TWENTY: Fold
Two days until Andoria.
What Dagmar would forever refer to as The Crying Incident was all but forgotten after a day or two, at least by her Andorian compatriots. As for herself, the entire thing was nearly as humiliating as the tabloids.
She'd never had culture shock before, the twenty-first century Canadian realized, staring up at the dark ceiling and watching her breath leave her in soft, visible puffs in the low light. It was getting towards the end of the ship's night cycle, and already Andorians were rising from their sleep.
It had been terrible –feeling overwhelmed and trapped for no logical reason- but it had gone as quickly as it had come, like some shadow. From a purely clinical perspective, it was a fascinating process, actually; despite her embarrassment over the incident itself, she felt more relaxed overall and was, in fact, absorbing more about Andorian behaviour and culture than she had before.
The whole thing had been almost... cathartic. Yes, cathartic was the word, and rejuv-
"Gunnarssen!" Thoris shouted suddenly, viciously, shattering the silence and the Canadian's reverie.
Several sleeping –rather, formerly sleeping- Andorians grumbled in protest.
With an alarmed shout of her own, Dagmar bolted upright from the mass of pillows and tangle of limbs, badly startled and staring at the Ambassador with wide eyes. His antennae were bowed and the silhouette of his shoulders were shaking as he said in a calm voice that couldn't quite mask the thin, rasping laugh, "...Predictable."
And then, turning on the heel of his boot, the Ambassdor left the sleeping quarters. Dagmar stared after him. Hell. That man was going to give her a heart attack one of these days, she thought, half in terror and half in exasperated anger. Let's see him laugh at her then!
Since the Ambassador had discovered that she was somewhat hypersensitive to disapproval from her superiors, the male had taken a sadistic sort of glee in shouting at her angrily for no reason other than it amused him. Worse –Dagmar knew he was doing it on purpose and couldn't stop reacting!
At first glance, it almost looked like a sense of humour. What Dagmar suspected it was really was, was some sort of crazy, latent sadism that came out to play whenever she was around.
Thelen, who had decided to use her stomach as a pillow at some point, snarled –if groggily- as he was jostled by Dagmar's somewhat violent awakening. "If you want to break my antennae, at least have the decency to do it when I'm awake!"
"Sorry!" Dagmar whispered back with a furrowed brow, though she didn't really know why she bothered to be. Andorians had ridiculous hearing; in fact, it was nigh impossible to sneak up on one unless he or she was in a particularly loud and massive crowd. She was probably loud and clear from across the sizeable room to the Andorians.
Then, belatedly, she was horrified. "...Oh, god, are your antennae okay?"
A snort was her only answer as a hand –presumably belonging to the acting Chief of Security- settled on her breastbone and pushed her back down into the pillows. Shral had left earlier in the night cycle –his departure, though discreet, causing an absence of warmth that had pulled her out of her slumber- and so was not there to complain. Small mercies, the redhead supposed, as the security officer resettled his head –this time, at her shoulder- and languorously collapsed a pile of pillows behind her to help keep her warm. The ship's overall temperature had been lowered to suit Andorians, and for all that the Andorian-made clothing staved of hypothermia quite effectively, her biology was a little too different for the temperature regulators; when she wasn't moving constantly, the cold seeped back in, though not as much as when she had been wearing Terran clothing.
An antenna brushed over the bridge of her nose.
Dagmar paused, wondering if she was imagining things as she blinked owlishly and turned her head just fractionally towards the Andorian.
He was asleep, at least, as near as she could tell, had probably fallen asleep instantly, since his hand, fingers loose and fingertips calloused, hadn't moved from the plane of her breastbone. She wasn't particularly disturbed –sleeping with thirty-plus Andorians in one room desensitized one to that kind of contact. That her legs were entangled with his was not particularly interesting either; in a sleeping pile such as this, she'd once found herself with one knee drawn over a complete stranger's stomach while the inside thigh of the other played pillow to someone else. That she could feel last vestigial remains of the ancient Andorians' exoskeletons in the form of lines of smooth chitin was certainly interesting but not worrying in the slightest. Some Andorians had those faint, almost indiscernible traces of their ancestor's more insect-like forms, and others didn't –not unlike how some Humans had, say, freckles and others didn't.
Some Andorians even had the faintest traces of this exoskeleton long their antennae, but Dagmar wasn't allowed to examine those very closely for obvious reasons.
The exoskeleton wasn't readily visible, which she had found surprising. The chitin was easy enough to feel, particularly in close quarters, but there was no distinctive colouration over or around the smooth and shallow ridges. In the right lighting, they were almost unnoticeable. This close, however, she could feel most of Thelen's faint exoskeleton along the tops of his thighs and his ribcage, lining the sharp outer bone of his forearms from wrist to elbow, converging over his own breastbone to protect the heart.
Shral, near as she could tell, had no such exoskeleton.
"Go-to-sleep." Thelen, who apparently wasn't asleep at all, ordered gruffly, surprising her. The redhead frowned.
"Can't!" She mumbled back in protest. And she couldn't. Thanks to Thoris, she was wide awake.
An exasperated sigh. "...Why not?"
"Adrenaline." Dagmar answered simply, voice still hushed more as a courtesy than anything else.
"Well stop poking me, at least!"
Oops.
...She maybe should have made sure Thelen was actually asleep before poking at his exoskeleton. Just maybe.
With an awkward, apologetic grimace that he probably couldn't see anyway, she offered, "...I'm curious?"
"Then go be curious with Vilashral and let me sleep!" The Chief of Security grumped, rolling away from her and abandoning her to the cold.
