Good talk - well, a talk if anything

Posted on 06 Nov 2020 @ 6:16pm by Commander Kristiana Petrova & Lieutenant Madalene Sabine

886 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Ab Intra
Location: Bridge

Kristiana stepped onto an otherwise mostly empty bridge, dimly lit with ambient lighting. Everyone was either asleep, sightseeing on the planet or doing their own thing. Except Madalene Sabine. Kris walked over to the replicator, replicating two mugs of coffee, adding a splash of vodka from a small flask and brought one over to the other woman.

"Hey," she began, her slight Russian accent showing through. "Hiding yourself in your work, trying to run away from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings of guilt?" She asked with a mirthless smirk. There were no rank pips on her collar.

Madalene looked up, seeing the XO, she knew she should be resting or at the very least not on the bridge, "something like that," Madalene said looking back down at her console, not necessarily actually working on something just pressing buttons.

"Same, for the most part," Kris set Madalene's coffee down on her console, then took the center seat, slouching a bit in it. "Here, have a drink. Talk to me, Madalene, whats' on your mind. Don't hold back."

Madalene looked at the mug, {Russians, well be Russians,} she thought with a chuckle, remembering her uncle talk about them, all good things just that they had some traditions, "the overall theme is that I failed, that I endangered the crew without even realizing it," she finally said walking down and taking a seat, and just holding the coffee enjoying the warmth it was creating in her hands.

"If you have then so have I," Kris answered quietly, taking a sip of her drink and savoring the taste for a moment, eyes closed. "But that's not fair to me, or so I'm told. It wasn't really me, they say. But it was my voice that ordered experiments done on my crew. It was my hands that locked down the ship. And I just have to learn to live with that, because there are people counting on me."

"The scary thing is, I think I enjoyed playing cat 'n mouse with the crew, and also that feeling of just giving up control," Madalene said taking a small sip of the coffee.

"Power is intoxicating," Kris offered a bit too readily, slowly lowering her mug as she opened her eyes again, looking pointedly at Madalene. "We humans have a dark side in us. Society, our upbringing, our Federation standards suppress them but they're never gone. Then when you're taken over by an entity without any compassion whatsoever, who only sees us as - " she shuddered, almost spilling her coffee - "cattle then, yes, I can understand you'd feel that way. But the very fact that it bothers you that you felt that way shows you're better than that."

Madalene took a few more small sips of the coffee, grateful for the XO, and grateful that they went through the same thing. "....so how do we get past this, or how do we get to a point of accepting what we did?"

"How do we get past this?" Kris sighed, shoulders slumping a bit. "I wish I had some magic phrase, the exact right words to say to you that made everything alright, but I don't. We just - move on with life, I think. One step at a time. It'll take time to get over this, to work through this, and we won't be the same having experienced this. But what can we do except move on with life?" she asked. "For me, doing the rounds, talking with people without the baggage of rank is one of the steps I need to move on. Maybe you can find similar to do. Something productive."

Madalene nodded, "true, guess it should start with some apologies to some of the crew, and checking in one of my officers," Madalene said looking around the empty bridge.

"Don't take too long before you get on that. I know it's not easy, but - well, just don't wait too long," Kris took another sip of her be-vodka'd coffee. You were assigned to helping that AI into a fighter, right? How's that going?"

"Slow, at least for the next phase, we got her to be portable, the next step is the integration which always takes time as we gotta take it slow," Madalene said glad to be discussing something else, "and I think it'll be good to speak to her, err them again, they are very fascinating," she added with a small smirk.

"Sounds like you got a handle on that then," Kris offered a half smile, rising to her feet again. "Well, I should be on my way I think."

"I think, hopefully," Madalene said with a small chuckle, "thank you," she quickly added.

"Welcome," Kris replied readily, before hesitating a moment. She was never a people person, this all took some effort from her. But she needed it. "If you ever need someone to talk to, someone who can relate, rank or no rank - my door's always open."

"Thank you com....," but stopped realizing that this was not a officer to officer talk, it was person to person, and with that Madalene moved back to her station she needed a few more minutes of something she knew and that was her console.

Kris chuckled softly. "I'll leave you to it," she said heading out again.

 

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