Anger and Helplessness

To be sure, the Harbinger contingent aren't the only ones who spend time with Brian in that dark, quiet hospital room with the machines beeping and the oxygen tent over the bed. When Nika arrives, she finds Christian there. He's set up a lamp and his easel off to the side of the room. The sketches on the canvas are still rough, but it won't be hard to figure out what it is he intends to paint. The former "pilot" of the Harbinger as he was just before he was tackled by Rick, the thermite grenade in hand.

When Nika slips in the door, suited up in a makeshift gown and gloves, she doesn't expect to find Brian alone. He can't be left alone... constant monitoring is required to make sure he's still breathing. As always when she steps into this room, it's like being hit in the gut; she can't breathe for just a few seconds. And then she says quietly, "I can take a turn." She 'takes a turn' every single time the opportunity presents itself, though getting the ship off the ground has to take first priority. She's been catching what little sleep she's allowing herself in the chair near the tented bed.

"I'll be at this for a little while. I don't mind company, though." Christian says without looking up. His hand works, sketching out details of the man's face on the canvas. Making it easier to add paint later. Christian, when it comes to art, is more a realist than anything else.

Nika hesitates, eyeing the canvas with distaste. "Do I even want to know why the hell you're painting that hun dan?" She slips through the tent's 'airlock' to go stand next to the bed, reaching out to gently brush dark hair of Brian's forehead while pointedly not looking in Christian's direction. Part of her wants to make Christian leave, but ... she doesn't really have the right.

"I'm trying to remember." Christian says as he works on the eyes. "The sequence of events. Everyone was focused on Brian. He was focused on getting away. I decided to focus on making sure we could. While he was distracted, I made my way into the shuttle. He went in after. I opened the locker. While I was doing that, he pulled the grenade. I pulled the flashbang. Was he going to threaten to blow the shuttle up? Was he planning on throwing the grenade out to make sure no one could else could come in? Would the grenade have gone off if I hadn't set off the flashbang?"

Her jaw clenches tight and Nika murmurs softly, "There was a time when it wouldn't have come down like that." She feels a weight of responsibility that may or may not be hers to shoulder, but it's there. "Harry's one of the fastest draws I've ever met in my life. And she's a better shot than me, too, though not by much. If she'd been armed... If Brian's reflexes weren't dulled... I've seen him grabbed like that before. His standard action is to turn all Noodle Man on whoever grabbed him..." She smiles faintly. "Just.... limp and loose and there ain't any grabbin' him with one hand. Never seen anybody but a kid who could do the Noodle Man as effectively. That whole situation was shit. And I wasn't sure that he'd duck... my aim was off."

"The Pax." Christian says, frowning as he leans back and looks over the sketch. "I'm sorry, Nika. I shouldn't have set off the flashbang."

Nika shakes her head vehemently. "Don't. I got enough guilt for all of us," she tells him softly. "You've asked me twice if we should follow them, and I said no." And that is like a boulder in her chest right there. "If we'd come out here four months ago. Or two months ago. Or just come along when they bugged out from Deadwood.... " She shakes her head. "It don't do any good to keep second-guessing any of it -- not whether we could have gotten 'em out earlier, not whether one action or another would have changed the outcome. Don't mean we won't keep doing it... but it don't fix anything," she drawls, her agitation evident in the grammar.

Christian glances up. "Okay." He says. "Okay." He sets his pencil down. "Thank you. He was... clever." He says, thinking about it. "The virtual reality goggles. Kept me from getting a reading on him because I never interacted with him. My guess is that his employer has a mole in the M.A.P's (Member of Parliament) office. They arranged to have him on Harbinger to report back anything they found."

The days have run together since the group got back to town and Nika says tiredly, "You aren't the only one he fooled -- not sure how long he's been on board, but between the two of 'em, Shyla and Harry usually have a good feel for people damn fast. He was good. Do what you can to get information out of him soon, though." She looks at Christian and her blue eyes are like frozen chips of sky. "Cuz he ain't leavin' the dirt with us, and he ain't takin' up rations for much longer."

