allmhadadh | Entries tagged with haroldlee

New Fairfield tended to be a quiet kind of place. Peaceful. A good place to be, if you happened to be displaced from your native timestream by about two centuries and some change.

The downtown was cute, and Scotty liked grocery shopping there. Mostly because there were a bunch of organic foodie types who lived in the area, and so that meant that the local stores had a decent selection of food that wasn't laden with all sorts of pesticides and whatnot. Today had been quiet, which was just a nice bonus.

Well. It was a nice bonus until he got the most eerie feeling, upon stepping out of the little grocery store. Inside, the clerk had barely been paying attention to the register, for watching the television. Outside, it was unnervingly quiet for an early Sunday evening. It took him a few moments to place it.

There weren't any birds.

Scotty adjusted the bag into his opposite arm, looking skywards.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Wait...

He saw a speck of something, up high. After another second, he identified it as a jetplane. Just a regular, run-of-the-mill passenger plane. As he watched, the trajectory of it seemed a bit off. And it seemed to be getting bigger, too, as it disappeared behind the treeline and hills.

A few more eerie moments later, he started around the corner for where the car was parked. Figured that right about now, he was quite keen on retreating back to their little time-share place off in the woods, and shaking off the strange sensation. He nearly ran into someone on the other side, and barely checked himself.

Fuck.

The person he ran into was... was bloody. Literally bloody. Scotty backpedaled automatically, eyes gone wide. "Are ye a'right?!" he asked, trying to see where the person was wounded.

The person let out the most horrifying sound from somewhere in its chest and lunged, even as the sound of a massive crash rumbled in the distance.

All it managed to catch was a whole cloth bag of organic food, and a glimpse of a black-haired Scot running for his life.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

When the sun is high
In the afternoon sky
You can always find something to do
But from dusk til dawn
As the clock ticks on
Something happens to you...

-Frank Sinatra, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

The thing that stuck most strongly with Scotty about October in New Jersey was the smell; it was musty and sort of sweet, in a way. He couldn't quite get over it. Then there were the leaves; even in the darkness of night, where there were bright enough lights, they showed in reds and golds and browns and still some greens.

Scotty had never given a whole lot of thought to environments, not like a naturalist would, but he decided that he really liked the fall.

Those leaves were slick underfoot, as they crossed through a band of trees between the walkway and where they parked. Between the trunks, he could see the lights of the New York skyline across the way, but mostly Scotty focused on the ground underfoot. It was chilly out; Harold had grabbed a blanket, and while Scotty wasn't feeling too cold, he still had to take some time to get genuinely readjusted to a non-climate controlled environment. He figured the blanket was to keep warm... dawn was a good ways off.

"Tourists really seem to like this view," Harold commented, offhandedly, as they crossed over to Sinatra Park. He didn't sound very enthusiastic himself, though. Scotty couldn't entirely blame him -- while Aberdeen hadn't had much of a tourist industry, San Francisco had been crawling with them, and they were a bit annoying as they swarmed the Academy grounds taking holos or pictures.

Still, he figured that the view might be nice. And they could spend more time getting to know each other. He was still trying to wrap his head around the change in time, in culture, in everything; it wasn't so much that it was hard, but it was just unreal in a lot of ways. And the world, at least so far, didn't look all that desperately different than the one he'd come from. Cars, instead of skimmers. Airplanes, instead of shuttles or a transporter pad. Not very eco friendly, but then, matter/antimatter energy hadn't been figured out here yet.

Just from what he had stored in his own head, Scotty could have probably put civilization a whole century ahead. But honestly, he really knew better, too. And some part of him didn't really want to; it would only be taking from them what they would someday earn on their own.

For now, though...

The Manhattan skyline, burning bright even at this late hour in oranges and the occasional splash of some other color, came into view when they stepped out of the trees, and Scotty had to stop.

Just for a moment to breathe.

