Tough Love II

Posted on Thu Apr 27th, 2023 @ 8:03am by Vasha & Petty Officer, 2nd Class Vithi D'Kiva

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 3: The Peace Ship
Location: USS Midway - various locations
Timeline: 2 Days after the 'Crash'

Sowande's funeral had been a miserable affair. A number of people had been killed and they were out of spare photon torpedo casings to give them a traditional 'burial at sea' The officers and cadets had got the torpedo casings, Sowande and other non-comms had been sent out into the great beyond in what looked suspiciously like a large plastic bag. The mourners had been a sparse collection of dead tired redshirts.

D'Kiva had walked back from the dreary ceremony with a comrade and as they passed the rebuilt but unrefurbished psychiatrist's office, the Orion woman glanced inside its open doorway to see a tall gangly figure, still bandaged here and there, struggling to tidy the place up.

The redskirt patted her companion on the back. "See you later, I just need to stop in here" she explained "Hello'?" came the inevitable reply.

The green skinned girl knocked on the door jamb.

"All right if I come in?" she asked to get Vasha's attention.

"Of course it is. I'm afraid I can't really offer you any counselling, if that's what you're looking for." The Kelpien replied tiredly. The past few days had been exhausting for her, and occasionally agony. Very occasionally. No, seriously, most of her body still hurt like a bitch and felt alternately soft or sore or sometimes both at once, but she was on the road to recovery - at least, that was what Slatterly had assured her repeatedly. She did still have to find some closure, though, and that meant tidying up the ruins of T'Mora's office and respectfully stowing or disposing of what could no longer be used or made no longer relevant by the Vulcan's passing.

D'Kira shook her head with a little grim tight-lipped smile. "No, I... y'know... just putting my head in to see how you're doing. You look a lot better than last time I saw ya." she said. She could hardly say that the Kelpien looked well. She didn't. D'Kiva had never seen a healthy Kelpien, but somehow she knew they didn't look like this sad being: sick in body and sick in soul.

And so, here she was, bandaged up, bruised, dead tired and a little bit depressed but still working away on the flames of... actually, she didn't even know what she was burning to keep her going in the here and now, ha. "Would you like a seat?" She gestured to the comfortable sofa in the corner, which had remained miraculously remained untouched through the crisis. It had a Kelpien sized indent in the middle, suggesting that the tall, lanky alien had probably taken a nap there at some point. Disrespect or not, you decide. "And uh. A drink? I can probably procure some tea from somewhere if you like..."

"Oh no, don't let me disturb you, you look like you're busy. Tidying up, huh?" she said, stating the obvious. "No, I er... I just went to my friend's funeral. He, er... yeah, he's gone now. Didn't get a torpedo casing though." she said distractedly. That shouldn't have been such an enormous deal, in the grand scheme of things, but it was.

"Someone said that Doctor T'Mora's body is being taken back to Vulcan."

It was maybe a risk to mention Vasha's deceased mentor, but the Orion girl thought that if the tall (and seeing her upright now, she realised just how tall!) xeno needed to talk about anything to a friend right now, it would be exactly that.

"As it should be. They'll know how to treat her body with... the appropriate rites. The monks there will probably want to do... whatever it is they need to do." Vasha sounded hoarse, maybe, and definitely very deflated, but better than the last time D'Kiva had heard her speak. She motioned to the sofa again. "Sit if you like. I... I could use the company, actually." Her eyes shifted to the Orion, studying her more closely now that she wasn't lying down with her eyes all misty. She was attractive, she thought, and muscular, exactly her type really, but the disparity between them was rather large, to say the least. People didn't want lanky, weird-looking... things... like her. No one outside of Kaminar, anyway. "It- It feels better when there's someone here with me. It really does."

"Er, yeah, sure!" D'Kiva shrugged, although she was more of a 'doer' than a sitter and talker, truth to tell. She sauntered over to the low sofa and sat down on it, sinking in a bit further than she expected. "Hey, this thing's eating me!" she joked weakly, trying rather clumsily to lighten the heavy mood that spread from Vasha like a thick fog.

"Thank you for keeping me company at my bed, by the way. That was really sweet, and I appreciate it much. I'm sorry if I didn't seem quite as grateful then." Vasha continued as she began to box up some of T'Mora's belongings. Vulcan paraphernalia. As expected.

The Orion girl shrugged "Ah, whatcha gonna do?" It didn't seem to be a big issue for her, at least. Sure, she'd been a little miffed at the time, but she was one of those souls quick to anger, but equally quick to forgive.

"I felt like a bag of rocks all laid out on that biobed. You... you saved my life. If there's any way I can thank you-"

"Just doin' my job, Ma'am!" D'Kiva smiled, giving a little salute. "Say, can I ask you a question, Vasha? Like... where are you from?" It was a polite way of asking 'what the hell are you?!!'

