Day off

NRPG:
Krister: You live in Malmo!?! My cousin, Monika is from Malmo, though she moved to Stockholm a couple years ago. Small world, isn't it? Anyway, welcome to the team!

RPG:

Zenya was feeling a bit like all the forces of the cosmos were conspiring against her. Not only was there very little for the team to do until they got a new assignment, but doctors in both Santa Fe *and* in Washington had told her that she should "take it easy for a couple days." She intended to follow their orders. Really, she did. But by noon, she had decided that she could no longer stand the sight of the inside of her apartment, and she could just as readily "take it easy" somewhere else. Maybe a nice walk through the park, followed by some intensive shopping therapy would take her mind off the fact that Zulu had been pulled off the investigation and that Ted and Rebecca had gotten away.

A couple hours, two pairs of shoes and a new suit later, Zenya was feeling much better. She'd managed to walk off most muscle strain incurred from repeatedly jumping through windows and she no longer felt as strong a desire to find Rebecca, wrap her hands around her throat and choke some answers out of her. In fact, she felt centered enough to deal with a little paper work, namely the endless forms that needed to be filled out regarding the loss of her gun, so she headed for the office.

"Agent Gorky, aren't you supposed to be at home recovering," Jenny asked almost before Zenya managed to make it through the office door.

"I assure you, I'm fully recovered, except for a few annoying stitches."

"Still, you should be taking it easy for�"

"If I hear one more person say that, I think I'll scream," Zenya said with more humor than she was really feeling at the moment. "Just tell me that the paperwork I have to do won't be too strenuous."

Jenny shrugged. "You know bureaucracy. I can't make any promises." She pulled a stack of forms out of the desk drawer, a much smaller stack than Zenya had anticipated. "Agent Lee was just here."

"Sorry I missed her," Zenya said. It would have been nice to have someone to chat with while she worked on these forms. That and the fact that she'd discovered that one day out of action and she already missed the camaraderie of the group.

Forms to be filled out in triplicate soon took her mind off any other thoughts. They required a detailed description of the events leading to the loss of the weapon, which of course led to more forms explaining how she had come to be injected with an as-yet unknown drug, which required copies of the preliminary lab report from the hospital that had failed to identify the substance in her blood� and so on and so on, all of which finally culminated in a trip to the quartermaster to be issued, and to pay for! a new gun.

Zenya managed to make it out of the office before rush hour traffic made the streets all but impassable. It was a pleasant day, so she decided to walk home rather than taking the bus as she'd originally planned. Or maybe she was just in no hurry to get there. After a stop at a neighborhood book shop to pick up a copy of Anna Levina's latest collection of short stories and the half dozen new novels that Peggy, the proprietor of the place, had gotten in from some little upstart publishing house in Moscow especially for her and another stop at the supermarket for a loaf of bread and a carton of milk that would probably go bad before anyone got around to opening it, Zenya found that she could think of no other reason not to go home.

Pausing in front of the steps to her building, Zenya sighed and finally headed to her apartment. Either Valery would be home or he wouldn't, and she wasn't sure which she would prefer. She recalled a brief conversation she'd had with Vanessa about what brings people together, and why they stay. It was something she'd thought a lot about lately. She'd known Valery since they were children, and both sets of parents had assumed that they would get together sooner or later. Except now there was no one left to make those assumptions or to exert subtle pressure. Maybe it was just that Valery had been the one constant in her life, there through good and bad. No comfort perhaps, but at least he stuck around.

Walking in the door, Zenya was greeted by the odor of turpentine and fresh oil paint, a sure sign that not only was he home, but already hard at work and not wanting to be disturbed. It seemed that inspiration had struck him while she was away. He'd spent all of the previous night standing in front of a canvas that looked vaguely like there had been an explosion in a paint factory.

Zenya dropped her shopping bags on the kitchen table, got a bottle of mineral water out of the refrigerator and started on one of her books.

"That you," Valery called from another room.

"Unless you're expecting someone else."

"Come here for a minute!"

Zenya glanced curiously in the direction his voice had come from and set aside her book. Valery was standing in the den, staring at the canvas on his easel.

"Well," he asked.

"Well what?"

"It's done." He glanced up at her for perhaps the first time since she got back. "What happened to you," he asked, lifting the collar of her blouse to look at the stitches on her shoulder.

"I jumped out a window. Nice of you to notice."

"That was a stupid thing to do."

"It was better than getting shot and - or becoming a human sacrifice."

Valery thought about that for a while, then shrugged. "So what do you think," he asked, indicating the painting.

Zenya looked at it for a long while, studying it from various angles and trying to come up with something - anything - positive to say about it. She was sure there must be some message in it, but she couldn't find a clue to what it was. "It's very� colorful," she said at last.

"Colorful? That's all you can come up with?"

"Well, it� looks like a sunflower," Zenya ventured.

"Yes! It represents the individual blossoming in spite of the oppression of an unfair society. You don't understand it at all, do you?"

"No more than you understand my work, Valery. To me, its just an abstract sunflower."

Valery shooed her out of the room without another word. Zenya couldn't tell if he was hurt or angry, but then, she never could tell what he was feeling. She returned to the kitchen and picked up her book, all the while hoping the team would be assigned a new mission very soon.

-----

Sydnie Kathryn MacElroy

SA1 Kate Calloway, X-Files, DELTA
SA2 Zenya Gorky, X-Files, ZULU
Fianna Nikal, Kal-Dixas Spaceport

Linguae quae genera distincta non habent inuriam faciunt feminis.

"It may not be apparent, but I am often amused with human behavior."