It was dark again when Scotty woke up, half-twisted in sheets and still a little groggy. It actually took him a few moments of laying there in that darkness to get his bearings, and remember where he was, and remember when he was.

Right. New Jersey, North America. October of 2009. The year made no sense to Scotty at all; it didn't even remotely seem real. More like some very distant past where nothing particularly noteworthy happened, except that mankind had stagnated worryingly in the space race. Decades to go before World War III broke out. He would maybe be alive for that. Maybe.

He laid there for long moments, shaking off the last of the NyQuil sleep. His dreams had been troubled and surreal, and it appeared that when he was actually awake and not in shock, reality felt that way too. It was both immediately recognizable, and yet wholly different, all at once.

Harold was still asleep; Scotty got up quietly so as not to wake him up. He had to go make coffee, and he had to make sure blondie was still alive. The apartment smelled better, now, than it had when he'd crashed. And he found the light switch, pausing to eye it -- plain old electricity. A simple switch. Those still existed in his century, actually, at least in the universe he had come from. So, he turned the lights on and went to figure out the coffee machine.

Another fairly simple thing; it took him about ten minutes, and that was mostly because he had to figure out the coffee to water ratio.

After that, he went back and checked on Neil. Who was actually worryingly still. But he was breathing steadily and had a steady pulse, albeit not terribly strong, so apparently he wasn't dying. At least, Scotty dearly and sincerely hoped not: He might not have liked being kidnapped, called a pixie or having to deal with the madness, but he sure didn't want the nutjob dead.

There wasn't much to do after that. So, feeling like the Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or at least a vampire given that he was waking up at night, he sat down at the kitchen table to watch the coffee brew.

After hanging around the galley, and helping Harold with the yeoman bit, Scotty had very little else to do with himself. He didn't want to go back to his quarters, and he didn't really want to just hang around idle anymore. So, finally, he got ahold of some buckets, and some soap, and some rags and headed back to the Riviera. He might not get to sleep with her tonight, but he could make up for that with some TLC.

He eyed the black Riviera for a long moment, a sort of half-sad look, half-still-in-awe, and then pulled his shirts off, setting them aside. There was little point in getting them soaked. And then, knowing that it probably wouldn't make up for his absence (at least in his own mind), he turned his attention to washing the car.

At least whenever Len came back, she'd look her very finest.

I realized clearly that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him close in my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong toward an abyss from which I could do nothing to restrain him... His look was very serious, like some one lost far away.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

He could not bring himself to attend the party, so Scotty did what he was apt to do as both an apology and a gesture of gratitude, and sent food. He wasn't sure why he couldn't make himself attend, except that it seemed harder and harder to be here at all with each passing day. He was not unaware of his reasons for coming aboard this ship, when he would have stayed on Risa and lived under a pier or roamed the planet finding odd jobs. He was also keenly aware that those reasons had not truly mattered, in the end.

It matters, he had written on the bottom of Perera's theory, in ink, on paper.

Scotty now dwelled in a world where it seemed few things did. It was not that he didn't care about the people here; there were a number of them he liked and wanted to do well by. Captain Kirk -- both versions, even -- Commander Spock, Doctor McCoy. Len Nimoy, who owned the Riviera he had taken refuge in since leaving Risa. Harold Lee, who reminded him of the sand, and the suns, and his spot under the pier. He still carried his shell in his pocket with him, a hidden talisman. The people mattered, and he cared, but it didn't seem to be enough to overcome the oppression that had dogged him since leaving Risa, and had only lifted in dreams of the road.

He felt trapped. Like the car, like something boxed into a cage. It didn't matter if the cage sailed the stars -- he had no room to run, no places to hide and become invisible; no pier to take shelter under, no warm sand. He had a beautiful car to visit, but she wasn't his either; her owner obviously loved her dearly, and Scotty quietly relinquished the building possessiveness of the Riviera he'd been gathering so long as he thought she was as lost as he was.

