12. Wrenlee

12

WRENLEE

" H ave you lost your ever-loving mind?" Saylor asks, raising her voice as she throws her hands around in wild gesticulations to accent each syllable that comes from her mouth.

She is wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and probably a few dozen more adjectives that I don't have the brain power to think of at the moment. She's been ranting for probably more than ten minutes. I had led us back to the relative privacy of our room, ignoring our assigned duties, but there is no doubt that the rumors are flying, and I need time to figure out what I'm going to do.

Mentally I'm making a checklist of all the ways this is going to be a problem. It's an exercise I've always found to be helpful. Instead of letting a problem be some big nebulous thing, break it down into parts, make a list, and then figure each thing out one at a time.

Emery is the biggest thing on the list. Sure, the masses will all have their opinions and some of them will not hesitate to share it long and loud. That is not something I can do anything about. Some will like it, some will hate it, and some will be indifferent. In the end, they will be what they will and that is not something under my control.

Emery though. I turn the problem of her over and over again. She has always been jealous of my role in our group. Always felt she should be the top dog, so to speak. She's been ruthless in our past, but I've always been able to fend her attempts off easily.

Every scandal that she has tried to use against me only served to solidify my position and reputation. Those were, comparatively to this, easy to navigate because they weren't me going against myself.

Why did I decide to make the interspecies dating a thing? What kind of jaded, moronic fool was I?

A petty and childish one, that's what kind. I was bored and looking for something to make an issue of, so we'd have a group to look down on.

Wow. I am a shitty person.

I've never looked at myself like this before. What is happening to me? I'm not supposed to care what anyone else thinks. That's the game we were bred to play. To be above their judgments, which is, or was, the only way to survive.

If I cared what others thought of me then they could hurt me. If I am better than them and they are all less than me, they cannot touch or harm me. Yet. I am caring. And that is simply and purely because of him.

The intermingling of Zmaj and humans has become more or less normalized since the crash. It was much more of a thing when Gershom was spouting off his crazy theories as he tried to grab power.

Ziva would have been so amused by him. I know I was, but then I also saw the opportunity. I used it to create an expectation, but now that has come back to bite me in the ass. I couldn't have imagined then that I would ever, in all my life, fall for one of them. They were so… alien.

"Well?" Saylor asks, hand on her hip, eyes boring into mine.

"What do you want me to say?" I ask, trying to cover for the fact that I have no idea what she said or asked.

She gives me a blank stare for a long moment before throwing her hands up in exasperation as she shakes her head.

"I want you to say something that will explain what you were thinking. If you're going to commit social suicide, could you at least try to be a little less obvious about it?"

I can't meet her eyes, so I drop mine to the floor.

"I don't know," I admit and a cold chill races down my spine.

She doesn't speak so I dare to dart a glance up and meet her eyes. The look of shock and surprise on her face takes me aback. Saylor closes her mouth and blinks, then she moves over and takes a seat next to me on the bunk. She puts her arm over my shoulders and we sit together in silence.

"Shit," she whispers finally.

"Yeah," I agree.

"You…"

"Yeah," I say, knowing what she's going to ask. I do like him. More than I ever possibly should.

The stone floor is completely smooth. A stupid, inane observation that for whatever reason seems to have some incredibly profound meaning at this moment. How did they make it? I've been staring at it for a while now and can't spot a single tool mark. It's impressive craftsmanship.

"Wren…" Saylor sighs, raising and dropping her hands back into her lap. Silence drops across us like the heavy leather door. Falling into place and dampening not only sound but mood too.

"I know," I say, speaking softly, as if anyone might be listening.

And what do I know? They might be. On the ship no matter how careful we were, someone always found out anything and everything we did. Every mistake, every misstep, was fodder for the masses to dissect and slice us to pieces.

"You fucking fool," she says.

Surprised by her words, they jerk me out of the circling drain of my thoughts and onto her. I stare with wide eyes and an open mouth until she smiles and then I do too. And in the next moment, we're laughing. Laughing so hard that tears form in my eyes, blurring my vision. I can't breathe, I'm laughing so hard.

