InsaneJournal

Blake wasn’t exactly a morning person, but she was interested in the talk Kate had promised her enough to show up in the galley, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Except of course she didn’t actually have a tail.

Not one for heavy breakfasts, she’d settled on a cup of tea and a muffin with odd colored berries in it that she’d never seen before. They smelled a little bit like a blackberry and a strawberry had been blended together, and were orange, but the muffin had looked too good to pass up. With her breakfast on a tray, she moved towards the tables and glanced around looking for Kate.

Early mornings were routine for Kate. She had been a cop for going on 15 years and even on the days where she didn’t have to crawl out of bed to visit a dead body or push herself at the gym to be able to chase down a suspect, she still usually got up with the sun and started the day with it.

Of course on the Enterprise there was no sun, just an annoying light above the bed that insisted on waking you with the rest of the crew but she usually ignored that, too and went at her own pace which, this morning, had meant a workout, a shower, fixing her hair and makeup and tugging on the standard issue Starfleet uniform.

Since she was part of the security team, she wore red. But with so many others of the same division in her mess hall, it wasn’t as if she stood out or anything.

But she was trained to observe and notice people, and Blake wasn’t difficult to find. True to her description, she had cat ears poking out of her head. It was far from the strangest thing Kate had seen in her months with the Enterprise but it still took her a moment to adjust to the sight. Still, she stood up from her chair, the largest cup of coffee the ship could produce in one hand and gave a small wave to catch Blake’s attention with the other. “Over here,” she said, waiting until the other woman had spotted her before taking her seat again.

The mess hall during regular morning and evening hours definitely was filled with an army of red, yellow, and blue uniforms. Blake had seen a picture of Kate but her face was still difficult to track down, and there was a noticeable look of relief on her face when the other woman stood up and waved.

She made her way over and took a seat, glad that the ship knew how to produce large cups of beverage because her own tea was exactly the same size. She lifted it and smiled at Kate, a little nervously. "Hi... Good morning. Am I supposed to salute you? I don't really talk to a lot of the members of the crew."

“Not quite,” Kate said with a laugh, pausing to sip at her coffee. She was addicted to the stuff, and it didn’t hurt at all that now she had a private stash of some of the best she could afford in her room. Her coffee intake had increased dramatically since they had stopped at Yorktown. “I’m not an officer, I haven’t been through proper Starfleet training and I doubt they would let me go through it even if I asked. I’m just a crewman but I’m also not on duty. Not yet anyway.”

Blake had been raised on tea, the kind that here on a more Earth-based vessel they'd call the 'asian blends' of it. That morning she'd opted for a simple green blend, but she'd picked up some amazing samples at the station. It was also helpful to have something warm and comforting to hold in your hand when meeting new people.

New people who were friendly and charming and somehow also intimidating. "I'm still not sure what I want to do here on the ship. I'm young enough, I think, to try for their academy but I hear it's very competitive. Which was fine when I was trying to get into Beacon, but that was based on fighting marks more than academics. Do they treat you well here?"

This wasn't the reason they'd decided to meet this morning, but Blake couldn't help asking. She felt lost most days, and Kate definitely seemed to have it together.

“I don’t think age is the problem,” she said, the tip of her nose wrinkling up ever so slightly. “I think it’s the fact that we aren’t from this time and they perhaps don’t trust us.” There was more to it than that, and there were elements of the argument that Kate understood and even agreed with, but at its simplest people looked at all of the refugees as somehow less than the rest.

“But yes, they treat me well. I get paid just like anyone else, my duties are like those of the others of my ranking.” She decided to leave out the part that it was essentially grunt work compared to what she had done at home, though Kate could admit to herself that it was going to be different no matter what. At home, she investigated murders and there weren’t exactly many of those to keep her busy with the Enterprise and its crew. “It’s maybe not the most exciting work at time, but it’s something to do and something purposeful towards life on the ship, which is important to me.”

