Dissonance

In deference to Steve's preference for 3rd person, I changed my usual format to suit. It was the least I could do in exchange for the gift of Natalia. Thanks, Steve!--Maer

Saturday, 15 May 2523
Durance class Equinox
Fueling queue, Paquin Orbital Station
Red Sun (Zhu Que) system
1535hrs, ship's time

Equinox was running a touch off. Rina could hear it, a near-subsonic dissonance clawing at her nerves, tickling the bones in her ear and making her brain itch. Equinox was on idle in the fueling queue at Paquin and now would be a good time to hunt the anomaly down. She rolled up her sleeves and got to work but the events of the past few days kept intruding and her concentration was fragmented at best. The pain of Kolya's disappearance into the Elect, her father's failing mind, her mother's rejection of her—it took time to process and Rina was failing at it, making her current job harder. What should have taken maybe twenty minutes took over an hour. It was hot work crawling under the deck plates and it wasn't long before she'd shrugged out of her coverall sleeves and tied them around her waist for comfort. Since she wore only a sports bra underneath, her shoulders, arms, and midriff were soon smeared with dirt and grease, punctuated by pink where she'd touched something hot. Not that Rina cared. It wasn't worse than what she normally incurred on a daily basis and right now, it suited her mood: self-punishing and bitter.

She had her pencil torch in her teeth and the problem exposed under her hands when footsteps rang on the deck plates. Squinting through them, Rina recognized her mother's shoes and her mood slid deeper into the dark. All over dirt from her work, Rina had a pretty good idea how her mother view her: badly. Dammit, one look from her and I'm five years old again. Rina closed her eyes and got a grip. She's hated me for seventeen years, she can hate me a few minutes more while I fix this. It took her smallest gauge flathead to get it in there and give it an eighth of a turn. The engine subtly changed pitch and she frowned. Not quite right … And Mother's still waiting.

There being nothing for it, Rina crawled out and faced the music.

"Mama," she said as politely as she could, given the circumstances. She grabbed a shop rag and scrubbed her hands. "What brings you to the engine room?"

Natalia stood regarding the engine room with a discerning eye. Her hands, once on her hips, folded across her chest protectively. Tears began to cloud her eyes for the first time as she looked down on her daughter.

"Oh Rinushka! To see you like this..."

She turned away, and moved to the open doorway leading to Rina's workshop, standing there for a long moment. Though Rina could not see her face, she heard the shallow sobbing.

Like what? Alarmed by her mother's tears, Rina glanced down. Saw nothing but the usual dirt, grease, and ... Wait. Scars. She yanked on on sleeves and zipped up to her chin. She'd become inured to most of her scars and Joshua wasn't bothered by them, but they might frighten the uninitiated. Keep it light. No big deal. "Mama?" Rina closed the distance between them. "I know I'm a mess, but it comes with the territory. It'll wash off."

"When you joined the Navy all those years ago, we fought but … I didn't put up as much a fight as I might. I was worried you'd be killed, but the thought crossed my mind: What general would send a little thing like you into battle? So I hoped you'd be working in communications, or intelligence, you're such a smart girl. That you'd be safe in the Core at some headquarters, you'd come back with a shiny purple uniform and that would be the end. When you waved being shipped out, I sensed a foreboding, but Papa brushed it off. Navy ships were practically invulnerable compared to the little junkers the Browncoats were using. Then we heard of your death, and people asking about you... it was hard. Then news came of your... of the accusations. People stopped asking about you. They may have spoken about it behind our backs, but they never brought it up to us. That was good, we too stopped talking about it."

She pulled a silk kerchief from a fold in her outfit and dabbed at her eyes and nose, her carefully applied make-up running slightly.

"And now you are back, after so long, and I thank God for that. But...," she trailed off, then straightened herself out. "Do you remember your grandmother, my mother?" she asked almost rhetorically.

"Baba Varvara?" Rina blinked, thrown. What does she have to do with …? Never mind. Focus. "Nemnoga," she admitted. "A little."

