TEST DRIVE #1 - Ten Forward

[tenforward_m]

You know how you were standing there, back in your home world, just minding your own business?

Time to forget all about that.

Instead of doing whatever the heck you were just doing, you're standing in the middle of this very stylish, sedate barroom. Happily, you're not alone there - in fact you're surrounded by people who seem to be as confused as you are...and some of them look a little, well unusual

Now would be a great time to do....well, something. Ask some questions of the person nearest you, throw a fit, stage a coup....maybe do a little exploring? No matter what you do, you're going to be here for a very long time.

For others might call it the USS Enterprise, but for the foreseeable future, you'll be calling it home.

[OOC: this test drive's open until the next app period.]

Comments

[abyssum_invocat]

"Sinthia Schmidt," she answers plainly--she doesn't lie, not outright, because it's uncomfortable and her father hates when she tries it on him.

"My father's name is Johann."

It isn't that she doesn't like Steve because of who he is, or because of who her father is, though she's very aware that they do not like each other. It's mostly that Steve is new, and everything she's been told about America is bad, and here he is epitomizing it and that makes Sinthia feel more than a little bit lost.

[stark_spangled]

Schmidt.

The dirty rat had a kid? A little girl? Where was she when he was building his death machines, or torturing soldiers -- his friends? She couldn't be more than 8. What has she known in her life to this point? How to hate?

Steve takes a deep breath, forcing down the anger he feels boiling his blood. This would go differently if she was an adult, but she isn't. She's just a kid, Johann Schmidt's daughter, and Steve's seventy years and a million miles away from the war.

"Johann Schmidt doesn't want to stop the war, he wants to kill thousands of people." Rein it in, Steve. Breathe in, breathe out. He flexes a fist, letting all his tension drain from his fingertips. With a softer voice, he continues. "I was never interested in hurting your father. All I want to do is protect the people who can't protect themselves."

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia takes half a step back, pressed against the wall, and though nothing shows on her face or in her bearing, she feels a tremor of fear. She has none of the biological responses for it, her breathing doesn't cease and her eyes don't widen; her back is already stiff and straight.

She can hear every question he thinks about her, and the tone of all of them. "So do the Allies. They'll want me dead too."

[stark_spangled]

Something twists inside of him. "No one will want you dead."

He's seen some awful things during the war, he's even committed some by his own hand. You do what you have to do, you just try to make the best decisions you can in the heat of the moment. Regardless, he absolutely believes in what he tells her.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says, holding up his hands. "I'm sure you have no reason to believe me, but it doesn't matter who your father is. You're safe here."

As safe as any of them are.

[abyssum_invocat]

"I don't believe you," she says cautiously.

[stark_spangled]

He nods.

Fair enough.

"Look around the room Sinthia," he implores her. "Your father isn't here, and neither are any of his men."

That may frighten her, but for good or bad it's a truth she needs to understand. "The war isn't here, either. It's long over for the people on this ship."

[abyssum_invocat]

She does as told, and scans the room, and has a slightly strange reaction.

She relaxes, taking a breath as if blowing out all the tension in her small body, leaving only enough to keep her upright. She murmurs something that sounds close to either a prayer of thanks or a reassurance to herself, under her breath in German.

"Is it over for you?" she asks. "Did you win?"

It's a secret she hates keeping that she doesn't like her father. She finds him distasteful, and painful to be around--conditioned response, that--and though she loves him because she is his child and he does provide for her (and she's too young to do much else) Sinthia holds no affection for Johann. She still remembers the experiments on her when she was younger. It's hard to get past that.

[stark_spangled]

Steve's good at reading body language, but he isn't great. He recognizes the look of restrained contempt and machismo, because it's one he's worn for more years than he can count. Still, he isn't sure what to make of Johann's daughter.

"Yeah, it's over for me," he says, sounding resigned. The war may have ended without his permission. It definitely ended without his presence. Somebody won, but he's not all that sure it was him. "Hitler lost."

He doesn't bring up the fate of her father, but he's pretty sure she can put it together herself.

[abyssum_invocat]

Her eyebrows stay creased, and she searches Steve's face for any hint he's lying or withholding information from her. "How long ago?"

She's almost relieved her father is dead. It feels strange, because now she's really alone. No one else like her exists, not that Johann was all that much like her to begin with. But he was at least related.

[stark_spangled]

Steve is, as always, painfully genuine. He isn't a spy like almost everybody else in SHIELD; lying isn't his strong point.

Clenching his jaw, he rubs the back of his neck and chuckles dryly. "That's -- complicated."

Where to begin? He gestures around the ship again, shifting his center of balance so it looks less like he might spring off the balls of his feet into action at any minute. He isn't totally relaxed, but he honestly isn't planning on making a grab for her.

"Here it's the 24th century, so you're talking 400 years. Back home, the war ended in 1945," he says.

His brow crinkles as he considers bringing up the 21st century, and quickly rejects it.

[abyssum_invocat]

She blinks as if she simply doesn't process that at first. "The...24th..."

The girl shakes her head, disbelieving. "What do I do now?" she asks, because honestly she's at a complete loss after that. None of the rules she knows for living apply in this situation and she has no grasp of what the next step is.

[stark_spangled]

Yeah, that was about the shape of it when he first found out where he was. He purses his lips, giving her a few seconds to work through it.

"Well, do you like astronomy?" he asks. "Because there's a pretty great view outside the windows."

[abyssum_invocat]

"I don't go outside very much," she says, mildly concerned. "Not much at all."

[stark_spangled]

Yeah, he bets. It causes another ripple of anger, but this time it's on behalf of Sinthia and not because of her.

"Well, now you can do whatever you like," he says, a little forcefully. He doesn't know what to make of the girl -- maybe she wants to further her father's interests -- but no matter what, she's a little girl and she deserves a shot at something better than whatever Johann gave her. "There are people here to protect you. They protect everyone onboard. You can take a look at the stars if you want to, no one will stop you."

[abyssum_invocat]

Her brows raise, and she can't say she's not a little confused, but she glances toward the wide windows that look out on the stars.

"I wonder if I could go out there," she muses to herself, face relaxing. When she's relaxed, she looks much like any other child from that era; it's when she gets upset or stressed that her reactions tend to go a little sideways. "I haven't ever tried walking through air when I'm incorporeal. Just walls."

[stark_spangled]

He watches her carefully, making a mental log of all her tics and tells.

"Excuse me?" His brow furrows. "You can walk through walls?"

And then it hits him, all of a sudden. The condition he found Bucky in when he staged the rescue op, Schmidt's diatribe against humanity, the next step of evolution, the way Sinthia's hand almost seemed to sink into the wall as she backed away...

He peers at her hand again, the line between his eyebrows deep as everything slots into place and the heat of anger builds in his spinal column. "He experimented on you."

[abyssum_invocat]

She takes a sharp breath, and blinks once, twice, before she takes a very conscious step back from Steve, pressing against the wall.

"Yes," she says cautiously, putting an outstretches hand against the wall and concentrating as hard as she can on going intangible,so she can slip back and away. She can see the crease between his brows and the buildup of anger and it frightens her, because she doesn't know this man and doesn't want him any closer than he already is. "He did. When I was little, there was a machine...he put me in it. It hurt," she murmurs, wide brown blue-flecked eyes locked on Steve's face.

[stark_spangled]

It hurt.

He didn't think he could be angrier with the Red Skull. He stood against everything Steve stood for, tortured his best friend, took hundreds of lives, took seventy years away from him, his whole life. But in this moment?

It hurt.

Steve flushes with anger, and all at once it twists into sadness. She's looking at him with big, scared eyes. Her whole life has been this, and now he can see her slipping away. "No, don't--!" He starts to reach for her, and realizes what a bad idea that is. It hurt. Sighing, he runs his hand through his hair (it still feels weird, unnatural, no matter what Nat says it does for his cheekbones), and tries again. "Don't run. It's all right, I'll leave. There are other people here who can help you, I can go find one."

It would be better, anyway. Steve's too close to this, and more than anything Sinthia should feel safe.

[abyssum_invocat]

She's scared. She's never been scared before in her life, not of her father or of the experiments because she didn't know she should be afraid of him. She knew it hurt, and he always told her she'd behaved admirably because she didn't cry; she screamed.

Sinthia watches him reach for her, and she presses back half an inch until he stops. "Don't leave," she says hesitantly, after a minute. "I don't know anyone else here. Nobody looks like the people I know except you. I don't..." Her childlike shoulders move, arms wound about her waist. She's alone, and relieved and afraid and unsure what to do next, all at once. And Steve maybe understands a little bit about what she came from, so maybe she can trust him a little bit about this.

"Will you sit with me for a while?"

[stark_spangled]

He's surprised by the change of heart. Part of him feels like he should insist -- he's unraveling just a little, the edges of this moment bleeding into everything from his past, all the built-up anger and sadness and resentment -- but he's never been the kind of guy to walk away from somebody in need.

"Okay," he says, holding her gaze. She's safe. More than anything else, he wants her to know that. She's safe. "I can introduce you to some new people, if you like. Guinan is a friend. She can even get you some food, if you're hungry."

[abyssum_invocat]

"I don't...have any money," she says softly, still nervous. "I just don't want to be alone when I don't know where we are."

[stark_spangled]

He shakes his head a little. "You don't need it."

He's not an expert on the food replicators, but he knows his way around them in a pinch. The staff are pretty patient, taking only amusement at his blockheadedness as currency so far. "You're not alone, Sinthia. I can stay with you as long as you want me to, if you're sure that's what you want."

[abyssum_invocat]

"I don't want to be alone," she says, as if that's about the only thing she's sure of, because...well. It is.

"And I know you. Kind of." Maybe. She knows of him, and that counts.

[stark_spangled]

He can only nod when she repeats herself, because it's too difficult opening his mouth without something angry or upset tumbling out. He wonders if she just means she doesn't want to be alone here, or if she's been alone for a long time and is sick of it.

Whatever the case, it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter who her father is. He won't leave her alone. "OK. Do you want to sit at a table? You can pick which one."

[abyssum_invocat]

She looks out at the room, tiny brows creasing the barest bit as she flicks her glance from one person to the next, hesitating only a few fractions of a second on each. She reads them all, listening in to their thoughts and their expressions as if she could pick which ones to avoid by such a short excursion into their heads.

Sinthia glances at Steve again, and she avoids reading him, looking away only a millisecond later. "The one by the windows," she says impulsively. "It looks pretty over there."