"Kaminar. Some call it Kelpia. It is a beautiful planet with nature as far and wide as the eye can see. I lived in a lovely little village before my parents and I moved to Earth. You'd wake up to the skee-crows crying out in the morning and the smell of freshly cooking grain porridge. My parents were farmers, see, we'd take what we grew to the market to sell. But my father knew that Earth has a great demand for Kelpien vegetables, too, and so we left home for greener pastures, as our human colleagues say." The Kelpien laughed. "So I suppose the correct answer to your question is Earth and Kaminar."

D'Kiva nodded with a smile "Sounds nice" she said. Geez, place sounded like a dump, no wonder her parents moved to earth. d'Kiva liked earth: the noise, the bars, the busy traffic, the hustle, the bustle. Yeah, her kind of planet. She'd have to look up in the ship's library about these Kelpien birds. If she knew where it was. Or how it worked.

"What about you? I'm afraid I know little about Orions apart from the famous color of your skin. Which, I must say, I do quite like. Is it true that your skin contains chlorophyll, which is why it is the shade of green it is? Merely a rumor I overheard from some of my classmates on Earth."

The security woman held up her hand and pulled back the clashing red coloured sleeve of her uniform like she'd never noticed it was green before.

"I dunno!" she shrugged "Chlorophyll, that's like plants, right? A teacher once told me I was virtually a vegetable, maybe that's what she meant. I thought she was calling me stupid."

"All I know is, it's hard to find clothes that go well with it: the green stuff, you know? Probably why I was never much into fashion. Just dungarees and a vest for me if I'm in civvies. Not like you... you dress nice. Must be hard to get clothes, bein' so tall." she said, gazing up at Vasha's battered and bruised face.

"Blech, no, not really. There are some human males taller than me, believe it or not," Vasha replied. "Though they're more rhe exception rather than the norm as with all species. It usually takes some alteration and I'll be set for clothes - though if I do want something cute it has to be custom made, unfortunately or not. Well, whatever. I don't mind paying extra." She glanced down at the simple black tank top and blue jeans she had on, fitted to her slender frame. "This is really quite ordinary, however. I'm sure even you could fill out an outfit like this better than me... if you're ever willing to try."

D’Kiva jumped up, the subject of fashion was clearly not up her street. “Hey, let me help you with some of this stuff: I’m kinda more a doer than a talker, y’know?” She picked up an odd bit of apparatus that Dr T’Mora’s predecessor, Dr Matthews had left behind: a thought bong.

“What the heck’s this thing?!” Asked the security woman, hefting it.

"Oh, that. Doctor T'Mora's predecessor left it behind. Apparently it was a prototype thought reader he was supposed to help test on patients. Did he? I don't really know. Here, put it in here please." Vee picked up a box from the floor and held it out to her.

"I appreciate that you're helping out even though you didn't know her. That's really sweet of you. So thank you. If there's ever some way I can pay you back, just let me know - and no, you can't refuse. This time. I think I owe you double now, once for saving my life and now this," She joked as she took the item away and put it away at the side. T'Mora's belongings had been boxed up and stacked neatly in a tower in the corner now, an arrangement the Vulcan would've liked. The items in T'Mora's quarters had still yet to be tidied up, but that was a later question.

The buxom green-skinned woman shrugged. She shrugged a lot. D'Kiva actually had questions: questions about the alien Vasha's relationship with T'Mora, about whether one could even have a relationship with a Vulcan, a pure blood Vulcan, a being of pure cold logic. The tall girl, for despite her size, the security woman instinctively thought of her as a girl: young and emotionally undeveloped, clearly had emotions. In fact, even taking into account her traumatic experiences, she was maybe a little too emotional for life on a Starship on active duty.

But those questions remained unasked. She allowed Vasha that privacy.

But some questions she could ask.

"So, er, when you were in sickbay, after the accident, you said something about not being able to complete your studies; what's the deal with that?" she asked, happily showing her ignorance of the intricacies of academic life while bending over to pick up a file from the floor, artlessly displaying her thick muscular buttocks encased in those god-damn embarrassing red pant things that some male designer had come up with as part of the standard service uniform.

When Vasha had finally shaken off the wow factor that came with having her eyes met with D'Kiva's shapely rear end (she'd always considered herself pansexual and willing to try mostly anything and anyone) , she blinked and cleared her throat. "Well. I am actually a university student studying psychology, and the good doctor was my mentor. I was to shadow her for the next six months in order to finally complete my degree... but, well, you know how that turned out," The Kelpien sighed. She'd been looking forward to a nice, smooth-ish internship with minimal (as much as minimal could be with Starfleet) trouble, but then again unexpected happenings were to be expected in space, no?

"So, you gotta do half a year of real life, psycho-ology stuff, huh?" the ranker didn't see what the problem was.

"Well. I suppose when my university on Earth gets wind they'll want to assign me to someone new, possibly not even on this ship. Or they'll do... whatever else it is they feel is best. I don't know." Vasha sighed and plopped down on the sofa. She looked exhausted, physically, mentally and emotionally all at once - otherwise known as the picture of complete and utter exhaustion. "Shame. I've not even properly introduced myself to the majority of the crew yet."

