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ninety6tears[See Master Post]
Jim's favorite regular at Rosetta's is a middle-aged woman who comes in for a hard drink a few times a week and can't seem to remember that he doesn't like to be called James. The first morning after the front gate is up again, she's sitting and deeply forlorn at the bar an hour after Jim comes in.
He approaches her when he has a rest from his tables, pauses at the sight of her idly turning some scrap of paper around in her fingers. "Hey, Molly," he quietly greets.
Some sad smile and a couple small-talk comments later, she says, "Did you and yours stay safe during all the mess?"
There are too many complicated ways he could answer that question. "I lost a...friend of a friend. But I can't say we weren't lucky."
He looks at her for a moment, at how she hasn't looked up at all, and he's about to go refill another drink when she says, "They took my brother."
Rosetta is on the comm at the other end of the bar; she looks over and scrutinizes the sad dismantled woman nursing her gin, and cocks an eyebrow. Jim has stopped moving for the moment, and finally just takes a couple steps back and leans into Molly's space enough to whisper, "I'm sorry."
"Branded him and hauled him off just like he was..." She shakes her head, finally showing tear-streaked eyes. "He'll be sold somewhere. There are not that many people who want to own humans, you know, that's the terrible part. That I know he must be going to the worst."
Jim is about to try to reassure her, tell her her brother could just be put in a factory somewhere, when Rosetta whistles shrilly, prodding him to look over. She's holding a comm in the crook of her neck and indicating that she needs him in the stock room, and with an irritated slap against the bar he walks off to oblige.
Rosetta (Jim thinks there's no way that's her actual name) gives him a couple waves while she's still talking on the comm, gesturing for him to carry a couple wine boxes. In another half-minute she hangs up the comm and taps it in thought against her hand, as if trying to remember something she was going to say.
"Oh, Jim...."
He sighs from a couple feet away and turns to look at her.
She mouths, Molly? while she points at the door, mockingly. "Milk that for all it's worth, just make sure she's sober enough to pay the tab."
"...You're a fucking animal, you know that?"
He didn't think before he said it, but he's unyielding, glaring at her when she tersely turns back to him to lean with a hand onto the low wooden table that's between the two of them, eyebrows going high. He gives her a look as if to say it sure as hell isn't his turn to say something, almost shrugging back at her. "You better watch it, Cyrus," she boredly scolds.
The thing about Rosetta is that she's one of those people who, in theory, if you take one piece of the package at a time into account, is very attractive.
The other thing about her is that she was making remarks that made him wonder what the hell she was doing out here in Asheville from the day he came in for an interview; the entire make-up of how she treats other people has always appeared so demeaning and belittling and bullying that it took him weeks, maybe months, of being around the ugly feeling she put in his stomach to actually notice that she was irrelevantly so pretty. He spent that entire hellish stretch of hours during the riots pent up with it and the fact that she just sat there content to be safe while he was crawling out of his skin wondering what was going on outside, the fact that he couldn't believe he was with someone like her for the duration of it. It's not that fact or how she's always been or anything that Nyota said to him about her or what she just said, but all these things at once.
"Or what?" Jim takes a few steps around the table.
"You don't think I'll hesitate to throw you off the job? I don't need to remind you I fired Paul just last week."
"You're going to bring up Paul? Paul, the one who I walked in on you with right here, the day before he skipped town."
"God, don't get so delicate about everything—"
"You did not fire Paul." Jim fervently says, "He had a wife. They were desperate to get off-planet. I can add it up."
But of course he should know that she wouldn't attempt to really deny it; while he's been talking she's gotten out her sixth cigarette of the day and lights it all cool and calm, scrutinizing him mildly.
Something in Jim gets more severe; he's bearing down on her a little now. "How much did you pay him for him to let you fuck him? At least I can know if it was close to worth it," he demands.
That's when just the tips of her mouth hint at the beginning of a wicked smile; that's when she looks him up and down. "How much are you worth?...Is that what you're asking?"
Jim's eyes are gut-driven and cold as he steps into her. He snatches her cigarette and takes one draw from it before he looks right into those abysmal greenish things surrounded by her lashes. "Get on the table," he says.
There she is, eyes cocking in some filthy type of contentment as she backs up the half-step and hoists herself up in a quick movement, and inches farther in, knees high and resting back on her hands in something almost like a coyly inviting pin-up pose.
He laughs at her.
"Oh, wow," he gets out through his cocky sudden mirth. "At least I know I've still got it. You just...fucking hopped right off your feet there like a five-year-old getting on a ferris wheel. Jesus."
He accompanies his laughter with a mocking toss of a motion, and there's an overturning realization of what this is coming into her face. She slowly scoots back to the edge of the table, her jaw clenching visibly.
"The question you should have been asking is: Is there any conceivable thing that I want that badly?" He says this while he backs up and points somewhere at her, as if at some idea the table itself represents. "And: Yes. Yes, there is."
He tosses her cigarette into the sink by the door, and then shrugs.
"But it's nothing you can give me." This he says while walking back up to her to lean in right at her ear, and say, "I quit."
He is probably all the way home by the time she realizes that the tip cash from her pockets is gone.
Bones is leaning into the counter going over some medical inventory and Nyota is sitting reading the PADD press when he saunters into the kitchen with a not-quite-sheepish expression. He's sitting down next to Nyota but she doesn't seem to notice him until Bones does, and moves his work to the table with a perturbed expression. "I thought you went in to work," he says.
Jim nervously does some little rhythmic knocking against the table. He meets Nyota's eyes before he says, "I lost the job."
Her eyes soften at him, and Bones doesn't find it all that strange when she briskly changes the topic by bopping a couple commands into the PADD and then sliding it over to Jim.
"That ad on the bottom right corner?" She takes a sip from her glass, puts it down and declares, "I am going to win that contest."
Jim looks over at her, down on the ad, back to her again, an eyebrow cocking in bemusement.
"You sing?"
She's slowly nodding, slowly grinning.
"You sing?"
It's an actually refreshing challenge for Scotty and Jim to fabricate Nyota an identity with enough non-suspicious specifics in time to get her under the wire of the sign-up deadline for the contest, and by then she has exactly two weeks to prepare. She hasn't done a lot of singing even for fun lately, and seems to spend the first few days of time at the house warming her voice back up. One morning Bones and Jim are both crammed in front of the sink while she sings in the shower, Bones calling out scales and song requests until she starts making up lyrics to what she doesn't know, giving them both fits of snickers while they're trying to brush their teeth.
Jill comes over one day saying, "This is all I could find" and dumping a pile of crimson silk-like fabric in front of Nyota, who only mentioned in passing to her that they needed to somehow come up with a decent gown. Nyota looks at her and the fabric in blinking surprise as she even hands over some suggestions she got from an acquaintance who knows more than most of them about sewing.
They all help with the dress when they're not at work. One evening finds all of them sitting on the floor with plates of snacks and a couple sewing kits watching a miniseries, Nyota telling Scotty, "Give that over to Jim after you pin it. That part's really exposed and I think his stitches are the neatest."
"My stitches are beautiful," Jim hums around the needle clamped in his lips, playful and cocky in the eyes.
"Jim, please try not to swallow any pointed objects," Bones mutters. "And don't hold it in your teeth either—"
"So, Jill," Jim interrupts, with a look at Bones that might as well say, Yes, I am in fact five years old but then reverting immediately into something more serious. "Tell me about the revolutions." And Jill does.
The current state of friction between small abolitionist movements and the larger political powers is the fourth rebellion against Terra by Terrans that has ever been notable enough to make up what is or will become history. Despite the small size of the Knot and the relatively ineffectual protest of the rest of the town, they are part of a quiet phenomenon. Jill knows for a fact that the most well-built anti-slavery area is not here but somewhere in Sweden, and also hears rumors that there is a highly secretive one that's literally underground in Calcutta.
