Chapter Text
The first time she awakens to birdsong, Bobbie thinks she’s dreaming.
She’s been to the Biodomes, of course, she knows what a bird looks and sounds like up close. When she was eleven, an educator even let her hold a seagull on her arm and showed her how to stroke its plasticky feathers. But the sound of dozens of the things outside her window -- maybe even a hundred -- and she has a window that opens up to nothing but dizzying free atmosphere and sky and space --
With a groan she shuts her eyes tight and rolls over, burying her face in the huge pillow. When she went to bed last night she exalted in its spacious luxury, but now everything is too soft and fuzzy and she needs some hard edges to brace against.
This is a punishment, she thinks to herself dutifully, and then repeats it aloud to the cream-coloured wall. “This is a punishment.”
The wall, dappled blue and yellow where the light of the brightening sky peeks through the window, makes mockery of the phrase.
“It’s true,” she says, as she has been saying every morning for nearly a week. “It’s this or the brig. We’re under surveillance.”
No matter that surveillance is limited to discreet drone passes and guards that won’t come within fifty feet of the house, or that the property she’s confined to is better-appointed than some of the most expensive residences back on Mars. Being branded a traitor to both inhabited planets has to come with consequences.
Unless you’re rich and powerful or, say, under the protection of someone who is. Then you get house arrest with your ridiculously fancy employer and your punishment is to stand around being her “personal bodyguard.” Which means, living rent-free in her home with nothing much to do but entertain the old fox when she gets bored of secret shadow governing.
It isn’t a very effective deterrent.
As she reluctantly drags herself out from under the covers and stretches gravity-sore ligaments, Bobbie tries to remember the times when she used Chrisjen Avasarala’s face as target practice. It wasn’t often -- when the team got tired of the old-fashioned UNN logo and were feeling particularly righteous about the way Earth valued aesthetics and the comfort of the elite over human advancement.
So maybe once every couple of months.
Now that very same face is going to smile out at her from casual family photos on her way down the stairs. Not to mention across the breakfast table.
“Traitor to the cause,” Bobbie tries singing to herself as she brushes out her braids, but her heart isn’t in it. Mars betrayed her first; at least Avasarala has better food.
Also, the household’s guest bedroom has an en-suite bathroom with no water rationing. It only takes about half an hour to get her morning workout out of the way, and then she spends another thirty minutes just staring at the inside of her eyelids as hot, endless water pours down around her.
There’s a moment as she turns off the faucet when she thinks she’s hearing things, a deep unfamiliar voice singing some sustained note, but by the time she holds her breath to listen it’s faded already into the foundations of the house. With nothing better to do Bobbie stays still for a few minutes, wondering if the sound will come back, but her mind wanders and she finds herself drip-dried and silent when her attention finally returns.
Maybe Earth has beautiful ghostly music because it’s so close to the sun. Apparently it makes noise if you know what to listen for.
She spends a few seconds making faces into the frankly oversized bathroom mirror, but after all that silliness it’s still barely past six hundred hours when she emerges into her room to check the time. Another fifty pull-ups for fun warm up her stiff back muscles, and then she’s more or less dressed and has no excuse but to wander out into the house.
The birds are still chattering when she passes the open -- open! -- window by the stairs. “I know. It’s ridiculous,” she mutters to them. “This planet does everything all wrong.”
Hing hing, say the birds in high-pitched voices, and Bobbie takes it to mean, So does Mars.
“Oh, shut up. Your brains are pebbles.”
By then she’s out of earshot and can pretend they were silenced by her brilliant wit.
Fuck, she needs something to do.
"Something to do" is sitting at the kitchen table when Bobbie walks in, already dressed and made up and regal as if she’s been awake for hours. Which, knowing her, she might have been.
Avasarala looks up a few seconds later, eyes slow to track her head away from the scrolling text on her hand terminal. With a tap of her painted nail she pauses the readout. “Fancy seeing you here. Good morning, Bobbie.”
“Morning, ma’am.” She’s made herself comfortable enough in the house to get her own breakfast, though perhaps not as much as she’d like. “Slept alright?”
“I always do. Will you be finishing your grand inspection to-day?”
Of course, she knows. It’s not that Bobbie’s been keeping it from her, but she’s tried to be discreet in familiarizing herself with the finer points of the residence. One might even say it’s her job to be aware of possible security risks. Leave it to Avasarala to make it sound like some petty intrusion.
She clears her throat. “Actually, if you’d let me, I’d like to have a closer look at your storage and personal areas. Doors and corners, you know.”
Avasarala grunts in a distinctly non-regal manner.
“Look, it’s for your own safety. I need to know where the liabilities are. For example, do you keep classified materials in your underwear drawer?”
It’s meant to be a joke, lighten the mood a bit, but the woman nods very seriously as she brings her teacup to her lips. “Is that what you Martians call them? I’d be happy to show you the collection.”
“Besides --” It takes her a second to piece the innuendo together and when she does she can’t help what must look like a flustered scowl. “Ma’am, I’m being serious.”
“So am I.” Seeming to finally deem the interaction worthy of her attention, she sets down her reading and folds her hands elegantly. “You should be using this opportunity to relax. Think of it as an… unexpected vacation.”
Bobbie has to take a deep breath to keep from noticeably tensing. “I’m in jail. Under investigation. A traitor to all the recognized governments of the system. How am I supposed to see this as a vacation?”
There’s a beat, then Avasarala smiles brilliantly. “Well, the company couldn’t be better.”
Instead of answering, she breathes out for a full ten seconds. The TV smile in front of her abruptly fades into a more genuine, if irritating, chuckle.
