nysalogs | closed; a man walks into a bar

Entry tags:

closed; a man walks into a bar

Who: TJ Johansen (

stargatemedic) & Brock Rumlow (

ukase)
What: Drinking and dares (maybe)
When: Several days after their first bar meeting
Where: The Frosty Tap Cantina
Warning(s): TBD

It was easier for TJ to tell herself that she was following up on a patient than it was to admit that she'd had enough of New and Exciting™ and needed a bit of a break. Where 'following up on a patient' didn't usually entail going to a bar, she felt justified in the fact that his bones had fallen out of his body at the bar, so she could reexamine his hand at the bar.

Maybe it was better to get a drink in her before she started talking dares or anything else.

Despite it being a night out, TJ had still dressed in something resembling her former uniform; absent the pants, she'd pulled on jeans instead, but the Air Force shirt remained. Hair stayed up and she'd even brought her small medkit, just in case anything inside it was needed.

Finding a (relatively) quiet table in the corner nearest the excitement, something that hadn't clearly started up just yet, she ordered something that appeared tame and waited for her new acquaintance to arrive.

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"Thor was a myth, but he's definitely real. He's an Asgardian from one of the Nine Realms or some such. He came to Earth and he's part of the Avengers," he said with a raised eyebrow as if he were waiting for TJ to clue in on what he was saying. Of course, different worlds and all that, so it might not be a thing in her world.

Huh, that was very interesting, and he rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward to show that he was definitely listening to what she had to say. "How many planets actually have oxygen? I mean, where I'm from, we're basically looking at Mars trying to figure out if we can jump hop there and survive. So... you're on a space shift but not doing what you originally set out to do?"

"I've never heard of the Avengers. Or met a real life Thor." Her expression is apologetic and she decides not to mention the Thor that belongs to the SGC legacy; an alien that was small and very reminiscent of those that seemed to belong at Area 51. "But, I left the planet in 2009 and haven't been back since. I mean, the last I heard, it was 2011."

Which means she's at least seven years behind some of the people she's talked to and quite a few years ahead of others. She has no idea what year it really is anywhere anymore.

"A lot of planets have oxygen and I was on one where we'd established what we called the Icarus Base before it was attacked by a group called the Lucian Alliance. I'm sure they're around here somewhere, but the planet itself was dangerous and, just before it exploded, we dialed the gate to a place none of us had been before. None of us knew the ship existed and there was no way to turn it around or go home again. Ever."

"Earth's mightiest heroes? Yeah, they do sound kind of lame when you don't have a basis of reference for what they've been up to," he remarked and had to shrug his shoulders. There didn't seem much of a point of trying to explain it either, since many of the members came with their own unique histories that were ground into the very fabric of their timeline. "So you're a little out of touch with the happenings, it seems. It's 2014 for me."

Huh, well, that was something interesting to know, not that it would make much of a difference to him. He doubted his feet would ever leave the planet long enough to be shot into space, and he was kind of a worldly homebody anyway. He wanted to fix where he lived before running off to some other place to get himself into trouble.

"Sounds like quite the adventure to me," he replied, nodding his head in appreciation. "Except it seems that it ended with you and your team being literally fired off into the edges of space with no way back. Am I right?"

TJ almost asked what they'd been up to, but really? Earth's Mightiest Heroes sounded a little much on the ego for her and she still felt bad for being gone for a few years before he'd disappeared. She left that where it was.

"So, you're 2014, I've met someone from 2018, and no one really knows what year it is. Interesting." That actually required another sip of her drink. "But, yeah. You're right. I had a feeling I was gonna die out there. Was sure of it, actually, given what we'd found in the outer reaches of the planets we'd seen and the people we'd met."

Actual ancestors.

He knew that there were many people from quite a span of dates, but he figured that was par for the course of being dragged in as the planet was being consumed by the Storm. It didn't seem like things lined up in the same way for anyone, but he also wasn't big on interrogating people for their histories. It was life experience he was far more interested in.