Only forty years before now was a controversially and arguably over-sensationalized trend in New York, where a number of servants used in smaller establishments proved to be effective enough businesspeople that many of them were coerced into more cooperative collaboration by being paid a small sum under the table. This phenomenon escalated quickly into the mostly indifferent public awareness, and while it took years for the authorities to intervene, it had already been wryly nicknamed "Little Ferenginar" for its high population of quietly infuential Ferengi who in some cases started as slaves and became merely poorly paid immigrants lurking in the lowest class. As rebellions go, it was weak and profit-driven, and the Imperial forces mostly came in and shut down many of the businesses on the basis of the anti-imperial pro-independent attitudes of the locals. Business licenses were revoked, and local officials imprisoned. It was one of the first of recent concerns that led to the blacklist as well as much stricter monitoring of slavery in industries.
A long time before then in the 2170s, a small crew in the Imperial fleet allegedly attempted the type of more peaceful economic negotiations not unlike the ones Captain Spock was attempting before his disappearance. It is unknown what eventually happened to this crew; the official explanation is that a group of Vulcans found their ship in a compromised state and took them out while they were defenseless, but it is understood in certain groups that this was quite possibly a misunderstanding that the Empire willingly allowed in order to instill fear towards the concept of cooperative diplomacy, if they did not fabricate the story themselves.
The first ever attempt to vocalize protest against the Terran Empire occurred in the mid-to-late 20th century, when what would become the Empire was first rising from its roots of a small and secretive political party to a constant presence in politics. A prominent counter-culture founded on peaceful protests grew into the sub-cultural basis of many personal rights movements in North America, using expression through artistic means to breed resistance against the monarchy. The head of the government may not have been directly involved in the backlash, but he allowed it, when in a riot much like what happened at the Knot, a music festival was bombarded with armed terrorists who slaughtered over 20,000 civilians. Quiet conspiracy was clearly abandoned; the Empire had installed itself into a position of threatening influence and was content to prevail by maintaining terror.
However, the eventual contact with alien forces eventually allowed Terra to return to a state of relative hegemony, once hostility towards these new outsiders gradually supplanted domestic racism and sexism. Xenophobia took on an increasingly abstract form of fear that allowed the now technologically apt Imperial Starfleet to be hailed or at least respected as an important defense; this attitude was used for the Empire's gain in allying directly with the Fleet in order to exploit other species, reap the benefits of space colonization, and gain enough economic success to provide for the Terran population and inspire the utmost pride in Earth that would put tremendous uninterrupted power in the officials' hands.
This shifting paradigm of the people's ideas is of course, Jim can imagine, not directly implied in any history records; but Jill tells it this way like it's completely obvious.
"They still love the music, though."
"Hmm?" Nyota is looking up from reading something at Jim's last remark to Jill.
"Haven't you noticed a lot of the music they play here is really, really old? A lot of it's from that era; I've noticed that twentieth century music is pretty popular, and probably a lot of it was part of the political movements."
"Oh, yeah." Nyota shrugs. "It's not surprising that they'd be into any and all music from Earth. It's not like back home when you'd walk into a restaurant and hear pop music from other planets every once in a while. This club I'm singing at, their whole theme is like a...glammy rock and roll revival."
"Do you know what song you're doing?" Jill asks her.
"Yes." Nyota says it with a little grin, keeping it to herself for whatever reason.
This is the day they're finishing up on the most important part of the dress. Jill keeps wrapping the stiff fabric around the sides and back of Nyota's neck to make sure it covers up the brand, and there's been much idle debate over whether the high collar is going to look terribly matronly, but they don't have much of a choice.
Jim goes into his work shift and comes home later, and hasn't realized that the dress is done as quickly as he realizes some more vague noise of exclamation in the front of his mind.
She's muttering as she looks into their only mirror. "They're gonna know the minute I walk in that something's off about me, I look so...hungry and—"
"Ah, none of that, now," Scotty's protesting. "You look fucking marvelous."
Jim takes back any concerns he shared that the gown might end up looking too stately. It's gorgeous. Even with the simple work on the skirt, the fabric is so rich and resonant it speaks for itself against her skin; the sleeveless boasting of her beautiful shoulders leading into the narrow style of the high collar gives her a regal sophistication. The uniqueness of it is bold rather than anywhere close to ridiculous. It should go without saying considering she's going to be getting up on a stage, but really, she has no hope of not being very, very noticed.
Nyota sees him in the doorway. She furrows her brow. "Are you coming in or out?"
"—Oh." Jim swallows and steps inside. She looks a little perplexed by him and is looking back into the mirror, when Bones cocks an eyebrow at Jim, looking like he's suppressing a laugh.
The actual stress over the real danger of what they're doing finally kicks in the night that they're heading to the front gate for their one-time-out. That League member Charlie is working the security and looks extremely curious about what they're doing. She tries to convince them in slightly broken Standard that it's too risky to go messing around when there could be some slavers skulking around the boundary, probably confused by Nyota already wearing the gown in the passenger seat. But she waves them through in the end, not acquainted enough with them to really make it her business.
"Bones."
Jim is in the back seat resting his temple against one of his hands while Bones drives the three of them; the plan is for him to drop them off and pick them up later because while they really couldn't let Nyota go alone it seemed like a really bad idea to all show up to the party. Bones is acting as jittery as Jim feels, slamming his thumb against the wheel in an irregular rhythm. Jim repeats his name in mild irritation.
"Sorry," Bones says, moving his hands lower on the wheel.
Thankfully contestants were scheduled in the order in which they registered, meaning that Nyota's up second to last and they're able to get there fashionably late. Bones drops them off a few blocks away after they decide the vehicle is considerably far from upper-crust style, and Jim finds it kind of reassuring as he and Nyota walk up to the club that they're both a little good at slipping in anywhere like they own the place. He's already given Bones the reassuring lecture about how nobody's going to think anything other than "Funny how she looks like..." He has to admit it's only now he's gotten to really convincing himself of it.
The club is called Edie's and is about what Jim expected, only bigger, everything a sort of glamorous expensive version of your average night life without the seedy low lighting and a lot more space for shimmying, not that anyone looks like they're one to shimmy. There are some round tables that seem mostly filled up, with half of the crowd only standing around. Jim and Nyota have already decided to split up, make it look for the most part like they're both there alone. She heads up to the front and is talking to some man, maybe the pianist or somebody like that, while Jim finds a place to sit at the bar in the far back.
There are Orion servants working the place. It's pretty atypical to see them around, as Jim understands they were introduced into Terran slavery around Tokyo. He thinks, dryly, that the owner must have thought they'd match the drapes.
A group is on stage singing "Long Cool Woman" when Nyota is across the room chatting up some guy just to look busy; he offers her the seat next to him, and something stirs in Jim at noticing the girl the same time she does: There's a child who's small enough to have to strain to reach the glass on the table, carrying a pitcher in a clearly tired shaking grasp. She refills the glass and puts it back before Nyota composes herself into looking unfazed by it. They've seen a lot of things, but never a slave quite that young. And it's obvious, he knew they existed, but seeing it is another thing. Especially here, where she seems like a cruel afterthought to the enforced sexuality of the other slaves who all look like game show grinners all down their bodies except for the numb faces.
The night before was when Jill finally told Jim, as if he needed to really understand this to accept her previous apology, what had happened to make her hate Starfleet so much. She'd started by saying that she'd been bought and owned by a commander during her childhood and really, she could have stopped there, because that was enough and Jim has almost suspected as much. But she gave him the rest because she needed him to understand, and like she wouldn't be brave enough to say it again for a very long time, and he let her.
