The feeling man was bound, by fate, to be an inmate.

Posted on Sat Feb 5th, 2022 @ 4:55am by Ships Doctor Hiram Maitland M.D. & Evahnae Kohl
Edited on on Sat Feb 5th, 2022 @ 9:44am

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
Location: Eva's Quarters
Timeline: MD06 2200
10985 words - 22 OF Standard Post Measure

Shortly after their conversation in sickbay, Hiram ended up having to go back to work, though he stopped in here and there to check up on Eva under the guise of making sure Purple was OK. Eventually his shift wound down and he took her vitals once more and decided she could be released to her quarters right as the day wound down to a near-close. He insisted that she be wheeled in an anti-grav chair, which he was now pushing down the halls.

"Monochromatism endures. Abstract Painting was interesting," he was saying in response to her, and laughed a little. "Reinhardt stated his intention was to produce something useless. He sought to remove all evidence that it was a painting at all. He wanted it devoid of any human meaning, shape or form." Hearing someone like Hiram talk about those concepts, they suddenly seemed to make more sense. Why there would be a meaning, in nothing.

"Obsidian was used draw the viewer closer, that what looks a single color on its surface is composed of an infinite variety of blacks up-close. Malevich changed contemporary art with Black Painting and introduced Suprematism. Franko B did a few very interesting ones." Who knew the guy who barely understood how to watch a movie had absorbed his art history classes with gusto. Hiram didn't strike Eva, or anyone as the kind of guy who would appreciate modern art.

As things went, he seemed to strive to topple over the status quo like upset apple carts, one after the other. "Ah, here we are. I did bring a movie, if you cared for some company," he swayed an isolinear data rod down over her head in front of her eyes, a swinging pendulum of fingers and transparent glass.

The upwards sweep of a gaze, swung like a metronome in an attempt to focus on an offering that uncomfortably close to tapping against her nose, eventually extended further to convey a muted yet somehow very pointed expression of limited patience. She had been perfectly capable of walking; she had, and being exposed to this interpretation of her capacity didn't comfort Eva in the slightest. He was fortunate they hadn't encountered anyone, which had been a genuine concern that wasn't appeased at all by the understanding that it was irrational. Like many who had suffered trauma, a return to normal seemed very big to Eva. Dying on the operating table had a way of getting around and she dreaded the thought of the impending fuss. Some spotlights, she preferred to avoid.

As for his fine arts lecture, that had been her fault. Provocative, stirring the pot because she was already annoyed with him. Dredging up her slightly less-comprehensive understanding of visual media to pass commentary on the design of one of the pairs of socks he'd decided was a great get-well present. She wasn't wearing them; Purple was. The bear, resting in Eva's lap, didn't seem particularly impressed by the enforced fashion and Eva still maintained that the geometric nightmare, coupled with the garish and intentional clash of neon, was responsible. People will slap a bunch of shapes on anything and call it art, she had heckled, and off he'd gone.

It had actually made the trip nearly enjoyable.

Now, cross-eyed, the telepath pulled back a little; wary, perhaps, of what the subject material would be if Hiram was in charge of choosing.

"Depends what you're trying to subject me to."

"I have heard that you cannot go wrong with the romantic comedy," Hiram deadpanned. "I think the title of this one is Miss Congeniality. Go easy on me, I picked one at random from the ship's stores. While there is no cheesecake this time around, I believe we can make due with a replicator and a prayer. And do not be silly. Purple loves my socks. He maintains they are a modern art miracle." Hiram had the ability to open her door for her, but he didn't, even when it would have prevented her from potentially injuring herself by rising to do so. He just remained closeby as she stood for the first time since her ordeal, having put the brakes on the grav-chair on so the momentum wouldn't send it skating backwards.

It being a perfect moment for a poignant assertion of vitality, the first shaky steps of a newlyy-born fawn, there was no one at all surprised that Eva butchered it entirely by shifting herself to the edge of the seat and still finding herself short an inch of touching the actual floor. Adjusting the tilt eventually worked but, by that point, the damage was done; she stood, feet apart, and allowed herself to fall forward to catch the weight on her hands against the door. Being short was fun. Rearrangement wasn't actually that difficult; she didn't feel overly sore, he'd dosed her up well enough to avoid that. Weakness and fatigue were the lingering symptoms, but neither prevented Eva from pulling up and managing her own weight whilst a flat palm to the panel allowed the door to open. "You can go plenty wrong with 'the romantic comedy', I wouldn't recommend taking notes for future seductions."

The quarters, small but serviceable, didn't really contain a lot of personal touches. As Eva shuffled inside and the main lights sprang to life, the entry immediately became the living space, consisting of a sofa, coffee table and television, plus the storage shelves that held the collection of isolinear rods and several dog-eared books. The kitchenette was neat and tidy and probably rarely used, and the single bedroom and bathroom tucked down a small passageway had plenty of stuff in them, but it was just consumables. Toiletries, makeup, hair paraphernalia. The only true indicators of the personality calling the space home were the compact recording set-up rigged up in the far corner of the living space, the guitar case leaning against the wall just outside the bedroom door, and the sketchbooks and art supplies still half-strewn over the coffee table. There had been no anticipation that she'd be gone for quite this length of time.

Eva made it to the couch and eased herself down, finding the process of bending in the middle to be the most likely to cause complaints. Still holding Purple, the bear immediately became a cushion and Eva smushed him against the arm of the couch so that she could lean her head sideways in over-exaggerated exhaustion. Closing her eyes, the brunette lingered a moment before providing a necessary update. "I probably should have peed."

She could probably just pee, and the transporters would automatically beam it into space. "Do you need some assistance? It is no trouble." Fuck Nakatomi Plaza, Hiram was going to seduct her by offering to help her pee, which was the real Christmas miracle. He tapped the chair, having... flown it inside. Hovered. Whatever. He took a seat on the edge of her living table, watching her sprawl out over Purple who was definitely never leaving these quarters again, let's be real.

"I'll hold." The immortal words.

From her position, Eva raised a half-hearted hand and waggled it towards the kitchen. "There's snacks in there somewhere if you want. There's more soda in the fridge too, you should try the green stuff. It tastes nothing like lime."

