Getting Back on the Bike

Posted on Mon Apr 4th, 2022 @ 1:28am by Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein & Evahnae Kohl

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
Location: The Bar
Timeline: End of Mission
2797 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Gratitude was often about the small things.

Your favourite breakfast food.

Finding a great shade of purple for the ends of your hair.

Finally finishing the lyrics to a song that stuck to you for months but refused to actually come together.

A moment's peace and solitude.

Other times, it was about the enormously profound things, like not dying and opportunities to rediscover purpose, and actually getting some semblance of sleep now that your liver looked like a liver again and not some sort of shredded cheese option from a local buffet. Finding friends, digging deep to discover reservoirs of bravery and resilience; going back to work even though you were still scared.

Walking through the door had been the hardest part.

That had been about an hour ago. Once she'd forced herself over the threshold, however, and actually slipped behind the bar to sink onto her usual stool and just sit, Eva had slowly acclimatised to the fact that it was possible for everything and nothing to change, all at the same time. People had still used the space, but that had been the case before she'd had to be absent for any length of time. She usually kept longer hours than necessary given the absence of a proper sleep schedule and it wasn't very often that the crew had to pour their own drinks, but it had still happened. This time around, there were definite signs that others still hadn't bothered too much about the lack of bartender and, honestly, Eva hadn't really figured out how she felt about that. Disposable came to mind but she couldn't quite bring herself to be that conceited and, as such, had settled for being grateful they hadn't messed up the sound system she'd spent so long installing. Just another little thing to be thankful for; she scrabbled for them as a beggar groped at pennies flung on the ground.

Perhaps the greatest gift she'd been handed, however, was the fact that nobody had arrived in that first hour seeking a recreational way to escape the tension that had settled across the entire ship. It was a minor miracle and not something Eva had expected but the bar was empty and it had given her time to breathe. Eventually, she had slowly rediscovered all the little jobs she'd left half-finished and, just like that, life went on. Now, with one of the smaller tables tipped onto its top to facilitate a minor repair and a less-minor attempt to scrub away months of neglect, the brunette had a room full of music, which she idly harmonised with in a rather distracted way, and cleaning product drizzling up her bare arms to drip off her elbows. Deep cleaning involved sacrifice.

Burnie peaked through the door of the currently quiet bar. No one would ever accuse the engineer of being a 'people person', or at least not a 'normal people person', but then after killing gnolls and setting part of the kitchen on fire with eva, he had pretty much moved her into the catagory of good non-normal people he could feel comfortable around. Whether she welcomed him coming around was another issue, but while the battery of aptitude tests in junior high had shown anything related to regular interpersonal interaction at the very bottom of recommended careers, with counseling falling into what might be considered the 'please, for the love of God, do not even think about it!' level, he did have some (admittedly somewhat offbeat) sense of empathy and remembered the first time he'd left a hospital after a near-death experience. It was the sort of thing that could rattle person. He'd been raised well enough to know that checking on a friend and offering a sympathetic (and his case fairly experienced) ear after something like that wasthe right thing to do.

"Hey, need any help?" he asked, heading toward the woman scrubbing an over turned table. "or maybe a break? I brought latkes." He offered a friendly smile along with a covered plate. "Only slightly charred this time."

The transition between private reverie and professional readiness proved sluggish. Over the years, Eva had cultivated the ability to switch between the two in an instant with very little outward visibility of any struggle or reluctance or effort but she'd literally not seen many people since the entire mission had decided to take a nose-dive into hell. Obviously she'd come to work expecting to see them, but the first instance was still...jarring. Slightly.

Except, it was an unusual candidate with an unusual offering. In the initial instant, Eva didn't even register the plate or its contents or what that all meant. She just saw her now-much-taller partner-in-crime and flashed him a welcoming, if not a little forced, grin. "I'm not quite at the point of needing to melt it all down into scrap metal," she teased, referencing what was a very stereotypical by now assumption of the kind of 'help' Burnie could offer. Lifting a knee, Eva used it to wipe a drip from her elbow and regarded the table. "Though I don't know that anyone has deep cleaned this place in years. Some of these stains might benefit from explosive removal."

