Amara Carroll / Maid Marian (needsofthemany) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-06-27 23:24:00 |
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Ever since she’d watched “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” with Mulder, Christine had found herself more and more curious about her counterpart. She’d watched a couple of random episodes not long after she’d arrived in New York, before she’d met Mulder but this was the first one she’d watched where her counterpart was featured. In the others she’d been on screen briefly or in one case not at all but this was more or less her story. The idea of having an alternate reality version of herself out there was hard to get used to and Christine knew that there was more than a slight chance that she might come through the Tesseract if recent events were any indication. What would she do if that happened? She had no idea but she knew that she’d like to know more about her at the very least. When she’d discovered the Star Trek fandom site Memory Alpha she had deliberately not looked herself up. After she learned Roger’s fate though, she had gone back and read all the information that was there about her counterpart. Some of the things had surprised her and now she wanted to talk to someone who actually knew her, who’d experienced a lot of the things that Christine was reading about and watching on the show. She could have talked to Spock about it, she saw him pretty often after all, but that felt awkward to her given the feelings that she knew her other self grew to have for Spock. Therefore when Jim Kirk had arrived, she’d decided that eventually she would talk to him. He seemed like the kind of man who would be honest with her, much like the Jim Kirk that she knew, and Christine wanted to know the truth. Thursday afternoon when she’d gotten home from work, she’d sent him a text and asked him if she could come to see him. She told him that she wanted to talk to him about some things and he’d agreed to see her. After changing clothes, Christine had gone down to the sixth floor and knocked on his door, slightly nervous as she stood waiting for him to answer. Jim wasn’t surprised when he got the text, mostly because the other Starfleet people were on the whole very friendly. He was getting used to their gatherings already, and it was making this transition easier on him. He was still adjusting and trying to sort out what he wanted to do with his life there. He had to figure it out fairly soon since he needed money. Money. A concern of the past, and now they were stuck there. Great. Spock taught, and Jim didn’t have the patience to do well at that. A seminar occasionally, sure, but full time? Not really his way. He opened the door when she knocked and his smile was immediate and warm. “Nurse Chapel,” Jim greeted her with a respectful nod of his head. He did look comfortable at least in modern clothing. He was at home in jeans and they suited his more casual lifestyle. He didn’t have need of a uniform these days. That was a change he could live with. Christine was one of his favorite additions to this new world. He was very fond of their own Christine, but he was delighted to find out the alternate universe’s version was just as sassy, smart, and kind. His favorite type of woman by far. “Come on in.” He gestured for her to come in. His one bedroom apartment was very clean and well maintained. It was Starfleet regulation to keep things neat. Jim’s only change was that he filled the shelves with books he picked up there. Used ones, since it was cheaper, and borrowed others when he could find them. He’d probably pick up a library card one of these days to get more. “What can I get you? Coffee? Water? Juice? I can make us some tea.” “Water is fine,” Christine replied, returning his smile. “Thank you for letting me come over by the way. I’ve been wanting to talk to you since you got here but whenever I’ve seen you it’s been at one of the Starfleet thing and I had some questions that only you could answer.” She walked in and sat down in a chair, glancing around the apartment, comparing it without even realizing she was doing it to the Jim Kirk that she knew. This one was neater it would appear. “Well actually Spock could answer them too but I wasn’t sure how he’d feel about me asking him.” She and Spock got along well enough although with Spock it was hard to tell but asking him about her counterpart? Christine wasn’t sure she could do that. “I suppose I should stop being vague, shouldn’t I?” she laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I tend to ramble when I’m nervous. Anyway, I’ve been watching some of the original show and recently I watched the episode about Roger Korby. There is or was a Roger Korby in my time too and I was engaged to him just as the Christine you know was. The big difference is that I don’t know what happened to him in my timeline although I have to wonder if it’s something similar. Spock could probably quote me the odds on that if I asked him.” Christine smiled. “Anyway I’ve been curious since I watched that episode. About her. The other me, I mean. It felt strange because there were things she did that I know I do, mannerisms, that kind of thing, I could almost predict what she was going to do at times. So what I want to know is what is she like? You know her and I only know what I’ve seen on television but I’m curious to know where the differences are.” Jim nodded when she asked for water and went into the kitchen while she took a seat. He had a water filter since he was told not to always trust the water in New York City, although he assumed Potts Tower was an exception there. At least with the filter he could keep some of it cool, and he brought her back a glass. He had one himself, since it seemed only polite to join her. “I’m glad to have you here, Christine, you’re always welcome. As for asking Spock, well you can ask him many things but you don’t always get the most helpful of answers.” He smiled at that. The Vulcan would argue he only gave helpful answers, but for humans, the flat facts left a lot to be desired. He offered her the glass and took a seat nearby. “Ahhh, I see. I thought that might be it.” If she wasn’t asking Spock, too, that meant she knew about Christine’s feelings for him. The whole crew knew about that. They gave her the space to come to grips with it, and eventually Christine’s heart moved on. They were a team, they supported one another that way. “I’m not entirely sure if it will be the same for your world. The USS Kelvin’s destruction changed many things.” Khan for example was let out far too early, but he wouldn’t bring that up now. No sense dwelling on that. “What is she like. Hm.” Jim took a moment or two to think it over. There was a great deal he could say about the woman. “Christine is a beautiful woman, and I’d say most of that beauty comes directly from her heart. She’s compassionate and kind Forgiving. But at the same time, she calls you on your mistakes and doesn’t let people get away with anything.” He smiled wryly and shook his head. “Especially not the Captain. You see I’d argue with Bones, but I’d never argue with her.” Bones used that to his advantage occasionally. Jim tried a few times, and Christine would just stare him down until he stopped. “She’s smart, she understands what makes people tick, and she has more faith in her crew than we probably deserve.” His eyes were getting a little distant as he spoke of his friend, but he seemed to focus again, and looked over to Christine. “I think you two have plenty in common.” “It’s not the same in my world. Spock and Uhura are together, have been since they were at the Academy. Spock isn’t an easy person to know and even though Uhura and I are good friends, I don’t feel like I really know Spock despite having been around him a lot.” She took a sip of water. “I’ve met your Spock of course, I’m dating his roommate which is kind of funny when you think about it.” Christine wasn’t about to go into details about just how funny it was with Jim but she couldn’t stop the little grin that flitted over her face. “Wow. You could have just described me..at least the part about not letting people get away with anything. Ask Pike sometime about how I threatened to throw horse poo at him if he gave up and stopped his rehab.” She laughed. “and I’d like to think that I’m kind and compassionate, I try to be anyway. “You really would argue with McCoy but not with her? That’s funny. I’m kind of glad to know she’s a kick-ass person.” Christine took another sip of water before she went on. “and here’s something that’s really odd. I found a data base on the Internet which has pretty much anything you could ever want to know about Star Trek on it. Some fans put it together. I never looked myself up until after I watched that episode last week. You see I signed up for deep space missions for the same reason your Christine did. I wanted to find Roger. Getting a medical slot was easier than getting a science slot at the time so I had to choose whether I wanted to go into nursing or into medicine. I chose nursing but I always kind of had it in the back of my mind that someday maybe...anyway a couple of months ago I decided to take a chance, take the MCAT, try to get into medical school here because who knows how long I’m going to be around? It could be forever. I was very surprised when I finally looked myself up on Memory Alpha and found out that my counterpart went on to become a doctor. It was kind of spooky really because I had no idea but it looks like I’m following in her footsteps.” “Spock and Uhura, that … I don’t know what to say to that. If they’re happy that’s great, but I can just imagine Spock’s face when he heard.” Many people would think Spock was as deadpan as ever, but Jim could read him easily. He was surprised and a little bewildered no doubt. “He’s difficult to get to know, but once you do, it’s impossible to think of him any other way than a dear friend.” There was a special warmth in his voice when he talked about his First Officer, and he had a widely known soft spot for him. “Yes, Mr. Mulder. He is a good man from what I can tell, he must be to win you over.” Jim smiled and nodded. “Bones and I bicker, that’s just our way. And she is … kick-ass for sure.” That wasn’t the type of wording he’d use, but it worked. If he talked too much about his crew he’d start missing them for real. If Spock wasn’t there he would have gone mad. “Oh yes, she did, I saw the first few movies. I was glad to hear it, she is a very talented medical officer. You sometimes find your calling in the most unexpected of places. It sounds like you were both made for medical.” Their temperament helped. Compassion and kindness along with being hard as a rock. The perfect combination. “You’re all very new to the Enterprise, that must be why you haven’t had the chance to look for Roger yet. I hope it goes better than our situation.” Christine smiled when Jim mentioned Mulder. “He is a good man,” she replied. “and thank you for the compliment.” She couldn’t help but think that Mulder’s inner fanboy would be squealing if he knew where she was at this particular moment. “It does seem that we’re both made for the medical profession. I just wasn’t prepared for our lives to parallel so much although I should have expected it from what I know of alternate universes. Which is a lot more now than I knew before. FInding yourself in the middle of one will do that for you,” She still found herself amazed by some of the things she’d learned about since arriving through the Tesseract. “That’s true. We had just really gotten together as a crew when I was brought here. There’s no way to know what will happen in the future but I hope that Roger at least had some peace in the end. I’d already come to terms with the fact that he was probably gone but seeing how it played out in your timeline was harder than I had expected yet it gave me closure in a way. I realize that might sound kind of strange.” Christine took a drink of water, trying to gather her thoughts. “So how are you adjusting to life here in New York?” she asked, deciding that maybe a change of subject might be a good idea for the moment. “We’d seen alternate universes and worlds before. Time jumping has inherent problems. No matter how much you try to keep from changing the fabric of the world, it only takes one small event to set things in motion. And then there’s the theory of already being infinite