One Step at a Time
Posted on Tue Jun 25th, 2019 @ 3:17pm by Staff Warrant Officer Jennifer Masters - Calhoun & Major Cornelius Tremble
Edited on on Wed Jun 26th, 2019 @ 12:00am
1,631 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
Episode 7 - Home Again
Location: USS Pioneer - SCIF
Timeline: MD003 1900 hrs
Neil walked purposely through the corridors of the Pioneer, avoiding the work crews when needed and tried to keep both his nerve and his focus for what was to come next. Why this should make him nervous was obvious to him.
And he hated it.
His steps slowed as he neared the SCIF then he steeled his shoulders and pushed forward and hit the annunciator, “Lt. Tremble to see SWO Masters.
Jenn was in her office. She of course had seen him coming. She was curious as to why there was no one in the foyer to greet him. She looked on her security screens and saw Sergeant Miller coming from one of the restrooms. But her security officer, ensign Pawls was gone as well. This was highly unusually.
She got up and walked out of her office, through the main room to the foyer. She opened the door only to bump in to the tall Marine. A silence fell. She looked to the desk in the foyer. "Your sergeant and the security ensign were away from their post. I don't know where Pawls is. This not how I run this place. She pushed him aside a second.
"Yo, Miller, find Pawls, get him in to my office asap. Let him know he is on report! This is the second time this week that he left his post." She turned back to Neil. "Sorry for that." She stepped aside. "Please come to my office, that talks easier." She said pointed to the office door at the other end of the door.
"If you're having trouble with the Sgt., tell Wilson and she'll arrange some re-education training for him," Neil said as he headed toward her office. He stepped inside and waited as she moved past and took her seat.
"Well, I suppose I should ask. Exactly what did happen down there? I remember talking to a Cardassian, but then things kind of greyed out."
She took a seat rubbing her face. He vision still blurred sometimes, but it was temporary the doctor said. "Pleas sit down." She pointed to a chair. "What happened is we came to rescue you. And you weren't you. You looked at me like I just done a terrible thing to you. A very terrible thing. You broke my nose. And I tried to...I tried to kill you." She spoke out the last bit almost whispering. "And while I was doing so, you... tried to poke my eyes out." She sighed. "It hurt so much, and when we got to sickbay I went blind. I couldn't see. As if the pain wasn't enough." Before she knew it, she felt a tear on her cheek. she cursed quietly. This was the second time since the accident she started crying.
It wasn't often Neil felt like a heel, but this was one of them. Part of him wanted to tell her she had killed her. According to his medical file, he'd been dead for five minutes. That somehow didn't seem appropriate just now.
Some of the fog had cleared and he voiced what he thought he remembered. "I. There's something up here," he said, tapping the side of his head,"That seems recent. But an old memory too. Fighting Jem ha'Dar...and then a Vorta. I was captured when I served on the Hood..." Trailing off he could only look at Jenn.
"All I can really say is that I"m sorry Jenn. That I wasn't in my own mind really doesn't change that." He was tempted to stand and put his hand on her shoulder, but wasn't sure how that would be received, so he kept his seat.
Jenn tried to wipe the tears away, but the flood gates were open once more, and there was no stopping. "Neil, You are a good friend, I know you were under the influence, it wasn't your fault." It then hit her, why this was the last straw for her. Why she was caving in now.
"I had a friend once. He was more than a friend. I trusted him and he betrayed me." Jenn closed her eyes. She wasn't sure why she talked about it now. But she felt like she needed to. "He didn't poke my eyes out or anything. But he did hurt me. I was so alone. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. Nothing. And then you....I think my heart hurts more then my eyes. It is so hard for me to make the right friends. I try so hard, to trust again."
She sighed.
Neil listened, then got up and put his hand on Jenn's shoulder as he sat on the corner of her desk. "You probably don't know, but I'm scared of the dark." He said by way of sharing, thinking maybe it would help. "I got into a nasty situation on Garalall and it's something else I don't remember much of. Nearly two days of being in the dark with...things I can't really describe and don't want to, left me scared of the dark."
He smiled then, "That's how I picked up the tag Tentative Tremble. And that took me years to shake off. Both the name and being scared of the dark. I took EOD training because the threat of dying by explosives seemed less daunting."
Finally, he stopped. "I guess what I'm trying to say is we all have things, if we live long enough in this business, to work past. Trust is hard and honestly I'd have much rather have had you kill me than I hurt anyone."
Silence hung for a moment, then he said "We're a fine pair, aren't we sister?"
Jenn smiled. "Yes we are." She put her hand on his hand, that was resting on her shoulder. "Please don't be so hard on yourself. You have been through a lot, seen a lot. A lot more than I have. I just hope we never have to face each other like that again."
"No rematch?" Neil grinned. "I'm already setting up JG Ó Flannagáin and daughter for self-defense training, which will probably include some E&E. So, if you want a chance to pound on me, apparently there is a line forming."
Jenn sighed and said, "I think I've pounded you enough, don't think? I think at one point I jumped on you, flooring you. And you are much taller than me."
"We cross-trained with Fleet tactical when I was going through RECON," he reminisced," and one of their instructors was maybe 150 cm and 50 kg soaking wet. She'd routinely be balancing on our chests with one foot while the other was on our throats as she asked our thoughts on the fact that she'd been too small to join the Corp."
Then more seriously he said, "I don't know. There's so much milling around in my head right now everything seems about four degrees off bubble."
Jenn got up and then put her arms around him to hug him. "I have a brother, a younger brother, he is not in the fleet. He has people taking care of him. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't take care of me." She let go of him. "And then I have a sister, she is so consumed with a career and a family, I sometimes miss her. She writes me sometimes. My parents died when I was younger. I was so jealous of my sister, she was the perfect person. Perfect career, perfect life, perfect daughter...perfect child." She tilted her head as she thought of something. "Although there is one thing that I am better at. Linda is such a slob. For someone with the perfect everything, she doesn't clean her quarters that well. And I am so neat, my roommate in the academy told me to please go sleep with the marines. Cause they probably appreciate my punctuality more. But as you know, I have a problem with obeying orders." She laughed. "I wonder what it would be like though."
Neil hugged Jenn back, listening to her relate her family and he grinned. "Your roommate told you to go sleep with the marines? All of them? That's kind of ambitious."
Jenn laughed. "She hated how neat I was. So I should've slept in the barracks. Well, I had been sleeping with the marines, I probably would've been in the academy still." She giggled.
"Teaching or...?" Neil chuckled. "At any rate, thanks for cutting me a break on all this. I'd say I owe you, but it's past that. We're family now."
Then he grinned, "It's not quite as deep as the apparent blood debt I owe this Klingon, but did you hear anything about a half Klingon named Larta beaming aboard and laying a lip-lock on the XO?"
Jen grinned. "Oh yea, we're intelligence people, we write the book of gossip and disinformation. And we usually listen in on anything interesting. And you can't find anyone that doesn't know that."
Snickering slightly, Neil leaned back against her desk then. "He's lucky he didn't lose a lip. Anyway, now that we've cleared the air over all that, we should find some place with lots of good booze and see if I can't lose time for a few more days."
Jenn looked to Neil with a grin. She got up. "Let's go to the station. The White Stag has just what you need."
"Sounds right to me," Neil replied. "The last time I was there they had some decent bourbon."
A Joint Post By
First Lieutenant Cornelius Tremble
Marine Commanding Officer, USS Pioneer
Staff Warrant Officer Jennifer Masters
Chief Intelligence Officer, USS Pioneer
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