Chastra Week | Day 5: Discovery
“It’s funny,” Astra says. “I barely know what Earth’s like and now I’m stuck on Jupiter.”
The bartender, green- Martian? Seems to ignore her, and she recognizes the situation for what it is.
“I lived in Hell, you know,” Astra says. “Humans- Earthlings, I guess- We have a Hell and we have a-“ She points up. “This place reminds me of Hell.”
It’s not meant as an insult. An old movie had once taught Astra that there’s no place like home, and Hell is home. And if you stick her in any seedy little bar with a seedy little crowd, she’ll blend right in.
Alien liquor might be a mistake. It hasn’t stopped her from drinking. “I’m looking for someone,” Astra says, pulling Charlie’s photo up on her phone. Most extraterrestrials she’s encountered are surprisingly nonplussed by the iPhone, so she knows that’s not why the bar tender isn’t paying attention.
If this were her bar, she’d have the Martian by the neck, pinned to the wall. But it’s not her bar, it’s not her hell, it’s not even her planet.
“This is my partner,” Astra says. “Charlie. You might have seen her with a blonde woman?”
The fuck is cleaning glasses. Astra is drinking out of one of the bar’s glasses right now, and she can attest they’ve never actually been really cleaned.
“Hey!” she says, pounding her fist on the bar. “Big and stupid!”
That gets the bartender’s attention, and Astra replies with an old fallback, her familiar wolfish grin.
“That’s right,” she says, voice low with anger. “You. I’m looking for my partner. Have you seen her?”
The bartender finally gives the image on Astra’s phone a cursory glance, and then shakes their head.
Astra responds to this with a sort of sneer, running her tongue along her molars. “Okay,” Astra says. “That’s fair. How much?”
The bartender tilts their head.
“How much for information?” Astra asks. “What do you take as payment? Favors? Theft? Hits? I’m flexible.”
“I don’t understand,” the bartender says, and Astra almost startles at the sound of their voice. Not because she hasn’t been able to understand anyone- she’d swallowed that little translator pill when this mess had started, but because the bartender hadn’t seemed at all like the speaking kind.
“What don’t you understand?” she asks.
“I haven’t seen your lover,” they say. “Why would I ask you for anything else?”
Astra’s face feels hot. “I said partner.”
“That’s what I said,” the bartender says. “Lover.”
Okay. Imperfect translator. Understood. “Well that sucks shit,” Astra says. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Charlie’s not even supposed to be here. She wanted to leave and then they got like, the fucking Captain, and maybe I thought it would be good to bring her back, just because it had happened so quickly, maybe I should’ve let her go?” She looks at the Bartender and wishes he’d give her something. Even empathy. “Maybe I wanted her back too much. Now they got her, too.”
“Who’s they?” the Bartender asks.
Astra presses her finger to the screen of her phone, against Charlie’s cheek. “I was hoping you’d tell me,” she says. “They’re picking us off. First Sara. Then Nate. Now Charlie.”
“Go back to Earth,” the Bartender says. “Go back to what you know and protect yourself.”
Astra shakes her head. “There’s no point,” Astra says. “Without Charlie, there’s no point.” She looks up, hoping they can’t read the surprise on her face, at her own words. “I mean. I just got back to the surface, but I don’t want to even… do anything. Until I can do it with Charlie. Does that make sense?”
No response. The bartender seems to be considering the glasses again.
“And now I’m stuck here, by the way,” Astra says. “With no way to contact my ship and no idea where I am, besides Jupiter.” She wants to stop talking, but she also doesn’t. She wants to throw it up. “John says I’ve just replaced getting my mom back with finding Charlie but- I didn’t love my mom like I love… like Charlie. It’s completely different.” She checks the photo on her phone again, to make sure Charlie is still the same, unchanged. Not a trick. Not an illusion. “Why do I keep doing this?”
She realizes the bartender has slipped out, leaving her to stare at the items behind the counter, another new thing to study that will lead her nowhere.
“Love,” Astra answers herself. “Every time I’ve pushed my boundaries, it’s for love.” Some of the bottles have creatures inside them, another familiar, hellish feature of the place. “It’s stupid,” Astra says. “It’s stupid of me to keep looking for love in the biggest, most dangerous places.”
One of the bottles seems to bubble and fizz and she sighs.
“Not like I’d do anything else,” she says, and puts her phone back into her coat.