Regardless, he still went back to her; spent the rest of his day off on general maintenance and then cleaning. Scraping cruddy build-up off of her engine mounts with a wire brush, oiling door hinges. Then, he cleaned his own hands in the nearest public restroom and came back to wipe down her dash and interior, polish her up with a clean rag. He would likely not stay another night with her; he told her this. A quiet confession to a dash -- he loved her, and was grateful, but she was never his and her Len still needed and wanted her. But he would check on her and care for her while he could.

He stayed one more night, though. One more night smelling the miles and the road dust and the leather; smelling the years and distances. Some place for a dream.

He set his PADD to wake him up before the morning watch, then curled up in the back seat to go to sleep.

After the last of the party last night, Scotty took his food and bid a goodnight to Harold. From there, he went to grab his stuff from his locker and managed to catch a good shower before the public beach houses closed for the night, then change into his clean clothes. And, since he didn't have to worry about starving, he also finally picked up a comb. It took him about a half-hour to untangle his hair, in all. He hadn't properly combed it in a week, and it was apt to be uncontrollable even when it was neat, let alone when it wasn't.

But finally, after all of that, he went back to his spot.

His last night here. He still didn't want to leave. He still thought those plaintive, childish thoughts that he could be Robinson Crusoe or Peter Pan and just spend the rest of his life under a pier, scraping by, maybe building a small shelter under the eves of civilization. Scotty was only ever one step removed from the wilderness. Not even because he loved wilderness, but because he understood it and it meant not being around people. It meant he could live or die by his own hands.

Still, he had given his word. He hadn't heard back from the other Scott, but he still wasn't all that surprised by it. Man probably finally came to his senses.

He didn't sleep brilliantly, mostly because he was a little anxious and partly because he felt like he was mourning, but he was up with the suns and resolved to carry through on what he said he would. It wasn't easy; he kept having to jerk himself back on task, away from everything in him crying out to run.

The first thing he did was type up his proper transcripts into the PADD, including name, rank, serial number and everything else. He wasn't a member of this Starfleet, but he included all of his Basic Training information, included all of the classes he'd taken and scores -- universally above average -- and then the classes he'd already been released from in Command School thanks to his time at the University of Aberdeen, and his class-credits from those. He was, in his own universe, a first-year Command Cadet, but he was sure that wouldn't translate.

The second thing he did was draw up a contract. He wasn't ready to commit to being in this Starfleet; far from it, he wasn't even sure if he could commit to being in this universe. So, the contract he drew up was that, if accepted, he would work as a privately contracted civilian at a pay-rate of a crewman third class, answerable to senior warrant officers and commissioned officers, but not a member of the crew officially. He could, then, leave if it proved to be a bad idea. He would be able to wear his own clothes, but he would be under the command of everyone from senior warrant officer on up. It was the best he could do to honor both his own Starfleet, who he had made his commitment to, but likewise be fair to the crew of this starship and properly pull his weight, and to put himself under their code of conduct so long as he worked with them.

He read over it a handful of times, then send it off:

To: Yeoman Harold Lee, USS Enterprise
From: Montgomery Scott
Re: Contract Proposal for Captain Kirk
Attached: transcripts.doc, contract.doc

Yeoman Lee,

Herein is my formal request to join the crew of the USS Enterprise as a privately contracted civilian, as well as my qualifications for such a position. Please forward this to Captain Kirk as priority allows. If said contract is approved, please pass on my formal request to work one full shift rotation in the galley, and one half shift rotation as a technician, and any/all pertinent information I would need (reporting officers, schedule, quarters) to adequately perform my duties.

-Montgomery Scott

It was a formal note, but it made Scotty grin briefly. He wondered if he was the first person to send paperwork to the newly minted yeoman as something of a loose introduction to his job. And he imagined Harold's face as he tried to figure out what to do with it, which made him laugh outright.

It was still morning when Scotty was all finished with that.

And all that was really left for him to do then was wait.