Her owner had only ever had her call him Tony, and that was the only thing she ever knew him by. Jill remembers being happy the day she was purchased. Tony was kind to her, treating her in every way like he had simply wanted to adopt a child; not knowing any better, Jill began to think of him as her father. He gave her much more of an education than the usual slave could hope to have. She could read whatever she wanted, she could pick out what she wore, and if she was never permitted to leave his room on the ship, she never thought anything of the locked door.
Then one day, after owning her for years, Tony brought another slave home: a Romulan male a few years older than she was. Out of jealousy, she hated him instantly. She wasn't given as much food as before and was told that it was because Tony had to provide for the boy as well. Tony treated him with vague derision, as if to impress upon Jill that he was inferior, as much of a burden to him as to her.
And one day he took them both down to shore leave with him, saying that it was for a special occasion. While Tony was taking a nap, the boy sternly warned Jill to be quiet. And then he used what strength he had to hold the man down long enough to stab him with his own switchblade.
He stabbed him six times. It took Jill the next six years of running with the boy to forgive him for existing, to forgive him for killing Tony, to forgive him for being the only thing she had in the world.
Jill didn't say up until that point—but Jim didn't have to be told, from the way she looked when she explained—that the boy had been Tom.
It was years and years after, when she was a woman, when she was in the company of other escaped slaves on Earth that she learned the "common practices" from her friend Maria, who Jill vividly remembers blurting out over a couple beers, "You realize he was going to force you two to fuck sooner or later?"
Maybe as some sickly means of getting his rocks off without the girl actually hating him, like he was only a gentle enough man to need some filter over what it is to do that to a kid; maybe some other circuitous way of planting a sense of safety between him and Jill that he could later exploit. Maria hadn't known, but she was so certain it had to be something like that, like this was something she'd heard of again and again. Jill wanted to punch her in the face over it, didn't think it added up, but when she started to think about the way Tom had always been with her growing up, distant and fiercely protective in equal measures, it slowly roared into some sense for her.
And when Jill had told Jim this, it was the first time, even after how far they'd all gone to prove they couldn't stand for these things, that he was forced to put a face to everything. And suddenly he was flooded with the images of so many alien people he'd met back home; all the friendly acquaintances he'd sat next to in training and met at the outposts and accepted into his crew, he wondered, were they somewhere here too, being sold and stripped of every last virtue or good word there was to be said. He couldn't help praying that they simply didn't exist.
That hilarious bartender who worked some of the academy-catered events. That librarian who somehow memorized everyone's names so that you wouldn't have to get out your ID code. The cadet who had shivered wonderfully when being kissed on her shoulders; her roommate, also foreign, who they'd thrown a small party for when her parents couldn't make it into the country for a holiday. And Gaila...
He didn't sleep at all last night.
He gets up.
It takes only a look at Nyota for her to furrow her brows and say some polite word to the man at the table, get up and follow him into the little hallway where some jackets are hanging. They back up a bit out of sight.
"Hey," Jim interrupts her before she can ask anything. "I won't be able to watch, so don't worry when you don't see me out there, okay?"
She stammers, "Okay, what—"
"Get out of here as soon as possible when you're done. We'll have the car outside the west door waiting for you. Okay?...You're gonna knock them dead, you know." He wants to say more, but he doesn't want her to worry. So he settles on, "You look beautiful," and he kisses her on her temple, a helpless aching worry making it fervent and final.
She's clearly jumpy and worried anyway and wants to ask what's going on, but she's supposed to get to the stage now. After he gives her his best reassuring smile she anxiously ducks back out of the hall, and he can sense her forcing herself into cool and calm even across the distance.
"Bones."
"...Yeah?" the voice comes back quickly on his communicator.
"Pull up, about half a block away in the back."
"Already?"
"Yeah." Jim adds, "It could be a few minutes," and then cuts it off.
He's mostly watching across the crowd for the next few minutes, and he does get to see the beginning of Nyota's performance as he's leaning into the threshold at the edge of the hallway. It slides into the noise and takes him by surprise, because he isn't looking at the stage anymore by the time she's gotten up there.
Nyota's singing voice had a ghostly status to him thus far; he's heard it from the other side of the shower door, or from another room, but he's never seen her sing. It feels in a way the opposite of how a song will seem to sound better when you close your eyes and take it in, because seeing it come out of her is the first time it feels gorgeous and full and grieving. The song is not a love song, but she sings it like everyone in the audience has broken her heart, and he can tell that the feeling of it is somehow transfixing; some people are still muttering to each other at the front, the servers serving, glasses being raised. But slowly.
She's at the second verse when he sees the girl disappear into the back kitchen door, moves back into the hall. He checks around and then snatches a coat off of the rack, folding it neatly over his arm and striding across the ballroom at a steady go.
Walks back to the offices, looks around again, this time waiting longer.
He finally takes the chance to step quickly into the back hallway, scanning around for some direction that seems to make sense. There is a nicely furnished office visible through the door on his right; he goes for the more dull-looking lines of doors down in the other direction.
When one of them opens, he's planning his act of stupid visitor, and then notices it's a slave.
"Hey," he walks up, and the young man looks at him nervously. "Do you know the young girl, the little one that's—"
The kid's shaking his head automatically, as if he's always getting mistaken for effective customer service.
"I don't even know how—" He shakes his head, feeling ridiculous and frantic. "There was a very young girl working as a servant; I want to free her. Can you bring her to me?"
The Orion is extremely wary. He looks him up and down, backing up as if he plans to put up a fight. And before Jim has any grasp on what to say next, he suddenly goes through the door he just came out of.
Jim has his lips pressed firmly together. He takes a shifting half-step forward, pauses, and then bluntly walks right in after.
The small uproar is immediate, nine or so of the slaves looking his way and disputing with the one who just came in. One finally comes straight forward, and suddenly a woman is slapping Jim across the face, alarmingly hard.
He's leaning over in astonishment, still recovering when she kicks him sharply in the right shin.
"Fucking. Jesus. Fucking. Mother. Fuck." He manages to seethe quickly through it, but before he can stand up straight again she knocks a punch to his face that lands badly aimed but still lands his back sharply against the wall.
Rubbing vaguely at where she punched him, he looks back at her, eyes placid steel. He's beginning to suspect what this is, some test of his character that's about all they can do in limited time.
He shrugs as he stands back up straight. "We can do this all day, but I'm not gonna hit you back."
And after a second she looks at him intently, an inner battle flicking in her eyes.
"I'm from the Knot. Do you know what that means?"
She doesn't seem to, but one of the other servants goes wide-eyed, grabs her arm and says something fast and quiet.
"You can't let him take Madda," one of the others suddenly wails. "Please."
"Don't be selfish, Noni," the woman in front of Jim is scolding, not turning her glance away from him. He wonders if she's also saying it to herself.
Another one in the small throng, a man, is the first to take action. "We don't have time to argue."
What happens next Jim will never completely figure out; some form of cryptic democracy with a set of code they all know like the back of their hands. It's intriguing, thinking why they would often need it, especially when it's among a species he's only ever come across as the most politically unorganized pirates running around the galaxy. But they're clearly well organized and respectful of it, and Jim is impressed with the fact that it probably saves him a lot of time.
"Sona?"
"Second law."
"Noni."
"Third law."
"Bela."
"Second."
"Manyl."
"Second."
He turns to the woman who was striking Jim before, already knowing, but she says, "Second."
"That's majority in favor," the man quips, not seeming eager to shut down the young girl who's crying now, but immediately turns to Jim. "Go to the bathroom."
"The main bathroom?" Jim's eyebrows go up, but he doesn't argue; he looks around for just a flicker before leaving as fast as he came in.
