Trying To Find A Side Quest

Posted on Sun Feb 25th, 2024 @ 5:04pm by Petty Officer, 3rd Class Lottie Daglish & Ensign Isaac 'Zac' Hughes & Ziu'Liherasefra

Mission: Contagion
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Day 366 PM
2540 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

Lottie knew that Hughes would have questions on what she was doing back after only a small amount of rest time but there was no way the nurse was going to leave him by himself when everyone else with any medical skills. She smiled at Hera as they walk along the corridor after waking up and their showers.

She had never wondered until this moment if her colleagues even knew about her and the woman that Leroux had let onboard for local knowledge. She had never hidden herself or wants but she had never been specific about her preferences. And in that moment she realised that she might need to warn the woman.

“Err Hera?” She ventured as they stepped into the lift.

Lihera, for her part, had done her part to breach ignorance on the crew's part by looping her arm through Lottie's and resting her head against the other woman's arm as the lift started. In truth, though it had never occurred to her to intentionally disclose her relationship with the nurse, that came mostly from a genuine supposition that people simply knew, a fact easily supported by just how much the alien tended to talk about her lover when chatting with Lottie's colleagues. If she sifted back through all those exchanges, Hera would probably struggle to have found a definitive moment of admission but some things were just obvious, weren't they? "Err, Lottie," she mimicked, closing her eyes as the lift's movement brought her a moment of contentment.

Lottie smiled at the way the woman mimicked her. She almost had the accent down to a t but there was just a slight lilt to her accent. “I like you a lot but I have not told anyone about us. It’s not something that has come up but I’ve also … I wanted something that was just mine.” The last year had made it so that she savoured the small private things about her life.

The confession seemed to stop Hera in her tracks, though she avoided literally freezing as the turbolift moved swiftly towards its destination and opened to deposit them on the right deck. By now, her thoughtful silences were less concerning, it seemed difficult to offend the alien but almost too easy to instantly fascinate her. Lihera had never been someone's secret, at least not that she was aware, though if she considered some of her previous entanglements, there was every possibility. She waivered between intrigue and the slight hesitation of guilt, wondering if she'd done enough to preserve privacy, and finally asked one of the many questions bouncing around her head. "You don't think you have anything of your own here?"

The woman nodded. “Not really. Nothing is overly private and I have liked the little bubble that we have had the last couple of weeks. I like that you are mine…” Lottie stepped out the life and frowned at how that sounded. “I do not mean that in a possessive way or at least not in a bad way… I… I am going to shut up as this sounds awful as you are not a dirty little secrete just something I just have not said anything around to anyone.”

"So, do you want us to behave in a way in front of your colleagues that will allow you to keep your charade?" It was an instance of awkward translation, one of the occasional moments where Hera's word choice didn't quite seem to match her tone and expression. It took a degree of trust to blame the translation protocols and not consider the alien capable of passive aggressiveness, but it seemed the most likely. Certainly there was nothing about Hera's disposition that made it seem like she was anything other than curious.

Lottie leant out a wrapped the woman’s hair around her finger as she tried to understand if the woman meant charade how she would have meant it. Nothing about the woman showed her that she meant it in a negative way she just wanted to understand how the nurse wanted. “No. I really like Hughes and I know he would understand our choices and … this.” Lottie lent up and kissed her cheek before carrying on down the corridor.

A dimple appeared beneath her lips, though Hera strolled along in thoughtful silence for a short while, contemplating what this new information meant in regards to her own interactions with the crew. "I can't tell for sure," she eventually confessed, "if anything that I have said or done might contradict your attempts. I feel like I do talk about you a lot." Her brow furrowed. "But I don't know that I have spoken particularly intimately, that didn't seem appropriate."

“It’s okay. We’re in a relationship and I have not hidden you for a nasty reason, it was more selfish than anything.” Lottie was not ashamed of her sexuality or anything about Hera and what she felt for her. “Now what could you been telling them?” She asked.

"People are mostly interested in how I came to be on board, so of course it starts with meeting a very special member of the crew and letting her talk me into it." Aware, at least on some level, that they were about to step into Lottie's professional space, Hera gathered herself into her own personal space but stayed close enough to buffet the other woman with a gentle hip nudge. "If nothing else, they all know who to blame if employing me doesn't work out."

“Well that is a positive.” Lottie said thinking that it did make sense that the woman was talking about how she joined the ship and how she was involved in it. Even if the woman changed her mind and decided that in a couple of weeks she did not want to continue with the ship Lottie would not regret any moment of it. She squeezed her hand one more time before moving into the sickbay. “Hey Ensign.” She called into the space.

In direct contrast to the double-barrelled enthusiasm that had just walked into Sickbay, Isaac was sat at one of the benches, stooped over just enough to convey a quite familiar sense of pensive preoccupation, one of his natural states that Nish liked to call fretting. He did so quite conservatively, usually within the confines of his own mind, but it made him withdrawn and overly quiet and so it took a few seconds for him to realise the greeting had been addressed to him. The slow lift of his head betrayed his concerned furrow, which shifted quickly into mild surprise to find the nurse wasn't alone. "Aren't you a little early?"

Lottie narrowed her eyes back as she took in his worried looking face. She should have expected that question but it still left her for a moment confused to answer with her reasons for coming there so early. “I thought you might like a little bit of company so I arranged to get up early and…” she started straight into the second reason so he could be distracted with her lack of sleep. “And Hera was looking for something a little more substantial to do onboard.”

Another doctor might have chastised the pair of them for not having a better work-life balance but Isaac didn't usually like to lecture, especially not about a topic that he could quickly be declared a hypocrite over. Instead, he offered Lottie a tired half-smile of resignation and then slowly pushed himself to his feet to approach. Hera watched him keenly, taking particular note of the weariness that hung as dull bags beneath his eyes.

