Nothing Is Ever Quite What It Seems

With Kevin finally home, Nika actually found it far more relaxing to be on the ranch. Everyone was home, Kevin would have no lasting effects from the medication most likely, and all was right in the world.

"Nika?"

The sound of her sister's voice brought Nika's gaze from the horse she was grooming to the door, and she grinned at her sister, who moved to rest one elbow on the top of the stall door. "Hey there. Kevin doing all right?"

"He's napping. Now that everything's out in the open, I finally feel like the boulder that's been on my shoulders for months is gone. So I figured I'd poke my head out and see how you're doing," Nala commented, leaning her chin on her hand. "Saddlesore?"

Nika shrugged. "It's a good kind of sore. Besides... got my own personal doc to keep my backside muscles limber," she said with a wicked grin as she brushed the horse's flanks.

"Geez," Nala smirked. "You're getting right raunchy in your old age, sis." There was a faint blush across her cheeks even as she laughed. Perching her chin on her hands where they rested on top of the stall door, she asked her sister, "So.... you and the doc, huh? What about you and Brian Connelly?"

Glancing over her shoulder at her sister once more, Nika sighed heavily. "Oh Lord... if we're having this conversation, you better have brought the good stuff."

Nala laughed and held up her other hand, which contained a bottle of amber-colored liquid and two glasses.

Patting the horse's withers, Nika let herself out of the stall. "You either know me too well or you're desperate to tell me everything I never wanted to know about Larry Johannsen," she chuckled.

Nala blushed still deeper rose and headed for the ladder to the hayloft. "C'mon. Your friend Christian said he'd watch Kevin if he woke and make sure everyone gets dinner if we're out here a while," she tells her twin. At the top of the ladder, Nala headed for the far corner to plop down on a pile of hay that looked just made for such plopping. "Aw, to hell with it. Who needs glasses anyway?" she asked with a grin, holding the bottle out to Nika.

Settling herself next to her sister, Nika's mind went back over the last time they'd sat up here like this and she laughed out loud. "Remember Jeremy Korskin?" she asked as she uncapped the bottle and took a swallow. Oh GOD... it burned all the way down!! Nika coughed a bit and handed the bottle back with a teary-eyed expression.

Nala snorted. "Please, do not remind me of that jerk!" she said after taking a swallow. "And don't change the subject. You and Doc Arden and you and Brian. Tell me what's going on in that head of yours."

Nika shrugged a little, taking the bottle back. "Seriously, Nala... I'd rather wait til we're a little closer to smashed before I get into it. You'll be pissed."

With a frown, Nala replied softly, "Even if I was mad at you, it's your life, Nika. C'mon... talk to me."

With a sigh, Nika took another long swallow of the bottle of Brimstone -- gorram apt name if you asked her -- and held onto it a minute. "After what happened with Trey, I couldn't... I really didn't want to go back to Harbinger, Nala. Oh, they all would have been two hundred percent behind me... behind us... for what happened. And when I finally told them, they were actually kind of mad at me for not calling them sooner. But... Some of what we were doing out there was still just too close to the war. And I wanted something not as... demanding. I wanted somewhere that nobody was going to bother the crap out of me while I figured out how to deal with it."

Nala looked part horrified and part regretful. "Oh Nika," she murmured. "Did I send you away too soon?" That fear, that worry, had been part of her mindset ever since that fateful day. And now her sister was laying out exactly what she'd been worried about. That she'd pushed her twin out the door before it was really time.

"No... I don't think I could have stayed here, either, Nala," Nika admitted softly. "Every time I looked at you and Kev, all I could see was... that day. The way that you looked at me after."

Nala wrapped her arm around her sister's neck and dragged her into a tight hug, hiding her tears in Nika's hair. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm so sorry."

Resting her head on Nala's shoulder, Nika replied softly, "So was I."

"Don't be," Nala murmured fiercely, her other arm coming around to cradle Nika to her. "It was worse than you know. God... by the time you came home, I hated him, Nika. I kept wishing it was him that died instead of Daddy. And I think... if you hadn't done it, I would have one day real soon after. He was .... it was getting worse and worse. Before Daddy died, he was mostly in control, but after? God... it was a nightmare."

