The First Dream: Brunch

Posted on Tue Jul 19th, 2022 @ 7:09pm by Commodore Jacob Kane & Lieutenant Alexis Ryan

Mission: In Dreams
Location: ?
Timeline: ?
1754 words - 3.5 OF Standard Post Measure

The small but pleasant café had a vaguely European element to it. The window table looked out over a short railing and a river of some description. The sun was shining. People went about their business. It was calm, and welcoming. Like a peaceful vacation spot.

Kane sipped a cup of tea. It was a little too hot, so he blew gently at the rim and pretended to taste it before putting the plain white cup back on the saucer. A PADD sat to one side, a set of local news outlets scrolling past with some generic articles about current affairs. None stood out.

"I wonder what the cheesecake is like here," he mused out loud.

"If it's anything like their macchiato, I'd recommend it."

From across the other side of the table, the response was impressively relevant to the conversation given that the other occupant's gaze was directed at the view. A glance at her profile gave adequate pause to predict that, actually, her attention was probably far more inward focused. She did that, lost herself between her own layers in a way that only really seemed evident when she finally relaxed. She had her whimsical side, if you gave it time to percolate.

A slow, gentle blink brought her back, blue eyes drifting from idle contemplation to focus on his features. As was her way, Alexis studied his expression as a means of refocusing and then fixed him with the twinkle of elusive merriment. Smothering a smile with her next sip, followed by an exaggerated hunch of one shoulder, the redhead feigned nonchalance. "Not that it would concern me in the slightest."

"Dessert is an art form," he explained. "It can't be too sweet, or you end up with a sugar crash. Not sweet enough, and it leaves you feeling like you wanted more." He touched his beard, a classic contemplative move. "A delicate balancing act. Sadly, it's somewhat difficult to know before sampling what is on offer."

"The only way to know for sure is to order it."

She set her mug down and leaned her chin against an open hand. There was a certain way her eyes travelled when considering his expression that resembled the slow trace of a fingertip attempting to puzzle out the reason for every crease and crinkle. Poised in this way, she didn't break gaze, having reassembled her attention with laser-beam precision.

"Or are we not really talking about dessert anymore?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I was talking about food." He couldn't tell if she was making a minor attempt at flirtation, but her gaze suggested some sort of meaning. "Although perhaps it is too early in the day to be talking about sweet things."

Alexis' features relaxed into a smile, which had a transformative effect on the overall warmth of her expression. It broke the tension of her scrutiny and brought with it a more frank sense of amusement. "If you want to order cheesecake, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it."

"But we haven't answered the question; especially at this time of day. I wouldn't want to eat something quite so sweet if I were to know that I was having lunch." He sipped the tea again. It was a strange little conundrum, not something he would usually see himself suffering any sort of analysis paralysis over. "I'd hate to miss out when I could have taken the chance."

"You're not going to know unless you go for it," the redhead reasoned. "Worst case scenario, you don't enjoy it and then you know not to order it again. You waste a few credits and some cheesecake but gain insight. It all comes down to how much of a risk-taker you are, or are you just going to play it safe forever?"

"Surely you know my reputation by now..." he remarked, motioning with one hand for a waiter. "The cheesecake, please."

"Certainly. And for the lady?"

"An extra fork," Kane answered, before she could. He nonchalantly met her expression. "What? I hope you're not going to play it safe forever either?"

A tilt of the ex-marine's head to one side allowed her to regard him with the narrow-eyed, evaluative hint of partial humour that carried with it an element of competitive zeal. "If the challenge is warranted, and worth it, I'd like to think I never back down."

"Then we have that in common," he nodded, folding his hands calmly in front of himself. "I have a feeling that there is a story behind that stance. Something in your past?"

"Or all of it," Alexis suggested enigmatically. She picked up a spoon to stir what remained of her coffee and then set it aside as she contemplated another sip before offering him a better answer. "I think it's fair to say persistence is something I was born with but my dossier doesn't hide the aspects that forced me to make use of it extensively." The mug tipped and she held his gaze as the mouthful added a natural pause. "I'd be long dead otherwise."