"Your brothers might remember her better, by the time you were old enough to care, she was a shell of her former self. Despite her success, her youth shortened her life." Natalia walked back into the engine room and knocked her knuckles against one the engine components making it ring. "She was an engineer of sorts herself, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't." Rina remembered the stories at the dinner table, of her grandmother owning the small theater/cabaret where her mother met her father. It was part and parcel of the How-I-Married-Your-Mother story they all loved to hear as children, but Baba Varvara being an engineer? This was news to her. Yet, it made sense. Rina had always wondered why she, born into a family of artists, had her odd-duck affinity for machines. Were it not for the strong family resemblance, she would have concluded early on that she was adopted. Little else could have explained the discrepancy that was her. Rina followed her mother as she moved through the engine room, knowing there was more to the story.

"My mother's family business, automation systems, was ruined by bad business decisions and a dubious partner. Mother made some money working as a dance hall girl in that same theater you remember visiting. The girls were popular with the boys in town, and a girl could make a little extra money... entertaining them. Her family was so poor, she had to do it. One night while celebrating, one boy tried to have his way with her. She fought back, he is the one who cut her face."

One of Rina's earliest memories of Baba Varvara was that scar. The children were told never to ask her about it and they never did. Deeply seamed and pink, even into her old age, it snaked across her cheek, marring her beauty. Despite everything Rina had been through, she'd been spared that. Her mother's reaction to her scars now made sense and Rina realized she might never be able to tell her what the Lieutenant did to her. One such tragedy in the family was enough.

"Disfigured as she was, she couldn't make it in front of the curtain any more. But the owner took pity on her, and put her to work behind the scenes, she cleaned, and helped with the stage. It wasn't much, she worked extra jobs around town, supporting her parents and siblings. Eventually her duties extended to maintenance and repair of the dilapidated machinery than ran the sound, the lights, the curtains and sets. She had a knack for it, but it was hard on her. My father, an actor, though not in the guild, took a shine to her, and soon I was born. When things were tough, mother would work hard, but she'd never let me help. She told me a pretty girl like me should stay soft and clean. She, on the other hand, was in constant pain from crawling around, in and over the tight spaces, or stretched to reach the high lights, or burdened by heavy loads. She only seemed happy when she had her weekly bath, I'd wash her hair and scrub her nails. The grease was so deep I think it stained her very flesh, but loved that time with her."

Natalia seemed to drift off a bit in memory of those moments, then returned to present.

"As I grew older I wanted to work with her, but she forbade me. Once I sneaked in after her one night she couldn't finish her work, and started to apply grease to the massive cable spindle that controlled on the main curtain. Mother found me and slapped me so hard, I fell to the ground." She rubbed her cheek wistfully. "I can still feel it."

Then:

"She made me swear that I would never do that again, that I would not except a job that would get me dirty or involve physical labor. She was so adamant, I made the vow."

She walked around the grav-boot almost admiringly.

"Her work paid off. The owner of the theater died childless and passed it to her. She built it up and soon made a small profit. Enough to send my siblings and me to the artist academy. Enough to buy my father into the guild. Enough to eventually hire people to replace her. She buried herself in the books. We still scraped by. I always assumed we were poor until the day I saw the books. She had scrimped and saved a small fortune. Enough to help us all move on with our lives. My brother Yergei eventually took over the theater and sold it to become... of all things a Tri-Vid theater..." She sighed. "Well they needed the money. Your grandmother worked herself nearly to death, so that I would never have to work like that. And now ... I see you ... you remind me of her, and my vows."

Rina fetched up against the engine cowling and simply watched Natalia as she moved and touched things as she talked. Puzzle pieces from Rina's childhood, persistent and maddening, finally clicked into place: her mother's insistence on staying clean, of her pained expression whenever Rina came home after a day of playing hard and tagging along with her brothers, the constant battles with her over the matter of dresses and frilly femininity … It all made sense now. At the time, she'd felt stifled, forced to be something she wasn't in order to please her mother. All those years, Rina thought her mother wanted something from her that she couldn't give, never realizing that her mother was trying to give her something that she didn't have, so that she would never suffer the lack.

Seventeen years is a long time to finally see the truth, Irina Feodorovna. Don't waste it.

