SD242012.25 |

Posted on Sun Feb 19th, 2023 @ 4:07am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova & Lieutenant Anaxar Shran & Lieutenant Si'a Dai'xun Shran

2,364 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Genesis

Dismal. Sad. Insecure. Angry.

The feelings of the Vindicator had quickly spiraled down into a manifesto of misery and discord the moment word of the Commodore's disappearance and death hit its hull. Si'a was not immune to the melancholy. The Commodore had done a great deal for her and for her people. It wasn't likely that Si'a would even have been there had it not been for the woman's more gregarious beliefs and attempts to right wrongs and dot i's and cross t's and-- She blinked, chasing away the rambling nature of her thoughts.

The rock sample in front of her hardly held any luster anymore. Outwardly is shone radiant and bright with the all the colors of the rainbow swirled within what appeared to be some sort of crystalline shell. It could have been a star itself had it not been for the fact that stars were gaseous bodies and would have evaded capture by outsizing and blinding the entire ship. This time she sighed, chewing her lip. "I'm sorry, but I can't concrete," Concentrate, dammit, "with everything happening. Besides. This isn't a star and I..." Another sigh. Arguing against her own merits was counter productive. Instead she turned to come face to sternum with Anaxar. Surprised to find him so close, she couldn't help but take advantage of the nearness to wrap her arms around her husband's narrow waist.

Anaxar returned the hug, held her tight. She needed his touch and his comfort, just as he needed hers. The sudden loss of the Commodore had awoken memories whose slumber were uneasy at the best of times. Death could come so easily, with the speed of light. One flash and a shuttle crashes. One flip of a coin where someone turns left instead of right could make that difference. One flash and a ship is destroyed, a crew lost-

He pushed those thoughts away with the ease of long practice, knowing that they'd come back somewhere in the middle of the night. Not right now, though, and that was good. Now he could focus on the comfort he had and the comfort he could give. The knowledge that for the survivors, life went on, that people could come together and grieve as one.

"I know," he whispered, still holding her. "The analysis can wait. There are more important things right now."

In the big bright shiny spectrum of things, Si'a was but a tiny little speck of energy. Even in the smaller scale consideration of life and things within it, she was still but itty bitty. Happenings and times like the present were things that had a way of making her feel even smaller, but she hardly resigned to the feelings of helplessness and being inconsequential. She wanted, more like needed, to do something. Anything.

Her nose poked out from under a crease in the Andorian's tunic and she followed it with her eyes, looking up at him with her usual good measure of admiration. Beneath her finely tuned ear, his heart and quickened a pace and was settling back down. It was to be expected, everyone was hurt and locked in their own heads wondering what could have been done without truly knowing the full explanation. "I feel worst for Commander Dah'el," She sniffed, "He must blame himself for what happened." Same way that Anaxar would undoubtedly blame himself if something were to happen to her or their son on his watch. Same way she'd blame herself if something happened to him.

Was that how he'd felt back in those prisons or when she'd been taken?

The thought brought to her a full body shiver and her arms tightened around him.

"There is absolutely no reason for him to blame himself…" Anaxar began, but his antennae twitched and he sighed. "No logical reason. But few people can look at what happened logically. Yes, I'm sure he'll go over every scenario. Had the shuttle been checked properly? Could he have done anything to prevent it?" Stars knew that after the battle which had cost him his eyes and so much more, he had spent countless hours going over the sequence of events, pondering over the 'what if's' and 'maybe's' until it felt his head would explode. But he hadn't been part of a whole then, just one man on one ship in a complex situation. This was so much more personal, so much more direct. If it had been Si'a- No, that would be unthinkable. He would lose his mind if something happened to her. And if his son would be with her, if he would lose his kelthreh in one blow-

His mind abruptly made yet another connection and his antennae drooped. "And her poor son, great stars above." Though he had only seen the Commodore's former husband and her son only a few times before they left the ship, they must be hurting too. So, so bad. He stroked Si'a's hair, both to comfort her and to reassure himself that she was real, tangible, and all here. "Sometimes I envy the Vulcans…"

Ah yes. The Vulcans with their lack of emotion often came across as cold and sterile even in the best hearted of situation. It was a wonder if they could even understand joy, though Si'a had seen a few greet one another with smiles. Smiles were often associated with happy feelings and feelings were emotions. It was all entirely way too confusing for a creature as gregarious and driven by emotion as Si'a. "I don't." She piped up, her voice partially muffled by his warm chest, "we feel sadness and grief because we also feel love. I wouldn't want to exist in a society that didn't celebrate love." Even if it did mean a son now mourned the loss of his mother and a husband grieved his wife. Si'a knew full well that death, especially tragic death, was all the more cause to celebrate life. "She'd want us to feel."

Anaxar could've told her that Vulcans could be very passionate indeed, which was why they embarked on the whole emotion-suppressing thing to begin with. Under the circumstances, though, that never occurred to him. "Yes, she would," he replied, still softly stroking Si'a's hair. "If there was anyone who ever approached life with full passion and strength, it was her." And you, he thought, but didn't say aloud. Always you.

"Then maybe we should leave the stone alone today," The itty bitty Stenellis looked up at him, trying to read the little tells of his emotional state. The visor made things difficult for those that didn't know him, most beings looked to the eyes first and to Si'a that was almost like cheating when it came to reading people. Anaxar's emotions played out in many different ways, all of them uniquely him. His antennae were often the quickest way to figure things out, but she couldn't quite make them out from her angle. Instead she had to rely on the tension in his jaw, the way he held his mouth, and the rhythm of his heart. There was sadness there and a touch of concern. "Maybe we should stow ourselves away for the day and just, I don't know..." Si'a puffed, trying to gather her thoughts into the correct language, "You know?" He always knew.

