[Semi-Open, Arrival] Dreaming Wide Awake

[oyedeng]

WHO: Naomi Nagata, James Holden, Amos Burton, a Rescue Crew and OPEN
WHAT: A woman falls out of space and onto Thedas. Some damage is incurred, some recovery time is needed, some reunions are happening. Also: Space resident's first exposure to snow.
WHEN: Covering arrival, quarantine/recovery and first steps in a snowy Kirkwall
WHERE: Wounded Coast, Riftwatch Infirmary, Kirkwall
NOTES: If you want to continue any CWs for description of/discussion of injuries sustained, pain suffered, Holden being a sap

At first, there is nothing. She floats, as she has done all her life, when the ring gate decelerates everything in an instant, and Naomi is knocked out cold.

Her dream is a simple thing. To stand aboard the Rocinante, to hug Alex, to touch her forehead to Amos', to hold Holden close. To tell them all she has to say, and to be welcomed back.

Instead, she comes to when she falls, thin body impacting on hard ground, vision flooding with flickering green, and beyond... the horrifying sight not of metal, not even of the darkness between stars... but of a grey, cloudy sky.

[ ooc: Closed and Open Prompts in comments below. If you'd like to do something else or discuss handwaving/continuing TDM threads, feel free to shoot me a message: inkcharm or Discord: inkcharm#4573.

Please also take a gander at Naomi's Permissions/CWs/Opt-Outs as well as her Info post. ]

Comments

[oyedeng]

"Not quite how I intended."

There's amusement though, in the ways her eyes crinkle at the corners and her mouth curves gently. Her thumb shifts downwards to trace the shape of Holden's smile, too.

She can feel her heartbeat, much too heavy against the fragile cage of her ribs. Still it's easy to believe that she'll be alright here and now.

"I thought I was hallucinating Amos, when I fell through. Thought it was a bit unkind I wasn't hallucinating you, too." Truth be told, she'd thought it was the protomolecule. Wrong colour, yet still... her amusement seeps away to something smaller, something more tentative. "It's been a few months."

[acreage]

"I can't argue with the results."

— is only halfway true. Of course it is, with Naomi so sick and so bedridden, tied down to a planet instead of the guts of the Roci, free in space where she belongs. With Naomi here in Thedas, with all of its shittiness and dangers. There's the selfish relief, desire to have her with him; and there's the part of him that fears what could happen to her here, including the fate so many rifters have apparently met: simply vanishing one day, with no warning or reason.

"I'll try harder to make an appearance next time," he quips, leaning into her hand. He's still not convinced the protomolecule isn't involved; and the blue glow at his shoulder, hidden under his shirt, is part of why. "For me, too. I'd say we both have some catching up to do."

[oyedeng]

There's something bittersweet deep in his dark gaze, and Naomi thinks she understands it. There are places in their galaxy - and beyond, it seems - where she imagines she'd not wish for him to end up, and yet still would long to have him by her side. It aches now, that she ever flinched away from something good, that she ever jeopardized not just her family on the Rocinante, but especially what they have together, because she couldn't unsee the shadow of her own past as cast by James Holden for a while. He doesn't deserve that comparison, and Naomi isn't sure she'll ever be able to properly vocalize to Jim what it means that he gives her room to make her own mistakes and shape her own regrets, rather than making her carry his.

He makes her want better for herself than she ever had, and makes her want to be better in return as well. For all Jim gives her, if the one thing she can give back is to behold all the ways in which the world wants to tear him down, and refuse to let it, Naomi would be glad.

"Now would be a good a time as any to start," Naomi murmurs. She wants to know all of him, the spaces she remembers and the things that she missed, so she may calculate the distances between them and recalibrate it down to nothing. "Maybe we can begin with how you are. There are no meds here, no auto-docs, but you don't look sick."

[acreage]

He breathes out. It's a question he'd just as soon have put off for later, when she's feeling stronger, but he can answer this.

By raising his eyebrows, wryly, and saying, "Would you believe me if I said, because magic?"