"Listen" D'Kiva strolled over holding some dust covered bit of impedimenta and stood in front of the seated Vasha, even though the Kelpien was tall, the busty Orion loomed over her a little, looking down at her over those two ripe bumps in her uniform.

"You gotta be more 'proactive', see? I know you're broke up about T'Mora, and your tits are in plaster or whatever, but if you jus' sit around on y'comfy sofa thing there, waiting for these University mugs to tell you what to do, sure, they'll send you to the ass end of nowhere. You gotta send them a plan of how you can stay on this ship and still get your experience you need. Crap! You're probably a better psycho-actress, or whatever it is, than some cold hearted Vulcan could ever be." she nodded to the boxes of T'Mora's junk "No disrespect Ma'am."

It was hard to tell with her half-cute/half-hideously ugly face, but Vasha seemed like she might burst out crying any second. D'Kiva threw down the thing she was holding and stroked her left hand gently over the Kelpien girl's bald head. It was hard and bony and the palm of the Orion's hand was soft and warm - the counterpoint to their two personalities.

"It'll be OK, I didn't pull you outta that rubble just so you could be sent off to some dump someplace. We gonna at least try and keep you here, yes?" She lifted Vasha's weird otherworldly face to her own and with her right hand stroked behind her fuggly wrinkled up ear. "Yes?!" she asked more firmly.

For someone who'd known her less than a day or two at most D'Kiva seemed very, very determined indeed to keep her aboard, she Vee noted with a touch of amusement. Most people she knew wouldn't give an impassioned speech about fighting for their own right to stay where they liked to an (up till now) complete stranger after all. The thing about having her breasts stuck in plaster made about zero sense to her, though. She couldn't see the analogy, truth be told. Perhaps she'd find out later if the curvaceous green beauty in front of her went on with her talk.

"Alright, alright. I'll write to them and ask to be allowed to stay. 'I firmly believe that there remain many opportunities for me to learn from the crew of this vessel and I would be pleased to be attached to another member of counselling staff in the meanwhile', and things like that. I'm not much good at writing fiery compelling subspace letters, but I'll try."

"Yeah, that does sound kinda wet." nodded D'Kiva seemingly forgetting that she was rubbing the Kelpien's strangely ridged head patterns. "Hmmm, you're too wishy washy. I'm too dumb to help, there aren't any other councillors on the ship... ah, I know someone who might be able to help. She's a queen bitch but she can bring the goods to the party, if we play it right."

There was something else distracting besides the two rather obvious things in her face, however. She rubbed against the Orion's soft, warm palm while making a sound that was almost the purr of a pleased cat. "You have really nice hands." She murmured softly. "Have you considered therapeutic massages? With your strength you'd probably do a lovely job. I'd come often if you did."

"You'd what?" the Orion girl suddenly blinked and suddenly let go of Vasha's head, stepping back a little. "Oh, I'm... I'm sorry Miss, I got a little distracted... I... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong signals there, I didn't even realise you were... I mean."

She stopped herself prattling and took a breath.

"Look, Miss... Vasha. I just got out of a... a kind of destructive relationship on my last ship and... well... you know, it was me doing the destructive side, you know? I don't think.. Listen, I like you, I think I really like you, but you don't need me making things worse in your life right now, not with what you've been through, what you're going through."

She looked round at the door, like she was about to make a run for it.

"I'll set up a meeting with someone who can help us.. help you. OK? Maybe..." she looked at the floor and shook her head "Maybe, later, when it's all settled and you're settled and, well, everybody's settled, maybe... well, you know, maybe something... might... OK, I'll go set up this meeting. You carry on with the... yeah.. bye... for now."

She backed up toward the door, like she didn't trust Vasha not to leap on her, or vice-versa for that matter.

"D'Kiva." The Kelpien's expression was kind, in spite of the tiny bombshell the Orion had just dropped on her. "Thinking that people don't need you in their lives for whatever reason is more often than not more destructive than constructive. If you feel attraction there's no harm in following up on it, after you feel that you've become a better version of yourself if need be, but try not to frame things in the backdrop of being a distraction. Alright?"

"What? Er, sure, OK, Whatever." The earthy, if unearthly, woman was nearly at the door. she didn't really get all of this emotional psycho-babble: she was confused enough at this strange attraction to the gangly creature she was backing away from.

"And for what it's worth. Sometimes what someone needs is someone else to help them through whatever they're going through and emerge stronger. That's something I need to figure out for myself. So don't worry. I'll see you again, right? I would love to talk with you again." She offered a kind smile.

"Yeah, we'll talk, yeah" D'Kiva nodded, trying to normalise the situation. She was at the door now, and sensing her, it swished open.

"Maybe over some food. Wherever and whenever you like. You have shifts and things to attend to, I don't really. Ball's in your court, dear."

"Yeah. Food. Right" - now she was free to run away from what she had stumbled into, she felt able to stop and add a coda.

"I'll let you know when we can go see Karashka, OK? See ya later!" and she was gone in a flash of red.

 

RSS Feed