Beneath the Olive Branches

Posted on Wed Apr 26th, 2023 @ 4:52am by Evanna Belyaev & Captain Reuben Gregnol (Mirror)

Mission: Mission 16: Hysperia
Location: Holodeck
4334 words - 8.7 OF Standard Post Measure

In the grand scheme of things, a few days was hardly anything.

Certainly, if Evanna considered what her expected projections had anticipated when it came to Gregnol's assimilation of new information, there had been a very real possibility that she could have spent the next year proving her intentions to the man and still failing to placate him. It wasn't a wariness she could fault; the Empress' secret service was an insidiously competent group permitted far more leeway outside the normal code of conduct in order to get their job done. Sometimes, extreme efficiency resembled outright betrayal, the necessity to embrace a traitor's disposition simply to embed oneself deep enough to make a difference. Evanna herself had not really been a field operative, ostensibly because she was far more valuable constructing the digital infrastructure they all relied upon, but also because Ivan had a tendency to interfere where his daughter was concerned. He had that in common with his ex-husband; neither of them had ever been particularly content to just let her determine her own destiny.

But, they had raised her with the tenacity to pursue it anyway, believing that she never would. Evanna didn't have a lot of time for regret, not as something that lingered. Evaluate failures, adjust operational procedure to improve the chances next time, and move on. She also felt no pressure to apologise for her actions to date, knowing that following Ivan's vision had simply dragged her to one side of a flipped coin where all other prospects were equally as open to criticism. She hadn't blown up an entire planet but she'd written programs that enabled a considerable amount of wide-spread manipulation. Ruining a life was just as cruel as ending one. Perhaps it counted as worse.

Still, there was no escaping from the fact that her service record made for a very shaky character witness. And it made no difference that she was telling the truth because men like Gregnol knew that the truth was subjective and easily warped. Casting herself free of one set of shackles only to pledge herself to another might not have made a lot of sense to those without any intimate knowledge of how constructed her existence had been to date but Evanna felt, in time, there was a chance Gregnol would understand. If you had not choice but to serve then at least having some say over whose command you followed was the closest thing to independence any of them had. Could she convince him that this was as simple as finding him more tolerable than either of her fathers, however? Even to her own ears, the explanation sounded trite. At the very least, it hadn't been a lovesick ploy for devoted allegiance because she'd had absolutely no idea before she'd met the man that he had any capacity to turn her head in more than a professional sense.

Perhaps, in hindsight, she should have known better. He was her type, after all.

And so the effort and expectation of patience had seemed worth it. If he doubted her, she would simply do her best to prove it unwarranted without succumbing to the distasteful groveling of submission. She had changed her entire career to serve under him, that didn't automatically render her any more inclined to cower. Just as she had withstood his anger, had held herself rigid as his hands had dug into her skin, prepared to defend herself if he forced it, so too would she bend and sway beneath his efforts to deconstruct her intent. She had nothing to hide, except a very long list of things she should probably keep hidden.

She'd probably tell him one day.

It had been a rare moment of surprise, all of these things considered, when she'd opened her messages to a simple request to meet him. Aside from not expecting any overtures at all, what had immediately stood out was the pains in which he had taken to ensure it translated as a personal request; the location was not ideal for discussing business, the request for her to wear something comfortable entirely beyond professional parameters, and the simple addition of his first name as a signature was more telling than the handful of sentences themselves. She had accepted after a moment to consider his motive and found herself now, dressed as required, entirely curious about the exchange to come. She couldn't discount further interrogation and wouldn't have been surprised to endure several more rounds of it before he was at least satisfied enough not to leave her behind. As she rounded the corner and saw him waiting outside the holodeck, her steps slowed just enough to allow her to approach without excessive eagerness. It didn't do to spook an angry bear.

