Lord Help My Unbelief
Posted on 17 Dec 2023 @ 10:59pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Ensign Marcello Wiser
Edited on on 06 Feb 2024 @ 10:07pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, Junior Officer Quarters
1830 words - 3.7 OF Standard Post Measure
Calliope found herself in a spot she had never anticipated: standing at the door of Marcello Wiser. A few weeks ago, she would have insisted she would avoid it like the plague for fear of a very big misunderstanding. Maybe having it all misconstrued as personal interest. But she'd settled on this decision last night, and here she was, chiming his door.
She'd been preparing her crew roster for the Pathfinder, and would have liked to assign Ensign Marcello Wiser as a helmsman, but she found him on a no fly list from medical. So he wasn't over it. She'd put in for Lieutenant Ethan Gunnersen instead, glad to see medical had cleared him and hopeful that Captain Callum of the Theseus would still agree to share him so soon on the heels of their last mission together.
Although she could find other pilots without any difficulty, she was nonetheless left with a guilty feeling over the situation between Wiser and Lance and that terribly fated side quest they'd gone on. She wasn't sure what to say. She hadn't been there, but her away team going out of communication for as long as they had to make contact with the Irix Korinn had been the impetus for Corvus sending the follow up shuttle. It was circumstantial and she didn't blame herself. But she was no less a feature in the scenario. And then there was DeHavilland, who had been under pressure to leave them behind. But that she had sent Lance remained to Calliope a serious misjudgement of his areas of expertise. That Lance had made it his mission to collect her instead of insisting on staying with the engines and sending someone with away team experience, even if the other officer laid claim to a lesser rank... and further that he hadn't trusted Marcello who had the flight experience and training that Lance didn't for emergent situations… The lion's share of blame for Ensign Jup's current status and by extension for Marcello's was really—
"Commander?"
Calliope took a step back from the door. She hadn't expected Marcello to answer it directly. He was dressed, if rumpled. His hair was actually ruffled, rather than selectively combed into the stylized haphazard look he favored. And he was legitimately a couple of weeks into a beard now. It made him look years older. The new jaded look was solidified by the shadows over his half lidded eyes and the bags under them.
“Sorry,” Calliope said. “I tried to send you a personal message, but I didn’t see any read receipts.”
“I didn’t open them, Ma’am.”
“Right.” She’d sent them over personal communications, not wanting them to be mistaken for orders to talk to her or anything. “I understand. They weren’t pressing or anything. I just wanted to check in on you.” There was an awkward pause as Wiser only slowly blinked in response. “May I come in?”
He stepped aside to admit her. On the station, Ensigns were afforded their own junior officer quarters. With no roomates, Marcello clearly didn’t appear to have gone to very much trouble to impress anyone with upkeep. It still wasn’t how she imagined the chipper, first in line ensign living normally, not with towels and dishes and clothes just landed wherever like they were. She knew this apathetic feeling, so she quickly overlooked it and gave him a bit of a genuine, if not effortless, smile. Then she moved to one of the open seats, which was only holding things on the back of it, and settled on the edge, waiting for him to likewise take a chair.
She rubbed her fingers back and forth in her palms, thinking about how to address the whole Klingon Sargh beast in the battleroom, so to speak. Start with what matters the most, to him— the most pertinent issue affecting Marcello Wiser’s broken view of his world. Start with Jup.
“So, I haven’t had any new word on Mr. Jup’s condition,” she began quietly, cautiously. “And this church I’ve been attending, kinda irregularly, uh, they have a healing prayer service tonight. I've never been to one, but I thought, you know. I’m going to try it out tonight. I have a few people in mind to get some prayer for, and… I mean. It doesn’t feel like I have any power to do anything myself, you know. So I figure. It can’t hurt to ask a higher power if maybe… uh. Are you religious at all?”
Although he looked back at her, he appeared distant, like he was remembering something. Calliope thought there was a spark in his eyes for a second. “I… don’t know. I mean.” His hand dropped to the table, open as he tried to explain. “Catholic, but, sort of a family thing. My mom… I used to attend Mass with her. I went through confirmation. I just. I have my doubts, you know.”
“I know,” Calliope said with a depth of her own cloud of uncertainties, and a kind of awkward chuckle. “Maybe faith and doubt aren't exclusionary. I’m starting to think doubt might be a feature and not a bug of the whole ‘belief’ thing.”
