Zoe Graystone (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
firstcylon) wrote2012-10-23 01:27 am
firstcylon) wrote2012-10-23 01:27 am
Entry tags:
Tombstone, Arizona - Log 6
By the time they reached the town, Steve still feels completely uncertain about what happened between Sharon and him. He shouldn't still be dwelling on it, he knows that, because it's not like he is going to talk to her in front of Logan and Zoe (and to say what, exactly - 'out of curiosity, you were just thinking about him when you kissed me, right?'), so it's all as pointless as it gets, but there you go.
It's the look on Ed Sullivan's face when Logan puts his son down and the town's doctor (not the shifty one with the guns, but one that seems a little less given to drinking and smoking) declares him alive that manages to make him focus on something else at last. There's nothing quite like a father's joy to be reunited with his son, and everybody congratulates them, and asks them what happened, and yes, they saw the explosion from within town, and were convinced that they had all died, and everybody is calling them heroes and saviors, when not angels and miracle-workers. Zoe seems to thrive particularly under such religious monikers, but to Steve what matters is the look on Sullivan's face, and the fact that the town is safe and, in fact, the whole of Earth.
They're walking back to the boarding house to change when Zoe tells them, in a quiet whisper, in case anybody had a mind to listen, "I don't think he'll live more than a few years. Al Sullivan. The machines made it look like they'd gotten most of what they wanted from him."
She lets them digest it, and they all go and change and wash up. Logan's on corset duty again, because now that Zoe's recovered some it ought to be a little tighter than it is (especially given what it does to her breasts, since she has every hope of seeing Doc Holliday tonight, and it's been so long - since Philomon - since she's dressed up for anyone), and Zoe does love to torture him that way.
---
Logan has no idea how he pulled teenage-underwear duty twice in a row, but Zoe just sort of appears in front of him half dressed and Carter’s nowhere to be found, again. Not that Logan doesn’t have a good guess where she might be, and he stops thinking about it before he loses his lunch, which was just a pint of whiskey anyway. He thinks about finding a padlock for the bottom of the corset, and they’re definitely going to have another round of the “Doc-Holiday-is-out-of-bounds” conversation, but Logan figures there’s a more important one to have first.
“Not a lot of folks can plug into a computer like that, bub. What’s your deal?” Android? Bio-tech mutation? Logan’s genuinely curious, cause nothing she can say is actually more threatening in his book than ‘teenage girl’.
---
Zoe finds Logan frustrating to no end at times - at times when he treats her like a kid, like a beat-up, other-side-of-the-coin version of her father (could they be more different?) - but there's one thing she loves about him. He never gave her grief for introducing herself as Rachel at first, when she told him she really was called Zoe. He didn't even ask, he just let her be. That makes her purse her lips in thought for only a couple of seconds, before she answers him.
"To put it simply, I'm a robot," Zoe tells him, because it's the most simplistic thing to say. "Cybernetic Lifeform. Hi," she concludes, waving her fingers at him over her shoulder, without moving, so she doesn't make the corset thing harder on him.
---
“I’ve met robots before, kid. None of them went to this much trouble to pass for human.” He’s not sure what that's supposed to mean, really. Is it a compliment, that she’s a very lifelike automaton? Or maybe a little suspicion at why someone would have gone to the trouble to make her that way...
---
And just like that, any desire to stay still goes out the window. Logan's unknotting the laces at the back of the corset so she can actually turn around to fix him with a glare without risking suffocation, like if he had been in the process of tightening the corset. She's half turned around, and she's clearly not happy.
"I don't go through any trouble to pass as anything," she snaps, because he makes it sound like she's just a machine. "I'm as much of a person as any of you, even if this body's not human."
---
Logan’s brows go up when he sees how pissed she is.
“Hey,” he resists the urge to give her a robot-themed nickname in the moment [VICI? Johny 5?], “I personally think ‘human’ is an overrated thing to be, anyway.” A grimace. “There’s plenty of folks where I’m from that don’t strictly speaking think of me as human, and I’d say I’m a person just the same.”
---
Zoe doesn't stop glaring immediately, but after a moment something in her quiets down, and she turns back around, so he can keep working on the corset. "Sorry," she even says, after a bit. If she was the sort to open up more, she'd explain why she reacts like that, she'd explain how long her father kept at it, the gun, their dog, and the fire. But that's not her style, and she just adds, "And you're right. A frakking annoying person, but definitely a person."
---
He’s a little pleased that she’s such a grumpy thing - it’s sunshiney people that really irritate him.
“You think I’m annoying now, wait till I’m knocking the teeth out of your friend Holiday.”
---
Zoe doesn't think about it. Her elbow just shoots back, and right into his ribs, even if it sort of kills her upper back and her own ribs a little, with the corset in the process of being tightened. Probably not the best plan, hitting the guy who could break your ribs if he pulled on the laces some more, but hey. "You have an unhealthy obsession with my potential sex life, Logan."
---
Logan freezes in the middle of tugging the last lace closed.
“Do me a favor and never say that again.” He’s got half a mind to lock her in the room before he goes back down to the saloon, but it’s probably easier to keep tabs on her if he can see her. If pressed, he’d have to admit that he was less interested in Zoe’s night than in his own, but the total and utter... wrong...ness of Doc Holiday pawing at his teenage ‘cousin’ is giving Logan the serious creepin willies.
---
"Keep sticking your nose in things that are none of your business and I'll make it a point to tell you every last detail about all I've gotten up to until now," Zoe tells him, tone sweet as can be, just your adorable cousin sensing a weakness in your armor and going for it with all she's got, and a smile on her face. Her breath hitches when Logan finishes tightening the corset a little too viciously, but she's still smiling.
***
The ride back out to the mini ship is totally, freakishly silent. Sharon shifts the bandolier of dynamite over her shoulder [there was no way she was getting back in that ship and rigging its own system to blow after what had happened on the mothership, and so had used their new hero status to wheedle a large amount of good old fashioned explosives out of the mercantile] and looks overhead, amazed at how many more stars there are when they’re not competing with New York City lights .
Her mind [unlike her horse, cause hello dynamite] is going at a breakneck pace, and not in any particularly helpful direction. The things a person does when they’re convinced they’re going to die tend to be hard to reconcile. At least there’s still work to do, or they’d be awkwardly staring at each other over a dirty table in the saloon, or, worse, trying to get to sleep in that little room again, burning holes in the ceiling.
It’s a hell of a lot further than Sharon remembered from the walk into town an hour earlier.
---
Steve has a bandolier of his own, just to make sure they have enough, and he barely even tried to talk Sharon into letting him carry it all, just in case. She just gave him one look and he shut up. Now he's left with his thoughts and the steady, almost lulling walk of his horse, who he regularly pats on the neck in a show of appreciation and support. It's easier to let the mare know how he feels about her than it is to say anything to Sharon, and her stony silence doesn't help. He looks at her from time to time, and that silence probably says it all, he thinks, but doesn't know.
They get to the ship without having pronounced one word since leaving town, and they work in silence, setting up the explosives and drawing a fuse long enough for them to have the time to get back on their horses and gallop far away before it explodes. Steve takes a box of matches out of his pocket, and looks at Sharon, crouched beside him. "What happened on the ship..."
He's always had a great sense of timing.
