A Good Plan for Now

Posted on Tue Feb 2nd, 2016 @ 8:25am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Captain Patrick O'Connor

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck Five, Captain O'Conner's Quarters
Timeline: 2265
Tags: Patrick,1stlove,flashback

She lay still atop him, deep in sleep, her breathing slow and measured even as her heartbeat raced along... her pulse at rest averaged four beats per second. The night had passed for the most part, and within a few hours they would both be on duty on the bridge, as they were six days a week... as senior staff, they both served extra duty shifts, but they did them gladly, as they were fond of their jobs. There was every possibility that she might awaken early and want to be intimate with him before duty, and ordinarily he was quite fond of that idea.

But he'd had a rather disturbing dream... and in his heart of hearts he knew where it had come, and he knew what it really meant. Obviously she was unaware of what she was doing... he was awake beneath her, as he had been for some time, but she still slept soundly. If she knew of his internal turmoil she would likely be awake... and likely be in mortal fear for her life, or perhaps constructing some elaborate fiction to explain it away.

He allowed the images to play out in his head once more, the child crying, the arguing, and then the main component... Romulans.

Little was known about them. The Federation had fought a war against them, a war that was at the very core of the formation of the Federation. Vulcans knew more about them than they let on, of that he was positive. And based on the dream he understood why they might wish to keep that information to themselves. They were the same race, or cousins at the very least. And Charybdis... Scylla? Which was she, really? He had trouble wrapping his mind around it.

There was a very real possibility that he was sleeping with a Romulan.

If she was in fact a Romulan, masquerading as a Vulcan, then there was a very real and distinct possibility that she was in point of fact a spy. If she was a Romulan spy aboard his ship, then his duty was clear.

Except that it wasn't clear at all.

This was a dangerous thought process he was entertaining. If he was correct in his assessment, his duty was to turn her over for interrogation, and she would ultimately be eliminated, if not by the Federation then she would be turned over to her own people, who most likely would not tolerate her failure. He could hear the speech about duty, and more to the point, he could feel the veil of his father come over him. He was the son of a very important member of Starfleet. He was a remarkable asset to a spy, as he could provide information as both a captain and as the son of an admiral. And yet, he couldn't help but think it was not so cut and dry.

Something inside him, something deep inside him told him that no matter what, she was loyal to him, and that she'd die before doing anything that would hurt him or his career. And even deeper than that, past the sexual attraction and allure, past the craziness and zany antics, at the core of his being, he was positive that he loved her and that she felt the same way. He knew it, with a surety beyond anything he had ever known before.

Quite simply... while it could cost him everything, he wasn't willing to lose her.

In her sleep she cooed and slid her hand across his body, kissed his chest and mumbled something nonsensical as she nuzzled her head against his chest... and for the first time he realized that she was likely speaking Romulan in her sleep. He had no idea what she was saying, but he realized that it likely wasn't just gibberish, that she was actually saying something in the language of one of the Federation's most dire enemies.

While she shared his bed.

He could stop her... he knew without a doubt that he could stop her easily. She was slow to rouse when wrapped in his arms, and he could have her incapacitated, even crippled before she was anywhere near awake enough to resist. He could have Security in here to haul her to the brig, buck-assed naked and he could be done with her... he wouldn't have to see her again until they dropped her off at the nearest Starbase so that Starfleet Intel could begin the interrogation. And he wouldn't even have to see her then... just file his report and be done with it, and likely get a commendation.

And somehow that thought filled him with pain and sorrow.

She had touched his mind, somehow... and in doing so she had told him of who and what she was... exactly what a spy would never do. It made no sense at all for her to compromise herself in this way, to open her mind to him and tell him of her past like this. He considered it... she had been so afraid to be vulnerable, so ashamed of so much of who she was, and it was beginning to all make sense to him.

What was it that she had told him, tears of shame and sorrow filling her eyes as she buried her face in his chest? "It... it is my past, Patrick. It is nothing that I am proud of and it is not who I am today, I swear to you but... it is a part of who I was. I don't... I didn't have a choice Patrick. I never had a choice... I never, ever had a choice..."

Choice and free will were two concepts that he was very, very familiar with. Free will he was certain she still had, and she had used it to get to this point. And choice... choice was a tricky thing. Choice came down to circumstances, to best interests, to things often outside your control that you wanted to think were actually in your control.

But things did happen to people in life where choice was taken away from them- he knew that all to well from personal experience. And he knew of his feeling towards those that took away choice, and what he'd like to do to them if he had the opportunity. She seemed to be cut from the same cloth.