That was about the time it took her brain to process his second offer and, once again, there was an exaggerated hesitation before Eva looked back at the engineer and just blinked at him. Bringing latkes meant making latkes and therefore wasn't any accidental kind of gesture. Momentary confusion lead to an extended case of blank mind, which still raced at a million parsecs per minute but couldn't settle on an comfortable emotional reaction. Mostly, Eva was taken aback; shocked even. As simple as it was, it felt tailored to the occasion and their previous interactions and that made it monumental.

"I can grab us something to drink," she eventually managed, holding both arms upwards until she reached behind the bar to grab a towel. In the absence of any other reaction to someone actually taking the time to do anything for her, Eva reverted to what she knew. "Anything take your fancy or do throw a dart and see what it lands on?"

"We used to do 'vodka and latke' parties back home," Burnie replied, bringing the plate over to the presumably much cleaner bar counter. "So let's do that. And then if there are any stains needing explosive removal, well, vodka burns really well," he added with a wink and grin.

One difficulty about recovering from any kind of addictive tendency was the temptation of exceptions. Eva had made far too many since coming on board and she knew it, but this was... She could feel the excuses mounting and knew she'd lost the battle of avoidance the moment she'd offered. It was familiar, however, in the midst of kindness she hadn't anticipated and, besides, it was only one drink.

She reached up and took down two glasses.

"I'm surprised you found time to cook anything," the bartender observed, her tone dipping briefly into the scalding pit of searing empathy that couldn't be denied. Judging by the barrage, the entire crew hadn't escaped this particular encounter completely unscathed. "I hear you've been kept pretty busy."

Burnie shrugged. "I was busy ...until I wasn't," he explained, glancing aside and focusing on the plate as he removed the cover. Cooking hadn't been so much a matter of finding time as finding ways to *not* think about all of those bodies tossed in a pile like so much rubbish. He'd done what could for them: turned that whole ruined ship into a funeral pyre that would have done any latter day Viking proud, but while that had been satisfying, somehow explosive destruction wasn't enough, so he had turned to creation. Normally people who knew him got worried when he did that - his creative tendencies tended to run to things like specialty rounds for plasma rifles or challenging himself to build IEDs from whatever was laying around - but after seeing so much death he'd felt an impulse to find something life affirming, nourishing even. Hence latkes. And with latkes had come the thought of his partner in fire-starting, and the fact that she had just come through what might be her first experience of almost dying. "Anyway, I figured I'd check in. It's always weird trying to get back to normal after something tries to kill you." The last was said with a crooked smile, almost a joke but also an admission of similar experience, and an invitation if she felt like talking.

One of the things Eva had feared most, if you could really call it fear, about returning to work was dealing with the aftermath of people's knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of what had happened. Retelling the story countless times didn't appeal to her at all, but likewise trying to pretend that she was fully operational was exhausting before she even attempted it. Something about the way Burnie had phrased it, however, and the fact that he'd come armed with the distraction of food, made the inevitable conversation a little less daunting than Eva had expected. She pushed him a drink and smiled faintly at him. "I'm starting to think weird is just a permanent state of being."

"It is for me. Ask anyone," he joked, and flashed a smile as he accepted the drink. Not talking was fine too; probably preferable even since he wasn't great at the whole heavy emotions thing. "The trick is to just *own* it. There was an entire Marine squad that called me 'The Mad Bomber' but they were always happy to have me along on a mission."

"I'd certainly be pushed to find a time where weird wasn't the most common opinion of me in the room." Except for all the times in her life where people saw her in a different light, for a different purpose; usually for what they could get out of her. It wasn't the woman's first brush with death but that hardly seemed like a conversation to have over latkes. "But hey, you've cultivated yours into an effective problem-solving technique at least."

Eva regarded the engineer over her next sip, aware of the awkwardness floating around between the gaps in conversation, which already suffered from imperfection because the pair of them were actively not saying quite a lot. The brunette was struggling to process Burnstein's consideration, since it contradicted violently with the bone-deep dread she'd felt huddled in the darkness, being hunted by god-only-knew-what at that point. The sensation of invisibility, a trait often cultivated by bartenders but also a product of only having been around for several weeks before the need for an identity had presented itself as a spear to her gut. Loneliness. That nobody-will-notice-until-it's-too-late insignificance. Burnie could have burnt the latkes to a cinder and it wouldn't have done a thing to damage the kindness of his attempt. Eva drew up her stool and settled onto it, committing at least to giving him her best effort at reciprocation.

