(no subject)

[chasedthestars]

"It's not so bad," says Jim, sitting sprawled with his back against a tree trunk and a glass of something clear on his knee. Addressing his other knee, or rather, the orange tabby sitting there, he grins. "I mean, Bones has got a pretty sweet place as huts go. I wouldn't mind if it reminded me less of an Iowan farmhouse, but it makes him happy."

Plum's tail swishes once, which is more than enough for Jim to assume the animal agrees with him. "Right? So I've got Spock's old room, which is weird." More than weird, in fact. Sleeping in Spock's bed is uncomfortable in a way Jim's chosen not to examine too carefully, but he leaves the sheets in a mess every morning, and it makes him feel a little better. "If you're keeping score, that's one BFF, one bed, and one roof over my head. And I've got this."

He shakes his glass. Privately, Jim feels that Bones drinks too much, but damn if he isn't generous about it. "He's got a whole still to himself. And he totally doesn't bother locking it up. How great is that?"

Comments

[priorcommitment]

It's the sound of a conversation which pulls Lesovik suddenly off the track, his tail moving at a mile a minute as he struggles against Ishiah's firm grip on the leash. One particularly well-timed tug has the puppy finally free of his oversized owner, and he bolts through the grass towards a man and his cat, barking in tiny high-pitched yips that sound far more threatening to the dog's ear than anyone around him.

"Leshy," Ishiah protests in an accent not visited for quite some time, frowning as he takes off after the puppy, resolving to train the boy better before bringing him out again. "Down. Sit. Back."

Fruitless scolds and orders fall upon deaf ears before Ishiah looks up to see who exactly his puppy has decided to bestow with slobbery love, and somehow, as shown with an arch of his brow, he's unsurprised.

"Jim. Speaking to your cat?"

[chasedthestars]

Jim is alerted to the presence of the dog several moments before its first yip, the scrape of claws across his kneecap and orange blur winging past his eyes all the early warning he needs, and he's got the glass down in time to catch the puppy as it launches.

"Hey there buddy," Jim coos, deaf to Plum's betrayed hissing from a branch overhead. "You out walking your master, huh? That's good, I think he needs the exercise." Looking up, Jim grins even wider. "Hey, Ish."

[priorcommitment]

Turning an apologetic gaze over to the cat now perched high in the tree, Ishiah rounds over to stare in her direction, hesitantly reaching a hand closer to see if she'd rather come back down. For his part, Lesovik ignores the hissing from above, still launching himself at Jim's chest at intervals, tongue lapping out at the underside of Jim's chin.

Blinking in confusion, Ishiah turns his gaze over at the young man. "Jim," says Ishiah first, acknowledging the young man politely, even as he turns a thin-lipped gaze over at the glass— he has the feeling that the smell would be sharp, if Ishiah bothered to pull closer. "In what way do I seem to need the exercise?"

[chasedthestars]

"Well, you're awfully frail," says Jim seriously, looking up - and up - at Ishiah. He catches the puppy beneath both ears and scratches, for a moment distracted by the sight of the little guy all but combusting with ecstacy.

Looking up again, Jim's gaze slides over the solid line of Ishiah's shoulders. "You should work out."

[priorcommitment]

A quiet little growl sounds out from deep inside Lesovik's throat, but there isn't a single ounce of ferocity in the puppy's countenance; the trick is one quickly learned from Salome, a young dog's best attempt at mimicking a cat's hollowed purr. He shakes his head, enjoying the press of the man's fingers, and his entire body soon wriggles to follow suit.

"I do work out," argues Ishiah, blind to both the building friendship and any humor in Jim's words. Although he's grown accustomed to the wry nature of certain individuals, each new acquaintance made seems to reset the dial to zero, where all words are taken at face value unless proven to be meant otherwise. "Most of my hours are spent outdoors, and as a member of the ITF, it's imperative that I stay in good shape, should any emergency break out on the island."

[chasedthestars]

Jim picks up the puppy and holds it like a baby before it squirms clean off his lap, apology in the grin he tips into the trees for Plum, though Ishiah gets anything but. Jim is, as ever, unrepentently obnoxious. "God, you remind me of someone," he says, grin softening, and holds out his bundle. "Want your buddy back?"

[priorcommitment]

"That isn't a comment I hear often," replies Ishiah with no small amount of surprise, muted though it is on his expression. He reaches out for the puppy, who manages to lick the man's fingers before Ishiah gets a proper hold around the dog at last, unaccustomed to holding something quite so small and active in his arms, and for a second struggling to maintain a proper grip. A nod shows his appreciation. "I hope that isn't intended as a thinly veiled insult."