Trying to make up with someone like Evanna was a complex mix of emotions that the Butcher Of Betazed did not like at all. Initially, there had been feelings of regret and guilt for acting too hasty in holding her so tightly which had led to the conflict and estrangement over the last few days as he tried to work it all out. There was a sense of vulnerability, as he was unsure if he wanted to open himself to the possibility of rejection or further hurt – she had been there to test him and control him in his opinion. It was not something he was used to having to happen to him and yet there he was sending her a message to meet him on the holodeck.

There may be a fear of rejection and of not being able to fully communicate one's thoughts and feelings to the other person but he was going to at least try in a setting of his own choosing and time. If she was a spy he at the very least could keep her where he wanted to and that involved keeping her close. He stood at the doorway of the holodeck with his bodyguard close by, the woman said nothing other than to confirm she would stay outside the door. Gregnol often did not use one of his bodyguards, feeling that if there were any issues he could face them easy enough but the uneasiness of still being held at the palace was making some of the crew touched. "Good evening." He commented seeing the science chief turned the corn.

The inclusion of personal security did not lend itself to a particularly warm welcome, though it was a precaution Evanna approved of in a professional sense. It had never seemed overly wise to focus on the fact that her instincts had intervened on a very real attempt on his life, there had been no mistaking that Gregnol was one of the primary targets of the attempted bombing. Lending her expertise to the investigation had pointed the Empress' people in the right direction but, given the Butcher's recent reaction to finding out his Science Chief's previous employment, Evanna was frankly surprised she hadn't been hauled in as a suspect. How long would it take him to throw her into a week's worth of torture and interrogation?

At least he was taking the necessary steps to protect himself.

"Dobryy vecher." If Gregnol handpicked his security guards then there was every chance their linguistic connection was sullied by another's ability to translate but it felt like the right level at which to pitch her demeanor. Short of rolling over to exposure her underbelly and submit to whatever assault he wanted to render until he was satisfied she couldn't pose further threat, all Evanna could do was do her best to match his ebb and flow. Her eyes flitted briefly towards the guard before returning once again to meet Gregnol's. "Apologies if I am late." She wasn't, but deference seemed the best place to start.

The woman inclined her head and took several more steps further away to offer more privacy as instructed. "You are not late. Perfect timing and you look good." He commented having taken the time to change out of his uniform to actually wearing something civilian clothes in the way of black trousers, boots and a black shirt. He had never been one to wear colour as a child so he was not about to change that now.

As with all things with a man like Gregnol, it was the unspoken that mattered, all the silence that spilled into the gaps and seeped without ceremony to eradicate emptiness without actually addressing it. A compliment might not have been necessary, she had taken better care to dress practically as instructed than to invest too much in attempting to distract or disarm, but it was offered as hand might be to assist in stepping over a river. Evanna smiled faintly and closed her eyes briefly as she dipped her head in gratitude. "You made it sound as if there may be some walking involved."

"More a stroll but yes there will be activity." He said quietly as he pressed the door release and stepped through the holodeck arch. The usual square grid greeted them even as the door closed nothing changed for a moment before the world shimmered into view around them revealing Moscow. "I thought we could walk around somewhere familiar." The capital city was truly timeless, with its architecture dating back to medieval times, as well as the modern skyscrapers that now dotted along the sky line.

Another gesture. As a woman who had spent her life collecting intricacies from the details others thought they hid perfectly, Evanna had no trouble reading the intent behind his choice of setting. There was a point, far enough back on their personal timelines, where the two of them already intersected and an innate cultural understanding, coupled with a shared language, rendered them allies well-before any political system sought to rearrange allegiances. It was difficult not to be drawn to the familiarity of kindred out amongst the cosmos where alien was considered normal. Gregnol had reason to remind her of that, apparently. Whether it was to reassure himself that it was possible for loyalty to surpass outside interference or simply to warn her that she was not the enigma to him that she might wish others to view her as, Evanna wasn't sure. She smiled faintly as she stepped through the doors into a familiar biting crispness that burned the lungs. The motherland was cold and she was beautiful.

