Owen delivers the beat-down you’ve been wanting to give to McCoy for a while. 😆 And McCoy absolutely didn’t see it coming. (Love the discussion later—Scotty has forgiven them. Doesn’t mean Owen has to.)
Owen is—complicated. He has depths and contradictions that are just intriguing. He can pull the effeminate poetry professor on an off like a cloak. A cynic who can speak to beauty. A lover who can be a fighter. The masochist—was it because of the beatings he gave and took? Or other reasons? This bit, which I adore: Doctor Hanson, imparting words of wisdom and love, and Owen who wanted people to hurt him. Even having learned how to be comfortable with it, he still wasn’t always sure what of him was real and what of him wasn’t. That is a facinating bit of insight (driven, I know, by considerations in your own life.) He is intensely good for Scotty—and intensely bad. He is a throughly fascinating OC.
Adore the look back in the 20th Century through his eyes. I can very much imagine McCoy and Owen not getting along at all, in just a few meetings. McCoy, who is going to try to cover up his guilt with paternalism, is only going to see the bad in Owen. (Throughly confirmed when they catch HIV. I can imagine the lecture he gave Scotty when that happened. Not a good or actually productive or helpful conversation, I suspect.( There may have been a second one, later. Where the Doctor and professional was there, offering actual medical advice.) But when Scotty first told him? Not good.)
Love the small acknowledgement that Owen and Edith know each other. Not well (“Senator,”) but they do know each other. Kindred spirits in this mad adventure of living in the future.
The look back into their last day. They were living relatively gently, I think. Not perfectly or always healthily, but well enough. (He’ll just be able to buy weed at the shop next time.) Owen more the caretaker, although Scotty would have had his moments, but not usually the strength. Owen picks up the slack when he can, because that is what people do when they love each other.
And the Scotty walks back into the room, fifteen minutes and years later—in a younger and whole body. That is a fantastic moment.
And then we have Owen being confronted by the future. His broken hand getting put back together, a force field. Bringing home to his mind something that he certainly knew, but has never actually been able to understand. Which like—ok, Scotty is born in 2222. You can accept that without really understanding it, until now. (And I adore the way you describe the future as it was described to him by Scotty, especially as compared with Owen’s experience with the way the 20th Century grinds everyone—up against the Scotty’s despair he really can’t fully grasp that that future is gone That is a gorgeous and chilling bit of writing.)
You’ve tackled, so well and brilliantly, Scotty in this one too. He’s lived years of suffering and sacrifice. He’s also just done the reality bomb, the encounter with eternity and his otherself changing him in an instant and forever. Sharpness. It’s a word you’ve used for yours. It took my breath away to see it used to describe mine. (I think it even has changed how he moves; an expression on his face, a shrug with his eyebrows that Owen doesn’t recognize but I do—from TOS Scotty.) I really do think that’s what his otherself did for him. Honed clarity. It’s always been bit in him (although not something Owen would have seen—not with him so ill.) But after the reality bomb? That’s it. You’ve said it exactly.
The question—how long has it been? And he can’t even answer it, not really. And he’s standing in a body that hasn’t ever been Owen’s. Whew. That is deep and heavy stuff.
As if it broke a dam (or renewed a bridge), Scotty pulled him in close and held him tight, one hand finding the back of his head as he murmured, teary himself, “Bonnie poet. We’ll learn that together.” Oh. That is just about enough to make me cry there.
Holding him while they come into Earth orbit. That’s extraordinary. Could you imagine what that would be like? (21st Century person me would about die for that chance.)
Owen musing on being cured and wondering—how do I explain, to these future people, what living like that was like? (Not even quite able to explain to himself why he risked death over and over until it caught him.)
Scotty snorted, then laughed at that; the first was the cynical little sound that Owen was well-familiar with, but the second was one he'd only heard rarely, so rarely that it took him a moment to place it. Joy. Oh, now I really am crying.
Only those few minutes of quiet, though, because duty is about to swallow up Scotty for—some weeks or months.
Oh, Owen musing in what any dreams he had for the future. Nothing sci-fi it, but freedom. I love his thoughts there. What a life that would be, wouldn’t it? But also—how do you navigate this? Where do you live? Are there even restaurants? He hates capitalism but it’s his native language—how do you live, here in the future? And Springsteen is dead and it makes him sob. Losing every single touchstone of his existence but the one, and even that one he wasn’t sure he knew anymore, though he knew he loved the man. Right?? Wow, you nail that so perfectly. Hope, but how overwhelming and disorienting that would all have to be. He’s given up his life, and doesn’t have any idea where to even begin with a new one—except with Scotty, who isn’t exactly who he was before either.
Ah, Nyota. I really appreciate this moment. Her coming to check in him, and her incredibly insightful gift. (And their relationship wasn’t necessarily easy, but Nyota was always able to be clear-eyed and honest; to change when someone shows her she should, without pride. I love her.
This is gorgeous: “I cried so many times after I was dropped in your time,” she said, rubbing up and down his arm. “For-- everything. Everything I’d lost. Everything we’d lost. And then I came back here and I was so angry-- ” Tears slid down her face, but she made no effort to wipe them away and instead held out her arms. (And she would know what he is experiencing. She lost her world once too, trapped in the past. And the lost it again, when the life she’d built in that past was taken from her too.)
And then two years later. Having found his footing, living the life he’d hoped a future world might be able to bring. Traveling, teaching, dancing, singing Springsteen at the top of his lungs. (This song isn’t one I’d heard until you pointed me toward it, and now it is one of my very favorites.) The way Scotty describes how we comforted himself with imagining Owen an old man, listening to it in 2020. And that’s not the way it happened, but this is better.
(Teaching in Maine. And if Scotty doesn’t meet Corry before that, Owen does now. That’s just the way it is.)
Your love and I’m alive...!” And they were . And they lived happily ever after, too.
Yes. Yes they do.
I just adore this. Entirely and completely. Thank you for this gift; it was more than worth the wait. I’ll be reading it on repeat for days, and will come back to it often. Just so, so gorgeous. Thank you ❤️
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daraoakwise Sat 06 Jan 2024 05:31AM UTC
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