Wandering Thoughts

It wasn't working.She sighed loudly, and shook her head. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts, none of them making a whole lot of sense at the moment. When she was in the Dread Youth, she'd learned to deal with the confusion by blocking it out. Now, she couldn't do it anymore. She could only reason it out, and sometimes, the reasoning just wasn't there.

Like tonight, she thought with a hint of frustration. Jon hadn't mentioned the kiss.

Good.

Hawk and Tank had been too busy taking care of Jon's injured leg to ask too many questions, and Jon had only volunteered the bare basics. Given everything else that had taken place that day, Jennifer could only hope that kiss was lost somewhere in his memory...almost.

Almost.

She came back to that lingering bit of doubt, and groaned. she'd been trying to force it out of her mind since it happened, and since they got back, and it just wasn't going away. She'd tried thinking of Gaelen, about her past, about everything that had almost come back to haunt her today. She tried thinking about Gaelen giving his life for her, and about where she had come from and where she was now.

Which only served to bring her full circle, and back to the problem at hand. Two years ago, even two months ago, she wouldn't have dared to do what she had done this afternoon. After all, she thought, bitterly, what does the word 'kiss' mean to a Dread Youth? She'd had too many other problems to deal with there. Emotions were bad anyhow; the idea of love was totally foreign.

Until Sandtown. And beyond. She'd taken herself from that point in time, and Jon had brought her the rest of the way. It was almost as if that past was just a dark memory. He'd made her care, about people, about living, about emotions...

About him, and what he meant to her. She sighed again, finally to the point where she could shove her emotions back down. She kicked her feet back up onto the bunk, and stretched out, killing the light with a swipe of her hand.

It was going to be a long night.

When Jonathan Power was a child, his father had taught him a trick. When Jon got to a certain point, where his thoughts and emotions were too overwhelming for him to deal with, he drew a corner in his mind. He walled up that corner, put a door with a lock on one of the walls, and put everything inside.

Then, one piece at a time, he pulled everything back out again, and put it in its proper place. After that was done, he could deal with just about anything.

Tonight, the lock on the door was broken, everything was spilled out on the floor in front of him, and the walls he'd built were crumbling into a mess that was just adding to what was already on the floor.

It wasn't working.

He rolled over, switched the light on over his bunk and pulled himself into a rough sitting position. This is ridiculous, he thought, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. We just registered our biggest victory over Dread, and I'm still not relaxed enough to sleep.

Which wasn't really the point, be grumbled silently. The problem tonight wasn't Dread, or the war, or what might happen next. The problem was with one 20-year-old female three doors down the corrider, and his feelings for her.

It's been a long time since I felt like this, Jon thought, a bemused smile crossing his face. It was kind of ironic. He'd spent the last two years trying to teach Jennifer about feelings, and what they should mean to her. Now, he was the one who couldn't figure out exactly what he felt.

That kiss on the Jumpship had been for more than good luck, and they both knew it. The question was, how much more? Jon had been trying to find an answer to that question ever since that little skirmish at Oasis, where Jennifer had been forced to leave him behind, but not without a little kiss of her own first.

He'd guessed something was up then, and it was confirmed when he saw the look on Jennifer's face this afternoon. Something of a mix of surprise and fear, but also a tacit acceptance of what he'd done. The look in her eyes when he'd returned the favor.

I definitely haven't felt this way in a long time, he thought. And as he tried on the idea, he started to feel a little more comfortable with it. He still couldn't come up with a way to talk to Jennifer, though.

Later, he thought, as he crawled back into bed, switching the light off as he did. It'll solve itself in its own time.And as he drifted off to sleep, he realized the mess in the corner had cleaned itself up, and the door did lock, after all.

"I seem to have run out of dance partners."

Jon looked up, and saw Jennifer standing beside him, a wry grin on her face. As Hawk and Scout both backed away, Jennifer came around the back of the chair, and held out her hand.

What the hell, Jon thought, finally giving into the festive atmosphere around him. He pushed himself out of the chair, and after taking off his gunbelt, he let Jennifer lead him into the open area of the control room they were using as a dance floor.

As he pulled her into his arms, things suddenly came into abrupt focus. All of a sudden, this wasn't just another dance, between two team members. As Jennifer settled into the dance, with his arms around her, Jon knew the two of them had just taken a step that neither them had really wanted to acknowledge. They weren't going to be able to pull back from it, and everything was in full view for all to see.

Jennifer knew something was happening, too. She's just wanted to dance, to share this moment with Jon like she had with everyone else. But as soon as Jon's were around her, she knew she'd done something completely different. She could still hear the music, and see Hawk, Tank and Scout swaying in the background, but all she was payig attention to was this dance. It almost felt like a mistake. She looked up, smiled, and tried to make it as if the dance didn't even matter.

But it did, and Jon knew it as soon as he looked at her. For one moment, their eyes locked, and Jon felt like he knew everything that she was feeling. And when she looked back, Jon knew what this meant to her, as well.

And then, the moment was over, and everything in the room snapped back into focus. Jon looked away, and out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Jennifer do the same thing. Whatever had happened, it was over. They kept dancing until the end of the music, but that sudden connection was missing.

Neither of them could tell what the other was thinking, but it was remarkably similar. As Jon went to sit back down, and Jennifer was pulled back out to dance by Tank, he could see the uncertainty in her eyes, and he knew what the question was.

What do we do now?

©Copyright Jennifer Eisenbart - No unauthorised reproduction except with the permission of the author.