"You programmed the weather properly." It was a simple detail so often butchered.

Of course, he did. Moscow's red square had been an important historical, cultural, and political centre of the city for centuries, it deserved the respect. "I did as should be proper." He noted and held out his hand to her, waiting for her to take it before he started to weave through the crowds that appeared in the red square as they stepped away from the arch.

There was no point spending the outing second-guessing his motives. If the calculated conclusion to all of this was an attempt to extract himself from her influence, or toss her into an agony booth in between attempts to make use of her, then Evanna would break habit and choose to fight the battle when it arrived, not beforehand. Reaching out, she allowed him to take her hand and watched his profile carefully as they stepped beyond their daily reality and into the heart of their combined ancestry.

Then she closed her eyes to absorb the nostalgic overload.

It wasn't just the weather, though the bitter cold was a backdrop that demanded clarity and focus. Tropical heat, Evanna had always discovered with some distaste, lent itself to lethargy and indolence, the kind of gratuitous time-wasting that prompted revellers to believe life had done away with its capriciousness just because the ambience seemed welcoming. Moscow had no time for laziness, just as it had no time for platitudes or fabricated luxury. You worked, you reaped, or your perished.

The climate might have been a major contributor but it wasn't the thing that always drew Evanna back. Industriousness was a national past-time and there was an efficiency and stamina to Russian society that was quite unlike anything she'd ever experienced elsewhere. The Vulcans came close but made too much of it, Cardassians wore it as an ostentatious badge of honour, and both hung their presence on the global stage entirely on other people's respect for it. Russians didn't seek accolades, they simply acted and from those actions, productivity ensued. Gregnol, in so many ways unsullied by outside input, was the embodiment of that rock-solid enterprise that had no use for self-congratulatory chest-puffing because that simply wasted time that could be spent on further toil. If you wanted to know how a perfect machine operated, you came to Russia. All its cogs turned as one.

Dodging someone with head down, intent on employing that self-same efficiency to get wherever it was they needed to be in as short time as possible, Evanna melted into the side of the stoic hulk beside her and then cast her gaze to follow the hologram, impressed yet again at the accuracy.

The man stepped through the crowd making sure the woman stayed with him. The holograms were designed to be solid so it would hurt if they bumped into you but Gregnol was used to the crowds that it was easy to move through it to one of the big statues around edge. “Have you been here before?” He demanded in Russian.

Evanna studied him for a moment before nodding once. "Of course. Ivan sent me to school here whilst he was cultivating his career."

Her childhood was convoluted. Even the sparse information regarding it that existed in her dossier painted a very fractured picture of a child torn between two egotists whose passion eventually succumbed to pride. A single fight was all it had taken to send the human storming from the family home on Betazed, never to return, or at least distant until his daughter reached an age where he had use for her. By then, she had grown up surrounded by Talon's own aspirations, which didn't lend itself to an ideal situation for a child but had at least gifted her an uncanny telepathic resilience for a human. She wasn't immune to the interference of standard interrogating procedure but she had fortitude beyond what many could muster.

Returning her gaze to the plaza, Evanna added softly, "It was a comforting place for a child who had only visited Kyiv a handful of times prior." Ivan hadn't been particularly good at maintaining visiting rights.

"I see," Gregnol commented as he looked around. The name "Red Square" did not refer to the colour of the buildings or the pavement that he was standing on, but rather the old Russian word "krasny," which originally meant "beautiful" but later came to mean "red.". It was one of the useless facts he knew about Motherland. "He was right to bring you here even if it is not quite the glory it used to be."

"Moscow wears her years with pride," Evanna observed quietly, pausing to study the statue he'd brought them to. "It is more of a shame that I cannot return as often as would suit me. I haven't seen Kyiv in quite a while either, for that matter." Aware that they were delving into an aspect of each other's lives that rested so far in the past as to be virtually unrecognisable now, the reserved blonde drew her attention back to a gentle scrutiny of the Butcher of Betazed's furrowed brow. "Work and duty have done a great deal to send both of us considerable distance from our roots. I've never considered it successful in disturbing them, however."