Nika pulled away from her sister and looked into the face nearly identical to her own. "He was still *Trey*, Nala. Still... the boy who patched up my knee when Dancer threw me when I was twelve. The boy who... " All the good things Trey Johannsen ever did once more flash through her head. "He stepped up when Daddy wanted to spend more time with JJ to help with the ranch. I mean... "

Nala grimaced and took a long swallow from the bottle. "Yeah," she replied with a rasp to her voice caused by the liquor. "I know exactly who he was, Nika. Good, bad, and now... ugly." She sighed. "Look... knowing that it wasn't all his fault? It helps in a lot of ways. And maybe it'll help his brothers too. They took him out behind the barn one day and beat the living daylights out of him the first time he laid his hands on me, but ... whatever was driving him, it wasn't... " She shrugged a little. "He clearly couldn't control it. I thought it was something *I* did for a long time, and then after you left ... I finally managed to come around to the idea that I hadn't done anything wrong. But that just made me mad, cuz if I didn't, then... something must not have been what we thought it was in his family, you know? But that didn't set right either, and so... it's just been a muddled mess for months."

Nika laughed quietly. "Yeah... it was such a mess that Larry managed to climb into that chilly bed of yours," she teased.

Nala blushed and took another long swallow, handing the bottle back to her sister. "As you say .. if we're going to have that conversation, we better be toasted."

Nika laughed, and the two women passed the bottle back and forth while Nala finally filled her sister in on all the gory details about the strange and crazy courtship of Larry Johannsen. "We were scared to death that his Mama would have an absolute conniption," Nala confessed with a soft giggle.

"You're lucky that woman didn't smack him upside the head at the hospital last week," Nika laughed. "Actually, I'm probably lucky she didn't smack *me*!" she said, laughing even harder.

The afternoon sun was slanting low by the time Rina finally judged the irrigation pump well and truly fixed. She carefully stowed her tools in her bag and paused a moment to take in the view from the windmill. All around her lay the ranch, the grass made golden by the dust and the heat, with ribbons of green marking where the irrigation lines lay. From her perch on the towering frame, she could make out the house and the barn tucked in a sheltering fold of the land. Overhead was the endless bowl of the blue sky, reddening toward sunset. High cirrus clouds veiled the western quarter, gleaming impossibly gold and molten, bright enough to make Rina's eyes water. Breathing deeply, Rina took in the air with a twinge of regret and resolutely scaled the ladder down. It was getting late and she should check in with the others.

The trip back to the house was a short one, thanks to the mule. Rina parked it next to the barn and climbed out of it, grabbed her tools from the back and paused.

Was that ... giggling?

She listened again, caught the sound of laughter coming from the barn and intrigued, Rina put her shoulder to the big oaken doors and pushed her way inside.

"Hello?" she called, blinking in the sudden gloom of the barn's lofty interior.

The sound from the hayloft stops for a long moment, and then a woman's voice -- Nika or Nala in this instance are hard to tell apart -- calls down, "C'mon up... but don't bring any damn men with you!"

When Rina gets to the top of the ladder, the sight that greets her is unusual -- Nika, dressed in a pair of denim pants and a long-sleeved blouse with her hair, as always, caught back in its braid, and Nala, wearing a lightweight skirt, as if she's been doing things in the house today instead of out in the sun with her shorter hair piled haphazardly into an alligator-mouthed clip off her neck, are sitting in the hay with a bottle half-full of amber liquid between them... clearly up to no good.

Nika waves Rina over. "C'mon. May as well join the party," she invites Rina with a grin. The two women are definitely well into 'buzzed' and on their way to hammered.

"Yeah, right," Rina snorted and stepped off the top rung of the loft ladder. "Like I have 'em by the six-pack in my back pocket." She paused and looked at the women narrowly, then dropped her tools to the hay and sat down next to Nika. "Give it over. You're both halfway to shit-faced. The least I can do is slow your drunken debauchery down a third." She took up the bottle and sucked down a hefty swig, and choked. "Gaghhh, what is this stuff anyway? Tequila?" She squinted at the bottle, read the label, and frowned. "Figures. I swear, Nika, the next time we stop over, we have got to get your sister some decent vodka."

Nika laughs at Rina and Nala just snickers and hands over the bottle. Watching the twins together like this, it's easy to see how close they must have been growing up. In spite of their two-peas-in-a-pod looks, their mannerisms are so different that they complement one another. "Well, shi, Rina... you got every gorram thing ELSE in your back freakin' pocket!" Nika giggles.

