Drinking The Blues

Posted on Tue Mar 22nd, 2022 @ 11:05pm by Chief Helmsman Kalahaeia t'Leiya & Executive Officer Jake Ford

Mission: Mission 14: Holoworld
Location: SS Mary Rose
Timeline: After Mission End
3840 words - 7.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Jake's quarters had felt empty. Eden hadn't spoken much about events on the Holoship, and had actually been pretty quiet in general since their 'vacation' had turned into a massive group piggyback on the Austenworld program. She'd wanted a proper vacation, and he'd said no. And the silence had turned into arguing. And then he'd said some things that he shouldn't have. And she'd walked out; not just on him, but on the ship. He figured it was an extreme reaction, but Eden had never done anything by halves.

With their shared bedroom filled with bitter memories, he had fled to the bar. Eva wasn't around at that particular time, and it was fairly quiet considering the relative lateness of the hour. Maybe that was a good thing; being around groups of people was less appealing lately. He just couldn't shift that weird undercurrent of tension, a precursor to defensiveness, when more than a few people were in close proximity.

Having helped himself to a drink from the bar, he took the bottle and a glass to a table looking out into space and sat down, pondering silently what was coming next.

Kali didn't so much walk into the bar as enter it like a sub-compact force of nature possessed of too much energy for her petite frame to contain. She spotted Jake, the glass and bottle, and the absence of any bar staff; and stalked over to the wall of bottles herself, upending a bottle of Romulan ale, a measure of pineapple juice, and some coconut rum, and shaking it before pouring it into a glass and topping it with one of the little tiki umbrella garnishes before making her way over to where Jake was and sitting down across from him, not waiting for an invitation.

"You're the XO here, right?" Kali twirled the umbrella stick in her drink, then took a long sip of it.

He was momentarily taken aback by the whirlwind arrival, but grasped hold his glass protectively and made momentary eye contact. "That's right. We met on the Holoship. You're...Kalahaeia," he recalled, almost perfectly pronouncing the name.

One of Kali's eyebrows climbed up slightly--over 90 percent of the people she met completely butchered the pronunciation; but that had been about as good as it could get, or at least, as good as it could get for people without a set of vulcanoid vocal chords. "Yeah. Most people called me Kali." She smiled slightly, then frowned. "Can't say the whole 'free luxury cruise' thing turned out how it was supposed to. Thanks for picking us up."

"For a while there it was fun." He left the interpretation of which part was 'fun' to her. No doubt she would see that detail differently. He took a sip of his drink, noting the one in her hand with a motion of his arm. "That smells interesting. Do you mind if I...?"

"Sure." Kali slid the drink over toward Jake to sample, a move that was also an incidental but fairly blatant tell that she had a rather lower level of paranoia than the points on the ears would otherwise imply; or an easier and faster trust threshold; and had already decided after the events on the holoship that Jake was unlikely to take the opportunity to do anything to the drink. "If you decide you like it and ever want to order it at a bar, it's called a 'Warbird of Paradise'. Became pretty popular back during the Dominion War when the trade embargo fell and bars could start getting and advertising legal Romulan ale...But needed to sell something that let most of their customers buy more than one drink before passing out." If it was a bit of an exaggeration of the power of the 'blue stuff', it wasn't by much.

He sipped the pale blue beverage, letting it linger on his tongue for a few seconds before swallowing. He returned the glass.

"Fvadt...that's good." He shook his head slowly. "It's funny, a few months ago I don't think that would have been to my taste, but I suppose some things change." He topped-up his own glass from the bottle. "Don't worry, I'm not going to propose a drinking contest or anything, as much as I feel like getting drunk right now, I don't think that would be for the best."

Kali looked Jake up and down briefly, filing the also-excellent pronunciation there away for later thought--profanity was something she was slightly less surprised when people knew; in her experience one of the things languages tended to trade most when people learned a few words between species was profanity--but the pronunciation had been above-average again.

