Observation Duty

Posted on Fri Dec 9th, 2022 @ 6:18am by Ensign Isaac 'Zac' Hughes & Chief Petty Officer Nish Karalo

Mission: Sojurn
Location: Upper Observation Deck
Timeline: Before his meeting with Beth
2456 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure

There had been a time, it seemed a very long while ago now, where Isaac had indulged in a reclusive tenacity that favoured the Upper Observation Deck in the midst of the night shift. It was an oddly-overlooked area of the ship now that there were very few official dignitaries to require a distant view of proceedings, not exactly functional as a social space given that it was merely a very large viewport with no seating, and a ledge to lean against if you got desperate. There was nothing very inspiring about the view either, at least not on a typical day. Warp travel didn't allow for stargazing and the shuttlebay wasn't usually a hive of activity, 150-years-away from any reason to take a short trip somewhere. The deserted nature of the area had been the point though; a place to ruminate, to rummage around inside his own head without being interrupted by yet another interjection that required his input.

He'd been found out eventually.

Now it served as a place where he could mostly hide, unless a certain blue-eyed detective got it into her head to gate-crash his solitude. The approach of footsteps didn't alarm him, he wasn't the type to allow himself to express frustration easily and felt a natural compulsion to avail himself when needed in any case. He stood, facing inwards towards the hangar, where the escape pod that had safely delivered them an entire universe away from home still rested. There was no place else for it, none of the pod bays had room for another. There had been a compulsion the last few times he'd wandered this direction to head down into the bay itself to sit inside the pod and imagine, for a moment, that it was back where it was meant to be, but Isaac couldn't see himself being given permission to turn it into a cubby house. Instead, he watched, and pondered, and waited for the footsteps to arrive.

"As far as secret hideouts go, you're no master at them. Slightly too predictable." Nish had been looking for him in sickbay and then his quarters. It's had been a bit awkward having to explain to a nurse that she didn't actually need medical attention. It had even taken her a moment after the doors to his quarters didn't open for her to realise that he had pulled away from everything and found a quiet place to have a good think. "Why are you hiding?"

"Does it really count as hiding if I pick an obvious spot?," Isaac replied, weight rested against his forearms as he leaned against the ledge and watched her approach. It was a rhetorical question, however, and with a faint half-smile, he returned his gaze to the flight bay and considered a response that would actually address her curiosity.

Back in their universe, this had become his retreat when the demands of his job had permitted him no room to process particular things. One thing that Isaac had realised about their situation back then was that, over time, the reality of being so far from home had settled more as an ever-present ache that the crew simply lived with, as one might deal with the dull throb of old injuries from time to time. Grief was something the mind eventually sought refuge from and so there had been a general consensus towards getting-on-with-things. It had worked, most of the time.

But occasionally, the enormity of their dilemma rose to slap him across the face. Sometimes it was the pressure of maintaining everyone's physical and mental health, with limited resources, knowing that the burden fell to him and his medical team to ensure that, should the time come for them to return home, there was a crew fit and able to actually perform the task. Pressure regarding food supplies, and medications, had been worrying enough without adding to the mix the threat of psychological impairment the deeper they became entrenched in a life of uncertainty and isolation. Isaac was a man who worried about other people. There had been a lot to worry about, back then.

Then there were the personal losses. Concern over his family's perceptions of his disappearance, and the inability to be present in his daughter's life. Missed milestones and anniversaries. They were difficult struggles to focus on, the doctor had been unwilling to allow himself to linger on losses that threatened his own capacity to drag himself out of bed in the morning. A trip to the Observation Deck, especially on specific dates that stuck out as something poignant he was missing, had been his only concession to grieve. A space, if only for half an hour, to allow himself to feel.

It was different now. Gone was the reassurance, however fragile at times, that all efforts were geared towards a return home. The crew around him were still deeply invested in the mutual sense of hope but Isaac found himself with no active part in it anymore. Returning, for him, meant further complication. Redundancy. Even his job, which had permitted him a martyr's distraction, was no longer as custodial as it had once been. A visitor in someone else's Sickbay, albeit a useful one. Everything had been so chaotic at first that there had been no time to focus on anything other than surviving the incident that had dragged them here in the first place. Now, with the novelty of fresh catastrophe all-but worn away, the bleakness of his situation had drawn Isaac's attention to a sense of detachment that worried him. He'd caught himself going through the motions, and with honest self-reflection, had cross-examined himself on his willingness to take the graveyard shift which placed him in Sickbay almost entirely on his own at times.

The results had been...less than optimal.

He sighed. Staring at the escape pod wasn't answering her question. "It seemed as good a place as any to have an existential crisis."

"Wait." Nish reached inside her pocket and pulled out a resequenced chocolate bar, which she handed over to the man. She then reached inside her other pocket to produce a small flask filled with the finest local moonshine. "It's bad form to have an existential crisis without chocolate and hooch."

For a moment, affectionate amusement became Isaac's only response. "That didn't take you long." Leave it to Nish to find the permissible vices. Not for the first time since entering service, Isaac found himself wishing that nicotine featured on the list, and then instantly berated himself for the weakness. Reaching out, he took the offerings, but left both unopened for the moment. "How'd the first day go?" To the best of his ability to recall, she'd had her first shift at the helm, and if he couldn't celebrate the trajectory of his own career, at least he could take comfort in her progression.

