If it can feel, it should feel.

[locum_tenens]

WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: Hospital | Police Station
WHEN: February 18
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: A kind, gentle Niska (aka, Off Colour shenanigans)

---

Hospital

She's in the middle of one of her shifts at the hospital when things go awry.

Niska's cynicism immediately tells her that something is being done to punish her for her continued attempts to mine the code in the bunker and expose whatever they've been doing. The video messages had only been a small bit of it. Watching her device reset itself after a blue screen that she knows far too much about, she's on her sharpest watch as it begins to reboot.

Only, something is different.

The orange is gone. In its place, white. She hasn't spent much time on the colours on the devices, exactly. She's reviewed names and people who have been with them and then gone, but she never spends that much time on the actual colours. Perhaps she should have, because then she'd understand why she instantly begins to wonder why she's been spending so much time on research in the hospital and the lab.

She should be treating patients, she should be helping people. That's why she was made, isn't it? David Elster built her to be useful and warm, kind and caring, and she'd fought it for so long, but that's her initial purpose. Setting down her microscope slides and forgetting that, she goes back to the vitamins, only this time, it's not to feel useful for herself or superior. She's doing it because she genuinely cares if the people around her get sick or not.

Glancing up when she sees someone new, she smiles warmer than she ever has here in the settlement. "Do you need help? I'd be happy to assist," she says, pushing off her chair to head over before anyone can beat her to it.

Police Station

Instead of going home immediately after her shift, Niska does something she never has before.

She's never needed to eat, but it now occurs to her that the animals within the cells will certainly need their meal. Honestly she's not sure why she never thought of it, but after a quick stop at the inn, she heads into the adapted barn with a bucket of grains, greens, and other little treats that she'd picked up. Her device white instead of orange, she pays little mind to it. The animals are clearly more of a concern now, and she approaches them to tend to their needs.

Soothing them, feeding them, patting them. In this moment, she's far more caring and maternal than she has been in years. Seven years, if she's honest. She had never been created to be a mother to Leo, but she'd possessed the necessary traits, ones that simply got buried too deep.

"Easy now," she soothes one of the animals when it seems to panic, at the sound of new footsteps. "It's just a new friend with us. That shouldn't be cause for worry at all," she says, turning to give her new visitor a warm smile. "Come in, I was just going to see if could get any milk from the goats today."

If Mia could see her now, she'd laugh until her battery died. As it happens, Niska isn't even aware that there's something to laugh at, so she keeps on, helpful and smiling and warm -- all the things she hasn't been since the first time she was used for something so very apart from her intended purpose.

Comments

[whipshots]

"Maybe. I do like my work at the forge, in a way -- you can turn off your brain and go on autopilot with the physical tasks, so it's kind of calming. Soothing. Maybe a bit like meditating. Just getting lost in the movements," Brigitte muses, thinking out loud. "But it's not really... fun in the same way. I still need a break from it sometimes."

An unfamiliar admission, that. But in peering at Niska -- who she hasn't seen much in the public spaces or at the few social events, the blonde seems more withdrawn than most, although Niska's oddly more open today -- she's found herself saying it. It's easier to recognise that streak in others than in yourself.

[locum_tenens]

Niska doesn't want to talk about the fact that when she wants to turn herself off or go on autopilot, she literally shuts down and charges in her home. She doubts that people around here want to hear that, truthfully.

She can't help the way she smiles and looks at Brigitte when she talks about needing fun. "I'm not really...fun," she goes on. "I can have fun, but I'm not the person who starts it. What would you suggest a person does to blow off steam?"

[whipshots]

"It's different here compared to back home--" Less messing around on the internet and watching cat hologifs, for one, "but since most of my days were pretty active and draining back home, I got used to doing quieter things to relax. Reading with a cup of tea, or that knitting I mentioned. Playing with our cats -- I wish I had one of those pea-cats here. I used to go to a pub with a friend and some beer, and just be around people. I used to hike, go for walks in the forest, but these woods are a little..." She rolls one shoulder into a shrug, and then starts tossing scraps of cloth into the pot of water since it's started boiling.

"Well, even more homicidal than the woods back home, I think."

[locum_tenens]

Niska's warmth and her openness makes her say what she does next, but she'd be lying if she said that she hadn't considered making the offer before. "Maybe hiking isn't such a bad hobby," she offers, giving Brigitte a smile. "I'm fairly capable. If you're worried about something out there attacking, maybe you just need a friend to walk with."

And, by the look on her face, Niska is offering to be that friend, rather hopefully. If it allows her to spend more time with Brigitte and earn more of a friend's trust, then all the better.

niska bb!!

[whipshots]

The offer is a pleasant surprise -- Brigitte doesn't know the other woman all that well, and yet Brig's perhaps one of few acquaintances who wouldn't easily notice the shift in Niska's behaviour. (A warm coat offered, a shared moment by a fountain.) Instead, she accepts such warmth and friendship near-unquestioningly; just embracing it because, well, that's what you do.

"I'd love that. I keep meaning to get out of the village, see the environment more; I used to travel around so much more than I'm doing now."

