JDL | Capt Ivanova, LtCmdr Waterhouse, Cmdr Dahe'el, LtCmdr Neyes, Cmdr Grant, Commo Levine, Capt Neyes, Mr. Waterhouse - "It Ain't Necessarily So"

Posted on Wed Dec 24th, 2014 @ 9:32pm by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Commodore Andrea Levine PhD & Commander Logan Grant, PhD. & Commander James Archer & Commander Amelia Waterhouse & Commander Tristan Neyes PhD. & Captain Landon Neyes

4,063 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: All Hallows’

The night before had done it's task, liberated a Phoenix from ashes and allowed a Dragon to come out from the shadows. True... It had nearly rendered the young fire-bird worthless, laid her out in the freshly falling snow as she struggled to breathe and her mind spun like a top as the darkness yielded forth a ghost like no other. Though she'd never say it, she could have sworn her heart was going to burst right then and there as she'd looked at Landon's rugged face once more. Living. Breathing. There.

There.

The sound of him clearing his throat as he stood beside her was yet another reminder that he was, in fact, alive.

She wasn't supposed to be back on duty yet, Rotek's orders after Lareth's little pissing match left the Vindicator thinking it was appropriate to brain her plucky little Captain. Everything was different. The desk she'd cried over being destroyed had been replaced by the rough hewn edges and high polished top of a slab of petrified wood cleverly turned into a one of a kind office piece. The agatized wood was the furthest thing from Landon's previous furniture, but she'd allowed her own sense of design to take over instead of simply doing her damnedest to replace the one that had been burnt to cinders. The coffee stain, too, was gone and the carpet itself had been replaced by the same chic teak wood planks that lined the floor of her quarters. and behind her shelves had been created and dotted with some of her more exotic finds, a large agatized ammonite sat center, a prized fossil from somewhere on Earth. She could have rattled off the exact place, but at that very moment it didn't matter. What mattered was the fact she was in uniform a full week before she was supposed to be. Instead of pajamas or jeans and a messy pony tail, she was the picture of a Captain, her pips gleaming brightly on her collar as if to emphasize the point.

It felt so alien to be sitting in that big chair behind that big desk in that ready room as the Captain with him there and close... The King dethroned by Romulan stupidity. Rochelle sighed softly and pursed her lips to keep from being a fidget as she sat in wait for her crew to arrive at their impromptu little meeting. She could feel his eyes on her, analyzing, watching, predicting in the same fashion she'd felt them some five months and a wee bit of change ago. "Something amusing?" She asked, trying her best to remain stone faced. They'd be there any second to pay the piper.

"Not at all." Landon said. "But aren't you supposed to have four pips?" He smiled, carefully rolling one around on the table in front of him.

The eyebrow inched higher as she carefully reached to the side of her neck where the brass pieces fit together. Like brail they rested upraised against the ruby fabric and she counted three before her fingers fell flush. The sound of the fitting rolling against the stone-like surface of her desk drew her eye and only served to heat the tips of her ears as she allowed an almost sheepish nod. "If you wouldn't mind?" Rochelle asked, tilting her head to the side to give him access. At least one of them had paid attention that morning to just who was who. Old habits would have to be forced to die a hard and arduous death.

He flicked the pip up and stood to catch it. "'If the townspeople are happy, look to the chief.' I was told that once... some time ago. Last night I saw you dancing around all those people. I should tell you they were all having a great time, even if you didn't seem to be quite there yet. A masked party... where do you come up with these things?" His left hand brushed her shoulders and gave a reassuring squeeze, while the right quickly replaced the fourth pip.

"Thank you. Insanity like that seems to brew between Pond and I. Something to do with girlish glee and a need for morale boosting. Halloween and masquerades were and are a big thing on Earth." She replied with a small, demure smile. "I wasn't happy on a personal level, but I was happy to see them enjoying themselves. They deserved it." The smile, however, quickly faded from her mouth as the chime to the ready room rang. "Come." She called, her eyes still glittering in spite of herself as she pulled them from Landon's face and towards which ever one of her minions was about to burst through the door.

When Amelia had run into her brother on the way to the turbolift and he offered to walk with her, she thought little of it. When they'd entered the turbolift and called for the bridge, and he gave it no other directions, she asked him where he was going. He'd shrugged, and when they'd reached the bridge, he only paused a moment before he was on her heels as she walked to Rochelle's ready room. He'd even had the nerve to reach past her and ring the chime before she could. It actually surprised her to the point that he ended up moving past her and into the ready room first.

"Good morning, Captain, Landon," he greeted with a large grin. Amelia's steps faltered as her brain processed what she heard at the same time she spotted the trill man.

"What do you know about this?" she all but hissed at her brother, catching him by the arm, then directing a polite smile at Rochelle and Landon.

