holy rings of betazed

[warpfairy]

Isabella doesn't really like being surrounded by Betazoids. She can ward off the scans - it's barely an effort - but they look at her like she's terribly unfriendly for doing it. Still, she almost never gets verbal complaints for it. She can conduct her shopping while Lalita hires a ship to go get the Harlequin from where he left her, and then they have a week to kill on the planet and its immediate environs while the tugboat goes out and fetches her.

Shopping isn't going to take that long. They should do tourist things!

Comments

[warpfairy]

"I - not very much," murmurs Isabella.

[dream_me_up]

"Imagine you're completely alone," he says softly. "If anyone you meet finds out anything true about who you are or where you came from, and gets to the authorities with it, you'll probably be killed. But you have to get money from somewhere, because nothing's free, and you're not sure if you can starve to death but you don't want to find out by trying it. You speak a dozen languages and you're familiar with thousands of years of cultural and political and military history from all over the planet, but nobody ever taught you how to get a job, cook, wash the dishes, do laundry, buy something from a store... you have to figure all that out by yourself, and hope nobody gets suspicious if you do it wrong. That's the world I grew up in. With crime rates hundreds of times what you're used to. 'I avoid situations where I might have to kill somebody' is the kind of thing you only say when you've never had to choose between the street where you'll probably get mugged and the street where you'll probably get arrested."

[warpfairy]

[dream_me_up]

[warpfairy]

"I am sorry. I spoke without thinking."

[dream_me_up]

"It's okay," he says wryly. "You didn't know."

[warpfairy]

"I should have. I turned over my entire life to providing more people the civilization I'm accustomed to, but don't often think about the details of what it means to lack it."

[dream_me_up]

"Sometimes I forget that other people don't remember history as personally as I do," he murmurs.

[warpfairy]

She nods once. "I'm sorry," she repeats.

[dream_me_up]

He smiles.

"It's okay."

[warpfairy]

Isabella smiles weakly.

[dream_me_up]

Lalita hugs her.

[warpfairy]

Hugs! Hugs are a good end to misunderstandings.

[dream_me_up]

They are, it's true!