[oyedeng]

Naomi hums in thought, brows pulling together a bit. "Ask me that again when your face is less blurry to me and I can read you like a book," he quips back, but the gears in her mind are already spinning. "So... something that doesn't make sense to our understanding of the laws of nature and physics." Her fingers twitch a little in his hand, as if she remembers the space in her palm where the anchor sits. "Do you think it's the protomolecule? Or something like it?"

[acreage]

He lets go of her hand, then, straightens and pulls at the collar of his tunic. He turns a little so she can clearly see his implant — same as ever, save for the blue glow that's a little too familiar for comfort.

"It's been like this since I got spat out by a rift, myself. I've heard the light might be from something they call lyrium around here, which is apparently closely connected to rifters. I can't explain it. But I haven't had access to meds or auto-docs in months, and I don't seem to be dying."

So, does he think it's the protomolecule or something like it? Maybe.

[oyedeng]

Naomi straightens from her relaxed position with him, wincing a little and using his other shoulder to pull her further upright and into his space. She doesn't touch the implant, just leans closer to inspect it.

"Lyrium," she repeats, letting the word sit on her tongue. Not a term she's ever heard. There's concern in her features. "Whatever it is must be powerful to keep the tumors at bay. Jim... tell me these healers here know, in case. You wouldn't last months back home without meds. It might just be an intense decelaration, rather than a fix." Her eyes flick to his, imploring. "You also didn't actually tell me how you are."

[acreage]

He rights his shirt once Naomi's had her look of the implant, shrugging slightly.

"I'm fine," he says bracingly. And it's true, really; he's never been better than now, having Naomi right here with him. "I've talked to someone about it. But I don't think anything's going to happen to me if it hasn't already. I don't want you worrying about it."

At least, not while the lyrium-whatever-the-fuck stays working. Besides which, problems like iron maidens and whatever the dreams were have proven to be more salient threats on his life.

(But. He can get anyway with avoiding that explanation until she sees the scar on his abdomen. A problem for later.)

[oyedeng]

"Did you think today was the day I'd start listening to you?"

The quip is gentle, though. Naomi will worry, but she can let it simmer. Holden worries to little about himself - and so she will do it for him, whether he welcomes her back to his side or not.

She will always have space enough inside herself to worry for him, to care for him, to love him, in all the ways he can't do for himself.

For now, she will not push. Tempting as it is to pull aside healers and ask if they're aware of Holden's condition, unless there's cause to assume his health is at risk, his autonomy matters more than how truthful he's being with her.

"And if I don't ask about your health, but about you - is the answer the same? You said months, here." Naomi doesn't know if it's still her place to ask, after she left, when she never made it back - but for now, that won't stop her.

[acreage]

"Hope springs eternal," he suggests, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.

No, she isn't likely to not worry, any more than he could stop himself from worrying about her and Amos. They're a family; they look out for each other.

He exhales at her question, leaning back in his seat. Months here, in an unfamiliar world with its share of problems; months of not knowing what he is, if there's any way home; months with encounters like the innkeeper at Ostwick or dark dreams or learning more and more about the shitty ways so many are treated here. But months, also, with people he would never have met otherwise. It's true that he hasn't been happy here. But he's not sure he'd take back the experience either.

"It could've been worse," he says, slow. Maybe that's obvious — he isn't the one, after all, bedridden upon arrival. Naomi can probably recognize that flicker of guilt in his expression, but he doesn't dwell. "Amos got here at the same time I did, same rift. I haven't been alone. And there are a lot of good people in Riftwatch."

None of which really answers how are you? — but if there's anyone who can understand what he's trying to say, it's Naomi Nagata.

[oyedeng]

She does understand, and it makes sense to her. Not quite unlike her time away on the Behemoth after all - true, more of a connection with her Belter roots, but still it had been a time during which she'd missed her boys, a time that ended with her desperately wanting to return, and yet a time she knows she needed and wouldn't have wanted to miss, despite everything. She regrets leaving, but she doesn't regret the time spent helping Camina, and understanding where her heart truly lies.

It's not been easy. There's been good to be found here, though. Good people in Riftwatch - and that includes him. And good to be done, Naomi has no doubt about that. Weights and burdens, too, and pain; that she also does not doubt.