--

Andrea Levine waved at her daughter and received a half-assed, teen-attitude-filled wave back, accompanied by a grunt, a snatching of a book bag, another grunt, and the swooshing of the doors. Andrea took a breath and stretched her neck to the sides. Apparently, teen-attitude is something she was going to have to accept in her otherwise calm and gentle daughter, for at least the next few... few years. Wow, that thought made her cringe. Why can children not simply be transported across the teenage years, straight into young adulthood, where they can talk to their parents without raging hormones changing their moods like a mad pendulum? Ah yes. There could be money answering that question.

She chuckled to herself with a shake of her head and made her way out the door. She walked through the hallways and reached the lift, instructing it thoughtfully, smiling at random crew and waiting to arrive at the bridge.

The lift chimed its arrival and the doors opened to allow the tall, blustery Kiwi entrance. A grunt of a greeting was passed to the woman standing in the back, the grunter almost too wound up in the PADD he was editing to identify the blonde as his wife. "Come here often?" He rasped, falling in line beside her for the rest of the ride to the bridge. The answer would have to wait, it was a speedy trip from medical to the bridge and the lift came to a stop and spat them out onto the bridge.

Logan waggled his brow at Andrea, snuck a quick goosing on the way past her, and once again became the unfettered professional the moment the heel of one of his size fourteens hit the deck in pursuit of the ready room. Toying with a Commodore was a very special treat, one he thoroughly enjoyed even while prepping the standard 'Captain, you've been ordered off duty for medical reasons. I'm going to have to ask that you obey for your own safety and report to either your quarters or somewhere relaxing.' mantra in his head. It was far too soon for Rochelle to be doing anything more than reading in bed or lounging on holo-Risa and working on toasting her freckles or something equally as lovely.

Andrea smirked, Logan's arrival snapping her out of her reverie. This was her third grunt of the day, she mused to herself, sarcastically amused. She was going to say "not often enough," but his gesture stopped the all syllables but one from forming. Her tongue reached her cheek and her eyes narrowed in an attempt to swallow the smile that formed on her face. It was too late to respond in kind now, on the bridge. She gave her husband a promising look and followed into the ready room.

What waited for them on the other side of that door, however, was truly shocking.

Logan came to an all stop and the PADD in his hand nearly dropped to the hardwood below. Pond stood bristling, Noah grinned like an idiot savant, Landon stood behind the desk and out of hiding and Rochelle sat in uniform trying so very hard to look angry. Her eyes gave away the diamond-like glitter of happiness he hadn't seen in them for a long time, and that made everything else just peachy, even if his testicles just so happened to suck back up into his abdominal cavity out of fear of the redhead's special brand of retribution. There was little doubt that it was about to be gifted to them in pretty little boxes complete with festive bows and ribbons. Had Landon escaped and ratted them out? Or was something far more 'sinister' a foot? Logan's keen green eyes settled on the grinning man-child and his arms folded across his chest.

Andrea almost walked into Logan. At the last moment she managed to sway to the side and stare ahead, absorbing the scenery that stopped her husband cold. A soft breath escaped her lungs, and she reached, instinctively, to touch Logan's arm, as if she needed to point it out to him; as if anyone could not have noticed. Her eyes shifted through the people in the room, from Rochelle to the living, breathing Landon, to Amelia and Noah... and... Noah. Her eyes stayed on him, examining his grin, her blood running hot, her lips stretching into a tight thin line.

Tristan was less fortunate. His mind was buried along with his face in a large PaDD as he assessed the latest round of intake and additional patients his dept was currently meeting. The task seemed to be consuming him lately, and he'd all but disappeared. Partly to avoid Landon, and partly to keep on top of it. Attention to his work failed to allow for obstructions in his path, and his trodded into Logan. Rather, his lower torso, as Grant was considerably taller than Neyes. Tristan blustered an apology, before his eyes met Landon's across the room.

"Oh hello, broth-... oh. Oh. Captain."

"Move it, you're causing a backup," Amelia hissed up at Noah, giving him a shove as she released the grip on his arm. He dutifully moved out of the way, and Amelia followed behind him boring holes into the back of his head with her eyes.

"That's the least of what he's caused," Andrea muttered quietly, angrily, her eyes following the siblings, then shifting back to examine Rochelle. Her eyes, softer now, swimming with concern, looked for the younger woman's gaze, trying to catch it, to look into the younger woman's soul. Rochelle looked angry, but 'angry' is much better than the alternative. Angry was the good option. No one needs to collect the pieces of 'angry'. They deserved angry.

