "new Andromeda".
Reflection
By B.L.A. the Mouse
Part One
The ship was stable, for the moment. Everything from the slipstream engines to the artificial gravity was stable and running smoothly. No calamities had befallen them within the last few days (well, none aside from Harper, in building the X-1, shorting out a few minor, easily reparable circuits). There was time to think, to plan, instead of running from someone who wanted to either kill them or take advantage of them. Since no one could think of anything else to do, they had taken the Eureka Maru to one of the drifts- Parvati.
"I think that's the last one," Rommie said, checking the stores they had obtained against the mental list of much-needed supplies that she had compiled.
Beka, who was carrying a physical copy of the list on a flexi, glanced over it. "Dammit. It is, but we'll need some help with all these, and Dylan and Trance won't be here for at least half an hour, they're still negotiating with the Corresson ambassador. Dylan had better hurry up, because I need a shower after that last store." "That last store" had been, quite possibly, the only parts store ever to have a seller dirtier than a planet.
"So what shall we do until then?" Rommie had begun studying the pile of boxes stacked along one side of the airlock during Beka's last sentence. There were only a few, and none of them were heavy, but most were unwieldy enough to require two people. That would be fine, except for the fact that there were only two of them, and they couldn't just leave the boxes out there without a guard. "Do you have anything to work on?"
Beka noted carefully the fact that her sudden preoccupation with the boxes had coincided with the mention of their captain's name. "No. I guess we wait." She suited action to words, sliding down the wall next to the crates. A flicker of movement caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and she saw that one of the unwieldy boxes had a reflective stripe along one side. She began rearranging her flyaway hair as best as she could, looking into the small, mirror-like strip.
Rommie stood straight at attention, as was her habit. Today her outfit was one of those picked from Trance's stores, a dark blue tank and clinging black leggings that still managed to look like her uniform. Beka, for her part, was dressed in her gleaming black leather, complete with a High Guard force-lance dangling from her belt. She found the overall image effective for warding off anyone with a casual or harmful purpose. "You can relax, you know," she said to the AI, suddenly finding the stiff pose incredibly irritating.
"Hmm? Oh, I prefer to stand," Rommie replied, "I feel…uncomfortable…sitting while I'm waiting or working." A silence fell over the two women at the airlock for a few moments, until Rommie slid down the wall next to Beka. She smiled grimly and humorlessly at the startled freighter captain, and explained, "I decided that I may as well get used to sitting."
Beka just nodded and looked back at the little strip of reflective image on the box. Raising one hand, she pushed back the mass of wild blonde waves and wondered whether she should change her hair color again. For an experiment, she switched briefly to a rich brown shade, the color of Rommie's own hair, and back.
Rommie jumped. "Um, Beka, may I ask what you just did?"
The other woman grinned. "Changed my hair color. What do you think?" She flipped back to the brown for Rommie's perusal.
"I think you should stick to blonde." The avatar pushed off the wall and walked quickly over to the other side of the airlock door and back. Beka's hair faded back to the original shade as she watched the other woman's consternation.
"Something wrong, Rommie?" she asked, concerned. If Rommie was upset, the running of the ship could be affected. That would not be a good thing. If there was really a problem, they could go the way of the Pax Magellanic. She shuddered mentally and shied away from that prospect. She continued to watch Rommie pace.
"Nothing you can help me with, thanks." Rommie continued to pace, stretching her statement into a grimace. Suddenly she stopped, closed her eyes, and put her hands up to her temples, pressing the palms into the place where the pulse beat (did a pulse beat there?).
"Rommie?"
"I'm fine," the AI said, as much to herself as to Beka. She pulled her hands away from her face, and shook her head slightly. "Just fine," she repeated, with more than a hint of bitterness evident in her tone.
Beka crept her hand toward the force-lance and closed on it, carefully tightening her grip and hoping that she wouldn't have to use it.
Rommie saw the movement. "Don't worry, I'm not going to try anything. I'm just," she paused, searching for the right word, "frustrated?" She turned the statement into a question. "I don't know." She sat down again next to Beka, and seemed to be fighting to contain furious excess energy.
"Are you sure I can't help? Talking can do a good bit. Of course," Beka threw a strained little laugh into the statement, "you can always talk to Rev."
"He can't help me with things like this." The statement was abrupt and final. "But…"
"Yeah?"
"Can you?"
