#I mean Park definitely has some kind of PTSD from Zone Z but I am in no way equipped to Go There

[iffeelscouldkill]

Adjusting [Part 2: Park]

A/N: Here’s Part 2! Many thanks to @dragonsthough101 for beta reading this and for the lovely, encouraging feedback💖💖💖

If you haven’t read it or want to re-read, here’s a link to Part 1!

Summary: It turns out that there isn’t a blueprint for quitting your job, turning your back on the organisation that you’d built your life around, committing treason and abandoning your friends and family to go travel across the galaxy with a band of wanted criminals. Fortunately, RJ now knows some people who have been there.

Or: Five times that RJ McCabe shares a late-night drink with someone on the Iris 2.

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About a week later, RJ is feeling slightly more at home on the Iris. It helps that it’s a new ship for the rest of the crew, too, and so everyone’s a bit at sea, missing things they used to take for granted and sometimes finding themselves unexpectedly at a loose end.

One of the things that RJ finds hard to get used to is how chatty the crew of the Rumor is. They knew about this from listening to the recordings, but knowing about something and being on the receiving end of it are two very different things. In the IGR, supervisors tended to frown on idle chatter (everything was about maximising productivity, after all) and people were cautious about volunteering details of their personal lives, never quite sure who might be trying to inform on them or get them written up for having a hobby that wasn’t quite above-board. You couldn’t exactly enjoy a conversation with someone when you were constantly watching your words.

But here on the Iris, everyone talks so much, about anything and everything. RJ isn’t used to people honestly trying to get to know them, or to the level of genuine interest that many of the crew have taken in their past, their hobbies, their thoughts, and their likes and dislikes.

RJ knows that Krejjh and Brian mean well, and that Sana cares about every member of her crew (the idea that RJ is included in that category already is still hard to wrap their head around), but it can still be a little much sometimes. They prefer to spend time around Violet, who is more tactful; Park, who is familiar; or Arkady, who is mostly silent except when she’s cracking some honestly hilarious sarcastic jokes.

Nights are still hard, and RJ has more or less become used to taking hours to get to sleep, or waking up in the middle of the night from confused and anxious dreams, but they’re finding things to do with the extra time. Park, who is an incurable bookworm, gifted RJ with a truly staggering number of audiobook files that he’s been keeping on a jailbroken telecomm (a sort of souped-up comm device that Republic employees are issued as standard). RJ has learned things about their former boss’s tastes that they never expected.

(“Park! You know a jailbroken telecomm is considered a Class E banned item, right?” RJ says when Park shows it to them.

“Oh no,” Park replies, deadpan. “Do you think I’ll get in trouble for it?”)

Even more unexpected, though, are the downloads that RJ was given by Krejjh and Brian after they expressed curiosity towards something called ‘Sh’th Hremreh’ that the two were always discussing. Krejjh’s eyes lit up and they immediately began to wax lyrical about the plot and the acting, Brian chipping in with relevant details. Before they knew what was happening, RJ found themself in possession of two whole seasons of a Dwarnian soap opera.

(RJ doesn’t speak Dwarnian, of course, but Brian has a solution for that. “I’ve created my own fansubs,” he says happily. “It’s been a good exercise for my translation skills – don’t want them to get rusty – and it helped Krejjh with their English, back when they were still learning. I upload them to a Dwarnian video site under a pseudonym.”

“They’re very popular!” Krejjh adds proudly.)

So, between audiobooks and Dwarnian soap opera episodes – which are oddly engrossing – RJ has a few ways to take their mind off things, but sometimes it still isn’t enough. On nights like these, RJ makes their way to the kitchen. The crew had made a brief stop-off at an extremely sketchy and borderline lawless moon where a heavily disguised Sana and Arkady did a run for basic supplies, so the tea stocks are replenished – although it’s not great tea. (Apparently, one night of quality herbal tea was enough to turn RJ into a bit of a tea snob).

What they don’t expect is to run into Park, sitting in the darkened kitchen at two o’clock in the morning. The lights flicker on as RJ enters, which means that Park must have been sitting still long enough for the motion sensors to deactivate.

“Oh – McCabe,” he says, looking up. “I mean… RJ, sorry.”

“You can still call me McCabe,” RJ tells him as they pull out the stepping stool, carry it over to the cupboard, and climb up to reach the highest shelf. Park watches in bemusement. “I mean, I still call you Park, unless you’d prefer-”

“No, just Park is fine,” Park assures them. “What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

RJ pulls down the little cardboard box, sets it on the table, and opens it to reveal an orderly collection of teabags in rows. “We’re running low on camomile, but I think the peppermint is caffeine-free.”

“What if I want caffeine?” Park asks, eyeing the collection of teabags warily. He looks terrible, with dishevelled hair and dark circles under his eyes.

“That’s too bad, because you’re not getting any,” RJ tells him primly, and takes a bag of peppermint tea out of the box. Park laughs as though it’s been startled out of him.

“Fine.”

As they wait for the water to boil, RJ surveys Park out of the corner of their eye. They realise that they’d subconsciously been thinking of Park as ‘further ahead’ than they were with adjusting to life as an outlaw, given that he’d turned against the Republic first, and actively worked with the crew of the Rumor to carry out the plan on New Jupiter. During the day, he puts up a good front, but RJ can see now how much of that is a front. This hasn’t been easy for Park either.

RJ pours out the tea into two dinged-up tin mugs and hands one to Park. For a while, neither of them says anything.

