Midnight Guitar Therapy

With the away mission drawing ever closer and no friend left to turn to without feeling like a burden, T'Pren wandered the station for the rest of the evening. The bar had been a bust -- it was too full of ensigns and the only people worth talking to were talking to each other fairly devotedly. She'd gone to practice her mok'bara in the holosuites and then taken a swim to tire herself out before adjourning to her quarters.

And she'd slept, at least for a little while. At least until the nightmares had started. Nightmares of all the different ways in which her fathers could be hurt or dead or not know her or hate her or have forgotten her or moved past her or... After her third attempt at sleeping backfired horribly in a terrifying dream in which her fathers and Rai joined up to tell her they didn't feel that way about her and started to distance themselves, she finally gave up on resting.

And now here she was again, sitting in the dark in the observation area, Adlai's guitar on her lap. She played and sang softly out at the stars, letting the fear and pain and misery and even a little hope seep into her music.

Val ran past her, then turned and ran past her again, and again. Each time he was followed by a large Earth tabby cat, chasing the fringed end of his scarf. At each lap, the cat would gain on him and he would laugh and yank the scarf away.

It only took Val running past the first time for T'Pren to abruptly stop playing music. She stared first at the commotion in the dim halls at this time of night and then dejectedly down at her guitar. Apparently she wasn't meant have the kind of peace she was really seeking tonight. Instead of alerting Val to her presence -- because why bother, if he hadn't noticed already? She didn't want to disturb someone actually enjoying themselves -- she began to carefully and silently pack her guitar away. She left the case open and pulled a flask from inside, unscrewing the top and taking a long drink.

And then she watched Val with something between envy and longing, trying to find a way to sneak by without interrupting his play.

The tabby flopped over onto its side and flexed its paws in the air.
"Tired already?" The Bajoran panted, coming over to rub the cat's belly and dodge its claws. "You're so lazy!"
Val settled on the floor, and only then noticed the young woman sitting by the window.
"Hi, Pren," he said happily.

So much for making a clean getaway. T'Pren smiled wanly at Val and took another sip from her flask. And then she offered it over to him. "You're up late," she pointed out. As if she weren't. Her head tilted at the cat and her hand went down to its level to wiggle fingers for attention. "Who is this?"

The cat turned over again and sniffed her hand curiously.
"I'm giving Papus some exercise... no overnight clients tonight," he said with contentment. "Aren't you shipping out tomorrow?" He took the flash and sniffed it. "Is this a Vulcan spirit, by any chance?"

"It is," T'Pren admitted, and if Papus let her, she moved to scratch behind his ear and against his cheek not like she was greeting a pet, but as though she was saying hello to a friend she hadn't seen in quite some time. "It's a little sugary. We need the glucose to get anywhere worthwhile."

She glanced up from the cat to Val and gave a helpless shrug. "Shipping out in approximately twelve hours."

Val drank from the flask and nodded.
"I like sweet things."
Papus purred loudly and rubbed his chin over Pren's hand.
"Gosh, that soon? You should probably get some.. well, I guess you don't need the sleep, actually." He noticed her closed guitar case. "Is that a guitar?"

"Sleep isn't happening tonight," T'Pren replied to Val while looking at Papus. She turned her hand over and rubbed under his chin, considering him more comfortably than she did another sentient being. Besides, the touch was something she desperately needed. "I tried. I failed."

At the mention of her guitar, she glanced up and over at it as though she'd forgotten what it was, but when she confirmed that it was, in fact, just that, she nodded. "Mmhmm. Terran. Classical." Drunk.

"I thought so!" Val said, settling down a little. "I've only seen them in pictures, but one of the human aid workers who came to my district played a banjo. He used to put little claws on his fingers to play it. I play a little Bajoran fiddle. Not spectacularly, but I manage."

Papus was momentarily ignored so that T'Pren could study the Bajoran on the floor. She seemed to decide something then and dropped onto the floor beside him, pulling the guitar case along with her. She settled it in between their legs and unclasped it so he could see inside.

"Be gentle. It was my father's." A lump formed in her throat and her cheeks turned a muted lime green.

Val reached across gingerly and brushed his fingers over the strings, one by one, then over the wood of the body, and the worn varnish.
"It's very nice," he said.

"This was the one he left with his parents on Earth," T'Pren corrected, flopping onto her back beside the instrument. "It's not in very good condition. He had a much, much better one on our ship, but it's gone now."

"I don't know.. sometimes instruments sound nicer when they're worn in," Val reasoned. "Anyway, it gives them a personality."

"That's true," T'Pren sighed. She lay on the floor looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling for a long moment before she suddenly pushed up on an elbow to look at Val. "What was the public education system like on Bajor? Or did you have one?"

Val shook his head. "My brothers all went to school or seminary, but it didn't seem to work for me. My mum taught me everything I needed. And the relief workers, sometimes. Why?"

"Curiosity," T'Pren decided. She flopped back down on her her back but this time turned her head so she could watch Val's reactions. "The Cardassians let me have access to basic educational resources if I was good. I taught myself from age fourteen on. And I was still behind when I applied to the Academy. It was humiliating."

"But you still got in," Val smiled.

"It required a lot of work and a lot of fighting," T'Pren confessed overseriously to the Bajoran. Who was drunk? Pren was drunk. "And a lot of genetic tests." Wait, what were they talking about? Oh, right. "But what I mean to say is that I know what it feels like to be...behind. To have been disadvantaged in that way."

Val chuckled, and reached for her flask again. "Give me that, I've got some catching up to do."

The flask was given over to Val without a fight. T'Pren was quite drunk enough for now and she did, after all, have to fly a warship in twelve hours. "Etilen," she continued with the intense sincerity of inebriation, "May I ask you a potentially offensive question?"

Val took a large sip from the flask and shrugged. "Why not?"

How did one go about asking questions like this one? T'Pren rolled onto her stomach and army-crawled closer to Val, reaching out to touch his shoulder by way of comfort and apology. And because she was too drunk to deal with skin contact. She looked him very, very earnestly in the eyes, her own green ones full of compassion and worry and understanding. "Do you know how to read?" she whispered, just in case someone else was wandering around at midnight.

Val blushed furiously, and averted her gaze. "Yes..." he lied.

T'Pren frowned deeply at that, a little too drunk to be able to tell if Val was blushing because it was offensive or because he was lying. "I'm sorry," she assured him with a particularly pouty frown of apology. "I won't tell anybody if you can't. I told you, I know what it's like." The frown deepened. "I'm very drunk. I had a plan for this. It was going to be much more subtle. It involved a report on Phylosian anatomy!"