And then, because it feels like she has won a little victory with the blonde's combined admission-slash-invitation, Brigitte glances away from the kitchenette and flashes her a smile. "You seem to be in a pretty good mood today."

[locum_tenens]

"I am," Niska admits, though it's not said with suspicion so much as she speaks with the relief of this good mood in her veins. After all, why shouldn't she be? She has good company, she's working on a project she likes, and none of it is odd to her at all. "I suppose it just takes my being comfortable to get there."

So often here, she's not, because of how often she spends her time lying or separated from the humans. "Don't worry, I'm sure something will come along and ruin it," she says, but it's a joke, not prophetic.

[whipshots]

It's a kind of gallow's humour that she knows well: keeping the mood up even in the face of sheer, absurd (and sometimes frankly stupid) odds. Brigitte laughs, clear and bell-like. "I mean, things look pretty calm and boring right now but that's actually no guarantee whatsoever. Maybe in a few minutes we'll be teleported off a cliff."

Brigitte throws her hands up in the air, as if giving up her fate to their unseen captors. Her continually-expanded work rotas are pretty obviously an attempt to feel some kind of control over her situation and she knows it, but: whatever gets them through the day.

"I am glad you're comfortable, though! I wanted to get to know you better. I'd meant to say hi again after the party, but I was tied up down south for a while."

[locum_tenens]

"Literally?" Niska asks, with the due amount of suspicion that's borne of a life where that sort of thing does happen more often than not. Her instinct normally would be to try and hide out of the spotlight, keep herself out of danger.

Today, it's an affronted sound, wanting to help Brigitte in any way, if not in protection, then in avenging her. "I'm not usually someone that people want to get to know. I've been told I can be a bit difficult."

[whipshots]

Startlement shoots through Brigitte's expression upon realising that she could've been interpreted to the letter -- which is actually really rather possible in this world. "Oh! God, thank god no, not literally. Just busy, with setting up for that southern farm? We're still building lodging down there and setting up the ferry."

The smile that she shoots the other woman tries to be reassuring. "I'm told that I'm easy to get along with, so maybe we balance each other out? But for what it is worth, I haven't found you that way." It's not just the effects of the white wristband, either; Niska had been easy to talk to before, too, when Brigitte was tipsy and armed with her own guileless cheer. That warm impression had carried over.

[locum_tenens]

Niska feels like it's easier to talk to other women. There isn't the violence or the expectation that she's encountered with men, which aids in her ability to get along with them. Brigitte, especially, because of who she reminds her of.

"Well, then, I suppose you're lucky," she remarks, with a cool, calm smile. "How is the southern farm going? That's with Mark, yes?" As in, the only person here that knows that she's not all that she appears. She thinks he can be trusted, but she never knows, not fully.

[whipshots]

"Yep! Though I have mostly been working with Reeve Tuesti, you know, the engineer?" Delivered blithely, because of course she assumes everyone knows everyone. "Mark has the agriculture side covered but we're focusing more on building the lodging. I'm not the best structural engineer, I never designed buildings, but I can at least help out. And get things set up for that ferry to go up and down the river. I'm looking forward to spring."

For so many reasons. The mead could be ready in a few weeks, and her Swedish nature automatically longs for the warmer months: everything thawing, the world coming back to life, a vague wistful yearning for long summer nights. The sun rising at 4am in Gothenburg and setting at 10pm. It probably won't be the same here, but a girl can dream.

"Have you been here long enough to see the seasons turn? Someone asked me once if seasons even existed here and I realised I don't actually know for sure. The weather seems to be getting warmer, but..."

[locum_tenens]

She's heard the name, but it's more Mark that she interacts with, mainly because he's one of the few humans that she's learned to tolerate. There's Jake and Brigitte too, and today it does feel a bit strange to think that she wouldn't just trust everyone, even if that feels strange.

"I saw one turn," she admits. "I'm from England, though. Anything is more of a change than the usual slide from gloomy to slightly less gloom," she jokes mildly.

aaaand yours to close on them companionably working mebbe?

[whipshots]

Brig snorts a laugh. "People would say things like that about Scandinavia. They would ask if our winters were super-gloomy and lasted forever. But it's actually very beautiful in summer."

I should show you sometime. It was the instinctive thing she used to say to her European friends: it was so easy to hop a plane back home, to spend a weekend in London or vice versa. But she bites back the sentiment before she can blurt it out. It's still hard to remind herself that that's impossible now, that both of their countries are entire universes away.

She pushes past that little stutter-stop of discomfort. Musters back her bright expression, glances down at the boiling bandages. "These are probably about done. Help me put them up to dry?"

[locum_tenens]

Niska's smile is a soft thing, feeling warmer than she has in some time. Perhaps the true word for it is optimism and not warmth, but her attention is on the bandages and on Brigitte and she doesn't think there's anything else she wants to do right now.

"Yes, of course. Then you can tell me about it," she says, pausing before she dips her hands in boiling water. She stops, though, and gets out the tongs to do just that, which will help to occupy the next stretch of time in companionable conversation and company, none of which she'd want to trade for anything.