She valued her freedom. He had read Lieutenant Suval's report... she was willing to resign her commission rather than submit to his control and tutelage... no spy following orders would do such a thing. Instead she would have simply cozied up to him and convinced him of her compliance, while manipulating him to her own ends.

He got up and slid out of bed, disentangling himself from her grasp and walking over to the water basin as he had the last time he'd had such a moment. It was time for him to make a decision. It was his choice, and he needed to make it, here and now. The choice was ostensibly a simple one, and yet it was by far the most difficult decision of his life.

Out the Romulan spy or believe in love, wherever it might take him.

It was a simple choice, and yet it was not simple in the least. And as he considered what to do, he turned and looked at her lying peacefully in bed. He had a torrent of emotions to express, a lot to talk about with her... but his choice was somehow no choice at all. She was his heart, the missing part of his soul, and he couldn't bring himself to lose that. The joy that she brought him, the contentment that he felt keeping her safe in his arms, the look in her eyes when she saw him enter a room... she was the one.

He wanted to keep her by his side for the rest of his life. And she was a Romulan infiltrator.

She stirred, sensing his absence as she tended to, and in her sleep she made a sound of longing that tugged at his heart, and he knew that would be the sound that her heart would make for as long as she lived without him. If he turned her over to Starfleet what they would do to her would be nothing compared to that sound reverberating through her soul for the rest of her life. Even as he considered it, he was not sure that she would survive without him... perhaps it was egotism, but even as the thought occurred it felt right to him. Losing him might destroy her, and as much as that statement hurt him to consider, he somehow knew it to be true.

He knew her soul, for he had seen it in her eyes, and he knew one thing above all else... she trusted him as she had never trusted anyone, save perhaps the family he had seen in her memories... perhaps more, for it was harder for adults to trust.

Yet trust him she did, and he knew it. He had seen in her eyes the moment when she gave had given herself to him, not her body, but her heart... and no spy could have deceived him that thoroughly. Of that he was certain. She had yet to say that she loved him... she had shown it, and it had been clear to him, but she had yet to say it, and now he suspected why.

A spy would have used the word as a tool, used it to ensnare him and entangle him in moral quandry, even as he found himself now, to cloud his judgement. A spy would have said it easily, for in her own heart she would have felt nothing, and she would use his romantic nature against him. But she had never said it, and now he suspected that he knew why.

If he discovered her, then he could still convince himself that she had never loved him, and it would save him from ruin. His heart would harden, but he would survive it and move on, and he would know that she had simply used him. Whether she was doing it consciously or subconsciously, in her own way she was trying to protect him from herself... even as she could not help but love him and wish nothing more than to be near him.

She stirred in her sleep again, and even from where he was, he knew that she was beginning to have a nightmare... some scene of her past was replaying in her mind, that past which had left her so damaged and afraid, yet working so hard to appear not to care on the outside. When she had told him that first night of how poorly she slept, he had not imagined that it was this bad... yet here it was.

He considered his next move. Bluntness seemed necessary, a simple expression of truth, an expectation of answers... but she might not take well to it, and it might not be the best move. He wanted more than anything to talk with her, and he knew that while intimacy was not an issue, the type he was interested in at this moment had a lot less touching and a lot more talking. But then he began to think differently, and perhaps he needed to let her make the first move on this.

But then, in her own way, perhaps she already had.

What she had done was tantamount to suicide... by showing him her past, she was admitting to treason to her captain, and she knew full well what his duty called for. But yet she had reached out and showed him this in her sleep... far from her conscious, waking mind... and left her fate completely in his hands.

Perhaps therein lay his answer. Perhaps there was more to her tale, more that she wanted to show him and express to him, so that he could understand. It sounded crazy to him... but love made him a madman, and he was willing to entertain notions of lunacy rather than destroy her. Perhaps even as he considered, as he watched her toss and make small sounds of distress in the bed, sweat glistening on her form as she writhed, captive in the throes of some experience he could not imagine, she was trying to tell him how she had come to be what she was, and trying to gain his trust with a truth he would not believe if she simply told him.

He got back into bed, careful not to wake her, and she cried as she reached for him, and pulled him to her tightly. Within seconds she was curling about him, her feverishly hot flesh covered in glistening sweat, pressing herself against him and absorbing the relative coolness of his skin. He had decided that talking would have to wait as she calmed, and he felt her jackhammering heartbeat slow to her usual drumbeat as she slid back into peaceful slumber, as easily as that.

He needed to make things clearer in his mind. He had made certain choices, certain decisions, but he still had more to make. And so it was back to bed, back to a return to slumber for a bit longer, unless she awoke, which seemed unlikely as she snored gently, which he still somehow found endearing. And when she awoke, if she wished it, he would make love to her.

That sounded like a good plan to him... for now.

 

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