Nala takes the opportunity to shove her sister over and says, "Now that Rina's here, you ain't changin' the subject again, woman! We talked about Larry, dammit... now give over on your Doc Arden guy and Brian. Cuz the last time Shyla brought 'em out here, that boy cornered me to ask when the last time I talked to you was, how you looked, whether you were comin' home soon -- and I'm not even sure if he meant here or Harbinger when he said home!" Nala takes the bottle back from Rina and hands it to Nika. "Now spill it... I get that you didn't want to go back, but I didn't expect you to show up with a new guy in tow!"

Rina gave up the bottle easily, unnerved by Nika's comment. Every gorram thing else in her back pocket -- except the one thing she wanted.

Mope later. Mind what's happening in front of you first.

"I have to admit," Rina said, drawing up her knees and planting her arms on them, "that threw me for a loop, too, and I was there to see it all happen."

Nika takes the bottle and looks between the women, rolling her eyes. "Now seriously, you two! Nala, you can't possibly think that Brian's the only man I've been with out there. I mean... hell, even when we were serving together on /Harbinger/, we weren't exclusive!" She takes a big swallow out of the bottle and hands it to Nala. "When we manage to catch up with one another, we hook up. It's great. We both have fun. I miss the talking," she admits. She doesn't really /talk/ to anyone on the /Gift/. "But it's worked out all right. And Arden..." She offers a quick grin. "Well... he's lonely. He's nice. He likes me and he wanted to know if I'd be interested in having sex with him. No strings attached. So I told him up front I didn't want anything serious and he still took me up on it, and so here we are. It's fun. It relieves stress. And every damn body else on the ship was getting laid, so how come the fact that Arden and I hooked up when we're the odd men out all the time anyway is so odd?"

Nala listens and glances at Rina, raising a questioning brow as she takes a swig and hands the bottle back to the engineer. "And your take on all this?"

"My take?" Rina took the bottle and grimacing, she took another swig and managed to choke it down. Her eyes watered. "Nika may be a hot-shot pilot but she can't count worth shit. It's been over four months since I got laid, so I don't know where she thinks she was the odd man out in the bedroom department." Rina passed the bottle to Nika. "It's true. I said my goodbyes to Mike before you and Arden started getting cozy, by a long shot."

Nika pffts at Rina. "Got you beat," she comments. "Until Arden? I've only gotten laid once in the past... crap, how long I been on the Gift? It was about two weeks after I signed on, we laid over somewhere. Can't even remember where." Nika takes the bottle back and has another drink, then hands it back to Nala. "Anyway... I'm not kidding here. After Arden had to, like, bring me back from the dead, things were all kindsa weird. And I missed the flirting, you know? He's cute! And when I asked him if we were actually going to make it back to being friends, he flat out laid it out that he'd love to take me to bed and he didn't want to make it more than a thing, and if it starts to hurt the crew, then it ain't happening anymore." She glances at Rina. "It ain't going to hurt the crew, cuz if it does, I'm not kiddin' -- it's over. And he knows I'm serious." She's got that ultraserious 'I'm getting more than tipsy' face going on.

Nala shakes her head and glances at Rina again. "Long as you know what you're doing," she says doubtfully. "You should keep in touch with Shyla and Harry and Brian more, though. They were really worried until I told them last I heard you'd hooked up with a tramp freighter. When they got done laughing themselves stupid, they were glad you were doing all right." Nala passes the bottle to Rina without taking a sip.

"Got me beat?" Rina snorted at Nika. "I don't think so. And as for Harbinger's crew laughing themselves stupid, I don't know whether I like 'em or hate 'em for doin' it. So," she added as she took another hit off the bottle. "Is this going to be a pity party? If it is, I'm out of here."

Nala looks at Rina in surprise. "It's no pity party... it's a girl talk! Don't you do girl talk, Rina?" Her blue eyes, so like Nika's and so not -- not shuttered, not terribly wary, not constantly assessing everything around her like she might need an escape route -- are amused. "You can't always want to be one of the guys, can you?" she asks practically.

Nika snorts rudely. "She's not always one of the guys, Nala. Let her be." She'll take up on Rina's behalf because it's not Nala's business that Rina's seen the rough side of things unless Rina wants to mention it. "She's got a guy, he's just -- off. You know how it goes when you live in the Black," she says blithely. "And considering the kind of pilot I am, you oughtta probably like 'em for it. If we'd run into you back before I brained my asshole of a brother-in-law with a skillet and mashed his head like a pumpkin, you'd laugh at moving from Harbinger to Gift too."

