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<span style="color:#800000"> '''''Andy's an amazing RP partner.  You'll know why when you read it.  Thanks, Andy.--Maer''''' </span><br><br><br><br>



'''Monday, 22 Sep 2521'''<br>
'''Yan Wo Station, Yan Wo'''<br> 
'''Fury, Blue Sun (Qing Long) system'''<br>
'''1030hrs, ship’s time'''<br><br><br>

I was crashing and crashing hard. I’d put in a full day on Miranda before lifting off and after a sleepless night working on the ejection system for our containers, to say nothing of the celebratory whiskey Kiera offered me after we’d won free of the Reavers, I was ready to collapse. I was dreadfully tired but also oddly buoyed by our narrow escape and I wanted to share some of it with Joshua before falling into my bunk. I took a last turn around the engine room and my workshop to stow any loose articles before going forward to check the Botany Bay and the galley.  It had become a habit in recent weeks to steal a few moments with him before turning in and since it was in the middle of the morning, I knew I’d have a good chance finding him in either place.<br><br>

I moved forward, running my hand along the walls in silent tanks to our girl. It was a sentimental gesture and told me more than anything else just how fatigued I’d become.  And there was more than sentimentality tugging at me. Thinking back on Nika’s determined dragging of Arden off to medbay—the reasons for which had been glaringly obvious—I toyed with the idea of doing the same with Joshua. <br><br> 

''Find him.  Tell him you love him.  Then see what happens.''<br><br>

I found the galley empty and pushed on for hydroponics.  The lush greenery and the soothing sound of trickling water along with Joshua’s embrace were just what I needed at the moment.  Anticipation shimmered through my fatigue as I crossed the threshold and called his name.<br><br>

“Joshua? You here?”<br><br>

---

Joshua sat crosslegged on the bench in the back of Botany Bay, listening to the sounds of the hydroponics, taking in the peace and quiet. Kiera had just left a few minutes ago and he had barely had time to get comfortable when he heard Rina's voice. He had hoped to get some time to try and find his center, put himself on an even keel again. More and more lately, he found himself growing more mercurial, riding a high one minute, falling through a low the next. Excited at the action of escaping a Reaver, then sad at the memory of the sight of a nine year old with a blow to the head lying next to the body of the man unable to control his own actions. If it kept going like this, it was going to overwhelm him.<br><br>

"I'm back here, Rina," he said quietly, keeping his eyes closed for just a little longer, knowing he'd feel her when she got close.<br><br>

---

I rounded the last tank of greenery and stopped at the sight of him sitting drawn and weaery and clearly trying to grab a moment of peace.  He looked wrung out like a dishrag and guilt prodded my conscience and my tongue.<br><br>

"If ... this is a bad time, I can come back later."<br><br>

---

He opened his eyes and managed a soft smile. "No, come sit down." He shifted over from the middle of the bench to one of the ends, making room for her to sit. "There's never a bad time to share your company, Rina."<br><br>

---

I sat down and wrapped my arms around him without saying a word, offering him the comfort of touch. Given the events of the past twenty-four hours...<br><br>

''God knows, he could use a little comfort''.<br><br>

---

Joshua just sat there quietly, reflecting on how lucky he was to have found Rina. She knew what he needed, even when he didn't. He felt like he should say something, but he didn't know what and he didn't want to break the peaceful silence and warm embrace. If she needed him for something, she'd let him know.<br><br>

---

I felt Joshua's tension ease and I relaxed against him and listened to him breathe. He'd slipped his arm around my waist and his hand was a warm weight on my hip. It was a familiar touch and a welcome one and as we sat in the quiet and the green, I thought back across the years to other moments of quiet spent in another man's arms. They were far too few.  Mike was gone, swallowed by Miranda, and not knowing if he lived or died lay heavily on me.<br><br>

My thoughts strayed toward the what-ifs: ''What if I'd stayed on Salisbury with him? What if I'd given up my career for his? Would he still be with me? Would it be Mike on this bench instead of Joshua? Stop.'' Common sense reasserted itself. ''You aren't Mike's keeper. He made his choice, same as you. And had you left your world for his, would you have been anything but baggage? Would you have been a partner or a hindrance? Clandestine work like his isn't done on the buddy-system.''<br><br>

Mike and I had had our run. We'd loved as hard and fast as we could when we were together, hoping to make it last a lifetime. Perhaps we had and that lifetime being over, it was time to move on. There was nothing constructive in trying to pinpoint who had moved on first. It was done and obsessing over what might have been with Mike robbed my future with Joshua of its potential.<br><br>

