directly in his eyes and not see raw animal energy staring back. The thought shook her. She hadn’t expected to appraise him quite so viscerally. Even as she had these thoughts, there was also a sensation that she was betraying someone.
Dmitry, for his part, found himself nearly eye to eye with their newly arrived dinner companion. She wasn’t his height, but within several inches. Though she was still a bit pale, it seemed as though a brief moment or two in sunlight might change that. She was thin, but not angular, tightly wound, intense. Her face was not quite what he would call pretty.
Pretty was what he normally went for, because one could ignore a lot of other faults with the distraction of pretty. No, she was not pretty. Beauty was different, at least to him. Sa’andy had it in spades, for instance, that kind of old Greco-Roman statuesque beauty. Maeve had something else entirely, something deeper, harder to define. He felt an unsettling sense that he could easily get lost looking at her. What was more, she hadn’t blushed and averted her eyes, the way other women did when he put his full attention on them.
Instead, she was sizing him up. He could see her measuring him with flickering hazel eyes that conveyed, somehow, a sense of wary interest. Time seemed to slow somewhat under her scrutiny. He came to his senses, and shook himself free of her for the time being. There would be time to…get to know her later. Now was time for business.
She walked behind the two men to their table, purposefully, to watch them interact. They spoke to one another in an easy manner, as though they were old friends. She concluded that they must be. To her, at least, it seemed unusual for a major to be hanging around playing sidekick to somebody who acted more like a peer than a senior.
Dmitry turned his head, noting the way she hung back. He wrote it off to shyness. That perception was satisfactory to her. His eyes lingered over her as he continued to talk to Tark. He liked her eyes as well, with their color that refused to be any one shade. They were like twin oceans in the wake of a fury. She was not his type, he reminded himself.
And yet he watched her still, while he mulled over that last thought. Tark had said that she and her friends had all looked somewhat sickly after being awoken, but this was no longer the case. Between the efficacies of modern medicine and the power of what he presumed to be sheer determination, she at least was looking…fit.
She wore a simple black dress, made of a light material that hung off her body as though it knew her. He could not tell whether it was sleeveless or not; she was wearing a tailored denim jacket, which he felt must hide a multitude of secrets. He recognized her jewelry as something purchased from the open-air markets, and was instantly dismayed by this knowledge.
In his duties as station’s executive officer, he had less to do with giving orders to personnel, certainly. It was his job to see to the needs of the personnel and the requests and complaints of the civilians. Essentially, to see to all the things with which Tark could not and should not be involved.
It would seem however, that he, Dmitry, had become overly familiar with his surroundings. If he was able not only to recognize a woman’s accessory, but know who had sold it to her, and how much it had probably cost, the answer was yes. He wasn’t totally sure how he felt about this realization.
Belatedly then, he began to realize that he’d been staring at her the whole time. Maeve didn’t seem to mind. He sheepishly redirected his eyes. Meanwhile, she was finishing sizing him up, though he was blissfully unaware of that fact. He’d been so busy looking her over that he’d not noticed her doing the same thing. Nor, that he’d narrowly missed sprawling himself into a table encircled by elderly women, who were tittering under their red hats at him.
As they passed, Maeve would have sworn that she heard one of them say something like, “…bit of a biscuit, that,” in high, York-tinged accents. She smiled, but was careful to hide it when Dmitry finally shook himself out of his daze.
The proprietor gladly placed them in the smallest of the private dining rooms, and kept everyone else out, excepting the server, who nervously took their drink orders. Tark asked for a decent wine, and Dmitry would have done the same, had Maeve not explained to the wide-eyed young woman how a lychee martini was made. He changed his mind, and ordered a whiskey. He wasn’t about to let her outpace him. It wouldn’t do. Maeve only knew that she felt like uncoiling from the tensions of the past few weeks, and planned to do so, whatever it took.
“So, Major, I would hazard a guess that you and the Colonel here are old buddies.” Tark grinned at the glint in her eye. She was trying to put him on the spot for some reason.
“You guess correctly, Lieutenant. We’ve known one another since basic training.” A slight frown washed away her tiny hint of humor. Did she ever smile?
“Don’t call me that, please. That part of me is…dead, and meaningless.” She looked away then. Though it was said without animosity, there was something there, some barely controlled emotion.
Dmitry liked the simple fact that there was something in her left to be tamed. Startled again by his own ruminations, it occurred to him that he hadn’t had conversations with himself like that since well before Rebecca had left.
Once, he would have been bothered by such things, since the past provided much in the way of pain. He felt he no longer carried any illusions with regards to love. As far as anything like that went, he felt that he couldn’t afford to let his guard down anymore. Work was his life; despite leaving the thrill of frontier patrolling behind, he was happy staying in one place for now.
He had the opportunity to do some good. It didn’t matter that he had made mistakes before. Tark had given him a second chance, and he owed it to his friend not to screw things up. So he smiled and pretended that he’d thought nothing, although nothing was definitely fooling around with something right then.
