STF

Botany Lab- Making Amends

Posted March 5, 2020, 9 a.m. by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) (Lindsay B)

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Botany Lab- Making Amends

Posted by Lieutenant Jasmine Wynter (Chief Medical Officer) in Botany Lab- Making Amends

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Botany Lab- Making Amends

(snip)

Settling herself on the stool next to Jasmine, Faye propped one heel on the upper bar and left her other foot to dangle partly, her toes skimming the lower bar of the stool. Shifting her gaze to the doctor, her stormy grey-green eyes told the story of her thoughts, of how she went from one wary thought to another. “Are you sure I shouldn’t be asking you if you have a fever?” she said dryly. Her natural instinct was to deflect when she wasn’t sure people wanted the truth. It scared them, made them uncomfortable. Faye’s truth was often far too dark and didn’t make for polite conversation. Not that she was social adept in the first place. It was why she was constantly giving Jasmine an out. Jasmine meant well, but she didn’t understand how deep the darkness went, nor did Faye want to subject people to it. But if she couldn’t ever share it, well… it was lonely. And people like her weren’t able to just ‘let it go’. It would never just magically float away and leave her a happy or content person.

“Oh god no,” Jasmine patted the dirt down with her fist like she was playing with bread dough. “Usually that comment is followed up by someone vomiting on my shoes and let’s not even talk about explosive diarrhea.” The comment made Jasmine break out in snorting laughter. “You know I am pretty sure I have never used explosive diarrhea off duty until now. Don’t hold it against me,” she pointed a finger playfully at Faye.

“There are lots of things I could hold against you Wynter, but that isn’t one of them,” Calloway retorted.

Opening the seed sorting container, Faye continued to look at Jasmine, though her procedural memory told her exactly what she was doing as she flipped through the little secured packets. After a moment though she stopped and sighed. “I’m private because over and over again it’s been proven that when people get too see too much of me and what I’ve been through, they back off. I’ve been burned a lot Jasmine. I don’t trust easily because I’ve rarely been given a good reason too. I shouldn’t be alive but I am. If you want to get to know the walking mess that if Faye Calloway, okay, sure, we can try. But I’m constantly two steps away from self-destructing. And while I’m used to that reality, but…” She paused and while normally she would look away, she continued to meet Wynter’s gaze and let the moment see the tears moistening the edges of her eyes. “It is unacceptable to me for others to be brought down with me. I won’t allow it. So what do I do? If I let people in too close, they get burned along with me. But if I protect them from all that my life comes with, I exist on the fringes. Alone.” She shrugged and moved her focus to the seeds, hunting for the one she wanted to fill the trays with.

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist

Jasmine looked at Faye not sure how to proceed. She had no issues with hearing the stories the woman wanted to tell but how to come off sincere. The trick was all people had problems. Some were mountains, some molehills, and some molehills people thought were mountains. She had no doubt the woman’s story was tragic but talking solved far more problems than drugs at time. Communication was key to any situation. She understood Faye on more levels than the woman probably believed. To ask to share something as personal as what the woman went through for only a need to know basis was wrong, yet that was the motive of so many. Rumors and the gossip mill were probably always in full swing once they heard a whisper of something she did. From Faye’s slightly biting tone when she spoke Jasmine guess what the observable side of Faye’s life was like. The averted gaze as she walked by only to have the staring begin at her back when the people thought she had passed far enough not to notice. The dim of the conversation as she entered a room only to have it modified from the loud white noise of idle chatter to low whispers. Jasmine could imagine all this and while she could not even begin to compare any part of her life with Faye’s she did understand the whispers. Maybe that is where she would start to try and make some connection with Calloway.

“Try answering the question how did you and your husband meet when you are Mintaran? So like we go to this building,” Jasmine took on a highly teenaged girl voice and flipped her hair over one shoulder, “and I fill out this um question thing and then they give me a husband,” she gave a small happy jump at the end clasping her hands together before rolling her eyes and picking up a seed packet following Faye’s lead. Taking a far more serious tone, Jasmine talked as the separated seeds like Faye was doing. “I am not at all comparing my life to yours. I had zero issues growing up. My career is fine and as I said I have a fabulously handsome husband that is pretty handy when he doesn’t forget his spanner at work but small intimate get to know you talk,” she tossed her seeds into the tray a bit more hostile than probably necessary, “that sucks. While it in no way can compare to your life, I get the questions of wow so you married him because he is hot I want to lose my mind. I get it. People don’t understand especially when they found out the first time we met was when he picked me up at the airlock. Do you know how many mail order bride jokes I got? So while it is for completely different reasons I do get the weird look when I talk about Max and I. Please don’t think I am trying to one-up or bond or anything. I guess,” Jasmine turned to look at Faye, “I am trying to show that while we are so different we have experienced stuff from different angles. So I am going to suggest we say Frack it. I will tell you where I feel like my life sucks and you just silently or in a really low tone judge me,” Jasmine tried to make it a little lighter being a bit silly, “because lets face it my problems are first galaxy problems. I will listen and promise not to get all clinically on you. If I try to solve you instead of listening to you, I give you permission to tell me to put the tricorder away. When you roll your eyes at my mother in law issues I will tell you to stop being mean. We have to start somewhere to get to know each other and I really really want to get to know you so deal,” Jasmine stuck out her hand. Faye would easily be able to see Jasmine was nervous slightly. It was not about learning what Faye had to tell but that she didn’t go the right way to open a conversation up.

Jasmine Wynter CMO

Faye just couldn’t help herself and broke into a grin, all the while shaking her head. She took Jasmine’s hand and shook it once firmly. “It’s a deal.” She gave a half chuckle. “You’ve got guts, Wynter, that’s for sure.” She already knew that and had known it for awhile, ever since Faye had woken up in Sickbay after the exploding conduit. Faye had been exceptionally vulnerable during that time and it had been something more on Jasmine’s part than just being a doctor that had resonated with Faye when she had woken up with her eyes bandaged, terrified that her nightmare of being back with the Tal Shiar had come true. Those few dissociative moments had been soothed by more than just bedside manner and even now she wasn’t sure how to express to the CMO what that had meant to her. They could joke, eye patch and all, but to have a sincere reason to not just take Jasmine at her word but trust her? Well, it was a bloody miracle and one of several that seemed to have surfaced since she had arrived on this ship. Faye wasn’t optimistic enough to think that her fortunes had turned, but she was sure as hell willing to take some tentative steps towards what could be a place of peace. Whatever that looked like.

Grabbing another tray, Faye gestured to the one Jasmine had already filled. “Go ahead and put three seeds in each and we’ll have to mark that tray as goinza vine. And I’m going to start a tray of mixed wildflowers I was given.”

As she worked, she considered Jasmine thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re silly or weird for having married a man you never met but some test said you would get along with. In my books, that’s pretty damn brave. Braver than picking up a weapon and fighting. That I can do. Right now I can barely handle the feelings I may or may not have for someone, let alone actually have a relationship that lasts long enough to get married.”

~Faye Calloway, Data Specialist

Bump


Posts on USS Manhattan

In topic

Posted since


© 1991-2024 STF. Terms of Service

Version 1.15.9