Permanence
Posted on 01 Feb 2024 @ 7:51pm by Major Porter Wallace & Olivia Winetrout
Edited on on 25 Apr 2024 @ 4:11pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: The Promenade
Timeline: Immediately following "Better to Give"
2374 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure
A neon sign over the door declared the parlor ‘Buster’s Tattoo.’ Wallace had been in his fair share of run-down, beaten up, ad-hoc parlor’s in his day, but this was not one of those. Bright lights lit up the colorful interior, where every wall seemed to have had a different muralist cover it in some mythic figure from Federation history. From one wall, Kirk, Spock, and the others from those famed voyages stared down on a couple of tattoo artists hard at work; on another Jean-Luc Picard was silently observing Buster wiping down a chair.
Buster had opened his first tattoo shop after a stint in the Federation criminal rehab colony on Alpha Centauri sixteen years ago. While he might not be a pirate anymore, he’d told his new customers, the old habit of drifting from port to port remained. He stayed in one place for only a while - two years at most - before journeying on. He’d just arrived on Obsidian a few weeks before.
Wallace decided that though the giant, muscular Orion wore a floral tank top and designer pants he still looked pirate-ish. Half a dozen piercings littered both ears and nose and, among his many tattoos were crossed swords, a chained targ, and an Orion female whose head was poking out from underneath the collar of his shirt. The rest of her was hidden, but her alluring posture Wallace could see suggested she was probably wearing nothing at all.
He looked askance at Irwin, who’d suggested the shop. “I did some pirate fighting after the War, you ever raid in the Caspian Sector?”
“You look like you fought pirates. ‘No Mercy,’” Buster said with a grin, his eyes twinkled. He gestured to Wallace’s knuckles and, the Marine noted, parried the question, “Real ink. Old school, baby. Old school. Needles. I love it. Real pain with those, baby. Real blood. Not any of this tickle shit with modern tattoos. What say you, little sister, want some real ink?”
“No,” Wallace said just as Olivia nodded. She gave him a flat stare.
Not understanding the difference between the needle and the modern inking method, Olivia felt miffed. Irwin had them stop and sit down to get her to describe and draw out her grease designs on paper and explain them, so that he could send the images and descriptions ahead of them. They had to wait until the parlor had an open appointment for them and Irwin had treated them to a sushi bar; even though he knew Wallace had his own fill of fish, Olivia was enthused by the menu. They ate raw fish, like the Korinn. Olivia had built up quite a bit of expectation for the tattoos they were waiting for. Since she couldn’t see them, the Korinn cubs had described their first markings to her in sand drawings. They would have their fur dyed at the root to make the colors they could see express in their fur as it grew. She’d developed her own markings so she could explain to them her own School of One, and in a way, not be completely left out, even if there was no one else like her. The grease paint had to be reapplied though, and she was excited to think that she was going to make them forever, like Wallace’s were on his skin. Even as she described all of her designs to Ibis’s dad, Wallace kept saying they weren’t going to do all of them. That she could pick something small.
She was here for a ‘real’ tattoo, but already Wallace sounded like he was going back on the idea. No ‘real’ ink?
Irwin watched as the images they had sent of the ideas were pulled on their appointment file. It included shots from the holos of her in the grease paint she had worn during their reception to the station. “Those are all of her School of One designs.”
“Interesting,” Buster said, patting the chair, “I can do it. No problem. You want ‘em all? Would take a few sessions, sure, but hell I did the ‘toos on a Klingon once that took fifteen sessions.”
Was this guy trying to stir up shit? “Something small. She’s still just a…” Wallace swallowed ‘just a child,’ realizing that it would probably make Olivia want to get a full body tattoo. “She’s still just, uh, experimenting. Something small, like we discussed, right, Olivia?”
Olivia climbed up into the chair, in her night shorts and sports bra and mass of dirty blonde dreads. “I want them all on me,” she said obstinately.
Wallace looked at Irwin wanting some help, but the Betazoid stood there with a slight smile on his face. What is this?, Wallace thought hoping Irwin was listening in, Good cop, bad cop? But Irwin apparently was being polite; he made no movement suggesting he’d caught Wallace’s vibe. “Maybe just start small, okay?”
Irwin always had a mild sort of look on his face, it was no different standing in the midst of the tattoo parlor of which he looked entirely out of place in. He could sense Wallace’s unease with his gift for Olivia, but was entirely nonplussed. It had been a skill learned of many years living with Jalaine and her reactive emotions. Instead he just addressed Olivia. *Why don’t you tell us which of your symbols you would like to begin with today?*
Olivia squinted at the weird head voice and the intuitive feeling that Irwin was talking to her, even without his lips moving. But she understood. Her gift was to be one of her symbols.
Holding out her right arm, Olivia glared at the giant green man, her bottom lip stuck out in a sort of bold determination not to get scared. She’d always thought Wallace was big, but she was learning there were even bigger dry landers. “I want ‘The currents of change’. Two waters that flow opposite ways. It goes here, like this.” She drew the wavy lines with her fingers, like she would with the grease paint.
Irwin smiled at Wallace. *It could be worse. She might have elected the shark teeth encircling her forehead.*
“Love it. ‘Currents of change,’” Buster looked at the design and nodded his approval. “Ain’t that the truth? Change. I know about that. You know about that. Pops knows about that shit. Gramps knows. Hell yeah, he does. Anyone who’s lived a little knows. You should all get this tattoo.”
He snapped gloves over his skillet sized hands. “Yeah, baby. Okay. I use Isotope Holographic Ink, straight from Orion. That cool with you, Pops?” He looked over his shoulder at Wallace, who nodded once. Buster turned back to Olivia, “It’s not the kind you can turn on and off, but you don’t seem like you’ll want to turn this shit off like some of those fancy nanite tats. True enough, little sister?”