He half-slept, something between dream and reality; a restless doze, where he would stir himself awake just to make sure he was still breathing. And then, confirmed, in the rain tapering to a sprinkle, then a mist, then the clear and clean and hazy scent left afterwards, he would drift back into that half-asleep state again. It wasn't that bad, really. It hurt, but it wasn't that bad. He knew he wasn't in any mortal danger from injury, just beaten.

He drifted there, in that place, breath shallow to avoid making the pain flare across his left side. Counted himself lucky that all of the hurt was on the left, and he could lay on the right. A matter of fact thought, like most of his waking thoughts. His dozing thoughts were less settled; fragments and pieces and when he woke up to see the suns rising, he realized all over again that he was far more afraid of leaving this place than he was of any number of beatings.

( Read more... )

By the time they made it back to the hostel room, Scotty was pretty much exhausted beyond any description.

He had fallen quiet in the cab, leaning his head over against the window and almost drifting off, while the unconscious older Scott was laying across his and Harold's laps, and as Harold was doing something or another with the PADD. Thankfully, the ride wasn't too desperately long and they skirted the edge of the city to miss most of the traffic.

Needless to say, when he had woken up on the pier that morning, he could not have remotely predicted this was how he'd end up spending his night. Not in a million years.

In under twenty-four hours, he had woken up and went to work, got chased by irate dockhands and ended up in a far too personal conversation with the other Scott over breakfast, had offered to go fishing -- which had gone wrong -- and had ended up half-drugged and messed up. It could be little wonder why Harold kissing him didn't particularly bother him; there was so much on his plate that he just didn't have it in him to do anything but take it for what it was. Which was a stoned snog in a lake.

The cab deposited them at the hostel, and they managed to wrangle the older Scotty out without bashing him against anything unforgiving. The younger Scotty told Harold the door code to get in, and they were able to get back to the tiny room.

The hostel keeper's daughter still had a wee thing for Scotty, and was very accommodating; she brought extra blankets and pillows, and even a large, self-cooling thermos of water with glasses to set on the shelf. Not one to leave anything in less than Bristol fashion, Scotty made sure everything was put up and away. He and Harold wrestled the older Scott out of most of his clothes and back into his dry civvies so he could sleep this mess off dry and in peace; Scotty covered him over in the small bed, leaving his arms free, and Harold crashed on the floor with the extra pillows and blankets.

After that, he just sort of plunked down to sit, dazed now to barely more than fragments of thoughts. He could feel a heavy blanket of almost peaceful blackness that he'd been fighting off for quite awhile now, weighing down on his overwhelmed mind and rather abused body. He couldn't even begin to figure out what the day had been. He knew he had to find work tomorrow; he was starving and hadn't had anything to eat since before dawn, and he was down to seven credits over all. He also just didn't have it left in him to go find anything this moment.

He fell asleep with his head and arms on the bed below the other Scott's feet, sitting up, down into some kind of blackness beyond any contact with the outside world.

It was the first time since he got here that he wasn't awake before the suns.

Fishing on the sea shore was virtually impossible for any number of reasons; the biggest being, of course, that they had several seriously pissed off dockhands who would probably have an eye out for them. But another reason was that it was too busy and bustling for any such thing, and therefore any attempt at fishing would have to be made somewhere slightly quieter.

Risa's weather-net system controlled everything. Rain, temperatures, everything. It was a fine tightrope to walk, controlling the climate of an entire world, and when the system fell it tended to be nearly catastrophic. Luckily for the inhabitants and tourists, it only rarely did that. But it was a fine tightrope and certainly there had to be some balance towards natural ecology.

On the interior side of the city, among mountains and cliffs and trees were the rivers that fed the sea; deep cut rivers that were still surprisingly untamed on a world where everything else seemed to be. And the fishing there was good.