"It's all about who you know. And clearly I know me. So, that helped." Nish let out a loud sigh as he mentioned her first shift at the helm. "Well, they've assured me that the warp core going critical had nothing to do with me." She looked at him a bit sheepishly. "Though the insistence on that has started to make me doubt that a bit." She shuffled a bit closer to him until they were shoulder to shoulder looking out over the pod in the hangar. "Now stop trying to deflect and tell me." She put an arm around his waist and pulled him closer to her before leaning her head on his shoulder.

A defeated sigh carried more acceptance than regret. For all his natural tendency to slather himself in gentle optimism, Isaac was a terrible liar once someone saw through his façade. It had been a while now since she'd let him get away with any obligation of cheerfulness, and he didn't have the energy to indulge in discomfort at the intrusion into personal space. If anything, he'd stopped feeling awkward about it months ago. An arm around her shoulders accepted the embrace, and his face dipped into her hair was a thankful acknowledgement without the need for actually saying the words.

"Just my turn to find my footing," he said after a moment, chin settling where his nose had nuzzled moments before. "The longer we spend out here, the more it makes sense that an increased medical staff helps more than it hinders, and I wouldn't consider myself the possessive type..." He exhaled again and his posture relaxed, sagging under the weight of burdens oft unspoken. "There's just not a lot by way of distraction at the moment though." Without moving his head, Isaac's gaze found the escape pod again through the glass. "So I find myself with a lot of headspace for trying to grasp how far from everything we are. I didn't buy the whole alternate universe thing at first," he admitted. "Sounded far-fetched, very light on any actual scientific explanation initially. Too big. Even now it sounds more like a novel than an actual plausible reality."

"It's like staring out into the field of stars for too long. It's too much to comprehend. The brain can't cope with that." Nish knew the feeling, the feeling that darkened the edges of your vision. The dread wrapping itself around your heart and lungs a bit too tightly. "Maybe someday we'll be able to accept that this is our life now."

"I'd already got myself to a point, Nish, where I could accept that maybe we weren't getting home. I'd made peace with it as best I could and then got on with the same thing all of us were focused on; making sure we did. Now..." He lifted a hand towards the hangar and let it drop again, hopelessly. "I don't even know if I want to find out what's at the end of all this."

He dropped his face so that the bridge of his nose pressed against her temple.

"I guess the professional diagnosis would be that I'm moping."

Nish sighed a bit at that. What was there you could say to someone in that situation? His reasons for moping were completely valid and there probably weren't any psychological papers on this whole thing that would help with trying to resolve the trauma they had gone through. Exciting new opportunities and discoveries indeed.

"It's ok to mope sometimes, and if you don't feel like moping alone please come get me." Nish spoke softly as her hand around his back started to make soothing circles between his shoulderblades. "I'm an excellent moper."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

The tease in his tone was indication at least that the physician hadn't lost his sense of humour. What he had lost was a sense of identity, and had inherited in its place the pervasive suffocation of the unknown. His family, his daughter, were gone. Whilst he was not and had not been concerned that she was without support and guidance in his absence, he was left to suffer now with the understanding that he would be forever killed-in-action to her. He doubted what remained of the Atlantis they'd fled from would have left enough clues to even hint at the actual events that had occurred, and it was probably honestly easier on her to just believe that he'd died so that she could grieve and move on.

In this universe, too many variables kept presenting themselves every time he tried to sleep. Did he even have a daughter here? The lack of biological connection made for too many situations where chance meetings had never occurred and his life may have taken a completely different turn, if not enough of one to have avoided the medical field entirely. The fact that Isaac Hughes had nearly made it aboard this vessel was the one breadcrumb of hope he had that things were not too different, and yet...

That would mean Jennifer had still died. It was difficult to reconcile a compulsion for believing nothing had changed with the missed opportunities for the absence of major suffering.

Closing his eyes, for once not retreating from another person's attempt to console him, Isaac exhaled and allowed his shoulders to relax beneath her efforts. As far from clingy as a person could get, Zac was still struck by an intense gratitude that Ben, no matter what his original intention had been, had managed to find Manishie and pull her out before she was lost to them like the rest. Dealing with that specific guilt on top of everything else wasn't something he wanted to contemplate.

"Though, judging by the vibe around here, I'd say moping has been added to the list of most of the crew's expertise. Had we got this bad?"

Nish shrugged a bit, there were plenty of moments where the situation seemed rather dire. Even on their own Atlantis. The difference now was that even if they made it through Ben, Zac and her still wouldn't be home.

"I'm sure we had our moments. Our moonshine was better though." She pointed at the flask.

Following her gaze, Isaac stared at the flask a moment and then unravelled himself from their embrace long enough to open the peace offering. A tentative sniff earned a similar grimace to the one the tea-drinking doctor had always reserved for the piquant homebrew. He waggled the flask at Nish, the contents sloshing audibly. "Just how much of this have you had?"

"Not really enough." Nish sighed and leaned back into him. "There's more where that came from. But the chocolate is pretty rare. And I kinda already regret giving it to you, so you better make it count." She looked out over the hangar bay and wondered how different things would've been if they hadn't been lost in space. If they hadn't been pulled out to this alternate universe. At least the fact that she wasn't alone here made it tolerable.

As far as hints went, it was one of her least subtle. It broke the last of Isaac's resolve, however, and his gentle laughter sounded far more like the unassuming optimism Nish was used to. The chocolate bar bopped her gently on the nose before Zac offered the other end to her, bending it until it snapped once she took hold. Just like any other time, the largest portion snapped off in her hand. He wouldn't have had it any other way.

He waggled the flask again.

"Off the record, right?" It was his way of promising to ditch his obligation to promote healthy choices long enough to make some far more interesting ones.