trans_9 | Watching and Waiting [open]

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Watching and Waiting [open]

Paranoia was a perfectly reasonable reaction to waking up in a strange place covered in slime, having a fight with tentacles that put some kind of throbbing...thing on him, and then being forced to run through mazes that shot fire, a cruel voice passive-aggressively taunting him the entire time.

Tarzan didn't know where he was, didn't know what was going on, and didn't know what happened to the people--and gorillas---he cared about most. His entire world had been turned upside down. He'd found himself in a strange place completely full of people, more people than he'd even imagined existed. It was full of lots of strange people, and some of them walked on two legs but didn't look human; others were clearly animals but they conversed with humans with apparently no difficulty.

They all were strange to him. Frightening, even to one that had faced Sabor. It was all so confusing. Even terrifying, all the more so because he couldn't find Jane or his mother anywhere, even when he searched during the times other slept.

So he'd hidden in Hydroponics, and taken to the trees, wary of every living being on the ship.

Anyone that entered Hydroponics and stayed there for long might find themselves having the unmistakable feeling that they were being watched.

But he was just as curious as he was frightened and cautious. As much as he was holding back from the people on the ship, he had a burning desire to speak to them, to figure out what they were all about.

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Gingerly, Inara took a small, delicate bite of the fruit. It was every bit as good as it smelled. She tasted some hint of honey in the juices as well. She wondered what kind of planet this fruit was from, and if Kaylee had possibly found the fruit yet. They weren't strawberries by any means, but they were quite delicious. "I want to ask you something, but I don't mean any offense by it. I hope you won't take any," she said. "Can you speak?" She only asked because he was so very quiet, though his face was rather expressive.

That got a long, inscrutable stare, but finally he said in quiet, deep voice, "Yes."

He pointed to Inara.

"Inara."

She'd said that was her name, right?

He held the same hand to his chest.

"Tarzan."

He tilted his head.

"Tarzan knows--I know English. Some."

A pause.

"Bad at pronouns."

"Tarzan," Inara said. "It's a pleasure to meet you." She gently held out her hand to him in greeting. "Pronouns are something that can be learned," she added. "When I asked you earlier how you were, you seemed scared. Are you new here?"

Tarzan just sniffed at her hand. He'd learned to handshake, but after Jane and the Professor decided to stay with him, they'd stopped trying to teach him the little social niceties beyong the ones he was interested in learning, and he forgot it.

He'd never quite picked up shaking hands again or anything else like it since.

"New," he said slowly. "Yes."

Inara blinked, but gingerly withdrew her hand after Tarzan had finished sniffing it. He was from a different culture, and Inara accepted that. She'd learned long ago that it wasn't polite to judge.

Granted, that had never stopped her from judging Mal.

"That must have been quite an ordeal for you," Inara said. "Finding yourself in a pile of slime in a strange place." It was bad enough for Inara, but she couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Tarzan. "You came straight here, didn't you? After getting clothed?" She wasn't sure if he did, but it seemed like a reasonable enough guess.

"Mazes first. Strange voice. Fire."

He shivered slightly, despite himself. GLaDoS's mazes hadn't been a pleasant experience.

"Then here. Hiding."

There was a pause a he tried to construct a difficult sentence.

"A monkey told me what was going on."

"Oh no," Inara said. "You were in GLaDOS as well? Tarzan, I was there for awhile too. That is a cruel, deplorable machine." She nudged the fruit towards him, offering him another slice. Where she came from, even if you were given a gift, it was polite to share, especially if the gift was food. Inara could never have eaten all the fruit on her own. It wasn't in her nature when she had company. Her brow creased a little at that last sentence. She tilted her head. "A monkey?" she asked. "Who was this monkey? Where did you find her? Or him?"

Machine. A machine was... it was a thing. With parts. He'd learned that. Things like the Professor's gramophone. How could a machine talk like a person, though?

"Beastboy. Found him here. He could change. Could be many animals. He explained."