---
Are you doing this now just so we’ll have to run for our lives rather than talk? That’s annoying on so many levels, including the one where she didn’t think of it first.
Sharon takes the box of matches from him, needing to feel control over something.
“Yeah,” she sounds cool, almost ALMOST casual. “About that.”
She strikes the match. How many women would rather set off ten sticks of dynamite than talk about their feelings?
---
Steve frowns when she takes the matches from him, and the frown doesn't go away when she actually strikes one. If she'd rather light the fuse than talk about it, that's just one more tick in the not-good column.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, because if she's sorry she did it, then so is he. "It won't happen again."
Hopefully, because apparently, kissing the Carter women when he's in mortal danger is just something he does.
---
“Of course you’d say that.” She stands, hands on her hips, suddenly forgetting that she’s supposed to be running from the imminent explosion. He’s just as confused as she is and he’s making it sound like she’s the only one shutting down. What the hell is the other option, anyway? Admitting that it wasn’t a mistake, that it’s been all she can do to avoid kissing him before now? Not flippin likely, not when he’ll just pull some sort of duty, modesty, not-your-Steve bullshit on her. She doesn’t have anything more helpful, and just glares.
---
"Of course I -" Steve starts to echo, confused about what she means, but he cuts himself short because the fuse is lit and they need to get gone. "Afterwards," Steve tells her, and mounts his mare, checking that she's doing the same with her horse before he presses his heels into her flanks and wheels her back towards town, sending her into a gallop.
---
Sharon rides the horse as hard as she feels it can comfortably handle, not checking to see if Steve is keeping up. If he’s looking for a way out, she’ll sure as hell give it to him.
Won’t happen again... Damn right.
Clearly it’s time for enough booze to drown the fluttery feeling in her stomach when she thinks about Steve’s lips, warm and insistent on hers. The colossal jerk.
Even the explosion behind her doesn’t merit turning around, in fact she shows no sign of having felt the blast at all. The first time she moves so much as a muscle is to jump down from her horse and tie her up outside the saloon, brushing off her skirts and accepting the first drink pressed into her hand.
She’s a freakin’ hero, after all. If her ‘husband’ doesn’t like it, he can deal.
---
By the time Steve gets to town (Brooklyn kids clearly can't ride all that well, and all the serum in the world wouldn't change the fact that he rides less well than Sharon by far), and to the saloon, Sharon's knocking back a shot like it's the answer to everything. He frowns for a second, watching her and trying to find better words to say, or any words to say at all, but before he can, Schieffelin is congratulating him, and pulling him away to meet the town officials. Again, but last time, at the town meeting, the only one that had really wanted to speak to any of them had been the undertaker.
---
Logan’s as close to tears as he’s been since Mariko, and Abel [the big guy who tried to hassle the girls the day before] narrowly escapes a bear hug [well, badger hug]. Logan looks down at the cigars like he’s just been given a little wooden box full of diamond encrusted kittens, and stammers a thank you that might not even have included real words. He roars for another round of drinks for himself and his new best friends.
The roar reaches Doc Holiday, who’d been dealing stud in the corner for the last couple of hours, and, being a man of excellent timing, he decides that is as good a sign as any he’s likely to get that Miss Zoe is free for a dance. He excuses himself from the card game with a slurry “Gggentlemen,” and makes his way to her side, taking her hand without giving her the chance to offer it. He brushes a kiss over her knuckles before he speaks.
“Is the pretty heroine too busy to favor us with a spin around this filthy establishment?”
---
Zoe has been talking with the local reverend, who apparently doesn't think himself too good for a saloon, which means he is totally her sort of God-loving people. Or so she thought, until it turned out that he was more God-fearing than God-loving, and that... she can't really get behind that, for all that she's more than once put the fear of God in other people.
So all in all, she's glad for the rescue, because she could feel the argument coming, and, well. To be perfectly honest, it isn't as if she hasn't been aware where Doc was all the time. So what, she finds him... fascinating, and he makes her heart clench with the friends he's lost, the disease in his lungs, and how resilient he is. Her smile is genuine when he cuts in, and she throws an apologetic glance at the reverend, and walks a few paces away, without taking her hand back, instinctively checking where Logan is at, because does she not want to have to deal with that again.
"The pretty heroine," and oh, is that not her, heroine makes her sound like the main character of some detective novel, "is not much of a dancer, or she'd have looked past that description and readily agreed."
The offer certainly makes her wish she knew how to dance any of their dances, but she's pretty certain that the virtual clubbing scene never prepared her for any of them.
---
Doc smiles, slow and sweet as molasses, and puts his hand around her waist just the same, changing his grip on her hand and pulling them into a sluggish waltz.
“I oughta have said - I’m not much of a one for being told ‘no’, personality quirk of mine I hope you’ll indulge.” He winks, pretty sure he’s got her, and not about to get the business end of the blade he gifted her the night before. She’s funny, this one, ornery in a way that reminds him powerfully of Kate, though Kate was a special kind of demon that would be impossible to replace. No harm in tryin, though, when it meant corrupting a sweet young soul like Zoe Graystone.
---
Zoe really doesn't have a clue how to waltz, and doesn't even know that it is called that, but she doesn't know if it's Doc or the dance itself that makes it relatively easy to follow. From watching the people around them, she feels like they're not dancing as well as they are, but she doesn't care much.
She cares enough to tell him, though, as she tries to follow his lead without stepping on his feet, "My cousin has it in his head that he should neuter you." Just so he knows what he's risking.
---
Doc snorts a little laugh out of his nose, which fluffs out his moustache in a rather indignant way. The old killing edge flares up in him, the desire to prove that he can put her cousin down like a dog before he has a chance to so much as wrinkle Doc’s shirt collar. Consumption or no, town hero or no. Doc forces himself to smile and take it with breezy good humor.
“Your cousin is a very ambitious man. I have no trouble believing he’ll rend me asunder if I touch so much as the hem of your garment.” He holds a little tighter to her waist, so her corset digs into his ribs, just to show her how very afraid of her cousin’s wrath he is. “What I have the gravest difficulty believing is that the boys of Caprica let you escape dancing with them.”
---
He's a little crazy not to even be slightly afraid of Logan, Zoe thinks, but she doesn't know if it's recklessness or delusion. She doesn't know about his reputation, of course; she doesn't even know he has one, but Logan is Logan. She doesn't think any normal man could take him out, ill or not. And she knows that this is none of Logan's business anyway.
Now if she knew the customs here, she'd know how improper the way he's holding her is, but compared to the dances she does know, this is downright prim and proper, and she doesn't notice the way some of the people in the saloon have begun to stare and whisper. She's looking into his face as they dance, after all, because that's one more thing she doesn't realize a proper lady wouldn't do, and because she's nowhere near a proper lady.
"Maybe I didn't feel like dancing with any of them," she tells him, with a small smile, tinted by a hint of sadness as she remembers Philomon making her dance, one of her rare happy moments while in the U-87. One of her rare happy moments at all, as far as moments that really belong to her and not to Original Zoe go, and she ought to make more of them. "Or maybe Logan scared them all off." She steps on Doc's foot when he moves them a way she doesn't expect, and her smile widens briefly into something apologetic, and a lot more like the kind of smile a girl her age should sport, but she'll keep trying if he doesn't stop. "I told you, not much of a dancer."