"Hmm." Blake wrinkled a brow as Kate spoke. It was nice to know that if they did get jobs here on the ship they'd be treated fairly, but the thought that they couldn't really take their place here in this world didn't sit well with her. Faunuses back on Remnant were still fighting for the right just to live and join normal society, and that felt like too similar of a situation.

But it did make sense. "I guess... they have no reason to trust us yet. We come from so many different places, some of us with unique gifts and powers that no one's ever heard of before and... we're kind of wild cards. But I understand needing a purpose. My entire life's purpose was kind of messed up when I showed up here, and I've kind of been wandering aimlessly since. Which isn't like me at all. What's funny is after everything happened at my school I thought I needed a vacation. But now that I have the chance to get one, I hate how idle I am."

Maybe that's why the idea of spirituality was appealing to her. She gave Kate a sheepish smile and added, "I'm sorry, we were supposed to be talking about your Christianity."

She nodded her agreement at that, because the powers and abilities that some of the refugees brought with them were a cause for concern. Even working security, it was always in the back of her mind about what - if anything - the ship could do in the unlikely event that something went wrong with one of them.

But Kate wasn’t sure there was an answer or, more accurately, an answer that she would agree with. “Wanting a vacation is quite different than turning up somewhere and learning you are now essentially on a permanent one.” Kate had gotten a job early on, mostly as a way to keep herself busy and distracted, but that wasn’t the reaction that everyone else would have.

“I wouldn’t say it’s mine,” she said after a moment’s pause, “I didn’t grow up in church outside of major holiday services. My parents were the sort that believed more in law and justice than religion, and I really adopted those ideals as a kid.”

"I think my parents are kind of similar in that - well..." Blake trailed off and her ears twitched back and forth a bit as she thought of how best to describe it, before shrugging a shoulder and deciding to just go with the truth. There was nothing to lose here in space, after all, with Remnant and its various issues so very far away.

"Faunuses aren't... exactly welcome in society. There's been a lot of fighting and a lot of pushback on both sides. Eventually they gave us a place to live all on our own, but it's a gigantic island that's mostly desert, so we all end up squished together in our one port city mostly. My parents, my father mainly, was the leader of a group called the White Fang. It started out as just... a group fighting for our rights. For justice and equality. Those are things I can definitely believe in. Though that group lost its way eventually. I was actually about to go and take it back when I ended up here. Is Spirituality like that? Just... the belief in an ideal?"

If that was the case, it didn't sound like as foreign a concept as Blake had initially believed. "But then, why only go to church on holidays?"

How did you define something that you didn’t really put much belief in? Kate had to take a moment to think about that one, swallowing several sips of coffee while she worked that one out in her mind. “I think it’s just a belief,” she said finally, placing her cup on the tabletop and folding her hands together. “On Earth there are a lot of religions and, in some of those, different portions of them who interpret things in different ways. Then other people aren’t religious at all and don’t believe in anything. Other people put their faith in luck or fate or destiny, and that’s as real to them as someone who attended church every single service.”

“You don’t go to church just on holidays. Different religions have services at various times, and followers are usually encouraged to attend all of them or maybe to perform a ceremony as a sign of their belief,” Kate explained, “My family only attended on holidays because we weren’t particularly devout in our belief of one specific thing. As I said, my parents really put their time and energy into completely different parts of our society. In a lot of ways, doing good and helping others was their religion.”


While Kate took the time to think things out and then explain them, Blake picked at her muffin. The odd berries were more tart than she'd originally thought, and had an aftertaste that reminded her of the spices sometimes put in tea. There was a lot to consider and Earth definitely seemed more diverse than the other planets and cultures she'd been trying to learn about.

She nodded, "Well... I guess that kind of makes sense, though. Doing good and helping others is a great thing to turn your attention to, and if you believe in that, then that would make it a religion, I guess. On Remnant, we have some... I think ceremonies would be a good word. Like the Vytal Festival, that shows our continued strength in unity. And then we've got the belief that all children should be named in a way that evokes art or a color, which came about as a reaction to a war we're still recovering from. Blake, my name, is based on the color Black, for instance. It's a little more subtle than my team leader, who got the name Ruby. Maybe that's our Religion. The things we all practice to show that we're all still fighting this fight together."