He goes, and he waits, wondering if this is all some elaborate distraction and they're really way too distrustful of him and somebody's gonna come in here after somebody's told the authorities. He's starting to feel anxious about Nyota. He can't help it; even when he knows she's charismatic enough not to be suspicious at all, there's that fucking brand, it's always there. They did their homework and almost wanted to pull out of the whole thing when they knew for sure that neither of them would be let into the club with a phaser, but Nyota was the one to point out that one gun against a security team wouldn't have been much help in any case if they were recognized. As if that made any of them feel better.
Jim lets out a breath when the door of the bathroom opens; now it's a teenager he didn't meet before and she's chattering quickly in Orion with the girl, crouching down to give her what sounds like commands and reassurances. She finally leads the child over to Jim with a final, somewhat emotional baby-sitterly squeeze.
"She doesn't like to talk much," she warns Jim. "But at least she'll be quiet. You're going out this window."
"There's more security working that side—"
"It is the best way out. One of us is going to attempt some kind of diversion to get one of them away, but you don't have time to wait and see if it works." Jim ignores the grim thought of what kind of reprimand is coming to whoever tries to "divert" a member of security.
She has already taken the coat and started helping Madda into it, tucking her hair into the hood. "You'll have to go back in and leave through the rehearsal room."
And hope nobody notices that he's carrying somebody green. Right.
He can't help asking, "Has anybody ever done this before?"
"People have tried before. Maybe even for the right reasons." She considers him. "Though you're the first to come to us about it first, so you have a chance."
The window is wide and easy to get out of, and they're lucky that the locked bathroom door is only getting pounded on when they're in the process of letting the girl down into his arms. She's unresistant out of obedience; even in the middle of all the urgency he has the compulsion to mutter something to her.
"You ready to blow this joint, honey?" He's saying this once he's made it onto the balcony-style roof level that is mostly decorative, not even that far off the ground, but he knows if he wasn't told to run off that way that it's probably a bad idea. He finally finds a patio-style door propped open and just walks in with the least suspicious bravado he can manage; thankfully no one's in the little smoking room, but he hears some voices right around the entrance.
He hikes up the girl into a sturdier grasp, holds his breath as it ends up being a matter of ducking out while none of the guests just outside are looking his way, then just falling into a casual stride.
He hasn't walked straight into this bad a risk since he was on missions regularly, but his spine is still there, his brawn pulsing steady through the actions as he makes it down the little hall, sees the rehearsal room, goes in.
There are about fourteen people, several of them crowded closer to the piano in the corner, the rest sitting down looking tired or being chatty. None of them look over at him, except for one woman who gives the stern look of knowing he isn't supposed to be there but not really caring; and a man standing looking out the back door, who looks over, and looks straight down at the bundle of coated little girl in his arms.
Something jumping in his chest, Jim grins. "Cold out there." Overly friendly, like the man was observing that his daughter was cute or something. The man cocks his eyebrow, and looks back out the window.
Jim understands why he was told to leave here when he notices that security can probably see him but only from afar; by the time he's reached the front walkway he's probably too much of a blur for them to even realize he isn't just carrying some kind of instrument.
Holy fuck, but he actually reaches the car.
Bones seems to jolt in inattentive surprise when Jim pulls open one of the back doors, quickly smuggling him and Madda into the back.
He's sitting behind the passenger seat, settling her in the middle seat with light calming gestures. "As soon as she gets here, you take off, but don't take 56, take the highway."
Bones is looking into the back. Then forward. Then back again, slowly.
"...What is that?" he evenly demands.
"Her name is Madda."
Bones is giving Jim a horrified glare, like how dare he pull that without telling him he was going to pull it, looking at the girl again with a gaping indecision in what he wants to say, when they hear the sudden fast click of heels.
The left back door opens and a swish of silky burgundy lands into the opposite seat. Bones starts driving, and Nyota's saying, "The piano guy got so chatty afterward, I..."
She stills right in the middle when she notices the girl. Then she is looking at Jim like she has never seen him before.
"Do you know if Jill might be at the house?" Jim asks.
"No..." Bones answers, still clumsy with incredulity. "I was just talking to Scotty, I don't think she's around."
"I was thinking we could ask her what we should probably do."
"We can't take care of her," Nyota says, but is almost beaming at the girl; Jim can tell she's resisting the instinct to comfort her physically, and she only fingers her dress and says, "Put on the music. Maybe she likes it."
She almost seems to, and though they're steeling with anxiety all the way to the highway, a giddy disbelief is washing over everyone by the time they're a third of the way home.
"You stole a slave!"
Jim and Nyota are grinning at the outburst while he dutifully corrects, "You can't steal a person, Bones."
"Fine, you fucking freed somebody. You are honest to hell crazy, Jim, I don't think I even want to know how close you just came to—"
"That's not all," Nyota is biting her lip under the grin; just as Jim looks over she's pushing a credit chip into his hand. His eyes are doing lightning strikes between her and it before he pushes the button to check the number, and practically croons.
"Holy hell!"
She almost keels over in laughter while reaching to put the chip away.
"You won?!"
She's nodding and nodding and everything is giddy and bouncing as he lets out another laugh and leans over and they're holding each other's faces for a happy impulsive kiss before they even realize they're crowding over Madda and then just laughing about it more.
Madda finally warms up to Nyota enough to start talking idly, but Jim can only pick up a few words and phrases in Orion. He doesn't like that she seems to be all buckled down and obedient, like she's not really able to perceive them with the trust she'd give a fellow Orion. It just frustrates him that it's hard to be sure how scared she is.
When they finally arrive at the front gate, Charlie slowly puts her drink down next to her in confusion.
"Where did you get her?"
"Close to Manchester," Jim replies with a shrug.
While Bones is looking Madda over with a tricorder, Gene, apparently the other person working the entrance, comes up to them with a brighter form of astonishment.
"What did you guys do?" He crouches down in front of the girl. "Hey, you. You tired?"
"She doesn't speak a lot of Standard, I don't think," Nyota says.
"She's kinda tiny," he observes, tapping her on the nose in a teasing way, and the girl very slightly smiles. "You want some food, huh?...How is she?"
That question was directed at Bones, who gives a lilt of his head. "She could definitely use some food. She's got a cold, but she's really pretty much alright."
"We gotta get you something to chow on, string bean. And some serious sleep. Hmm?" He tweaks her nose again, looks at the rest of them. "You all look pretty tired. I'll talk to the league about what to do with her. For tonight she can stay at my place, if that's alright with you."
Bones kind of furrows his eyebrows, but Jim isn't worried. Gene wouldn't have been somebody he thought of to take her to, but he had no idea what to expect bringing an Orion girl in here and it's probably lucky they already found somebody who's compassionate about it.
"Thanks, Gene," Nyota says.
"Yeah," he just nods all casually at them, already starting to gently poise the girl away with him by the shoulders, and she goes away easy like she already trusts him.
The first thing Scotty asks later that night after evaluating with a squint that Jim has a bruise forming on his face and also that no one looks shaken, is, "You get rammy with somebody?"
"Get what?" Bones barks, laughing.
"In a fight? No," Jim provides. "...It's a long story."
"Yeah, very uneventful evening," Nyota says, slick and smiling and still looking great in that dress. And proceeds to tell him everything that happened in a way that makes Scotty certain she's kidding for an honestly ridiculously long time of trying to convince him she's not.
"How old's the girl?" he finally asks.
"I don't know. 'Bout that high," Jim puts out an arm and then shrugs. "Brown hair, cute big eyes. I have a soft spot. But Gene took her for now. She shouldn't really be with humans anyway."
"Is this what you're gonna do, then?...If we get the ship, I mean."
"What I'm gonna do?" Jim's look is cynical and crooked as if deterring them from something. "As if it's all up to me."
Without even coming close to answering the question, he shrugs out of his dress jacket and leaves to go get ready for bed.