"I had always wondered, Mama," Rina said, her voice soft. "Why it bothered you so much that I liked machines. All I knew was the wonder and the joy they gave me, while all you could see was me reliving Baba's life … and enduring the same troubles she did. I won't lie to you. There are similarities, but my life is still different from hers. And what of you? She sacrificed to give you a life that was different. Did you get it? Are you happy?"

If she knew that answer to that question, it would go far in helping her understand the mystery that was her mother, who she subconsciously measured herself against in a dozen different ways.

Natalia paused for a moment. I have recovered a daughter, but lost a son. Am I happy? she questioned herself.

'I am worried Rinushka, how can I not? Worried about you, the gun play, the danger, this... life you've chosen away from us. I worry about Sasha staying behind to challenge Anna and her monsters. I worry about how Papa and the family will fare moving off to a distant world, will we make it there? Here we are fugitives, floating in an ocean of warships, waiting... Will someone come aboard and take us all to the Black Tower? Will they even bother with that or just blow us up in the cold of space? I don't have brains left to be happy or sad."

"Then simply be, Mama, and breathe," Rina said, gently taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. "The Universe can wait until you get your breath back. Joshua taught me that. It's good advice."

You can't always get what you want, or so the wisdom went. But sometimes you get what you need. Rina knew her mother was overwhelmed and needed something to hold on to, some reassurance that they would all make it through this, all while mourning for a son she'd lost even as she tried to accept a daughter she'd thought dead was still alive.

In her memories, her mother was always indomitable, always young and beautiful—a child's vision of her parents—but she could see the years had taken their toll. There were lines on her face that hadn't been there when she last saw her. Silver kissed her hair and her skin had that translucent delicacy that spoke of age instead of youth. Her blue eyes were still clear and sharp, if clouded by the current what-ifs that plagued her, and Rina had faith that her mother's mind and spirit remained unbroken, even though her mother felt otherwise. She wanted to hug her, to give her the comfort of touch … but she was too filthy for it and her mother didn't have the clothes to spare the ruination of what she wore. So Rina held her hand and hoped it was enough.

"As for the rest, we've been through worse and we're still here," Rina said "We're not alone. We have a ship and we have a crew, damned good ones. We have friends and contacts, places to go. We will win through, Mama. It won't be easy but we will win. Sasha knows this, else he would never have gone back. You and Papa know this, else you never would have left. Come," she added, tugging her mother gently for the crew lounge. "I'll make some tea. You look like you can use a cup."

"If you've been doing this for seventeen years, I supposed it's pointless for me to tell you that it is not for you. But let me ask you. Do you do this because you need to eat, because you can't settle down with those," she waved her hand in the air, "those things in your past? If those things change, and you didn't need to live ... like this... would you?"

"Yes." In that instant Rina knew what she had to do. "And I'll show you exactly why. Stand here, please."

Just as she had that day on Meadow with Joshua, she did with mother now. She guided her to the sweet spot in the engine room where everything acoustically came together. Then she dove under the deck plates and went back to the problem on the engine. C'mon, sweetheart, I know you've got it in you. Rina gave her screwdriver another eighth of a turn and everything tipped over into that one perfect chord. It thrummed through her like a bell, bone deep and true. She closed her eyes and melted against the deck for one self-indulgent second, then scrambled up to rejoin her mother.

"This is why, Mama. This ship, this engine has a song to sing. It lifts my soul to God and having touched God, there is no going back."

Natalia watched her daughter's blissful look as she closed her eyes and listened to the hum of the engine. In a 'Verse as big as this, she couldn't find her song someplace without all this grime? She sighed to herself. She put her hand tenderly on Rina's cheek, ignoring what she assumed was grease for the moment.

"You and your machines. Honestly, I don't understand the attraction. But, if it makes you happy, eh who am I to say otherwise? You might want to marry that boyfriend of yours before all this grime and steam turns your skin to leather and your hair to straw."

With that she pulled Rina in to a slow, gentle but enveloping embrace, savoring each moment of contact between herself and her long lost child.

HOW TO SPEAK RUSSIAN

Nemnoga = немного = nyim-no-gah = a little Sound clip

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Go back to: Season Six, Aug 2522 to May 2523
Go to EPISODES or TIMELINE