His eyes follow Jim's progress as he reaches out for the cat, something gentle in the movement. Years ago, he might have thought it conflicting.

[chasedthestars]

"Not at all, he's my First Officer. Only guy I trust to replace me," says Jim, his face now set in an imploring pout to the cat still high above them.

When Plum refuses to come down, Jim sighs, pushing to his feet that are wobblier than he'd expected, but then, that's Bones' booze for you. Looks innocent and packs a hell of a punch. Jim chuckles, steadying himself with a hand against the tree. "He's got a funny name, too." Jim purses his lips, enunciating every consonant. "Spock."

[priorcommitment]

"You're inebriated. Perhaps you should sit," suggests Ishiah first, eyes narrowing as he tries to decide whether or not he ought step forward and help Jim regain his balance, or if the ground is soft enough, and the man's motions smooth enough, to allow for a stumble here or there. If nothing else, it could serve as a lesson. But where physically, Jim appears to be compromised, Ishiah doesn't doubt the truth of the man's words.

"I know the man that you're referring to. He was actually on the island for some time, although I never met him personally."

[chasedthestars]

"Yeah." For one wretched moment, Jim feels the world tip, too much drink and too little sleep, one too many world ending revelations and not enough ways out of here piling on, almost sending him down again, but he sets his own considerable will to remaining upright and does so.

"I heard. Figures he'd find a way off this rock. Don't tell anyone I said this, but that guy is so much smarter than me."

[priorcommitment]

He's been on this side of the fence plenty of times. Watching Robin practically tip over from too much drink, balance compromised by the alcohol running heavy through his system. It'd been better before the two of them arrived on the island, and Robin had started to embrace all of it, things that weren't common to his kind. Domesticity, some would have said. Devotion, Ishiah countered. It softens the peri's gaze a touch, before his lip draws thin again, because if there's one thing that he knows, it's that one cannot encourage this type of behavior to continue.

"Considering how much you've had to drink, I'd be inclined to agree with you," Ishiah points out, reaching a hand out and hoping he can coax the glass away. "Let's sit."

[chasedthestars]

"How do you know how much I've had to drink?" Jim counters, smiling even as he holds the glass out of immediate reach. If Ishiah sticks around, he'll soon learn that the quickest way to make Jim do something is to tell him not to. Bringing the glass to his mouth, Jim takes another burning gulp.

"I could've only filled it up halfway."

[priorcommitment]

"I work as a bartender here on the island. I owned and ran a bar back in Manhattan, before I arrived here, and was in charge of the establishment for over half a century," Ishiah replies neatly, his eyes on the glass and following quickly, as though hoping to have his hand dart out at exactly the right moment. "Your balance suggests you've had a fair amount. You don't look like a light drinker, nor do you act like one."

The scar on his jaw pulls white.

"Again, I ask for you to hand over the glass."

[chasedthestars]

Jim beams at him, suddenly overcome with an affection that's only partially misplaced. He's not Spock - no one could be - but there's a lack of nonsense there that draws Jim in, makes him want to cause a scene just to see how he'll respond.

"Man, you are wound up tight," he says, taking another gulp before handing it over. If it's gone for good, it's not like he can't crawl back into Bones' still. Bones would never deprive a poor shipwrecked Captain of his alcohol.

"If you wanted to share, all you had to do was say so.

[priorcommitment]

When Jim gives in, Ishiah feels somewhat mollified, setting the glass down in the grass next to them. Notably, he doesn't spill a single drop; as a bartender, especially on the island, he knows how valuable things like liquor tend to be. But it almost feels like something Robin would have done, back in the day. Caved before Ishiah truly became angry.

They'd learned to get along better, far better than their earlier years.

"I don't require any drink," Ishiah shakes his head. "I simply dislike caring for someone who's drank to the point of alcohol poisoning. Or, at least, a deep and thorough discomfort. And I am not wound up tight. A peri's way of behaving is generally different than a human's."

[chasedthestars]

"I," says Jim with the certainty of one who'd done his damndest to drink himself to death early on, "am nowhere near poisoned. Believe me, buddy, I know when to get off the fun train."

Leaning back against an accommodating tree trunk, Jim regards his companion. "I'm not supposed to ask this," he says, "I've had a startling amount of interspecies sensitivity training and I know better, I just don't care, so. How is your way different from mine?"

[priorcommitment]

"Then perhaps I am simply sparing you a significant hangover," Ishiah concludes, still not backing down from the decision to take away the drink. Perhaps it's the undertone that bothers him, something about Jim's countenance that isn't quite right, and that digs under his skin. "And either way, we spare your liver."