Deflating somewhat –half because Thelen was cranky and half because it was bloody cold- Dagmar pushed herself to her feet and began to pick her way over to the door as quietly as possible.
Shral was alone in the Mess when Dagmar finally found him, off to the side and out of the way. He had a stack of PADDs in front of him, and a mug of katheka in one hand. His antennae wiggled in her direction as she approached.
"Hey, Shral." Dagmar greeted, remembering to incline her head politely. A moment later, she stepped closer and raised her hand.
Since she knew Shral somewhat, it wasn't necessary for her to bow in greeting, but in absence of antennae on her part, she still had to bow her head in mimicry of the appropriate antennae-wiggle. The hand gesture was her initiative, showing familiarity and affection. Thelen greeted her as such all the time, and she knew Shral only a little less than she knew Thelen, so it seemed appropriate to greet them with the same level of familiarity.
At least, to her it did.
When Shral returned the nod with an antennae wiggle but didn't immediately press his hand to hers, she twenty-first century Human started to feel awkward. Was that not okay? It was okay when Thelen did it, wasn't it? Why wasn't it okay now?
When the aide kept staring at her hand, as if it was some strange puzzle that he'd never seen before, her stomach squirmed uncomfortably and, cringing, her fingers curled and she awkwardly dropped her hand to her side. Her face burned and her face showed a little more hurt than she would have liked.
If she was lucky, maybe the Andorian wouldn't understand her expression and chalk it up to embarrassment instead.
"It is not appropriate for you to display such familiarity towards me." Shral told her suddenly, eyes flat and antennae neutral. "You are not yet able to judge the progression of relationships here; you will either offend someone or give them an incorrect impression of your character."
Wandering into an abandoned ice cave and dying of hypothermia suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.
At least it would save her the complete humiliation of getting every other cultural nuance wrong.
"Sorry." She mumbled, averting her eyes off to the side and shifting her weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. Her face was probably well beyond lobster red at this point.
"Sit." Shral commanded, eyes shifting away from her as he picked up a PADD from the table. Gingerly, she complied, though Dagmar internally debated whether or not she could plead sudden fatigue and go back to Thelen.
Thelen, at least, didn't seem to mind it so much when she slipped up.
But why did she keep making so many mistakes? It was like for every ten things she learned not to do, there were another twenty that she didn't know about. She'd been afraid of this from the get go –of thinking she understood the culture and finding that, no, she really didn't.
...She wanted to go home.
Not Earth, though. Home.
Home, where global warming was an impending disaster and people were still fighting in the Middle East, and the North Koreans were absolutely paranoid about everything, and people worried over whether or not the world would end in 2012, and Canadians weren't necessarily as nice or polite as advertized. Back where aliens didn't exist, and space exploration was going nowhere fast, and everybody swore there would never be another World War.
Back where things made sense.
Yes, home was terrible. It was corrupt and polluted and every day it seemed one step closer to going pear-shaped, but it was home.
Her sinuses began to sting uncomfortably, a precursor to crying and something she desperately wanted to avoid. Two counts of sobbing in front of an Andorian would probably destroy what was left of her self-confidence –never mind her self-esteem.
Wetting her lips, the Canadian began awkwardly, "I know that I don't really understand your culture."
Shral's antennae swivelled towards her –she caught the movement in her peripheral vision, looking away as she was- and she felt eyes on her. For a moment, her throat felt like it was trying to close up and she had to actively fight the overwhelming flight impulse that seized her nervous system.
"But I'm trying," Dagmar forced herself to continue, painfully. "Half the time I don't even know what I'm doing wrong, and most of the time I wish I'd never come here, but I'm trying."
To be brutally honest, the redhead wasn't sure where she was going with this. It just felt like something that really needed to be said.
"Andoria?" Shral asked suddenly, and his tone was strange –low and tinged with something that she couldn't identify.
Dagmar blinked, looking over at the aide at last. "Sorry?"
Verdant eyes were narrowed at her. "You regret coming to Andoria?"
Well, technically they weren't there yet, but—
Oh.
"No." Dagmar shook her head, understanding. Shral's expression didn't change. "When I said 'here,' I meant this time. To be honest, I don't think it'll matter where I go –I'm still never really going to fit in anywhere."
Shral regarded her for a long time with a serious, almost stern expression that made the harsh lines of his face seem all the more alien to her. Silence flooded the space in between, but it wasn't the awkward sort that Dagmar had grown to expect. It was... searching, she supposed, though she didn't know who was searching for what. The Canadian merely met the Andorian's gaze and waited, because that seemed to be the thing to do at the time.
Slowly, reminding Dagmar of a glacier's slow slide down a valley slope, Shral raised his hand, palm facing her.
Something embarrassingly like elation set warm fuzzy things alight in her belly, and it probably showed in the renewed flush of her face –something she damned her pasty complexion for time and time again- as she raised her hand and pressed her palm to his.
The stinging of her sinuses flared into something tenfold, blue eyes watering to the point of obscuring her vision, and Dagmar swore internally. Her emotions were a bloody rollercoaster. What was wrong with her?
She hadn't realized she'd done it until her forehead contacted stiff leather and she felt the muscle beneath tensed dangerously. Her fingers had, of their own accord, slipped between his, their paired hands held awkwardly upright, and her head had settled on his shoulder.
There was a long and awkward pause where Dagmar tried to remember how this had happened and Shral attempted to find a logical reason for the impromptu leaning.
At length, the Andorian inquired, just a little coolly, "What are you doing?"
Too late to run, Dagmar sighed inwardly, and she mumbled, "I needed a hug and you probably aren't ever going to give me one, so I'm just going to lean on you for a moment, okay?"
Strangely, he let her.
