First Contact (A "Signs" tribute)
A/N: The last of the epilogues. How Jack and Lila might have met, in San Diego, given a very different universe.
Built totally on the brilliant mechanic by green-piggy, and inspired by their even more brilliant story using it. Go! Read it! Very funny, full of feels, and they nailed the real power of Cross, as well as the weirdness of L. "I See Signs Now (All the Time)." Look back to April 2016 in the XCX stories. This story can wait, it can so so so wait, right? I salute them.
Indulgent fluff, swears, libido, and a lack of spoilers. Set pre-game by about 6? 7? years. The real stuff belongs to the geniuses of MONOLITH SOFT, and the AU is all green-piggy, so very good.
Back on Earth, back before all the horror, Jack meets Lila. To say there is a spark is boring. To say there is gasoline slopped all over some dry straw and there is a spark is more accurate. Because….
"From the age of thirteen, every human has two names appear on their wrists; one for their worst enemy, and one for their soulmate. Needless to say, it isn't always that simple […]" I See Signs Now (All the Time), green-piggy.
Jack sat in his new and tiny office, stewing. He did not have time for this. At the same time, you did not ignore having your soulmate land in your lap.
Wrong image. He shifted uncomfortably.
"Of all the gin joints in all the world," he muttered, not completely accurately. Here he was, not on the job four hours, and he already was in deep for something that had nothing to do with the proper reason for being here.
He's known there'd be trouble, from the moment he laid eyes on her cute little butt. And then she had smiled at him and he'd gone down hard. But only for a second, because he was not a pig and he was not stupid. He'd keep it under control, ignore it even if it killed him, and walk away. You do not mess with a subordinate, done. She'd be fine. Safe. Funny, just that one smile and he'd dedicated a large part of his soul to keeping her safe.
That was before he'd learned her name. Now he was in a whole new world of hurt, and he honestly had no idea what to do.
He flicked a resentful look at his wrist. The khaki patch commonly worn in the military, the one that matched no skin color on Earth as far as he could tell, lay innocently as it always did. The trouble was underneath.
Her name. The name of his soulmate, as determined by whatever put it there since he was 13. Lila.
Well, maybe not her name. Maybe it wasn't her fault that he was in such a stew. Strike that. She had nothing to do with his being completely flummoxed (yeah, that was a word for you, and one you could say in church. Not many of those floating around in his head right at the moment). The point was, maybe her name and his wrist had no connection.
And maybe she hadn't smiled at him and her eyes hadn't filled with silver darts that had flown out and straight into his heart. Maybe it would have been better if she had flattened him with that leaking connector and been done with it.
Again. NOT HER FAULT. He was the one making himself crazy. Because he'd already pretty much fallen for her with just that one mischievous and friendly smile, that one welcoming and teasing comment, and most of all, that quick and measuring glance that erased her smile, straightened her spine, and yet could not remove the sparkles from her eyes. He felt welcomed by her, even as she'd recognized the new commander of the project. A formal and respectful welcome. It had warmed him in a way that he couldn't quite explain, and made the absolute decision to treat her properly feel so much easier. At the same time he'd inched just a little deeper towards a place he was not going to go. A crazy, bad place for crazy, bad people, and to repeat, he was neither.
And that was all before he'd learned her name.
A weaker man would have laid his head on the desk and wept, or gone out for a series of increasingly stiff drinks. Howling, that was also an option. He was going to do none of these. He was going to use all of his fierce and powerful intellect to figure out what he should do. Or at least keep banging his brain inside his skull until at least one possible solution survived the beating.
It came down to whether he told her or not. Whether he ignored it, the original option and still the best, or whether he admitted that, dammit, this was not something that you left by the side of the road. And once more, he'd veered into vocabulary that was not church going.
Tell her or not. Show her or not. Ask her or not. Because if his name was on her wrist…
Jack didn't howl, but he did take a very deep breath, and thought very slowly. If his name was on her wrist, he would go directly to the logical conclusion, do no pass go, do not collect anything. He'd just hand her the key to his apartment and tell her that she was welcome to everything he had. Including his heart.
