Drunk Talk

Posted on Sunday, 19 March 2023 - 11:29am by Lieutenant Alex Kingsley & Commander Soral

Mission: Shore Leave
Location: Soral's Quarters
Timeline: Current

ON:

Soral was spending a quiet night. He’d finished his duties and then finished a meditation. Now he was settling in on the sofa with a good book. Part of him missed Bones but another part of him did not. The dog was friendly one minute and wanted to bite him the next. Perhaps he’d get a cat. They were less trouble.

Sighing he ordered a mint tea from the replicator and carried it to the sofa where he settled in with a Bajoran text, one of many suggested by the Librarian Oriana had put him in contact with. It was detailing the orbs. Perhaps he could make sense of his own orb experience before he’d left Bajor.

A few chapters in was the only peace and quiet allowed. Without warning the doors to the Executive Officer’s quarters opened to admit an unexpected visitor who made it two steps inside before realizing they hadn’t needed to pause or ask for entry. For a moment Alex Kingsley stared at the doors as if they were some great mystery before reminding herself that she had come all the way here for a reason. What was it again? Oh, yes….

“Nothing’s going on,” she blurted out as she faced her husband. Like her, he was out of uniform. Although she doubted he had kept polishing off wine and then some marshmallow flavoured vodka as a chaser. It was dangerously delicious. “It’s all wrong-“

Soral who'd been in the middle of a sentence had been taken a little off guard. Alex's appearance seemed to be conjured from the very depths of his musings but he could tell that her enthusiasm had a liquid back story. "Alexandra? What precocity are you referring to?" He closed the book being careful to mark the page and stood.

How could he not know of the wild rumours which had brought even T’Lanna to her door to be sure there was no truth in it? But there he was, looking very calm if a little perplexed. “It isn’t true,” she told him. “I… I just wanted to make sure you knew it…. T’Lanna even came to check. But I’d never.”

Soral held back a sigh. "I still do not understand? You would never what? What rumours are you referring to?"

“Oh I’m sure you will hear soon enough,” Alex assured him with a sigh, glancing around the room. Her gaze settled on a fixture which she didn’t personally recognize but she remembered it well - from Lexi’s point of view. “You kept some things… look, I shouldn’t have came here. I just…”

With a shake of her head she made a move towards the door before she stopped and pointed at it. “Why did it let me in?”

"The door?"

“Of course the door,” she replied with no small hint of exasperation. Had she somehow walked through the wall?

"Why would it not admit you? This will forever be your home as well."

That made her pause. “You sound so confident,” she said sadly.

"It is the truth, weather you choose to stay married to me or not this will always be your home....if you wish it to be."

“Even if you leave and go be a Romulan senator or whatever it is that’s planned for you?” She asked before realizing she wasn’t supposed to know that part.

His eyes narrowed. Very few knew of that being an option. Hamura wouldn't talk so. "I see I will have to speak with Mac and Haru."

“No… Because they at least told me,” she argued, not wishing her friends to get in trouble. She turned to face him, tears stinging her eyes. “Knowing what you - part of you at least - and Lexi had…. I feel like some kind of fraud. They knew each other inside and out. Equals in everything.”

"Indeed, they had an ... enviable relationship."

“I can’t compete with that,” Alex whispered.

"A scientific conclusion without trial?" He stared at her. "Not very scientific."

“Our marriage isn’t an experiment,” she retorted.

"Not in the common sense. No but in a philosophical one it can be argued that all of life is an experiment."

“Then whatever experiment my life is right now it needs to end or a little more vodka,” she quipped. “I shouldn’t have come. It’s so much harder to think straight around you.”

"I think perhaps the drink has something to do with that." He paused. "Coffee?"

She stuck her tongue out at his comment about drinking. “I shouldn’t stay,” she told him. “I can replicate coffee. I’m not drunk. I just like holding onto the back of this chair. It’s a great chair.”

His lip twitched. "Sit. I shall get the coffee." He turned and walked to the replicator. "And for the record..."

With his back turned she pulled out the chair and sat. At least that was the intention. Instead she mostly missed the seat entirely and hit the floor instead before quickly hauling herself up hoping he hadn’t noticed or at least chooses not to notice.

