BACKLOG - JL | Com Ivanova, Cmdr Dahe'el - "Paint It Black"

Posted on Sat May 2nd, 2015 @ 6:39pm by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova
Edited on on Sun May 3rd, 2015 @ 1:33am

3,981 words; about a 20 minute read

Mission: Agua Mala

When Cecil had prattled off his top of the morning report, Rochelle had sat quietly and taken it. She'd nodded and smoothed her hands over the warm comforter of her bed and played the role of the subdued and resting patient. Rotek had held her captive for a couple days before decided she was safe enough on a ship that was headed back to friendly territory. The only portion of the report that had caught her true attention was news of how the ship's engines were running. While few had seen Almar, the submission of his records meant he was still ever present and Cecil's voice had slowly been droned out by the pulsing hum of Vindicator's voice as she beckoned the Commodore to action.

It hadn't taken much to confirm that Almar was scheduled for shift rotation, and after Cecil had gone back to the bridge, Rochelle had gotten dressed. The thin, gauze like fabric of her sweater left her healing injuries well enough alone. She'd owned it since before her days at the Academy, it's neck had long since lost the shape forming line of it's hem, leaving it largely clinging to one shoulder - baring the other down nearly to mid-arm. While she'd been well doctored, knitted, and repaired but the pain was still there and the skin still sensitive and raw where the autosuture had gone across and closed the gaping wound across her tender throat. The bruises were all but gone, bare whispers across her sternum and clavicle where bone had been broken beneath them and, of course, 'healed' by Rotek's careful hand. If she'd cared to look in a mirror, she'd have seen the dark circles still caressing the skin beneath her eyes and just how pale she truly was after such a trauma. Pale, that is, aside from pink tinge across her cheeks where the front burn hadn't been severe enough to warrant treatment beyond moisturizer.

A couple eyes lifted seeing the Commodore navigating the corridors with a bare shoulder and her hair tugged into a quick and messy bun. They'd never say a word, however uncharacteristic her frail and casual appearance was.

"You don't write. You don't call. I was beginning to think you'd lapsed out of existence." Rochelle greeted the Cardassian as she made her way into the bowels of main Engineering. A young junior officer did a quick double take before deciding that the Commodore wasn't worth tangling with whether or not she was in uniform. Especially not the way she'd blown in and confronted the Chief with folded arms and a lofted brow.

Hanging, it was a position he'd been caught in multiple times, hanging by his feet under one of the gantrys above the Quantite Fusion Reactor, inspecting one of the housings while the core was offline, his hands caressing the materials and his finely tuned sense of touch letting him know what it was saying, a tricorder could only tell you the basics, the mere information.

"Commodore." Almar replied as he raised a brow and turned to look in her direction, the voice had broken his concentration and it was one he'd hoped to avoid for now. Everything that had happened on the planet was still raw in his mind and the events with Q had just confused and frustrated him even more, the solace of his jefferies tubes was a peace he sought out regularly.

She watched the Cardassian as he swung in suspension, carefully working. Her weight shifted from one hip to the other and her head tilted to bring her ear nearly to its coordinating shoulder as she watched him. "Really?" Her eyebrows lifted in emphasis.

Mechanical could be the only word to describe Almar's reaction at her presence, he ached and the only way he knew of dealing with things like this was to shut himself away and to throw himself into his work, into the only other thing he loved in this life, "Do you need to speak with me, Commodore?"

The cold blue of her eyes closed, and Rochelle shook her head. "Pointless." She huffed with a shake of her head. "Carry on, Commander." Things were cold and sterile, hardly filled with the warm that had enshrouded her as recently as their time in Crown King. "I was a fool." She muttered as she began to take her leave of the Commander. He'd promised her he'd always come for her, save her, protect her, but in her time of need trapped in a cold bunker, and later laying there bleeding in Amelia's arms, hide nor hair of the Cardassian had been felt or seen. What had transpired on Atlantis had been a mockery of convention. It had burnt, singed, and torn at more than just his heart -- it had broken hers to have to watch his fall from grace.

Flipping himself down from the gantry, the Cardassian made his way over to the Commodore as she turned to leave, a large hand placed gently on her bare shoulder, his touch as soft as ever when he dealt with her, "Rochelle..."

A shuffle, the jingle of unclipped D-rings, and hurried steps all heralded his approach. His touch, as it fell against her skin, was almost an after thought. Warm, inviting, quietly commanding; it begged for her to shut down any and all forward motion. Her eyes closed as she stopped and her arms tightened their fold across her chest. "I wanted to tell you in Arizona, and I choked." The words tumbled from her lips unceremoniously, sounding heavy and sodden to her as she spoke them, caustic because of their content.

She was colder to the touch than he had expected and he used his hand to guide her towards the door of his office, "Come and sit, we'll talk about it in private," Almar replied softly as he removed his hand and entered his codes to open the office, taking a step back from the doorway and gesturing for her to enter.

"Ok." Rochelle nodded, swallowing the building knot in her throat. Against his hand she felt like nothing more than a petal on a gentle breeze, hardly able to rebel against his suggestion of her direction. Vindicator was a massive ship, made more so by the taxing nature of her tired little body. It had been a feat, one Rotek would likely have tanned her ass for if he knew she'd so much as left bed, let alone trod down from her quarters to Engineering. Lucky for her, though several sizes too large, the sweater she wore conveniently swallowed her and offered warmth in an environment she would normally found nearly unbearably hot. The Commodore shivered when the door closed behind them and lowered herself into one of the chairs in front of his desk, taxed by the situation and her own frailty in ways that irritated her beyond belief and nearly to the point of angry tears. "I'm sorry." She said, unable to raise her eyes to him.

Almar found himself perching on his desk and hefting himself up, "Why didn't you tell me, Rochelle?" the Cardassian asked as he placed his hands on his knees, his heart shifting up into his throat as he forced himself to speak about it.

"Because I didn't know how." She replied and then shrugged, "I didn't think it mattered and it became easier and easier just to let it slide." Her honesty was only emphasized by the shaking of her head as she spoke. From the corners of her vision she could see his body language and the way his hands slid along his pants.

"So everything that happened between us... the time we spent together... why? when you had someone else, why did you come to me?" He replied, his voice getting softer as he dug amongst his feelings, all of this was new to him and he was desperately grasping around, seeking answers.

Rochelle's jaw tightened and flexed as she considered the question. It was fair, more than fair, but the way it was tainted by pain forced her to feel inadequate and coaxed a generous measure of resentment up to the surface of her emotional tide pool. "Because..." She started, trying to muster the fortitude to look at him. "Because you always knew there was someone else." It was almost a tangible, physical pain to bring her eyes to his face, but sitting there like a scolded school child was hardly the way for her to combat the issue at hand. "You knew how much I loved Landon from the word go." The Commodore paused, her head shaking, "Then again there was never a word go from you. Ever."

Their eyes met and it dug into him again, they tugged at his heart and forced the lump further into his throat, "I've never been in this position before, Rochelle," Almar replied as he cleared his throat, attempting to force it back down so he could continue on with the conversation, "No one has ever given me the time of day, let alone engaged with me long enough for something like this to develop."

The redhead's tongue worried the fullness of her lower lip and she nodded as she listened to him, understanding well enough what he was saying. Her lips tightened into a thin line as she regarded him and her eyebrows lifted a few seconds before her shoulders did likewise and the nod turned into a head shake, "I don't know what to tell you, Almar. Nothing I say is going to make you feel better and I'm not going to be made to feel ashamed of what happened between Landon and I. I shouldn't be." She said, "But I am sorry that you found out the way you did."

"I just wish you had taken the time to tell me, Rochelle." Almar replied, his voice calming and quieting throughout the statement as his gaze dropped and he made his way to his seat. Taking the weight off his feet afforded him a few moments to think as he looked back up at the woman sat opposite him, "You asked me once to define what I felt... what I felt when we were together, but I couldn't verbalize it. I'm not versed in this kind of thing, it's as alien to me as the thought of having telepathic powers."

Rochelle blinked as she listened to what the Cardassian had to say. All of it resonated, all of it dug at the deeper reaches of her psyche and beckoned to the parts of her that she kept so carefully guarded. Almar's spirit had always begged for her to drop her walls and let him soothe what it was that had hurt her over the years. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she found herself dragging her eyes from him to study the still frost pinked lines of her fingers and the healing abrasions that marred them. "But when you say nothing at all, people move on." She shrugged, "They feel unwanted and that any emotions they may have felt are... Well... Unrequited."

"I tried to say something. I tried to put what I feel into words," the Cardassian replied as he dropped his head into his hands and began to break down softly. It was the first time since he'd found out that he'd even thought to confront it, to confront his feelings and what he truly felt, "You make me feel alive, Rochelle, something happens when I'm with you and it just changes everything about the world."