The train wreck James walked into, or rather required some fancy footwork for himself to skirt around as Tristan ricocheted off the monolith of a Commander, wasn't his idea of starting his morning sunny side up. A wry smile plastered itself across his boyish features and he found a seat, and his amusement, quickly. The Captains had found one another, and by the toxic looks being passed towards the Waterhouse guy, Noah had something to do with it.

Having seen the train of senior officers float into the room, Almar stood from the command chair and gave a nod towards a waiting officer to take the conn while they met, he filtered in to the back of the room.

From behind that pretty desk, Ivanova rose and motioned for the rest of the majority of her senior staff to plant themselves. "Sit. Now." She rolled darkly, resting her palms against the cold top of the table. For all of her irritation that her staff had deliberately lied to her by omission and run their own little operation under her nose, she couldn't quite work up enough of a natural hackle. In any other case this would have meant the ending of careers, some of them quite bright and beautiful. For Noah, it would have meant Rura Penthe or somewhere equally as toxic, but all of that was a simple IF Rochelle were any other Captain, if the situation was any other situation, and if the players of this little scheme had any other motive. Landon, however, was right. She couldn't be too hard on them, not when they'd done this for her... For them. Working the fear of the Gods into them, however, seemed an appropriate punishment -- even if she did want to celebrate with them.

"I'm impressed. You followed orders and actually showed up." The Captain sighed with a heavy measure of irritation and sarcasm laced within her voice, "I don't think I need to explain why I called you up here, none of you are blind and Captain Neyes' father certainly wasn't a glass maker." She smirked, stealing a quick glance at the Trill to her right. Anger, however, was so very hard to feign when mirth was all that wanted to be conveyed and glittered so defiantly in those big baby blues.

"I'd... quite like an explanation?" Almar chimed from the back of the group, "I knew something was going on because people kept asking me to overlook certain things... and the transporter logs have been somewhat... extended as of late." the Cardassian began as he took one of the seats and glanced around the group, his gaze lingering on the Trill and the fiery redhead, "But how in the hell is Captain Neyes back, yet we also have Lieutenant Commander Neyes?"

"The short explanation? Romulans and some luck that defied odds that I'm a little too annoyed with my little brother to care to calculate for you," Amelia answered the Cardassian chief engineer's question, the heel of her boot finding Noah's ankle under the table. Noah's shit eater grin had failed to dim, and even his sister's under table assault didn't crack it. "However, I am not sure why the reunion has already occurred when the plan was going to be sitting down with a quiet conversation to bring Rochelle up to date on why we needed to verify him before hand."

The diminutive half of the redheaded command team only furrowed her brows deeper and stood there watching her officers bumble and teeter about like school children caught in an elaborate scheme to liberate the class guinea pig. "Romulans and some luck." She parroted with a small nod and a shrug before straightening up. "The point remains that you six characters failed to inform me, the Captain of this ship, something that was critically important. Instead you went to devious lengths to hide everything from me, altered logs, lied to my face about the number of Romulan survivors coming aboard and basically kidnapped a fellow officer."

She sighed again, heavily, and threw her hands up as she spoke. If she'd looked sideways at Landon, she'd have likely lost the steam to continue and much of her rant would have faded into giggles. Rochelle knew she had them on the ropes, could see them squirming and fuming. "Instead I find out at the party when a guy dressed as a dragon unmasks himself because a spaghetti fearing pirate boy had more access to this scheme than I did and couldn't keep it in the bag. I don't think I have to tell you all the ways this could have gone terribly wrong, do I?"

"You mean like how if it hadn't been him, and we'd told you from the get go, it would undo the last five months of hard work all of us in this room had done to convince you to keep living?" Amelia didn't pause or think before saying this. This was the core of why she, and she knew the rest of them, had kept this secret.

Logan choked from where he sat between Tristan and Andrea. He could feel his eyes snap open and bug in a manner better suited for bad sitcoms and cartoons at what Amelia had just so carelessly spat out. Previous that, Logan hadn't a fear in the world. Everything was as it should have been, albeit a bit premature, with Landon beside Rochelle and Rochelle posturing because she was the Captain and making it known she was still in control of her ship. The big Kiwi quickly got to his feet, practically elbowing his cohorts in their faces as he did.

"Woah woah woah." He said, holding up the palms of his hands in surrender, "That's not necessarily the whole truth. We don't think that you're weak or that you'd top yourself, Rochelle, but we knew you'd had so much shit thrown at you over the last few months and we couldn't risk this being some plot to kill you one way or another. You were just starting to come out of your bloody funk again and we all saw life being breathed back into you and you allowing it more and more. We didn't want to lose you again or watch you transform into some hateful ice queen born of tragedy and all that bullshit." Logan's eyes raced back and forth between the other's in the room and the little Captain, trying to diffuse the bomb before it blew up so needlessly.