Rina sighed and raked her hands through her hair, feeling the sweat drying on it with distaste. "Christ, talking with the two of you is like watching a tennis match, all the back-and-forthing." She held up two fingers and folded them down as she addressed each sister in turn. "Nala: No, I don't normally do girl talk because I'm either too busy or haven't found any girls I cared to girl-talk to. Til now. Nika: Having never been on Harbinger, I'll just have to take your word for it that the move was laugh worthy. I'm just glad I wasn't there to see it. I might have decked one of your crew, just on principle. It's not a ship's fault it's not as pretty or fast or shwai as the other ones. That's like sayin' it's Kevin's fault he has blue eyes instead'a brown. Pass the bottle over. Either I'm getting too drunk too fast, or the booze tastes better because it's already killed my tastebuds."

Nala reaches over and slaps Nika upside the back of the head sharply. "Nika Gwendolyn Earhart -- that's beyond rude!" she admonishes sternly. "And I don't want to hear you ever describe it like that again, okay?" It was one of the worst days of her whole life, and of Nika's too, but even most of a bottle of Brimstone doesn't excuse that kind of talk in Nala's eyes.

Nika ouches and reaches up to rub her head, looking apologetically at her twin. "I'm sorry," she says contritely. And she hugs her sister tightly, then reaches over to pluck the nearly empty bottle out of the hay, handing it to Rina once more. It got lost in transition somehow the last time it got passed. "I like the Gift well enough. Besides... it's the people who make it worth staying," she grins.

"Oh, good. Now you're talkin' sense again." Rina took the bottle and shook it ruefully. "About time, too. I think we're outa booze. You want the last of it? Last call." She held it up and offered it to the twins.

Interestingly enough, it is the 'nicer' twin who takes the bottle and downs the last swallow. Perhaps trying to drown memories. Nala shudders in a bit of revulsion. "I forget how bad that stuff is," she comments with a grin. "So now... good old-fashioned girl-talk to the side, you think we oughtta rescue the men in the house from the kidlet?"

Nika snickers. "Hell no. Let's sit out here and enjoy the buzz!" she replies. "Rina?"

"Nah," Rina shook her head and flopped back into the fragrant hay. "The men can rescue themselves if they need to. I say we stay and talk smack til the moon comes up and the coyotes start howlin'." Rina laced her fingers behind her head and spoke to the rafters. "Nika, did I ever tell you the first time Mike threw me on a horse, it was to go ride fence for a three day trip to the high pasture? The beast."

"Yup." Rina nodded. "That's always been his way. He doesn't tell you what he's going to do til it's already done."

Nika plops backward in the hay to watch the ceiling spin. "Which one? The man or the horse?" she fires back on a laugh. "That's just plain mean to do to a tenderfoot.... or a tenderbutt, as the case may be. Bet your blisters had blisters. And he sure didn't get laid THAT night!"

Nala snickers with laughter of her own, propping her head on her elbow as she lays on her side, merely listening to the two women now.

"The man, of course." Rina cut a look at Nika and grinned. "As for getting laid, you sell us short, madam. To this day, I'm sure it was the only thing that kept me from seizing up come morning." She laughed then. "You'd have loved the sky that night -- crystal clear with the stars close enough to touch. And the coyotes singing and the frogs chirping. Hell, with all that noise, we'd've never fallen asleep anyhow."

Rina rolled over and propped her head on a crooked arm.

"That was when he took me home to see his folks. They had a place much like yours, Nala. Maybe a little bigger. Had a helluva lot more people, though. All his brothers and his sister were married off by then and had kids of their own. Counting the ranch hands, they must have had close on to seventy people down to Sunday dinner. Had to eat in shifts. The first day there, it was too much for me and Mike found me hiding in the barn." She snorted again at the memory. "In the hayloft, to be exact."

Nika laughs outright at Rina, suddenly happier than she's been in .... several years. Sometimes things just come out right. "Brave, brave soul," she chuckles at the engineer. And she clasps her hands behind her head and crosses her ankles as she listens to the information about Mike Carter's life.

Nala chuckles and rebutts Nika with, "SMART soul! It's a good way to keep yourself limber if you're doing it right! We used to have a lot of people around here. Not that many, mind. But when Nika lived at home, Tracy -- that's our stepmother -- and our brother JJ lived here, and we had about 20 hands who were regular employees, some of them with families. After Daddy died, I downsized a little and since then, well.... I'm good with the books, but I venture to say I'm no foreman. Still, maybe we'll be able to build the herd back up real well now. Larry knows ranching," she says with a faint blush. She's still not used to actually talking about the man.