He got the coffee and brought it back sitting across from her. "Perhaps you should stay here or at least allow me to walk you back to your quarters after the drink."

“I can walk,” she assured him, clasping the coffee cup in both hands before taking a sip. “I don’t thing staying is a good idea. What were you going to say? Before. You said ‘for the record’…. For the record what?”

"Ah, I just meant that if the rumours were true the young man would already have had a wonderful private tour of the Airlock, My...mirror counterpart was quite fond of handling rumours thusly. Something he, and I of course, agree on."

“So you did know of the rumour?”

"There is little I do not know on this ship. I was one of the master minds that set up the gossip pages in order to keep informed."

She considered that for a long moment before laughing as she took another drink. “Should have figured that out.”

"Indeed." He studied her. "I was... clearing something out and found something I do not know if you wish to keep it but perhaps ..."

“What is it?”

He walked into the bedroom and came back with an emerald and ruby rose, one that Soral had gotten for Lexi shortly before their wedding. He placed it on the table between them.

“That isn’t mine,” Alex said after a long moment. She recognised it, knew how it had been taken by Lexi as a sign that it was indeed her destiny to defeat Evesta and have the future with Soral that she had always imagined…

"Perhaps not in this life but it once was. Do you wish to keep it?"

“I’m not Lexi,” she reiterated as the rose slid across the table until it hit his arm. Neither of them had touched it.

"No. I realize that. Very well then." He said.

“You should keep it. A reminder. I mean, she loved you,” Alex told him as she set aside the coffee.

"She loved her husband. I am not he."

“You are. And you aren’t.” Alex glanced around, “the two of you spent many nights together on this ship. Of course it was their ship…”

"It was theirs and ours in a way."

“Even sober my head and my heart struggles with that,” she admitted.

"Why must we live in the shadow of them or what we had once. The future is ours to write."

“Because actions have consequences,” Alex pointed out. “I’m not a machine, I can’t just flip a switch and forget what happened or make it suddenly okay. I’m sorry…”

She shouldn’t have come here. Pushing the chair back she climbed a little unsteadily to her feet.

Soral stood and lightly took her arm. "Careful. I will walk you back to your quarters to ensure you get there safe."

“I’m fine,” she insisted, although an effort to shake him off only made her fall into him.

He steadied her and stepped back. "Come on then. It is time you got home to rest." He held out his arm allowing her to take it if she wished.

“Why did you let go of our bond?” She asked him quietly, making no move to take the offered arm. Or move at all. Of all that had happened, that one choice had shattered her heart into so many pieces. He would have reasons but her fear was that amongst those reasons was the thing she had suspected from the beginning- that she had never been good enough to be his wife.

"To protect us both. I knew that he would use your knowledge of me against me and you would hate yourself for something you could not control. Plus he would be able to read my love for you through the bond and could use it against you. It was an attempt to ensure I could store up my strength and come back to ensure both of us were alright."

“He just brought them into our quarters and they broke our bond,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “And the worst part was knowing you were gone. With Sara… I could still see you. Touch you. But I didn’t even know if you were alive…”

Soral stepped close to her and wrapped his arms around her. "I know. It was... difficult for me as well. I felt...hollow."

This time she didn’t push him away, instead leaning into him. Emotions waged a war that had been going on ever since Lexi had entered her life. Both of them loved the two versions of Soral, had trusted him implicitly and felt so safe with him. Yet there was that part of Alex who remembered all the things the alternate Soral had done. And Lexi too. And then there was her own guilt, of the signs she had missed. At her inability to fight back. The loss of an entire ship in a rescue mission to get her back.

Yet mostly in that moment she felt like she was safe and exactly where she needed to be. Which was a thought that followed her into the dark as the toll of too many night of restlessness and nightmares caused her eyes to drift closed.

Soral felt her fall asleep. Sighing, he carried her to what was once their bed and tucked her in. He grabbed an extra pillow and made his own bed on the sofa. Their road was long and for the first time he wondered if it had actually ended. It was that thought that chased him into sleep.

OFF: