Confessions to the Unconscious
Posted on 08 Feb 2023 @ 1:12pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: USS Pathfinder, Zahn-Quinn Quarters
Timeline: MD08 ~0200
1672 words - 3.3 OF Standard Post Measure
In the low light of the cabin, lying in bed, Calliope watched the slow rise and fall of Lance's chest. She'd slept dressed and ready. Now that they were this far out into deep space and on the trail of the Pyrryx origin, it seemed prudent to be a moment's call away. Still, half the night had passed without a call to the bridge and she found herself restlessly awake.
"Hey... You asleep?" she asked Lance, hushed.
Only the near-snore of his half open mouth and slow hiss of his exhale came by way of response. Lance didn't shift.
"I don't know how to tell you..." Calliope said. "I mean, there's a chance we don't get back. Some of us, maybe all of us... I never wanted you to dwell on it, but there's always been a chance on these missions of me not coming back. We have to go out into the deep, we have to check for danger, to answer calls for help. But there's no guaranteeing we come back." Calliope relaxed back into the pillow. "You're smart. I know you know these things. I just... I worry, if it ever happened... If I never came back from a mission... Would it have been better for you to have been with someone who took fewer risks? Someone with her feet on the ground on Earth with you?
"I don't know how to explain it... I *want* to go first. I throw myself out there so I can know there's somewhere to come back to. I don't do it for adrenaline. It's not trilling, in fact it's always scary. It's just ultimately fulfilling." She bit her lip as she added honestly, "I do admit it's maybe grown into a kind of compulsion, though. Even if I'm not going out looking for it, I'm just always tuned for it. I'm ready for it. It's just what I feel like I was meant to do. If it helps at all, I'm just as determined to make it back to you.
"Thank you, for listening and understanding, when I came back from the incident at the Devil's Golden Bowl. I... can't tell you how much it meant to me that you never called me reckless and that you heard out the whole of the situation. Even the parts that I know you disagree with, the religious stuff..." She trailed off, still not sure how to sort out her knowledge that there was something much much bigger and more true than anything she could lay hands on in the material world. Lance wasn't willing to go there with her. It was too far from his tether in the known reach of the sciences. And she felt the more she reached for spiritual comfort the more it might strain them as a couple. She just had to hide that in her heart for now, maybe.
"It means everything to me to be believed, to be trusted..." She continued slowly, her words a barely intelligible murmur. "Especially when I hardly deserve it." Calliope let the tears roll off her cheeks while she whispered, "Especially when no one else could. Especially when compared with everyone else, you always have the most to lose when I take those kind of risks. Out of anyone, you had the most right to be upset. I mean, I can survive the doubt of admirals and the loss of Corvus' faith. But I don't know what I'd do without you believing in me."
"Corvus..." Calliope felt the topic on her heart shift focus. "Corvus is so hesitant. Playing everything safe. She's always been good at tactics. She even led some pretty ambitious away team missions back on the Challenger when we worked together. Some of those were pretty brazen. And I heard she had a few chancy scrapes in the service after that too. She was a star under Dansby. The stories got around, between friends of friends and occasionally out of the horse's mouth when she and I would have the chance to catch up. Her determined pilot's spirit just seems... squelched now. All that's running the show is this tactician so full of self doubt she doesn't know which play to call."
She slid her hand into Lance's fingers, brushing her thumb over his knuckles as he slept. "I think Corvus can't handle the idea that she might go home to OC and have to fill in the empty spots on the memorial wall with people she put into harms way." Listening, Calliope gauged Lance's breathing a little longer. She had to be careful not to talk about the Captain to any of the crew in any way that might cause doubt in her. Even to Lance. But she needed badly to unburden herself. "I've been thinking of her more than any of the Ensigns I've been putting through their paces, reminding them they're mortal. Because if any of them are lost on this mission, responsibility goes to the top and she's going to have to process that more than any of the rest of us will.
"Captain Winters, he confided in me once how much he hated sending the younger officers out, some of them never to return, while he got to contemplate old age and retirement. It's a heavy thing to bear. I never envied him that. But as his first officer, I knew it could fall to me to make the call. I've... lost people on my watch, covering for Winters..." She thought back to the reflective reassurance Winters had bolstered her with, a taste of what he had to do over his years in service, going back to the Dominion War. "Sometimes there are no good choices, the die is cast, and not making a choice isn't going to absolve you either. It's the hot seat.
"I want to help Corvus so badly, but she doesn't want to rely on me. She covers all my tasks as if she's her own XO and I feel redundant on the bridge. I'm working with the departments as best as I can, but everything is hackneyed at the top and everyone can sense it. I think she sees me being assigned to her as more of a problem than an aid.
"I don't know what she's thinking." Calliope said incredulously, one arm out towards the sky at large, "Like I took the drugs and lied about it for fun? Like I don't get the dynamic of men and women working together? That's exactly the reason I was ever even on them! She should understand better than anyone what it means for everyone around me, I mean, honestly! She has Finn shadowing her everywhere and every single time I have to walk with her or get into a lift car with her, he's right there. She's in denial about him too, pretending she wasn't watching his ass on parade since the minute he boarded the station with his company. They're already a firecracker waiting for a match.
"I'm trying to be real zen about it, but I can't believe the two of them aren't shagging every time I leave the room. I'm worse than an aphrodisiac incense." She snorted lightly. Sometimes she wondered if her pheromone composition wasn't even more potent for human males over other species precisely because of her mixed human heritage. "Except I know they aren't because maybe if they got it out of their systems she'd unwind a little and figure her shit out."
Calliope sat a while longer, contemplating the colorlessness of the near dark, watching the stillness of the ceiling, tracing the lines of long shadows cast in the faint night lights.
"I've been as careful as possible around her. There's nothing I can say or do with Corvus that won't blow up in my face. We've served together, been friends since Academy to one degree or another. But she won't talk to me. I don't mean reports and bridge watch updates. I mean, like really talk to me. It's like she expects me to prove myself but has already decided there's nothing that counts for proof. Not all my work with medical and counseling, not coming clean, or my history of service, or even fifteen years of friendship. In fact, it's almost like our history just makes my mistakes even easier for her to consider on the order of some kind of betrayal. Even if I tried to tell her about anything I've come through, it would be discounted before we even replicated the scones on the table between us. Explaining myself will be taken for excusing myself. On the other hand, quietly accepting her opinion of me will just validate her decision to cut me off.
"And I've seen her cut people off before. They don't get second chances. If she can't forgive me, it might be best for the crew... for everyone..." She didn't want to think about transferring. At this point in her career, so soon after everything coming apart, there was no chance of a recovery for her reputation. She'd end up in a dead end assignment with no where to climb. Careers all had to wind down some time, she tried to console herself. Her mother had become a recruiter. Maybe she could go back to the Sol system with Lance and work in the administration somewhere, making up maintenance schedules on Jupiter Station or running training simulations at the Academy... She thought it all out, but didn't say it, even to her unconscious husband. She didn't want to make that her path. It felt too much like giving up.
Drawing herself against her husband, Calliope tucked his arm behind her neck so she could rest on his shoulder. "Still, it's not really myself I feel sorry for. It's her. I think right now, it's very lonely being Corvus." Yawning, she closed her eyes and let her self drift back to sleep, her heart slightly relieved at the outpouring and her whole body able to rest again.