Scotty had stopped back at the locker to grab his paperwork, and the PADD for the other Scott if he so wanted it to navigate them, and they hopped the public transit system that was pretty much free to get out of the city for a few hours. Back in those mountains and trees were plenty of hiking trails, but it was surprisingly bereft of parasitic insect life, or at least the kind with a taste for human blood, and it was likewise bereft of all that many people. The sounds of the city faded to the sounds of leaves and water and echoes off of rock; the light filtered down in dappled yellows across near-black dirt and green ferns. They certainly weren't the only people who would fish here; in fact, they rented their poles at a shack catering to fishermen up the road from the trails, but it was fairly quiet.

The younger Scott thought any number of times that he should beg off, that he should tell the older one that he had no right to go interrupting shore leave, that there was no obligation and about a million other things that were far too ingrained into his thought patterns. Somehow, he stopped himself each time. That had gotten them no where, and it was fairly clear now that they tended to make the other Scotty unhappy. He didn't really understand why they did, but he knew he didn't want to cause that look anymore. He just kept reinforcing in his own head that if the other Scott didn't want to be here, he wouldn't be. It would probably take him awhile to believe that, but he worked on it.

He himself was not sure how to feel, except still half-exhausted. But in a good way. Where you were too tired to be so jumpy, but awake enough not to miss things. He still felt off-balanced and like he was in rough waters, but not on his beam-ends, waiting for the sea to take him down. Ultimately, if he had any specific way to describe it, he would probably say that he was a little lost, and a bit afraid, and rather warmed, and trying to both retain himself and still flex enough to let someone else do the leading, even if this outing was his idea. He was pretty sure all that was a first, in his living memory. He didn't try to wonder if it would be the last; just lived the now.

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

( Off the Ground )

( Risa )

( Open Door )

Scotty woke up in the galley, not too terribly surprised that Harold had left; he didn't figure the floor of a galley was all that comfortable a napping spot for most people anyway. But he was then chased out by some of the next watch of cooks, and had to do something with himself.

Reluctant as he was, he headed back for his assigned quarters. The nap had done him some good; it'd be probably a few days before he wasn't limping, but it didn't bother him, and his head was a little clearer. He grabbed a shower, eyeing the myriad black and blue and purple marks with clinical disinterest, then changed into a handy set of clothes and started getting his toolkit together.

Might not exactly have a repair list accessible anymore, but that didn't stop him from deciding to fix whatever he could see visible and in need of repair. He figured it was fair. And he had to earn his room and food, anyway.

He just didn't realize what else he'd be doing while out tonight, too.

After a couple hours of being passed out on a desk, he woke up with a jerk, then winced at the ache in his neck. By now, he was too hungry to go and ignore it, and after a genuinely baleful look at the replicator, he figured that he had to find some source of food that wouldn't feel like a betrayal.

He rolled down the sleeves of the long t-shirt he'd borrowed off of the other Scott to cover up the bruises, did the best he could to finger-comb his hair into some semblance of neatness (not quite succeeding) and tried not to feel too messed up to move. He went to check for another list of repairs he could do, and found access blocked; letting out a quiet, disheartened sigh, he just decided to go with plan A.

The galley wasn't too hard to find. And it was busy. Really busy. He almost balked and left, but after a moment, someone came by and literally shoved a bowl of dough into his hands.

Scotty was a mean cook. Not nearly to his mother's level, mind, but he certainly wasn't a kitchen idiot. He'd been her sous chef enough times in a professional kitchen, those times when it wasn't too much of a hassle to take him along, that he knew his way around there about like he did machines. Cooking was just another form of engineering; put things together, make them work, try not to create any disasters, and he was a natural at it.

So, being conscripted briefly into the galley staff, working to prepare meals for an overcrowded starship, was not too bad a fate. He lost track of time there, too, though he sure didn't lose track of his stomach, which was probably trying to eat itself by now. And after he'd worked long enough that he felt he had earned his meal and two others besides, he stashed some aside to make dinner for himself. There was a broken stove in the back of the galley; he repaired it easily, washed up, then got to preparing food.