"Brave and smart, and funny, with a wicked sense of humor once you know what to look for," Rina agreed. "As for doing it right... I'll just leave it to your fevered imaginations. As for having a good man at your back, Nala, if you find what you're looking for, there's none better. I found mine. I hope you've found yours. And speaking of which," Rina shot upright and swatted Nika on the arm. "What about this Brian guy? C'mon. Dish, girl. Or I'll ask your sister to fill me in."

Aaaaannd we're back to that again. Nika rolls her eyes, not bothering to get off the hay. "What about him?" she asks Rina. "He was a crewmate on the /Harbinger/. He's a sometime lover, all-the-time friend." Nika shoots a dirty look at Nala, who merely shrugs easily. "There's nothing more to know!"

"Riiiight. And I'm the Queen of Londinium," Rina snorted and raised her head to catch Nala's eye over her sister and winked. "Besides, we're supposed to talkin' smack. Ranch stuff is far too serious a topic for this party, anyway. So, spill. How far back do you and Brian go? He got a last name, or am I gonna have to call him Brian No-Name?"

Nala giggles softly, her buzz making her cheeks pink as she watches Nika get interrogated.

Nika makes a face at her sister. "Connelly. He's Harbinger's XO. We go back.... a long way. I got on board that ship when we stole her from the Alliance," she says with a smirk. Nala doesn't even look surprised. She must know some of the story. "That would have been.... thirteen years? Really? Crap. Didn't really turn into friends with benefits until.... well, I guess it's about ten years ago now." She looks sort of weirded out at that bit of information, like it's never occurred to her before. "We've been on-again, off-again over the years. Not particularly exclusive. We've hooked up a couple of times since I left the ship, though our most recent meet-up was aborted." She grins at Rina. "We almost had us a real live barbecue. A whole cow!"

"You stole Harbinger around...late oh-seven, early oh-eight, right? Mike told me some of it. So that means you've known Brian a year or so longer than I've known Mike. Huh, and you're only just figuring out where you stand with the guy? Slow, Nika," Rina drawled. "Slow."

Rina flopped back down.

"It's a good thing you didn't tell me about the barbecue I'd missed. I might have sabotaged the ship to make you turn around for it. That was Deadwood, right? Alliance cruiser, homing in on our twenty? Had to leave in a hurry? We're always leaving before anything gets started."

At that, Nala laughs softly. She chooses to ignore anything and everything that she shouldn't probably hear, and it's probably safer that way. She and her sister are very different women, and she knows it -- it's why she worries. "She's definitely slow," she teases mildly, though, putting her head down to rest on her arm while the three women lay there and chat.

"Hey, I resemble that remark!" Nika quips. "C'mon, seriously.... I know exactly where I stand. He's the best friend I ever had, one of the best lovers who's ever graced my bed, and ... he's a guy! What more do I need to know about him? Sheesh. You people and Christian. Stop making it more than it is. I'm happy with what it is."

"Yeah, so he's a guy. But even a guy can't wait forever, Nika. You may be happy with what is, but are you sure Brian's on board with it?"

Rina sat up again.

"And before you start yellin' "Pot-Kettle" at me, Mike and I are a different case altogether. For one, we know what we've got and how far we're willing to go to keep it. For another, we're already halfway to the altar anyway. What about you and Brian. Have you even talked about it? Really sat down and talked about it? Laid it out on the table where you can both look at it? Hell, Mike and I did that before we left after we first met...huh...there's something grammatically wrong in that sentence somewhere..." She shook her head. "Grammar be damned--that's not important. Deciding the issue with Brian is."

Nika sighs. "If Brian had a problem with where we're at, he'd say so," she says firmly. "Both of you, if you don't quit, I'm leaving." She looks serious, and Rina's bulldog tendency has no firmly squashed her buzz. Between Christian's comments while they were riding the fence line and this, Nika is more than a little annoyed that she even bothers to be friends with her crewmates. Since when does that give them the right to butt into her sex life, dammit?? This is exactly why she usually keeps her flings off a ship. And she's right peeved.

Nala kindly changes the topic. "Anyone hungry yet? Since I'm quite sure they've managed to feed themselves, we might get something decent for dinner."

Go to Nika's Crew Page
Go to Peripatetica - Rina's Journal entry and RP log
Go to Rina's Russian Glossary
Go to Rina's Crew Page
Go to EPISODES or TIMELINE