Joint Log | Commo Ivanova, Capt Neyes - "Under the Stars" Pt. I/IV

Posted on Tue Jan 6th, 2015 @ 8:27am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Captain Landon Neyes

2,398 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: A Spot To Kill
Location: Holodeck 2

The Tambo spun in Landon's hand, and the heavy metal bars felt weightier than his daggers. His breathing was hard as he moved to keep ahead of his weakening fatigue. The injuries he'd sustained on the Romulan warbird, after being tortured no less, were still not fully healed. Wanting to give in and rest was now always a thought in his mind, and part of him was weary after his ordeal. His entire being ached for some kind of catharsis, and the holodeck seemed to be the only respite available to him.

They'd fought, roughly, for the better part of two hours. He'd tuned up the settings on the holodeck to be a considerable match for him, which was less of a challenge considering his current state. She'd dip and block, stunningly quickly, but he still relished the moments when his attacks connected against the Romulan subcommander. A satisfying crack against her shoulder or the welcome grunt when her gut took the brunt of his assault. She was essentially his punching bag, and was programmed to return attacks only when he presented her with an opportunity.

"Done already, Captain?" The hologram smirked, a stream of green Romulan blood rolling down her forehead.

Neyes sneered. "Computer, mute hologram."

Landon sighed angrily as the Romulan commander continued to bleat despite being silenced entirely. Her fictional snide, and bitterly arrogant attitude still rolling forward. The door chime rang, and he wiped away the sweat from his brow. "Enter"

Finding him wasn't a hard task to accomplish, the Vindicator's computers kept perfect tabs on just about everyone, even the Levine-Grant family's giant Andorian rat. Rochelle, however, knew that it was less than an intelligent move to interrupt him during one of his programs and had waited for the better part of an hour and a half before growing concerned and seeking him out. Entering the program she was quickly greeted by what she'd imagined. Woman's intuition was a bitch, a roaring and angry sadistic bitch at that. The hologram of Lareth looked up and the young Commodore simply sighed at it with a roll of her eyes. Even in death, the Romulan would be a figment of anger and anxiety fueled nightmares for months to come -- and that was simply on the redhead's side. She couldn't and wouldn't speak for Landon's psyche.

"We leave back for New York tomorrow morning." Rochelle greeted him with her hands clasped behind her back. The position of Captain, and rank of Commodore, were still so foreign when she was around him, the roles not quite having been placed where they needed to be and as such she found herself reporting positions and quoting stats before she was able to catch herself. Usually it came with a silly smile or the chewing of her lower lip, this time it came with nothing more than the shake of her head and an eye that quickly appraised his physique and the heaving of his bare chest and ribs. "It's a real shame that they killed her." The little woman huffed and used the Romulan SubCommander to her advantage, her fingers lacing together at the small of her back as she took those last few steps to be toe to toe and face to face with the image of her latest adversary. "She deserved to suffer."

Landon shook his head. Rochelle being Captain was frankly a relief to him, and it was still despite her obvious lack of comfort when addressing him as anything other than Captain. Everything told him the crew had accepted her from the get-go. It satisfied his ego to know they mourned his false death, and he had a feeling it was more a mourning for Rochelle's obvious and palatable suffering as a result. She was made to lead, designed to overcome, and bred to be in control. Landon was less so, since his base motivations were self-involved once you dug into them deep enough. He had been taught since he was a child that no one would get ahead in life by helping everyone but oneself, and even after growing up, joining with Neyes, and Captaining a starship... a small part of him still believed that. Losing his parents, his home, and his friends all added up to a Trill whose memories of past lives had been sullied by the fear of losing it all over again.

Leaving her was out of the question, however. His internal struggles aside, there was nothing inside him which would allow her out of his sights. Rochelle was the thing that kept him alive. The promise of a future he would welcome with open arms, even if it was harder than simply leaving Starfleet altogether to return to Trill.

He looked over his shoulder toward the holographic replica of Lareth, and she returned the look with a repugnant grin. "This," Landon started, "is not how I would inflict suffering on such a waste of a creature. She played a hand in both our own suffering, for months, and then tried her damnedest to annihilate this entire crew.

"Ultimately though, she did it out of fear." He looked to Rochelle. "We could learn from her mistakes."

The canting of the wee Captain's head was a slow movement, carefully executed as she brought her right ear to the coordinating shoulder in an obvious effort to study the pixel produced image of the green blooded bitch. Landon's words weighed heavily as the fine features of her nose wrinkled gently and her eyes danced across the expanse of the sage colored skin of the other woman's face. To say Rochelle hated Lareth would have been an understatement. No forty would be poured in respect for that loss. While she'd been a nuisance during the fight, she'd become so much more after the back story had been revealed. Lareth, and everything and one like her, quickly scrawled their names on the redhead's black list. "Fear of what? Failing and becoming cannon fodder for Tr'bak?" She asked without looking back towards him.

He always had been more practical, less prone to charging head long into things simply on a whim or spur of the moment reaction. He was patience and virtue, but he wasn't infallible. Still... Captain or not, she'd forever look to him for advice and guidance, that's just how such a level of trust worked. From him she'd already learned so much, and still she blamed herself for his capture. If she'd stayed with him, or if she'd stayed put watching out for Almar, none of it would ever have happened and life would have continued down the line of the status quo she'd grown comfortable with. Both of them, however, knew that Rochelle hadn't been bred for comfortable routines. There would have come a time she'd have been called to leave him in order to take command of some vessel or another and saying no would have killed any and all veil of disinterest she may have feigned for sake of his, and her, career. The blame game would never end, even if she was able to soothe herself with the happiness the fact he was alive brought to her. The caveat was keeping him safe... and sane.