Blake sipped her tea, and then tilted her head to the side. "I wonder what’s so different between Earth and a planet like Vulcan that things on the one planet ended up so much more diverse."

“There are ceremonies on Earth, too,” Kate replied, brushing her hair behind her ears and giving Blake a smile. “You have them in Christianity, but some of the other larger religions put a lot of emphasis on ceremonies. Smaller ones do it, too, but I wouldn’t say that they are well known or anything.”

“Black? That’s interesting,” she said with a brief tap of her fingers against the cup in her hands. “I think most people in Earth would look at Ruby as something far more complimentary for a name to represent a color. But I do like the idea of naming someone after something important. It’s a practice that happens on Earth, too, but not with everyone. And sometimes people just choose a name because they like it, there’s no deeper meaning to it.”

“But religion really -- I think it can just be whatever means something to you. It doesn’t have to be a person or a particular set of beliefs.”


"I think it has something to do with the colors that we are. My hair is black. Yang, which I think means 'sunshine' in another language, has yellow hair. Ruby's has hints of red in it, and Weiss, which I think means 'white' in yet another language, has silver hair." Blake explained, going down the list of people on her team. It wasn't always so straightforward though. She thought about Team JNPR and the people on that, which had hair colors that more subtly went with their names. Ren and his flower really only matched the one pink streak, for instance.

But she nodded her head at Kate as she went on, "I had the computer put some of the religious texts on my PADD, but it's really dry reading. I'm glad that there are people willing to talk about it. I think I hit a nerve with someone on the network when I was asking about it because he never messaged me back. He said he was the 'bad guy' in the story, but wouldn't say more."

Blake wondered what Lucifer's deal was. She'd tried to explain that stories were skewed and that 'bad' in one story could even be 'good' in another. He'd sounded interesting to talk to, but she guessed that discussion would never come.

“Oh, Lucifer?” Kate asked, remembering reading that comment on the network. “In Christianity there is Jesus - who is also called God - and then the devil. God is good, the devil is evil. And the devil, in this instance, would be Lucifer. And talking about God, or any of the holidays associated with him, often hits a nerve.”

Kate paused for a moment to finish off her coffee, setting aside the cup. “Don’t take it personally. Lucifer’s just sensitive about it and likes to snap when people bring it up.”

"Oh..." Blake trailed off, raising her eyebrows. That seemed like an incredibly complicated matter, and though she was now even more curious, she was glad that Kate could clear things up. She knew that she hated it when people pressed her to talk about things that were soft spots for her, and she'd never press anyone else's buttons in a similar way. She made a mental note to read up more on it, in the hopes that would be enough.

Her tea was nearly done, too, and she sipped the last of its contents before setting the cup back down. "We probably all have things that we don't really want to talk about. I once ran away from my friends for twelve hours when something came up that hit one of my own nerves. Thank you for explaining. And for talking about the other things, too."

“My suggestion for Lucifer is just to talk to him about other things, don’t bring up religion or Jesus or any of that,” Kate said with a shrug, “He’ll just snap at you or deflect the question altogether.”

But Blake was right about everyone have subjects they preferred to avoid. It seemed that the woman across from her had them going by her own words, and Kate certainly had things that she didn’t like talking about and, strictly speaking, wouldn’t unless she felt the knowledge could help someone else learn to cope with loss or that they were someone she trusted enough to hand over that painful piece of her past. “Oh, I think you are exactly right about that,” she said with a small smile, “It’s just part of living life. We all have things we don’t want to revisit for whatever reason. But it wasn’t - and isn’t - a problem, if I can explain something, I’m happy to do it.”

"The problem is that now I'm curious, but I can probably find answers in other places if I look around enough," Blake admitted, looking a bit sheepish. "This is where Yang would make another cat joke, and I would be forced to slap her."