***
It’s [pathetically] only an hour after she hit the saloon, and Sharon is already a little indignant. Possibly even belligerent. She’s gesturing with her tumbler, and it’s not quite empty either, so she comes damn close to sloshing her whiskey onto the table. She’s sitting with Zoe and a couple of girls from the brothel next door, and it’s actually when one of them flashes a bit of garter at Steve that she starts to get riled, but her rant is in a totally different direction than one would expect from a jealous wife.
“It’s not your fault, even. It’s a lack of opportunity.” She looks to Zoe for confirmation, or solidarity, or something. “It’s the only role they’ll let you play, other than wife and mother, and I don’t know about you.” She surveys the room with a scowl. “But none of them look like marriage material to me.”
---
"If you don't like your husband, say the word and I'm takin' him off your hands," the same one that flashed a little garter at Steve earlier offers, and a couple of her friends giggle and generally seem to agree with the sentiment.
Zoe shakes her head, and keeps her gaze on the ones that smiled rather than laughed, the ones that seem a little more invested in the conversation. "It's what the world does, what society does. It forces you to live a certain way, instead of giving you choices. But you can break the mold. You can become whoever you want to be."
---
Sharon’s chalking the flush up to the wine, and jumps on Zoe’s train of thought to stop any more talk about husbands.
“Yes. Exactly. You don’t have to just accept this. This isn’t all there is! Open a shop, become a teacher, or a doctor or-” -a spy? What the hell are you talking about, sugar?
A petite brunette scoffs in a dainty, ladylike way. “You have to go to school for that.” It’s the defeated way she says it that makes Sharon pound her fist down on the table.
“Then GO! Who’s stopping you?”
---
"How am I supposed to pay my way through school? I can't work proper an' study at the same time," another one, Logan's Annie, Zoe recognizes her, points out.
"You could get a scholarship," Zoe starts, hesitatingly, and looking Sharon's way in a clear 'I don't know what this world is like at all, do they have scholarships?' way.
---
Sharon’s not even totally sure women can go to college at this point in history, and there probably isn’t one for a thousand miles, anyway. She doesn’t have time to bullshit an answer, though, cause some smarmy fellow comes to their table and takes the little brunette by the wrist.
“Let’s dance, Mary.”
Sharon stands up. “We’re having a conversation, actually.” There’s a mean look in the roughneck’s eye that Sharon’ just tipsy enough to take as a challenge.
---
Zoe stands more slowly, and it's the look in her eyes the man shouldn't take lightly. It's a dangerous look, and she isn't even tipsy. She's mostly careful about that kind of thing (last night notwithstanding), and New Cap City taught her how dangerous anywhere can be. Just because you can't die doesn't mean you want to feel the pain of it over and over again.
"It's alright, ma'am," Mary says, eyes darting over to Sharon, and the minute shake of her head is like a warning and a plea all at once. "I could sure use a dance."
---
“And you could use some air.” Logan’s voice is right next to her, and Sharon’s a little pissed that she didn’t notice him approaching. She looks at his face, sternly warning her to Take A Walk before things get really stupid, and Sharon realizes that’s exactly what she’d been after. Fighting a whole bar of cowpokes just might have been enough of a distraction. She downs her drink with a scowl and bangs the glass down hard.
“Damn right.” She stalks to the door [probably she should just head to bed, but it’s suddenly a thousand degrees and she’s not giving up the possibility of kicking someone’s ass before the night is through]. The little crowd dissipates, leaving Logan with Zoe and Annie. He’s decided he’s gonna have a word with the former before he deals with the latter.
“Can you make it an hour without getting in trouble?”
---
"Can you sound any more like my mother," Zoe answers, too flatly for it to actually sound like a question, and crosses her arms under her breasts in a way that looks far too modern for somebody wearing what she's wearing.
Talking to the prostitutes has made her realize exactly how the women are treated here, and it makes her even less patient for male patronizing than usual, which is saying a lot. Thematically, it would've made more sense to compare him to her father, but Daniel Graystone had been considerably less patronizing than her mother. Zoe's always figured it was because of her mind, and what it could do. Daniel Graystone had a knack for spotting talent, after all.
"Find me if you wanna keep talking," she tells the girls, including Annie, thank you, and stalks off towards the bar for another drink.
---
Logan growls and almost goes after her, but the hand on his arm stops him. Annie sure is a beauty, and Logan’s never been able to get away from red hair fast enough to keep himself out of trouble. She’s smiling in a way that makes it hard to hear over the buzzing in his ears.
“What do you say, hero; one on the house?”
Don’t mind if I do...
***
Zoe's had enough of being careful for tonight, whether it is about who she dances with or what she drinks. She knocks back a shot of whisky, and Ed pours her another one when she gestures for it, although he looks a little worried for her. She's going to be alright, she wants to tell him, she's just a skin job, but at least that means holding her alcohol a lot better than a petite human teenager should.
Instead she just says thanks, and takes a sip as she turns around, eyes scanning the saloon until they settle on a certain figure. He's back at a poker table, but it seems like he can feel her gaze on him, because he looks up from his game, and that makes her smile a little.
She could use a bit of fresh air as well, and she tilts her head towards the door, an invitation to a walk. She doesn't even know if she wants to do anything with him, for all that the attraction's there, and she isn't worried about defending herself. She doesn't think he's the type to try and rape her, but just in case she's wrong... Well, she's got his knife. So she really does want nothing but a walk (and, admittedly, pissing Logan off), and she'll see about the rest, when she knocks back her second shot, thanks Ed again, and heads out of the saloon.
---
The second time Doc excuses himself from the game, he’s followed by groans and shouts of “Don’t come back!” He doesn’t intend to. He catches Zoe quickly, and slips an arm around her waist, talking pretty nonsense.
“If you’ve an interest in botany, I know a spot just overrun with night-blooming gladiolus.”
---
Zoe's stopped in the street when he catches up with her, head tilted back to look at the stars up ahead. That's something she wishes she could explain to him right now, how they might have a breathtaking starscape on the station, but it's not the same as watching the stars from a planet, and in a city like Caprica, they're never quite this bright.
But she can't, of course, and she laughs when his arm winds its way around her waist, and looks at him. She's fairly certain that it's very inappropriate in this time and place, but it hardly matters, and she leans against him slightly. "I don't have a clue what gladiolus are."
That is the truth, and she feels safe saying it. It doesn't scream "I come from another planet where your Earth is just a myth", even if that's the reason why. That, and...
"Which ties in with my lack of interest in botany tonight very nicely," she adds, and disentangles herself from him so she can take his arm and draw him forward. It's not that she minded his hand on her hip (not at all, says the bundle of warmth inside her), it's that she needs that much control over what they're doing, and she had none that way. "How about a walk and a tale," she asks, and, a little more quietly, "Tell me about your friends."
---
Doc stops and gives her a hard look. It’s not a question he’s expecting, and like any surprise, it makes him a little suspicious.
“Now, darlin, why would I want to tell you about fine, upstanding gentlemen that you’d rather be taking a stroll with in the moonlight?”
---
Zoe stops when he does, and looks up at him. Compared to earlier, when she was facing off that roughneck, and then Logan, there's no hardness in her, only quiet strength.