If. Because it didn't always work out that way. And if it didn't, if someone else was her soulmate, he needed to keep very very carefully away from all this. Because in the past four hours, he had already accidently caught his brain practicing ways to propose marriage. Twice.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in," he barked. Then he looked at the clock. Gah! It had suddenly eaten up the 20 minutes he knew he'd had 5 seconds ago.
Two minutes early, Lila Brown stood in the doorway, not completely comfortable. "Aanderson told me to come at 1600. You wanted to tell me something, sir?"
Jack looked very hard and for the last time at Lila, closed his eyes, opened them and looked at Seaman Brown. "Yeah, come on in. I was wondering what you bunch of bubbleheads were doing on this project. They yanked you from no one's going to tell me where and dropped you here. Why?"
Lila looked uncomfortable (Brown, dammit, Brown!). "I can't really say, sir. It was a very confusing time. No one explained why our boat had to go into dry-dock, and I can't exactly say why the three of us ended here. I'm not complaining, sir. It's a great posting. But it sometimes feels like we were chosen alphabetically. ABC. Aanderson, Brown, Crane."
"So not your field of expertise."
"No, sir. We're mostly a sort of overpriced untrained labor."
"Trained for the submarines, and that's no small thing."
She couldn't hide a slight flash of pride, he noted. "No, sir, that's its own world. We're hard working and love a tight team."
"Sardines."
"If you say so, sir." A flash of silver, a quirk of a smile, and he had to stomp on his heart for a second, pleased to note that it backed down. Good dog, maybe we'll get out of this alive. "The thought of replacing the existing nuclear subs with ones using gravitational engines, I'm not sure how you could make that work for the speeds and distances we need to cover. We're tight on space as it is, and I don't think we can scale up and be at all useful. Even on the biggest carrier, it would be wasted."
Jack frowned and grunted. Not even close to her field of expertise, based on what he'd read in her file, and she was almost dead on target. Clever bitch. He liked that. (Smack. Down boy. Let the professionals do the talking. And watch your language.)
He heaved a deep sigh for more than one reason."Well, I'm going to rip this project to shreds. Thought I'd give you weirdos fair warning. What are you going to do about it?"
She looked thoughtful, head tilted very slightly. "Same thing as we always do. Work hard, show respect, help the team. More or less."
"Less? When less?"
She grinned full on, just for a second, and his heart would not be stomped on. It rose up to bask in the sunshine that fell on it. Dammit, if you won't back down, at least do me the favor of listening to her words. "Aanderson really needs his coffee in the morning. And I'm no prize when I'm hungry."
"And Crane?"
"If you don't rush the boy, he gets there. And please, if he starts to stutter, let him slow down."
Jack narrowed his eyes.
She looked defensive. "It never hampers communication, sir. Never. No repeats necessary. Never. A deep breath is all it takes. He's very young."
"And you're so old."
She grinned again, only slightly, and twice as swift. "Well, older than he is. Ours was his first boat, and I remember how hard it was, sometimes."
"Right. Coffee, food, air. You guys are making this too easy."
"Anything else, sir?" She'd picked up that the conversation was over.
Am I your soulmate? Or maybe you could throw me onto the I-5 freeway and let a bus run over me? Several buses. Jack shook his head. "Nope, nothing I'm going to bring up right now. We'll see how it runs, right? Dismissed."
"Thank you, sir." And with a turn on her heel she was gone.
Jack sat for exactly 45 seconds, breathing deeply. Then he stared at his other arm, which in opposition to standards was NOT covered with the patch of no natural color. People covered both sides in the military, generally. No one needed or usually wanted to know who your soulmate was, and wanted this even less about your worst enemy. But his was special, and besides it was too damn large to cover with anything short of a standard dish towel. A parade of equations, not particularly complicated once you'd done enough advanced college physics classes, marched from wrist to elbow, inside and out. The blues and reds flickered slightly deeper this afternoon.