Because Blake had already heard the saying about curiosity and cats, and while it seemed accurate, she was still completely over it. Unfortunately for her, Yang was probably never going to be over it any time in their adult lifetime. Despite her annoyance with the other woman though, her smile was fond. There was no doubt the two of them were close, though how close was even a mystery to her.

“But… I’ll remember that I can ask you about things. Assuming they’re things about Earth or being a law enforcement expert, anyway. Or about the Security team. I still want to explore my options, but working there might be a good fit.”

“There is no need to look it up,” Kate replied, “The story goes that Lucifer was one of the angels that were in heaven with God until one angel, which would be Lucifer, decided that he wanted as much power as God had and tried to overthrow him. It didn’t work and as punishment Lucifer and all of the other angels who agreed with him were cast out of heaven and sent to hell.”

Kate gave a shrug after she had explained that part, “That’s the version taught in my world, but Lucifer looks at God as his actual father and, much like you and I, he also has a mother. He was still cast out of heaven and sent to rule over hell, but the why and the how is a bit muddy and confusing. Either way, Lucifer now hates his father and thinks that he is manipulative and cruel for all the things that he allows to happen to the Earth and the people who live there.”

It wasn’t the most thorough explanation, but she thought she had hit the high points and maybe explained enough for Blake to get the gist of it all. Besides, there were some things that Kate didn’t think were her place to share with someone else without Lucifer’s permission. “The security team isn’t so bad, really,” she replied, “It’s not what I was doing before I came here, but it’s the closest comparable job to working homicide.”

Blake's eyebrows rose up as Kate recounted the tale, "That definitely explains why he wouldn't want to talk about it. And why it would be a very sensitive subject for him. When I left home, the falling out was so large that I didn't even mention my parents to my friends. After the school was attacked, going home was... an effort." Lucifer’s sounded like a complicated story, one with lots of different sides and truths to it, but she'd probably never get the whole of it. Even if she did end up convincing Lucifer to divulge it, she'd never know what 'God's' side really was without asking him. And that seemed out of the question.

"It doesn't seem bad, no, not with nice people like you working on it. But I might try and finish some kind of schooling, too. The system is different here than on Remnant and I think I would be placed into... I guess it would be called University or College. There are programs here on the ship, I really need to look over all the details." The Traveler Liasion office had gone out of its way to make sure that all of the 'travelers' showing up on the Enterprise had something to do with their lives. She had the vague understanding that higher education wasn't usually something pursued on a ship like this, but the concession was a nice way to keep everyone aboard. "Maybe study literature or languages. I don't know if I can work and study too."

As far as Kate knew, no one had taken the Enterprise up on the offer to continue or begin schooling. But it was her understanding that most of the refugees that had arrived had completed their schooling or, if not, had no real desire to continue it. “It would likely be a question for Peggy Carter, but I’m sure that they would accommodate you if you wanted to do school and also work. It would mean reduced working hours, of course, but I don’t think that would be a problem.”

But she did smile at the mention of literature, her thoughts turning quickly to her husband. “You like to read then?” she asked.

"Oh I love books." Blake's face lit up, and her love of reading was clear in how excited she was to move to a topic she was this comfortable with. "When I moved to Vale for school, my suitcase was packed with them. There were so many they took up an entire shelf. On Remnant we have devices that are like PADDs, but smaller, and they don't really store books on them yet. We still use physical copies."

Her ears twitched around excitedly, "When we were at the station, I found a shop that sold them and bought all the ones I could afford. There's just... something about the smell of the paper and the feel of it under your finger tips. I read them on my PADD too, but I love real books. I wish there was a way to replicate them."

Blake’s excitement was adorable, the way her ears twitched only adding to the effect. In a way, she reminded Kate of Alexis, Castle’s daughter who had been in her last year of college when Kate had been tugged onto the Enterprise. Alexis, too, had that same appetite for reading and learning. “It’s too bad you can’t see the loft I lived in in New York,” she said with a smile, “My husband is the one who decorated it and when he moved in he put up bookshelves to serve as room dividers on the first floor. It’s a bit like having a small library in our living room.”