"Perhaps Thomas Nagel was wrong. It simply is what green tastes like," Hiram told another super nerdy joke as he maneuevered to the kitchen and took out two bottles. He did find some snacks in the cupboard but he smiled privately to himself and found her replicator instead. He hid the snacks in his Bag of Wonders (he had been on his way out of sickbay for the day so he was wearing it) and when he came back over Eva got her bottle of green and a bag of baby carrots. Without dipping sauce. Because all the fat was in the dipping sauce. "Bone apple tea."

A pair of very dark eyes glared up at him from the midst of a purple refuge. "I will actually stab you with a spear." It wasn't quite an even keel yet but jokes like that proved that recovery was not so much a distant hope as an already-unfolding reality. The carrots were bad enough but the complete annihilation of French stereotypes was nearly unforgivable.

"I know, my French is terrible," Hiram said like that was the problem. He relinquished some real snacks with a smile along with a brownie for himself, and one for her if she wanted it. The really junky ones with lots of walnuts. He surveyed her television before finding the isolinear port. "I put a few more on here... but I cannot promise quality." A menu listing popped up. "The internet said that was the best one." He pointed at the aforementioned movie.

"Which absolutely means it's going to be trash. Good." Walnuts were enough temptation to make Eva sit up, though it wasn't a gracious defeat and involved her immediately making a fuss over the effort it took to twist her body and put her feet up onto the middle cushion. A paused allowed her to muster strength and then another push backwards wedged her butt up against the arm of the couch to sit upright enough for brownie. "What's the synopsis say?" These were the intended words. What actually came out, around a mouthful of chocolate goop, was less intelligible than his French just about.

"It says-" Hiram paused to eat his because he wasn't an animal like SOME people. :3. "When a terrorist threatens to bomb the Miss United States pageant, the FBI rushes to find a female agent to go under cover as a contestant. Unfortunately, Gracie is the only female FBI agent who can 'look the part' despite her complete lack of refinement," Hiram read out from his PADD. "What is the FBI?"

"Full Blown Insanity." The scoop of her hand beneath had caught as much brownie as Eva had attempted to eat, and so these went into her mouth next. She knew perfectly well what the acronym meant, having watched more than enough plotlines where they utterly failed to be of any use to anyone, but there were still carrots to be avenged. "Some thrash metal band back at the start of the 21st Century. Completely revolutionised the scene, produced all their sound using household appliances. Used to blow up a washing machine once in every show. The lead singer was only 3-feet tall." Credibility was drizzling away fast.

Hiram nodded along with her explanation. That was reasonable. "That does not seem particularly relevant to the remainder of the movie description," he thought, eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement. He dipped a carrot in his milk absently and ate it while he tried to work out this conundrum.

Her palm cupped against her mouth, tongue smooshing brownie crumbs unhelpfully between the cracks of her fingers, Eva's eyes gleamed as she just watched her friend. Her very dear, very gullible friend. Eventually, the tip of her tongue poked through between her index and middle finger and Eva enjoyed the very blissful moment of understanding that he had no idea what that particular gesture often referred to and then ran her tongue along the full length of her palm before trying to reach forward to wipe it against his arm. She was too short without strain she wasn't prepared to risk and so adjustment was needed. "Or it's just some government investigation for thingo that never actually did half the stuff the movies liked to make out they did."

If she didn't think there was anything wrong with him before, she would now as she watched him watch her fully lick her hand and wipe it on his bared forearm (his sleeves were half rolled which was about as casual as Hiram got) with literally zero reaction. Not an ick. Not a dodge out of the way. Zip. Zilch. "I must presume this is a further case of movie etiquette," he replied dryly instead.

A grabby hand stretched towards the bottle of lime soda, with a grand total of zero effort actually put into trying to reach it herself. "You have much to learn, padawan. All right, let's watch this train wreck then. Wait! Wait." Eva did not mean the bottle, which she accepted blithely and then struggled to uncap. "There's blankets in the wall storage over there." A finger pointed over her head was barely helpful.

Hiram moved at the insistence to retrieve them with the helpful aura of a seasoned butler. "For you," he donned them and covered her gently, he also took her soda and uncapped it before handing it back and waving the television on with an embedded gesture that ignited the screen in a blue glow of recognition. The logo flashed and music began, the opening scene was a man being taken hostage.

It was a pitiful attempt, especially given her usual capacity, but half a bottle of soda and most of a brownie proved the best of Eva. Though admittedly less nauseous than she'd initially felt, recovery from the anaesthetic was lingering almost as long as the liver repair itself and, at some point, she winced and quietly listened to her stomach's insistence that if she didn't stop, it would step in. The remains of both were left on the table and the brunette turned onto her side, wrestling a moment with the blanket to get it to cover her legs, which she pulled into a curl so that she only took up two-thirds of the couch like a good hostess. Purple had half disappeared, his head poking up to rest just beneath her chin as both arms hugged warmly. Occasionally, her features shifted, mostly to pull faces at the unfolding plot, though something that passed for approval emerged as one small kid punched another in flashback. "I don't remember signing away the rights to my childhood."

Hiram laughed gently. In this, he didn't reciprocate, but he took a sip of his green drink that tasted green and pronounced with complete honesty, "she does indeed remind me of you. It was a fortuitous choice of films," he declared. Apparently he was liking it, but that being said, Hiram liked paintings of squares, so. Art is subjective and all that.

"Oh, you bet I punched a kid once. He deserved it." She didn't elaborate, because she was also paying attention to the movie, which wasn't exactly good but it was new and that gave it an appeal of an entire different ilk. "I did not grow into anything this ridiculous though." No, she did not. "And her name is Gracie. Of course it is."

"I like her," Hiram laughed a bit. "Have fun at the mall." Snerk. Perhaps Hiram's taste ought to be questioned, but he seemed to be enjoying the movie. One thing about lacking emotions, maybe. He was easily entertained-a good quality to have when one was as prone to chronic boredom as Hiram could be. It didn't reach blowing stuff up levels anymore like Bernie, but it had been destructive in its own way. Watching a movie with a friend was a far preferable alternative. "What did the kid do?" he murmured. "To deserve it."