>Apotropaism
Jim's favorite regular at Rosetta's is a middle-aged woman who comes in for a hard drink a few times a week and can't seem to remember that he doesn't like to be called James. The first morning after the front gate is up again, she's sitting and deeply forlorn at the bar an hour after Jim comes in.
He approaches her when he has a rest from his tables, pauses at the sight of her idly turning some scrap of paper around in her fingers. "Hey, Molly," he quietly greets.
Some sad smile and a couple small-talk comments later, she says, "Did you and yours stay safe during all the mess?"
There are too many complicated ways he could answer that question. "I lost a...friend of a friend. But I can't say we weren't lucky."
He looks at her for a moment, at how she hasn't looked up at all, and he's about to go refill another drink when she says, "They took my brother."
Rosetta is on the comm at the other end of the bar; she looks over and scrutinizes the sad dismantled woman nursing her gin, and cocks an eyebrow. Jim has stopped moving for the moment, and finally just takes a couple steps back and leans into Molly's space enough to whisper, "I'm sorry."
"Branded him and hauled him off just like he was..." She shakes her head, finally showing tear-streaked eyes. "He'll be sold somewhere. There are not that many people who want to own humans, you know, that's the terrible part. That I know he must be going to the worst."
Jim is about to try to reassure her, tell her her brother could just be put in a factory somewhere, when Rosetta whistles shrilly, prodding him to look over. She's holding a comm in the crook of her neck and indicating that she needs him in the stock room, and with an irritated slap against the bar he walks off to oblige.
Rosetta (Jim thinks there's no way that's her actual name) gives him a couple waves while she's still talking on the comm, gesturing for him to carry a couple wine boxes. In another half-minute she hangs up the comm and taps it in thought against her hand, as if trying to remember something she was going to say.
"Oh, Jim...."
He sighs from a couple feet away and turns to look at her.
She mouths, Molly? while she points at the door, mockingly. "Milk that for all it's worth, just make sure she's sober enough to pay the tab."
"...You're a fucking animal, you know that?"
He didn't think before he said it, but he's unyielding, glaring at her when she tersely turns back to him to lean with a hand onto the low wooden table that's between the two of them, eyebrows going high. He gives her a look as if to say it sure as hell isn't his turn to say something, almost shrugging back at her. "You better watch it, Cyrus," she boredly scolds.
The thing about Rosetta is that she's one of those people who, in theory, if you take one piece of the package at a time into account, is very attractive.
The other thing about her is that she was making remarks that made him wonder what the hell she was doing out here in Asheville from the day he came in for an interview; the entire make-up of how she treats other people has always appeared so demeaning and belittling and bullying that it took him weeks, maybe months, of being around the ugly feeling she put in his stomach to actually notice that she was irrelevantly so pretty. He spent that entire hellish stretch of hours during the riots pent up with it and the fact that she just sat there content to be safe while he was crawling out of his skin wondering what was going on outside, the fact that he couldn't believe he was with someone like her for the duration of it. It's not that fact or how she's always been or anything that Nyota said to him about her or what she just said, but all these things at once.
"Or what?" Jim takes a few steps around the table.
"You don't think I'll hesitate to throw you off the job? I don't need to remind you I fired Paul just last week."
"You're going to bring up Paul? Paul, the one who I walked in on you with right here, the day before he skipped town."
"God, don't get so delicate about everything—"
"You did not fire Paul." Jim fervently says, "He had a wife. They were desperate to get off-planet. I can add it up."
But of course he should know that she wouldn't attempt to really deny it; while he's been talking she's gotten out her sixth cigarette of the day and lights it all cool and calm, scrutinizing him mildly.
Something in Jim gets more severe; he's bearing down on her a little now. "How much did you pay him for him to let you fuck him? At least I can know if it was close to worth it," he demands.
That's when just the tips of her mouth hint at the beginning of a wicked smile; that's when she looks him up and down. "How much are you worth?...Is that what you're asking?"
Jim's eyes are gut-driven and cold as he steps into her. He snatches her cigarette and takes one draw from it before he looks right into those abysmal greenish things surrounded by her lashes. "Get on the table," he says.
There she is, eyes cocking in some filthy type of contentment as she backs up the half-step and hoists herself up in a quick movement, and inches farther in, knees high and resting back on her hands in something almost like a coyly inviting pin-up pose.
He laughs at her.
"Oh, wow," he gets out through his cocky sudden mirth. "At least I know I've still got it. You just...fucking hopped right off your feet there like a five-year-old getting on a ferris wheel. Jesus."
He accompanies his laughter with a mocking toss of a motion, and there's an overturning realization of what this is coming into her face. She slowly scoots back to the edge of the table, her jaw clenching visibly.
"The question you should have been asking is: Is there any conceivable thing that I want that badly?" He says this while he backs up and points somewhere at her, as if at some idea the table itself represents. "And: Yes. Yes, there is."
He tosses her cigarette into the sink by the door, and then shrugs.
"But it's nothing you can give me." This he says while walking back up to her to lean in right at her ear, and say, "I quit."
He is probably all the way home by the time she realizes that the tip cash from her pockets is gone.
Bones is leaning into the counter going over some medical inventory and Nyota is sitting reading the PADD press when he saunters into the kitchen with a not-quite-sheepish expression. He's sitting down next to Nyota but she doesn't seem to notice him until Bones does, and moves his work to the table with a perturbed expression. "I thought you went in to work," he says.
Jim nervously does some little rhythmic knocking against the table. He meets Nyota's eyes before he says, "I lost the job."
Her eyes soften at him, and Bones doesn't find it all that strange when she briskly changes the topic by bopping a couple commands into the PADD and then sliding it over to Jim.
"That ad on the bottom right corner?" She takes a sip from her glass, puts it down and declares, "I am going to win that contest."
Jim looks over at her, down on the ad, back to her again, an eyebrow cocking in bemusement.
"You sing?"
She's slowly nodding, slowly grinning.
"You sing?"
It's an actually refreshing challenge for Scotty and Jim to fabricate Nyota an identity with enough non-suspicious specifics in time to get her under the wire of the sign-up deadline for the contest, and by then she has exactly two weeks to prepare. She hasn't done a lot of singing even for fun lately, and seems to spend the first few days of time at the house warming her voice back up. One morning Bones and Jim are both crammed in front of the sink while she sings in the shower, Bones calling out scales and song requests until she starts making up lyrics to what she doesn't know, giving them both fits of snickers while they're trying to brush their teeth.
Jill comes over one day saying, "This is all I could find" and dumping a pile of crimson silk-like fabric in front of Nyota, who only mentioned in passing to her that they needed to somehow come up with a decent gown. Nyota looks at her and the fabric in blinking surprise as she even hands over some suggestions she got from an acquaintance who knows more than most of them about sewing.
They all help with the dress when they're not at work. One evening finds all of them sitting on the floor with plates of snacks and a couple sewing kits watching a miniseries, Nyota telling Scotty, "Give that over to Jim after you pin it. That part's really exposed and I think his stitches are the neatest."
"My stitches are beautiful," Jim hums around the needle clamped in his lips, playful and cocky in the eyes.
"Jim, please try not to swallow any pointed objects," Bones mutters. "And don't hold it in your teeth either—"
"So, Jill," Jim interrupts, with a look at Bones that might as well say, Yes, I am in fact five years old but then reverting immediately into something more serious. "Tell me about the revolutions." And Jill does.
The current state of friction between small abolitionist movements and the larger political powers is the fourth rebellion against Terra by Terrans that has ever been notable enough to make up what is or will become history. Despite the small size of the Knot and the relatively ineffectual protest of the rest of the town, they are part of a quiet phenomenon. Jill knows for a fact that the most well-built anti-slavery area is not here but somewhere in Sweden, and also hears rumors that there is a highly secretive one that's literally underground in Calcutta.