She grinned with confidence in her next words despite the fact that Jake was more than a foot taller than she was. "You're right; it wouldn't be; I'd drink you under the table." She waved a hand at the drink he'd tried and took another sip of it herself. "Really not that much alcohol in this by...certain standards." The shot of rum barely counted; the Romulan ale was only a single shot itself, and the rest was pineapple juice: The drink had been invented to let even your average human drink a few of them; to a Romulan, even a small one, it was more like drinking watered down beer, effects wise. "Which probably wouldn't do much for anyone else's opinion of me, for one." A human style shrug with her shoulders, an a resigned look flitting across her face for the briefest of moments. "Generally found in life that most people's response to these--" Kali flicked the elegant point on one ear with her fingers "--is to demand you work three times harder than they ask of a human, to prove you're not about to stab than in the back."

"Oh I fully expect that. Why I don't have my back to you." He allowed himself a little smirk at that point. He side-eyed her momentarily. "You're definitely not like Liha, that's for sure. She'd have cursed me two or three times by this point. Honestly it's reassuring to know that not all of your species are so..."

"Only an idiot puts their back to anyone they don't know. You don't strike me as an idiot." Kali shrugged again. "But change a word or two intended for the end of that line about my species, and you could say something similar about yours." Her tone there was hard to parse; wry and witty but with more than a touch of weary hurt behind it too; perhaps remembering every time in her life or her former career where she'd been accused of being an enemy spy, excluded as an outsider, or otherwise made to feel unwelcome based on someones' prejudice or stereotypes...Quite possibly more recently of late by both humans and Romulans, albeit in different ways. "A lot of humans are way more knee-jerk judgemental than they like to say they are." She took another long pull of the cocktail. "I grew up on Earth; so I suppose I either got the worst of or the best of both cultures. Kind of like the Warbird of Paradise." Kali flicked the glass with two fingers, sending pale sea-green liquid swirling around the tiki umbrella.

"Explains a lot," he nodded. "Like why you're not actively trying to trigger me at every opportunity," he added dryly, wondering if his interactions with Liha, in particular, had shaded his view of her kind. "Listen..." he leaned forward, trying to articulate some of the thoughts rolling around inside his head. "I recently went through some...changes. Still am, I think. It's a bit of a long story, but I sort-of inherited some Romulan...I don't know." He sighed, struggling to find the words. "It's not genetic; It's more like random emotional or psychological pieces. I feel like I have these feelings in my head, just burning to get out. Sometimes they do. Do you understand what I mean?"

"I'm...not quite sure." Kali took another sip, considering: That was quite a statement, and the particular way it was stated, what as said and especially what was not said, implied a complicated incident that pushed the bounds of a 'reasonable mans' belief' standards, like an encounter with Q or something equally bizarre. Still, she personally had never seen much harm explaining certain things; honestly her own would have been easier if more humans had understood them over the years dealing with her. "But on a purely biological level of psychology, cultural influences aside even, we're rather more...intense...than humans. And don't let any haughty Vulcan fool you; they're the exact same way." She chuckled, seemingly more willing than most Romulans or most Vulcans to admit the two species were in fact historically the same one. "Emotions. Reactions. How deep they run, how intense they are and how keenly you feel them. How quickly they can come on, and the level of skill and practice and sheer will required to master them and control yourself." A veridian blush spread across her cheeks. "I'm not really very good at that part myself actually; so my advice is possibly of limited use when it comes to acquiring that control."

"At least you're willing to listen," he remarked glumly. "I suppose it's just very new to me. And self-control over wild emotion was never really a problem I've had to deal with in the past." He frowned, staring at his own drink for a few moments. "Honestly I'm worried I won't be the same person anymore."

"Can't really opine too reliably on that one one way or another, without knowing a lot more about what, how, and why. But first guess, if they seem like they could have been your feelings before perhaps, just now harder to tamp down or hold back, or easier to 'hear'...Then you're probably pretty much exactly the same person, just with the volume cranked to 'max'. Keep in mind my ancestors had themselves a global nuclear war, nearly blew up their first planet, and split an entire species in two for an insane journey that pushed--or exceeded--the envelope of their available level of space travel technology at the time; before they all learned various ways of turning down their reactions." So if you haven't smashed anything yet, you're probably doing fine." It came to Kali slightly too late that this was possibly the wrong thing to say to a human, with their rather easy and seemingly inborn self-control abilities, and their quick judgement of people for admitting to violent thoughts even, regardless of how well they held back action; but the shuttle had already left the bay so to speak and the words were out of her mouth, so she barged onward. "Though, I got myself booted from the fleet a decade back for shattering the noses and zygomatic arches of three admirals who deserved it, so...I may be an especially low bar of comparison there."

