Miscalculations, Great and Small
Posted on 15 Jul 2023 @ 9:35pm by Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*) & Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 18 Jul 2023 @ 7:52pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Pathfinder
Timeline: M3 D14 Early Morning
2009 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure
On the final morning of the Pathfinder’s five day return trip, the silence between them broke. It wasn’t exactly a conscious act of will so much as Calliope had, in her sleep, happened to curl against Lancelot. She first became aware of it when he woke her with caresses and gentle kisses, though the affection was a little rough through a few days of his accumulated scruff. Calliope had sighed deeply and relaxed, at first. She was still melancholy, but her injured heart wished that the feeling could be kissed away, as their differences often had been over the years. In the space between sleep and waking, she warmed a little and reciprocated until her consciousness was wide enough that she admitted to herself all of the sweetness just highlighted the hurt she felt, as if trying to smother it only repressed the real trouble which she could no longer paper over with gestures. It wasn’t salve enough to work.
She broke away and rolled to her side of the bed, first rubbing sleep from her eyes and then beginning to gather her wild hair into a twist. In the corner of her view, she caught a glimpse of Lance reflected in the dressing mirror. He was sitting up, propped on his elbows and looking fairly pleased with himself. Calliope anticipated him about to reach for her by the waist and slipped off the side of the bed to her feet before he got very far into the stretch.
She knew herself. She knew that just at that moment, she had only narrowly missed another bout of living in denial by mere inches. It would have been a return to the same denial that had gone on for years and let her carry on in a kind of suspended bliss of anticipation. She clutched her own sides. The sharp reality of standing outside of that hope now was as painful as breathing knives. She hated herself for dodging Lance.
Wordlessly, Calliope retreated to the washroom and the door latch clicked behind her.
“I shall summon us some breakfast,” Lance said through the door. The phrasing absurdly seeming as if he was going to ring the butler and not simply gather his tray from the replicator like anyone else.
Calliope leaned her head back against her side of the door and slid to the floor to hug her knees and think of the seabirds on the holodeck. She’d only wanted a nest in the stars. She’d only wanted to make a home with Lance. They were different. They had always been different. She had loved everything that was different about him. She laughed as she cried, thinking about all the sweet, endearing things he’d done or said. And she cried as she laughed, thinking about the deserts of time stretching between each of those memories. All of the time she had filled with anticipation. The time she had saved up in her heart for now. But it wasn't turning out anything like she had hoped.
After a few minutes she stood and began going through the motions of preparing herself for the day. She washed her face, avoiding looking too long in the mirror with its propensity for telling the truth. The truth was already crushing enough. She brushed out her hair and conditioned it with her back to the mirror, only stealing glances to check how it was shaping up, and to be certain no tendrils had escaped around her ears for Lance to have an excuse to fidget with.
When she came out in her uniform only minus the service jacket, she noted a silver covered tray laid out for her, with half a grapefruit on the side on a dainty plate. Lance had wrapped on a robe. Why not? Where was he supposed to be in any hurry? Although he had full use of his arm and only one more scheduled visit to sick bay under the dermal regenerator, he was officially on medical leave. His unshaven shadow was somewhere between stubble and on its way to becoming a beard now, Calliope observed as Lance switched on a holo pad. She could see in the reverse image of the projection that he was scrolling Research Lab openings, sliding view after view in between sips of his tea.
She salted the grapefruit as she watched him pause on Aberdine-Solara Yards, a Bolian private interstellar shipbuilder. He was unlikely to be released to use his Starfleet experience to advance slipstream technology in such a place. And it was unlikely they would have the resources to fund him working on new technologies with little to no promise of returns. At a place like that, he would be tweaking warp designs on yachts. Lance had already come to the same conclusion and flicked the job opening away.
“You’re thinking about finding other work?” Calliope asked.
“Not seriously.” Lance said with a sort of bemused derision. “I only anticipate the possibility that Captain DeHavilland may yet discover a means of discrediting me, or may break the protocols in order to take action against me.”
“She won’t do that,” Calliope said.
“Oh really? How is it you can claim that with such certainty?”
Calliope shifted in her seat, thinking about her suggestion to Corvus. But there were reasons beyond Corvus possibly working out an offer for him to return to Daystrom. “Corvus is rightfully angry at you, Lance. But she isn’t petty, and as per her oath to Starfleet, she’s not going to break a lawful directive.”
“I do take your meaning,” Lance accepted with a bit of a stiff upper lip, taking Calli’s verbal shot on the proverbial chin, as it were. It was, after all, the first time they had said more than a by-your-leave, since they had set course out of the Korix system. This was progress, and he had expected the challenge.
Calliope started into the grapefruit a while, leaving the tray covered. She knew what was beneath. It would be some sausage patties and star-shaped french toast, with powdered sugar and piles of berries topped in cream. She’d told him once that the simple spread was her favorite. They’d only been able to eat berries in season on her colony, since the replication units were basic models and covered only staples, and when they did, her mother took a cookie cutter and made star shapes from their bread to dress up the meal even more. Like most things, Lance had committed that detail to memory, striving to learn to please her. And she had been content to consider his study of her preferences as his own way of demonstrating his love. In reality, though, she knew he thought of her as predictable. The relationship to him was on one level a puzzle for him to find the rules to play by. She hadn’t decided yet if she was going to uncover the tray. She was content for now with the bittersweet citrus starter.
“No, no. I’ll simply carry on at my post,” Lance said, returning to the earlier question, his sense of longsuffering bearing up under his burden. “I promised you that we would make the station our home, and that remains my primary purpose. The work is but an ends to a means.”
“And me?”
“Hm?”
“What am I meant to do?”
“Anything you please.” He returned his teacup to the saucer, smiling at her with a kind of compassion. “Take all the time you need to decide upon it.”
Calliope stabbed and dug at the grapefruit with her spoon, reigning in her frustration. “And what if what I want to do is closed to me now?”
“In such case,” Lance said drily, pulling apart a danish with knife and fork poised, “point us anywhere in the Federation and we shall make another home.”
“And you’ll be happy with that?”
Lance shrugged. Happiness to his mind was much overrated, and he’d already calculated his own as a loss he could afford. “I shall strive to be content that you are happy.”
Calliope put down what was left of the rind and wiped her hands and face to stand again.
“Where are you going?”
“To check in on the bridge.”
“Your shift doesn’t begin quite yet. Tarry a bit. Finish eating,” he implored.
Calliope lifted the cover over the tray and found it exactly as she expected, right down to the stars. Was it really her that was so predictable? Or was Lance just comforted by the idea that he could predict her and she’d leaned into it, thinking that’s what marriage was? All of these well intended compromises. Calliope replaced the lid and walked it to the replicator to clear it. She entered protocol for a shake. Not the usual sludge. Salted caramel frozen mocha. Damn everyone else’s programs for her this morning.
She slurped defiantly.
“I’ll see you when we’re back on the Station,” she told Lance, collecting her jacket and her wrist brace in one sweep, attempting to make for the door.
Her husband was on his feet faster than she had counted on, and had his hand on her shoulder. “I made us new reservations,” he said. “To account for the plans you canceled before we left.”
She let him turn her by the shoulder and look her in the eyes. And she did sense the draw again, the longing in her heart that this would work out. But she also felt a metronome, a silent one, as Lance tried to count out his gaze long enough to seem meaningful. Had he always been so baldly intentional? Of course he had. His social cues, even with her, relied on a kind of study. She’d always known it.
So why was it so irritating now?
Calliope again knew she had always loved Lance and never ceased. No matter how mad she was. But she recognized something else now, while taking in his simultaneously haughty, yet doleful gaze. Calliope sensed she would have to start again, from whatever this was currently. And she wasn’t as certain now as she had been when she’d made those vows fifteen years ago in front of mostly guests she hadn’t known, fitted in a dress styled after his ancestor's tastes, in a cathedral that seemed to swallow them up in awe and history, before a minister of a faith Lance would never give any true credence to apart from the learned lip-service required in pleasing his mother.
“It is our anniversary this week.” Lance reminded her as she seemed to hesitate. Calliope did take especially to holidays and anniversaries over the years and he’d learned to ascribe them the appropriate importance.
Her expression softening, Calliope leaned in towards Lance.
Noticing her motion to stand on her toes, Lance quickly bowed his head to make up the difference between their lips, but his wife turned aside to press a kiss to his whiskered cheek instead. “I’ll go out with you, Lancelot,” she whispered in promise before she left.
He wasn’t sure why, but regarding the space Calliope left behind gave Lance pause, leaving him uncertain of things he took to be constants in his life, wondering if they were really variables, until conviction returned from somewhere.
“Equilibrium is at hand. It shall be righted,” he assured himself and then stretched and rubbed his face. Perhaps the morning might have gone differently had he taken up a razor the night before, he reflected, deciding it was likely she’d just objected to being scoured by his chin hair. Indeed, how could she be blamed for that unpleasantness? He simply hadn't anticipated the ice melting off so soon. A small miscalculation. Things were going a bit ahead of schedule, then. He’d adjust accordingly. “But perhaps a shave is in order.”
