Drink Your Water

Posted on Sun Jan 7th, 2024 @ 12:12am by Captain Rueben Gregnol & Delaney O'Callaghan

Mission: Fractures
Location: Personal Quarters, SS Mary Rose (Alternative)
Timeline: Future Variant Timeline
3307 words - 6.6 OF Standard Post Measure

Nights hadn't really got any easier.

When she'd first left the ship, Eva's near brush with death had prompted a very swift reanalysis of her life, or at least certain aspects of it that had been placed on a shelf labeled 'later' and then pushed to the back in the hope that 'much later' became possible. Her time on Betazed had yielded decent results, she had a treatment regime now for the mess of chemicals in her head and that had at least removed the legitimate reason for her over-dependence on sleep aids. When she'd first arrived back, she'd been fairly optimistic, convinced that a second stab at a life amongst the stars wasn't going to be as much an attempt at running away as it was of taking the time to understand her place.

Dangerous situations, one after the other, had a different opinion on how this next stage would play out.

Now, the struggle to sleep was shared by most of the crew and exacerbated by the very real and present risk that taking their eyes off the universe for too long would topple over what remained of their fragile house of cards. She got her best rest when she wasn't alone and yet that wasn't something the bartender was willing to admit, not when it had the potential to come across as a manipulative coercion. She took what she could get; sometimes that meant dozing off in front of a movie, curled up on the couch with nothing for company but a pervading sense of paranoia.

She jolted awake, unsure of what had disturbed her.

The ship was kept fairly dark these days, the low energy signal being a safety precaution to keep their profile low. The room was illuminated only by the faint glow of the television, which displayed only static now that she'd slept through the bulk of what she'd been watching. Bleary-eyed, Eva stared at the fuzz for a moment, trying to orient herself, and slowly sat up to stretch as she gradually accepted this was going to be the first of many interruptions she'd have to navigate before the next shift alleviated her of redundancy. She fumbled for the remote, found it resting on the floor where it had bounced after falling, and froze as the pair of boots visible just beyond shifted awkwardly, attached to legs that, once the line of her gaze finished cataloguing, were only part of a familiar figure who didn't usually make a habit of just standing around in her quarters. Something was off.

"Rueben?"

Gregnol stood there confused for a moment as he had just been talking to the Ishimura Captain and then he was in a darkened quarters. He just stood there looking confused as he tried to work it what was going on and where was he now. “Yeah?” He questioned gently. He recognised the sleepy voice but he could not at all place it there and then. The shifting had left him drained and he sunk to the edge of the bed holding his head as he tried to work out what was going on now.

"Is everything okay?"

Even before she'd finished, Eva knew the answer. Telepathically, she was still adapting to being somewhat capable of a stable connection, and she had a long way to go before she would have called herself a reliable source for identifying a person by their psionic resonance but she had spent enough time over the past few months watching this man sleep to have a reasonable idea of what to expect. This was different, he was different. Suspicion creased her brow but, despite an over-abundance of need for caution these days, she didn't feel threatened, just confused. Rising slowly, Eva pulled her cardigan around her, a contradiction to the shorts the left her legs bare, and hugged her arms around her mid-rift. "What is it?"

Gregnol froze as he tried to think about what was going on. “I am …. I am not from here.” He finally whispered softly as he turned and looked at the woman as his senses returned. “Eva?” He finally realised as he stumbled to where a control was and turned up the light.

His words stopped the telepath in her tracks. It had been a couple of months now since the other traveler had come and gone but the impact of his visit was still being felt. Reuben had spent days looking off into empty space, struck by a miserable anticipation of who else might suddenly appear. A cold trickle down her spine reminded her that she was unarmed and that if this did represent some kind of larger plot, there was very little she was going to be able to do to intervene currently. It at least explained the sense of wrongness but, once again, if there was any threat intended, she didn't sense it.

Slowly, she forced her shoulders to relax.

"Time hopping, right?"

“Yeah…” The man groaned as his head started to ache more with the pressure of everything that was going on. It was so wrong to be off gallivanting when something was going so wrong. “What year is it?” He demanded. He knew this was not the last so it had to be the future and a future where Eva returned, which to him right there and then was mind boggling.

"2404." Last time around, Reuben had handled things, and his friend hadn't lingered long enough for conversation to gain any momentum. Now stuck with the responsibility of knowing what should and shouldn't be disclosed, Eva found herself overwhelmingly drawn by a very familiar desire to comfort. This was a younger version to the man who often fell asleep against her chest but it was difficult to dial things back to a time where the pair of them were just friends. "Take a seat, you look like you've been through hell." She gestured to the couch and then, after a moment's hesitation once he sat, lowered herself to sit on the coffee table just in front of him. "You're not the first we've had through, though it's been a couple of months now. Can I get you something?" She stopped herself as she realised a hand reaching to smooth the creases on his brow had no business offering the tenderness.

The man looked at the bed and shook his head staggering into the living area and sagged onto the couch. “I was in the past. This ship's past in 2243. But this is 2404. What is this going on?” He wondered quietly ignoring the offer of something to drink. He would have loved to have something strong but he needed to keep his wits about him best he could.

"The other guy didn't know either, he wasn't here for very long." A sense of guilt welled, the understanding that not only was she charged with keeping information from this version of the captain, but that she would struggle to know if she should tell her Reuben and risk igniting his sense of longing all over again. There was obviously no permanency to these drop-ins but with so many lost, including his wife, she hadn't been able to begrudge him even the tiniest hope of seeing loved ones again. "We haven't experienced anything like it here, at least that's what Reuben says. I wasn't here, obviously." She offered him a rueful smile. "Made good on the threat eventually though, I told you I'd be back."

Well that was positive wasn’t it that someone else had ended up in that timeline. “Who was the other guy?” He wondered before looking over and smiled despite the head ache. “You did and you look healthy and happy.” He said quietly. It was a thoughtful tone as he felt less guilt now despite how bad the situation was that she was okay.

A circumspect hum sounded evident of the spirited bartender who'd left her mark despite the relative brevity of her time on board. "Someone told me they'd fly to Betazed and kick my ass for me if needed." It had been an oddly emotional conversation at the time, a blurting out of several home truths to a man she really didn't know that much. Somehow, when she'd gone to him to explain why she needed to leave, Gregnol had presented as just the right kind of confidant though, far enough removed personally whilst still being the type of guy to invest in his crew indefinitely. At the time, she hadn't really thought returning would be possible, but he'd left the door open and...well, it was hard now to imagine being anywhere else.

She watched him, trying to recall the man he once was, fumbling to find their old dynamic now that it had been replaced by something that wouldn't pass as acceptable under these conditions.

"It was Jaxx, wasn't here for more than a couple of minutes." Eva bit her lip then, drawn back in by indecision to eventually arrive at, "If you're here for too much longer, I'll have to alert Rue...the Captain." As much as she wanted to protect them both, a certain level of respect made some secrets inadvisable. "Unauthorized presence on board and all that."

The man nodded for a moment letting it all sink in. “You should call him. I would not like it if it was left unknown to me.” He said gently trying to not think to much into the way that she said Rue. “I get the impression that things are very different right now.” He stood gathering himself for what was going to be coming through the door as soon as she told his future self about everything that bad transpired in the last couple of moments.

"Yeah. You could say that.'

Eva paused, taking a moment to consider whether it was kinder to break the news to him before he was left to confront himself but she honestly wasn't sure she was the best person for it, not when she presented an emotional complication of her own. Rising slowly, the brunette hesitated again and then moved towards the small set-up in the corner that doubled as a desk and recording space for whenever she actually had time to create music these days. Activating the communicator took a moment to garner a response, which was one-sided due to the earpiece she immediately put in. Cloaks and daggers, the climate of secrecy was pervasive.

"Hey, it's me."

There was familiarity to her tone that Eva tried her best to balance, turning her back slightly on her visitor to continue.

"I know, I was. Listen, we have...another visitor." Her tone was immediately conciliatory. "I'm fine, I don't think there's any threat. Not that, the time travel...yeah." Hazel eyes glanced back over her shoulder as Eva chose her words carefully. "A bit closer to home this time. It's been a couple of minutes. Yeah. Yeah, okay."

Lingering a moment as communications cut off, Eva then drew in a deep breath and turned, once again pulling her cardigan around her. "Now to see if he gets here in time."

“I do not felt any different so I am quite happy to sitting there.” The man commented softly moving to sit on the sofa and looked around the room. It was a familiar room but he could not place it at all, he knew the ship but he could not at all to know the state rooms when he allowed the senior crew members free reign in things like decorating quarters.

At a loss, for once, to know how to fill in the time, Eva turned to wander into the small kitchenette and grabbed a glass of water. Rather than consume it herself, she took it to him, a small offering that might go some way towards helping his head. Dehydration was something she could assist with, despite the fact that if she knew him half as well as she would eventually, Gregnol probably wanted something much stronger by this point.

The door slid open and Gregnol walked into the the quarters without needing permission and stopped instantly taking in a younger version of him that had far less grey hair and scars. “Well, this is different.” He said slowly as he stepped further into the room.

Caught, as it were, in between the pair of them, Eva turned her head and watched the battle-worn Captain enter. Fleeting eye contact was enough to convey an understanding and she stepped back, favouring proximity to the older Gregnol whilst still respecting physical boundaries. Given the nature of things, she was relatively sure he'd prefer sending the younger version of himself on his way without the knowledge of what life after his wife's passing resembled. Not for the first time, Eva felt the weight of being the new woman and resigned herself, yet again, to it lacking in enough definition to even qualify as a fixed point in the man's future.