“Let me get you some more fruit,” she says finally, rising in a whisper of silk. Her sari to-day is a rich glittering brown, accented with silver, and with her hair coiled low at the base of her neck she looks almost domestic against the sink and kitchen counter. Bobbie, weighing the situation in her head, has to admit that she’d deal much better with the infuriating woman if she had fresh produce to focus on.
Which, of course, must be the point.
Even while doing something as simple as washing and cutting fruits from a basket, Avasarala’s movements have a certain stately elegance. Deliberate and slow, like she’s moving through the fluids of a gravity tank. It must make her look powerful to some, but Bobbie can only agonize over how long she takes to do everything -- lingering over the real wooden counter, selecting stone fruit like it’s jewelry, cutting it in perfect sixths with a wicked little knife that she holds like a calligraphy brush. Agonizing. It’s a wonder she ever survived the military, telegraphing her movements like that.
Can’t believe I betrayed my planet for you, she thinks sourly, and then her mouth is full of fresh ripe peaches and she’s in heaven. But I’m so fucking glad I did.
As if reading her mind (which isn’t, Bobbie thinks, out of the question), Avasarala smirks a bit as she settles back into her chair and delicately selects a slice of plum. “Still regretting your choice of allegiance?”
Sheer joy makes her honest. “I never regretted it,” she admits earnestly around another bite. “Saving your life was the best thing I ever did.”
Her sincerity is rewarded with a faint change of expression, the smug curl of dark lips turning surprised. “Are you being sarcastic with me, Draper?”
“As a rule? Yeah.” She swallows, and it takes all her military discipline not to stuff her mouth again. “Not this time though.”
A clinking noise as Avasarala cocks her head, disturbing the silver palettes of her earrings. “Tell me about that.”
Something -- the admittedly adorable way this woman jingles when she so much as twitches, maybe, or the animal pleasure of safety and abundance -- gives her pause. It occurs to her that she feels comfortable, and that she actually wants to talk. “No offence, ma’am, but you sound like a shrink,” she says instead.
“You have been talking to yourself a lot more that usual, lately. Perhaps you could use one.”
“I suppose that’s free, too?” Bobbie scoffs, but the edge isn’t there. The truth is if she doesn’t start talking to someone, and soon, she’s going to go crazy.
Avasarala shrugs, picking out another piece of fruit with long fingers. “I’m happy to serve.”
She considers this. As much as she complains internally, she really doesn’t dislike the woman -- she wouldn't be here if she did. And besides, she's spilling her guts already.
“I trust you,” she says aloud, feeling out the words. “And I think you’re doing good.”
Coming from such a refined nose, the snort is really prodigious.
“Oh, shut it. Ma’am. You knew that already.”
“I suppose I did,” she concedes with a sigh. “Here I was thinking you were attracted to my scintillating personality.”
By now Bobbie knows when to recognize to the little openings, and she’s relieved to change the subject. “With all due respect, it’s your body I’m attracted to,” she deadpans. “Your personality is the reason I’ll never do anything about it.”
There’s a glint of something like pride as Avasarala laughs and tosses her shoulders. “Now, that’s just a challenge. You’re practically begging for it.”
“What if I am?”
“You’ll have to be nicer to me, then. I’m a busy woman, I don’t have time for games.” As if to illustrate her point she sweeps to her feet and grabs her hand terminal, rounding the table to make her way into the living room.
“Doing what? Busy, my ass.”
Avasarala pats her shoulder. “It is a lovely ass, dear.”
Bobbie sticks out her tongue, but she’s already floated out of the room.
“I’ll show you my ass,” she mutters at the table, and then wrinkles her nose at the way it came out. “Or… not.”
Mercifully her hand terminal chimes and she hurriedly licks the juice off her fingers to check it. “Doing this,” comes a husky shout from the living room as if the conversation never ended. “Make yourself useful, if my hospitality is so lacking in enrichment.”
Folders upon folders of research and intel. Bobbie can barely process what she’s looking at. “I’m supposed to read all this? What for?”
“I thought you said you trusted me,” comes the snotty reply. “Just let me do my good fucking work.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Bobbie answers under her breath, but she opens the first folder anyways as she pushes her chair back. “I’m going to read outside, though.”
“I don’t care.”
“And I’m taking the fruit plate.”
“Goodbye, Bobbie.”
Later, when the glass door has slid shut behind her and she’s scouting the garden for a likely spot, she realizes that she’s hearing the morning song again. She can make out lyrics this time, rough and low: So mothers, warn your daughters not to do what I have done…
After a second she realizes where it’s coming from, and nearly jumps out of her skin.
“Holy shit,” she says to the unimpressed garden. “She’s singing.”
And waste their lives in passionate sin...
Chrisjen doesn’t exactly have a good voice. The rasp that lends her gravitas in speech doesn’t translate very well to sustained notes, and the words run together without consideration or elocution. It’s the type of singing you do when you’re alone in the house and the vibrations feel right in your throat and you barely even realize that you’re singing. A blind and selfish kind of song.
Despite that fact -- because of it, really -- something very much like affection bubbles up in Bobbie’s chest and she smiles, secretly, unthinkingly.
There is a house in New Orleans, they call the Rising Sun… Chrisjen sings absently, drawing the sun and all the world into her petulant boredom. It’s been the ruin of many -- god knows, I am a ruined one.
It isn’t Bobbie’s fault, really. She’s always been fiercely protective of her team, no matter who they are, and she’s always loved them in her own way -- aggressively. Quietly. And when the whole world is against you, and only one person is left on your side…
“Okay,” she whispers. “Suck it. Just because we’re family doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
The singing stops, and it’s almost as if Chrisjen heard her.
Which, knowing her, she might have.