The Olive Grove - "A Brush With The Past"
23 Feb 2018Jemine Caesar
“You okay, Jem?” asked Sam Hodkin. “Only you’re looking a bit peaky.”Jemine, sitting at her dressing table, shook her head and smiled at the concerned face of her boyfriend.
“I’m fine,” she said as she brushed her hair. “Just a little run down, maybe. I’ll look a lot better with some makeup on.”
“You look beautiful to me whether you’ve got makeup on or not, my love.” Sam stood behind the woman and placed his hands on her shoulders. “But I have to say, you do look tired. I hope you’re not overdoing things at The Olive Grove?”
“Of course I’m not. It’s busy, but not that busy. And I’m well supported by Suki and Cee. The pair of them run things very efficiently. So efficiently, in fact, that I sometimes almost feel I’m rather surplus to requirements.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Sam, with a reassuring grin. He bent down and gave Jemine a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll leave you alone to get ready.”
Jemine watched his reflection walk out of the bedroom, and then studied her own slightly paler-than-usual features with a sigh. Her boyfriend was right, she did look tired. Finishing the task of arranging her hair, she scowled at the number of brown strands tangled in the bristles of the brush.
Feeling more confident after applying her makeup, Jemine sprayed on some scent and got dressed. She opted for a fashionable dark blue knee-length dress with silver trim, black stockings, and her favourite House Of Lalande high heel shoes. Once satisfied with her appearance, she picked up her handbag, gave Sam an affectionate peck on the cheek, and left the apartment.
In her office in The Olive Grove, Jemine settled herself down to another day’s work. She shuffled her way through some financial reports on the previous twenty-four hours’ business, and then turned her attention to the matter of looking up some security company names and addresses. The contract with Citi Securiti she’d inherited when she took over the pleasure house was due for review, so she’d decided to check out some of the options. After a little research, Jemine had drawn up a shortlist of three companies, including Citi Securiti. She drafted an invitation to tender, then saved the document to action later. She brought up the unfinished letter to her father that she'd begun the previous day, and read over the last paragraph:
“I hoped that the possibility of combat opportunities in and around Inara might be enough to persuade Nath to stay. I didn’t for a moment expect Nath to remain, if truth be told. But, to my surprise, she said she would. I was delighted, of course, and promised I’d help her find a good place to live in Citi Gateway’s Hab Ring. We decided to celebrate the decision with drinks in the InGaBa, an extremely popular bar in the starp”
Jemine frowned at the sight of the truncated word. She’d had to break off from writing, her eyes having been unable to remain focussed on the screen. Calling up the keyboard on her desktop, Jemine carried on the letter from where she’d left off. Not that there was too much more to write, really. She described how she had gone to the InGaBa with Nathalie and Sam, and how she’d suddenly realised that she’d forgotten Nath’s birthday had happened just over a week before.
“I made an excuse and dashed out to the nearest shopping mall,” she wrote. “Luckily I already knew exactly what I wanted to buy for Nath, so it didn’t take too long. I got her a gorgeous gold rope necklace, with a diamond clasp fastening and a pendant with the letter N inscribed on it. ‘The pendant is a locket,’ I told her. ‘You can use it to store a little keepsake’. Well, after a moment or two, Nath slowly put the necklace on the table. I was afraid she wasn’t going to accept it, but then she gave me a huge grin and wrapped her arms around me. After that we went looking for somewhere on Citi Gateway for Nath to live, and we’ve been meeting up for coffees nearly every day. We’ve had a lot of catching up to do!”
Jemine added a few more little anecdotes to the letter, and then sent it off. She wondered how her father was. In particular, she hoped he’d managed to get over the disappointment of having his fiancée, Diadem Palama, run out on him days before they’d been due to be married.
Scratching at a maddeningly persistent itch on her left arm, Jemine glanced up at the screen in the corner of the office. It was showing the security cam feed from the bar. It was bustling with patrons, the evening rush having apparently started a little earlier than normal. Jemine smiled as she watched her girls working the tables as usual, encouraging the patrons to have fun in the bar and, hopefully, to be generous with their hard-earned credits in the bedrooms. Then Jemine’s eyes narrowed, her smile vanishing.
"No," she whispered. "No, it can't be. Not him..."
Shaking her head slowly, Jemine gazed wide-eyed at a familiar muscular figure standing by the bar counter. She blinked at the twinkling pinpoints of coloured club lighting being rhythmically reflected from the cybernetic arm...