"I am, aren't I?"

The absurdity of it all is too much to do anything else but laugh about it. It's not that it's hopeless, but more that it's pointless. And that is the crux of everything. Our entire lives have been lived under the scrutiny of the public eye. As much as we might set the trends or the idea of what's cool and what's not, it's every bit as much enforced on us. Beyond our control because once something begins, stopping it is no easy task.

The laughing slowly subsides but I realize that I do feel better. I don't have any answers, but the weight on my heart has at least lightened. Some if nothing else. I wipe the last of the tears away then walk over to the wash basin on the wall and rinse. The cool liquid is soothing. I press my wet fingers to my eyes, hoping to avoid any puffiness. No matter what is happening I do have standards to maintain and expectations to meet.

I step aside and Saylor does the same. It's mundane and routine and in that, there is at least some comfort. I stoke the small fire that sits in a pit in the middle of the room, adding some of whatever it is that goes on the fire. I try not to think about it too much because I'm mostly sure it's poo and if I think about that it gives me the ick.

"Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into Alice," Saylor says, intoning a line from an old Earth vid that she and I used to watch when we were very young. My dad loved that show, though I can't recall the name of it, it's something she, Ziva, and I would mimic.

"You know my motto," I say, with a mock solemnity. "If you're going to make a mess, make a big one."

Her smile is genuine for a moment before it tightens as her shoulders drop and she lowers her head.

"Emery is going to be a problem," she says.

"I know," I agree.

"You have a plan?"

"No."

"You need to stop," she says with clear insistence in her voice and attitude.

I purse my lips and stare into the fire. As soon as she says it, I feel short of air and there is an echoing pang in my chest like some massive hand is squeezing tighter and tighter. Even the idea of not seeing him again, of pushing him away, makes me feel physically ill.

"I don't think I can…" I say trailing off.

"You…" she trails off too.

"Yeah," I say, and I know she gets the meaning.

There are words I cannot say. Not out loud, not even in my head, but this… this could be something more.

"It's not like Brock?" she asks.

I bite my lip giving her suggestion a thorough look. Brock broke my heart. I thought we had something real. That he was more than another notch in the bedpost, more than arm candy and tabloid fodder.

I thought all that until I caught him in bed with Emery. She'd seduced him, sure, but he didn't have to act on it. Didn't have to jump in her bed. It had broken me, though the only people who ever knew the truth of how bad I got with it were Saylor and Ziva.

"No," I say at last. "I don't think so."

"Don't think?" she probes.

"How am I supposed to know?" I ask, throwing my hands up. "I thought he was real. What do I know of what's real? We live a lie every day of our lives. Sooner or later, you get caught up in your own hype."

She frowns and nods understanding.

"We can't just… go for it. You made these rules yourself and you know she'll use that against you. She wants to take you down, probably more than anything."

"I know," I say. "She always has."

"Maybe you shouldn't have told the judges in that beauty contest she was padding her ass."

"We were eight!" I exclaim. "Get over it for fucks sake. Besides, she was."

Frustration and anger rips free, but when I see her ridiculous grin as she struggles to not snort I shake my head and laugh too. Saylor loses the battle and snorts loudly which makes me laugh even harder.

"You need to play this cool until we have a plan," she says at last.

"I'll try," I say.

"I mean it, you can't give her anything."

"I know."

"We should probably get to our duty stations, the best thing we can do is not break routines. You know how that raises their suspicions."

I do. The mythical, mysterious them . You never know who they are, where they are, or what they look like because to us they're nothing more than a faceless mob. Waiting to tear you down for any single misstep. The only answer is to not make a misstep.

"Right," I say. "Let's go. We'll figure this out. Somehow."

Saylor places her arm over my shoulders and leans in close.

"Was he good at least? Worth all this?"

"Oh god," I exclaim blushing with the memory of his cock filling me.

My pussy still aches but in that really good, I want more kind of way. I smile and lead the way to our jobs.