Third Time's The Charm

Posted on Tue Feb 10th, 2026 @ 7:41pm by Executive Officer Jake Ford & Evelyn Reynolds

Mission: Shackles
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Between Missions
2563 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Jake arrived in sickbay approximately six minutes late. He'd hoped it was just enough time for Evelyn to get bored of waiting for him and move on to something else - but with the potential excuse that he had at least 'made the effort' even if it was a token one. Unfortunately, she knew him too well for that trick to work; the sickbay was empty, and she was sitting in a chair waiting. If there had been a clock on the wall she might have well been watching it.

"Heyyyy..." he greeted in a vaguely sing-song sort of tone, sensing that any attempt to excuse his tardiness would be blatantly transparent. "I got held up. Or something." He screwed up his face for a minute and gave up immediately. "Okay, fine, maybe not. But do we have to do this scan thing? I told you, everything is fine - no voices, no interactions, radio silence from the woman in my subconscious."

'Of course not," Evelyn replied unexpectedly, though the direct swivel of her eyes towards the chronometer on her desk, followed by the very obvious documentation of said-time in the notes she was already prepared to take, was far more predictable. An overly placid expression, one that Jake had just-cause to mistrust by dint of past experience, came to rest as a lofty gaze that held his and the momentary flare of reprieve was immediately doused by, "I can skip the formalities and complete a disqualification certificate based on the information I do have, which is a little out-dated and largely unverified, but still enough of a concern that Gregnol's likely to get tangled up in a bureucratic nightmare if insurance ever gets involved."

A delicate eyebrow, poised at an arch over the pointed stare of a very blue eye, twitched a little higher.

"Just sit down, Jake."

The creep of a familiar sense of humour, one that sometimes took some peeling back to find, caused the corners of Evie's mouth to twitch.

"I promise I'll keep digging until I find some evidence of a working brain in that head of yours."

He gave the faintest quasi-sibling look of 'nyaaaahh' before hopping on the biobed, staying seated for now. "Matter of fact, I have two. That's the whole point of this scan." The joke was a mix of self-depreciation and acceptance of the unusual nature of what they were investigating.

"Before you ask," he continued, "I was telling the truth. Not a peep from the woman in my head. Seems like she's settled down in there. Hibernating for the winter or something."

"I'm a little more concerned that your first instinct was to believe you have a second entity living in your head and not that you'd suffered a medical episode."

As she moved to attach a cortical scanner to his temple, Evelyn diverted her gaze for exactly long enough to drive home a pointed piece of logic.

"The Jake Ford I know never used to jump straight to the, what did he used to call it? The "scientific mumbo-jumbo" explanation. He also," she continued, never one to pull punches when it mattered, "wouldn't have neglected his responsibilities by leaving himself open to impaired judgement without proper investigation."

"I don't exactly think of it as 'neglecting'..." he reasoned, that light-hearted evasiveness in his tone again. "That's just me on an empty stomach." The dry remark gave way to another semi-brotherly look. "Yes, yes. Got to take care of myself, blah blah, responsibilities. Don't you ever get bored of it up there on my back?"

"I wouldn't need to spend so much time there if you'd stop dismissing serious health concerns as mere inconveniences."

There hadn't even been a pause for breath. In the entire time they had known each other, Evelyn had only been lost for words a scant handful of times and self-preservation made it typically unwise to bring them up very often. Judging by the look on her face, that remained the case now, though there came a point where the display panel in front of her warranted the bulk of her attention and granted some reprieve.

"In order to monitor this properly, I'm going to need to run this once a week. And, if you experience any kind of episode, I need to see you immediately." As much as her gaze was focused on the readouts, Evelyn's tone provided about as much wiggle room as a bug trapped beneath the squish of a thumb could expect. "You may want to clue security in."

"I already clued-in Liha, if that helps. She promised to stab me a few times. So I guess that's security concerns eased." He lay back on the biobed, relaxed as she monitored. "But, uh, scouts honour: I promise I won't do the holodrama thing of keeping any episodes to myself. You'll be the first to know."