parallel universes where one thing was different. But I digress.” Jim digressed a great deal of the time if people gave him the chance. He had a bright mind and endless curiosity. This was not one he imagined, where they were all well known entertainment characters with films. And somewhere there was an actor identical to him only several decades older. “It doesn’t sound strange. I know that watching your movies was a strange experience. Difficult too, in a way.” George Kirk was still his father, watching him die was difficult. Seeing Vulcan explode? Painful for him, although mostly due to being concerned for Spock. “I’m glad you managed to get closure, since keeping that door open would get in the way of you moving on.” And no doubt away from the man she started to date. He heard the subject changer and went along with it easily. “Still adjusting. I’m at the point I haven’t stopped trying to speak to the computer and television. Eventually I’ll have to get a job. I thought about joining SHIELD, as that’s probably the closest to Starfleet I can find around here.” “The Butterfly Effect,” she said. “I’ve heard it called that although it seems that what we do here doesn’t affect our own time because there are people who have gone back and returned, they have no memory of ever being here at all. Mulder’s partner was here and then left, she was gone for a few months and when she came back, she was actually from a point further along their timeline. Everything checked out though, the fact that she had been here didn’t change anything that had already happened. So no one really understands how it works.” Christine took a drink of water and sighed. “Yes, I can imagine it was. To me, to all of us from my timeline, that’s our life. We didn’t even know that any of you existed until we came here. It took a lot of getting used to.” She didn’t want to bring up the fact that Jim had watched his father die because even though she knew that this Jim had grown up with his father, watching that couldn’t been easy. “SHIELD is the closest thing there is and it’s not that close at all really. I work for them but not as an agent. I don’t have the credentials for that and it’s not something I would want to do anyway. I work in their medical facility and their research lab. Sometimes I help out down in the clinic when I’m off if they get very busy.” “I’m not certain whether that’s comforting or more alarming.” Jim would lean toward both. “I am glad the ship is going on without us. It would be painful to know she was without her Captain and First Officer.” On the other hand that meant they had no reason to go looking for Jim and Spock either. In the past the crew had to rescue each other, and while he didn’t think there was a way to rescue them from there, he’d like to think they would try. “I think that’s the best option for our worlds, but not the best option for us.” He understood people were settling here and they had their reasons for being comfortable. Or wanting to stay. “I like the idea that even in the alternate universe we all found our way to each other and the Enterprise. Different paths with the same results, at least in the big picture.” They took over the Enterprise in a very different circumstance, but they treated her well. Jim thought it was strangely romantic, in a general platonic way, to know they’d be a crew either way. “Do you find that satisfying? I can’t think of much else I would do. Unless professional science fiction idol is an option.” Jim grinned at the last. He was amused by the sheer volume of fans they had. He didn’t get recognized as often as people might expect, because his actor was currently so much older. “I still get to be a nurse which is what I love so I do like that and some of the research is interesting although I know it’s none of the really cool stuff. Our security clearances aren’t that high” Christine shook her head. “sometimes I think that even SHIELD doesn’t really know what to do with us. I think they’re as surprised that all these people started showing up as we were to be here. Although Tony Stark and his girlfriend have been very good to us, this building for example. It’s got everything we need and if there’s something we don’t have, the housing assistants can usually take care of it pretty quickly. The hard part was getting used to the fact that the technology is so different. I talked to the lamps for weeks before I remembered that didn’t work here.” She laughed and took another drink of water. “At least you can get a job as a professional science fiction idol. I don’t appear in the movie so no one knows me, the people I meet think I’m someone from a medical show on TV. I tried making up plots when people asked me about things but then I found out that she wasn’t on the show anymore so they knew more than I did. Which usually pissed them off.” Christine laughed. “Sometimes I wish she would show up just so she could deal with them for me and I could just be anonymous.” “I believe you may be right about that. How can they know what to do with us? They’ve never had to deal with anything of this magnitude. An alien attack is difficult, but at least they have something to fight when that happens. A way to band together. Now they have an endless supply of refuges, each more powerful than the rest, and no way of controlling the portal. IN truth, I’m not certain what Starfleet would do either. Perhaps try to find a colony or a planet with the space.” Like Stark had done, they certainly would provide food and shelter for the colony to begin. Jim did much the same for Khan, to a lesser extend, and look how well that turned out. “Perhaps she will. If they don’t know you, how sad for them.” Jim smiled to her and set his water to the side. “I’m not very good at sitting still for too long, would you care to have a walk while we continue to talk?” Christine smiled. “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’m not that good at sitting still myself so yes, I think a walk would be lovely.” She put her glass down and stood up. “Thank you for talking to me by the way and answering my questions.” It made her feel better somehow to know that her counterpart was a good person even if she never got the chance to meet her face to face. |