"I'm in the moonlight with you, and I'm asking," she answers, because there's really no specific reason why he should, or would want to. She would just like him to, and that's the simple truth of it.
---
This is far too serious for Doc Holiday, and he considers just bidding her goodnight and crawling into a bottle, but something in her look makes him stick it out a little. Something fine about her taking an interest in something outside her own pretty little head, maybe.
“Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, mind, were some of the finest, bravest men ever to sit a horse, and that’s a piece of truth. If they’d been just a little less fine and a little less brave, they might still be around to make me look the worse for comparing.”
He sighs, studying a bit of sky.
“Wyatt was the only man who ever called me friend and I never questioned it. I’d take his place in the ground a thousand times over and never think I’d been cheated.”
---
Zoe's glad that she's still holding his arm, for the physical connection as he talks. If he hadn't stopped, they would still be walking and she probably wouldn't be looking at his profile as he tilts his head back slightly, watching the sky for a wholly different reason than she had been, avoidance instead of contemplation - or maybe some of both, Zoe wouldn't know.
"I'm glad you lent us their weapons," Zoe says, because I'm-sorry's have never helped anyone, and what she says is true. Even if Doc had probably thought they wouldn't survive their attempt anymore than his friends had, and even if that must sting some. Why did they survive - because they were chosen.
She absolutely intends for them to give the weapons back before they go. They can't take these guns away from him and out of this world; they belong here.
---
In a fit of rebellious strength, Doc bends down and takes hold of Miss Zoe under her bustle, lifting her up so they’re eye to eye. He needs her to leave the interrogation that only leads to sad memories, but he’s far too much of a showman just to ask.
“Anything else you need to know about me before your cousin catches up? I’ve got a few doozies from a Southern Baptist childhood that’ll really turn your head.” He’s smiling, his biggest bawdiest version of a smile, though it’s probably too dark for her to tell.
---
Zoe has no idea what a Southern Baptist anything is, and once she's recovered from the surprise of being lifted up off the ground, and curbed the urge to fight against it, she relaxes slightly, and finds that she doesn't really care. Instead, she's perfectly placed to wrap her arms around his shoulders, one of them curling up so her hand can tilt his hat back enough for her to comfortably kiss him, direct and unhesitant.
***
Steve's eye is drawn over to where Zoe and Sharon are talking to the prostitutes when Logan heads over, and a second later Sharon is walking out with a huff. He checks (not for the first time that evening) that the map Ed Sullivan entrusted him with is still rolled up inside his jacket, and after a few minutes, manages to excuse himself from the current company and heads out after Sharon.
"Is everything alright?" he asks, tentatively, but also with genuine concern.
---
“Dandy.” Sharon grinds out, leaning on the rail that separates the saloon’s porch from the street. Steve is about the last person she wants to see her like this, as if things aren’t bad enough between them already. Frustration makes a hard lump in her throat, and she probably sounds a little choked and funny when she speaks again.
“Just - go back inside, Steve.”
---
Not exactly the sort of command - request - Steve Rogers is likely to ever follow, not when Sharon sounds so off, not when something is very clearly wrong. Instead, he puts all of his own doubts aside, because of course he's going to be there for her, stepping closer and resting a hand on her back. "What's the matter?"
---
The part of her that still wants to turn and hug him, even though they’re not going to die, gets shouted down by something altogether cagier. She shakes off his hand, trying to sit the other way on the rail and remembering too late she’s wearing that ridiculous bustle. With as much dignity as she can summon, Sharon looks Steve in the eye.
“Don’t act like you don’t know.” Of course he knows what her problem is, how could he have forgotten so quickly?
---
Steve didn't expect that kind of answer, and he pauses for a few seconds without saying anything, just frowns at her, holding her gaze and clearly working it out. Working it out, and then finding the voice to ask, "Our kiss."
Except it doesn't ends up like a question the way it was supposed to.
---
The kissing was fine, it’s all the bullshit that happened after that’s killing me. Also , it was a gross understatement to categorize the kissing as just ‘fine.’
“Yeah.” She realizes that in terms of coherent and constructive, she hasn’t got a lot to offer here. She hates not being able to put feelings into the right words.
“Why’d you have to apologize for it?” It sounded childish, but that was really where it had started to unravel for Sharon - when Steve had acted like it was a mistake.
---
"You didn't seem happy it happened," Steve answers, earnestly and spontaneously. It's the unaltered truth he's giving her; his truth, anyway. It's not as if he's kissed many women (by opposition to being kissed by his fans), but if he knows one thing, it's that he always wants them to be happy about it. Anything less and of course he's going to apologize.
---
“Well, not when you’re going to be that way about it!” Sharon crosses her arms, knowing she’s not being very helpful, but she’s buzzed and Steve is incredibly annoying when his earnest nature doubles as a shield.
“I was confused... aren’t you?”
---
"Only about - your feelings," he finishes after half a second's pause, because he's never been the type to back down, and he's not going to back down now. He's going to stick with the fact that he's very clear about his own feelings, even if of course he is, it is easier for him, he doesn't know any other her. Her smile might remind him of Peggy, and some of her mannerisms, but it's very clear in his mind all the same.
---
You and me both, buster. But that’s actually the less alarming part of his statement. As much as she wants to know, her blood still feels like battery acid.
“What about yours?” She’s probably lucky the dress is so stiff - it might have to hold her up in a second.
---
"I'm very clear about those," Steve confirms, without an instant's hesitation, and it's all there in his eyes, too, as he looks at her. It's clear in the way he's just waiting for her word, either way.
---
The only thing more unnerving than Steve hemming and hawing is Steve when he knows exactly what he wants. He’d never lie or lead her on, which is what terrifies Sharon; if this Steve has actually managed to fall for her in the few months he’s known her on the space station, how can she live up to that? How does anyone live up to Steve Rogers’s affection? Sharon realizes she’s pretty screwed at this point, because there hadn’t been anyone else on her mind when she kissed him, just the 40s throwback that had wheeled her around, taken a computer keyboard to mutated rats, and put up with all her nonsense for no good reason. She’d been kissing that guy, which makes her feel like two cents, because what about the other Steve? The one she fell in love with years ago, and heartlessly abandoned [several times, the most recent one being the real ‘fuck you’].
Confused is about the simplest way to sum up her feelings. It’s kind of like falling for identical twins [Sharon assumes]; she knows they’re different people, but it’s partly the similarities that draw her to him. Them. Shit.
Steve is still looking at her, his eyes locked on her face, and Sharon is at a total loss. All she knows is she can’t have this conversation, possibly ever and certainly not drunk.
“I’m not sorry it happened.” It’s as much truth as she dares to admit out loud, and then she’s rushing past him into the night.
---
She might be rushing, but Steve doesn't back down from a fight, or anything else. He didn't back down back before the serum, he's not going to start now, so he jogs after her, not fast enough to catch up, because it's still her choice, but enough that she knows he's not just letting her go, and enough that she can hear him when he stops and calls out her name, a request, almost a plea, "Sharon."
---
She should keep going, give him time to really think about what a terrible plan caring about her is. It’s a crush, and if she doesn’t give him anything in return to work with, he’ll just get over it.
But will you? She stops and turns, wishing for the zillionth time she wasn’t wearing twenty pounds of wool in Arizona.
“What?” Let him steer the conversation for once; she’s already demonstrated her keen ability to avoid talking about feelings.