Only forty years before now was a controversially and arguably over-sensationalized trend in New York, where a number of servants used in smaller establishments proved to be effective enough businesspeople that many of them were coerced into more cooperative collaboration by being paid a small sum under the table. This phenomenon escalated quickly into the mostly indifferent public awareness, and while it took years for the authorities to intervene, it had already been wryly nicknamed "Little Ferenginar" for its high population of quietly infuential Ferengi who in some cases started as slaves and became merely poorly paid immigrants lurking in the lowest class. As rebellions go, it was weak and profit-driven, and the Imperial forces mostly came in and shut down many of the businesses on the basis of the anti-imperial pro-independent attitudes of the locals. Business licenses were revoked, and local officials imprisoned. It was one of the first of recent concerns that led to the blacklist as well as much stricter monitoring of slavery in industries.
A long time before then in the 2170s, a small crew in the Imperial fleet allegedly attempted the type of more peaceful economic negotiations not unlike the ones Captain Spock was attempting before his disappearance. It is unknown what eventually happened to this crew; the official explanation is that a group of Vulcans found their ship in a compromised state and took them out while they were defenseless, but it is understood in certain groups that this was quite possibly a misunderstanding that the Empire willingly allowed in order to instill fear towards the concept of cooperative diplomacy, if they did not fabricate the story themselves.
The first ever attempt to vocalize protest against the Terran Empire occurred in the mid-to-late 20th century, when what would become the Empire was first rising from its roots of a small and secretive political party to a constant presence in politics. A prominent counter-culture founded on peaceful protests grew into the sub-cultural basis of many personal rights movements in North America, using expression through artistic means to breed resistance against the monarchy. The head of the government may not have been directly involved in the backlash, but he allowed it, when in a riot much like what happened at the Knot, a music festival was bombarded with armed terrorists who slaughtered over 20,000 civilians. Quiet conspiracy was clearly abandoned; the Empire had installed itself into a position of threatening influence and was content to prevail by maintaining terror.
However, the eventual contact with alien forces eventually allowed Terra to return to a state of relative hegemony, once hostility towards these new outsiders gradually supplanted domestic racism and sexism. Xenophobia took on an increasingly abstract form of fear that allowed the now technologically apt Imperial Starfleet to be hailed or at least respected as an important defense; this attitude was used for the Empire's gain in allying directly with the Fleet in order to exploit other species, reap the benefits of space colonization, and gain enough economic success to provide for the Terran population and inspire the utmost pride in Earth that would put tremendous uninterrupted power in the officials' hands.
This shifting paradigm of the people's ideas is of course, Jim can imagine, not directly implied in any history records; but Jill tells it this way like it's completely obvious.
"They still love the music, though."
"Hmm?" Nyota is looking up from reading something at Jim's last remark to Jill.
"Haven't you noticed a lot of the music they play here is really, really old? A lot of it's from that era; I've noticed that twentieth century music is pretty popular, and probably a lot of it was part of the political movements."
"Oh, yeah." Nyota shrugs. "It's not surprising that they'd be into any and all music from Earth. It's not like back home when you'd walk into a restaurant and hear pop music from other planets every once in a while. This club I'm singing at, their whole theme is like a...glammy rock and roll revival."
"Do you know what song you're doing?" Jill asks her.
"Yes." Nyota says it with a little grin, keeping it to herself for whatever reason.
This is the day they're finishing up on the most important part of the dress. Jill keeps wrapping the stiff fabric around the sides and back of Nyota's neck to make sure it covers up the brand, and there's been much idle debate over whether the high collar is going to look terribly matronly, but they don't have much of a choice.
Jim goes into his work shift and comes home later, and hasn't realized that the dress is done as quickly as he realizes some more vague noise of exclamation in the front of his mind.
She's muttering as she looks into their only mirror. "They're gonna know the minute I walk in that something's off about me, I look so...hungry and—"
"Ah, none of that, now," Scotty's protesting. "You look fucking marvelous."
Jim takes back any concerns he shared that the gown might end up looking too stately. It's gorgeous. Even with the simple work on the skirt, the fabric is so rich and resonant it speaks for itself against her skin; the sleeveless boasting of her beautiful shoulders leading into the narrow style of the high collar gives her a regal sophistication. The uniqueness of it is bold rather than anywhere close to ridiculous. It should go without saying considering she's going to be getting up on a stage, but really, she has no hope of not being very, very noticed.
Nyota sees him in the doorway. She furrows her brow. "Are you coming in or out?"
"—Oh." Jim swallows and steps inside. She looks a little perplexed by him and is looking back into the mirror, when Bones cocks an eyebrow at Jim, looking like he's suppressing a laugh.
The actual stress over the real danger of what they're doing finally kicks in the night that they're heading to the front gate for their one-time-out. That League member Charlie is working the security and looks extremely curious about what they're doing. She tries to convince them in slightly broken Standard that it's too risky to go messing around when there could be some slavers skulking around the boundary, probably confused by Nyota already wearing the gown in the passenger seat. But she waves them through in the end, not acquainted enough with them to really make it her business.
"Bones."
Jim is in the back seat resting his temple against one of his hands while Bones drives the three of them; the plan is for him to drop them off and pick them up later because while they really couldn't let Nyota go alone it seemed like a really bad idea to all show up to the party. Bones is acting as jittery as Jim feels, slamming his thumb against the wheel in an irregular rhythm. Jim repeats his name in mild irritation.
"Sorry," Bones says, moving his hands lower on the wheel.
Thankfully contestants were scheduled in the order in which they registered, meaning that Nyota's up second to last and they're able to get there fashionably late. Bones drops them off a few blocks away after they decide the vehicle is considerably far from upper-crust style, and Jim finds it kind of reassuring as he and Nyota walk up to the club that they're both a little good at slipping in anywhere like they own the place. He's already given Bones the reassuring lecture about how nobody's going to think anything other than "Funny how she looks like..." He has to admit it's only now he's gotten to really convincing himself of it.
The club is called Edie's and is about what Jim expected, only bigger, everything a sort of glamorous expensive version of your average night life without the seedy low lighting and a lot more space for shimmying, not that anyone looks like they're one to shimmy. There are some round tables that seem mostly filled up, with half of the crowd only standing around. Jim and Nyota have already decided to split up, make it look for the most part like they're both there alone. She heads up to the front and is talking to some man, maybe the pianist or somebody like that, while Jim finds a place to sit at the bar in the far back.
There are Orion servants working the place. It's pretty atypical to see them around, as Jim understands they were introduced into Terran slavery around Tokyo. He thinks, dryly, that the owner must have thought they'd match the drapes.
A group is on stage singing "Long Cool Woman" when Nyota is across the room chatting up some guy just to look busy; he offers her the seat next to him, and something stirs in Jim at noticing the girl the same time she does: There's a child who's small enough to have to strain to reach the glass on the table, carrying a pitcher in a clearly tired shaking grasp. She refills the glass and puts it back before Nyota composes herself into looking unfazed by it. They've seen a lot of things, but never a slave quite that young. And it's obvious, he knew they existed, but seeing it is another thing. Especially here, where she seems like a cruel afterthought to the enforced sexuality of the other slaves who all look like game show grinners all down their bodies except for the numb faces.
The night before was when Jill finally told Jim, as if he needed to really understand this to accept her previous apology, what had happened to make her hate Starfleet so much. She'd started by saying that she'd been bought and owned by a commander during her childhood and really, she could have stopped there, because that was enough and Jim has almost suspected as much. But she gave him the rest because she needed him to understand, and like she wouldn't be brave enough to say it again for a very long time, and he let her.