"So you kind of just lost track of the date? That seems a little odd." And what kind of sudden jarring adventure didn't involve being in a near-death situation. Some people would thrill at it honestly. "You met people on the outer reaches? Like actual humans?"

"No," she corrects. "It was 2011 the last I knew. We'd just decided to put ourselves in the stasis pods on that ship when I woke up here instead of there. Suddenly, it's seven years later and everything's been supposedly caught up in this storm that they're talking about and I'm meeting people from places I've never heard of before."

Settling on the table much like he has, she nods her head. "Our descendants, actually. Apparently, in some far future, we'd colonized a planet, had children and our children's children had children and so on and they recognized us when we stepped through the gate. It was strange."

Oh, stasis pods. That made more sense, and he was familiar enough with that kind of technology to understand that it had to be jarring to wake up and have no idea what the date was. Even now, his second venture in waking had been difficult to understand how much time had gone by. "Stasis seems to screw up a lot of things to do with how people cope with changes in time. Before my body started to rebel on me after the last stint in cryo, I thought I had it all figured out here."

Well, that sort of made sense, and weren't there a ton of science fiction novels about that very idea? "You mean they hadn't evolved in weird and wonderful ways to set them apart from boring old us?"

"It's strange to think that time just stops for you while it goes on everywhere else."

At least for her. But when he talks about the descendants, she huffs a laugh and shakes her head, then tips the rest of her drink back. Honestly, what does it matter at this point? She's already spilled the beans about the classified stuff, this is the part that doesn't really matter. Right?

"They were just... people. Us. Humans that had descended from people on Earth, but in a new place, billions of light years from Earth. They knew some of the history we shared from home, had pieces of different languages, but they came from the seventy or so of us that were left." Her expressions softens, falters a little actually, a little lost in the memory. "They had our history, too. What'd happened to us after we'd decided to settle there. It was weird, watching and learning about a future that hadn't happened."

"Not really. I find it stranger to come out of it and try to adapt to all the changes that happened while you just did nothing. Some people cope better than others." He liked to think that adaptable people did better, or maybe they were simply better than hiding their insecurities.

He figured that if someone's imagination could come up with it, somewhere, on some world, it had probably happened. It seemed stupid not to be closed-minded to all the millions of possibilities. After all, no one's history seemed to be the same of anyone that he had spoken to.

"You settled with the Descendents? Really? I guess you had no where else to go," he said, considering that for a minute. He grinned at her. "How did that work out for you, losing everything and yet gaining every opportunity again?"

"We didn't settle with them. We settled there a few thousand years ago, grew old, died, and then we'd come back in their future as." She's not sure how to explain it. "Ourselves. We just learned as much as we could about how we'd built a civilization from scratch and then left. Learned about the people we'd become and that was it. But it was our actual selves both times. It was strange."

After that, they'd gone back to the Destiny and been on their way. "But I have to say, losing everything is no fun. Ever."

"So you meet the descendants of yourselves," he said, his tone a bit confused as he tried to wrap his mind around the very idea. It was like some kind of weird time loop? He supposed that made a relationship awkward since you could be dating a relative of your original self. "That's fucked up, you know."

And at the notion of losing everything, he was quiet for a time and almost asked for a drink. He knew all about that; he came here with nothing and still had nothing. "No, but it's an opportunity to build up again, right?"

Not wanting to date anyone that they'd been the great-great-great-whatever of was a good reason not to settle where their descendants were. She could see that he was losing track of the past and future, though, so TJ shook off that part of the conversation and took a breath.

"I know."

She's glad that her drink is gone and she refuses to order another one at the moment. "I suppose it is," she agrees. "I'm a sucker for new opportunities, be they in space or... weird planets suddenly covered in ice and snow."

He suspected she could explain it more, but it was likely a subject to have to return to at another time. Let them take a minute to process it all. Besides, her experiences seemed to be vastly different from his own in some regards and quite the same in others.

"So what's your opportunity in a place like this? You have a plan on where you want to go with yourself?" He watched her, taking a sip from his glass of water or whatever they called it here.

