-----
“C’mon… wake up and answer me, damn it… so help me, if you’re dead, I’ll kill you…”
Falynn coughed violently, expelling a lungful of trapped dust and pulverized rock. She spent the next few seconds trapped in a fit of grotesque hacking that left her gasping for breath afterwards.
“Where are you hit?” Imoen was practically in a frenzy, searching for bleeding wounds, burn marks, spilled gray matter, any indication as to where Falynn’s injuries lay. “Lynn, where are you hit?!” She screamed into her comlink. “This is Two, I need a medic here, on the double! Get your pasty, white ass in gear, Jaheira!”
Nalia, who was considerably less panicked, took hold of the Major’s arm and helped her into a sitting position. She spoke into her own communications uplink. “This is… Omega Seven…” she said, still feeling very odd using that phrase to identify herself, “cancel that medic. We’re all right, here.”
“Im… Im! Relax… I’m not hit...”
Harlequin remained skeptical. “Are… are you sure?”
“I’m quite sure. Do you see me sitting in a pool of my own blood? I just took a little knock on the head, ok?”
“That’s even worse! You don’t exactly have all that many brain cells left, you know! I like Minsc – we don’t need two of him!”
Nalia gave a brief yelp of laughter then clamped her hand over her mouth. She smiled sheepishly, looking apologetic.
Falynn rolled her eyes. “You never miss an opportunity to bust my chops, do you?”
“I’m not allowed to. Supreme Court ruling,” Imoen joked half-heartedly.
“Glad one of us can make jokes.”
“Also in the ruling. Look, are you sure you’re all right… that explosion was pretty close. I mean, you might have a concussion… o-or internal bleeding. You never know with these things. There’s always something that could- ”
“Stop. Breathe.” Falynn shook her head ruefully. “I get the odd feeling we’ve had this conversation before… and yet there’s something not quite right about it…” Her words had a sarcastic edge to them. She snapped her fingers, as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh yeah, that’s it… you’re usually the one telling -me- not to worry. Guess now you know what it’s like on the other side of the fence.”
Imoen looked crestfallen. “Worrying is one thing, Lynn. Working myself into a state of clinical depression like you’ve been doing is quite another.”
Nalia suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Er… maybe we’d better-” she began, trying to break into their conversation. It didn’t work.
“That wasn’t funny, Imoen.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.” She sighed. “We need to talk about this at some point. Whether you like it or not.”
Falynn gave a tired nod of acknowledgment. “Fine. Later.”
“Later.”
“Um… Chief?” Nalia finally managed to fight her way into the discussion. “Uh… our ride’s here…”
“Omega One to all units, the cavalry has arrived. Fall back to your designated evac-zones.”
“Roger Roger. Alpha Team is bugging out…”
“Acknowledged, Omega One. Delta group is headed for extraction…”
“Copy that, Epsilon Team is clearing out…”
-----
Confed APC 1-001
Morellian Plateau
Returning to Primary Landing Zone
1045 Hours, Local Standard
“Are you all right, Lieutenant?”
“Huh? Oh… yeah. Got stung by some shrapnel, but it’s nothing serious.”
“That… wasn’t what I was referring to.”
Imoen sighed. “Oh… you mean that thing between me and Falynn...”
“If it’s none of my business -”
“No, it’s not that… I… just don’t know if…” Imoen trailed off, then began again. “Ok, if we’re gonna have a chat like this, we’re at least going to need to be on a first name basis.”
“That’s fine. You can call me ‘Nalia,’, and I can call you ‘Lieutenant.’”
“I’m serious.”
Nalia smiled awkwardly. “So am I. My father’s a Confederation senator, and he was a Marine before that. I’ve… got the conditioning.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’m comfortable ditching protocol just yet; after all, we only met yesterday.”
A slightly derisive snort. “And yet you feel comfortable asking me to regale you with tales of my familial disputes?”
Nalia’s expression sobered, and she shook her head. “ ‘Comfortable?’ Not quite. But you do look like you need someone to talk to, and… well… no offense to your teammates…”
“They’re yours now, too…”
The ensign blissfully ignored the comment. “At the moment, none of them seems to be particularly interested in chatting.”
The two of them turned their heads to glance at the rest of the squad gathered in the APC’s passenger bay. Castle and Ratchet were asleep. Vixen and Spectre had blank, distant stares; their minds were clearly somewhere else. As for Raven, she was busily tapping away on a datapad, probably drafting an after-action report or some such. She didn’t look terribly happy about it.
Harlequin winced. “You’d be right about that,” she said, agreeing with Nalia’s statement.
“So that leaves me. Anyway, if it wouldn’t be totally out of line for this newbie to make a suggestion: let me butt in.”
Imoen weighed the alternatives before her: 1) Nalia -did- seem like someone she could like, and her concern did seem genuine enough. It wasn’t very often that you found someone who seemed so… willing… to help another out, and that counted for a lot. On the other hand, 2) while the two of them likely -would- become friends at some point, they weren’t… yet… and it just felt awkward discussing something like this with someone who was, truth be told, little more than an acquaintance. And yet, 3)… huh, she’d run out of hands. Well, anyway, that left, 4). Whether she was inclined to admit it or not, the need to talk to someone about the entire mess was just so… overwhelming - it almost didn’t matter who was listening, as long as someone was…
“It’s kinda a… long story, Nalia.”
“You could order me to listen to it,” the ensign teased.
Harlequin poked her tongue out in response. “Stop that.”