Before Tarzan had freaked and run off, that is.

"I don't know who Beastboy is," Inara apologized. "I'm sorry." She frowned. Someone who could shapeshift into different animals? She was mystified by it, but she wasn't surprised. There were many different kinds of people on the ship. "He explained everything to you, though?"

The pained expression that came over his face made it clear that he understood the gravity of the situation, yes.

"Starboat. Worlds gone. Home gone. Can't find Jane. Can't find family."

"Yes. But," Inara said, "the pods that we came out of? There are many of those, and they have our friends in there. Our families. Maybe you'll be lucky and a friend of yours will be released," Inara said. "My - er, friend, Mal, was released with the last wave. Maybe Jane will be released with the next?" She smiled beatifically at him. "Until then, you shouldn't give up hope. And there are new friends to be made. Like me."

He looked a little less moody at that, even if he still worried.

But still, there was a part that was important, that made it hard to just...wait.

"Jane is my mate."

And she wasn't here. He was in a strange place, and his world was gone, and she wasn't awake with him.

"Oh, sweetie." Not that Inara would ever call Mal her mate or anything, given that their relationship was just so many different kinds of weird and bizarre, but she understood the sentiment, somewhat. "I understand. To not have your love with you...yes. But I'm sure she's alright. This ship has a weird way of making sure that our loved ones are returned to us."

That made him feel a little better.

Taking a slice of the shared fruit and popping it in his mouth made him feel even more better. (It was pretty good, and he'd eaten a lot of fruit so he was a good judge.)

"Inara is...kind. Friend?"

He could use new ones. Hopefully, he'd come across Beastboy to apologize for freaking out on him. He doubted anyone else here spoke monkey or gorilla.

"Of course," Inara grinned. "You don't even have to ask, Tarzan. It would be my pleasure." The warmth that was there in her voice showed that she was coming from a genuine, honest place in that regard. Granted, one would have to know Inara very well to know when she was being less than genuine, thanks to her training, but that was besides the point.

Tarzan smiled in response, then reached over and prodded at Inara's earrings, making them jingle.

Friendship meant he was going to get up all in her personal space now, apparently.

For a moment, Inara hadn't been sure what Tarzan was about to do when he leaned in close to her. She trusted him as well as she could, given that she'd already met the man, and it wasn't as though she was getting any weird sort of feeling off of him, but still, she'd only just met the man. For a moment, she wasn't sure what his definition of friendship was. (Not that it showed on her face or anything. Companion training at its finest.) She laughed, though, when he prodded the earrings.

She reached up, unhooked one, and held it out for Tarzan to inspect more, if he wished to.

"Pretty, isn't it? I was given these by an old friend of mine, many years ago."

Tarzan took the earring in his hand and jingled it, and if it looked as if he took simple pleasure from the jingling noises, it was because he did. Little handcrafted things were intriguing to him. He found himself wanting to explain why he was so interested, not out of embarrassment or any self-consciousness, but out of a desire for connection and understanding.

"Made by human hands."

He made a soft grunting noise, as he tried to find the right words for what he wanted to express.

"Was raised in jungle. By gorillas." As unbelievable as it sounded. "Only see things made by humans that Jane and the Professor brought with them to jungle. They're scientists."

There, that explained it. He jingled the earring in his hand.

"Always wonder how--how things are made. This. Metal inside metal?" That's what it sounded like when he jingled it. "How--how did they do this?"

How did they put a piece of metal inside another piece? That was what he was wondering.

Inara watched with interest as Tarzan jingle the earring around. He seemed very fascinated by it. His expression brought to mind Kaylee's face whenever she bit into a strawberry, or that time that Kaylee had gone to a ball, wearing a huge, floofy pink dress. Inara couldn't help but smile at those memories, and at Tarzan's simple wonderment at the earring.

