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He keeps staring up, watching the stars for a moment, as if they might be able to navigate him anywhere.

"Do you know that you give yourself a label?" he wonders, though it's genuine. "And that you are then working off of what the label is, rather than what you are?"

"You're kinda doing the same thing, Doctor," Nana points out, with a heavy emphasis on that last word. She gives Sheehan a little shrug before continuing with,

"You don't work in the counseling office, but you're still making posts every few weeks about therapy stuff. You had the opportunity to make a clean break from the label you gave yourself. But you haven't."

"Yeah, I know," he tells her and takes his cigarettes from his pocket. "I'm not in the counseling office because I couldn't be. But I still like helping people, and I still think that the exercises I do are helpful. But it's - hard to turn it off."

He searches his pockets for his lighter.

"Do you even want to turn it off in the first place?"

It's an honest question.

A fair question, too. He abandons his search for the lighter and just sticks the end of the cigarette into the edge of the fire.

"Sometimes. But we all have our protections, don't we? Some people like swords and fantasies. Other people like walls."

"If you're gonna smoke, can I have one?" Nana asks, deliberately playing up the wide-eyed innocent look in the hope that it helps.

"You don't have to worry about teaching me. Somebody here already taught me how to smoke a cigarette."

He laughs softly. "You're what - sixty? And it took you that long to learn how to smoke?"

"I'm sixteen, thank you very much," Nana lightly points out, with a little shake of her head.

"Yeah? And how many times have you been sixteen?"

He hands her a cigarette.

"Repeating it doesn't count!" Nana cheerfully points out, as she takes the cigarette. She lights it on the fire as well before exhaling. And hey, she didn't immediately choke, she at least slightly knows what she's doing!

"I'm a sixteen year old girl and that's all there is."

"The fact that it doesn't count and doesn't change you says a lot," he tells her softly. "I'm not going to argue with you about it, don't worry."

"Good," Nana says, with a little nod. She turns her attention towards the fire as she muses, "I don't really have it in me for a fight today anyway."

"No," he agrees. "This well and truly sucks."

He digs his feet in. "Do you have shelter? Somewhere to go?"

"Not really. I was probably thinking of just finding a tree and curling up there tonight."

There are other people that Nana can bunk with. But she's still a little bit hesitant that people would want her in the first place.

"Why don't you come over with me?" he wonders. "I've got a little shelter with three walls and some blankets. I'll take first watch if you want."

"That works for me," Nana nods. "But you've got to actually wake me up. None of that chivalrous nonsense. I can help, so I'm going to."

Said mostly because Nana thinks Sheehan would be the sort of person who would try and take all of the shifts, or at least more than he reasonably should.

"I'm so fucking tired, Nana, that I am counting the hours until I can wake you up," he promises and holds out a hand. "I'll wake you in a few but you have to do the same. Deal?"

"Deal," Nana says, with a nod and a smile as she shakes Sheehan's hand. "Trust me, I'm gonna wake you up. I'll make sure we get through this together."

He holds fast to her hand for half a second. "We will make sure. Together, Nana." And he lets go to stand up. "Come on. I've got a fire going, too."

Nana takes another puff of her cigarette before standing up to go follow Sheehan.

"I wonder how long we'll be stuck here," she muses. "The Admiral's probably getting the Barge back in shape, right?"

"Most likely. But there's plenty still on the ship for us to go to," he assures her, walking slowly through the sand. "Are you worried?"

Nana shakes her head, letting out a little 'mmm.' She's not worried in the slightest. After a moment, she continues with, "What can I do? If I worry about something, it's not like I can do anything about it. We're at the mercy of everything else here."

"Worry is normal, Nana. You don't have to fix it. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but it's alright," he assures her.

That's the thing: she has to fix it. She has to fix everything. In a situation like this, where she can't do anything...it's taking all of Nana's strength to remind her of that fact, to remind her that there are just some things she can't do, that she'll need to go with the flow on this.

"I'm not worried," she reiterates. "If I worry about this, then I'll want to do something. I can't do anything, so I've gotta focus on not being worried."

He smiles. "That's something maybe we can talk about when we're back on familiar ground," he teases gently, leading her to his makeshift little tent. There's a few blankets inside and the fire out.

"Go ahead and rest a while. I'll wake you up soon."

Re: On the Beach

reviewstarlight - 2024-10-13 18:57 (UTC) - Expand