''Joshua deserves better from you. Let go and give.''<br><br>

Surrender has never been an easy option for me. Too much of what I am is based on fighting what the Universe threw at me. It was a loner's mindset and one I had slowly come to understand was self-destructive. All of which led me to this bench in the hydroponics bay, with my arms around a man who loved me, whose love I returned despite my history and my inner demons. Only surrender had given me Joshua and paradoxically it hadn’t weakened me as I’d feared but had made me stronger. I thought of the dead on Miranda and their surrender to the Pax ... and firmly reminded myself that mine was '''''not''''' the same.<br><br>

"Penny for your thoughts," I said quietly, dragging my own from their well-worn track.<br><br>

---

"Isn't it funny," he mused, "how normal is just a matter of perspective? Here I am, thinking that I've established some sort of normalcy, and then I'm reminded how abnormal I am to start with. I can read people's minds and '''that''' is my normal baseline." He shook his head in disbelief.<br><br>

---

I raised my head and looked at him. As I'd thought, he wasn't speaking metaphorically. He was serious and since it was a serious question, I gave it some thought before answering.<br><br>

"Maybe normal is an illusion, like perfection. Maybe all we have is acceptance of who and what we are and whatever moral compass we follow. Arguing the definition of normal is like arguing doctrine between religions. It misses the entire point." I cupped his face in my hands and said, "The point is not the laws but the spirit behind them. And with a gift like yours, Joshua, that's an important thing to remember."<br><br>

---

"It's not a gift, Rina. I don't know what it is, but it's not a gift. Neither in how I obtained it or in how I use it." Or how it uses me, he amended in his mind. Every time he began to think he was in control, he was rudely reminded how little he really understood what had been done to him.<br><br>

---

"Perhaps not yet, but it can be." I searched his face and saw my horror of Miranda's dead mirrored in his own. "This is about what we saw back there, isn't it?"<br><br>

I didn't think I needed to elaborate.<br><br>

---

He nodded softly. "Yeah, about what we saw, what I felt, and why I felt it. I shouldn't be hearing the dead, Rina. I'm not hard enough for that."<br><br>

---

“I know what you saw,” I said, caressing his face. I had an idea struggling at the back of my head, pushing through the molasses of fatigue, but I was going to need help. “But what did you feel?  And why do you think you felt it?”<br><br>

---  

"You'll laugh, but Kiera asked the same question." Although hers was much more scientific in concern, he thought. "I told her that it was like a tug in my mind, the metal bearings getting drawn to the magnet. A feeling that something was there...something needing my attention.<br><br>

"As for why?" He shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "I don't know. Maybe there was no reason. Maybe my brain chemistry is going all wacky without my drugs. My handlers did warn me that I would be sensitive to psychic residue. But I just thought they meant I wouldn't feel good around bad places. This is altogether different."<br><br>

---

With that, the idea at the back of my head broke free. I held it up against what I'd seen in the subway car, saw again the tentative slashes on the bodies, the half-hearted attempts to devour the victims, the vicious self-mutilation and the ruination of the hand that had struck the little girl down. With the clarity that sometimes comes of hovering on the edge of sleep, of insight born of fatigue, I knew what Joshua sought.<br><br>

"It was different," I said, stroking his hair back and looking him straight in the eye. "That man back there? He called you and I know why. Can you guess?"<br><br>

As much as I wanted to let loose what rang inside me I had to give him the chance to discover it for himself. Those things you find on your own you believe the deepest and Joshua needed to believe that he wasn't a freak and a monster.<br><br>

---

He shook his head tightly. Where was she going with this? "He was fighting being a Reaver, yes. But how does that make me be able to hear the dead, no matter what their impassioned pleas might be?"<br><br>

---

“Atonement.  He needed to atone for what he did, to beg forgiveness. He needed someone to witness what he’d done, what he’d felt, and understand.” I gripped his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t you see? He was a tortured soul, Joshua, and you heard him. By seeing what he'd done, by understanding he didn't want to do it, you gave him peace. You set him free."<br><br>

I am not normally a person given to spiritual flights of fancy. I was and still am someone who preferred to deal with the concrete and measurable but every so often something like this would strike me out of the blue. Was the Universe speaking through me? Or was fatigue granting my subconscious free rein of my tongue? To this day I cannot say for certain. I can only attest that experience had taught me to never doubt it when it happened but to believe with the utter conviction of the faith I did not possess that it was true. And now I had to somehow pass that on to another.<br><br>

"Only someone with your gift could have done that and Miranda is a soul lighter for it. ''His'' soul is lighter for it. And that's a good thing, Joshua. Please believe that."<br><br>

---

Joshua knew that asking Why me? was a pointless endeavor for which there was no answer, but that didn't mean he didn't feel like asking it anyway. And if God was listening and granted one soul peace, why did he kill thirty million people to start with?<br><br>