"Well, that's the concern; I won't be the first to know if you suffer a dissociative lapse. You're either going to be in charge of something presumably vital to crew safety and well-being or spending private time with someone who might prefer not have to deal with you suddenly trying to steal her wardrobe." It was a tone, a flippancy tinged with slight brutality, that Evelyn didn't use with everyone, at least not to its full extent. Experience had taught her the lengths it sometimes took to get through a Ford's head, however. "If I had my way, you'd be wearing a portable monitor; the once-a-week is a compromise."

"Aye aye, Doc." He even threw up a teasing salute, knowing that it was an effective way of playfully getting under her skin. "I'm here, aren't I? Definitely taking it seriously so you don't do that medical confinement thing." He let her carry on with the examination, waiting for a moment to throw up a sly inquiry of his own. "So...I can't help but notice you and that protege of yours have been giving one another that 'look'. And don't claim ignorance, it's the same look you had at breakfast when staying with my brother. So spill."

As much as she knew exactly what he was doing, even Evelyn's composure faltered just enough to create a palpable shift in energy. A hesitation, a dip towards the merest glimmer of vulnerability. "He's nothing like Jack."

Denial was pointless. Certainly, they could go through the motions but given they would ultimately wind up in the same place, and Evelyn did have some respect for the fact that crew dynamics were Jake's purview, the effort required to maintain a charade of privacy was outweighed by the desire not to relegate Oliver to the realm of dirty little secret. Instead, she landed on an imperative, a crucial definition that needed to be understood before she'd even consider adding more details.

"Oh?" Jake's eyebrow lifted slightly. The fact that she wasn't making a pithy remark or flipping things back on him gave him pause. This was different. Her relationship with his brother had always been a little bit of a rocky thing, but so were other relationships. The look on her face when he hinted at something more between her and Oliver spoke more than just the four that had come from her lips. "Wait...you like him, don't you?" His voice was less teasing and more curious now. Perhaps even empathetic.

"Oh, for pity's sake, Jake, we're not in high school."

As exasperated as Evelyn sounded, her tone lacked its usual fortitude, hindered by a dip in volume as she sought to minimise the potential for intrusion. In an otherwise-empty Sickbay, it was an odd choice, though given that the man currently under scrutiny actually worked in the vicinity, perhaps it was simply a matter of respect. The advocacy in Oliver's absence was also, in itself, rather telling.

"You do..." His eyebrows raised. It was a response borne out of surprise more than anything. "Damn, Evie. I...I'm happy for you. Seriously, I am. He's a nice guy." He wanted to say nicer than her last romantic partner, but that was never something he would say to her face. And it was the truth, too; Oliver was calm, polite, and safe. Nothing like Jake's brother.

"He is that, yes."

Evelyn Reynolds was not always a woman who took a great deal of comfort in being easy to read. As tirelessly as she was prone to work on behalf of other people, interacting with them on any level of intimacy was a constant struggle only exacerbated by recent betrayals and she could count on one hand the amount of people who actually knew her well enough to read the nuances within her silence. That Jake had picked up a knack for it had been a source of frustration plenty of times but, right now, it was difficult to deny the sense of relief it brought. If past experience was anything to go by, this was exactly the kind of thing she didn't manage very well with only her own judgment to act on.

"Time will tell how problematic that is."

The faint curl of his lips indicated that he understood. Or at least, he knew Evelyn well enough to interpret her reply. "Relationships usually are," he mused. "You don't seem happy about it. Want to share?"

"Happiness has nothing to do with it."

She kept busy, that much was always true. It took a lot to get Evelyn to just stop and speak, to confront whatever needed to be said without the distraction of something else to minimise the amount of eye contact she was required to make. The nature of these scans meant that there was going to be very little to interpret right off the bat but that didn't stop her from focusing intently on the wave patterns as they appeared.

"I just don't know if it's in his best interest."