Her owner had only ever had her call him Tony, and that was the only thing she ever knew him by. Jill remembers being happy the day she was purchased. Tony was kind to her, treating her in every way like he had simply wanted to adopt a child; not knowing any better, Jill began to think of him as her father. He gave her much more of an education than the usual slave could hope to have. She could read whatever she wanted, she could pick out what she wore, and if she was never permitted to leave his room on the ship, she never thought anything of the locked door.
Then one day, after owning her for years, Tony brought another slave home: a Romulan male a few years older than she was. Out of jealousy, she hated him instantly. She wasn't given as much food as before and was told that it was because Tony had to provide for the boy as well. Tony treated him with vague derision, as if to impress upon Jill that he was inferior, as much of a burden to him as to her.
And one day he took them both down to shore leave with him, saying that it was for a special occasion. While Tony was taking a nap, the boy sternly warned Jill to be quiet. And then he used what strength he had to hold the man down long enough to stab him with his own switchblade.
He stabbed him six times. It took Jill the next six years of running with the boy to forgive him for existing, to forgive him for killing Tony, to forgive him for being the only thing she had in the world.
Jill didn't say up until that point—but Jim didn't have to be told, from the way she looked when she explained—that the boy had been Tom.
It was years and years after, when she was a woman, when she was in the company of other escaped slaves on Earth that she learned the "common practices" from her friend Maria, who Jill vividly remembers blurting out over a couple beers, "You realize he was going to force you two to fuck sooner or later?"
Maybe as some sickly means of getting his rocks off without the girl actually hating him, like he was only a gentle enough man to need some filter over what it is to do that to a kid; maybe some other circuitous way of planting a sense of safety between him and Jill that he could later exploit. Maria hadn't known, but she was so certain it had to be something like that, like this was something she'd heard of again and again. Jill wanted to punch her in the face over it, didn't think it added up, but when she started to think about the way Tom had always been with her growing up, distant and fiercely protective in equal measures, it slowly roared into some sense for her.
And when Jill had told Jim this, it was the first time, even after how far they'd all gone to prove they couldn't stand for these things, that he was forced to put a face to everything. And suddenly he was flooded with the images of so many alien people he'd met back home; all the friendly acquaintances he'd sat next to in training and met at the outposts and accepted into his crew, he wondered, were they somewhere here too, being sold and stripped of every last virtue or good word there was to be said. He couldn't help praying that they simply didn't exist.
That hilarious bartender who worked some of the academy-catered events. That librarian who somehow memorized everyone's names so that you wouldn't have to get out your ID code. The cadet who had shivered wonderfully when being kissed on her shoulders; her roommate, also foreign, who they'd thrown a small party for when her parents couldn't make it into the country for a holiday. And Gaila...
He didn't sleep at all last night.
He gets up.
It takes only a look at Nyota for her to furrow her brows and say some polite word to the man at the table, get up and follow him into the little hallway where some jackets are hanging. They back up a bit out of sight.
"Hey," Jim interrupts her before she can ask anything. "I won't be able to watch, so don't worry when you don't see me out there, okay?"
She stammers, "Okay, what—"
"Get out of here as soon as possible when you're done. We'll have the car outside the west door waiting for you. Okay?...You're gonna knock them dead, you know." He wants to say more, but he doesn't want her to worry. So he settles on, "You look beautiful," and he kisses her on her temple, a helpless aching worry making it fervent and final.
She's clearly jumpy and worried anyway and wants to ask what's going on, but she's supposed to get to the stage now. After he gives her his best reassuring smile she anxiously ducks back out of the hall, and he can sense her forcing herself into cool and calm even across the distance.
"Bones."
"...Yeah?" the voice comes back quickly on his communicator.
"Pull up, about half a block away in the back."
"Already?"
"Yeah." Jim adds, "It could be a few minutes," and then cuts it off.
He's mostly watching across the crowd for the next few minutes, and he does get to see the beginning of Nyota's performance as he's leaning into the threshold at the edge of the hallway. It slides into the noise and takes him by surprise, because he isn't looking at the stage anymore by the time she's gotten up there.
Nyota's singing voice had a ghostly status to him thus far; he's heard it from the other side of the shower door, or from another room, but he's never seen her sing. It feels in a way the opposite of how a song will seem to sound better when you close your eyes and take it in, because seeing it come out of her is the first time it feels gorgeous and full and grieving. The song is not a love song, but she sings it like everyone in the audience has broken her heart, and he can tell that the feeling of it is somehow transfixing; some people are still muttering to each other at the front, the servers serving, glasses being raised. But slowly.
She's at the second verse when he sees the girl disappear into the back kitchen door, moves back into the hall. He checks around and then snatches a coat off of the rack, folding it neatly over his arm and striding across the ballroom at a steady go.
Walks back to the offices, looks around again, this time waiting longer.
He finally takes the chance to step quickly into the back hallway, scanning around for some direction that seems to make sense. There is a nicely furnished office visible through the door on his right; he goes for the more dull-looking lines of doors down in the other direction.
When one of them opens, he's planning his act of stupid visitor, and then notices it's a slave.
"Hey," he walks up, and the young man looks at him nervously. "Do you know the young girl, the little one that's—"
The kid's shaking his head automatically, as if he's always getting mistaken for effective customer service.
"I don't even know how—" He shakes his head, feeling ridiculous and frantic. "There was a very young girl working as a servant; I want to free her. Can you bring her to me?"
The Orion is extremely wary. He looks him up and down, backing up as if he plans to put up a fight. And before Jim has any grasp on what to say next, he suddenly goes through the door he just came out of.
Jim has his lips pressed firmly together. He takes a shifting half-step forward, pauses, and then bluntly walks right in after.
The small uproar is immediate, nine or so of the slaves looking his way and disputing with the one who just came in. One finally comes straight forward, and suddenly a woman is slapping Jim across the face, alarmingly hard.
He's leaning over in astonishment, still recovering when she kicks him sharply in the right shin.
"Fucking. Jesus. Fucking. Mother. Fuck." He manages to seethe quickly through it, but before he can stand up straight again she knocks a punch to his face that lands badly aimed but still lands his back sharply against the wall.
Rubbing vaguely at where she punched him, he looks back at her, eyes placid steel. He's beginning to suspect what this is, some test of his character that's about all they can do in limited time.
He shrugs as he stands back up straight. "We can do this all day, but I'm not gonna hit you back."
And after a second she looks at him intently, an inner battle flicking in her eyes.
"I'm from the Knot. Do you know what that means?"
She doesn't seem to, but one of the other servants goes wide-eyed, grabs her arm and says something fast and quiet.
"You can't let him take Madda," one of the others suddenly wails. "Please."
"Don't be selfish, Noni," the woman in front of Jim is scolding, not turning her glance away from him. He wonders if she's also saying it to herself.
Another one in the small throng, a man, is the first to take action. "We don't have time to argue."
What happens next Jim will never completely figure out; some form of cryptic democracy with a set of code they all know like the back of their hands. It's intriguing, thinking why they would often need it, especially when it's among a species he's only ever come across as the most politically unorganized pirates running around the galaxy. But they're clearly well organized and respectful of it, and Jim is impressed with the fact that it probably saves him a lot of time.
"Sona?"
"Second law."
"Noni."
"Third law."
"Bela."
"Second."
"Manyl."
"Second."
He turns to the woman who was striking Jim before, already knowing, but she says, "Second."
"That's majority in favor," the man quips, not seeming eager to shut down the young girl who's crying now, but immediately turns to Jim. "Go to the bathroom."
"The main bathroom?" Jim's eyebrows go up, but he doesn't argue; he looks around for just a flicker before leaving as fast as he came in.