"I believe you," he responded, because he really did, even if he had his doubts as to the why, "but I'm not convinced that my powers are '''right''', no matter what purpose they get put to. Of course, I'm not sure I understand how half of my powers work to begin with."<br><br>

---

“Didn’t we have this conversation before?” I asked, despite the stab my heart gave me.  It had been an inside joke between Mike and me, based on something we’d shared early on in our relationship.  That didn’t make it less relevant to the matter at hand. ''Didn’t we have this conversation before?''  Yes, we’d definitely had.  My first real conversation with Joshua, in fact, sitting in the Aberg garage after we’d brought Jake home for burial. Back then I had no real answers for Joshua, only advice, and as I had then, I gave it without hesitation.<br><br>

“Maybe they aren’t right but since you do have them, it’s your responsibility to see that they’re used for the right reasons.  I know it’s unfair to ask it of you, because you didn’t sign up for that program.  That choice was taken away from you and I am sorry for that, but you do have a choice about control and understanding.  You don’t gain it by avoiding your ability.  You gain it by using it.  Experience is the best teacher there is, Joshua.  Take advantage of it before it’s taken away, too. You never know when the opportunity will come again.”<br><br>

I thought back to that moment in medbay when I taught him what he needed to get the damned hydras off our girl.  I gave his hands another squeeze and continued.<br><br>

“You’ve done it with me.  I’m willing to help you do it again, as often as it takes til you get a handle on this.”<br><br>

---

“I use them less and less, you know.  I’m not even sure that’s intentional.”  He just didn’t think about his Reading abilities as a first or even second option these days.  He still thought about borrowing people, but that was perhaps because he separated his role as a Borrower from his role as a Reader, even though he had no logical reason to do so.<br><br>

“Can we maybe just assume that I will use them for the right if I choose to use them and ask whether I should be using my ability to read people’s minds at all?  I can pretend to be normal in that regard.”<br><br>

---

That damned wall between my practicality and his ideals rose between us again.  I didn’t bother telling him that his ability to Read had tactical and practical applications, that privacy couldn’t be an issue if it were a life-and-death situation.  He’d heard that argument from me before and we’d gotten nowhere with it. I tried a different angle.<br><br>

“You’re right.  Being able to read someone’s mind isn’t normal but does that automatically mean that it’s morally wrong?  If you believe that, there will never be a time when Reading someone would be right and you know that this isn’t always true.  And as for being normal, I’ve heard it said that no one really is, that we’re all just at different points on the abnormal spectrum.” I shook my head and settled against his shoulder and spoke to the green.  “I don’t buy that one, actually.  It’s a faulty argument. In order to gauge the level of abnormality of anything, you need something normal to measure the deviance against.”<br><br>

I sighed, realizing I’d digressed, and pulled myself back on track.<br><br>

“In the end, if you decide never to use them again, and by what you’ve said you seem to be trending toward that option, you have your meds to ensure that.  Maintaining your regimen should keep what happened on Miranda from happening again, right?”  I straightened and caressed his face.  I wished for eloquence but knew I could only give him my conviction and my promise. “Just like anyone else with a medical condition, you can choose to live as normally as you’d like. Your principles need never be compromised.  Whatever you decide, I’ll stand by it.” <br><br> 

--- 

"I just wonder if I've been too close to what I do. Growing up with my Reading as something expected and common...I just don't know if I have really examined my abilities in the light of morality. Should I really be poking about in people's heads, even if it doesn't hurt them?"<br><br>

He shook his head and then kissed his palm before placing it on her cheek. "I'm sorry. I'm such a pain in the ass. I think the feeling of being out of control down in that train of the dead has thrown me a little. Plus I've been kind of mercurial the last few months. Thanks for putting up with me and not chucking me out into the Black."<br><br>

---

Joshua's dilemma was an old one and ever-present and I understood there were no easy answers for it, so I didn't persist when he tabled it. His transfer of a kiss from palm to cheek set an internal bell ringing, however, and I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand before whispering, "Why won't you kiss me?"<br><br>

---

Joshua used his hand to guide her face towards his and gave her a long kiss, a warm reminder to himself of everything in his life that '''was''' normal, that '''was''' right. When he released her, first letting his hand go and then ending the kiss, he said quietly, almost in a whisper, "I love you, Irina. You have nothing to fear."<br><br>

---

I opened my eyes and searched his face and saw the truth ... and answered it. "I love you back."<br><br>

I rose and pulled him gently with me.<br><br>

"Take me to bed?"<br><br>

---

Joshua nodded as he stood up, and pressed up close against Rina as they walked back towards her room. ''You should have known you didn't need the peace and quiet of Botany Bay to get centered'', he told himself. He looked down at the beautiful Russian woman he had fallen in love with and smiled.<br><br>

'''She''' was his center.<br><br>




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