"You were a marine for a long time. I assumed they just bred it into you over the years you were in the corps," he suggested. "Reading between the lines of your dossier, I'd have almost said it was a chip on your shoulder at times; the need to constantly prove yourself worthy of...well, something?"

The long stare across the table seemed to arrive at an eventual decision, though not before it became resoundingly obvious that Alexis was sizing up her lunch buddy as a worthy confidant. "My service record will only tell you half the story. Early exposure, which I'm well-aware is listed, played its part." Her steady gaze, still locked on his, hadn't waivered. "I was ten years old when the Maquis formed. It wasn't an environment where giving up easily rewarded you with a decent life expectancy."

He took a moment to consider his reply to that statement. As someone who steadfastly believed in the ideals of the Federation, the entire business with the Maquis, which had subsequently led to increased tensions with the Cardassians, he believed had been one of many causative factors for war. But she was a victim of circumstance, he reminded himself. She was not a belligerent, and she would be unlikely to describe herself as a 'victim' in the sense that she had been forced into it. "It gave you purpose. Something to fight for," he concluded out loud.

"I already had something to fight for." The enigmatic expression on the redhead's face wasn't as combative as it once might have been but neither was it without a certain fierceness. Not anger; more...resolve. "My home. It may be easy, in the midst of a political quagmire, to quantify sacrifice as minimal but when the Federation ceded territory, it wasn't just shapes on a map, Jacob. They took people's homes and gifted them to foreigners who had no interest in allowing them to stay. There are people buried in that soil. The Federation forced us to leave them behind."

"The Federation didn't force them to stay, though," he replied, stoically but not aggressively. He understood her position, her reasoning. But that didn't mean he necessarily shared it. They were both children of different homes, different circumstances. And yet, they both knew war and what it meant. "Don't think I don't understand what you felt, Alex. I watched fellow cadets die at the Academy when the Breen attacked Earth. I get that. The...anger. The frustration. The need to blame." He shook his head very quickly. "Look at me...anyone would think I'm some sort of counsellor." That was about as far from the case as could possibly be.

That earned him a faint smile, softer around the edges than her usual amusement. "I don't have a lot of time for blame, not anymore." Alex lowered her gaze and picked up her spoon once more to stir at what remained of her drink. "But, for the record," she added quietly without making eye contact right away. "I wasn't talking about those who died after the treaty." The spoon span several rotations before being set aside. Only then did Alexis look at him again. "We lived there. We died there. Before the war, before there were Cardassians to speed up the process for us. Every society makes provisions for its deceased, we were no different, even in peacetime. You know I found that, of every attempt at empathy ever directed at us, that was the one thing nobody ever considered. You can relocate the living, Jacob."

She took a gulp of coffee.

"They turned our cemeteries into training grounds."

His jaw tightened as he let that one sink in. He felt her pain, her bitterness, at what had happened. He would have felt the same way she did, were their roles reversed.

"I'm...sorry." It was all Kane felt like he could say at first. As he had said, he was no counsellor. But he knew what injustice felt like. And the burning desire to visit some form of retribution on those who committed such acts. His hand touched hers, just fleetingly. A wordless indication that he understood her pain and the way she had described it.

As he was about to try to fumble out something else pithy and encouraging, the waiter materialised with the cheesecake and a pair of forks, breaking the connection. He slid one of the utensils towards her.

"I guess playing it safe isn't really an option, then."

Considering the fork for a moment, Alex then took slow possession of it and lifted it to take the first stab at the tip of the cheesecake. Her eyes found his before the morsel reached her lips.

"It never is."

---

"Captain? You wanted me to page you when we were approaching Titania..." The voice of Yeoman Williams snapped Kane out of his sleep. He rolled over, rubbing his eyes as he tried to shake off the strange...dream? It was fading quickly, as most dreams did, but it had felt incredibly vivid for a moment there. But he'd felt unusual. Emotional, almost, in the contextless interaction.

"I'm awake," he grunted, reaching for his uniform. He still felt restless, almost like the sleep had been poorer quality than usual. Nothing a coffee wouldn't fix. And hopefully the detail of whatever dreams had come would be long gone before he got to the bridge.