tricktofalling | Hope is the thing with feathers

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Hope is the thing with feathers | for Daniel

The snow comes rather unexpectedly and Inej doesn't need to be told that it would be a generous, appreciated thing to do if she happens to appear at Daniel's door. So, after a task of bundling the twins--neither of them want to be put in their jackets and hats and gloves--she heads out to the nearest grocery.

There's plenty of people that are acting a little manic about the sudden snow, but Inej has been through enough storms in her life that she isn't too worried. It's mostly wrangling the twins, who want to do everything but stay close to the cart as they go through the aisles and she gets things for a few meals.

Once it looks like a manageable few days of meals, she makes her way to the register. That's a whole different task, making sure that the twins stay on her side when they're fussing, but after grabbing a candy bar and promising they can share it, they manage to focus long enough for her to finish the transaction, pay, and get everything together.

And then it's back out into the snow, the twins carefully holding onto her jacket and her arms holding the grocery bags. It's a slog through deep snow, almost as tall as the twins, from the grocery back to Dimera, but they all make it. The twins are fussy enough that she doesn't want to send them back to the apartment alone--and she knows that Daniel likes them.

She knocks on the door. If he's not in--she hopes he is--she'll come back with some food in containers later. The twins join in on the knocking, gently hollering as well, even as Inej tries to shush them.

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She sees that, the moment where he almost plays it off. She's grateful that he doesn't. Instead, she listens. She considers. She knows Kaz remembered the break, and she remembers every time she's been hurt, can detail every specific knife or gun that hurt her. But their experiences--her experience--is not the same as Daniel's.

She's grateful, for the honesty and to know that he is not left with the lingering memories that might hurt him more. She reaches over, careful of the knife, to collect the cut vegetables he has already and get them in a pot to start cooking.

"It's good you were given rites," Inej says softly, "but I am glad they weren't needed in the end."

"So am I, on both counts," he replied, and paused to let her hand scoop up the vegetables he'd already cut before he started cutting some more.

"It was cold and foggy. I remember that. I came to and, well, I'm no doctor, but it doesn't take a fancy diploma to know when something's really not right. We both know that."

She'd had a hard life that they didn't talk about, but he was certain she knew what it looked like when someone had a serious injury. He didn't need to know what injuries those were or who'd had them. And he'd been in theater for awhile by that point and had seen other injuries on other men.

Inej gives Daniel another smile, small and tender and, indeed, understanding. To go through life was to experience both small and large hurts. Some of them lingered more than others. But she's glad he's well--and that he's been treated well to take care and improve his life.

"We do," she says, a quiet acknowledgement as she looks from him, to her children, and then back. Cold and foggy, gruesome hurts of all varieties, the knowledge of how these things lived in them later.

She works on a little bit of everything all at once, the more basic soup coming together slowly, and, once it seems it can take care of itself, a bowl that already has flour in it.

"How do you feel about dill?" she asks, a shift in the conversation because she has what she needs: a truth that speaks of trust. "My mother always used dill in fry bread."

He'd always thought it was interesting that the people who actually seemed to care the most about his answers when he was talking about his leg also didn't ask a lot of detailed questions. They asked because they cared, not because they were fascinated by the story. It made a difference.

"I've never had fry bread, but I'm fine with dill," he replied, since she had changed the subject. "About the only spice I try to avoid is cilantro. Tastes like soap."

Not everyone thought cilantro tasted like soap, he thought, but he did, and he wasn't a fan.

"I am terribly sorry that you are very incorrect about coriander," Inej says with a bright smile and a laugh. Still, she'll keep it in mind for the rest of the things she's making with him, not wanting to give him a big mouthful of an unpleasant taste.

The frybread, however, doesn't need to have anything like that. Flour, salt, bicarb, and a drizzle of olive oil before she sets the whole bowl aside. She takes the rest of what he's cut, and throws that into a pan separate from the first pot, getting that cooked down.

"My mother was more of a baker, such as it was in the caravan," she says contemplatively. "My father did most of the cooking. Every once in a while, he and my uncles and cousins would hunt a boar or an elk, and we would pit roast it. Mostly it was fish and bird, though."

Daniel chuckled too, because maybe his taste buds were incorrect, but he didn't think they were gonna be changing any time soon, either. And either way, he didn't like eating soap.

"My mother did all the cooking unless my Pai went fishing or got a lobster. We knew people who had traps and it wasn't fancy people food back then like it is now. But I know how hard it would be to bake on the move. I never had decent bread unless we were somewhere near a mess hall when I was over there. Started to crave it worse than I missed fresh veggies."

Towards the end, he'd been almost worried he was gonna get scurvy he missed vegetables so bad.