Lareth was dead, but her spirit would still haunt the two of them so long as her puppeteer still lurked in the shadows. That fact was one of the biggest reasons for the Captain's decision to see the Vindicator be refit; to avoid being snuck up on in the dark ever again. "Or is it deeper?" She asked, drawing her attention away from the Romulan and straightening up to address Landon directly.

"It is rarely deeper than our own fear." He said, taking a moment to note his own fear of losing her again. "She was a pawn being moved by forces outside her control. Romulans are layers of masters and slaves. Their loyalties are governed by a complex set of cultural ideologies, governments, and expectations. Just like everyone else.

"Except humans." He said. "Your people have managed to elude what just about every other race in the galaxy has fallen victim to. You think freely, by definition. If I had been raised on Trill, or if Tristan had been, I have no doubt that you and I never would have met. Even the most reserved Trill is flighty and ambitious. Our expectation is to be better than our peers because they might be seen as more worthy of joining is paramount. We have to be better than them, and anyone who might be seen as better than us. It means being flexible, and diligent, peaceful but driven. It's why my people join Vulcans in our technological excellence. We add to the Federation, but had we not joined we would be in a silent competitive battle to stay ahead of you for no reason at all.

"Lareth failed to keep her mission under control. She failed in the eyes of her crew and her people, probably long before she attacked us. She was most likely desperate, and only partly aware of Tr'bak using her along the way. He told me so in our 'talks'. If she had been more conscious of the powers working to put her down, maybe she could have outwitted them.

"That's what I try to do every day, and what you do out of natural grace." He looked at her, tossing his new weaponized rods at the corner of the room. They clanged loudly against the floor as he walked toward her, strolling up to with a hair's breadth of her, and rubbed the back of her neck. Rochelle was the living image of a Captain working her way out of a vice. Her ship had been nearly destroyed twice, and it was enough to put knots in anyone's shoulders. "Is that all you came to tell me? That we're leaving in the morning?" He smiled.

"You're preaching to the choir with most of it." The woman gifted him with a wry soft of smile. She'd watched the measured way in which he handled life, the staving off of temptation and the way he embraced order and calculations. The man had become a warrior in spite of his race dictating that he be more scholarly, but his drive had always been one of the things she admired most. "I've known for a long time that the human race defies the laws and logic of every other that we've come across so far. We're still so young compared to everyone else running in the space race, but we've made leaps and bounds with our technology. I think it may be because we simply exist for the sole reasons of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. At least that's what they cram down our throats in primary school and it seems to stick regardless of all indications to the contrary." She chuckled lightly. "I'll just be sure to send thanks to Cesparia for dabbling in our brand of witchcraft and that it churned you and Tristan out of the proverbial mill."

Everything told her that his touch was one of those forbidden fruits and that she was supposed to deny him and keep him at arm's length. He, however, made it an impossibility. Around him she wasn't the Commander she’d once been, nor was she the Captain of the ship or the newly crowned Queen or the Commodore... She was Rochelle and she was steadily melting in spite of herself and what little reserve of restraint she clung to after the surprise of having him gifted back into her life. Part of her secretly thought a Q was sitting somewhere in the shadows, watching and smirking as if their lives were a little play put on for their entertainment only – or that she was still laying on Rotek's table dreaming as he tried to figure out how to put her back together from head trauma. The pressure of his fingers drawing down the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades tried to promise her that it was still real. The twinge of pain as they rolled over a knot served as a mental slap, how dare she even think anything to the contrary?

Her fingers unlaced to allow her hands to rest at her sides, if she'd flexed them even slightly she'd have touched the bare skin of his speckled lower belly. Now what was it that he'd asked her? Oh yes... "No." She responded honestly with a slight shake of her head. "I was wondering if you'd like to get away from this mess and walk with me?"

Landon continued to press into the tense muscles of the little redhead's shoulders and back. Not too much, but just enough to force her to try to relax. He realized quickly that she kept moving her hands forward, keeping them just behind an invisible barrier between them. Even with his hands massaging her, and the question to take a stroll somewhere, she was struggling to find a balance with him.

Naturally, he inched closer to her.

He remembered he'd been shirtless for the sake of keeping cool in the holodeck, which wasn't uncommon for anyone practicing in a physicality program. In this case, he took particular pleasure in teasing her with her silly need to stay in command around him. He leaned in, his body pressed against her as he whispered, "Try to remember I was relieved of command, and I am not officially a member of your crew, Rochelle." His tone was playful, however hard he tried to come across as informative.

"But..." She half-heartedly protested as the strength of his body molded so deftly along her back. The heat of him, even with his chilled hands taken into consideration, anchored his words as a constant reminder that the pretenses that kept them at arm's length were dead and gone.

"But of course," he relented, pulling away and moving toward the wall to retrieve his shirt. "Where did you have in mind?" He asked, suddenly resuming his friendlier, less intimate stance with her. He’d felt the knot give way beneath his fingers, and knew that hadn’t been all that had started to come loose.


-- continued in part II --

Captain Rochelle Ivanova
Commanding Officer
USS Vindicator

Captain Landon Neyes
Former CO / Unassigned
USS Vindicator

 

RSS Feed