Posted Sept. 29, 2022, 7:29 p.m. by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) (Lucas Foxley)
Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: A Secret is a Prison
Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: A Secret is a Prison
Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: A Secret is a Prison
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻(snip)
It was finally, finally time to get up and moving for the day and Roman didn’t want to get up because that would mean not being next to her. He sighed against her, eyes closed for a moment, and then hugged her again before he stood and stretched. He wished there was more time to just lay with her, but at least she had accomplished her goal. He did not look quite so upset as he had earlier. He was smiling down at her playfully, “I wish we could stay here all day, but I’ve got to get moving or I’ll be late on shift.”~ Roman
Rand smiled up at Roman. “I wish we could too.” Then what he said sank in. If he was going to be late then so was she. Her shift started before his. She scrambled up from the bed suddenly, “I am late.” She moved a little too fast and held onto his arms for a moment as a moment of dizziness passed. She looked bemused and blushed to the roots of her hair. It took Rand fifteen minutes to get ready, not long but longer than normal. She paused and glanced at the counter. “I didn’t get to make tea…” That bothered her. Roman could get it in the Galley from Gorshin, but she liked making it. She didn’t have time. The reason why she didn’t have time made her flush again.
Roman was glad to let her use him to help balance. He held onto her until she was steady and then grinned when she blushed. “That’s okay. I’ll get it downstairs.” He said with a little shrug. He gave her a quick hug, amused as she flushed again. It took him just over ten minutes to get ready.
“Should…should I come down for lunch?” She wasn’t trying to make him eat, though he should, but she didn’t want to leave him after last night. She didn’t want to wait till after her shift to see him either.
Rand
Roman paused, hesitated a moment, and then nodded. It’s okay to need someone. “I’ll be in my office, I have a meeting just before lunch.” He said, meaning the actual CSO office. “I’ll see you then.” He said, and then with one more quick kiss he was gone.
His first stop of the morning was the galley. Despite doing his best to hide it, he was visibly exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. “Tea. Extra strong today, please.” He said. He didn’t ask for anything to eat. He didn’t feel hungry, still.
Then it was off to the lab for a busy morning. He had a spell of lightheadedness in the lab, that he wrote off as standing too quickly, and his tea failed to keep him awake all morning. His reports weren’t done by the time he went in to his office for the meeting he’d told Rand about and he decided he’d have to finish them later.
~ Roman
As things happen, Rand didn’t show up for lunch.
After picking up the captain’s breakfast and compiling the morning reports for her meeting, Rand returned to their quarters and sat down at the computer. She wanted to get as much work done as possible. She finally felt like she was making a dent in the back log. She was making her way through reports and inquiries from the month that Roman had been in sickbay after he’d been attacked. There was so much back log. It wasn’t a lot of effort to take those reports and compress them and send them off to command. Some inquiries were simply a matter of attached extra documents that had been forgotten or double checking numbers.
Finally Rand came across an unusual request, because it didn’t happen often and not the type of request, for a witness account report to be resubmitted. Rand pulled it up…it was for one Ensign Kovan ch’Sirhc concerning his eye witness of the attack on Cmdr Roman Alden. Rand had to sit there a moment before that sank in. Kovan had not been in the lab when the machine malfunctioned. Then she opened it and read it to see what was wrong with it.
What was wrong was it wasn’t detailed enough. Not for command to use as evidence in a trial. Kovan had been rather flippant. It was not detailed enough for her. As she read, ice seeped into her body and she felt the need to be sick. She rushed into the bathroom. Long minutes passed before she returned to the computer, dutifully like a robot, transferred the report to her PaDD. Roman had been shot, twice, by the assassin. Kovan knew....RANDY knew. No one told her....Rand pulled up the other incident reports and ship’s logs. Scanning them, Rand’s hands began to shake, her ears roaring painfully and the edges of her vision went black, then red, and then black again. Roman had been treated for the wounds several times a day, he’d....he’d had an infection and been given medication. He…he’d been in sickbay alone. Irrationally all she could think of was she’d promised to go with him whenever he had to be in sickbay…and she wasn’t. She hadn’t been there…she’d been confined to sickbay at the time, she could have been. She had no work, no duty shifts, nothing to stop her from being there....
She picked up her PaDD, straightened her uniform and took a bracing breath before heading to engineering to find Kovan. Randy was coming down the corridor. “Hey Rand!”
“Rach gu ifrinn, Randall!”
“Whoa! What’s going on?”
Rand glared at him. “Nothing. I have work to do.” She turned her PaDD around, “Like getting Kovan’s report on Cmdr Alden being shot fixed and ready for trial.”
Randy was the one that showed up at lunch. He knocked on the office door and waited.
Rand
Roman had finished his meeting slightly early, and then chosen to wait for Rand. She never turned up, but that wouldn’t occur to him, because he had dozed off at his desk. Randy’s knock jolted him awake and, assuming it would be Rand, he went to the door and pressed the control to open it, with a tired smile that faded slightly when he saw who it was. “Randy? Is something wrong?”
~ Roman
Randy took in the very tired look on Roman’s face. That would have to wait though. He had a feeling Roman was about to be losing sleep for a while other reason. “Can I come in?” It was clipped, strained but not angry. He didn’t wait for an answer just moved Alden back inside by sheer need because Randy would have walked over him. Randy hit the control as he passed to shut the door. “You might want to sit.” But he didn’t wait for Roman to sit as he turned to face him. “Rand knows.” And he added just so there was no confusion, “About you getting shot.”
Randy
Roman looked upset, but not surprised. It was a time-bomb he had been dreading for a while now. He leaned a hand on his desk, struck by another spell of lightheadedness but trying to hide it. “That couldn’t have happened at a worse time.” Then he sighed, “I should have told her. I was going to…” Then he shook his head and looked up at Randy. “I take it she’s angry?” Of course she was. Everyone she cared about lied to her. He worried about how he’d sleep, and then immediately chastised himself for having such a selfish worry. “What should I do?”
~ Roman
Randy reached out a hand to steady him. By now Randy wasn’t likely to miss anything with Roman. “You okay? Your heart or head?”
“My heart’s fine,” Roman snapped and then immediately sighed and sat down. “Sorry. I’m just tired, I think.”
Randy sighed. “I don’t know. When I saw her and tried to talk to her she…rather forcefully and loudly told me ‘Rach gu ifrinn, Randall.’ She never calls me Randall unless she’s mad at me or really hurt. I do know she’ll fall back into, ‘what she’s supposed to do.’ So I wouldn’t try to talk to her while she’s on duty or when you are supposed to be either.”
Randy
Roman nodded, frowning and thinking. “Maybe I’ll just wait for her to come to me,” He looked at the clock and then back to Randy, “She was supposed to meet me for lunch, looks like she’s not coming. That’s why I thought you were her.” He sighed and repeated, “I should’ve just told her by now.”
~ Roman
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