“Turns out you were right,” Trip announced as he sidled up behind Shamara and tapped her on the shoulder. “Chocolate does go with pretty much everything.” After getting inspired by her comments, he’d taken it upon himself to find out. He’d thrown himself a one-person fondue party, to be exact, and he hadn’t regretted a single moment.
Except that he hadn’t invited anyone else. Trip wasn’t good at being alone. Sure, he could handle it on a mission, but he was rarely far from someone else he knew. They were either nearby on their own mark, or available to him through an earpiece, or back at mission control, as he liked to say it. It wasn’t until he got to his own downtime that he found himself really craving company. How people did long-term missions where they didn’t see anyone for months at a time, he had no idea.
“Although I gotta say,” he continued, “brussel sprouts were a no-go.”
Shamara wasn’t startled by Trip’s appearance at her side, having sensed someone close by as she often did even without that much focus. Being attuned to her surroundings through the Force had been the first thing she had been taught, if memory served, and it was almost second nature now. She turned to greet him with a wide smile, pleased that he hadn’t regretted taking up her suggestion. “Oh, good! I hear it makes you feel good, makes you release endorphins, so that probably has a lot to do with it.”
She laughed at the brussel sprouts incident. “So was chicken. Went for chicken and waffles with my friend Marce yesterday and we moved to just waffles pretty soon.”
“Oh, girl, you just said the magic words.” Trip lifted a hand and pressed it to his chest over his heart, overselling it a bit for show. “My mom makes the best damn chicken and waffles I’ve had in my life.”
But he’d never tried fried chicken with chocolate on top, and although chocolate went with waffles just fine, he didn’t know if it’d mix with chicken. “Probably smart to move to just waffles, though. There are some flavor combos that just should not be messed with.”
Impressed by his reaction, Shamara laughed with delight. “Aw! I love chicken and waffles, I really do. We ruined it with our hubris. And, well, Atlantis made me taste everything covered in chocolate.”
Changing the shopping bag to her other hand, Shamara looked up at Trip with a smile. “So, how do you like Atlantis so far?”
“It’s wild as hell,” Trip answered. It was a lot to take in at once, and he wondered how more people didn’t end up too overwhelmed to stick around. It could be a lot of people were like him, straddling that grey area between life and death, living with the knowledge that there was no going back.
“But it’s good, yeah,” he continued. “It’s like something out of a dream, honestly. Plato didn’t describe it exactly like this. You’re from here, right? I’ve been tryin’ to keep everyone straight, but there’s a lot of people around.”
“Yeah I don’t think Plato has ever been to this one.” Shamara agreed, unsurprised by his description. Even she thought it was wild after all. At his question, Shamara made a face. “Well... Yes and no. I am not born for another, oh, four years or so?”
She waited almost impatiently for his reaction, teeth biting into her bottom lip as Shamara focused on his face to see it. Unless she had told him this before, which was entirely possible and she’d just forgotten. This week had been really busy.
“Huh.” Trip tilted his head to the side a little, frowning slightly -- not over the fact that she wasn’t born yet, but because everything he’d ever been told about science fiction said that you weren’t supposed to cross your own timeline so directly. But maybe science fiction didn’t know all there was to know. “How’s that feel?” he asked instead, because trying to sort out the logic of time travel was beyond him. “To be here before you’re even born? How do you handle that? Obviously people know you’re here, but -- there has to be some sort of unwritten rule about talking about someone’s future with them.”
Looking away, Shamara thought about it for a moment, unsure what the answer actually was. She had taken it all in stride because Atlantis was a strange place where timelines crossed a whole lot, existed in parallel and all at the same time and really it all made sense in a nonsensical way. But she hadn’t actually assessed how she felt about seeing the world from before she had been in it. “It’s...odd. Being in the world before you’ve ever seen it means it’s wholly different by definition. And surprising your parents with your existence… it’s a little weird. But I don’t know, it’s patently proven to be only one future out of a whole bunch, there’s people here from an entirely different one where I probably don’t exist, so all I’d be telling them is one out of thousands of outcomes.”
She smiled up at Trip. “How does it feel for you? Having friends here who are also there...?”
That was a good point, he conceded. Everyone changed the future the moment they arrived. Maybe that was one of the divergences in the timelines. It was enough to give him a headache, honestly. He thought they had enough of a mess at home with aliens.
“Infinite possibilities,” Trip agreed, nodding his head. “Who knows how many other paths there are.” Her question wasn’t easy to answer - partly because it meant facing his own mortality more than anything else. “I’ve got no clue how it works, us being here and the world continuing to spin at home like nothing happened. It’s madness. My granddad’s here! But he was definitely around to have kids and end up with me, so…” Trip laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just trying to roll with it.”
“Exactly. And we can’t control them, so we might as well not fret over them!” Shamara replied, then considered that she hadn’t been in that situation before but probably was now. Truth be told, she probably didn’t understand the whole “doubles” thing as well as she should having been born here.
“I know saying it’s best not to think about it is a little lame, but it really is, in this case. Sometimes I feel like it’s akin to being preserved in amber, but instead of us here in one universe, they are, back home, in multiple ones.” She smiled again, giving a little shrug. “Anyway, I think rolling with it is probably the best idea. Wanna go get some hot chocolate, make it go full circle?”
Trip took a moment to consider how she’d described it, and thought it was a pretty beautiful thing. He didn’t know how accurate it really was, but he didn’t know if it really mattered in the end. Somehow, the world stopped spinning in a way, even if no one noticed. Even if it just happened over the span of a millisecond.
“Do I wanna get hot chocolate?” Trip laughed. “What do you think I am, a monster? Hell yeah, I want to get hot chocolate. Is there somewhere we can top it with whipped cream and all the extras? Sprinkles, cherries? Really go overboard?”
“Oh yeah, perfect for a cold, snowy day.” Shamara replied. It would be a big oversight not to have a place like that in Atlantis. “Everything you can think of, cookies to go with, the works. You’ll love it.”
She motioned with her chin for Trip to come along as she began to lead him to the place she knew had the best hot chocolate and the best toppings.