War and Peace
Posted on Fri Mar 22nd, 2024 @ 6:22pm by Commodore Jacob Kane & Lieutenant Alexis Ryan
Mission:
In Dreams
Location: Elsewhere
Timeline: MD-03
1548 words - 3.1 OF Standard Post Measure
"You're hiding from the Major too, huh?"
Kane was dressed in Starfleet Marine fatigues as he set his pack down beside the red-haired woman already present in the silent compartment. There were six bunks tightly packed in to a small space. Only two of them remained occupied now, and they belonged to the two already present. Weary, he sat down heavily on the lower bunk and looked over at her. "What do you think? They're either going to give us hell for this, or insist on giving us medals."
"Or both."
The agreement came as a quiet resignation, which would ordinarily have been understandable had it not been so remarkably different to the woman's usual demeanour. It certainly hadn't been her attitude several hours ago, though tenacious determination to rage against the odds hadn't done her knuckles any good. Raw and weeping, they were the only aberration to an otherwise fairly calm and clean appearance. She'd hit the showers immediately, under orders practically, because drowning herself in freezing cold water had long been a viable tactic in ensuring Alexis Ryan didn't tear the entire outfit down refusing to accept the inevitable.
"Hey." His hand rested on her shoulder. "Don't freeze me out. I was there, too." Ordinarily one would seek to absolve blame. It wasn't your fault. However they both knew that there was no point in having that discussion. Instead this was about remaining together, as a team. Or at least, what was left of one.
The shoulder beneath his hand tensed, hunched slightly upwards as if in the initial throes of shrugging it away. Instead, the gentle, insistent pressure eventually coaxed Ryan to relax, though the grief in her eyes as she lifted them to make contact burned as barely contained anger. "Any word on Koja?" The last she'd seen of the Bajoran was him being loaded on a gurney after they'd dragged him several miles, absent part of one leg and likely to lose the other.
He shook his head. "I came here first. Wanted to make sure you were all right." His tone was uncharacteristically tender. "Stupid idea, I know; normally you're the one looking after me, but here we are."
As was often the case when trying to gauge Ryan's mood, the best bet was usually to pay attention to what she wasn't doing. By now, her tenacity was well-known, and though it was reasonable to say she'd lost a lot of her initial defensiveness now that she'd had plenty of opportunity to prove her worth in the field, she was stubborn to a fault and held herself to nearly impossible standards even on a good day. Right now, it was clear she was losing her grip on the anger that had kept her focused during their retreat, and there was never a time where what came next was something she was comfortable sharing.
Even with him.
She wasn't lashing out anymore though, hadn't shouted for the best part of an hour, and had stopped trying to insert herself into continued recovery efforts. It wasn't enough but it was a start.
"I'm fine." The words were hollow to the point of meaningless as she turned her head to glare at the door, each blink a little more staccato than the previous.
"Yeah." It was an acknowledgement, an acceptance, and a challenge all packaged into one word. Experiencing what they had just endured wasn't something you walked away from feeling 'fine'. But they both knew and understood that. There was a silent agreement of that; despite how unhealthy such an attitude could end up being. "You're clean, aren't you? You didn't take any hits or knocks?"
Such was his way with words, the stubbornness that matched her own. He was too good at navigating her mood, too proficient at manoeuvring to a position that left her indefensible. A master tactician, brilliant in the field, and just a little bit infuriating off it. Alex glanced down at her battered knuckles, casualties of her own inability to regulate rather than a parting souvenir from the hellhole they'd just evacuated, and huffed. It wasn't a laugh particularly burdened by humour but it got her standing, and earned him a glance that at least engaged. "I'm aware of what I look like, Jake."
Between them, it was hard to say who was the most colourful. Alexis' only advantage was that she'd cleaned most of the muck away from her cuts and bruises, that and the fact that she was pale enough to provide stark contrast. Moving towards her kit, she rummaged until she could dislodge her medkit and pulled from it a dermal regenerator. Ignoring her own need, she turned to the man trying to crawl his way inside her head and tapped the device against his chin. "You need to wash up so we can get that dealt with." The gash along his jawline, though destined to be an impressive scar, was far more of a concern than any injury she felt like confessing to.
"Tis but a scratch," he remarked, the faintest hint of dark humour present in his tone. He touched it with his fingertips, wincing just faintly when he realised that it was a little deeper than he'd accounted for. "Save some of that for me..." he added, lowering himself to sit alongside her so she could administer a similar treatment to his face. Turned inwards towards her, their faces not far apart, it was difficult to hide anything while she held the regenerator near his skin. "Alex-" he began, a breath before her own mouth opened to speak.
"Hold still."
It hadn't been what she was going to say, of course. Up until the point of execution, Alexis hadn't really been sure what was going to come out of her mouth but a retreat towards procedure hadn't been her first intention. Application of a saline solution to clear the grime away from the room left her with an excuse to hesitate, but eventually the pressure of those damnably intense eyes on her forced a glance sideways.
It was a bad idea. Letting him this close usually was.
"Don't." A single word, a plea more than a demand, prompted a refocus on repairing the injury. It was too late, though her effort was valiant in the face of certain defeat. It took only seconds for her to pipe up and add, "You should have left me."
"You know I couldn't. We don't...we don't leave a man behind." It was a pithy line, really. They both knew that it was more than a soldier's honour; Leaving her behind would have been impossible, tantamount to leaving a part of himself there. His eyes crept up to look for hers, despite the angle of her working on his injury. "I couldn't leave you behind," he added with a whisper.
And this was how he calmed her, with dangerous platitudes that demanded silence because she had no better context. They were idiots, the pair of them, Alex knew that much, and the foolish didn't last long out here. Persistent magnetism drew her gaze sideways to meet his, however, and whether she liked it or not, there was too much reciprocation for her to harbour much resentment. She'd tried that in the beginning; it hadn't got her very far.
The thumb dug in against his chin to hold his head steady softened its pressure, a softer introspection guiding it gently over the newly-repaired skin. Some of the tension in her shoulders relaxed and, for a brief moment, Alex caved, her head dropped forward until her brow rested against his cheek.
"You keep thinking like that and you're going to get yourself killed," she murmured, resigned to the accuracy without the energy, or will, to actually remove the possibility.
"Maybe. But not today," he said softly. Their cheeks touched momentarily, their lips starting to draw close.
"Commodore? The distant sound broke through the moment, just millimeters before they made contact. There's a call coming through from Commodore Ehestri..."
Kane rolled over in his bed. It was still early morning. He touched the communicator on his bedside table. "I'll take it here in a moment..." he growled, trying not to sound too much like he had been woken too soon. He scratched his jaw, feeling as though there were an itch or something there, where there wasn't. Then he rose and started to search for a uniform to wear before he took the Commodore's call.
Maybe you're just losing your mind.
The blue eyes that stared back at Alexis in the mirror were dulled slightly by fatigue, not exactly enhanced by the tinge of darkness in the hollows beneath her lower lids. The last dream had shaken her enough; this one was too close for comfort, too reminiscent in a way that didn't make sense, because it couldn't, and yet...
She remembered it. Not just the specifics of the dream itself, but the event that had provoked it, and the...aftermath.
A quick splash of cold water to the face didn't help much.
It would have to wait. She didn't have time to go nuts today.