"Just a little bit." The man commented as he stared at the man and then glanced to the woman. "So how bad is it for you to look... for us to look like that?" He wondered.

"Bad enough for most of the people we class as our family to be long gone." The future version said making the younger one frown and then paled. That was quite bad in his books, worse than he could have imagined. "She's gone." He said knowing that the she could only be one person - Jeassaho.

It seemed easier to retreat, even if the only place she could really disappear to that gave them any semblance of privacy was her workspace in the corner. Drawing back quietly, Eva eased herself into the seat her guitar case was nestled beside. Somehow, the need for minimal power and constant focus on slipping through the region of space as quietly as possible had translated to an overall aversion to noise amongst the crew, as if there was any chance that a cacophony inside the ship could escape into the void and give away their position. There was no reason for it but the psychological trickery still meant that the only place Eva really felt she could perform anymore was inside her own quarters when she was alone. Right now, she drew one leg up to rest her chin against her knee and closed her eyes. This conversation was going to leave another mess to tidy.

"That is a bad level I have not considered in a long time." The young version said not having missed the woman move to the corner in an attempt to disappear. He could not blame her and almost envied her being able to escape it all. None of this was what he wanted and he he did not have the first idea of how to stop his shifts through time yet. He was going to manage it though and get everyone back together. "So what is going on here? The ship feels silent?" He asked when the man did not want to tell him he glanced to Eva and raised an eyebrow.

"Business as usual." Her smile, though tired, was every bit as pragmatic as it had always been. If there was one thing this version of events hadn't destroyed, it was Eva's ability to push forward. Progress through adversity had been a theme in her life for a lot longer than these past few years. "Smaller crew rotation," she added, without elaborating on the why, "and an overall desire to minimise our presence. Work is a little riskier these days." Her dark eyes studied the much younger face before flitting towards the faded lines of anguish etched into the far more familiar features she was used to interpreting. "I think the important thing here is, we have no proof that our experiences will reflect yours. More information isn't going to help you, it'll just mess with your head."

The younger Gregnol shook his head. It was not going to mess with his head any more than the past had he was sure of that. "In both our cases." The older Gregnol commented. "He is already thinking of all the ways he can save everyone. Don't do it, Reuben, it will leave you broken and require people to put back together in ways you will never understand."

"Why don't we," Eva intervened, rising again as she resigned herself to forming a wedge between these two before they got too far into each other's heads, "consider a more practical approach than decimating potential timelines with pervasive indecision." If there was amusement to be shared between the pair, it was the way she fixed both of them with a pointed look that resembled every-bit the bossy presumption she'd had from the start. "Drink your water," she ordered the younger version. "If you're time hopping, eventually you're going to have to find a way to stay hydrated. And," Eva continued, before she could be interrupted by protest, "you should consider having something to eat while you can too."

“I am not hungry. I do not think I could keep it down anyway.” The man said drinking the water though. Keeping hydrated was important especially after the strong drinks he had had in 2243. “Thank you for the concern though.” He added looking at the woman. “I am glad to see you healthy.”

Forget how weird it must be for the pair of them, Eva was struggling to cast her mind back in time far enough to conceptualize who she'd been when this version had last seen her. Recovering from liver resectioning and a functional alcoholic, as best she could recall. More awkward was the fact she'd already had this conversation with him when she'd first returned, had been quietly touched at the time that he'd spent so long sat at the bar just chatting to her. Tapping at her temple, she did her best to pass it off with a smile. "Found a treatment that works, for the most part." Regulating her Psilosynine levels had been crucial, and the additional telepathic training on top of it had actually allowed her some semblance of control over the ability.

“Lucky.” Reuben knew many Betazoids who were not that lucky but he was glad that for once someone was looking down on her. He put the glass down on the nearest surface he could reach as he felt the strange echoing feeling coming over him.

“He is going.” The older Gregnol said as he watched his younger version fade a lot quicker that Jaxx had all those months back.

It felt wrong to be relieved but, knowing the potential for psychological torment, Eva couldn't help but release the breath she'd been holding. Wherever he'd been sent, she hoped the younger Gregnol remained safe and returned to his people in time to figure out whatever was happening to them. For now, all she was left with was her own responsibilities, starting with the man currently staring at her sofa.

She moved to wrap her arms around him from behind and, with her cheek pressed against his back so that she could hear the thud of his heart, loud and strong, stood like that in mutual silence for as long as felt necessary to give him space. This had been harder than Jaxx's visit, and would be harder still because the second incident paved the way for a third, a fourth, however many it would take until the one person he dreaded appearing, and yet so desperately longed for, finally got flung their way. Eva wasn't sure how easy it would be to pull him back if that ever happened.