Beka felt floored. She had not expected the offer of help and a willing ear to be taken seriously. "That depends. What's it about?" When Rommie hesitated, Beka tried again, probing gently into the avatar's personal life (could a machine have a personal life?). "Is this about…him?"
If Beka had misjudged the source of the problem, she was in deep shit. Even if Rommie took it the wrong way, she was in trouble. But Rommie seemed to pick up on her thoughts. "Yes. I think so. I don't know! But I'm starting to see why Pax… why Ma-… why Jill… did… what she did."
"You want him and he rejects you without meaning to."
"Exactly." Rommie paused and considered Beka's tone for a moment. "You've felt this way, haven't you?"
"I can't think of a single person who hasn't," Beka said dryly.
Rommie smiled, briefly, humorlessly. "I still haven't gotten used to emotions."
"I'll give you a hint. No one ever does."
As silence coated the two of them, thick and heavy, Beka stared into the little gleaming strip on the side of the box. She considered the thing that had been nagging at her all these weeks, that was thrown into stark relief by this conversation. She understood what Rommie felt because she was going through it herself.
She was attracted to Tyr Anasazi.
It was dumb. It was illogical. It was mere sexual attraction. It would be irresponsible for her to act on what was a hormonal impulse. It was sheer foolishness to even consider the two of them anything but crewmates. But she felt it.
Easy enough to figure out. She sensed his presence when he entered a room, felt that queer wrenching feeling in the pit of her stomach. She got flustered when he was too close (and he did his fair share of stuttering as well). She would often, in a moment of daydreaming, find herself admiring his easy grace, or fluidly streamlined muscles, or some other thing that she shouldn't even notice, let alone think about. And then she would jerk herself back to reality and tell herself to forget it. Not that she listened to herself much, anyway.
Her only choice, as she saw it, was to ignore and avoid the situation continuously. Of course, that was easier said than done. On a ship with only seven people, it was hard to avoid one person for very long. Besides, Dylan and the others would notice something was wrong. It was easier to avoid the times when it was just the two of them, alone, in close quarters. After all, it was in just those situations when the problems occurred. But steering clear of the situation and the man was, again, difficult.
The alternative wasn't much of an alternative, either- he himself had said that he would never, "not in a million, million years," consider a relationship with a human woman. Why humiliate herself more than she already had, just to accommodate a hormonal quirk? Between the wry comments, the occasional offer of help, and the dinner he had prepared (and that she hadn't stayed around long enough to appreciate), she couldn't-
"Beka?"
"Wha…?" Jerked out of her train of thought, Beka was surprised to see her friend (when had she started thinking of Rommie as a friend?) and fellow sufferer sitting next to her and speaking, instead of Tyr.
"I was thinking. You said that you had experienced emotions like…this…" Rommie waved her arm in a vague, all-encompassing gesture, "before. Who did you have a problem with? How'd you handle it?"
She couldn't believe it. The AI referred to infatuation as a problem. She'd never thought of it that way, but what was the expression about different strokes? "Um, you know, I don't think that…" Beka, trying to talk her way out of it, saw Rommie's face. Her face was inscrutable, as always, but her eyes burned with a need to…empathize. Beka sighed and tried to think how she would put it. "Well, I can't remember half of them…"
"Beka, please." She was almost begging.
"All right, all right. This is in absolute confidence, remember? To tell you the truth, it's…" Beka was having trouble saying it, after thinking it for so long. "I mean…"
"Never mind. I didn't mean to pry."
"No, no, Rommie, it isn't that, not at all! It's just," Beka bit her lip, furrowed her eyebrows, and shoved her hand into her blonde waves, pushing the mass back from her face. "It's just that I don't know quite how to say this. To put it simply…it's Tyr."
Rommie's eyes widened and her mouth gaped, inhaling in shock and surprise. She paused and tried to say something, then faltered and tried again. "Beka…"
"What?"
"I need a reminder- what happens after inhale?"
"Oh, God, Rommie! Exhale! You're the ship's computer, in human form, and you can't remember a basic breathing pattern?"
"Sorry, but your…announcement…took the wind out of my sails. No pun intended." Rommie managed a weak grin.
Beka nodded. "Me, too. Was that your reaction when you realized that you…I'm sorry, I'm prying now. Just forget that I asked." She turned back to the boxes, trying to hide her cheeks, tinted a flaming red.