Load, thrust, power. Everything necessary to get the Whale up and safe. He hadn't known what it meant at 13, but it had gotten him to finally crack a math book in 8th grade, had made him take the ROTC scholarship so he could keep going, had chosen his senior topic for him.
And now he had another reason to get it up and safe. Because if the Navy could drop bubbleheads into San Diego for no reason (or maybe they knew something about what was on his arm. Weren't supposed to, but everyone knew that was baloney. Hey, back to tolerable vocabulary, nice, have a dog biscuit.), if they could land her here, they could probably land her at the facility on the California/Nevada border. He expected nothing from her, make that clear, but he'd blow his store of clout to give her some luck. (And if they knew what was on her arm? Holy shit, please let that be the reason. And shit, bad dog, give that biscuit back, not just for language but because if she'd shown even a flicker of recognition he hadn't seen it. He'd certainly been watching closely enough.)
xcxcxcswitchxcxcxc
Meanwhile, back at the hangar, safe in the women's bathroom, Lila was having a serious staring contest with the mirror. "Not Jack. Not Francis. Definitely not Vandham. You KNOW this. Why am I even looking when I know what's there? It hasn't changed since this morning. Fool. It's your own arm." She pushed away from the sink, and peeled off the small khaki strip, on the wrong arm.
2054.07.16
04:29:15
Date and time and counting down to something she already hated, even if she had no idea what it was. She shivered, reapplied the strip, gave her cheeks a bracing and none too gentle pinch, and headed back out to the work area. Time to be all that foolish talk, what was it, hardworking and team players? Whatever. Plus what she hadn't said, loyal to a man she'd just met. Whom she was supposed to be subtly undermining, if only as a test. Not that she hadn't already jettisoned that part, even before she'd met him. Had no one bothered to read his file? Honestly, this was not a man to wreck, he was too good. Nope, not happening, even less now than five hours earlier. She shrugged. She'd never really liked the name on her arm, too pretentious. She had a Sharpie. Maybe she'd do fate's job herself and just pick a different one.
xcxcxcswitchxcxcxc
(There was a point in his young life when Jack wanted to sound so much more sophisticated. He'd announced his new moniker at Thanksgiving dinner. He'd been fierce about it, but even his loving mother could barely say his newly chosen name with a straight face. His sisters, not so much. It had lasted for about 2 months before he finally gave up. Slightly after someone else, all unknowing, turned 13 and read a rather unlikely name on her wrist.)
A/N: Fluff! So much ridiculous fluff. Not part of the main arc. However, if this were the same universe as "Signs", this is totally how it would have gone down. I keep imagining how they finally show each other their tattoos, and just how soppy they behave - not sure if they find a bed or a chaplain first. Or maybe Lila completely misunderstands it, assuming that physics is Jack's true love and she is his arch enemy (poor thing, she does get the wrong idea easily). If it is on the White Whale campus, Jack probably drags her off to Nagi, demands that he marry them AT ONCE, and then calls a meeting to discuss the date on her other wrist. Very useful information, don't you think, and probably one of the reasons the Whale survived.
I made up the day of the attack on Earth for 2016, the year I started writing this mess. The month and year are canon. The time is the Japanese release date. Francis, that one I made up completely. And yes, they are still watching "Casablanca" in 2049 (at least Vandham is, he's slowly turning into a film buff in my head).
Nominations for Jack's fake name are open. I'm thinking "Jonquil", but feel free to offer something more ridiculous.
For the love of clams, is that it? Yes, I think it is. Thus endeth "The Lily and the BLADE." I hope you enjoyed it. I have more, set post game, and when it is ready I will put it up, although it may take months. MONTHS! I tell you. "New Jack City." The beginning and ending are done, but I have to get the mess of another OC up first before I can approach the middle, since they intertwine. It will involve injury, tears, swears, frustration, a very annoyed Nagi, a Ma-non, a medi-pack, and a crowbar. Not nearly as much fluff, at least, I don't think there will be as much.
XCX PORTANDA EST!
And, with deepest gratitude,
Thank you Monolith Soft.
GOAT.