There could be a lot more explanation, and also things that had no explanation, but it wasn't what she'd come to this not-date for. It was supposed to be a check up and dares and more fun than rehashing certain pasts she didn't want to get into too deeply, especially with someone she'd just met.

"In this place?" Trying to lighten the mood, she pretended to think about it. "Checking up on men who suddenly shoot bones from their hands," she told him as if it were The Most Important Thing. "Find out if there's a place where I can do it full time... not check on wayward men, but be a medic." She flashed him a grin. "But other than that? I'm utterly open to learning something new and seeing where all of this--" She motioned to the crowd. "Takes me. What about you?"

Rumlow snorted at her attempt to lighten everything, and he was certain there was more to the story of her little ventures to the outer reaches of space. It wasn't as if he had given up much information about him, so there was no need to push. They had a rapport now, so they could have some beers and talk shit more often.

He flexed his hand and then slapped it down palm first on the table. Thankfully for them both, nothing shifted out of place this time. "Looks like you're previous medical treatment healed me." He nodded his head. "When we get out here - assuming that we do - there's a brisk Brit who has a clinic. You want to do medical stuff, you should go there. Claire Fraser."

He shrugged his shoulders, gazing off across the bar. "Not much. Maybe see a dragon sometime."

If bones had jarred loose the moment he'd slapped his hand down on the table, TJ probably would have had a panic attack on his behalf. ("if you KNOW that's what causes it, please don't DO it", which is why experimentation.), and her eyes widened when he does it.

"I don't know if I'd count it as treatment so much as being in the right place at the right time to," she shook her head. "Pull out the ones that came loose?" She huffed a laugh. "But Claire. I've met her. I'll have to look into it if it's something that I can do that's somewhat productive. As opposed to, I don't know. Looking for dragons."

Is that something people do? Sounds like a seven year old's dream job.

Rumlow knew better than to panic, but he could certainly amuse himself on her reactions to him just randomly slapping his hand down. "So, experimentation is the way to go, huh? Your expression there was amazing, by the way."

He was certain he would have figured it out on his own without her help, considering there hadn't been much damage to him personally. He grinned at her all the same, leaning back in his chair now that the secretive stuff was over and done with. "Yeah, she's rough around the edges and will tell it to you straight, but she's a good person to have around as a healer. She always needs help."

Hey, don't mock his dreams! There was a story behind it anyway, not that it mattered because Jones was long gone, trapped back in cryo and no longer being a bitch to him. He could honestly say that he missed her on some level.

"Whatever, I have nothing else to do."

TJ would never actively mock someone's dreams. Probably.

"Nothing? There's nothing else to do?" She's still grinning at him like he's holding back. "Why a dragon, then? There has to be a reason that you want to look for a dragon, of all things. If medics need help, I'm sure there's something here that'll require your particular skill set and it doesn't involve dragons."

A pause. "Are you thinking like. A pet?"

"My skill set is rather particular," he clarified but gave no more detail than that. There was plenty to do here, but it was mostly playing house, doing missions for their overlords and trying not to get killed by resistances against their being there. He had no team, no job, and she might be the closest thing to a friend that he had.

"A person who is now back in cryostasis full time challenged me to find and see a dragon. It's the only thing I have left of her," he said, his expression momentarily flickering with discomfort. A ruse really because at this point, finding a dragon would be the most entertaining part of it all.

"I did help in the clinic before, but I doubt I'm welcome there."

For the briefest moment, TJ wants to ask. It's the way he says that it's the only thing he has left of her - clearly he misses her, whoever she is, a lot - and then she wavers on whether or not she should. And because of it, she doesn't offer to help him find a dragon; if it was something that he and this woman had talked about, she definitely doesn't want to intrude on the memory.

Instead, she tries to focus on what he'd said regarding the clinic, her curiosity getting the better of her there.

"Why wouldn't you be welcome in a clinic, of all places?"

He was perfectly capable of finding his own dragon, just as he was perfectly capable of operating alone. It wasn't perfect, but he had done it before many times. It was very strange to him to not have a purpose, an over-reaching mission that he could drive his hands into and take up the charge of. So, he thought finding a dragon would at least give him a distraction for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks if they were so elusive.

