Jeremiah is mentally misspelling J'onn's name because of how Sarrin is pronouncing it: properly. In French Jean or John is pronounced with a soft 'J'. As J'onn Jo'nzz is. It would sound French to our ears.
I woke up. I don't know how else to describe what happened, I woke up. I was sitting on a bench, my back against a wall. The first thing I noticed was that the only lighting in the room was from tiki candles. The second was that I wasn't restrained in any way. Whoever that man was knocked Hank out quickly, and knocked me out a moment later. Hank was so focused on taking out this 'creature' he'd been hunting, he never stopped to think how powerful his target might have been. I couldn't help smiling at that. I looked around the room. It was a wigwam more than anything, the kind American Indians lived in. And I was alone. I laid down on my side, facing the curtain that served as a door. And waited for someone to come in and speak to me.
“Are you awake?” I heard a voice say from the other side of the door not ten minutes later.
“Yes, please come in.” I answered. A young woman, maybe in her late 20's walked in carrying a bowl and a tray. Her cinnamon-colored hair was short-cropped just below her earlobe. She weighed maybe 140 pounds. “Nibbles.” She said holding the tray up a bit. I nodded. She set the tray down on the bench and the bowl of water down at my feet.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I should think that was self-evident.” She said in a voice so devoid of humor I could not believe she was poking fun at me. If anything she seemed surprised at my question. So I decided to rephrase the question. “Why are you doing this?”
“Me personally, Jean said to make you as comfortable as possible. Why are we taking any measures to make you comfortable...that is for Jean to explain.”
“Am I a prisoner here?” I insisted.
“No restraints but there is a perimeter, that is my understanding.” She replied. She tilted her head to the left. “Please, introductions should come first. My name is Sarrin, and you?”
“Jeremiah.”
“Jeri-miah. That's a good name.” She smiled softly.
“Forgive me but are you...what planet are you from?”
“I am Atraxi. We don't have a home-planet. I was almost 8 years old when my mother and I left home. I was 10 years old when we made our home on the Western coast of the United States.”
“Jean is your leader?”
“We're a collection of aliens of various races and a few of the more tolerant humans any of us have met. And yes, J'onn Jo'nzz is the leader of our community. But I'm not wearing a bracelet.”
“Please, elaborate.” I told her earnestly.
“I'm not afraid of you. That's not why I'm this high-strung. I'm just skittish, even by my very nature I'm....unsteady and uncertain. To be frank, I'm more concerned with what you think of us than I am about offending you.”
“You are an incredibly perceptive individual.”
“My people sense emotional vibrations. We don't read minds. While I will not do so without permission or instruction, I can search your heart. If J'onn asked, I would try to search the core of your being. Tell the truth, I am tempted to do so anyway. I swear I am not trying to be intrusive. I can tell you are an extra-ordinary individual. I'm just...not sure why.”
“ 'Discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart'. And that was meant as a question.”
“More like 'motivations and intentions'...but yes. Early part of Hebrews am I right?”
“...Yes.”
“I like the book of Matthew and the book of Hebrews. Beyond that I prefer Psalms and Micah.”
“Luke and Isaiah were always my favorite.”
“Then you and I are a-lot a like.” She said with a smile. “Jeremiah. Well I assume your name is spelled the same as in the book of the major prophet?” I nodded and tried to smile. “Listen, J'onn is eager to speak with you. But I should warn you, J'onn's people are psychic. All his people's communication would have been through thought. So chances are he'll give me his words and hear your answers. My people are empaths and I have an extremely well-ordered mind, makes it easier for me to hear and understand what he is trying to say. But I wanted to assure you that he will not search through your mind to find hidden truths or secrets. If that is what you are, to be polite expecting -- to be candid anticipating -- will happen you are incorrect. To quote an old television show. 'Let him have every liberty, except liberty itself'. It's that kind of situation.
“House arrest.”
“I just realized you've been asleep for hours. You...probably don't even know where you are." I nodded. "Absolute cliff notes version: You are in Arias, Guatemala. It is our community of...friendly individuals from various points across the stars.” She looked at me hard, trying to make sure I understood her meaning. I nodded. “If you're up for it, I'm to take you down a walk down the main road. But only if you are up for it.”
“Then let us walk about a bit.”
“Please, wash up first. The dirt on your face will cake to your skin otherwise.”
“Do you always talk like that?”
“Uncertain, unsteady, yeah pretty much.” She said with the first smile I had seen on her face. “If you mean as if English is my second language, then absolutely yes...It's my fourth!”
“Okay, please explain that one.”
“My own people's language, the official language on my home-planet, the first Earth language I learned wasn't even English. I landed in a very ethnic community. Not diverse but...you can take a guess.”
“Chinatown in San Francisco.”
“Nail on head. I should tell you, at least a little of my being 10 degrees off is that I don't value hitting the nail on the head as far as convention. only communication... expression.”
“Which is why Jean has you do the introductions. You don't claim either world but you understand them both...I take it.”
“There is that.” A deep voice said from the doorway. “And she sees beyond sight in a way I have never encountered before.”
“I...ah..” I stammered at the giant green man standing in front of me. “I realize you have no reason to trust me but you can believe me when I say I am glad to meet you.”
“And I you, Jeremiah. What is your surname?”
“Listen, whatever else is going on, I don't doubt your intentions. And I hope to prove mine. Starting with what a friend of mine would have called 'proper introductions'. I'm Jeremiah Danvers. For my part, you can consider me a friend.” I offered him my hand.
For a moment the alien I took to be Jean Jones looked at my hand as if he didn't know what to do with it. Then he straightened himself like a solider and offered his own right hand. “I am...J'onn Jo'nzz.”