Christian considers that, then nods. "Yes." He says. "I know. If we turn him over to the authorities he'll go free. We really can't anyway. We have no evidence beyond our own observations and we can't get entangaled in a trial." He rubs at his eyes. "I'll see what I can do. Ask Harry to play bad cop."

Nika looks back at the man on the bed, her expression softening into lines of exhaustion, worry, and a hint of regret. There is much she wants to say -- much she //has// said to him lately; she's talked to him for hours every time she's here. But now is not the time or place, they have company. "You badgered me to death about him, you know... to the point that I finally had to acknowledge it. And I thought that was confusing enough -- what was I supposed to //do// with the knowledge, the two of us on about our lives as we are?" she says quietly to the Companion. "Knowing that I actually love the idiot makes all this ten times worse... and part of me wishes I didn't know." Part of her hates Christian for making her face it.

"I'm sorry." Christian says. He picks up the canvas, sets it aside and begins folding up his easel. "I'll leave you two alone." There aren't any platitudes. No words of wisdom. He has no answers. There aren't any.

"For what?" Nika asks quietly, moving now to come back out of the tent. She moves to walk past Christian toward the door. "He can't hear me in there anyway." The words choke her and she pulls off her gloves as she gets ready to leave. "Stay. Call me when your shift's up," she says around the knot in her throat. She'll put in a couple more hours working on the ship, perhaps.

"He can hear you." Christian says, "Somewhere in there." He gently puts his hand on Nika's shoulder. "This is hard. I know. I'm sorry. I can't tell you how to make this easier. I can hold your hand while you sit here, if you need me to. Or I can leave and make sure you see as little of me as possible until you resolve the anger you're feeling." He's a trigger for it. He knows it.

Nika looks up at him, struggling to keep the tears at bay. She's good at hiding them most of the time, but not now. "He wanted me to come home, Christian. He wasn't going to come with us unless I came back," she admits softly. Because damn it all, it's all her fault -- this is all her fault. Even though she knows it's //not//. "And I don't know what the hell to do with //that// either."

"You love him." Christian says, pointing to Brian. "And he loves you." He tries to take Nika by the hand, to lead her back to him. "But you're both adults. You made your choices. You can play "what if" until you are blue in the face but what happened isn't as important as what will happen. And what will happen is you're going to give him the strength he needs. Because that's what love is. Strength."

Holding Christian's hand -- her lifeline for this one moment -- Nika wipes impatiently at the tears that managed to spill over. "Told him we'd have to negotiate the time frame," Nika says softly, clearly feeling guilty. "I couldn't just say yes." And then she starts to laugh softly. "That'd just make it too easy, right?"

Christian smiles and pushes Nika, gently, into a seat. "Tell him what you've been doing since you saw him last. Think about the future. Even if he goes with his crew and you go with yours... think about it. You'll go a few months without seeing him. Then we'll meet up on some planet or another and you'll have a week together. You've already done this. Why should doing it now be any harder?"

Nika lets him shove her into the chair, slumping down to rest her elbows on her knees and hang her head. "It's harder cuz he's hurt... and what if we can't get off this rock in enough time to ...." The 'what if he dies' question can't pass her lips, it would make the possibility real in the universe somehow. "He needs help we can't give him here. That he won't find on a ship either. We're going to need to ... take him to Osiris or someplace." Blowing out a breath, she admits softly, "I don't know if there will be any problems with that. Shyla will know." She means about identities, whether there are any pending charges or what have you on any of them. Nika was never Alliance, but Shyla, Harry, and Brian were all bridge crew on Harbinger when she was Tigerlily. Granted, that was 15 years ago.

"We'll work that out. We're a resourceful bunch." Christian leans down to kiss Nika on the top of the head. "Now, I really am going to leave you two alone. You have a lot to talk about."

When she looks up, Nika offers him a smile. "Okay. Tell Rina I'll be back out in a couple of hours to get back to work. She's a slave driver," she quips lightly, shoving her fear and her grief back down deep.

Christian smiles. "Okay." He grabs the canvas and the easel and leaves. On the way out, the canvas will end up dropped in the trash. Nika helped him get over that particular hangup. Sometimes, it goes both ways.