Either for dramatic pause or simply because there was too much of an imperative to hear out the rest of the dialogue without interruption, Eva took a moment to answer. When she did finally flick her eyes in his direction, she blinked at him, half her face lost in a conglomeration of bear and blanket, and managed with an entirely straight face, "He pulled my hair." Luckily for her, Hiram was just as unlikely to read between the lines on that one as he'd been able to interpret vulgar, crude tongue-and-finger gestures earlier. Probably. "Like, actually pulled it," she added, unnecessarily. "It hurt."

"He assaulted you," Hiram's eyebrows arched. His understanding of schoolyard dynamics was incredibly lacking. He had been liberated at age twelve but spent four years in a hospital, it was not the same. By the time he was ready to enter high school most of his peers had grown out of juvenile behavior of that variety. It wasn't altogether absent, but nothing like that. Hiram was the one instigating all the fights, much to the shock and dismay of everyone around him. "It does indeed sound as though he got what he had coming to him." Hiram didn't believe in solving problems with violence, but his hope was that this instance in particular had not been very harmful to either party.

"Yeah, we'll go with that." It had been stupid, the kind of thing that happened in those preteen years where you looked back later with better clarity and still found it annoying. It was just a drop in the ocean though and didn't have a lot of interesting information surrounding it to warrant a longer retelling. Instead, she shifted, the slow lift of a hip to try and adjust her position without being too obvious about it. She'd spent the best part of her recovery trying to hide the faintly returning threat of discomfort that way, being firmly of the mind that the less medication a person took, the probably-better-for-everyone it was. Addictive personalities, once you'd fought the long haul back to a semblance of sobriety, didn't need temptation banging at the door every two seconds. There were already enough people out there who'd have opinions about the fact she'd started drinking again. Socially. Socially.

Of all of Eva's friends, Hiram seemed the least likely to say something about it, even if he appeared the most likely to do so. Given his profession and all things healthy and medically oriented; but Hiram didn't work like that. He knew too much, personally and professionally, to offer trite advice like have you tried NOT using drugs? that many practicing clinicians attempted with little success. Addiction was a disease that could only be treated with time and support and coping skills, not mindless platitudes and lectures. If you really wanted someone to stop drinking, you had to be there for them, or else you're just saying something meaningless. Not that he was aware of these internal machinations but he did note her shift and his eyebrows knit. "You are in pain," he said quietly. "I brought some terakine, and I have an IV of toradol here if you need it. They are both non-steroidal anti-inflammatories." Meaning, non-addictive. He didn't say that.

"Mmmn." It was a non-committal sound that veered towards reluctance; very much a repeated gesture throughout the time she'd been awake and coherent. "I think parts of me just have opinions about how I'm laying." She had squished herself into the corner, which honestly seemed to be the way she viewed most recreational seating arrangements, and that probably would have been perfectly fine on a normal day but it'd be a little while yet before that qualification was earned back. With an effort, Eva pulled into a position that was less lying down and more sitting up and once again propped herself up using Purple as a pillow. She closed her eyes, forehead creased. "Just give a few minutes." Stubborn.

Hiram nodded, leaving the choice to her as it was not likely to progress beyond an inconvenience. Another way in which Hiram worked, her stubbornness did not appear to have much of an effect on him in casual settings. And when it did, when it was vital, Hiram was fairly good at mitigating it. He did what had to be done. Right now, nothing was needed but small comforts and a mediocre movie.

For several scenes, a mutually agreed-upon-but-not-actually-discussed silence allowed space for symptom management that bordered more on psychological than physiological. Traumatic recollections of uncontrolled agony tended to spike panic regarding any sense of discomfort and it was through a series of slow breaths in and out that Eva managed to ride out the worst of the anxiety. She didn't enjoy this part of her recovery; the sensation of tenuous control, of her pulse suddenly picking up speed and her entire body chilled to trembling despite the fact she wasn't actually cold. No amount of rationalising things seemed to help, her flight response had an amplitude that couldn't be reasoned with. Eventually, she shifted to sit upright, into the middle of the couch to prop her feet up on the coffee table and, once again, Purple had to contend with a chin to the face.

Hiram had stayed on the coffee table this whole time more facing her than the movie, but now he moved to her side, deftly maneuvering her into a position where she was curled up next to him rather than sprawled out, and he wrapped her up in one arm, using the other to place her own arm over her chest, Purple in tow. She realized a very long moment later he was humming a song under his breath. I am just an image of/something so much greater/I am just the picture frame I am not the painter... Rationalizing things didn't work. Because these things existed in a place beyond rationality. You can't reason with insanity, otherwise insanity would be reasonable. But sometimes, you could sing it to sleep, for a little while.

Fuck.

Luckily for Hiram's equilibrium and overall sense of self-esteem, it wasn't a voiced sentiment but one felt deep in the pit of Eva's queasy stomach nonetheless. It wouldn't have been fair to say that Eva never cried, such claims simply didn't marry with the cyclic nature of her ebb and flow and the increasing obviousness that decreed every high must eventually be followed by a low of some sort. It hadn't been a crashing decrescendo for a while, more a chipping away at resolve until she reached a point where a good sniffle cleared the path for another slog forward. This was different. This wasn't old, ragged, weary grief, partially-dissolved and more a constant ache these days that anything sharp or stabby. It was grief mingled with fear, riding on the tail-feathers of an already-fragile mental health blip that really hadn't needed to deal with getting stabbed by a friend kind of on top of everything else. It was the trauma of remembered anguish and the body's residual panic that screwed up her nervous system's interpretative pain response. Every twinge became a potential calamity. It was exhausting and, when it flared in waves like it was showing a tendency to, the thing that took the most battering was her sense of hope. That this would pass. That this was not just another cycle to add to an entire lifetime of things that just kept coming back around.

She curled into him. Not just an acceptance of his simple physical reassurance but a clinging, grasping, hope-she-doesn't-knock-anything-problematic bury into his warmth that took Purple with her and saw Eva's face disappear, damp eyes an all, into what was essentially his armpit. And it mattered zero to her that he couldn't feel sorry for her because she didn't want people to pity her, and she barely even considered the fact that he couldn't, actually, care that she felt this way. People caring just pinged information back at her, gave her more goop to wade through whilst trying to sort out her own shit. She just wanted this. Calm, gentle vibrations, a mind's ability to announce I am here without the cavalcade of frills and furbelows to overloaded the senses. Just him, and his stupid bear, and his stupid taste in movies and him fucking singing to her.