"It was," Rommie said distantly, staring unseeing at her hands. "When- when he touched me…" she raised one hand to the left side of her forehead, "here… I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I could only feel his touch, hear his voice. And then…" She trailed off, then abruptly stiffened her back and snapped back to the present. "Never mind. It doesn't matter."
"It matters, Rommie. What happened?" Beka had turned back from the crates, her brilliant face subsiding to a dull pink glow. She wouldn't admit it under torture, but her reasons for wanting to know this part weren't entirely springing from a desire to help a crewmate.
"He said…that he," the bitterness crept into her voice again, "wasn't a machine. He almost said, not like you. And he didn't care that I was offended." A tear silently rolled down her cheek.
Beka reached over and patted her on her shoulder. "I know, I know. It's all right, shh, it's all right," she said, trying to be comforting, as more tears began to join the first one.
Rommie reached up and brushed ineffectually at one of the salty drops. She regarded her wet hand with amazement, even as more tears cascaded down her face. "I've only ever cried once, do you realize? Right after Jill…died…was the first time I cried. This-this is, I suppose, the second." She shook the offended hand and went back to staring into space. "I find it hard to believe that I'm crying over my captain." She froze as the unthinking comment passed her lips.
Beka's breath caught as all her suspicions were confirmed. She gave up trying to comfort the upset AI; she was too shocked to be sympathetic. There was a brief rush of victory- she was right! - but that was quickly subsumed by concerns and conflicting opinions. What would happen if word of this reached Dylan (not that she'd say anything, but…)? For that matter, what would happen to Dylan? As far as she could see, he was still mourning his fiancée. What was her name? Sara? This would probably send him head over heels onto a catatonic state. "I- I'm sorry, what was that?" she choked out, thinking that she could always have heard wrong.
Rommie didn't answer, too involved with her own thoughts to respond to Beka's question. She was thinking the same thing, though. The only difference was that she was wondering more along the lines of how Dylan would react. Would he be furious, upset, glad…? Her thoughts were interrupted by the advent of the man himself, closely tailed by Trance.
"Hey, Rommie, Beka. Did you get the supplies we needed?" Dylan Hunt looked tired, with heavy lines etched in his face, but he did a half-decent job of hiding it behind a triumphant grin. "The Corresson statesman has decided to meet with us. We could have another planet signed on within the week!"
"Great," Beka said dryly. "Formal dinner, right?"
Rommie shot a quick glare at her, then turned her attention back to Dylan. Beka noted the fact that the AI's voice changed subtly dulcet as she said, "That's wonderful, Dylan. Can you give me a hand with these boxes?"
"Sure."
Dylan grabbed the top box off the stack and Rommie followed suit. Beka and Trance hauled either end of the largest box and trailed them into the airlock of the Eureka Maru.
As they watched Dylan and Rommie discussing the ambassador's visit, the ever-curious Trance whispered, "What were you two talking about? Rommie looks a little upset."
Beka grimaced mentally. A little upset? "Nothing, really. Just girl stuff," she whispered back. They heaved the box into a corner of the Maru's small cargo bay and the freighter captain dusted off her hands. "I'll go start up the engines. Come on, Trance."
"But-" the purple girl protested, then looked in the same direction as Beka, to where their captain and computer were deeply involved in conversation. It didn't look like it was about the Commonwealth. Trance smiled, knowingly, enigmatically, and slightly cagily, and finished, "-I thought you said that I could start the engines back to the Andromeda."
Beka grinned as they fled the cargo bay, leaving it to the other two.
As a matter of fact, the conversation wasn't about the Corresson ambassador. It wasn't what Beka and Trance had thought it to be, though.
"She didn't say a word about the problems between her and Tyr?" Dylan asked incredulously. "I thought I asked you to bring up the topic."
"Not one word," Rommie confirmed. "She seemed rather ashamed of the whole affair, anyway. She avoided the subject the entire time we were sitting there."
He shook his head. "Never mind. I give up. I don't think they'll ever sort it out. I know that I sure can't figure out the problem."
Rommie shrugged. "I can try again, if you want me to."
"No. Don't. Whatever it is, it's private, and we shouldn't have snooped in the first place." He carefully put an arm around her shoulder. "We'd better get back up to the front before they miss us." He started to walk, pulling her out of the cargo bay with him. He suddenly stopped dead and got a closer look at her face. "You were crying." It was a statement, not a question. "What were you two talking about back there?"