It wasn't a masterpiece or anything. Meat, potatoes, noodles and vegetables, all together in one casserole. A hearty meal, meant to fill the belly, and maybe provide some level of comfort, and it didn't take all that much of any one thing to make it. A good bit of the juices from the meat left in with a base. An appropriate amount of herbs and a little spice, just enough to throw a tiny bit of bite into it. Poor man's food, basically, but almost on the same level as comfort food.

He sized out a couple of plates and managed to use a third to bribe another of the staff of the galley to deliver them. One to Harold, one to the other Scott, each with a note that read the same thing: "Thanks for the help yesterday."

Then, with a fourth plate of the casserole set aside, he washed the dishes and put them away, then found one of the few quiet spots in the kitchen to sit down against the wall and eat.

The work wasn't hard work, but Scotty was almost painfully grateful for it. It so turned out that his little jury-rigged project had exploited a weakness in the connection points of the lighting system, where each element joined to the next. He scrambled the ones overhead in the little homemade botany lab, with its special modified lights, and it cascaded to blow out the main junctures. If it'd destroyed every one, it'd be days of work. This, only hours.

He was still glad of it. Not of causing the damage, but of having something to do.

Once the older man, somehow a Scott, had showed him and Harold how to make the right repairs, he'd grasped it quickly and then stayed alongside Harold for another twenty minutes or so, helping Harold until he was as smooth as a technician would be; tips on how to hold the tools, how to move aside the fiber-lines, how to wire in new connections. The only show of gratitude he could think to give for now.

Then Scotty moved off to his own work, and found the steady, easy rhythm; that internal quiet he found when he worked with his hands. He loved working with his hands, and things that were concrete and that he could fix. His first real job had been in a salvage yard, taking what was broken and doing all he could to save it. Sometimes he failed. Sometimes he succeeded.

Always, he tried.

Now he worked again, something to keep his troubled thoughts at bay; worked the tangible, what appealed to his senses. Narrow sight, the hum of the energy through reactivated lines in his ears, the cool materials in his fingers. Forgot long since the bruises on his arms, or the fact he was still hungry and now thirsty.

Forgot that he was lost, and worse than he could even begin to understand.

In the work, he was there; he was good, and reached for perfect. Sometimes he failed, and mostly he succeeded, but always he tried.

In the work, he was there; no before, no after, no name or life or past or future. No questions, no answers. Only this.

Fixing what was broken.

...a little too free.

The opportunity was one he couldn't afford to miss. It wasn't that he was convinced quite like he was before that he was in mortal danger, but Scotty and confinement didn't get along. For that matter, Scotty and any kind of vulnerability didn't get along. Being vulnerable was the worst state he could be in.

Unfortunately, he went from the proverbial frying pan and into the fire.

The shower wasn't hard to sneak out of, and the guards had been convinced by his not-false modesty that he should be given some space. He really wasn't faking it. Even though he had to deal with crowds in Basic, his natural state was kind of on the private, shy side of things, and so it made him anxious to consider having a bunch of guards watching him in a shower. They, probably convinced by his age and the fact he was only just over five and a half feet tall, had moved off. They might have felt guilty about the ever darkening bruises all down his arms, too, and probably a good number elsewhere from where he was manhandled back to the brig.

He hadn't actively considered escape, though, until after he was clean again and had happened to notice how easy it would be. Namely, crawling across the bottom of the shower room, under the doors, until he reached the vent shaft at the end of the room. So, he did that. Quickly, quietly.

He managed to escape into the vent, and did quite a bit of climbing and crawling before, inadvertently, he came across a vent opening not strong enough to hold his weight.

By then, naturally, he could hear the guards shouting. Heard them quite clearly as he fell through the opening, hanging on for a split second before his hands slipped and he landed with a really painful thud, right on his ass.

Right in the middle of a corridor.

A very well-lit corridor.

At that really bloody bad luck, all he could do was groan, scramble to his feet and start running away from the sounds of boots coming through the corridors with his face on fire and the rest of him on display.