The man said nothing for a long moment before he nodded. “I am proud to be Russian and I know Russia is proud they I am a son but that is not why I brought you here, to peacock at my own victories but I want to show you where I am from so you understand beneath the surface.” He said hoping it was enough of a vulnerability that she would still want to be involved with him as he had found her interesting and charming company.

They were not so dissimilar that Evanna's first instinct wasn't to distrust his motives. Where the differences lie was in the way she handled it, not cold fire and an avalanche's worth of frustrated vitriol, but the calm composure of a gradually drifting glacier. Ruben processed his emotions behind a rigid façade but he was all passion beneath, something that had admittedly caught her off-guard and was contributing extensively to her consideration of him as something more than a change in command. Dig deeper still and Evanna would not have been surprised to find further layers of silt and slate, a hardened shell wrapped around stoic vulnerability. It wasn't weakness, just in the way that Moscow's heart was cracked but uncompromising, but it was a single source of warmth in a snowscape of frozen extremes and spoke somewhat to the man's capacity to feel. To connect. To love.

It was a hell of an excavation process.

More daunting still when one took into consideration her own scattered sentiment, trapped beneath layers of ice that rarely felt the temptation of warmth. Life had taught her that betrayal was the only predictable outcome, whether it arrived swiftly or after long deliberation, and she had sought to become its master rather than submit herself to the role of perpetual victim. There was no guarantee that this was anything more than his attempt to rein her in and keep her where he could act immediately and without mercy if it proved necessary, but then he had no proof that she wasn't a covert plant sent to pull his strings from the inside. Neither of things would ever cease to be a possibility, and so she either accepted his conditional trust or...she didn't. Only one of those options got her anywhere near what she wanted from her current situation.

Evanna smiled faintly. A valiant gesture towards the impossible was still courageous and worthy of admiration. He was trying. "Certainly not a man," she quietly confronted the elephant in the room, "to find it easy to accept an ex-spy." Pale blue eyes held his for a moment before Evanna's expression softened and she conceded, "At least not any easier than an ex-spy finds herself capable of expecting contentment from any of her relationships." An eyebrow quirked, a mixture of amusement and resignation. "We make quite a pair."

“But I am trying.” He said with a resounding effort to keep his voice even and low despite how he wanted to be short and ill tempered in having to eat a little humble pie. “You intrigue me and that does not happen often.”

The twitch of her lips saw Evanna exert a lifetime's experience with control over her facial muscles. "Likewise," she conceded, not entirely successful in keeping to dancing amusement from her eyes. "On both counts."

She drew in a breath then and regarded the statue again, eyes flitting towards the pigeons perched atop it. Despite it being the holodeck, Evanna strategically moved until she was standing beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder had their height difference allowed it. "It was not a criticism," she eventually pointed out. "From an entirely professional standpoint, I would never advise you to take your eye off a known operative. I do not begrudge your scrutiny; even without the purity of my intent, I am my fathers' daughter and that has always had a way of complicating things."

Pale blue eyes lifted upwards towards the sky, a similar colour beneath the expanse of white cloud. "On personal grounds, I find myself just as inclined to applaud your caution. I..." It was her turn to struggle with her words, not normally an affliction the articulate woman suffered from easily. "It would bother me a great deal to see you endangered on my behalf."

“I would like to see them try.” He said with all the pragmatism and stoic the man who had destroyed a world and whole civilisation could muster. It was a statement of fact that many had tried to hurt and endangered him and their bodies lined the universe. “This will not be easy, Evanna. I will not trust easily but this is me trying to move past the start of this.” He said turning to look down at her staring up at the sky.