"Hello again," Isaac greeted the alien, which suggested a previous meeting.

For her part, Hera beamed and lifted both shoulders in vaguely supressed excitement. "Good morning. Afternoon. Night?" She screwed her face up for a moment and then gave up. "One of those."

Lottie smiled and started to set about doing her start of shift checks. “Afternoon?” Lottie offered smiling brightly before quickly looking to the console so she did not stare as much as she normally would.

"I suppose it could be, though it seems a little silly now that I think about it, to segment a day that way. Do you know, in the low season, Relea doesn't really have an afternoon? The daylight hours pass so quickly that there's just about time for a sunrise, a cup of coffee and a short walk before it's on the way to setting again." It was fast morphing into one of Hera's philosophical distractions, which dragged her away from what she was meant to be focused on at least several times a day when operating at peak. She missed Hughes' bemusement entirely, though the doctor caught Lottie's gaze over the top of the alien's head and raised his eyebrows in mild amusement.

"We have places on Earth where the sun does not rise for months," Lottie smiled fondly before she turned away from the raised eyebrow as she set out the tray. "What about home?" Lottie wondered thoughtfully. They did not often speak of her home planet but it did bring up the thought of what it was like there to the woman.

The question had a palpable effect on Hera's demeanour. Not necessarily a negative one, though she was immediately subdued by deep thought, and now that Lottie was surely garnering quite a reference list, the slight hue shift that saw the Ziu'ni's white hair veer towards a light blue at tips was also a visible explanation for why the mood in the room instantly dropped. Hera had been working hard on minimising the influence she had over the crew but it was difficult when her own emotions distracted her. "The climate there, at least around the forests where I grew up, is quite temperate. The seasons shorten or lengthen the days, depending."

Lottie glanced over feeling that her question purely out of interest had caused something deeper than she had meant to. She wanted to go over and gather the woman up in an hug but kept her distance. “Sounds like Earth.” The woman finally said when she thought the moment was broken enough for her to speak.

"It certainly does," Isaac intervened, having less understanding than Lottie of why he felt the sudden need to change the subject, or why the current one had only added an extra layer to his anxieties. So far, in terms of all the mandatory medical screening the alien woman had been required to take, Avira had handled most of it as the senior doctor, which meant that Isaac knew very little about the Ziu'ni beyond being able to easily recognise her in a crowd. He smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes, and gave a half-hearted gesture with his hand to encompass most of the visible space. "Here in Sickbay, however, the time of day rarely matters because nobody makes an appointment before they fall ill or injure themselves. There's still no news," he called over to Lottie as he noticed the nurse checking their communication log.

Lottie glanced at Hughes and sighed. She had been hoping that there had been something from the group but now. "Okay." She said sadly before she glanced at Hera. "That is okay I guess. No news is good news but Hera came here looking for a role." She was not letting the woman off one of the reasons why they had come there.

Hughes hesitated for a moment, frozen in a moment's thought before his gaze wandered to where Hera had claimed a stool and had quietly propped her chin up in her hand, elbow resting on one of the preparation benches. The change in demeanour from gregarious to partially introverted seemed particularly swift but he didn't know the woman, nor what would be considered a normal emotional spectrum for her species. She appeared to be lost in thought, a somewhat dreamlike vagueness tempting him to wave a hand in front of her face, but the flit of her eyes caught him watching and, just like that, she flipped again.

"To be accurate, I expressed a desire to be more useful, and she suggested I come and do all the tasks she dislikes," Hera teased, an impish look shot sideways to twinkle at Lottie.

Isaac raised his eyebrows in amusement.

"I don't think I realised Lottie disliked any task. I certainly can't seem to stop her from doing all of them."

Lottie glanced over and smiled at the woman. “It felt like a good compromise. She is bored and I am bored.” She offered playing along with it. “Idle hands are the devils work.” She added turning around from the communication log with only a pout of disappointment.

"Well, I need to go have a discussion with the Captain, apparently, about what our next steps are if we don't hear from the away team soon." Gently amused, Isaac swung his gaze back and forth between the pair. "I have partial faith that I can leave Sickbay in your capable hands, though I'd be lying if I wasn't a little curious about what state I'll find it in when I get back."

Lottie raised an eyebrow but said nothing to suggest that she thought that his phrasing was odd. “I shall try and keep us occupied and working. I’ll give a tour.” Lottie decided.

"He seems very worried," Hera observed as the doctor left, a moment of clarity beyond her own thoughts that allowed her to realise a lot of her introspection had been inherited second-hand. It was far less likely that her empathetic abilities bounced back in that way, her gentle influence over the moods of others didn't result in quite the same amount of reciprocated impact, but Hera had noticed since joining the ship that the human contingent seemed more capable than most species she'd met of broadcasting their emotional state.

“Yeah he is not the only one.” Lottie said offering a worried smile. She had been trying to hide it but it was hard when it was just them both there and she was wanting to be open with her… girlfriend? Were they that or what? But whatever it was they were close and she needed to try to be open.

The Ziu'ni's gaze wandered to the communication's terminal, her own faint frown finally joining Lottie's as she realised how unusual it was for this crew to be out of contact with each other. Had it been just her on her vessel, communication deadzones were throughout the sector and she'd learned to just persevere and move out of them as soon as possible. She wasn't an expert on this particular installation but none of what she'd been able to provide to the Captain had included a suggestion that staying in contact might be difficult. Had she missed something?

"Why don't you show me around, point me in the direction of something I can do, and then if there's no update from the investigation team..." Hera frowned and turned her attention back to Lottie. "I'll offer to talk to the Captain."