"Baking was never the problem for us. Finding people that would sell goods to Suli, though?" She makes a soft, dismissive noise. It's been easier, in Ketterdam--and in Darrow--to be herself, more traditional and more easy going about what and who she is. But as a traveling Suli, it had been very difficult, time to time. "But we never went hungry, and that's something, certainly."

She's quiet a moment, thoughtful more than anything else, while all the vegetables start to cook down and she adds in garlic to the pot and the pan.

"Did you travel before the military?" she asks. She doesn't think he's ever said, as such, that he was a soldier, except that it's in everything that he says and does. From the way he carries himself and how tidy he is to that injury. It lives on the edges of every story he tells.

A wandering people that no one wanted to trade with, well, there were a few of those in his own world, and he didn't understand it in his own world more than any others.

She seemed not to need his help with the cooking right now, so he took some of the dishes and started washing them up while he answered her question.

"Nah, my family didn't have that kind of money. The longest trip I ever went on other than moving to New York in the first place was visiting relatives in Massachusetts."

Once he'd joined up, there had been Georgia, Missouri, California, England, and then onto the continent itself.

"I love when people talk about places I've never even heard of," Inej teases. She means it, too. She spent her childhood growing up around little places that she doubted even the Ravkan king knew of, and being in Darrow has been a lesson in the places that other people have never heard of either.

It's a learning that her traveling soul loves.

"You would think I'd looked at a map by now. I've been here years, and I know they have some of a lot of different places. Which seems strange, doesn't it? Since the people that live here don't seem to care about the outside since we can't go. Maybe I'm overthinking it."

He chuckled, which he was pretty sure she meant him to do. It was nice that they were comfortable enough around each other to joke and tease, even with the way this little visit had started.

"Well, if you ever want an Earth geography lesson, I can tell you a lot about a few places, a little about a few more, and absolutely nothing about a whole bunch," he offered.

"I don't know anything about your world either, though. I mean, you've mentioned a few places, but I couldn't find em on a map."

"I could only find a few of them on a map either, so we're about even about that," she says, that same kindness. While things cook, now turned low, she starts to make the fry bread. Even though it's been forever, it feels like, this process is an easy, relaxing one.

"But I would like to know more," she finally says, looking over at him where he's at the sink. "If you'd like to teach me a little bit. Not just about where you come from--just about anything, really. I love to learn."

And she likes spending time with Daniel, too.

"Sure. What do you want to know?" he asked. He wouldn't or couldn't talk about some things, but she wouldn't or couldn't talk about some things too, and they'd negotiate those things when they got there.

"About where I grew up, about being in the Army, about my family?"

He'd talk about any of those things, if she wanted to hear it.

All of it is about the way they can feel most comfortable opening themselves. There's no need to big into the deeper, darker things that have made them who they are. Instead, it's easy, and generous, and Inej finds that so remarkable somehow. Learning about someone through honest means and not through spying, or spontaneous discovery? She must be losing her edge.

"Start with where you're from and family," she commands, smiling at him. "They go hand and hand, don't you think?"

"They do, yeah," Daniel agreed, and took a second to think about how he'd start that story, what he'd say. Meanwhile, he was drying off a cutting board.

"My mother is named Doroteia and my father is Francisco. I have a little brother named Phillip, except he's not so little anymore. My pai ran a store in Idaho until I was about eight. Then the store closed -- I don't really remember why -- and we moved from Idaho to Brooklyn. That was a journey. It felt like it took forever to go across the country, but it was probably only a week or two."

Inej feels the weight of the names--names are always the most important--and compares those that sound more traditional with those that feel more common. No judgement on either, but the consideration of what a place looks like based on how the names are formed has always told her a lot about people.

"Idaho," she says, turning it into a drawn sort of word, the syllables familiar but not in this combination. She grabs the edge of her fry bread with her fingers and flips it in the hot pan, like her mouth used to.

"A week of travel is a long time. Are they very different, Idaho and Brooklyn?"

He didn’t smile at the way she said Idaho. He would probably pronounce all the places from her world with as much comfort, after all. Instead he chuckled at her question.

“About as different as night and day. Idaho’s rural, lots of farms and animals and not a lot of people. Brooklyn is a borough in New York, which might be one of the most dense cities in terms of people and buildings.”

It had been a complete change of life for them all.

"Sounds like coming from my family to Ketterdam, in a way." He came with his family and she without, in so many ways, but the cultural shock seems the same. If anything, it sounds more like Kaz and Jordie coming from the country to Ketterdam--but that isn't her story to tell, so she doesn't offer a hint of it.

"So, you moved across country with your parents and little brother. To a populated city. Quite an adventure right there." She smiles, and repeats her process of the first, now complete, fry bread with the next. A lovely process of making the bread, pinching each one in turn to turn it over when it's ready. "What's next?"

From the other room, the twins are starting to fuss a little bit. She looks over at Daniel. "Can you watch the bread while I see what they need? Once it start to look puffed, you flip it over."