He goes, and he waits, wondering if this is all some elaborate distraction and they're really way too distrustful of him and somebody's gonna come in here after somebody's told the authorities. He's starting to feel anxious about Nyota. He can't help it; even when he knows she's charismatic enough not to be suspicious at all, there's that fucking brand, it's always there. They did their homework and almost wanted to pull out of the whole thing when they knew for sure that neither of them would be let into the club with a phaser, but Nyota was the one to point out that one gun against a security team wouldn't have been much help in any case if they were recognized. As if that made any of them feel better.
Jim lets out a breath when the door of the bathroom opens; now it's a teenager he didn't meet before and she's chattering quickly in Orion with the girl, crouching down to give her what sounds like commands and reassurances. She finally leads the child over to Jim with a final, somewhat emotional baby-sitterly squeeze.
"She doesn't like to talk much," she warns Jim. "But at least she'll be quiet. You're going out this window."
"There's more security working that side—"
"It is the best way out. One of us is going to attempt some kind of diversion to get one of them away, but you don't have time to wait and see if it works." Jim ignores the grim thought of what kind of reprimand is coming to whoever tries to "divert" a member of security.
She has already taken the coat and started helping Madda into it, tucking her hair into the hood. "You'll have to go back in and leave through the rehearsal room."
And hope nobody notices that he's carrying somebody green. Right.
He can't help asking, "Has anybody ever done this before?"
"People have tried before. Maybe even for the right reasons." She considers him. "Though you're the first to come to us about it first, so you have a chance."
The window is wide and easy to get out of, and they're lucky that the locked bathroom door is only getting pounded on when they're in the process of letting the girl down into his arms. She's unresistant out of obedience; even in the middle of all the urgency he has the compulsion to mutter something to her.
"You ready to blow this joint, honey?" He's saying this once he's made it onto the balcony-style roof level that is mostly decorative, not even that far off the ground, but he knows if he wasn't told to run off that way that it's probably a bad idea. He finally finds a patio-style door propped open and just walks in with the least suspicious bravado he can manage; thankfully no one's in the little smoking room, but he hears some voices right around the entrance.
He hikes up the girl into a sturdier grasp, holds his breath as it ends up being a matter of ducking out while none of the guests just outside are looking his way, then just falling into a casual stride.
He hasn't walked straight into this bad a risk since he was on missions regularly, but his spine is still there, his brawn pulsing steady through the actions as he makes it down the little hall, sees the rehearsal room, goes in.
There are about fourteen people, several of them crowded closer to the piano in the corner, the rest sitting down looking tired or being chatty. None of them look over at him, except for one woman who gives the stern look of knowing he isn't supposed to be there but not really caring; and a man standing looking out the back door, who looks over, and looks straight down at the bundle of coated little girl in his arms.
Something jumping in his chest, Jim grins. "Cold out there." Overly friendly, like the man was observing that his daughter was cute or something. The man cocks his eyebrow, and looks back out the window.
Jim understands why he was told to leave here when he notices that security can probably see him but only from afar; by the time he's reached the front walkway he's probably too much of a blur for them to even realize he isn't just carrying some kind of instrument.
Holy fuck, but he actually reaches the car.
Bones seems to jolt in inattentive surprise when Jim pulls open one of the back doors, quickly smuggling him and Madda into the back.
He's sitting behind the passenger seat, settling her in the middle seat with light calming gestures. "As soon as she gets here, you take off, but don't take 56, take the highway."
Bones is looking into the back. Then forward. Then back again, slowly.
"...What is that?" he evenly demands.
"Her name is Madda."
Bones is giving Jim a horrified glare, like how dare he pull that without telling him he was going to pull it, looking at the girl again with a gaping indecision in what he wants to say, when they hear the sudden fast click of heels.
The left back door opens and a swish of silky burgundy lands into the opposite seat. Bones starts driving, and Nyota's saying, "The piano guy got so chatty afterward, I..."
She stills right in the middle when she notices the girl. Then she is looking at Jim like she has never seen him before.
"Do you know if Jill might be at the house?" Jim asks.
"No..." Bones answers, still clumsy with incredulity. "I was just talking to Scotty, I don't think she's around."
"I was thinking we could ask her what we should probably do."
"We can't take care of her," Nyota says, but is almost beaming at the girl; Jim can tell she's resisting the instinct to comfort her physically, and she only fingers her dress and says, "Put on the music. Maybe she likes it."
She almost seems to, and though they're steeling with anxiety all the way to the highway, a giddy disbelief is washing over everyone by the time they're a third of the way home.
"You stole a slave!"
Jim and Nyota are grinning at the outburst while he dutifully corrects, "You can't steal a person, Bones."
"Fine, you fucking freed somebody. You are honest to hell crazy, Jim, I don't think I even want to know how close you just came to—"
"That's not all," Nyota is biting her lip under the grin; just as Jim looks over she's pushing a credit chip into his hand. His eyes are doing lightning strikes between her and it before he pushes the button to check the number, and practically croons.
"Holy hell!"
She almost keels over in laughter while reaching to put the chip away.
"You won?!"
She's nodding and nodding and everything is giddy and bouncing as he lets out another laugh and leans over and they're holding each other's faces for a happy impulsive kiss before they even realize they're crowding over Madda and then just laughing about it more.
Madda finally warms up to Nyota enough to start talking idly, but Jim can only pick up a few words and phrases in Orion. He doesn't like that she seems to be all buckled down and obedient, like she's not really able to perceive them with the trust she'd give a fellow Orion. It just frustrates him that it's hard to be sure how scared she is.
When they finally arrive at the front gate, Charlie slowly puts her drink down next to her in confusion.
"Where did you get her?"
"Close to Manchester," Jim replies with a shrug.
While Bones is looking Madda over with a tricorder, Gene, apparently the other person working the entrance, comes up to them with a brighter form of astonishment.
"What did you guys do?" He crouches down in front of the girl. "Hey, you. You tired?"
"She doesn't speak a lot of Standard, I don't think," Nyota says.
"She's kinda tiny," he observes, tapping her on the nose in a teasing way, and the girl very slightly smiles. "You want some food, huh?...How is she?"
That question was directed at Bones, who gives a lilt of his head. "She could definitely use some food. She's got a cold, but she's really pretty much alright."
"We gotta get you something to chow on, string bean. And some serious sleep. Hmm?" He tweaks her nose again, looks at the rest of them. "You all look pretty tired. I'll talk to the league about what to do with her. For tonight she can stay at my place, if that's alright with you."
Bones kind of furrows his eyebrows, but Jim isn't worried. Gene wouldn't have been somebody he thought of to take her to, but he had no idea what to expect bringing an Orion girl in here and it's probably lucky they already found somebody who's compassionate about it.
"Thanks, Gene," Nyota says.
"Yeah," he just nods all casually at them, already starting to gently poise the girl away with him by the shoulders, and she goes away easy like she already trusts him.
The first thing Scotty asks later that night after evaluating with a squint that Jim has a bruise forming on his face and also that no one looks shaken, is, "You get rammy with somebody?"
"Get what?" Bones barks, laughing.
"In a fight? No," Jim provides. "...It's a long story."
"Yeah, very uneventful evening," Nyota says, slick and smiling and still looking great in that dress. And proceeds to tell him everything that happened in a way that makes Scotty certain she's kidding for an honestly ridiculously long time of trying to convince him she's not.
"How old's the girl?" he finally asks.
"I don't know. 'Bout that high," Jim puts out an arm and then shrugs. "Brown hair, cute big eyes. I have a soft spot. But Gene took her for now. She shouldn't really be with humans anyway."
"Is this what you're gonna do, then?...If we get the ship, I mean."
"What I'm gonna do?" Jim's look is cynical and crooked as if deterring them from something. "As if it's all up to me."
Without even coming close to answering the question, he shrugs out of his dress jacket and leaves to go get ready for bed.
>Apotropaism
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