His hand found her hair and sifted through it lightly, having reduced to a mere hum; nothing intrusive. Hiram had a decent singing voice, nothing magnificent but he could keep a tune. In general Hiram's voice was deep, and it translated to song as a baritone vibration against her cheek.

Monochromatism was fascinating to Hiram because the artist had tried so hard to erase all traces of art, of human influence. A void within edges, a Hilbert-space of nothingness, and Hiram too felt similar. He was decent enough looking, he had a decent enough singing voice, he was relatively smart, he dressed in calm and neutral colors. He could tell funny-enough jokes and people mostly-liked him. Some did not. A few crewmembers sprung to mind, but again, for a very-curated reason. None of this was purposeful, but combined with the rest of him, he too formed a shapeless void within the bounds of a man-shaped object.

Hiram didn't discuss, with anyone, the specifics of his existence prior to living in the Federation, beyond the broadest of strokes. (This was something he had come to view as ethical to disclose, to potential friends or partners. Calnin told him he didn't owe it to anyone, but he felt people had the right to know who it was they were associating with.) It was available publicly if people were curious, but he could not control what people did in their spare time. There were moments of those trials that had been conducted in camera for these very reasons.

Because despite his inability to feel for others, he had taken an oath. And for Hiram, that oath had been taken prior to graduation from medical school: to do no harm. And there was a point where listening to someone's experiences was harmful. Eva was struggling, and Hiram wanted her to know she was not alone, but he thought that maybe he had accomplished that in some way. She knew who she was sitting with. No stranger to it all. An individual who did not think her strange, no matter her reactions.

He sat behind his little void and petted her hair and swayed a little from side-to-side. Aware and understanding, but not overtaking. Never before had someone appreciated him for the way he was, rather than tolerating him in spite of it, because he made up for it somehow (which he really did not; for him it was just a basic minimum of conduct). Hiram let his eyes closed, tucking her under his chin.

There was a lot she wanted to talk to him about. Not perhaps what some might have expected would be a weight Eva longed to reduce by somehow extending it towards someone else, as if sharing out trauma stood any chance of actually minimising it. It wasn't something that could be divided amongst a group, there was no doggy-bag of damage that helped split the bill. Over time, there would be relief in speaking out, perhaps, but only when she was strong enough to accept the bounce-back, a ricochet that became part of the infrastructure of meaningful progress but nevertheless left the work of healing up to her. Talking about things before she was ready to do more than talk about them usually had mixed results.

But he knew about art, which she craved a wider knowledge of. And now he was singing to her, and his music so far had been just as imperfect as the rest of him, which was to say it was exactly the right cadence to fit together with hers. And there were ideas always percolating in her head, and arrangements that needed expressing on staves that could contain their intricate patterns, and provisions for a second voice, and a set of drums, and room for silly lyrics because not all music had to be serious. Sometimes it could be washing machine trash metal. Eva wanted so fiercely to just get on with life that the betrayal of her mind and body, and the frustration that came from it, remained the most palpable culprit of the trickle of moisture that spilled, not as a torrent, but as slowly welling tears that blooped every few blinks. She rallied a little though, because she was Eva and she didn't know how to do anything less.

"We need to work on your diaphragm engagement."

It made Hiram laugh slightly. "I suspect so," he agreed, his voice soft. "I did not really do a very good job elucidating my medical condition to you that day. Hopefully I can be forgiven for the technological jargon; I was somewhat distracted at the time."

By literally almost dying and suffocating to death. Which had apparently rolled right off this dude. He was far more concerned about the lasting effects of that expedition on Eva, now partnered with this-this injury, this harm. Being in close proximity to Hiram had resulted in two separate occasions where Eva had experienced pain. He hadn't caused it but in some way he did. His visage. His lack of foresight.

"It is called medullary dysregulation syndrome. The Synapse, my implant, regulates pulses along my phrenic nerve. That's a nerve that goes down your chest and into your diaphragm, and controls the ability to breathe on one's own. It would make sense that my diaphragmatic engagement is subpar. It would be interesting to attempt to work on that feature. I cannot guarantee success," he added, dry.

Silence. Processing. Quiet apology. He'd told her, she just hadn't interpreted and had then forgotten she even had information she could look up. And it seemed so entirely separate, though it probably wasn't, to everything else he had to deal with that Eva had to concede she probably wasn't, actually, the most cursed person in the room for once, from a physiological standpoint at least. Being a hybrid had kicked the shit out of her on a few fronts but Hiram's inability to do anything probably took the cake. The arm across his stomach squeezed, just a little, a non-verbal showing of support but also Eva's way of accounting for her insensitivity, her indelicacy, before she just went right ahead and made it worse.

"Next you'll be telling me there's a raccoon that lives inside your stomach that chews all your food for you."

But of course, Hiram was not offended. He reached the edge of a rolled-down sleeve to dab under her eye, an oddly intimate gesture in utilitarian, spare movements. The juxtaposition of real and alive, or not. "Of course. Purple needs a sibling, after all. His name is Larry. He is a very good raccoon." Vocals were never Hiram's focus. John Maitland had taken Hiram in hand very early and helped him to find outlets for his aggression that did not include ramming his palm into someone's face until they stopped moving.

The sheer amount of time he spent drumming instead of doing that, had honed him to mixing the technical and precise with the all-out thrashing intensity of old-world heavy metal bands. The opportunity of learning something new, appealed to him. Much like Eva, music had transformed Hiram's life, a subtle thread woven through the tapestry of his adolescence and made manifest by the drum-kit held inside the Bag of Wonders that accompanied him everywhere.

Hiram's eyes crinkled a little, amused but not at Eva's expense. "But I believe you will teach him to sing, yet."

"Teach him to sing knowledgably," Eva corrected, "You already can sing so you've clearly figured some of the basics out. And it probably will be challenging for you to gain meaningful control over the process." Like him, she didn't bother sugar-coating. "But we can at least make it as healthy as you're capable of."

Having emerged from his armpit to speak, Eva shifted just the tiniest fraction so that her bent knees rest against his lap and managed a watery sigh. Head tucked against his clavicle, she turned her eyes towards the television and watched blankly as her thoughts sat her focus in an entirely different place for a moment. "I have some arrangements that could use a voice in the lower register. Synthesised harmonics are a pain in the ass."