RJ and Park haven’t talked about the Republic much since leaving New Jupiter. RJ has made the odd quip about working with Agent Goodman, or referenced things that happened in their shared office, and both of them have been providing intel that Sana relays to the resistance movement via the other Violet Liu, but they haven’t had a real conversation about what – and who – both of them left behind. Park seems disinclined to talk about his time in Zone Z, and RJ had convinced themself that the best way to adjust to their new life on the Iris was to draw a line under everything that came before it. There was no point in bringing up old memories.

Except that now, they’re struck by how much they want to talk about it.

“Park,” RJ says in a rush. “Do you… ever miss… being back on New Jupiter? I-I don’t mean the last… part of your time on New Jupiter,” they add hurriedly when Park looks at them. “But… is there anything that you miss about… before?”

Park frowns in consideration. “I miss the amenities, for sure,” he says slowly. “I don’t care what Sana says – the water pressure is not the same in vacuum.” RJ snorts in amusement at that. “And the food was better down there.

“Maybe I miss being on the right side of the law, or thinking I was on the right side of the law – being able to safely move across IGR territory, being able to use my real name and identity. The kinds of things you just take for granted until you can’t do them anymore.” Park pauses, seeming to weigh his next words.

“But the thing is… I never felt safe under the IGR either. You remember what it was like.” Park looks at RJ, and there’s a darkness in his eyes that RJ has only seen there once before: shortly after Park’s return from Zone Z, when they had asked about what happened to his eye. At the time, it had been quickly suppressed, leaving RJ with a vaguely unsettled feeling that they couldn’t pinpoint the source of.

“Everyone constantly trying to inform on everyone else. People disappearing one day without a trace. Wondering if it would be you next. Constantly watching what you said, analysing what you did, looking over your shoulder.” Park gazes off into the middle distance, remembering things that RJ can only guess at. They unconsciously hold their breath, afraid to do or say anything to break Park’s reverie.

“When Major General Frederick came to take me away… there was a part of me that wasn’t surprised. I think I’d almost been waiting for it. The investigation wasn’t going well, and they were looking for someone to scapegoat. It was only a matter of time. Under a regime like the IGR-”

RJ manages to suppress their instinctive flinch at hearing Park describe the Republic in those terms, but only just. In spite of everything they now know to be true about the IGR, it isn’t easy to alter a lifetime of thinking a certain way. Or of not being allowed to think a certain way.

“-you never know when the ground is going to shift beneath your feet. You might cross the wrong person, or do something that you know to be the right thing, and still wind up ‘disappearing’.” Park pronounces the last word with an uncharacteristic bitterness. “So no, I don’t really miss how things were on New Jupiter.”

“Yeah,” RJ says shakily. “You, uh, you make some good points. Hadn’t… hadn’t thought of that.”

Park blinks, and immediately looks stricken. “McCabe– I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have – I don’t know why I said all of that. I know it wasn’t what you were asking. I’ve just been carrying a lot of-”

“Park, it’s fine. You don’t need to apologise,” RJ says over him. “And you don’t need to try and sugarcoat anything for me. I was a naïve kid when I joined the investigation, but I’m not now. I saw you get taken away, and other people as well. I was terrified. But I found ways to justify it in my head, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

They say this last part, quietly, to the tabletop.

Park rubs his good eye. “I never wanted you to have to go through that.”

“But that wasn’t your fault,” RJ tells him. “It was theirs.”

Silence descends for a few moments, and RJ casts about for a change of subject. “So, uh, have you… heard from Shelley?”

Park shakes his head. “I asked the other Violet to get a message to her, because I wanted her to hear the truth from me and not whatever lies the Regime has decided to put out, but she warned me that it could take a while. I’m not sure if or how Shelley will be able to reply.”

RJ nods, their mouth twisting in sympathy. Shelley is Park’s twin sister, and the two are extremely close. Park hasn’t shared many details about his family life, but RJ has inferred that their parents aren’t around anymore, and that Park and Shelley are each the only family the other has left. It must be incredibly hard for him to be away from her – maybe the hardest thing of all.

“What about, uh… Have you thought of getting in touch with yours?” Park asks, his voice rough. RJ shakes their head.

“No. It would just be…”

RJ hunts for the right words for a long moment, and finally says, “It wouldn’t make much of a difference. To them, the truth would be just as bad.”

Park looks troubled, but he nods. “Okay.” He drains the last of the peppermint tea and smiles a little. “All right, I’ll admit it – the tea has helped. I didn’t even know there was a stash in here.”

“I split the cost with Violet and Arkady,” says RJ. “But it’s meant to be for emergencies only.” When Park quirks an eyebrow, RJ adds, “Insomnia counts as an emergency.”

Park gives that small smile again. “Fair enough. I appreciate it, anyway. You using up your emergency tea on me.”

RJ considers pointing out that they’d been going to make a cup anyway, but decides not to ruin the sentiment. “You’re welcome.”

“I guess I should head back to…” Park plants his hands on the table and levers himself up, wincing like he’s aggravating old injuries. Maybe he is. RJ still has no idea what the IGR did to him in Zone Z, besides the… eyeball thing.

“Park,” they blurt out, and Park looks at them, his face open and concerned. There are a lot of things that RJ didn’t realise were unique about Park until he was gone. The fact that he genuinely cared about RJ, and looked out for them, was one of those.

In many ways, Park is a different man since he came back from Zone Z. But that much hasn’t changed.

“Is…” RJ hesitates, not wanting to give voice to the nagging fear that lurks at the back of their mind – and increasingly, at the front.

“Is there going to be another war?”

Park hesitates, but he doesn’t try to offer up platitudes or empty reassurances. “Not if we can help it,” he tells them.