"How is everyone doing?"

Her tone, now sober, allowed itself to dip into the treacle of grief that Eva recognised as being something she shared but she didn't anticipate that making herself a priority case would actually help her feel any better about it. And she had been on an operating table, and then a recovery table, and then confined to quarters, and then wandering around like a sleepless zombie... News had got back to her but not the way the bartender preferred.

"Eh...I'm not really the person to ask," " Burnie pulled at the back of his neck, glancing at her almost sheepishly. "Engineer. Not known for social awareness or being pulled into what's going on outside of ship systems, you know? At a guess, I'd say it's hit everybody in different ways. Liha's kicked the normal Romulan paranoia up a notch, but she's always like that after unpleasant surprises. Mostly I think it's either typical post-combat reaction or for people weren't there when the holograms turned there's a sort of guilty horror at having enjoyed the holosuites without knowing about all the bodies down below." He took a sip of the vodka. In his case, it was 'all of the above', but no need to go into that. It wasn't his first time at either of those rodeos, and he'd gotten to indulge in his preferred therapy of blowing the whole to atoms, so... "Anyway, the one I'd be most concerned about is Cassie. It nearly killed her, but it did kill Jonathan and the two of them hadn't reconciled. She doesn't hide emotions like a Vulcan, but she isn't always good at not just suppressing them either, if you know what I mean."

It had taken a while for Eva to catch up on the other events that had transpired whilst she'd been on the operating table. Jonathen's death had left her feeling melancholy but also, frankly, numb. She'd never quite wrapped her head around his story, or how any of it was possible, but she had understood his desire to reconnect with his wife and had even pledged some assistance, such as she was able to provide. She hadn't known him well enough to grieve him and yet, on top of everything else, his death left a raw ache. The bartender's eyes immediately averted, their dart about the bar-top a furtive attempt to find distraction, which Eva eventually settled on being the need to wipe up a miniscule amount of drizzled residue from her drink. For once, she couldn't think of anything to say. Didn't really know the other woman outside their D & D session, was struggling enough with her own shattered equilibrium, and yet something was expected. She'd asked, after all.

"Just be there for her," she replied quietly. "She'll talk when she's ready."

Burnie picked up a latke, taking a bite while he thought on that. It was the standard advice, and probably that for a reason. Normally he'd just expect that the person Cassie would eventually talk to would be someone much better suited to amateur counselling than he was, but he knew Cassie, maybe not as well as many of the crew, but you couldn't help feeling a special connection to someone after having swapped bodies with them. It just didn't help when it came to what to do. "I suppose you're right," he said with a sigh. "But you asked, and if she decides to talk you, I figured a heads up might help you talk to her."

Something about his tone, more than his words, caused Eva to look up and re-engage. He had a point and, if she was honest, avoiding her own problems by immersing herself in the simple task of listening to other's was kind of her entire schtick. "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound dismissive. It's just not an easy situation to navigate, you know? Grief sucks. Guilt sucks. Fear sucks. And she's probably got hit with all of them, right? The consistency of the people around her will matter," the brunette assured him quietly, with the confidence of one who understood through personal experience. "Just keep being Burnie. It'll help her find some stability."

He certainly couldn't argue with any or all of that sucking, Burnie thought, but at the follow on advice he puffed a short laugh. "I think that may be the first time anyone has suggested that me being me could be in any way associated with providing a sense of stability."

That earned him a genuine grin. "You'd be surprised how many people find it reassuring to know their friends would blow up literally anything to keep them safe." Eva finally took a sip of her drink and reached for a latke with a faint shrug of her shoulder. "It's probably not as many as those who'd run screaming in the opposite direction, but a decent sample size at least."

"Thanks," Burnie laughed, and picked up his drink, briefly tipping the glass toward her. "I'm glad you're among that decent sample size." His mouth tipped in a crooked grin. "Or I assume you are since you haven't run screaming in the opposite direction yet."

"I wouldn't dare turn my back on you." This time, Eva's grin was accompanied by a familiar twinkle in her eyes; an exact duplicate of the one she'd adopted when embracing her inner-Tiefling. "But at least part of that is you tend to be where the fun is."