"I would be honored," he said, watching the movie himself for a little while. They were both bad at watching movies, but in a way, it meant they were plenty good at other, more important things. Hiram looked up at her. "Self-defense for a song," he bartered, eyebrows lifted. She teaches him, he will teach her in return. Though one of those things was less leisurely than others. She was his friend, he wanted to keep her as safe as possible, especially given their current circumstances.

His conversation with Gregnol filtered in. He didn't want to interrupt her recovery, but she deserved to know the full story. This wasn't a military ship. They were all equals, here. Every person on this crew, including Eva although she might not believe it herself, contributed something essential. It was the nature of operating in close quarters. Hiram's position was a tad more senior, being the only fully qualified doctor aboard, but that didn't extend to operational authority. It did periodically mean he got some information first.

But he wasn't obligated to keep it to himself. The chain of command really didn't exist in the same way, as he was learning in a trial forged by fire.

There hadn't been space in Eva's head to concern herself with the situation outside her own immediate recovery. She'd dipped into it briefly with Hiram already and promptly turned the anger inwards, which wasn't healthy but was ultimately probably more likely to aid a return to some semblance of security than dwelling on the insidious potential for this entire outfit to be committed to a risk level that hadn't been part of her contract. It had only been a matter of weeks, hardly time to have formed the kind of loyalty or allegiance required, assuming she was even prepared to extend either, to willingly put her life on the line for a greater purpose. They weren't Starfleet. She wasn't Starfleet. She wasn't even part of the command structure, which gave her zero input into matters that impacted her health and well-being other than to leave if this getting stabbed because those in charge were more interested in having a good time than being precautious became a regular thing.

Eva was scared now but she didn't tend to stay that way if she could help it. Eventually, fear turned to anger. Impetus.

Self-defense. Ha.

"I'm already an expert at bruising shins," she promised, sniffling and exhaling once more as her brief foray into an emotional wreck settled to a more even equilibrium once again. "And punching prospective suitors."

But Hiram shook his head. "Evidently this vessel has been dealing with something of a more significant threat level than either of those skills preclude," he murmured. "A group of individuals known for stealing vessels and terrorizing citizens in the name of their political agenda. This is inevitably a Fenris Rangers ship, so I'd like to extend you an opportunity to bring your defensive abilities up to a level where things like this may be less likely to occur."

It presumed a lot, but that seemed to be a common folly these days. As a general approach to being better prepared in future, Eva wasn't opposed to brushing up on some skills. Emergency procedures and protocols and all the training that came with them seemed a long time ago, and none were remotely sufficient to address a situation like the one they'd just been flung into. Taking intentional steps to equip herself with skills that supported a specific lifestyle, one that seemed to be everyone else's idea of a great time but hadn't featured once in any conversation that involved her terms and conditions, was different. Annoyance flared, and beyond that, anger and fear. Surely it was at least polite, if not legally imperative, to ask if your employees minded adopting suicidal tendencies.

"There's plenty of ways to make sure they're less likely to occur," she muttered, darkly.

"You mean resigning," Hiram murmured, soft. He struggled with nuances at times, but that was enough of a solar flare even for Hiram to pick up on. The prospect of danger itself had never been of particular concern to Hiram. Combat, even vigilantism, on their own were not things that bothered him. He believed in making a difference. He appreciated where Gregnol's heart was. Hiram may come at it differently but he grasped that this was ideologically important to the captain and Hiram would be lying if he said he disagreed. It was the lack of operational training that concerned him. You could take the man out of the military, but some days, Hiram found it hard to take the military out of himself.

"Name one person who would..."

She nearly said 'care' and, in the split second it took for Eva to realise how that was going to fall, a flare of guilt almost overrode the wave of vulnerability. She wasn't angry with him, so inadvertently lumping him in with the rest of them, especially by making a statement that callously disregarded his innate insufficiencies, was hurtful even if it wasn't actually going to affect Hiram in that way. She wanted him to expect better of her than that.

"...notice if I was gone, present company excluded. I mean, they'd notice they had to pour their own drinks, I'm sure, but how long do you think that kind of recovery would take? One, maybe two minutes?"

"No," Hiram disagreed. "It may not be personal," he granted-he didn't know how well Eva got along with the other crew and he didn't contradict her. "But presumably their emotional development is normal. Death affects everyone, and I imagine some may take it quite a bit harder than others. You're a member of Captain Gregnol's crew. Losing someone you're supposed to protect has a permanent impact. Death is significant. It changes things, forever. Even if those changes are small. Your absence would be tremendously significant to me. I would care if you were gone. That may not look the same as how others define it, but you matter to me." He had no telepathy, nor any reason to expect that she'd altered her words on purpose, but every once in a while he got it.

"I'd just drag you with me." Somehow, having more or less decided that lying on him was the solution to her pain, Eva had slowly sunk to a point where she had curled a shoulder into his stomach, using Purple as a cushion, and pulled her legs up onto the couch to make the situation a far more permanent one. Ostensibly, it allowed her to keep watching the movie, but the was also the surreptitious motive that, should she fall asleep this way, he wouldn't find leaving easy. There wasn't enough latinum in the world for Eva to ask him to sleep over; quite aside from anything else, she felt like she'd imposed enough already. "Surely a circus somewhere would take us in."

"I can be a doctor anywhere," Hiram murmured. If any group of people so obviously needed a doctor it was this group. But if Eva elected to leave, it would put Hiram in the precarious position of once more being alone, distanced, detached. He would have never otherwise made such a statement-it was far more imposing than Eva asking him to stay, although he certainly wasn't going to volunteer to leave-it was a statement nevertheless. If she meant it, so did he. He did value his work on the ship and he did believe with time and patience he might form less than surface relationships with some of the crew. Beya came to mind, and Gregnol himself, for all that Hiram had objected to their continued presence here. He was willing to try and work it out, to a degree. He wasn't sure he was so willing to lose his only friend in a long, long time.