He snorted. "Sounds like there's a story or two behind that." He refilled the glass, at least a little grateful for the distraction of hearing someone speak on a different topic. And the way she spoke it sounded like the sort of tale he might enjoy hearing. With Eden gone, he needed the change.

"At the risk of leaving out a lot of background...As you might guess based on the fact that I was born on Earth--and the fact that I pulled a stunt like that and the consequence didn't include my execution--the fleet I got axed by was the Federation Starfleet." Kali sighed. "Of which I served proudly in against the Dominion, and for some time after, as a pilot. Unfortunately around 2378 I finally gave in to the harassment I'd been getting from SFI since...well, since I was a cadet in the late 2360s if I'm honest." She downed the last of her own drink, then got up and made herself another one, talking all the while. "And while they figured out fairly quickly afterwards that I sucked at their initial plan and would've made a lousy undercover agent, rather than send me back to my old job, they settled for making me an analyst and intelligence officer still because, well. Native Rihannsu speaker and all; they kinda had less of those available in the Federation than you have fingers; and were even more attached to the idea of having one than you might be to having all those fingers. Did a couple years at headquarters, went out to Starbase 78 as the sector intel officer and served there with Burnie, went back to headquarters in '82 to the Romulan Affairs Section. You probably see where this one is going." The dry commentary managed to seem judgemental of both herself and others all at once, as she sat back down with her new drink and took a sip of it.

"Let's just say I had a bad reaction to certain decisions made by Federation and Starfleet leadership in the latter half of the 2380s." She knocked back a second gulp of the drink in quick succession, wishing it were stronger and debating the merits of switching to straight ale. "I got through three of them before security had me surrounded. Yet another incident in my life that pleased absolutely no one." Kali rolled her eyes, hard. "While most of the legal apparatus and various colleagues were busy judging me for socking anyone in the first place; my parents were busy making comments that if I was going to do that sort of thing, I really needed to have considered it better and made sure the results were worthy of the price; and that I should have started with the Chief of the Fleet, or possibly the Council, and should've been using my blade, not my fist, and making lethal strikes."

Jake chuckled to himself. It was surprising how many so-called Starfleet Command 'leaders' were complete jackasses. He'd met more than a few during his own brief stint in the uniform to have recognised a few of them too. Her reaction wasn't altogether surprising, though the fact that she'd actually followed-through was amusing. Few people he knew would have had the guts - or lack of care - to do that.

"I guess the Captain and I will have to watch ourselves then," he remarked. "Try and stay on your good side..." he angled his head slightly as he thought about that. "Oh no, I'm pretty sure that was your good side, right?"

Kali laughed for a moment at the first half of Jake's words, then grew more somber again at the last.

"Depends on how you look at it. As my attorney at the time pointed out to the charging authorities and the brass; it was probably about as well as it ever tends to end when someone with these ears loses control of themselves, and a lot less deadly than most." She flicked an ear point again. "But from a lot of humans' perspective, it's supposed to be easy to control yourself in the first place...Near as I can tell mostly because it really is much easier, comparatively, for you all. I might as well have been a raving madman bent on mass murder, in many of their eyes. And from my parents' point of view, it was just juvenile; to a degree unacceptable even for my rather less-than-impressive age at the time." She took another sip of her drink, using the momentary pause to consider the best way to simplify the next concepts, for an outsider. "Not in the same way a Vulcan might parse it, but we still judge a loss of control like that rather harshly--not because of the emotion itself, or the violence, but because of not having considered your actions, of not having made sure you felt they were worth whatever price you might pay for them, and of not having been in a state of mind to make sure you got the most for your money, basically. So actually, pretty much no one agrees that was my 'good side'; they have somewhat opposite ideas of what they think the good response would have been. I guess that's part of why I ended up bouncing around dicier areas of the universe in a lot of the decade since. Sick of being misunderstood and judged by two different sides in two different ways and I can never win."

Her voice trailed off and one corner of her mouth pulled up into a sly expression. "Beating cheating Ferengi at their own gambling tables, on the other hand; or the occasional small-time Orion hustler? That I could win at; and if any humans or Romulans were around, well. They usually weren't the types with a sterling social graces reputation themselves either, so generally less apt to judge."