"They were, yes. By a jewelry maker on a core planet called Laxmi." She reached up and unhooked the other earring from her ear. She turned it over and moved the intricately designed metal ball to the side, causing the bells attached to the bottom of it to tinkle merrily. She leaned in closer to Tarzan so he could see. "See, here? All the way inside? The soldered the hook of this bell here to the inner top of the outer doom, so that it would move, but it wouldn't fall off. It's an old technique, from Earth-That-Was. Or so I'm told."

She held the earring out to Tarzan, in case he wanted to play with both of them. "Do you know how you ended up in the jungle with the gorillas?" she asked. "Or is that something you were left unaware of?"

"Solder. Means...melt. Melt metal." Okay, so that was making some sense. He was starting to figure out how they were made now, but he couldn't help but marvel at the handiwork, like he did at anything that looked remotely complex to make. Given even smelting was something he hadn't figured out, it was pretty interesting stuff.

Jingle jingle jingle.

"Jane thinks shipwreck." It made the most sense. "Human parents killed by Sabor the leopard. My mother saved me. Kala. She lost a baby to Sabor."

Jingle jingle.

"She raised me as her own."

Genuine human raised by animals here, Inara.

Tarzan finally handed the earrings back.

Inara held them in the palm of her hand, gracefully closing her fingers around them while she thought of what Tarzan had said. "Kala was the ape, yes?" she asked. "She couldn't save her child or your parents, so she rescued you instead?" She wanted to make sure that she understood the story, tragic as it was, in its entirety. "Did you know that you were different from the others in the jungle, Tarzan?"

"No. No." He held up his hands. The language barrier was difficult.

"Parents already dead. She found them. I was still alive. She saved me. Too late for parents."

The other question made him pause.

"Always. Tarzan always know he was different from family."

Kerchak hadn't let him forget.

"Oh." What Tarzan had meant dawned on Inara. She reached out to him, gently, and placed her hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. About your parents. And about not having understood what you meant earlier." She frowned. She didn't want him to feel as though he were lacking in any way. It wasn't his fault that his English wasn't all that fluent. "Would you mind telling me about your life in the jungle? What it was like for you, and how you dealt with the fact that you knew you weren't like the rest of your family?"

Tarzan shrugged.

"Life good. Eat, roam, sleep, hide." From predators, you see. "Jungle is dangerous, but life good."

Why did she want to know the rest? How did he talk about it anyway?

"Wanted to prove myself. To rest of family. Keep up. Wanted...to prove myself to Kerchak. My father. Leader of our family."

It was difficult, at times. What was also difficult was articulating himself and he found himself getting frustrated. Things like feelings and thoughts were harder than basic communication.

"Not know what I was. Not know where I come from..."

Words words, he had to find the words. His face lit up. "Then Jane and her father come. And Clayton." That name was spat like a curse. "Jane and the Professor show me things, make me understand what I am. Human."

He finally managed to figure out what to say. "Confused. Growing up. Always confused. But now Tarzan knows what he is. Tarzan is human. I...I am human. And gorilla. Love Jane as a man. Lead family as gorilla."

And that was that. A conflicted childhood, but now he knew himself and what he was.

Listening to him, Inara thought back to her life as a Companion in training. Life then had been far simpler, as well. Far more simpler than everything that ensued afterwards, she mused. "You were able to handle yourself," she said, "because you were raised a gorilla." That had to be true, because she doubted that civilized humans would be able to last in the jungle their entire lives, even if they were dropped in as capable adults. The way you were raised caused you to look at the world in a very different manner. She understood that well enough. And about wanting to prove something to your parent figure...she understood that as well. She'd seen that with many of her clients, especially the ones who had been sent to her by their fathers to prove that they were, well, men. Men can be so silly sometimes.

"Were you afraid that you weren't going to get his approval because you weren't physically gorilla, like the rest of them?" She paused. "How do gorillas raise their families?" She felt that she needed to understand that, as well, if she were to understand what he meant by those last lines.

Watching and Waiting [open]

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