Promotions, Rum, and Eggs

Posted on Tue Aug 9th, 2022 @ 5:54pm by Lieutenant Xavier Leiko & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII

Mission: Character Development
Location: Finn's Quarters/Tertiary Engineering
Timeline: MD:02
2397 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

When Xavier was sick, when he thought he was going to die on the forgotten planet of Ithaca II he faced it knowing that there were a few people on the ship who would miss him. The first was Jerant, the Betazoid/human hybrid who had made his feelings pretty clear and the two of them had a unique bond that transcended both being telepaths and both facing death together. The second one was Tey, Xavier's closest friend on the ship. The Trill was trouble, but they went way back and in truth, Xavier would be lost without him, not that he would ever admit that. And finally there was Finn, the spunky engineer who never let anything faze her. She had come to check on Xavier during his time of need, she had distracted him with work problems, and they were pretty much surrogate parents to an unborn space cow; her friendship in his time of need had meant everything to him and now was the time to replace the favour.

Xavier wasn't sure what had happened to Finn during her time on the Rondac station, but what he did know was that the woman who had returned had not been the same one he had known. She was there for him when he needed it and now he would be there for her. Which was why he was standing outside of her quarters, a real bottle of rum in one hand and a PADD in the other one. He pressed the chime and waited patiently for her to answer the door.

Finn rolled her eyes as the chime rang. Ever since she had been back it was non-stop people wanting to talk. To 'be there for her', but all she wanted was to be alone. To wallow in her misery and guilt in the dark depths of her quarters with melancholic classical music playing on repeat. However, knowing that whoever was at the door likely wasn't going away, Finn let out a deep breath, stopped the music, and stood to answer the door.

"Hi Xavier," she said as the door opened to reveal the ops officer. "Can I help you with something?" Finn feigned a smile, while deep down she just hoped it was somehow a mistake and that he would just go away.

"Well, Commander, we need to celebrate your promotion, and before you say no," he quickly added, seeing the look on Finn's face, "this is a tradition among my people and I would be greatly offended. Just be grateful it's just me and not me and Teyo."

Celebrating was the last thing she felt like doing, especially to celebrate something she wasn't entirely sure she deserved. Then again, she didn't want to offend the man that she come to call a friend. "Fine, but that had better be the good stuff," Finn smirked and pointed to the bottle Xavier carried. "Make yourself at home. I'll grab us some glasses."

"I never cheap out when I'm celebrating," Xavier said as he entered the room. He was grateful to be inside, for a second he thought that Finn was going to shut the door on his face, she really was a shadow of her former self right now. He bounded over to the couch and sat down and opened the bottle of rum, waiting for Finn to return with the glasses. Now he was inside he wasn't sure what to say for the best, he would usually use his telepathy to guide him in situations like this, but that was no longer an option. "So how does it feel knowing that I have to call you Sir?" He asked, trying to keep the mood light.

"Weird," Finn said, setting down the two glasses that were already partially filled. "I assumed you wanted a rum and coke. Rum always tastes better with cold coke right?" She half smirked. "How are things in ops?" It was somewhat of an empty question, but in truth, Finn didn't really want to talk about the promotion. She didn't want to talk about anything.

"Coke is fine," Xavier said as he filled up the glasses with the golden-coloured liquid. He handed one of the glasses to Finn and took a swig of the other one before placing it on the coffee table. "Ops is ops," he said. In truth he hadn't been there much recently, between running the department, preparing for the current mission, overseeing engineering, and looking after Benny, he was a bit stretched, not that he was complaining. "Oh I brought this over for you," he said as he handed her the PADD. "I know you're on light duty at the moment and I know that will drive you insane, so here's the specs for the recent refit, the crew rotation report, the energy consumption report, and a sort of Benedict diary, I've been keeping. Just some light reading really," he added with a sheepish smile.

Finn downed her entire drink in a few large gulps and started pouring another of pure rum as Xavier handed her the PADD. She stopped mid-pour and accepted the offering. "Have I ever told you that you're my favorite Xav?" She said with a beaming grin. Out of everyone she had talked to since her return, she felt in that moment as though Xavier might actually know her best.

A thought suddenly came to mind and Finn thought of Benedict. With everything else taking up so much of her mind's capacity, she had completely forgotten about him and instantly she felt as if a mother that had abandoned her child. "How's Benedict? I haven't even been by to see him yet," she said with a hint of regret.

"He's great," Xavier said enthusiastically as he eyed Finn's large rum. "I actually think he'll hatch soon. He's a smart boy too," he added with a hint of reservation in his voice. He wasn't too sure if he should bring up his adventures with the other Finn, but maybe this was the best way to approach the subject. "He's actually the one that figured out that the other Finn was an imposter."

"Really?" She raised a brow and finished pouring her drink. "What do you say to a field trip and you can tell me about it along the way?" Finn took a large sip from the glass of now pure rum. The first drink had started to settle already in her otherwise empty stomach and she was starting to feel good. Besides, it was high time she visited her surrogate space cow baby and what better time than now?

Xavier smiled as he finished the last of his drink, "sure," he replied, happy that Finn was willing to leave the safety of her quarters. "Let's go."

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A few minutes later the pair arrived at tertiary engineering, as Xavier finished his story. "Then security arrived, saved the day and that was the end of evil Finn," he said as he subconsciously rubbed the area where she had shot him.

