[ She doesn't look good and, truth be told, she hasn't in a while. The silence of space had been bad enough in the beginning but then there'd been the attack by Todd (still unidentified, even though Kirk claims to have found the guilty party). Now this. There are haggard circles under both of her eyes, made more pronounced by the pallor of her skin and the bright white light of the medbay around her. ]
Since the jump. [ A pause and then Aberdeen rubs the heel of her palm into the socket of one eye. A sign of physical weakness (a rarity). At length: ] I promise.
[ It made sense in general to be looking a bit worse for wear when there was a lack of noise in the beginning, and even moreso after the attack (that he'd prefer to pretend doesn't exist). But now she looks positively horrendous, even on her worst days he's never seen her like this and it's worrisome. ]
And you haven't been able to get anything because of Watson's issues. [ He pauses and squints just a tiny bit, looking at how she's actually showing that she's in pain. It doesn't help the unease he feels. A sigh and this: ] Good. Beyond the obvious, do you want anything?
The doctor has experienced a temporal disconnect. [ A beat and then Aberdeen admits: ] So have I. [ There are memories that she has that she didn't before — recollections of being in London, seeing Ian, taking dictations that Aberdeen knows she couldn't remember previous. The working theory is that she's been home for a brief period of time, only to be returned by way of a different singularity.
The video feed shuts off and begins again, this time: ]
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to DUNDEE
[ Aberdeen stares into the camera for a long time and, perhaps for the first time since they met, looks her age. Young, almost fragile, with her hollowed cheeks and her bruised-by-sleeplessness eyes. She doesn't like having him see her like this, but Ian's the only one she'd ever allow to. ]
And yet you remember while he seems to have forgotten ever being here. [ It's an interesting difference and one Ian finds himself thinking on. If Aberdeen and Dr. Watson are both experiencing temporal disconnects, why does she remember while he does not. What makes them different?
He let's a silence fall over them and it feels suffocating even to him. Ian doesn't mind quiet, but this is a silence that seems worse than just a normal degree of a lack of talking. He takes a deep breath and starts saying the first things that come to him: ]
When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
[ For some reason he chooses that as the first thing he says before pausing and saying another passage from another book. ]
I kissed her and saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backwards as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with other officers.
[ She watches him while he speaks, focusing on the way his mouth forms the words, listening to the rise and pitch of his tone, the shape of his accent and the pause of his breath. Aberdeen is brilliant, arguably one of the smartest people on the ship, and as a result of her education, her tendency towards obsession and her eidetic memory there are very many things she knows and knows well. But there is nothing that she knows better than Ian Malone — nothing and no one she cares to know about more.
(At the same time, he is a muddled concept to her — a source of confusion and conflict. A patch of light in her life that shines so bright that it burns through her vision and makes her go blind.)
For a long time she says nothing; the silence threatens to swallow her. And when she finally speaks it's not her words she offers, but Hemingway's. ]
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
[ Her voice is even and she blinks only once. She looks tired and vulnerable. She looks very much in love with him. And maybe Aberdeen means her powers and maybe she means something else when she adds, at the very end: ]
I've never been compromised before. I don't like it, Ian.
[ To hear Aberdeen speak at length is a rarity and Ian can't help but listen with the most rapt attention as she does, taking note of her own pauses and her accent (similar and yet different from his own). He may be intelligent, but in comparison to her, he is light years behind. He can tell you about life and all there is about language, but there's gaps in fully understanding things. Even his knowledge of Hallah Tawse lacks certain elements.
(If he's her light, than perhaps she's his darkness, a black hole that sucks every bit of a light away, making him as blind as she is when he burns through her vision.)
He doesn't let the silence stretch like he originally did and instead let's F. Scott Fitzgerald's words speak for him. (After all, he knows who that quote was about.) ]
They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically when they read ... Their chance was to make everything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend tiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the place of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much of a dream.
[ He takes a quick pause before speaking again. ]
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.
[ He exhales and frowns before he says anything else. If she looks in love with him, he looks just as in love with her. It doesn't help that he's worried as well, but alas, he knows better than to let that show. ]
I know you don't. No one would, Hallah. I can't tell you that I can fix it, because I don't know why it's done it.
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VIDEO; encrypted 90% to le order members
Since the jump. [ A pause and then Aberdeen rubs the heel of her palm into the socket of one eye. A sign of physical weakness (a rarity). At length: ] I promise.
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to le order members
And you haven't been able to get anything because of Watson's issues. [ He pauses and squints just a tiny bit, looking at how she's actually showing that she's in pain. It doesn't help the unease he feels. A sigh and this: ] Good. Beyond the obvious, do you want anything?
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to le order members
The video feed shuts off and begins again, this time: ]
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to DUNDEE
[ Aberdeen stares into the camera for a long time and, perhaps for the first time since they met, looks her age. Young, almost fragile, with her hollowed cheeks and her bruised-by-sleeplessness eyes. She doesn't like having him see her like this, but Ian's the only one she'd ever allow to. ]
Talk.
[ Hum. Make noise. ]
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to aberdeen
He let's a silence fall over them and it feels suffocating even to him. Ian doesn't mind quiet, but this is a silence that seems worse than just a normal degree of a lack of talking. He takes a deep breath and starts saying the first things that come to him: ]
When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.
[ For some reason he chooses that as the first thing he says before pausing and saying another passage from another book. ]
I kissed her and saw that her eyes were shut. I kissed both her shut eyes. I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backwards as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with other officers.
[ Another pause and then this: ]
Anything in particular you want to hear?
VIDEO; encrypted 90% to aberdeen
(At the same time, he is a muddled concept to her — a source of confusion and conflict. A patch of light in her life that shines so bright that it burns through her vision and makes her go blind.)
For a long time she says nothing; the silence threatens to swallow her. And when she finally speaks it's not her words she offers, but Hemingway's. ]
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
[ Her voice is even and she blinks only once. She looks tired and vulnerable. She looks very much in love with him. And maybe Aberdeen means her powers and maybe she means something else when she adds, at the very end: ]
I've never been compromised before. I don't like it, Ian.
VIDEO; encrypted 90%
(If he's her light, than perhaps she's his darkness, a black hole that sucks every bit of a light away, making him as blind as she is when he burns through her vision.)
He doesn't let the silence stretch like he originally did and instead let's F. Scott Fitzgerald's words speak for him. (After all, he knows who that quote was about.) ]
They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically when they read ... Their chance was to make everything fine and finished and rich and imaginative; they must bend tiny golden tentacles from his imagination to hers, that would take the place of the great, deep love that was never so near, yet never so much of a dream.
[ He takes a quick pause before speaking again. ]
Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.
[ He exhales and frowns before he says anything else. If she looks in love with him, he looks just as in love with her. It doesn't help that he's worried as well, but alas, he knows better than to let that show. ]
I know you don't. No one would, Hallah. I can't tell you that I can fix it, because I don't know why it's done it.