"Celebrate life, even amidst sadness and grief," Anaxar said softly, his rough voice almost a whisper. "Yes. Leave the stone. The work can wait." He lifted her as easily as he would lift his son and carried her into his office. "Computer, engage privacy mode."

"Privacy mode engaged."

There were no giggles, the adrenaline for such things that normally came with an act - such as the one they commit - being conducted in such a risky and unorthodox place. It wasn't for the thrill. It was far more sanctimonious and far more deep than a simple mid-day office dalliance or boil over from a game of grab ass. It was about life. About realizing how fragile and delicate and sometimes fickle life could be. How it could be extinguished in the blink of an eye without even a gesture of warning.

For Si'a it was about the closeness and the connection, the feeling of being one with the person she loved and shared her existence with. Lab coats and tunics presented far too many layers, but were hardly a challenge. By the time he rested her pert little rear against his desk, she'd manage to shed hers along with all thought to the random rutilated space rock they'd been studying. His was next, then the long zipper along his tunic, then his duty slacks and so on. There was nothing rushed about any of this. It was methodical, gentle, punctuated by kisses and a pause to free his snowy mane from the neat ponytail he kept it in while he ended her affair with her uniform.

Stars above she loved his hair and the way the light caught it and how bright it was as it lay against his azure shoulders. Her slender little fingers ran through it, toying with the ends before they found the comforting warmth of his skin at his collarbone. "Do you remember the spiders?" Si'a voice was a husky, breathy laugh that was ultimately silenced by her lips settling on his chest over the beating of his heart. Its pace had quickened, but it spoke of strength and control, a man in that was comfortable and in his element. They'd come so far since the spiders.

"Oh yes, do I ever." Whatever happens in decon remains in decon… He remembered it vividly: the spiders crawling around, trying to escape the lab, Si'a's total panic. Shutting down the lab and sterilizing it, then themselves. The report he had written about the incident had been dry and factual, reflecting nothing of what really happened. It was the first time since his accident that anyone had looked at him with interest and fascination instead of repulsion, the first time that he had even allowed himself to consider the possibility of making a true connection to someone else, friendship, maybe even more.

He smiled, that rare smile which had once been exclusively reserved for her, which now extended to include his son, and traced the coloured spots on her skin with his slender fingers. "I never believed then that we would end up together… Dreamed about it, but it seemed as unattainable as the stars outside…"

"It gave me one single reason to like spiders." The wee starchild managed to nod, "Two impossible things came of it, or so we kinda thought." She added, her eyes barely open as her greater mind focused on what his fingers were doing and the way his scarred flesh felt against her bare skin. It was always a marvel, how her stars worked with his scars to create charts to some hidden galaxy only they knew of, "I wouldn't change it. Not a second of it... Except maybe kicking you, that's still a regret."

"You hurt yourself more than you hurt me. I got worse bruises from training in the holodeck," Anaxar replied. The delicate touch of her hands, her smell… He remembered how it had kept him awake that night, the memory of fingers tracing his scars in the same fashion as he touched her spots. Confused, half afraid, daring to hope. Those few touches had banished has nightmares that night. Her presence, later, had banished so many others. Occasionally they recurred, but their appearances nowadays were few and far between. And waking from them had changed from a panicky gasp in the dark to waking up and feeling her nearby – just feeling her lying next to him was enough to banish those dreams back to their realm, back to were they belonged.

A couple of broken toes had been a teensy weensy price to pay in the long run. When it had actually transpired, she'd thought she'd die of embarrassment and be shipped back to Apsha in a box with a couple holes in it. Express. There'd been no box, a handful of blunders, but no box. A hand moved to rest between his pecs, remembering something far more sinister than the spiders. Remembering a shuttle crash of a different nature, one where she'd nearly lost him. It sometimes haunted her dreams, the sensation of him bleeding out all around her hands no matter how she tried to staunch the flow. Her lips soon replaced her hand, murmuring her thank yous to the Gods and the stars that watched over them that he hadn't been stolen from her that day or in the days that followed in that dark, dank, cell.

"I suppose the ends just fried the means." Justified, dork.

His devotion had humbled her then as much as it continued to now. Valiant, sweet, wonderful Anaxar. He'd grown in so many ways. No longer a touch too thin, he could hardly be described as spindly or awkward even in spite of his height and overall lankiness. He was more sure of himself, less detached from life as a whole. Life, and all of its twists and turns, was an amazing thing.

He shivered at the touch of her hand, a shiver of more than pleasure, one which showed that he, too, remembered that other crash and everything that followed, that long dark night where he thought he'd lose her forever, so soon after finding her. Somehow they'd made it through. Somehow they both pulled through. They had been joined there, in the dark, and that union had only strengthened since then.

He moved, touched her lips with his own, drew her closer. Height differences no longer mattered when they were lying down.

Maybe there were more words, fragments of thoughts, whispers in the soundproof office. Words were no longer important, they were merely an extension of what they already were. Two beings joined as one, seeking and finding each other, celebrating life in the midst of grief and loss.

---

Lieutenant Anaxar Shran
Chief Science Officer
USS Vindicator, NX-78213-F

Lieutenant Si'a Shran
Stellar Cartographer
USS Vindicator, NX-78213-F

 

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