Naomi can see it in his eyes, in the smaller details of his face. The way he slows his words a little, that flicker of something in his eyes that he knows she doesn't want to see her, and that she knows will be there either way. "I'm glad you've had Amos. And that he's had you."

Her voice goes softer, the moment growing more private. "Jim..." She takes a breath, makes it slow and even. "I know you... must have heard this from me, or some variation of it at least. I hope so, at least, because you deserve to hear it. But just because you heard it doesn't mean I should no longer say it." She presses her lips together briefly. "I shouldn't have left. And it took me too long to come back." She knows he's a little older than the Holden she'd tried to come back to, same as Amos is a little older, too. It doesn't matter, so lang as it doesn't matter to him. "I'm sorry."

[acreage]

He listens quietly through her apology — because it's true, he has heard it, and the little nod he gives when she says it offers some confirmation — and lets her say it. She needs this, as much as she had when they first had this conversation. And, honestly, he had needed it too, at the time.

"You needed the time," he says, because he knows it's true. "I won't say we weren't a fucking wreck without you," added humorously, but c'mon, she has to know, "but it was important to you to help the Belter nation. You were right to be there for them."

He missed her, of course; they all did. But some things are bigger than that.

[oyedeng]

"A wreck," Naomi says dryly. "I'll say." Right at the center of immeasurable chaos, hurtling through near death and into the unknown of the ring gate like it was nothing.

Then, more quietly and more softly: "I was trying to figure the fake message out, even though I knew we didn't have the time. Camina needed to have two guys pull me away. If they'd hit you..."

Naomi would have rather had the Behemoth take the hit. She remembers how beside herself she was when Camina chose to fire. The only choice Camina could make in that moment, and there's a dark lick of thought in Naomi that would have preferred Camina hold her fire, and the Behemoth take the hit instead.

[acreage]

He breathes out, remembering that. The Roci completely fucked, comms dead, locked out of weapons, and even Amos and Alex wondering if he'd set up the destruction of the Seung Un. In retrospect, it's hard to blame them; he had been acting completely out of his fucking mind. He'd felt like he was going crazy, flickers of Miller's ghost appearing at random, spouting bizarre bullshit. It's weird that he misses the presence now, his mind quieter than it's been in a year or more.

"That was the only move she could make." He remembers Alex hitting the controls, Amos trying to get weapons back up, somehow being able to convince them to go for the Ring. "We all knew it. Clarissa Mao — Julie's sister, by the way, who was trying to discredit and kill me — had her backed into a corner."

[oyedeng]

Now that gets some surprise out of her. Mao was not a name Naomi expected to be tied to this, and that opens up a whole different can of worms. "I'll need a play by play of that at some point," she muses, rubbing her forehead. Wrapping her head around everything Fade and Thedas is taxing. Add trying to untangle 'Clarissa Mao tried to frame and kill Holden' and suddenly it's a new level of mental acrobatics.

Naomi can't blame Camina - even if she will never be okay with the shot taken. It was the right call to protect everyone on the Behemoth. It just almost came at the expense of nearly everyone Naomi loves.

"There was a rousing speech when we followed you into the Ring. Very idealistic." And he'll know the weight of that. The shadow her past casts forwards onto moments like that. Some day, she thinks, she'll share that story in its entirety, not because he asks for it, but because she will be ready to speak it. "Speaking of... causes and idealism." A small gesture, indicating the universal idea of 'all of this'. "Tell me what you and Amos make of Riftwatch?"

[acreage]

He knows. Of course, he knows. And it shows in a softening of his eyes, a squeeze at her hand. No wonder she'd left; not just her love for all of them at the Roci, but the show of her past couldn't have helped.

Amos had asked him almost the same thing, while they were in quarantine themselves. What's your read on this dump? It'd been months longer ago then he'd ever intended to stay here.

"I think there are a lot of people here trying to do the right thing. They're trying to make things better. I can't fault them that."

[oyedeng]

She slides her fingers between his, a fit so comfortable and familiar that it almost hurts. On the limited space of a ship, you find small ways to carve intimacy out for yourself when you can't exactly have too much in the way of privacy during the day to day. Naomi knows all the little ways in which they fit together. It's a comfort to rediscover them here.

"That sentence sounds like there's a 'but' coming."

[tender]

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