milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Five years."

Mal never remembers these things on his own. It's more when he steps up to the bar and he receives a note of congratulations from his mother the Barman and a cupcake from the bar.

"Wow."

Mal orders a Coke to go with the cupcake, requesting also a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen to get some notes written out for later.

Come on by when he settles into a booth. He's got the time, apparently.

[ooc: ~~open. very open.~~ not so open anymore! off to bed. <333]

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"Jack Bauer, shi a. Name's Mal Reynolds."

He doesn't know what the words mean, but the inflection and pronunciation is something he recognizes, or at least sounds very familiar, despite its brevity. He tenses for a moment, a memory surfacing of one of the guards replying to one of Cheng's orders with that phrase and a nod, before dishing out whatever torture Cheng had ordered. The memory of it is so sharp that he can taste the coppery tang of blood on his tongue, feel the tug of ropes on his wrists, the stretch of the muscles in his arms and torso.

It's over in a split second and he pulls himself together, just managing to complete the handshake before pulling his hand back slowly, instead of yanking it from Mal's grip.

This is Milliways. It might be a coincidence, two worlds, two languages sharing the same wording. It might be the same words but a different meaning, something that fit the context, something like "nice to meet you", even if Mal had already said that.

"That sounded like Chinese, but then I know a lot of people in here come from worlds that are pretty different from mine. It might have another name for you," he says, a little too calmly.

"It's Chinese. Some kind o' mix between all the dialects from Earth-that-Was."

But then Mal remembers, and winces. "Sorry if it uh -- " Mal points to his own temple, " - Brought up anythin'."

There's a slight pause as Jack looks at Mal a little suspiciously. A look of recognition had crossed Mal's face, as though he knew something, instead of just noticing Jack's momentary absence.

"It's fine," Jack says flatly, not sure he wants to ask Mal just what he meant by that comment until Jack knows him better. "What do you mean, Earth-that-was?"

"Nobody lives on Earth anymore, in my where and when. I captain a spaceship.

"Sorry - it's just odd having to explain this to you."

"Yeah, I imagine so," Jack says, taking a sip of his drink. "Of course it's not really normal on my end, either. So if no one lives on Earth anymore, where do they live?"

"...Not Earth? There is other planets 'n moons out there in the 'verse, sir."

"In my time there's only about eight that are close enough to reasonably get to, and most of them aren't habitable," Jack says, dryly, "Though I guess if spaceships are pretty common in your world, they had the means to go pretty far to find one that was. Did they end up one one planet, or a few?"

"Dozens o' planets, and over a couple hundred moons or so? Some of 'em don't even have names so few folk live on 'em."

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