A guarded admission, a dip once more into the vulnerability of past mistakes. The acceptance of previous difficulties and her role in perpetuating them. It wasn't just the protracted on-again, off-again relationship with Jack Ford, though the patterns there were toxic enough on their own to classify as a prime example. Evelyn didn't speak about her deceased husband often, which might have been easy to pass off as a widow's grief were it anyone other than this man chastising her. In many way, that relationship was even more complex, or at the very least, had left her with the most amount of unresolved conflict. Jack had been an excuse really, a bad match that kept her from dealing with a previous decision.

Marcus, in his own way, had been a lot like Oliver. That was the problem.

"You're worried about him or you?" Jake asked, sitting upright on the biobed. It was a question he posed without expecting an answer. "If you're worried about a conflict of interest, this isn't a Starfleet ship. There's no rules about it as such. Hell, Reuben's married to one of his engineers. So if it's something like that..."

"He has no experience."

Judging by her tone, and the look she gave him, Evelyn was very much aware of the irony of attempting to reassure her on fraternization rules as if she hadn't flaunted them countless times when they were actually applicable. Leave it to Jake to phrase it in a way that pointed that out without actually calling her a hypocrite. It wasn't, as it happened, what Evie was worried about.

"And, at the moment, the dynamic feels a little...unbalanced as a result."

"Isn't that every relationship ever?" Jake snorted faintly, then shook his head at his own attempt at humour that was maybe mis-timed. "Look, I'm not the best at this. And hell, you don't even need to open up wounds to me, Evie. But...you should at least talk to him about the concerns, right? Let him know how you feel. Oliver might be inexperienced, but he's also a person with feelings too. Maybe he'll surprise you."

As always, silence was not always a bad sign where Evelyn was concerned. Depending on the nature of it, it was often proof that a point had been made and partially accepted, even if she wasn't always the best at verbalising the concession, particularly where Jake was concerned. He had a tendency to work her out too often; admitting to every time he landed a piece of commonsense would have proved exhausting.

"We encountered an older version of him."

After the long pause, the sizeable jump to a further slice of context was a rare sign of trust but spoke volumes for how much the matter played on her mind.

"In one of the time fractures. He'd...taken over running this place."

The skirt of her eyes over the sickbay walls allowed a delay in the inevitable glance that flirted with eye contact and then held fast with grim intensity.

"He didn't look so great."

"Yeah." Jake nodded, acknowledging the impact something like that would have; indeed, his own experiences with potential futures had scrambled his own sanity too. He could understand how haunting that would be, for both of them. "The way I see it, what we all saw were possibilities rather than actual facts. That gives us the opportunity to fix them, right?"

The moment came and went for Evelyn to elaborate on the cause of the elder Oliver's distress. Ordinarily, Jake's logic would have been her preference but, if she was honest, she'd been struggling not to fixate on the notable absence of an older version of herself in any of the fractures she'd experienced. None of it had seemed far enough in the future to be deemed a satisfactory allotment of time but it was difficult to avoid an untimely demise when she had absolutely no information on what the cause had been.

She glanced up as a series of beeps signified the final stages of the data-rendering.

"I don't think we're ever going to know how close to any of it we get until we're too close to avoid it," she declared, considering it more a matter of being pragmatic than a descent into pessimism. "So I guess," Evie declared, adding several flourished keystrokes to complete the allocation of data to her friend's file, "We'll just have to keep our eyes and ears open and, where possible, our heads screwed on right."

A long-overdue smirk softened her features slightly, the closest concession to gratitude that Evelyn usually managed unless her composure was completely blasted to pieces.

"That's at least one of us screwed."

"Hmph. You don't have a murderhobo Romulan watching your every move..." He shrugged. "All clear?"

"I'll review the scans and we can take it from there. In the meantime," Evelyn added, her expression wry once more, "you can go, but I need you back here at the first sign of anything unusual. And that's not open to interpretation, you know perfectly well what would trigger a medical alert. Just pretend it's one of the crew and adjust your expectations accordingly."

Jake threw up a half-hearted and mocking salute. "Aye aye, boss. Same time next week..." He smirked, already strolling out before she could get in another scathing remark.