She hadn't said coming with her family to Ketterdam, and Daniel put that little detail into the picture that was Inej. She'd mentioned being with her family on the road and then also being in Ketterdam doing some things she didn't talk about, which tied back into that boat she'd gotten awhile ago. It was still in the harbor, as far as he knew.

He wasn't sure if she was asking him what was next in his story or talking to herself about what was next in the meal, but that was definitely a request to cook the bread while she made sure the twins weren't destroying anything or tussling too much.

"I'll try not to let it burn," he agreed.

"If you do, those will be yours," she says, a little teasing, as she steps out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Her tone changes instantly, sweet and light and charmed by her children. She speaks to them exclusively in Suli--something that she's been trying to do more of, that feels important to do, and that she tends to only do in private. To do it in front of Daniel feels like trust. The sort of trust that comes with seeing him in such a vulnerable and intimate situation and still being allowed to stay.

It's brief, a minute or two, a settling bit with the twins. She smiles and dotes, tickling and rustling them for a moment before setting them back to their quiet play. As quiet as they get, anyway.

The trip back is a more lingering thing, looking at the twins in this space, feeling the comfort that swells in her chest. It's been lonely, living alone. She's used to a certain loneliness, but she's still glad that it *doesn't* feel lonely to visit, to be here. Glancing over at Daniel as she slides back up to the stove, she finds herself hoping that he feels the same sort of comfortable contentment to have her here.

"I'll eat it, too," Daniel agreed, because that seemed more than fair.

He didn't listen to her talking to the kids, or at least not as actively as he could have. For one thing, he did need to make sure the bread didn't burn, and for another, he hadn't been invited to that conversation. But he did notice that she was speaking her own language to them, and he didn't recall her doing that before, not more than a word or two. Some of the sounds reminded him a little bit of Russian or a language like that, but he didn't know enough about any of those languages to do anything but hear cadences in the words.

When she came back, he glanced down and smiled.

"They haven't destroyed the place yet, I guess?"

"Not yet, but only because I don't let them have matches," she jokes. She checks on the fry bread and, pinching an edge, flips it over so it can cook on the other side. "Good, you didn't burn it. I might leave you in charge of those then."

She smiles at him, focusing on the pots and pans, everything coming along fabulously with the twins distracted and content and with an extra set of hands.

"I've missed having help in the kitchen," she confesses softly.

"Maybe they can have matches about the time they can have a car," he suggested equally jokingly. He couldn't even imagine the twins being old enough to drive a car, although obviously they'd get there sometime, if they were all still in Darrow, and that was strange to think about too.

He lifted the tongs for the frybread in a tiny, lighthearted salute when she said it was his job now. That quiet little statement after it, though, wasn't something to be lighthearted about.

"A lot of things are easier when you're not all by yourself," he agreed.

"I think I trust them with matches more," she confesses with a little bit of a laugh. After all, despite now owning and operating a race track, she wants nothing to do with cars. Too unpredictable. Too noisy, even after all this time. She'll walk. But the twins will come up in a place that has them, so maybe it will be different for them.

It's a gentle quiet that intrudes over their cooking then, as they both acknowledge without saying what they've lost to this place. Inej thinks about their first real encounter, not just passing nods in the lobby, at the church after she lit a candle for Kaz. It seems a lifetime ago, and by some definitions it is. The twins won't remember him, really, except for the little things left behind.

"What was she like?" she asks, looking at the array of pots and pans and everything happily turning into delicious food. "Your wife? I don't think I ever met her."

"Peggy?" he said, as if he'd had another wife. "Peggy was ... a force of nature."

His words and his smile were fond. There were so many things he couldn't say about her to anyone who hadn't been part of the SSR and SHIELD, because they just wouldn't make sense and also they were classified.

"She didn't take anything from anyone, but she always made sure she had on nail polish and lipstick and dressed to make sure everyone knew she was a woman. She'd throw a punch to knock a man flat and then in the next second smile like an angel. We worked together, after the war, and the men in our office dismissed us both. Me because of my leg, and her because she was a woman. More fool them, especially in her case."

Daniel liked and appreciated strong women. Some men didn't have room in their lives or their egos for that, but he did and he was glad to.

Daniel speaks of her, and Inej drinks it in. She knows, when she has the chances to speak of Kaz these days, that she looks just as fond and adoring and still in love, and it feels good to see someone else that lost someone so important but can still speak of them. The early days were hard; it's not easily, necessarily, but it is gentler with distance.

"Oh, that sounds like Nina," she says with a bit of a laugh. Strong and powerful, in love with her femininity and not afraid of it, able to stand up to just about everything--even when she was afraid. Inej is strong because she has to be, which is a very different sort of power than someone that wraps herself up in it.

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