It wasn't hard to imagine, even for someone with Hiram's particular constraints, that Eva had a tendency towards tempestuous reaction when moved to an emotional response beyond her surface frippery. Whilst the doctor himself probably wouldn't have denied she had a right to feel disgruntled, there was an extreme to threatening to leave that lacked a little sincerity. Eva was quite adept at leaving, had built an entire life around the skill, but this particular disappearing act would represent defeat and the only place she feasibly had to return to, at least in the interim between other jobs, was home. Earth. Her bar. The very thing she'd come out here to get away from. And if that happened, there would be no time where it had not been the case that the SS Mary Rose had got the better of her. Seared into her history forever and unlikely to be something she'd be allowed to forget. Jonas would probably tie her to a stool and refuse to let her leave again. She missed her oldest friend, and his husband, and their dogs, but not enough to fail at this graciously.

There was a very tangible sense of her relaxing into him. Somehow, the very notion that he'd legitimately pack up shop to come with her seemed to settle Eva's hackles somewhat. Not that she'd know exactly how to handle it if it came to that. A compulsion to get to know him didn't magically make just over a month nearly enough time for either of them to be basing life decisions on each other. But since her primary concern seemed to be that persistent invisibility, (which was funny, because that was intentionally cultivated and she really only had her own competence to blame if it was true), and since Hiram seemed inclined to do enough seeing her for everyone else, the telepath simmered to a point of sulking into a purple bear's forehead. Stupid Gregnol and his stupid crew and their stupid ship.

They weren't really stupid.

"Why be a doctor when you could tame lions? Just wave your celery at them, I bet that would bring the house down." Leaning into ridiculousness was Eva's way of indicating Okay, fine, I won't leave. Geez.

"Lions are just big house cats. I shall get a really big feather attached to a string," Hiram smiled down at her, unseen from her current perch. But certainly more than anything else, Hiram decidedly would not leave Eva here alone. Instead he suggested, "you should speak with Captain Gregnol on this matter. He did not appear to value my input, but perhaps you will have greater success." Of the two of them, it would be absurd to deny that Eva was eminently more likeable.

"I don't think he'd like anything I have to say to him right now." The statement proved the last definitive provocation that settled Eva absolutely into a prone huddle on her side, head in his lap, squished into a teddy bear's soft underbelly. She could only just see the television now over the top of the coffee table but that was a minor inconvenience when Eva's eyelids were already half-closed. "Though he'd better hope he remembers to say a few things to me or he might hear them anyway." Phrases like contract renegotiation and upgraded indemnity came to mind.

"Let me know if you would like immoral support," Hiram joked. She could hear the wink and the finger-gun. Closing her eyes wouldn't help. It would follow her everywhere, forever. This was the real unforeseen consequence of friendship with Hiram. Oh, sure, there was the periodically not breathing and the confusion over whether other people were like walking robot dogs to him. But the real clincher was his pervasive inability to stop telling dad jokes.

She had two fathers. At some point, the armor became impenetrable. "One day," Eva murmured, tempted to turn her face and bite his knee instead, "I will bite that damn finger off." Closing her eyes hadn't helped. His perpetually lame punchlines broke the ice though, which was the intention no doubt, and for a moment the telepath opened her languid eyes and stared once more at the movie. "I can't keep up. Has she slept with the cute agent dude yet nor not?"

"She's gorgeous, apparently," was Hiram's droll response. "He feinted. Last second maneuver. Just when you think you have met the perfect man." His huff was gentle. "Purple, arrest that woman," he pointed at the bear. "For insults to finger integrity. You're going to finger jail. That's next to celery jail."

"Of course she's gorgeous." The peanut gallery in his lap snuck a hand beneath the bear and poked Hiram in the knee. Several times. With a fingernail. She'd give him finger jail. "They literally tried to Clark Kent the heck out of her and it didn't work. Takes a lot more than brushing your hair to salvage some of us." Still poking his knee relentlessly, Eva watched the scene unfold for a moment longer and then veered the conversation down the sleepy path of general curiosity. "Do you have aesthetic preferences in other people or is it all just blobs, shapes and an endless ocean of black?"

"Of course," he laughed. "Rael was fair, but I would have found him attractive if he weren't. In general terms, people with symmetrical features, I tend to like them on a similar level regardless of their colouring. There's no real preference there. But I must confess to a certain pull toward individuals with unusual features, or who look drastically different to me. I suppose there is some evolutionary incentive there." Hiram was so romantic. Get out your stick, Eva. You're going to be nudging hordes of women off of him.

"Or you're just a goober." Literally none of it was even an adequate response. Looked drastically different to him, what did that even mean? "Be really weird if you went around trying to find carbon copies of yourself for shits and giggles." If she was honest, Eva had no litmus test for whether or not Hiram was interested in 'shits and giggles', but she was excessively drowsy and that felt like information she needed a clearer head to process. "Though you keep your hands off my linebacker, I have plans for seducing his kneecaps when I can wear heels again."

Hiram laughed. "I suppose I'm less preferential than I initially anticipated," he smiled. "My brain mostly sorts people into aesthetically attractive or not, and there are significantly more people in the former column than the latter. Usually a negative personality colors my perspective of their appearance, as well. I dated an Andorian in high school. What of yourself? Any preferences?"

"Mmmn." The non-committal sound again. On several layers, Eva was every bit the blend of two cultures and, as one might expect of a child raised by a Betazoid, her preferences when it came to sexual and romantic attraction were diverse and difficult to quantify. "Well, luckily I like being significantly shorter 'cause I sure don't often get much choice." Wry. She knew she was smol. "And if we're talking guys, I guess I prefer smaller to medium builds because I actually don't enjoy being squished like a bug and most meatheads can't seem to understand that even half-Betazoids are built lighter. Girls have their own entire category but it's hard to pin labels on what creates sparks." Her voice faded off then, a thoughtful silence filled with recollection to aid a better response. "Nice skin," she added, an odd thing to specify. "Always makes me want to draw on it."

"I am not particularly a fan of meatheads, myself," Hiram had to agree with a nod. He rarely judged others by their cover but people who had a tougher look about them, that usually translated into their demeanor. Size wasn't exactly the prerequisite, but guys who mean-mugged Hiram drew only his contempt. Not that he was in a position to be choosy. He was, though. Selective, because he didn't enjoy wasting his time, and he didn't want to cause harm to others the same way he had to Jeza. "Draw-?" Hiram's eyebrows arched, curious. Drawn out of his thoughts.