---
Steve opens his mouth to answer, and frowns. The familiar feel of upcoming teleportation is buzzing over his skin, and for one second before they dematerialize, he looks incredibly angry with the station's timing on pulling them back.
It's the look on Ed Sullivan's face when Logan puts his son down and the town's doctor (not the shifty one with the guns, but one that seems a little less given to drinking and smoking) declares him alive that manages to make him focus on something else at last. There's nothing quite like a father's joy to be reunited with his son, and everybody congratulates them, and asks them what happened, and yes, they saw the explosion from within town, and were convinced that they had all died, and everybody is calling them heroes and saviors, when not angels and miracle-workers. Zoe seems to thrive particularly under such religious monikers, but to Steve what matters is the look on Sullivan's face, and the fact that the town is safe and, in fact, the whole of Earth.
They're walking back to the boarding house to change when Zoe tells them, in a quiet whisper, in case anybody had a mind to listen, "I don't think he'll live more than a few years. Al Sullivan. The machines made it look like they'd gotten most of what they wanted from him."
She lets them digest it, and they all go and change and wash up. Logan's on corset duty again, because now that Zoe's recovered some it ought to be a little tighter than it is (especially given what it does to her breasts, since she has every hope of seeing Doc Holliday tonight, and it's been so long - since Philomon - since she's dressed up for anyone), and Zoe does love to torture him that way.
---
Logan has no idea how he pulled teenage-underwear duty twice in a row, but Zoe just sort of appears in front of him half dressed and Carter’s nowhere to be found, again. Not that Logan doesn’t have a good guess where she might be, and he stops thinking about it before he loses his lunch, which was just a pint of whiskey anyway. He thinks about finding a padlock for the bottom of the corset, and they’re definitely going to have another round of the “Doc-Holiday-is-out-of-bounds” conversation, but Logan figures there’s a more important one to have first.
“Not a lot of folks can plug into a computer like that, bub. What’s your deal?” Android? Bio-tech mutation? Logan’s genuinely curious, cause nothing she can say is actually more threatening in his book than ‘teenage girl’.
---
Zoe finds Logan frustrating to no end at times - at times when he treats her like a kid, like a beat-up, other-side-of-the-coin version of her father (could they be more different?) - but there's one thing she loves about him. He never gave her grief for introducing herself as Rachel at first, when she told him she really was called Zoe. He didn't even ask, he just let her be. That makes her purse her lips in thought for only a couple of seconds, before she answers him.
"To put it simply, I'm a robot," Zoe tells him, because it's the most simplistic thing to say. "Cybernetic Lifeform. Hi," she concludes, waving her fingers at him over her shoulder, without moving, so she doesn't make the corset thing harder on him.
---
“I’ve met robots before, kid. None of them went to this much trouble to pass for human.” He’s not sure what that's supposed to mean, really. Is it a compliment, that she’s a very lifelike automaton? Or maybe a little suspicion at why someone would have gone to the trouble to make her that way...
---
And just like that, any desire to stay still goes out the window. Logan's unknotting the laces at the back of the corset so she can actually turn around to fix him with a glare without risking suffocation, like if he had been in the process of tightening the corset. She's half turned around, and she's clearly not happy.
"I don't go through any trouble to pass as anything," she snaps, because he makes it sound like she's just a machine. "I'm as much of a person as any of you, even if this body's not human."
---
Logan’s brows go up when he sees how pissed she is.
“Hey,” he resists the urge to give her a robot-themed nickname in the moment [VICI? Johny 5?], “I personally think ‘human’ is an overrated thing to be, anyway.” A grimace. “There’s plenty of folks where I’m from that don’t strictly speaking think of me as human, and I’d say I’m a person just the same.”
---
Zoe doesn't stop glaring immediately, but after a moment something in her quiets down, and she turns back around, so he can keep working on the corset. "Sorry," she even says, after a bit. If she was the sort to open up more, she'd explain why she reacts like that, she'd explain how long her father kept at it, the gun, their dog, and the fire. But that's not her style, and she just adds, "And you're right. A frakking annoying person, but definitely a person."
---
He’s a little pleased that she’s such a grumpy thing - it’s sunshiney people that really irritate him.
“You think I’m annoying now, wait till I’m knocking the teeth out of your friend Holiday.”
---
Zoe doesn't think about it. Her elbow just shoots back, and right into his ribs, even if it sort of kills her upper back and her own ribs a little, with the corset in the process of being tightened. Probably not the best plan, hitting the guy who could break your ribs if he pulled on the laces some more, but hey. "You have an unhealthy obsession with my potential sex life, Logan."
---
Logan freezes in the middle of tugging the last lace closed.
“Do me a favor and never say that again.” He’s got half a mind to lock her in the room before he goes back down to the saloon, but it’s probably easier to keep tabs on her if he can see her. If pressed, he’d have to admit that he was less interested in Zoe’s night than in his own, but the total and utter... wrong...ness of Doc Holiday pawing at his teenage ‘cousin’ is giving Logan the serious creepin willies.
---
"Keep sticking your nose in things that are none of your business and I'll make it a point to tell you every last detail about all I've gotten up to until now," Zoe tells him, tone sweet as can be, just your adorable cousin sensing a weakness in your armor and going for it with all she's got, and a smile on her face. Her breath hitches when Logan finishes tightening the corset a little too viciously, but she's still smiling.
The ride back out to the mini ship is totally, freakishly silent. Sharon shifts the bandolier of dynamite over her shoulder [there was no way she was getting back in that ship and rigging its own system to blow after what had happened on the mothership, and so had used their new hero status to wheedle a large amount of good old fashioned explosives out of the mercantile] and looks overhead, amazed at how many more stars there are when they’re not competing with New York City lights .
Her mind [unlike her horse, cause hello dynamite] is going at a breakneck pace, and not in any particularly helpful direction. The things a person does when they’re convinced they’re going to die tend to be hard to reconcile. At least there’s still work to do, or they’d be awkwardly staring at each other over a dirty table in the saloon, or, worse, trying to get to sleep in that little room again, burning holes in the ceiling.
It’s a hell of a lot further than Sharon remembered from the walk into town an hour earlier.
---
Steve has a bandolier of his own, just to make sure they have enough, and he barely even tried to talk Sharon into letting him carry it all, just in case. She just gave him one look and he shut up. Now he's left with his thoughts and the steady, almost lulling walk of his horse, who he regularly pats on the neck in a show of appreciation and support. It's easier to let the mare know how he feels about her than it is to say anything to Sharon, and her stony silence doesn't help. He looks at her from time to time, and that silence probably says it all, he thinks, but doesn't know.
They get to the ship without having pronounced one word since leaving town, and they work in silence, setting up the explosives and drawing a fuse long enough for them to have the time to get back on their horses and gallop far away before it explodes. Steve takes a box of matches out of his pocket, and looks at Sharon, crouched beside him. "What happened on the ship..."
He's always had a great sense of timing.
---
Are you doing this now just so we’ll have to run for our lives rather than talk? That’s annoying on so many levels, including the one where she didn’t think of it first.
Sharon takes the box of matches from him, needing to feel control over something.
“Yeah,” she sounds cool, almost ALMOST casual. “About that.”