When Kate had officially moved in, they had actually ran out of shelf space to store Castle’s collection of books in addition to her own which had required quite a bit of bargaining and discussion to whittle it down so they all fit.

Though, in the end, they had really not gotten rid of that many books and instead just rearranged knick knacks and other things that had been placed on the shelves to make more room. “I like a physical book more, too,” she agreed, “But being here, I’ve mostly given up on having that luxury. The next time we dock I may try to find a bookstore and see what is in there that catches my interest, but I’m mostly just grateful that there is a digital database to choose from. E-books were pretty popular in my time, but they weren’t quite to the point that actual books weren’t a big money maker.”

"That sounds... actually amazing. I wish I could see it, too, but I'd just want to take every book off of the shelf and page through it. You probably wouldn't enjoy having an accidental live-in Faunus for a few weeks. One or both of you would end up kicking me out, and then I would be sad." Blake imagined trying to set up rows of book shelves in their quarters, but the rooms were so small that she understood why something like that might be impossible. At the moment, the ones she'd bought had been arranged on the table in the open area of her suite. If she ever got a roommate, she wasn't sure what she'd do.

Books were sacred objects, after all, and no one who was unfamiliar to her was allowed to touch them. That was the rule, which she'd had to explain when she'd first met her team. Especially after she caught Yang flipping through a few books she was embarrassed to be caught with. Her cheeks grew a little red at that memory. Her partner, sitting on her bunk, waving 'Ninjas of Love' around for all to see.

It sounded like Castle was a good fit for Kate, if only because he understood. "Your husband sounds amazing, but I might be biased. My last boyfriend wasn't much of a reader at all, I had to protect my books from him. Adam cared more about looking good and fighting things than literature." Or her. Or... common decency. She hoped he never showed up here. “But how could you possibly choose? I would have just kept all the books and stacked them in the corner.”

“I think he’s pretty amazing,” Kate said with a laugh, briefly looking away from Blake to search the room as if Castle would magically appear. In reality, he was still most likely sleeping in his room where she had left him and would be for at least a couple more hours. “But you’re right, he loves books. He actually writes them for a living. Or wrote them, I guess. I haven’t asked him if he’s going to keep it up now that we are here.”

Deep down, she felt pretty certain that he would because writing was so intertwined into the fabric of what made Castle, well, Castle. “We narrowed it down in part because we each had copies of the same book. Usually one of us had a sentimental attachment to a copy and that was the one we kept. A couple of times we just picked the cover that we liked the best.”

“Is the interest in language because you love reading?”

"I hope he does. Maybe he would let me read his books before he publishes them," Blake mumbled. She tried not to sound as enthusiastic about that idea as she was, but to be able to 'beta test' a writer’s handiwork before others got to read it? That would be an honor, and exhilarating, and something she'd internally brag about forever. Probably not aloud, however, because few people would really understand it. Someone like Kate probably would, at least. "But that selection process does make sense. And yes. Language is fascinating to me because of the way it translates from one form to another. It changes over time and seems to have its own consciousness in a way."

"And then there are the languages from my home, from Remnant, that seem to have things in common with Languages from Earth. And I know that there are translation programs we were all given when we got here, so that we would understand each other. But I want to be able to do it on my own. And to be able to read some of these other texts I find that are in languages the people from other worlds speak. I don't know if my head can fit that many different words for things, but it might be fun to try." The more Blake thought about this, the more she thought it was a good fit for her.

But she still wanted to keep herself fit and ready for combat. That was a large part of her life, and there was no going back. She thought Yang would feel similar about it, and that others that were used to a way of life like that would also agree. "...There's music in those other languages, too. Your Earth operas. And something in... Klingon? I thought I heard."

As she listened to Blake’s explanation she found that one word came to mind: polyglot. It was a word that Kate really only knew because she had always thought it would be nice to be able to speak three or four languages, but it was still precisely what Blake seemed to want to do. “There is a word for that on earth,” she said, “Polyglot. It’s someone who learns languages and always wants to learn a new one. There are people who make a living working as translators because they are gifted with languages and able to speak a lot of them.”