“I don’t want them to wash off,” she agreed, more nervous now as he was moving her arm around and she felt small. “It will stay with me, even when I’m swimming?”
“Hell, yeah. It won’t wash off.”
He looked at the design again, sketched it out on a spare piece of paper to the size it would need to be. The process took only a couple of minutes. “Yeah, baby. Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this.” He wiped off Olivia’s forearm with disinfectant and pulled out his bright red tattoo pen. In his hand it looked tiny, but it would’ve looked huge in anyone else’s. “You’re gonna feel a little bit of a buzz, got it? No pain. Ready?”
Olivia bit her lip, thrilled and uncertain all at once. She looked at Wallace, searching for some sort of affirmation from him that she didn’t think she cared about just a minute ago.
He gave her a reassuring nod and a small smile. Internally, however, Wallace was wondering how long Ibis might be mad at him.
“Ready.” Olivia nodded.
Buster nodded and bent his head over her arm, the affection of a beach bum falling away as the professional tattoo artist’s concentration took hold. The tattoo pen began to whir and a blue dot appeared on Olivia’s arm. As he moved it, a curved line appeared as if by magic. Olivia found the buzzing feeling surprising at first, but Buster seemed to accommodate, wordlessly giving her a chance to resettle now that she had gotten the feel of the first line. Soon there were others, running alongside of it, the artistry forming stylized water, two entwined currents, peaking in foamy waves.
She was awed watching it emerge. She had only been able to draw a few twisting lines with dark grease and her fingers, but somehow Buster seemed to interpret them into just what she wished she could have had them look like. The Korinn cubs could only get patterns and colors on their fur. Wouldn’t they be jealous if they could see her with her own picture! She leaned back on the chair after some time, while Buster was adding in finer details. She noticed Irwin was just walking around the room looking at the murals and sample art, both of his hands behind his back holding his hat, and his face contemplative. She turned her head to the side where Wallace was standing close by and gave him the biggest grin.
“I’m on a new adventure,” she said, so happy she could barely contain it.
He smiled back, much of his concern about Ibis’s reaction receding. Irwin had been right about this. “You are and I’m very proud of you.”
“Hell yeah!” she laughed, flexing her arm as Buster finished.
“Alright, little sister!” Buster gave her a fist bump; a giant fist to a little one. “Anyone else? How ‘bout you gramps? I got some flash around here, you could choose one.”
“I’m good, thank you.” Irwin drew back his shirt collar to the left where under the collar bone he had a Betazoid knotted design. It wasn’t often he had the opportunity to show it around, except trips to the beach with the grandkids. “I’ve already got Imza’s seal.” The lines had gotten blurred into the spaces, which made it right at home on his age mottled skin.
Olivia thought she saw letters under the picture, but they were blurry and didn’t look like the ones her mother had taught her. “Does it say a thing?”
“Oh, yes. ‘There is no small Love’.” Irwin pulled his collar back into place and waved it away. “It’s just an old mantra I like to keep close to my heart. Let me see your finished art, my dear. Do you like it?”
Olivia flexed for him, turning her wrist side to side to make the waves move. “I love it!”
“I’d like an addition,” Wallace said suddenly. Looking at Irwin’s tattoo, it had reminded him that his own were now deficient.
“Okay, Pops. Where at?”
Wallace pulled his shirt over his head. After a couple months of rest, healthy food, and some exercise his muscle definition was slowly returning. Still, he looked thin and the tattoos he had looked a little deflated, but not the one over his heart. Two names: Elizabeth and Emily. He pointed there.
“I want the names ‘Ibis,’ ‘Olivia,’ and ‘Ikemba’ to circle these two.”
Buster considered the matter and nodded. “Right on, bro. Right on. You want Holographic Ink…”
“No. Give me the needle.”
The Orion broke out into a big grin. “Hell yeah! The needle and ink. Old school! I knew I liked you when you walked in! Stuff’s in the back. Let me go get it. Hell yeah!”
Oliva rested her head on the armrest of the chair and looked at Wallace and all the faded markings over his body. She wondered how many times he'd come to have a tattoo. “I thought he said the real ink hurts?”
“It stings,” Wallace told her getting settled in the chair. “But I got Elizabeth’s and Emily’s names in ink. It’s right I treat you three the same.”
“Who are Elizabeth and Emily?”
Wallace blinked at her, confused. Had he never said anything about them? No. He supposed he hadn’t. After Jimoh and Laura’s death on Korix and taking over as her parent, Wallace didn’t see the point in sharing about his past and now, years later, it seemed he’d entirely forgotten that fact. She barely knew of his life before.
“I was married a long time ago. Elizabeth was my wife, a Starfleet doctor like your mom. Emily was our daughter. My wife was lost to…well, she was temporarily serving on another ship that was lost. And at the beginning of the Dominion War, I put my daughter on a ship bound for Earth and it went missing.” He shrugged. “Life’s full of ups and downs, kiddo.”
Olivia didn’t know what a Dominion was, or why it had to have a war, but she knew it made Wallace’s face look hurt. She was familiar with talk of dead from a destroyed ship, people who died like her Dad. And she knew about the lost who were not coming back, the missing who didn’t return, like everyone whose bones were in the sand of the burial dune. She remembered staring at the fresh grave of her own mother, feeling alone. And she remembered that Wallace held her hand.
She held Wallace’s hand. “If it hurts too much, you can squeeze my hand.” Olivia remembered that when someone hurt in her mother’s clinic, Ibis would hold their hand. She didn’t think it made them feel less pain, but they still always took her hand.
He gave her hand a little squeeze. “Thanks.”