She strikes the match. How many women would rather set off ten sticks of dynamite than talk about their feelings?
---
Steve frowns when she takes the matches from him, and the frown doesn't go away when she actually strikes one. If she'd rather light the fuse than talk about it, that's just one more tick in the not-good column.
"I'm sorry," he tells her, because if she's sorry she did it, then so is he. "It won't happen again."
Hopefully, because apparently, kissing the Carter women when he's in mortal danger is just something he does.
---
“Of course you’d say that.” She stands, hands on her hips, suddenly forgetting that she’s supposed to be running from the imminent explosion. He’s just as confused as she is and he’s making it sound like she’s the only one shutting down. What the hell is the other option, anyway? Admitting that it wasn’t a mistake, that it’s been all she can do to avoid kissing him before now? Not flippin likely, not when he’ll just pull some sort of duty, modesty, not-your-Steve bullshit on her. She doesn’t have anything more helpful, and just glares.
---
"Of course I -" Steve starts to echo, confused about what she means, but he cuts himself short because the fuse is lit and they need to get gone. "Afterwards," Steve tells her, and mounts his mare, checking that she's doing the same with her horse before he presses his heels into her flanks and wheels her back towards town, sending her into a gallop.
---
Sharon rides the horse as hard as she feels it can comfortably handle, not checking to see if Steve is keeping up. If he’s looking for a way out, she’ll sure as hell give it to him.
Won’t happen again... Damn right.
Clearly it’s time for enough booze to drown the fluttery feeling in her stomach when she thinks about Steve’s lips, warm and insistent on hers. The colossal jerk.
Even the explosion behind her doesn’t merit turning around, in fact she shows no sign of having felt the blast at all. The first time she moves so much as a muscle is to jump down from her horse and tie her up outside the saloon, brushing off her skirts and accepting the first drink pressed into her hand.
She’s a freakin’ hero, after all. If her ‘husband’ doesn’t like it, he can deal.
---
By the time Steve gets to town (Brooklyn kids clearly can't ride all that well, and all the serum in the world wouldn't change the fact that he rides less well than Sharon by far), and to the saloon, Sharon's knocking back a shot like it's the answer to everything. He frowns for a second, watching her and trying to find better words to say, or any words to say at all, but before he can, Schieffelin is congratulating him, and pulling him away to meet the town officials. Again, but last time, at the town meeting, the only one that had really wanted to speak to any of them had been the undertaker.
---
Logan’s as close to tears as he’s been since Mariko, and Abel [the big guy who tried to hassle the girls the day before] narrowly escapes a bear hug [well, badger hug]. Logan looks down at the cigars like he’s just been given a little wooden box full of diamond encrusted kittens, and stammers a thank you that might not even have included real words. He roars for another round of drinks for himself and his new best friends.
The roar reaches Doc Holiday, who’d been dealing stud in the corner for the last couple of hours, and, being a man of excellent timing, he decides that is as good a sign as any he’s likely to get that Miss Zoe is free for a dance. He excuses himself from the card game with a slurry “Gggentlemen,” and makes his way to her side, taking her hand without giving her the chance to offer it. He brushes a kiss over her knuckles before he speaks.
“Is the pretty heroine too busy to favor us with a spin around this filthy establishment?”
---
Zoe has been talking with the local reverend, who apparently doesn't think himself too good for a saloon, which means he is totally her sort of God-loving people. Or so she thought, until it turned out that he was more God-fearing than God-loving, and that... she can't really get behind that, for all that she's more than once put the fear of God in other people.
So all in all, she's glad for the rescue, because she could feel the argument coming, and, well. To be perfectly honest, it isn't as if she hasn't been aware where Doc was all the time. So what, she finds him... fascinating, and he makes her heart clench with the friends he's lost, the disease in his lungs, and how resilient he is. Her smile is genuine when he cuts in, and she throws an apologetic glance at the reverend, and walks a few paces away, without taking her hand back, instinctively checking where Logan is at, because does she not want to have to deal with that again.
"The pretty heroine," and oh, is that not her, heroine makes her sound like the main character of some detective novel, "is not much of a dancer, or she'd have looked past that description and readily agreed."
The offer certainly makes her wish she knew how to dance any of their dances, but she's pretty certain that the virtual clubbing scene never prepared her for any of them.
---
Doc smiles, slow and sweet as molasses, and puts his hand around her waist just the same, changing his grip on her hand and pulling them into a sluggish waltz.
“I oughta have said - I’m not much of a one for being told ‘no’, personality quirk of mine I hope you’ll indulge.” He winks, pretty sure he’s got her, and not about to get the business end of the blade he gifted her the night before. She’s funny, this one, ornery in a way that reminds him powerfully of Kate, though Kate was a special kind of demon that would be impossible to replace. No harm in tryin, though, when it meant corrupting a sweet young soul like Zoe Graystone.
---
Zoe really doesn't have a clue how to waltz, and doesn't even know that it is called that, but she doesn't know if it's Doc or the dance itself that makes it relatively easy to follow. From watching the people around them, she feels like they're not dancing as well as they are, but she doesn't care much.
She cares enough to tell him, though, as she tries to follow his lead without stepping on his feet, "My cousin has it in his head that he should neuter you." Just so he knows what he's risking.
---
Doc snorts a little laugh out of his nose, which fluffs out his moustache in a rather indignant way. The old killing edge flares up in him, the desire to prove that he can put her cousin down like a dog before he has a chance to so much as wrinkle Doc’s shirt collar. Consumption or no, town hero or no. Doc forces himself to smile and take it with breezy good humor.
“Your cousin is a very ambitious man. I have no trouble believing he’ll rend me asunder if I touch so much as the hem of your garment.” He holds a little tighter to her waist, so her corset digs into his ribs, just to show her how very afraid of her cousin’s wrath he is. “What I have the gravest difficulty believing is that the boys of Caprica let you escape dancing with them.”
---
He's a little crazy not to even be slightly afraid of Logan, Zoe thinks, but she doesn't know if it's recklessness or delusion. She doesn't know about his reputation, of course; she doesn't even know he has one, but Logan is Logan. She doesn't think any normal man could take him out, ill or not. And she knows that this is none of Logan's business anyway.
Now if she knew the customs here, she'd know how improper the way he's holding her is, but compared to the dances she does know, this is downright prim and proper, and she doesn't notice the way some of the people in the saloon have begun to stare and whisper. She's looking into his face as they dance, after all, because that's one more thing she doesn't realize a proper lady wouldn't do, and because she's nowhere near a proper lady.
"Maybe I didn't feel like dancing with any of them," she tells him, with a small smile, tinted by a hint of sadness as she remembers Philomon making her dance, one of her rare happy moments while in the U-87. One of her rare happy moments at all, as far as moments that really belong to her and not to Original Zoe go, and she ought to make more of them. "Or maybe Logan scared them all off." She steps on Doc's foot when he moves them a way she doesn't expect, and her smile widens briefly into something apologetic, and a lot more like the kind of smile a girl her age should sport, but she'll keep trying if he doesn't stop. "I told you, not much of a dancer."
It’s [pathetically] only an hour after she hit the saloon, and Sharon is already a little indignant. Possibly even belligerent. She’s gesturing with her tumbler, and it’s not quite empty either, so she comes damn close to sloshing her whiskey onto the table. She’s sitting with Zoe and a couple of girls from the brothel next door, and it’s actually when one of them flashes a bit of garter at Steve that she starts to get riled, but her rant is in a totally different direction than one would expect from a jealous wife.