Wiser's mouth quirked, uncertain about her assessment of uncertainty. “Maybe.”
“So you’ll come along?”
Marcello scrubbed his hand over his face, obviously managing frustration. “Look, I mean. Your concern for us kids, it’s real nice, Ma’am.” He knew he would never have talked like that to a superior officer before, much less to Commander Zahn, but all the shine was just gone. “But I just think this shouldn’t have happened at all. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“I don’t disagree with the post action assessment,” Calliope said, unable to help talking with a little professional distance now that he was confronting her directly about the matter. But he needed to talk about it and she needed to answer to it, like the officers they were. “There were a series of weak decision points and a cascading failure of situational conditions. When you’re in command, you take the faults on yourself. The Captain—”
Calliope paused. She was only able to speak for herself, though she knew that she was the lesser half of the command team, and was unsure how Corvus was internalizing any of it. Corvus just didn’t talk to her anymore. Not the same way, anyway. A little, though. Maybe more of their planned nights out would produce something… she wasn’t sure what to expect anymore. Or if it mattered when she was aiming to transfer out soon. Calliope shook her head; Corvus had her support in Thad professionally. And in Major Finn, otherwise. And besides, for her part, Calliope could only divulge her own struggle, and take her own responsibility.
“I look back every day since and I think about what I might have done differently to prevent what happened to Jup. Hindsight, you know?”
“So that’s it? It’s just a mistake?”
“It isn’t just anything, look—” She shook her head. “You’re training for command track.” Calliope shifted her chair closer, the cast off clothing on the back swinging with the sliding motion. “There’s going to be a day when you’re doing your own after action review. But not of some holodeck drills. And I don’t mean just entering a report.” She lowered her gaze to meet his, following him with her eyes when Marcello seemed to want to look away with a kind of bitter, angry pain. “I mean soul searching. Emotional and mental nonstop instant replays. And you’re going to have to decide if it breaks you or not. Because if you set your personal standards so high,” She illustrated with a hand forming a plane over their heads, “so high that you expect to be omniscient to perform your duties, you’re going to self-select yourself out of command. That’s just the truth, the plain old Kobayashi Maru truth.
“I know Jup is your friend. You developed that with him. It’s real. I don’t think I ever noticed Jup as easy with others as he was around you. And if you’re commanding right, if you can build trust, your crew is going to be like a second family out there on assignment together. And every day you’re going to have to get up knowing you could be taking them into danger. That it’s your job to lead them into not just the unknown, but the unknowable. Sometimes we can see enough ahead to be ready for what’s coming at us, but by definition, we go out into the wilds of this galaxy never fully prepared. Never.”
Marcello lifted his eyes, still not quite certain this was what he wanted to hear. Calliope knew if she swapped seats with him, she’d be thinking her yap was just some more high falutin’ talk meant to paper over Jup’s very real suffering with excuses. She was in for a penny now on the attempt to help him from his slump and threw in the rest of her latinum on that square.
“For all his lack of prudence on that flight, Commander Quinn didn’t attack Ensign Jup. It was the Z’ala fanatics working for the Pyrryx who shot your runabout. You were vigilant. You didn’t fail Jup. You didn’t. You were attacked by the enemy. And you flew that runabout while damaged, outnumbered, and under fire, into a storm that was off the scales, and did it all without a copilot. You got Jup home in time to give him a fighting chance. It might make the difference for him yet. You performed admirably, Mr. Wiser.”
“And what if it’s not enough?" Marcello asked, not raising his voice to raise the point. He'd already been suspended from duty for raising his voice repeatedly and trying to find some physical way to fight his way into having answers. His indignation all felt futile and silly now. "What if it isn’t enough and he doesn’t pull through?”
“I don’t know,” Calliope said. Helplessly, her hands sat partly open in her lap. “I mean, I was going to ask Jesus about that tonight. If you want to come with me.”
Wiser nodded, only barely, thinking about his mom and her ever present rosary. She’d prayed right up until she had died. And for everyone besides herself. “Whatever. Okay. I mean. I guess it can’t hurt." And he smirked slightly. "Even if it isn’t led by a proper priest.”
Calliope ventured to clasp a hand on Wiser’s shoulder, giving him a reassuring shake before standing again to excuse herself. “I know a guy that wears a collar. I’ll invite him.”