Finn grimaced as he finished the story. "I'm sorry evil me shot you," she said, wondering how different she really was from her evil twin. She had let Silnan be tortured without a care in the world and apparently it wasn't difficult at all for her clone to shoot Xavier even with her memories of their times together. Finn would've considered the ops officer a close friend, but perhaps, she thought, no one should risk getting close to her.

Pushing the images from her mind temporarily, Finn walked up to the alien space egg. "Hey Ben," she whispered softly. "I missed ya bud," she said hoping that he would accept her presence after everything her clone had done. She placed her arms in a wide embrace around the unhatched baby space cow and held him tight for a minute almost wishing he could do the same in return. Her eyes threatened to leak out some of the pent-up guilt and Finn wiped them out of view before turning to Xavier. "Are his readings ok?"

"Perfect," Xavier answered the second the question had left Finn's lips. He too had been curious whether Benny would still recognise the real Finn and it looked like he was having no trouble telling the two apart. Smart boy, Xavier thought fondly. He turned to face the woman again wishing he still had the ability to dip into her mind. "You know you're not responsible for clone you right? Or Silnan..." He added, trailing off a bit. She hadn't mentioned the Cardassian once, but leaving him behind couldn't have been easy.

"You don't know, Xav," she half whispered before letting out a sigh. She wondered what had prompted him to say that. Had he seen her wipe her eyes or was he somehow picking up on something? "How are you doing by the way? Have you been able to figure out how to get your mind-reading powers back?"

Xavier smiled, noting Finn's subtle change of subject, but if that was what she needed then he would oblige. "I'm okay," he answered, feeling for the first time in a while that this was the truth. "Still no sign of my senses, but Jerant had a mind meld with Savin and he's started to regain some sort of feelings again. I actually think the same would work for me, unfortunately, that means asking my mother for assistance and I'm truly not ready for that conversation."

"Ah yes, your mother. The Admiral that hates tardiness and whom I would assume accepts nothing less than perfection?" Finn smiled softly. "I'm sure that wouldn't be an easy conversation. What about your dad? He couldn't help?" She asked, unsure. She knew his father was a retired Starfleet pilot, but they hadn't talked about him much beyond that.

Xavier shook his head sadly, "he's only half Betazoid and to be honest, he has never been the best telepathically. My brothers could help but I don't know where in the universe Quori is and Edan, well let's just say I'd rather ask my mother." He gave a half smile, family drama, who needed it? "I bet it's been ages since you last seen yours?" He added, shifting the conversation back on to her.

"I haven't seen them since before my posting on the Athena. We send letters back and forth and get together on video calls when we're within com range, which is relatively rare. You know how it is when everyone is in Starfleet galavanting across the galaxy," Finn smirked and leaned against Ben. It only took seconds after making contact with the creature that her features twisted in confusion. "Somethings up," she said rushing towards the panel. "I swear I could feel him moving in there and that hasn't happened before."

"You sure?" Xavier asked as he turned his attention to the readout screen. "Maybe you still don't have full feeling in your new fingers yet?" He joked. "Actually no you're right, the readings have changed. The density of the egg is weakening but from the inside. By the looks of it, he's absorbing the nutritious radiation, weakening the shell so he can burst through. Finn, we gotta get him off this ship," he said in shock as he turned to the engineering chief.

"No no no no," Finn shook her head as she observed the readings. She was happy that Benny was ready to emerge, but she had lost so much recently and she wasn't sure she was ready to lose Benedict just yet. "Maybe we can stop the process. Try siphoning off the radiation some! We can lower the nutrient content to slow him down."

"Finn... Commander, no!" Xavier said, surprised at her reaction. Damn! What's going through her head? "This is happening now. We don't know anything about their birthing process, it could take days, hours, minutes, or even seconds. But if he emerges inside of this room, powered down core or not, we're looking at a warp core breach."

Finn broke her concentration on the console and looked over to Xavier. She hated to admit it, but he was right. She gave a solemn nod to the ops office before speaking. "Then let's tie into the transporter system and get him beamed out. We'll need to hook him back up to that mobile power unit and beam it with him in case he needs the nutrients to complete the process. You work on enabling the transporters to beam all of this out at once, I'll get him hooked up."

"Aye Sir," Xavier replied, relieved that she had finally come to her senses. He wasted no more time and tapped into the transporter subroutine. Preparing a wide beam, site-to-site transport with this amount of energy and radiation was no easy feat and his rum-soaked mind was having trouble with the calculations. Eventually, he found the right pattern lock that would compensate for all the noise and not tear the room apart. "Ready," he said.

Before Finn could reply, he had a thought, one he was sure would have occurred sooner had they not finished a half bottle of rum beforehand. "We're at high warp, once we beam Benny off the ship we'll be out of senor range in a matter of hours. What if we stayed behind in a shuttle, make sure he hatches correctly and then we can join the ship for the rest of the mission?"

"That's a fantastic idea!" Finn beamed. If he had to hatch and leave, at least they could make sure he was safe first. "Alright, he's all hooked up to the power supply. Beam it all into that modified shuttle we used last time. We can run by the XO's office on the way to the shuttle bay to bring Commander Zora up to speed so they're not confused when a shuttle carrying Benny launches out of the bay."

Xavier nodded. He did a quick check with the flight deck that the shuttle in question wasn't currently in use and then activated the transporter beam. Benny disappeared in a glow of blue light and once he had checked that the space cow had reached his destination, Xavier turned to Finn. "Let's go."