“It’s not your fault, even. It’s a lack of opportunity.” She looks to Zoe for confirmation, or solidarity, or something. “It’s the only role they’ll let you play, other than wife and mother, and I don’t know about you.” She surveys the room with a scowl. “But none of them look like marriage material to me.”
---
"If you don't like your husband, say the word and I'm takin' him off your hands," the same one that flashed a little garter at Steve earlier offers, and a couple of her friends giggle and generally seem to agree with the sentiment.
Zoe shakes her head, and keeps her gaze on the ones that smiled rather than laughed, the ones that seem a little more invested in the conversation. "It's what the world does, what society does. It forces you to live a certain way, instead of giving you choices. But you can break the mold. You can become whoever you want to be."
---
Sharon’s chalking the flush up to the wine, and jumps on Zoe’s train of thought to stop any more talk about husbands.
“Yes. Exactly. You don’t have to just accept this. This isn’t all there is! Open a shop, become a teacher, or a doctor or-” -a spy? What the hell are you talking about, sugar?
A petite brunette scoffs in a dainty, ladylike way. “You have to go to school for that.” It’s the defeated way she says it that makes Sharon pound her fist down on the table.
“Then GO! Who’s stopping you?”
---
"How am I supposed to pay my way through school? I can't work proper an' study at the same time," another one, Logan's Annie, Zoe recognizes her, points out.
"You could get a scholarship," Zoe starts, hesitatingly, and looking Sharon's way in a clear 'I don't know what this world is like at all, do they have scholarships?' way.
---
Sharon’s not even totally sure women can go to college at this point in history, and there probably isn’t one for a thousand miles, anyway. She doesn’t have time to bullshit an answer, though, cause some smarmy fellow comes to their table and takes the little brunette by the wrist.
“Let’s dance, Mary.”
Sharon stands up. “We’re having a conversation, actually.” There’s a mean look in the roughneck’s eye that Sharon’ just tipsy enough to take as a challenge.
---
Zoe stands more slowly, and it's the look in her eyes the man shouldn't take lightly. It's a dangerous look, and she isn't even tipsy. She's mostly careful about that kind of thing (last night notwithstanding), and New Cap City taught her how dangerous anywhere can be. Just because you can't die doesn't mean you want to feel the pain of it over and over again.
"It's alright, ma'am," Mary says, eyes darting over to Sharon, and the minute shake of her head is like a warning and a plea all at once. "I could sure use a dance."
---
“And you could use some air.” Logan’s voice is right next to her, and Sharon’s a little pissed that she didn’t notice him approaching. She looks at his face, sternly warning her to Take A Walk before things get really stupid, and Sharon realizes that’s exactly what she’d been after. Fighting a whole bar of cowpokes just might have been enough of a distraction. She downs her drink with a scowl and bangs the glass down hard.
“Damn right.” She stalks to the door [probably she should just head to bed, but it’s suddenly a thousand degrees and she’s not giving up the possibility of kicking someone’s ass before the night is through]. The little crowd dissipates, leaving Logan with Zoe and Annie. He’s decided he’s gonna have a word with the former before he deals with the latter.
“Can you make it an hour without getting in trouble?”
---
"Can you sound any more like my mother," Zoe answers, too flatly for it to actually sound like a question, and crosses her arms under her breasts in a way that looks far too modern for somebody wearing what she's wearing.
Talking to the prostitutes has made her realize exactly how the women are treated here, and it makes her even less patient for male patronizing than usual, which is saying a lot. Thematically, it would've made more sense to compare him to her father, but Daniel Graystone had been considerably less patronizing than her mother. Zoe's always figured it was because of her mind, and what it could do. Daniel Graystone had a knack for spotting talent, after all.
"Find me if you wanna keep talking," she tells the girls, including Annie, thank you, and stalks off towards the bar for another drink.
---
Logan growls and almost goes after her, but the hand on his arm stops him. Annie sure is a beauty, and Logan’s never been able to get away from red hair fast enough to keep himself out of trouble. She’s smiling in a way that makes it hard to hear over the buzzing in his ears.
“What do you say, hero; one on the house?”
Don’t mind if I do...
Zoe's had enough of being careful for tonight, whether it is about who she dances with or what she drinks. She knocks back a shot of whisky, and Ed pours her another one when she gestures for it, although he looks a little worried for her. She's going to be alright, she wants to tell him, she's just a skin job, but at least that means holding her alcohol a lot better than a petite human teenager should.
Instead she just says thanks, and takes a sip as she turns around, eyes scanning the saloon until they settle on a certain figure. He's back at a poker table, but it seems like he can feel her gaze on him, because he looks up from his game, and that makes her smile a little.
She could use a bit of fresh air as well, and she tilts her head towards the door, an invitation to a walk. She doesn't even know if she wants to do anything with him, for all that the attraction's there, and she isn't worried about defending herself. She doesn't think he's the type to try and rape her, but just in case she's wrong... Well, she's got his knife. So she really does want nothing but a walk (and, admittedly, pissing Logan off), and she'll see about the rest, when she knocks back her second shot, thanks Ed again, and heads out of the saloon.
---
The second time Doc excuses himself from the game, he’s followed by groans and shouts of “Don’t come back!” He doesn’t intend to. He catches Zoe quickly, and slips an arm around her waist, talking pretty nonsense.
“If you’ve an interest in botany, I know a spot just overrun with night-blooming gladiolus.”
---
Zoe's stopped in the street when he catches up with her, head tilted back to look at the stars up ahead. That's something she wishes she could explain to him right now, how they might have a breathtaking starscape on the station, but it's not the same as watching the stars from a planet, and in a city like Caprica, they're never quite this bright.
But she can't, of course, and she laughs when his arm winds its way around her waist, and looks at him. She's fairly certain that it's very inappropriate in this time and place, but it hardly matters, and she leans against him slightly. "I don't have a clue what gladiolus are."
That is the truth, and she feels safe saying it. It doesn't scream "I come from another planet where your Earth is just a myth", even if that's the reason why. That, and...
"Which ties in with my lack of interest in botany tonight very nicely," she adds, and disentangles herself from him so she can take his arm and draw him forward. It's not that she minded his hand on her hip (not at all, says the bundle of warmth inside her), it's that she needs that much control over what they're doing, and she had none that way. "How about a walk and a tale," she asks, and, a little more quietly, "Tell me about your friends."
---
Doc stops and gives her a hard look. It’s not a question he’s expecting, and like any surprise, it makes him a little suspicious.
“Now, darlin, why would I want to tell you about fine, upstanding gentlemen that you’d rather be taking a stroll with in the moonlight?”
---
Zoe stops when he does, and looks up at him. Compared to earlier, when she was facing off that roughneck, and then Logan, there's no hardness in her, only quiet strength.
"I'm in the moonlight with you, and I'm asking," she answers, because there's really no specific reason why he should, or would want to. She would just like him to, and that's the simple truth of it.
---
This is far too serious for Doc Holiday, and he considers just bidding her goodnight and crawling into a bottle, but something in her look makes him stick it out a little. Something fine about her taking an interest in something outside her own pretty little head, maybe.
“Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Morgan and Virgil, mind, were some of the finest, bravest men ever to sit a horse, and that’s a piece of truth. If they’d been just a little less fine and a little less brave, they might still be around to make me look the worse for comparing.”
He sighs, studying a bit of sky.
“Wyatt was the only man who ever called me friend and I never questioned it. I’d take his place in the ground a thousand times over and never think I’d been cheated.”
---
Zoe's glad that she's still holding his arm, for the physical connection as he talks. If he hadn't stopped, they would still be walking and she probably wouldn't be looking at his profile as he tilts his head back slightly, watching the sky for a wholly different reason than she had been, avoidance instead of contemplation - or maybe some of both, Zoe wouldn't know.
"I'm glad you lent us their weapons," Zoe says, because I'm-sorry's have never helped anyone, and what she says is true. Even if Doc had probably thought they wouldn't survive their attempt anymore than his friends had, and even if that must sting some. Why did they survive - because they were chosen.
She absolutely intends for them to give the weapons back before they go. They can't take these guns away from him and out of this world; they belong here.
---
In a fit of rebellious strength, Doc bends down and takes hold of Miss Zoe under her bustle, lifting her up so they’re eye to eye. He needs her to leave the interrogation that only leads to sad memories, but he’s far too much of a showman just to ask.
“Anything else you need to know about me before your cousin catches up? I’ve got a few doozies from a Southern Baptist childhood that’ll really turn your head.” He’s smiling, his biggest bawdiest version of a smile, though it’s probably too dark for her to tell.
---
Zoe has no idea what a Southern Baptist anything is, and once she's recovered from the surprise of being lifted up off the ground, and curbed the urge to fight against it, she relaxes slightly, and finds that she doesn't really care. Instead, she's perfectly placed to wrap her arms around his shoulders, one of them curling up so her hand can tilt his hat back enough for her to comfortably kiss him, direct and unhesitant.
Steve's eye is drawn over to where Zoe and Sharon are talking to the prostitutes when Logan heads over, and a second later Sharon is walking out with a huff. He checks (not for the first time that evening) that the map Ed Sullivan entrusted him with is still rolled up inside his jacket, and after a few minutes, manages to excuse himself from the current company and heads out after Sharon.
"Is everything alright?" he asks, tentatively, but also with genuine concern.
---
“Dandy.” Sharon grinds out, leaning on the rail that separates the saloon’s porch from the street. Steve is about the last person she wants to see her like this, as if things aren’t bad enough between them already. Frustration makes a hard lump in her throat, and she probably sounds a little choked and funny when she speaks again.
“Just - go back inside, Steve.”
---
Not exactly the sort of command - request - Steve Rogers is likely to ever follow, not when Sharon sounds so off, not when something is very clearly wrong. Instead, he puts all of his own doubts aside, because of course he's going to be there for her, stepping closer and resting a hand on her back. "What's the matter?"
---
The part of her that still wants to turn and hug him, even though they’re not going to die, gets shouted down by something altogether cagier. She shakes off his hand, trying to sit the other way on the rail and remembering too late she’s wearing that ridiculous bustle. With as much dignity as she can summon, Sharon looks Steve in the eye.
“Don’t act like you don’t know.” Of course he knows what her problem is, how could he have forgotten so quickly?
---
Steve didn't expect that kind of answer, and he pauses for a few seconds without saying anything, just frowns at her, holding her gaze and clearly working it out. Working it out, and then finding the voice to ask, "Our kiss."
Except it doesn't ends up like a question the way it was supposed to.
---
The kissing was fine, it’s all the bullshit that happened after that’s killing me. Also , it was a gross understatement to categorize the kissing as just ‘fine.’
“Yeah.” She realizes that in terms of coherent and constructive, she hasn’t got a lot to offer here. She hates not being able to put feelings into the right words.
“Why’d you have to apologize for it?” It sounded childish, but that was really where it had started to unravel for Sharon - when Steve had acted like it was a mistake.
---
"You didn't seem happy it happened," Steve answers, earnestly and spontaneously. It's the unaltered truth he's giving her; his truth, anyway. It's not as if he's kissed many women (by opposition to being kissed by his fans), but if he knows one thing, it's that he always wants them to be happy about it. Anything less and of course he's going to apologize.
---
“Well, not when you’re going to be that way about it!” Sharon crosses her arms, knowing she’s not being very helpful, but she’s buzzed and Steve is incredibly annoying when his earnest nature doubles as a shield.
“I was confused... aren’t you?”
---
"Only about - your feelings," he finishes after half a second's pause, because he's never been the type to back down, and he's not going to back down now. He's going to stick with the fact that he's very clear about his own feelings, even if of course he is, it is easier for him, he doesn't know any other her. Her smile might remind him of Peggy, and some of her mannerisms, but it's very clear in his mind all the same.
---
You and me both, buster. But that’s actually the less alarming part of his statement. As much as she wants to know, her blood still feels like battery acid.
“What about yours?” She’s probably lucky the dress is so stiff - it might have to hold her up in a second.
---
"I'm very clear about those," Steve confirms, without an instant's hesitation, and it's all there in his eyes, too, as he looks at her. It's clear in the way he's just waiting for her word, either way.
---
The only thing more unnerving than Steve hemming and hawing is Steve when he knows exactly what he wants. He’d never lie or lead her on, which is what terrifies Sharon; if this Steve has actually managed to fall for her in the few months he’s known her on the space station, how can she live up to that? How does anyone live up to Steve Rogers’s affection? Sharon realizes she’s pretty screwed at this point, because there hadn’t been anyone else on her mind when she kissed him, just the 40s throwback that had wheeled her around, taken a computer keyboard to mutated rats, and put up with all her nonsense for no good reason. She’d been kissing that guy, which makes her feel like two cents, because what about the other Steve? The one she fell in love with years ago, and heartlessly abandoned [several times, the most recent one being the real ‘fuck you’].
Confused is about the simplest way to sum up her feelings. It’s kind of like falling for identical twins [Sharon assumes]; she knows they’re different people, but it’s partly the similarities that draw her to him. Them. Shit.
Steve is still looking at her, his eyes locked on her face, and Sharon is at a total loss. All she knows is she can’t have this conversation, possibly ever and certainly not drunk.
“I’m not sorry it happened.” It’s as much truth as she dares to admit out loud, and then she’s rushing past him into the night.
---
She might be rushing, but Steve doesn't back down from a fight, or anything else. He didn't back down back before the serum, he's not going to start now, so he jogs after her, not fast enough to catch up, because it's still her choice, but enough that she knows he's not just letting her go, and enough that she can hear him when he stops and calls out her name, a request, almost a plea, "Sharon."
---
She should keep going, give him time to really think about what a terrible plan caring about her is. It’s a crush, and if she doesn’t give him anything in return to work with, he’ll just get over it.
But will you? She stops and turns, wishing for the zillionth time she wasn’t wearing twenty pounds of wool in Arizona.
“What?” Let him steer the conversation for once; she’s already demonstrated her keen ability to avoid talking about feelings.
---
Steve opens his mouth to answer, and frowns. The familiar feel of upcoming teleportation is buzzing over his skin, and for one second before they dematerialize, he looks incredibly angry with the station's timing on pulling them back.