Her weight shifted in the seat she'd taken and the tiny little firebrand crossed her legs as if putting up yet another barrier between them -- but it wasn't him she was trying to block out or chase away. It was emotion and the quiet ineptitude that threatened to overwhelm her. "I don't..." Rochelle began to reply, her voice quiet and somber until she stilled it and tried to drag the loose, destroyed collar of her old sweater up over her bare shoulder. It slipped back off as soon as she released it. "I don't know how to reply to that, Almar. I'm not some sort of super hero or somehow able to erase the past or brighten the future, if I could we wouldn't be in this position to begin with."

"I'm not asking you to, Rochelle," Almar replied as his voice finally began to tremor, his resolve breaking completely as he continued to hold his head in his hands, "I just could never find the way to tell you that I love you that didn't seem completely hollow or false," he blurted out as a tear splashed on his desk, "Every time I tried to tell you it just never seemed to come out right, it always seemed like it was the wrong thing to say even though every single part of me wanted to say it, I just couldn't draw myself to say it."

Closing her eyes, Rochelle willed herself to slide into a hole in the bulkhead, somewhere, anywhere, far from the hot seat she was sitting in at that very moment. She couldn't look, couldn't speak, but forced herself to listen as the man lamented to her what had been eating away at him. She wanted to be angry with him for falling through on his end of the bargain, but couldn't seem to muster the necessary ire. She wanted to snap at him for things coming too little too late, but couldn't draw up the strength to break him further. In effect, he'd backed her into the same corner the Atlanteans had thrown him in with her unwilling aid. "I'm sorry I hurt you so badly... Sorry I misunderstood." Was all she could whisper, sinking deeper into her seat. "I didn't dare assume so I wound up assuming the opposite, that your heart belonged to Vindicator and keeping me happy was just another way of keeping the ship running at peak."

"I might love the Vindicator... but I could never be in love with her," the Engineer replied softly as it hit home that it was his nature that had caused part of this. The fact that for the entirety of his career he'd forced himself into the comforts of his specialty and then sought refuge among the wiring when things had been tough, "The Vindicator is just a ship, she's our ship, but she's not you. For decades I spent my life fleeing from personal interactions because the majority would go unfavorably, but you were different. You admitted as much to me when we first started talking; you wanted to hate me for my race, but once you took the time to talk to me, properly, you found yourself feeling different..." Almar stated as he raised his head from his hands, "Since then we've been close, closer than I have ever been with anyone before. You asked me to verbalize feelings I've never dealt with before, I wasn't even sure if I knew what I was feeling..."

Once again she could feel his eyes on her skin, searching and poking through the cracks of the armor she'd put up as a shield. Her arm's folded across her chest, wrapping about the littleness of her frame like a safety blanket. "This is all very true, Almar, but I'm not a mind reader." To Rochelle, her voice sounded hollow and weak, strained, and injured. "I don't see you simply as a Cardassian. I see you as a person, a person that I've grown to admire and trust implicitly, but I haven't a clue when it comes down to figuring out what's going on in your mind." She added, finally reopening her eyes to meet the darkness of his. "Not even the foggiest inkling. I'm so sorry, Almar. I thought I had been mistaken, made a mistake and I let it die. I can't take back what happened and I can't change what didn't."

A cough covered up the lump in his throat as he brushed the back of his hand across his eyes for a moment, "So... where do we go from here?"

"You come out of hiding." Rochelle replied slowly, working to push herself away from where she'd been hiding, pressed against the back of her chair. "And then we either sink or swim. We can't force things, and we can't bury them. I'm not ready to burn over poor communication."

"Agreed," Almar replied softly as he brushed his eyes again and straightened his jacket, standing as he did, "I'll spend some time away from the jefferies tubes for a bit."

Watching him as he stood, Rochelle worked up the strength to get to her own feet, "You have promises to keep and work to do, Almar." She softly said, reaching towards him. "Don't hide anymore. Just... Don't."

"I never once stopped doing the work, you noticed that or you'd have torn the ship apart to find me." The Cardassian replied with a slight sigh, "As for the promises, I just ask that you talk to me too."

Her fingers brushed over the back of one of his hands, "I noticed." Rochelle admitted with a nod, "But I also know by hiding, you're not getting the feel of the Vindicator in quite the same way." Her head listed to one side as she spoke, driving home her point with nothing more than a look. "I'll talk to you Almar, but you know as well as I do that you're not the only one who's socially inept."

