Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Counter-Intelligence Officer) in Captain’s Quarters - Dancing On Toes, Losing The Rhythm

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Captain’s Quarters - Dancing On Toes, Losing The Rhythm

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Faye Calloway (Counter-Intelligence Officer) in Captain’s Quarters - Dancing On Toes, Losing The Rhythm
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

“No!” she exclaimed, startling Tess who was still fixated on her person’s moods. “No one was asking you to join the fight, but you threw us away! She told me. Did you or did you not say, and I quote: You are being misguided and reckless. Well don’t come crying to me if things don’t go the way you want them to. You deserve whatever the hell happens to you.” Her heart was racing and her eyes were stormy and fixed on the man who had such an important role in her life and Faye realized she resented him for it. But why?

Gavin Conner winced as his own words were fed back to him from a woman who had only been a girl, a child when she had heard them. “Faye…”

“Did you say that, yes or no?” Faye demanded.

“Yes, I did.” It hurt to admit that but she deserved nothing less than the truth.

“Well, congratulations, we certainly got ours!” Disgusted with him (with herself), Faye pushed her chair back and leapt to her feet, Tess jumping off to the desk with a low mew and look that could only be worry. Starting to pace, she moved out of view of the screen.

Gavin wasn’t sure what to say either.

~Faye & Gavin

Alex was silent for a moment, thinking. Finally he leaned forward and gave Captain Conner a nod that said Give me a minute. He turned in his chair and looked at Faye as she paced. He let her go for a minute in silence and then said “Faye… you just told your Uncle not to judge your mother too harshly until he heard the whole story. I suggest you take a moment and think about that, then come back and take a seat. Remember… move forward, not back. You can do this, Faye. You’ve done harder.”

Alex

Hands on her hips as she wore a path in her carpet, Faye tilted her head up towards the ceiling, beads of moisture carving a path over her cheeks. She wasn’t mad at Gavin, well… not entirely. She was mad at the confluence of events that made things so crappy for herself and those she cared about, or could have cared about. “I’m trying…” she whispered, not really to Alex specifically, but as her motions helped her physically work through the wash of emotions, her thoughts could coalesce into something more coherent. Perhaps more reasonable.

Something bumped against her leg and Faye looked down to find Tess butting her head against her shin. She laughed, expelling all the tension. Stopping to pick the feline up, Faye shook her head. “Just can’t leave me be, huh?” she asked before kissing the top of the cat’s head. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

With a loud exhale, Faye moved back to the desk and down down with Tess in her arms, shaking her head. “I don’t know how mom was before she came to Tracken, before she met my dad, but I can say growing up that she was hard to read. She kept her feelings to herself and was loathe to show too much. She laughed and smiled and had a good time at social events, but when something was bothering her? Not a chance. But that night after she talked to you was the one time I could remember seeing her cry. I can’t speak for her, but from the outside it was like something broke a little in her.”

Bracing his elbows on the desk and resting his chin on his laced fingers, Gavin nodded. “Here’s what I do know for sure, Faye. I know that we had a crappy time after our mother died and it was way worse for Shara. I suspect she protected me and put herself in the line of fire with our father to do just that. it would be easy to just say that our father and her didn’t get along and that’s why they argued, but when you factor in his drinking and Shara taking on most of keeping the household running, while going to school and trying to give herself a future. Most people never give her credit for that, and I know I certainly never did. And by the time I was old enough to realize just how much she sacrificed to keep me safe from his anger, it was too late, she was long gone. I was hurt because I felt like she abandoned me, and maybe a small part of me still feels that way. But after she left Midos it was like there was a rift between us that we couldn’t cross, or maybe we just didn’t know how. We are both prideful and when I’m hurt I lash out. It’s not an excuse, but how it was back then. And yes, I hurt her. I thought she was betraying the very values I lived and breathed every day as a Starfleet officer. I was young and my thinking too rigid to allow her side any credence. And Ed? Well I blamed it all on him, on him being a bad influence. But the truth is I didn’t know him. I never let myself get to know him. I refused to be at their wedding, small though it was, and I will forever regret that. I can’t make that right, but I can show up at yours. I can be there for you in a way I couldn’t be for her. If you still want me too.”

Though they had momentarily stopped, the tears flowed freely again. Faye nodded. “I’d like that.”

Silence ensued for a moment before Gavin leaned in. “And Faye? I’m truly sorry. I wish I could take back what I said to Shara, so that in the very least I could have been someone you could have turned to in those awful days after the Dominion attack, but you’re partly right. I did feel guilty and I wanted to do something to assuage that. But as I’ve watched you go along in your career, for better or worse, you remind me of Shar. You have her resourcefulness and her intellect. And as I never really knew if she was alive or not, seeing you go along, and sometimes stumble, reminded me of her, and kept that part of her alive. You see, Faye, I always admired her. Shar is so much stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. And more courageous than most. I think at the end of the day I resented her conviction, that she was willing to risk it all to do what she thought was right. And so are you. I’d know you to be her daughter easily, no DNA necessary.”

Okay, she wasn’t sure she could handle al the feelings and she could barely see the screen, so blurred was her vision. But she smiled nonetheless. “I’m overwhelmed and I need to go and process this all. But… I’ll send you the wedding details once we have them.”

Gavin smiled back. “I look forward to it. Maybe I’m not someone you feel like you can call on a whim, but if you ever need anything Faye, I hope you’ll include me in your list of people on your side.”

She just nodded and quickly ended the call, the dark screen a much nodded reprieve. “Well, he’s nicer than I’d thought he’d be,” she said and promptly began sobbing, Burying her head against Tess.

~Faye & Gavin (and Tess too!)

“Even after you let him have it for words he obviously regretted saying, too. Not a first impression I’d have gone for, but it seems to have played well enough.” Alex said with a teasing grin.

Faye didn’t smile, though she did lift her head and gaze at Alex, her expression momentarily unreadable.

“So? Now you are going to call your mom and Big Green and tell them all about it, right?”

Alex

She let out a tired chuckle. “Yeah. Though it is rational to be angry at her for not having called him first herself, for forcing me to be the one to reveal her very existence? ‘Cause I’m mad, Alex, and I don’t want to take that out on her, but it feels very unfair to me under the circumstances.”

~Faye

Alex shrugged and looked at her with that look he gave her when he was trying to make sure she grasped something she might need later on. “Fair doesn’t exist, Commander. There simply ‘is’. Sometimes the ‘is’ is harder on one party than it is on another… but that simply is the way circumstances come to be. If we search for the fairness in everything, we are destined to be sorely disappointed in the universe. So we deal with the ‘is’, and try to ensure that we are doing the best we can for everyone involved.”

Alex