“Hey, we’re all learning about each other. This is great.” He stared her down, willing her to come back with some smart-assed remark. She wouldn’t be baited. The night was young yet, her drink only half-gone. He made sure she saw him dispatch his own whiskey swiftly, and ordered another, asking to have it served colder. He cleared his throat. Something was definitely taking him over. Its undefined yet sharp edges held him in thrall. On top of that, she was resisting him thoroughly. He didn’t usually go for headstrong types. His inner voice was quite clear on that.
Maeve ordered another drink, feeling like the cat, rather than the canary. It was a rather strong feeling she had that Major Petrovich would spend the night catching up to her. She wasn’t sure why she’d think in such terms. After all, he wasn’t her normal type either.
She wondered briefly if he had any idea that she could perceive his thought processes as clearly as if it was written on his own forehead. He’d been watching her for the past hour, trying to be discreet, trying to read her and find her secrets. He’d fail in that, as so many others had. So far as she could recall, there had been only one person who’d known her like that in her whole life.
“Sure, we can all learn about each other. For instance, did you know that our food is here, and that I’m happy as a result?” Tark was good-natured, but aware that he was miles behind some subtext that was taking place. It unnerved him to see his friend suddenly go into pursuit mode, if anything could be judged by Dmitry’s having leered at Maeve for nearly an hour. Maybe that was unfair, but he felt protective of Maeve, as if she were a long-lost relative. To be sure, Sa’andy had already noticed, and had made a quiet remark to him about it earlier in the day. Luckily, she thought it was endearing.
“Thank goodness. Good choice, by the way.” Maeve couldn’t think of how to address Dmitry; a problem she frequently encountered. She slipped into her habit of familiar conversation, unburdened by any kind of pronoun whatsoever.
“Thanks. Dem, would you mind throwing some of that bread over here, you greedy bastard?”
“Your wish is my command, gorgeous. Make sure that vat of grease and meat makes it over my way before our guest thieves it all.” He tried s
miling his most innocent smile at her, hoping to convince himself to calm down in the process. By that point, she was feeling slightly more talkative.
“Well, at least you have something else to think about now.” She stared at Dmitry innocently. His heart dropped into his shoes.
“What do you mean by that?
“Hey, you two, how about getting to what we’re actually here for?”
“You have something you want to talk about? Have at it.” She tried to achieve an air of patience, made difficult by the torrent of emotions running through her head.
“You said you wanted to have something to do. Naturally the thing to do is to bring you up to speed, help you learn everything you’ve missed, and perhaps, in the process, discover a means for all of you to make new lives.” Her head jerked up at that.
“Great. Like college? I already have a degree, you know. Though it’s quite possibly utterly useless to me right now.” She ripped a piece flat bread and waded it through the spicy stew. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be crabby. This just sucks, not knowing anything, feeling like nothing is ever going to be right again.”
Dmitry knew exactly what she was talking about. Starting over, in any sense of the phrase was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life. He’d had a career already going, but Rebecca had gone before he could start the elusive family. Six years past, he could still see her every time he shut his eyes. He wondered how much more intense it was for Maeve, if he even dared to want to find out. His best friend was, at that moment, offering her some sympathy. Something from the depths of the counseling handbook, doubtless.
As in…life goes on, it perpetuates, the job of the strong is to lean into it, shoulder the weaknesses of those around them, and trust in fate to play her hand fairly. He was also in the process of fleshing out a rather detailed list of ideas for her, and for her friends as well. It was an offer of schooling, and exploration of future plans from that point onward. Maeve smiled politely at Tark’s idea that this would all be so terribly easy to fix. He was kidding himself.
He avoided mention of anything that might bring celebrity, much less outside attention. Tark was not the type to encourage the wholesale marketing of anyone, but Dmitry knew that it would be more than wrong with these people to push them into the public eye. It would be incredibly risky, given the current political climate. It made Dmitry wonder why exactly it was that Tark would be offering anything to these people at all. Surely it would become noticeable before too long. He’d have to talk to Tark about it later.
“...I should probably get back, because, regrettably, I am only on my dinner break. Besides, there’s no telling what could happen with O’Leary running the show.” Dmitry started to rise as well, but was shoved back down with a firm hand. “You are still off-duty, my friend, take the night, show up tomorrow at zero eight hundred or so. It’s not like we’re hurting for help. Just…behave.” The last part he spoke quietly into Dmitry’s ear. He tried to have faith in his best friend, otherwise, he would have taken Maeve with him instead. As it was, Dmitry merely nodded, looking benign. Tark left, and the two of them sat in silence for a full minute. He was trying to think of something rude to say to her when he caught her watching him with a peculiar expression.
“What?” He was leery. She’d cornered him into reacting, rather than him being able to take the reins.
“I was just trying to decide what kind of personality you have.” She wanted to spar verbally, eh? He decided to play.
“And what was your conclusion, doc?” Maeve was