"So Sarrin said she was to take me on a walk down the main road. Am I correct in thinking that was actually out of her own head?"
"Yes...But she said it that way to illustrate to you that I was alright with it. Sarrin can be...more direct than precise sometimes."
"I'm getting that impression." I said with a smile. "Let me wash up, I'll come with you." I thought I saw a sad look in Jean's eyes as I turned around to wash up in the bowl Sarrin had brought to me. I understood why as soon as I saw Sarrin give a slight bow to him and duck out of my room.
When Sarrin says 'I'm not wearing a bracelet', she is trying to tell Jeremiah that she follows J'onn because she respects him, not because he owns her...because she chooses to not because she has to. Her people were 'bonded into service' in such a way: silver bracelets that covered ones wrists, like irons. It is significant that Sarrin and her mother left her home planet when she was 8 years old. On her planet of origin Atraxi children are bonded into the service of a great family when they reached the age of 10. J'onn and Sarrin are as close as they are because they have history that predates Arias. Not romantic history more a feeling of mutual respect and owing the other person things.
Arias Guatemala only exists in one of my two sets of alternate Earth stories: the one on Earth-9. In it Jeremiah Danvers was brought here to live and to stay after the mission to terminate a particularly dangerous alien went the way it did. Jeremiah stayed with J'onn as kind of a willing captive. Exchanging himself for not only Hank Henshaw's life but his freedom. He asked J'onn to not only let Hank live but let him go. He's a captive in that he cannot escape but his life is otherwise perfectly normal. Basically he has every liberty except liberty himself. Elana and Martin Stein practically stumbled upon them, as Arias itself 4 years later and that in turn encouraged or spurned Jeremiah to visit the D.E.O and find some closure/answers on how he feels about...anything.
He tells J'onn he wants to see for himself if Nikita really is free to do what she wants and chooses to stand my Hank's side. Or is simply following orders, voicing a party line when she serves as Hank's lefftenant And they actually do use that word. He needs to check in on her and then he can find some closure and move on with his life. By this time Jeremiah and J'onn have become the best of friends. Jeremiah Danvers feels bound by an oath tying him to J'onn. "I promised I would never leave your side. From what I understood that was a til death do us part oath of loyalty, if not brotherhood."
I don't think this actually happened. But it would make a GREAT story:
In 1658 a duel occurred, between a French Duke and a Spanish Count. Upon defeat the Spaniard knelt, closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Quick and clean, you promised." He whispered. The other man dug his sword into the ground. "That assumed I would have to kill you. I don't and I will not. I cannot." This confused the Spaniard immensely. Obviously this man was not of any religious order that forbade violence or taking a life. The Duke explained. "I have not sworn an oath never to kill. Taking a life fighting for my own is something I can accept. Taking a life just because i have the choice or freedom to do so is abhorrent to me. And I will *never* cross that line. Get up."
Elana is of a race called Enkarens, well she is a half-breed but identifies herself as one of her mother's people. She can give people images or videos in thier minds eye if she maintains the connection, like they were watching a movie or in a holodeck. She's explaining that if she were entirely of her mother's people this would be a full immersion experience and indistinguishable from reality. Where ever they would put one, one would literally believe they were there and it was real. To other races in the galaxy this ability is known as 'traumatic hypnosis'. It's an misnomer, but an understandable one." She says. Her race are such fierce and capable warriors, this is assumed to be the only way they'd use that ability: to bring enemies to their knees.
Her friend suggests that might not be because of the Enkaren race at all. But because other alien races are such single-minded warriors and conquerors. They would use a gift this way, it is what makes sense to them. It is the only 'sensible' thing to do according to thier mindset. So how this ability is perceived has less to do with a misunderstanding of Enkarens and more to do with the mindset of the other races. What is this kind of reflection called? Where the description of a thing is taken more from the viewer than the picture itself? If it makes it easier to understand what I'm asking: Instead of 7 mice seeing 7 parts of a single thing and think it's something different, each of the seven mice sees the elephant, the one thing and give it seven different names?
Dreaming the Impossible, continued. Jeremiah is mentally misspelling J'onn's name.
“Jeri-miah. That's a good name.” She smiled softly.
“Forgive me but are you...what planet are you from?”
“I am Atraxi. We don't have a home-planet. I was almost 8 years old when my mother and I left home. I was 10 years old when we made our home on the Western coast of the United States.”
“Jean is your leader?”
“We're a collection of aliens of various races and a few of the more tolerant humans any of us have met. And yes, J'onn Jo'nzz is the leader of our community. But I'm not wearing a bracelet.”
“Please, elaborate.” I told her earnestly.
“I'm not afraid of you. That's not why I'm this high-strung. I'm just skittish, even by my very nature I'm....unsteady and uncertain. To be frank, I'm more concerned with what you think of us, how you interpret us, than I am about offending you.”
“You are an incredibly perceptive individual."
“My people sense emotional vibrations. We don't read minds and while I will not do so without permission or instruction I can search your heart. If J'onn asked, I would try to search the core of your being. To tell the truth, I am tempted to do so anyway. I swear I am not trying to be intrusive. I can tell you are an extra-ordinary individual. I'm just...I'm not sure why.”
“ 'Discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart'. And that was meant as a question.”
“More like 'motivations and intentions'...but yes."
Note: When Sarrin says 'I'm not wearing a bracelet', she is trying to tell Jeremiah that she follows J'onn because she respects him, not because he owns her. Because she chooses to not because she has to. Her people were 'bonded into service' in such a way: Silver bracelets that covered ones left wrist, like irons.
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