"I hear you on that. The last gig I had was running security for some of those types of 'establishment'. I've seen what those places are like; what they can do to a person if you stay there long enough." Jake finished his drink. Kalahaeia was different to Liha, that was for sure. A little more balanced. More human, perhaps, though he wouldn't say that out loud. "I guess feeling like I'm losing control...losing myself...is a good thing. That I'm noticing the changes and able to spot them. That's part of the Romulan. Right?"

"Sorta. I'd say that part is more cultural training than inborn biology or psych tendencies though." Kali wondered for a moment how on Earth something like that would have transferred in whatever incident he was in the aftermath of; but supposed it were possible if it had involved, say, telepaths melding everyone's heads together or something. She'd have to get the story later; and a voice in the corner or her head that sounded suspiciously like both her aunt and her first SFI boss was busy chastising her for telling Jake any of this, instead of trying to get it out of him now. "But knowing yourself; and mastering yourself, yes." She nodded and downed another sip of pale-blue-green cocktail. "Applying a fairly ruthless inner eye to analyzing, planning, and assessing your own actions, motives, and state of mind; and how it might interact with things around you as you apply a more external assessment of such to others, and to situations overall. Making sure you are in a position to maneuver a situation to an outcome you prefer; avoid ones you do not; and handle any issues or challenges which arise." She paused, considering. "Also; to know what prices you are likely to pay for an action or inaction; and which you are willing to, and keep such in mind."

The sheepish look was back on Kali's face for a moment. "Take that all with a grain of salt though...Because my exposure to Romulan culture growing up came from about as many people as you can count on one hand, or less at times. As to the rest of it, and why you only learned half that from someone half on the inside and half on the outside...Well. I'll offer you the following proverb; that I'm absolutely failing in myself at the moment: "If knowledge is power; then to be unknown is to be unconquerable." Kali threw the words out in a sudden burst of her native tongue; watching and wondering if the man knew enough to decipher what she'd said or not.

He frowned. The statement took him a while to translate in his mind; as though he were consciously willing himself to unlock that element of his damaged subconscious. It took several seconds, but he began to let it in. The paranoia, the slight rush of adrenaline and hyper-awareness; things he had been suppressing. He wondered whether he was opening pandora's box by encouraging it to happen.

"Proverbs?" he responded aloud. "Maybe I should start taking notes." He wouldn't admit it, but in the back of his mind he could hear the whispers of other, similar phrases. Lessons taught, wisdom retained by a foreign mind. It was unsettling, yet...oddly comforting at the same time. His throat dry, he offered Kali a polite smile and a nod. "This talk was appreciated."

“I wouldn’t mind the other side of the story, sometime.” Kali returned the nod. “As to what exactly was the incident that was the impetus for it. I mean, back in the fleet at least half that kinda stuff was classified, and my clearance was revoked with my discharge; but.” She shrugged once more, human and Romulan style at the same time with both eyebrows and shoulders. “Generally found no one out here cares about those much. Still; the ride is appreciated, on my end…Don’t really have anywhere else to go; unless I think I’d have better luck at the game tables than I have lately.”

"You might have some luck with Liha," he replied glumly. "At least better luck than I would have." He didn't want to dwell on that note, so left his comment in the air and headed back out of the bar.

Kali watched him go, uncharacteristically thoughtful; while he had left having learned a great deal more from her than she had learned from him, she'd found sometimes the last ten years that if you had time enough to play the long game, sometimes being the first to open up on anything (or more often simply appear to; it wasn't like she'd actually told much of value to any of the smugglers she'd reverse-conned over the years) and waiting a bit actually got you better odds the other party would reveal something significant, or tell you what you wanted to know. Curiosity was going to gnaw at her until she solved the mystery, she knew; but she snorted a moment of laughter into her drink, thinking of his statement that she ask Liha. As if. Clearly whatever had 'transferred' to Jake from a member of her own species - and based on his last comment, she suspected from Liha - did not include any understanding of social conventions. That was not the sort of thing she could ask the other woman, especially secondhand, and expect an answer. Especially if it involved her as well.

"Oh well. At least the booze is free." Kali said to the empty room, and then downed the last of her drink in one long gulp.