He chuckled and drank down the rest of the water in his glass, leaning back into it as he regarded her. "Friends choosing sides I imagine," he said with a shrug. "I treated someone as I would treat all my soldiers when wounded, and they took offense like I was being sexist."

Everyone's perfectly capable of operating alone; whether it's good for them in the long run is another story and she doesn't advise it, as a medical professional, simply because it's not good for one's mind or soul. Not for too long, anyway.

It's curiosity that has her looking at him when he talks about sexism and soldiers and she makes a guess. "You gave an order and they didn't like it?" TJ furrows her brow. "What happened?"

She wants to know how that affects his being at the clinic.

Rumlow wasn't one to talk about his personal problems or his personal life or his secrets or his childhood or, or, or. He kept to himself, generally putting himself out there so that people revealed themselves to him rather than the other way around. The way he had been brought up was a lot of doing it for oneself and then HYDRA had been about doing it for the greater good.

He set his arm across the back of his chair, looking casual and he nodded his head before shrugging. He shrugged a lot when he wanted to play not caring very much. "Mission with hostages, and a groups of people were sent to find them. I was invited by this person, so I went and we were all wounded in some capacity, some worse than others. It was a bad op with little information and even less ability to work our way through it in a timely fashion because the hostages were in danger. So, we took our knocks."

He rubbed his chin with his palm, looking beyond TJ's shoulder at nothing in particular. "This person was hurt, probably broken ribs and they wavered when standing. However this person's lover wasn't with the group we found, so I originally suggested we go and join another group. Once I realized how hurt they were, I told this person to stand down, that I would go and they should see to their wounds. They didn't take kindly to being told what they could or couldn't do, but it was a risk to the op. I stood my ground, treated them with the same respect I would treat all my people." He shrugged his shoulders. Again. "We haven't spoken since, and they are good friends with Claire, so I know how that situation goes."

Being stuck on a ship with the same seventy people - more than half of them military types -for two years, TJ has gotten to learn and understand body language more than she'd ever thought she'd get to. Being ordered by Colonel Young to perform psych evals on a crew of people she barely knew had forced her to up that knowledge quickly and she's trained herself to notice new tells quickly. The shrugging and forced nonchalance is something that she's familiar with, but not knowing Rumlow very well, she's certainly not about to call him on it.

Instead, she focuses on the story he tells, well aware of how dangerous missions can go awry quickly. She's also very aware how people react when they think the people they care about are in danger and she nods as he explains the reaction of the person he's talking about.

"I've been in situations where people, especially people who are trained to take orders, stop doing so when they think those they worry about most are in compromising positions," TJ says. "It's hard to admit that you're not the right person to take care of those you care about. Giving up that control is difficult." She takes a breath. "It's still not an excuse to disobey an order."

If Rumlow was in charge, he should have been listened to. Military to her core in that kind of setting, she understands. "I'm sorry to hear that you lost that relationship." Friendship? Whatever it was. "When I'm at the clinic, you can come see me and I won't let anyone say different." Fight her on it, she dares anyone.

Well, Rumlow did come from a place where certain types of people thought that they could disobey orders and often times they were strong enough and skilled enough to make the difference in a tight situation. That was the rule they played by, but in general, he respected those that kept the order unless it was going to cost way more lives than it should. Then he would question the order. He had a right to know why he was throwing his life down.

"This person was someone I considered my equal, but apparently, they likely never saw it that way," he replied and leaned his cheek on his hand, looking as casual as ever about the whole story. It bothered him though. Carter had been someone that he had automatically respected and that was difficult for him. Hell, he respected her more than he respected Rogers.

"It wasn't meant to be. I'm used to it; my manner isn't easy for some people to swallow and I get it." He considered helping out with the clinic, offer to be the muscle again and assist with some aspects of patient care, but it was likely to cause a scene and he wasn't interested in that.

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i actually changed tenses in the middle of that last tag, wow i'm sorry.

lol no worries

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