With Lesovik yawning in his arms, squirming lightly at the tight hold, Ishiah situates him more comfortably in the crook of an elbow. "Peri are less... expressive, for one, if we're looking at a superficial level. We have a very strict set of morals that we adhere to. We don't do things to excess. We may have left Heaven, but there is some of it that will always leave its mark on us and the way we behave."

[chasedthestars]

"Then why," Jim laughs, "why the hell did you spend a half century tending bar, man? All we humans do in bars is to excess, all we do is express."

Reaching over, he runs his palm along warm puppy belly and scratches, fingers light. "You might not be human, but I think you've got a thing for us."

[priorcommitment]

"First of all, I wanted to provide a safe haven for any species. Humans were probably among the least likely to happen by the Ninth Circle. And many species have been, whether knowingly or not, hunted by humankind. To have a space where people feel comfortable and able to do as they please is incredibly important," explains Ishiah, watching as Kirk reaches over to pat Lesovik's belly, which has the dog's tail quickly thudding against the peri's arm. "Secondly, to have that type of chaos closer to oneself also means a greater ability to regulate and protect anyone involved. It's a way of supervising."

Less mentioned, for how little Ishiah was aware of his own proclivities, was the fact that the peri tended to push his opinions and judgments on others. In his own way, he was trying to influence others by showing them the gains of peaceful cohabitation.

[chasedthestars]

"Holy crap, you are a glutton for punishment." Jim waves a hand over his own body as if to say, case in point, but he means more than that. "You made a place for chaos, but you reject it. You didn't want it but you wallowed in it."

Eying the glass near Ishiah's hand, Jim quirks a brow. "You should drink."

[priorcommitment]

"It's not that simple."

A place made for chaos. It makes him think of Robin, and of Her, all birth and the organic state of being, and a type of chaos that he can never be made to understand. That's the division between the two sides, after all. They need the other to exist, and sometimes even to thrive; Ishiah's lived long enough as a peri to recognize that. But beyond that coexistence, things become less clear. Sometimes, he feels all the more ragged for it, having been created in this form from day one, having orders practically etched into his brain.

He can't understand humans in full, not even now, having been changed biologically to match them.

"The one needs the other to survive. Witnessing chaos doesn't make me miserable. Engaging in it would. I have drank to excess before; it was... not an experience I wish to repeat."

[chasedthestars]

"No," says Jim. "It never makes it better." Even so, his eyes are still on the glass. "But it always seems like it will when you start." An excuse, it's just an excuse. He's idiotic, he's drunk, forgive him. He almost died, he's the Captain, he had to.

Jim smiles. "You've been here a while, right? Human, like everyone is here. You never engaged in a little chaos?"

[priorcommitment]

His lips quirk for a second, but only just, and it's an expression that almost looks out of place with the way his face is normally so even, calm, leaving everything to the imagination. Now, the normal clear slate blue of his eyes is clouded over, both in thought and, perhaps, more than a touch of grief. Over two thousand years, and not until this island could Ishiah ever say that he had no way of contacting Robin Goodfellow.

It hits him hardest when others remind him.

"My partner," he says, before falling to silence in a pause. "My partner was here for some months. But he disappeared almost one and a half years ago. When I drank, it was after his departure."

[chasedthestars]

Jim's heart lurches. Long or short, he can't hear a tale and not feel every part of it, not wonder what he'd do in the same situation, and right now he knows. He knows in the way he's been afraid Bones might disappear since he discovered it was possible, and now he's sitting next to someone who's lived it.

"I'm sorry," he says. "It feels like. It feels like it takes a lifetime to find anybody who wants you back. After all that, they really oughta stick around."

[priorcommitment]

I had family, Ishiah first thinks. He's never had to wait a lifetime to find people who wanted him, who cherished him, who kept him around. That was built into the system for him since day one. Instead, he thinks of Robin, of pucks battling against their kind, of living millions of years and watching everything and everyone around come to an inevitable end. A puck should, perhaps, be accustomed to the idea, but where many of his kind often thought Robin too weak, soft, searching after something immortals like them weren't supposed to have, Ishiah only finds that it makes him love Robin all the more.

"I am less concerned for myself," Ishiah says then, "and more concerned for him. There are not many people who would tolerate Robin, and even less that he allowed to. If he truly returns home and I am there in some fashion, that's fine. But I've learned not to trust interdimensional travel."