Jemine's right hand moved to her stomach, her flat palm pushing against it as though suppressing a pain. Beads of perspiration formed on her brow. Jabbing frantically at the desktop with her finger, Jemine opened the concealed door to her private bedchamber. Then, covering her mouth with her hand, she stood and dashed through the open doorway and on into the washroom.
A short time later Jemine emerged, breathing heavily. Sitting at the dressing table, she removed and reapplied her makeup, then left the bedchamber and sat down at her desk. She spun her chair around and gazed at the holographic picture window of her homeworld landscape.
Her legs began to tremble, her hands balling into fists. Memories tumbled around in her head. Memories of a night on Citi Gateway, in the InGaBa, when she’d been a guest at the birthday party of Marra Morgan. Jemine had been frightened at first, surrounded as she was by pirates and killers. Then, with a few glasses of Pegasi Moon inside her, she'd relaxed enough to actually enjoy herself in their company. In the company of one man in particular. A muscular man with a cybernetic arm.
A man named Stryker Aune.
They’d danced that night in the InGaBa. Danced, drank, kissed... and later, in the seclusion of Stryker’s ship, they had made love.
Just a few months later, again in the InGaBa, Jemine had accepted the contract from Marra Morgan to hunt for Kat von Steuben. She’d failed, spectacularly so, almost being killed in the process on a volcanic hell-hole planet. She’d been rescued, only to receive Morgan’s cruel punishment for her failure. It was meant to be an incentive, a hook to keep her mind on the task of eventually killing von Steuben as planned. A device, lodged into her womb, forever preventing her from attaining her heart’s true desire of someday bearing a child.
A device implanted by Stryker Aune in one horrible, barbaric act of violation.
It was an act Jemine could not bring herself to forgive, and was unable to forget. Oh, he'd only been following the orders of Marra fucking Morgan, of course. But his had been the hands which had pinned her down, helpless and screaming, as they performed the actual deed. Jemine remembered the look in his eyes as he delivered the implant into her body. A look of hatred, mixed with something else. Something Jemine could not comprehend. It didn't matter.
She turned away from the landscape and left the office, walking purposefully along the corridor and into the bar. In the dark, club-lit room, she sought out the man whom she’d once trusted to make love to her. She’d felt compassion for him then, having listened to the harrowing tale of how he’d acquired his cybernetic arm. That was before...
Before he became a monster in her eyes.
She was only dimly aware of anyone else in the bar. Her attention was solely fixed upon Aune, sitting at the counter. She stood in the centre of the room, arms folded, waiting for him to turn around and see her, as he inevitably must.
Her patience was rewarded eventually. Aune’s gaze wandered about the room, and came to rest upon her. Jemine held his stare for long seconds, not flinching for an instant, her eyes cold with loathing.
And then Aune moved slowly towards her, hesitant in his progress, as if... afraid? He met her in the centre of the room, his massive frame towering above her petite figure. He stared down at her, but said nothing. Jemine returned the stare.
"I don't want to make a scene here," she said. "The Olive Grove is my place. These people are all having a good time, and I'm not about to spoil that. So..."
She took a quick glance around the room before fixing her attention back on Aune.
"If you have a drink to finish, then finish it. If you're here with friends, then make an excuse to them, and leave. Get out of my club, Stryker. You're not welcome."
She didn’t wait for an answer, instead turning on her heel and sauntering out of the bar.
Jemine walked along the corridor and back into her office. Breathing hard, she sat down at her desk and activated the security camera feed from the bar. Aune was nowhere to be seen. She sat back for a moment, then leaned forward and tapped the desktop, calling Suki at the reception podium.
"Moshi moshi, Miss Jemine."
"Suki, have you seen a bald, muscular man with a cybernetic arm leaving in the last few minutes?"
"Yes," came the reply. "He did not look happy. I think he did not find pleasure here."
"No. No, he didn't."
Turning off the comms, Jemine sank back into her chair. She stayed still and silent for as long as she was able, until she could finally hold her composure no longer. Her hand once more rested on her stomach, on the spot where she had been so sadistically mutilated by Stryker Aune. She thought of the child she once had, and of the children she could now never have.
And she wept.
=============================================================
Author's Note
Very special Thank You to the lovely Stryker Aune for sharing his RP and his support.