Kate could only speak two and could stumble through a third, but the idea of gaining some sort of legitimate fluency in French was always in the back of her mind. “The thinking is that if you study a language then it’s easier to pick up more along the way. That idea is based on the similarities between some languages in Europe but it could apply to others as well.”

For a moment, she was quiet, thinking about what Castle might say to someone asking to read a book before it was published. It was possible that Blake didn’t know that she had basically described the role of an editor and the process they went through with the author in readying a book for publication and that it was a key component to the creation of a book. “I wouldn’t want to answer for him,” she said finally, “Castle has his own way of doing things, especially when it comes to writing, but you should talk to him. Ask him about it.”

Even if Rick said no, Kate would never expect he would be rude about it. He was pretty much the kindest and most considerate person that she knew.


"Oh..." Blake said, realising that she'd probably committed a social mistake in asking Kate instead of her husband. He was, after all, the writer in this scenario and she should have realised that Kate couldn't speak for him in that regard. But Kate was right, as much as she loved books, the editing process in itself was something of a mystery to her. She had no idea there was an official position for it, one that she might have been trying to step into. "You're right, I should ask him instead. I'll try to. I'm not actually good at talking to new people, but to meet and get to talk to an actual Writer would be worth trying to get over it."

On the other note, being a Polyglot sounded like a lot of fun. It was a chance, too, to make something more of her life. To take advantage of new opportunities she wouldn't have gotten where she grew up. "I don't know if I'm actually gifted at anything but combat. Our schooling was incredibly limited in its scope, but I think I mentioned that before. Normal people - those who aren't gifted with an aura or any powers at all, they probably go to school to learn things like that. I think it's only just starting to dawn on me that I have so many more choices."

And the idea that the languages in this place called Europe all came from a similar place and that there were connections between some but not others was exactly the kind of thing about it that excited Blake. Learning all about that, perhaps even learning the language that gave Weiss and Yang their names.

It wasn’t necessarily a mistake, there were people that would have answered without hesitation and, on some subjects, Kate would have been one of them. But writing was a process for her husband and in the years they had been together, she had learned that it was best to leave him be unless Rick was asking her for assistance. “He’s a nice guy,” she said, hoping to ease any anxiety Blake might have about speaking to someone new, “And I don’t think he would mind talking to you about writing at all.”

In fact, she’d be willing to bet that Castle would love the opportunity.

“Well, that’s just because you’ve never had the chance to do anything else,” she replied, “Once you’ve tried some other things, I think you’ll be very surprised at what you are able to do.”


Kate's assurances definitely helped make Blake feel less anxious, and she added contacting one Rick Castle to her list of things she really needed to do at some point. The list was very long and kept getting sidetracked by researching and reading books, but she knew she couldn't put off talking to the other people aboard the ship forever.

Her time at Beacon had taught her how to open up a little bit, and though Adam's attack had done quite a bit to push her back in the other direction, she didn't want to live like that. That was like letting him win. "I'll definitely try and find him... if not in person, maybe on the message board." Or whatever it was they called the place where they all seemed to speak to each other. It was easier to talk there sometimes.

Then she nodded her head, because Kate was right, and that helped her make a decision. "I'm really glad that I talked to you, now. I want to try that out - doing other things, learning other things. I'm going to talk to Miss Carter about it."

“I think that’s a great place to start,” Kate grinned, “Just tell him I told you that you should talk to him because you love books, that should be enough to break the ice. Castle rarely meets a stranger, so I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. One of his best qualities is how comfortable he can make people feel.”


Blake’s mention of intending to try other things just had Kate’s smile growing that much more, a little sparkle of amusement filtering into her eyes. “You definitely should. You aren’t in a place where you are limited by one thing anymore, Blake. You’ve been given opportunity and you should take it and run with it; who knows what might happen.”