"Perhaps we both need to make a bit more of an effort," the Cardassian replied with a slight sigh, it broke his heart to hear what he'd been subjected to on the planet, hearing it from her in private would have been much easier to handle.

"Perhaps," She nodded in agreement, "but I've never been one to kiss and tell, Almar. I wouldn't have the first clue on how to toddle up to someone and tell them about my sex life."

"I'm not asking you to tell me about your sex life," Almar replied with another slight sigh as he planted his head in his hands again, "I'd just like to be told one on one when there actually is more to your relationship with another man. You covered it up and tried to hide it, even after he'd disappeared after the threats of the symbiosis commission."

"Damn straight I did." Rochelle chortled in response, quickly folding her arms over her chest, "With everything we've been through and all of the proverbial things that go bump in the night and run around looking to rub us out of the roll call, it felt paramount that I keep things calm and quiet. You don't think the Commission wouldn't have tried using me as leverage to get what they want?" She leveled with him, her brows tightly knit and her lips a thin, grim line. "Again, Almar, as far as I knew you were interested in the ship and only the ship. How the Hell was I supposed to know that I needed to tell you 'oh hey, bee tea dubs, Landon and I are a thing'. You knew how I felt about Landon. It wasn't exactly a secret." She coughed and looked behind her to find her seat, sinking back into its stable confines.

"So what becomes of all the time we spent together, the times where we were much closer than friends, where we were much more than Captain and Engineer?" Almar replied as a tear came to his eye and drew a path down his face, "What did you think was going on? That I was just looking to use you as a comfort that the ship couldn't provide?" he asked, his blood beginning to rise slightly as he wound himself up, "The nights we spent together... they were more than just companionship to me, Rochelle."

"No!" She wailed, bringing a sleeve covered hand down harshly against the arm of her chair, "I never once said, thought, or implied that I was being used, Almar! I thought I was just an extension of the ship, that you'd do whatever you thought would keep me happy in order to keep this ship running smoothly. That's what it felt like when I had a chance to sit back and think about why you couldn't commit!" There was anger and anguish there, irritation and frustration all bubbling to the surface as she tried to figure out how to communicate her muddled thoughts.

"I once told you that you were my best friend, and that I didn't want to screw things up by going any further." She sighed, brushing her ever present, and ever annoying, errant lock of hair from her flushed and frost burnt face, "We never did, and yet here we are, fighting because both of us were too fucking dense to realize what the other was trying to communicate." Part of her wanted to cry out of sheer vexation, but knew that crumbling into a pit of tired, emotionally charged tears wouldn't solve anything. It would only lead to further issues.

"I always wanted more though Rochelle, I just could never find the words to tell you, I could never verbalize it properly," the Cardassian replied as he broke down again, "I've never been through this again and when you stopped us from going further because I couldn't work out what to say, because I didn't know what was inside me, most people have experienced this all before as kids, but I'm over forty, Rochelle, yet I've never been in this situation before, I've never had to grapple with these feelings before and I've never had to verbalize them before."

It was Rochelle's turn to bury her had in her hands, shaking her head as she covered it in an attempt to hide away from the awkwardness of the moment. "I understand that now." Her voice was muffled by her hands and wrists as she spoke.

Almar's heavy form fell back into his chair and the Cardassian found himself shuffling padds around, his gaze lowered as the strain dug itself a hole into his being, he opened his mouth to speak, to break the silence that was building moment upon moment between them, but nothing came forth, his throat was dry and lay silent.

"I..." Her voice attempted to reprise itself, struggling to take hold, "I don't know how to fix it, Almar."

"I don't know if it can be fixed." Almar finally forced himself to say as he looked back up at her, he'd struggled with his feelings since he had sought refuge among the jefferies tubes, it had destroyed him.

The sound that came from her throat was more like a squeak than a chirp, and hardly something that could have been defined as a word. Rochelle had opened her mouth to say something only to have the wind sucked straight out of her proverbial sails and the entire sentence, now seemingly so futile, crumbled into nothing more than the shaking of the tiny woman's tired head. "I'm sorry to have bothered you today." She finally found within herself to say and gingerly pushed herself up from the seat she'd occupied to her feet. "I'll leave you to your work." Were words that hurt beyond comparison and were hardly the ending note she wanted to leave on.

"I'm sorry, Rochelle." Almar replied softly as he dropped his head back into his hands and placed it down on the desk.

Casting a final glance at him nearly sent her heart into her throat, "So am I." She replied with a nod, "So am I."

(End Log.)

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

&

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

 

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