"What if he'd been sent to assassinate you? What if the Romulans had wanted us to find him just so they could get to you? We had to make decisions and make them fast in order to protect you and the integrity of your command and the Vindicator as a whole.

I'm sorry, but I can't say that it's because we kept him under wraps for so long and while a meeting would have been the ideal reveal, there's that portion of me that thinks you'd have just spun on your heel and lynched us all out of disbelief or thinking it was some kind of sick joke. Maybe Noah did the right thing. Maybe this was the right way for you to find out. We're all worn out here, Captain, we've been living double lives for the past week and a half and we did it because it needed to be done for you, for Tristan, and for Landon." If this didn't work, it would be Amelia he chose to kick under the table.

Next to him, Andrea let out a breath she wasn't even aware she kept. Her shoulders relaxed momentarily, as if that breath held them tight. It did, really. She wasn't sure she was breathing at all since she walked into the room and saw Rochelle and Landon together. Her mind, in its constant battle between the emotion and empiricism, was awake enough to prevent a purely empirical response from escaping her lips. This wasn't quite the time for long winded scientific explanations, for empirical concerns and questions of consequences.

This wasn't about hiding the information from Rochelle, either; this was about protecting everyone involved, including the two brothers, who, for all intents and purposes, still require their protection. For one, the symbiosis committee is going to have quite an issue with clones, beyond those that Starfleet will likely raise as well. Those were two battles that were yet to be fought. Beyond that, though, remained the underlying problems, the ones that extended beyond the purely scientific matter of comparative genetics. Landon has been under the less than friendly care of the Romulans for months, and neither one of them knew what the effects of that stay imprinted in his mind. Cloning was a problem, but there were other, more simplistic problems that needed to be dealt with properly for his and everyone else's sake.

"It still is," she muttered, looking at Landon for a moment, then shifting her eyes again to Rochelle. "This wasn't about hiding it from you. This was about figuring out how to tell you, and what to tell you." She wasn't sure everyone was completely aware just how badly screwed up this situation was. Noah clearly didn't.

"Did any of that go through your noodle touched head when you went and unleashed Landon without talking to any of us?" Amelia demanded of her brother, directing quite a look at him. He quietly stared down his sister for a moment, then laughed a little.

"After everything both of them had been through, they deserved a fairy tale reunion," Noah insisted, looking to Rochelle and Landon. "The rest of it will fall in place in time. The Symbiosis commission can be tamed, Flying Spaghetti Monster knows it's been done before, and I waited until the Commodore had confirmed that he was really really Landon. Everything else is details."

An amused look betrayed the Trill as he watched the slow meltdown of Rochelle's senior staff. "Setting aside Noah, or how he managed to sneak me to Rochelle without any of you finding out until right this moment... I have to say I am willing to endure whatever trials you see fit to test my loyalty or legitimacy. I also happen to know Saia is capable of telepathic interface with my people, and might be able to assuage some of your worry. In either case, I'm thankful you all worked hard to spare both Rochelle and myself any more hardship."

Looking between them all and Noah, the disconnect could have been seen by a blind man. Even the most unpracticed Cadet would never have dreamed of releasing someone that could have been a threat, but Noah wasn't a Cadet. He was an artist and a romantic. Rochelle sighed. It could have been seen as just another clue towards her level of irritation, but the sigh was relief. Without Noah, it was likely Landon would still have been locked up and she still oblivious while the rest of her staff ran in circles trying to figure out how to sugar coat the situation. "Enough." She said, "Landon is Landon. The Landon. The point remains that I should have been told about this a lot sooner, as in the moment you all realized something was screwy about the Romulans. From here on we move forward and agree that there will never be another Vindicator edition Nancy Drew mystery that's hidden from the Captain. You're dismissed."

Arguing or continuing on with pointed fingers and gut twisting glares would have been moot. Rochelle knew she'd made her point. She also knew she'd be able to gloat over the panic written across their faces when they'd walked in to see Landon standing there beside her. Almar had been the only one who seemed less perturbed about the proverbial cat being released from the bag than he was that the entire thing had come to pass in the first place. Concerned would have likely been a better word. Once again she took her seat, watching them as they lost the fish in the freezer look in exchange for gathering themselves up to file out of the ready room. If she'd looked Landon in the eye, she'd have likely split her sides laughing. That would have to wait.

---

Captain Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Lt Commander Amelia Waterhouse
Executive Officer
USS Vindicator, NCC-78213-E

Commander Almar Dahe'el
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Vindicator, NCC-78213-E

Lt Commander Tristan Neyes
Chief Counselor
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Commander Logan Grant
Counselor
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Captain Landon Neyes
Former Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC 78213-E

Commodore Andrea Levine-Grant
Professor of Sciences
Starfleet Academy

Noah Waterhouse
Pastafarian Minister and Artist
apb Pond

 

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