A foot nudged in the direction of the sketchbooks on the coffee table, both an indication of what she meant as well as permission to see for himself if he wanted. Eva's artwork wasn't necessarily secretive or private but it was generally less publicised than her music unless you wanted to count the fact that she actually worse some of it on her own skin. The brunette went sleeveless enough to show off her arm-piece and cut-off shorts, (though she was now in need of replacing at least one pair), partially revealed the work on her hip that ran over her waist and onto her ribcage. The only other ink that was obvious was a small symbol on the opposite leg's ankle that was easy to translate as a name if you knew how to read Bajoran. "Technically all skin just makes me itch to decorate it."

Her style was everything from intricate patterning, to detailed depictions, dark and heavy, to more comical aspects that strayed towards cute. One sketchbook housed purely the concerted efforts to perfect representations of various body parts. Pages of eyeballs and hands and breasts. Another meandered through an obsessed with clock faces and other timepieces; steampunk cogs and gears. The darker depictions; faces amidst haunting metaphor, showed the culmination of the individual efforts, painstakingly rendered in such a way that they could be translated to the body with the right care and skill.

"I see," Hiram nodded. "I have two myself," he murmured with a smile, though he did not go sleeveless enough for that to have been evident. "Yours are very fetching. Did you draw them yourself?" he asked, peering through the sketches with enough scrutiny that it appeared to him that she had, but he tried not to make assumptions.

Somewhere from the pit of his own lap, Eva snorted. "Fetching? Okay, Grandpa." It wasn't self-consciousness, Eva was perhaps guarded about the reason behind some of her art and how it linked back into her self-perception, but most of this was difficult to glean specific meaning from. Besides, it was Hiram; she was half-asleep in his crotch, she clearly didn't mind him having a degree of intimate knowledge. "I drew them, got a guy to work on them. Took about two years to finish though, I kept adding stuff."

"Fetching. That is normal. I use normal words." He smiled. "Did you study art professionally?" he wondered. "You're very talented. I can draw a stick person."

"I mean, do I have a piece of paper that says 'You Now Draw Goodly'?. No." As she spoke, Eva struggled to yank the blanket out from beneath her butt so that she could successfully position herself beneath it, like a sane person. "But you know, growing up my schooling involved some art classes, and then when I was older those became extra-curricular. Took myself to night school for a while in between deciding I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a complete wreck and actually picking up the hospitality contract and having to do about a thousand courses just to get my casino license. Professionally implies I made a living out of it, ever. I just do it for...well, therapy, I guess."

He helped her shift gently, in easy movements. "Therapy on your skin," Hiram smiled. It was poetic, in a way. "My mom wrote one of mine," he tapped his chest, over his heart. He processed everything else she said behind the scenes and his eyebrows arched. "You own a casino, I take it. Is it still operational?"

"No, I ran aspects of someone else's." Distracting her from important information like his mother with relevant questions, pft. "They're just a huge outfit, rake in a massive income and, despite being shits in a lot of ways, generally run a pretty good training regime for their staff. I got a lot of accreditation through them that helped me open up my place, which is a bar. God, shoot me if I ever try to run a casino in New Orleans."

Eva scooted onto her back then, counteracting the previous effort because it made looking up at him actually possible. "Okay, you literally can't miss my tattoos. I feel like there is an imbalance in the Force and one of us needs to take their shirt off."

"Running a bar would seem to have significantly less moving parts," Hiram agreed, though he was sure it could be complicated in its own ways. He'd never really set foot in an actual casino, all things considered. "Am I correct in assuming that is your way of asking to see?" Hiram's eyebrows arched.

"Your nipples? Yes. If we combine our talents, we can turn them into stick figures and you'll never have to do more than take off your shirt to impress people ever again." Staring straight up at him, Eva stuck her tongue out. "Yes, I want to see your damn tattoos. Unless you want me to take off my shirt? Is that how we're doing this?"

His lips pursed, amused. He maneuvered Eva a little so he wouldn't jostle her and undid the buttons to his top, which left the white long-sleeve T-shirt underneath, and tugged it over his head with a very spare, utilitarian maneuver. The aforementioned tattoos were easily visible; Escher's impossible cube on his upper right bicep and the phrase Somos más valientes que nuestro pasado over his heart in real handwriting. It was neat, but imperfect, and there was a small log pile with an axe whose blade had the chemical symbol Sn in the corner in the style of the periodic table, stuck into it beside.

A deep, definitely-complaining groan was hardly fair given that the interruption to her naptime imposition was entirely Eva's own doing. With a degree of visible effort, slightly exaggerated, she moved herself, blanket and all, to sit on the coffee table so that she could scrutinise him better. Eva squinted, leaned as far forward as her mid-section would permit, and extended an index finger towards the bicep, settling on the cube. "I used to draw this everywhere as a kid." A tad lower and she tapped against the text before sitting back. "What's this?"

"It's something my mom used to say to me all the time," he laughed a bit, nonplussed by the scrutiny. In addition to the tattoo there were three non-dissolvable scars on his left bicep, purposeful lines that appeared intentional, with an arranged cluster of circles beneath that appeared to communicate something, though it was lost on the viewer. "It means braver than our past."

Physical contact, specifically Eva's willingness to indulge in it freely and unreservedly past a certain point of familiarity, was perhaps one of the most obvious indications that she'd been raised by a Betazoid. It was unlikely to concern Hiram either way but the openness was not an attempt to take liberties or provoke a response, merely a very honest and partially subconscious level of comfort that blurred the distinction between her body and the body of people she felt safe to connect with in this way. Thus, shoving her face several inches from his nipple was not to be construed as anything other than her wanting to get a closer look. Neither of them had spoken a lot about their respective families, but then again, why would they have? It had taken both of them flirting with death to get even this far. "I like it," she said gently. "She sounds like a smart woman."

His smile was almost fond. "Indeed, far smarter than me." He'd spoken of his father in the past-that he actually was the Federation ambassador to Betazed, and had risen to the ranks of admiral prior to his civilian appointment, a retirement from the 'Fleet that taking care of his newly adopted son had required. "Were your family from New Orleans?" his head tilted slightly, curious but an attempt not to be overbearing.