[chasedthestars]

"Don't I know it," says Jim, a sudden undercurrent in his tone for all that his shoulders stay relaxed, easy. A year out, and he can still hear his own voice, so stupidly hopeful. Where you come from, did I know my father?. There's bitterness in his eyes, and so Jim focuses on his glass. "Never did anyone a goddamn spit of good."

Licking his lips, he leans his head back against the tree. "Y'know, I like your Robin. Guys remind me of me and Bones."

[priorcommitment]

"Then I almost pity you and Bones, if that's the case," Ishiah replies, although his gaze gains that much more of an edge as he watches Jim lean heavily against the tree, something like conflict and listlessness in his eyes, all rolled up into one. In that moment, he almost seems right. Robin could have worn that expression, and had just about a million times, even if those past few years had been easier. Having Caliban and Niko in their lives had brought back the immediacy of life, and the drive to live it to the fullest.

"Sounds like your take on interdimensional travel comes from experience," he adds. "Is that part of your regular job?"

[chasedthestars]

"I'd say no, but this is my third reality," Jim replies, finding he needs a long, deep drink afterwards. He swipes at his mouth with his forearm before turning a curiously affectionate smile on Ishiah. "See, that reminds me of Bones, too," he says, voice gruff, "I pity you. Some guys just wear tightly wound well, don't they?"

[priorcommitment]

"Almost," Ishiah says, and in its own way, the word is a greater concession than almost any Ishiah's learned to make in his life. Looking down his nose at people in ways far more than physical was practically ingrained into his nature from day one. Since leaving Heaven, however, he's found himself slowly tempered and has added far more knowledge to his arsenal. Now he knows that the quick dismissal of someone's experiences or choices rarely does him any good. And that being as quick to judge as he was once might have held him bereft of the most cherished experiences he's known, had he never learned.

He would never have loved Robin, had he never learned.

"Almsot pity you," he repeats. "I've never stepped in your shoes; I'm only partially informed. My own experiences with other dimensions before this have been with Heaven and Hell, as clichéd as it might sound. I don't know what yours were."

[chasedthestars]

Absently, Jim touches his own face, fingers spread over his psi points before they slip and fall away. He can still feel Spock's touch, cool and calloused with age, and the firestorm that'd followed, Jim's consciousness hurtling across time, space, far past the confines of his own body as their minds were melded into one. He saw, he heard, he felt everything Spock had been through in those few fraught moments. Saw another version of himself through Spock's eyes. Older, wiser. Beloved. T'hy'la.

"The first Jim Kirk," he says, slurring despite his better efforts. "Is a celebrated Admiral. He fucking. Taught at Starfleet, made Captain by 34, made peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, ending decades of bloodshed. He. He saved the fucking whales man. He made his daddy proud."

Jim laughs. "Second me, the one I remember. His daddy died the day he was born, killed by a timetravelling dick named Nero. He's got a juvie record a mile long, made Captain of a starship at - " Holding up his hand, Jim's fingers form the numbers. "25. Saved Earth from the Romulans, has a full crew and a first rate ship, is off exploring uncharted space even as we speak. Scientific discoveries, rescues, adventures. Things that matter.

"Third me." Jim closes his eyes, still smiling. "Third me is getting drunk in the jungle because he can't get home. No ship, no crew. No Spock." A friendship that will define you both. Who the hell will he be now? "No fucking use at all."

[priorcommitment]

It's easier than either of them might expect for Ishiah to understand Jim's predicament. All because of Robin. (It's always all because of Robin.) The pucks are one of the most accursed species, doomed to hate one another, doomed to self-loathing, reproducing through splitting straight down and emerging, completely formed, memories from the last copy intact. And this is the fate that they know is theirs, to continue breaking off, carrying memories of the last, with the knowledge that they are never the first— Hobgoblin was the first, and Hobgoblin is now gone. Never truly the product of all they remember.

Most importantly, they're fated to live with it all until the moment they are either killed, or kill themselves. It's fatalistic. And yet, the worst factor for Robin, his Robin, had always been living on an island where he could reach none of it. Couldn't take a flight back to Italy and see everything he'd been once. Couldn't use millions of years' worth of experience to swindle humans out of their last dime. Couldn't keep the closest of his friends safe.

Ishiah may feel similarly, but it was never to the same degree, never letting his friendships define him, nor allowing a limited series of choices curtail his actions.

"The median amount of time people stay is about two years, perhaps three," Ishiah remarks. "It isn't too unusual for people to remain for four, five. The longest anyone's been here is far short of seven years. This is only a stopgap. It says nothing of your use, or your future, or all that you will accomplish in life. It would probably be wise to hold back on the drinks, however."