This time, her humour curved her lips gently, though Evanna took her time in averting her eyes. "Very little that is worthwhile is ever easy." Leaving the sentiment to hang, she blinked slowly and then turned finally to look at him. "You have the distinction of being one of the few surprises I haven't accounted for in advance. I based my decisions on your professional capacity and given the extensive proof of your ability to produce results, possibly underestimated your charm." For a woman like Evanna, admitting to underestimating anything was also not simple; she was trying to meet him halfway, even if it was through flirtatious undercurrents. Her lips twitched again. "Very few turn my head more than once, Captain. You are an uncommon man."

“I like to think so.” The man replied his own lips turning from a frown to a smile. He never moved past professional often, it was easier to keep women at arms left to avoid intangibles that would compromise. It had only happened once before and that was with a woman who had caused him to nearly change his whole outlook on the woman. He could not see that happening with Evanna, she was not like Jeassaho. She was ice where the Betazoid had been fire but that was exactly what he needed after burning a planet. “I am not a man to be messed with but that does not mean I am not worthwhile.”

A healthy ego, whilst confronting to some, only won further admiration in Evanna's book. That did not mean to say she intended to indulge him too often in open compliment. With a boldness that very few possessed, she slipped her arm through his and through a subtle shifting of muscles beneath her layers, invited a continuation of their stroll thusly linked. Control would be a central theme of any relationship they forged, but whereas both were rigid and uncompromising in their own ways, Evanna's methods were far less direct than Gregnol's. Patience defined her, whilst he wrangled it as one might attempt to control a bucking bronco. If that gifted him the impression of authority, she had very little reason to assert otherwise, but he was starting to appear a little uncomfortable just standing there.

"How long is it since you returned home?," she queried eventually, anticipating a response somewhat similar to her own.

The woman’s arm through his had the desired effected and he turned to walk around the square. “Computer night mode.” The scene shifted from day to night and gave another side of Moscow. “I have not been back to Terra since 94.” He said simply. It was easy to forget the heart of the empire existed out there somewhere when you spent as long as he did ignoring things.

"Any plans to change that?" Curiosity came with the territory, though Evanna was used to digging around via alternative routes rather than pursuing the direct option of just asking. Gregnol was worth the dedicated effort, however, and given the effort he had made, it seemed only fitting that she forgo her own preferences to properly engage him.

“Not in the slightest.” He said simply as the crowds shifted around them from every day Russians to people dressed to impressed and partying. There were even a few imperial officers among the crowds now as the mood shifted. “I always preferred the nighttime Moscow to daytime. It appealed to me more even before we moved to London.”

What she made of his response was anyone's guess. As any investigator would, Evanna filed the information away and simply meandered where he chose to steer the conversation. Like him, she watched the swirl of people around them shift until the change in mood was palpable. "I had a tutor once who suggested that night-time in Moscow was recompense for all the sacrifices made throughout the day." She paused and then added pragmatically, "Of course, she was a complete hedonist so that may only have been an excuse to justify her extra-curricular habits."

“I feel like it is justified. I very much enjoyed many nights here.” He said grinning a little more before he shut it down and shook his head. “Pick a location and we shall go there. This program is one of the most well done programs that is used as a training program for security so it has many locations of Moscow planned for real life situations.”

"And I did not say what she was training me in." Two could play at that game. Flirtatiousness tugged at Evanna's lips but she lifted her chin to consider the question instead and even closed her eyes a moment to trust him with leading the way, as if to draw into her mind's eye a suggestion that would satisfy them both. "There is a bar on Nikolskaya Street that still serves Stroh Rum in its coffee." She opened her eyes again. "Shall we test the programmer's attention to detail?"

It sounded like a perfect way to test the program and each other so it was an agreement in his book. “ Stroh Rum sounds perfect.” He decided and started to lead the way. He was going to investigate the other comment later. That was too good to not discover but for now he was happy to satisfy himself with the bar on Nikolskaya Street.