Eva shook her head, for a moment still allowing her gaze to flit between his tattoos. Way to stare at a shirtless guy for hours, Eva. "Talon's Betazoid so the whole 'living on Earth' thing is a novelty amongst his family. Kristof's Ukrainian but it was just him and his mom most of his childhood, I don't think they stayed in the same country, much less the same city, for more than a year. He'd still be like that if he had his own way. As it was, we travelled around a bit." She sat back then, wincing faintly at the effort to straighten up, and settled a fairly wry and pragmatic gaze on his. "And I couldn't tell you where the egg donor grew up. Colombia, I think."

Good thing Hiram was pretty well built! Not excessively so, but he kept care of himself, and it was somewhat apparent. You could do worse, Eva. He didn't seem to notice the ogling. "Have you ever met her?" his eyebrows arched.

She was not ogling. Eva did, however, shake her head gently, eyes immediately dropping to her hands. "I mean, yes," she amended, a soft huff of laughter that contained no mirth completing the retraction. "Early on. A bit, anyway, from what they tell me." Dark eyes lifted to meet his, weary yet pointed. "Kind of fell to pieces when she tried to fuck off with me and they had to slap every restraining order their lawyers could find on her."

:3 IF YOU SAY SO, EVA.

"That is regrettable," Hiram said, but it didn't seem to be sympathy for her mother as much as it was for her. "I take it you do not speak to her any longer." He seemed to approve of that, at least.

"I don't even remember her, I was maybe one at the time. Bit older. Couldn't tell you what she does, where she lives, barely know what she looks like."

It was hard to say if growing up without a mother had really affected Eva. Certainly, aspects of her upbringing had, as had the circumstances surrounding the complications of puberty when you were a hybrid offspring of a very puissant telepath trying to straddle two cultures and the merging of two similar yet significantly-different-where-it mattered biological inheritances. Of all the brunette's issues, if you wanted to call it that, lack of a quality maternal figure didn't necessarily fit the bill. Eva watched Hiram for a minute, however, and there was a faint wistfulness to her tone when she finally asked, "Are you close to your mother?"

Hiram didn't seem to know how to answer that, and his gaze dropped to the wall opposite them for a moment. "We have a good relationship," is what he ended up settling on. "My father understood me a little better. But she never gave up on me. She showed me immense kindness."

The blip was enough to earn him a soft half-smile. The constant use of past tense hadn't gone unnoticed. "When did you last talk to them?" There'd been enough information to kind of assume his father might still be alive but, honestly, Eva was starting to hedge towards his mother not being without wanting to actually commit to it.

"It's been a while now. About a year," Hiram shook his head a bit. And it was. They had treated him very well. Beyond well. They loved him, genuinely, and only wanted the best for him. Hiram seemed a little bit farther away for a second.

The shrewdness was back. The analytical zeal, the dart of eyes in staggered revolutions that allowed her to take in his entire expression, his posture. Eva wasn't nosy, except she was; in the same way she wasn't Betazoid, but she was. All the way down. "I didn't talk to mine for years either." Divulging potential symmetry became a more tactful way of dealing with that look on his face. "Took a bit too, even once we reconnected. Family therapy. Might have helped but I'm not actually a fan."

"But you did? Reconnect?" He preferred to discuss Eva's history more than his own. Perhaps because his own history was rife with-neglect. His own neglect, not that of his parents.

Slowly, gingerly, and without a lot of care that he was now without a shirt, Eva lifted herself off the table and eased back into the middle seat, nodding as she did so. "Like most trauma, there's still bits. But the worst of it came to a head almost a decade ago now, we've moved past it. I picked some responsibilities I could live with and decided to be only halfway crazy." A glance sideways, eyebrows waggling, was promptly followed by the slow descent to reclaim his lap as a pillow. She wasn't quite ready to ask for medication and lying down was alleviating at least some of the discomfort. "Doesn't mean they can't still be pains in my ass."

Hiram, for his part, didn't appear to notice that she was using him as a pillow whether he was clothed or not, so that at least worked in her favor. As for her statements, they drew a nod from him, understanding. "I'm pleased to hear that you have managed to repair your contact with them. Those relationships are essential." Captain Obvious much, but it at least was a sincere statement, that he meant. His own lack of contact wasn't because of a fracture-not exactly. It had been challenging for him, to deal with his mother's obvious pain, and he had felt that it might be easier on her if she wasn't confronted by his constant presence, but maybe that was a miscalculation.

"Well, when you've got one father who loves you but doesn't really understand you, and another that loves you and understands you too well..." Eva huffed, tired laughter that prompted her to curl onto her side and stare blankly at the television. "Can't do much about previous dumb choices now, though I think I might leave this whole stabbed in the guts story out of my letters home." She'd tell them eventually, face-to-face, but worrying them this soon into her adventures seemed more cruel than necessary.

Silence lingered, the movie's dialogue having lost considerable meaning in the distraction. Like a recalcitrant child, Eva's blinks became increasingly more laboured without her surrendering to the urge to just keep her eyes closed entirely. Eventually, her tone sleep-ridden already, she mumbled, "Th'hell is going on? Did she win yet?"

"I think she just punched that guy," he had to laugh. "And now she's ripping the crown off of the other one's head. Very sportsmanlike. I suppose she really wanted to win."

"Probably pulled her hair."

It was the last coherent thing Eva said, and certainly the last of anything to do with the movie that she attempted to follow. Eventually, each blink became slower until the only way it seemed possible to manage the slight trickle of pain that really didn't warrant medication was to breathe in and out, slow regulation that had the additional effect of sending her into a light sleep. It hadn't been her plan. Gratitude aside, Hiram had done enough and she would have to try to sleep alone eventually, even if that seemed like a very heavy load right now. But he was shirtless, and his thigh was comfier than a skinny man's leg had a right to be, and if Eva wanted to be honest, she spent more time napping in this position than in her own bed. Slowly, her body succumbed and, soon after, her mind went with it.

Hiram lived there now. No, but really. He supposed he could have nudged her off, but there wasn't really much of a point, and he still had the controller for the TV, so he just turned on another bad movie and settled back into the couch. She needed her sleep, and that she'd been able to fall asleep might help ward away some of the pain. He drew the blanket up around her with a private smile.