Mercy Mourne & Madelyn Moore's Mortification Meeting

Posted on Sun Jul 21st, 2024 @ 9:22pm by Ensign Mercy Mourne & Ensign Madelyn 'Madi' Moore

Mission: Remnant
Location: Science lab
Timeline: 406 - early morning
5911 words - 11.8 OF Standard Post Measure

"Morning."

Never had a single word been uttered with so little enthusiasm. As it was, it only managed the bare minimum as far as greetings went and seemed mostly to serve as a warning to move out of the way as Madi dragged herself through the doors to a series of minor, localised catastrophes. Having made the unwise decision to take breakfast on the go, the ensign sacrificed one of two slices of toast to the floor as it fell from its precarious perch atop a half-finished cup of tea. In the time it took Madi to stand and gaze forlornly down at her unintentional sacrifice, the glasses she often wore to spare her eyes the strain of staring at a screen all day slipped off the top of her head and landed with exquisite accuracy right on top of the jam-slathered slice. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been much of a problem except for the unaccountable and improbable execution of sheer luck that had seen the bread fall spread-facing-up. Sure, it kept the floor clean, but the same couldn't be said for one of the lenses she was going to need to see out of for the next few hours.

Madelyn remained just inside the door, staring down at her lost food, and puffed out her cheeks in resignation. She at least had the foresight to set down the remaining piece, as well as her drink, before crouching to deal with the mess. "Yep, it's morning, all right."

“Ah just the woman I was hoping to see!” Mercy looked up from her station and blinked owlishly at Maddi. The round faced woman looked clearly tired. She had taken to picking up as many extra shifts as she could in the hopes of sparing others during the fuel crisis but it was clearly not sustainable. Her hair was pinned up and looked more like a birds nest than a bun. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her normal cheery smile was a little slower to arrive than normal.

“Oh dear!” She exclaimed as she watched the scene with the glasses unfold. “Oh no Madi, don’t worry, we can fix that.” She stumbled to her feet and went in search of the paper towels they kept nearby in case of accidental spillage. She bustled over to Madi, grabbing the woman’s glasses from atop their jammy toast pillow, and wiped them off. Once clean she handed them back to the diminutive scientist. “Don’t think I can save your breakfast unfortunately.”

"I'm not hungry anyway."

Which was true, and would lead to the eventual abandonment of the other piece of toast now that it was cold and partially-soggy. With a rueful half-smile, Madelyn accepted the glasses and pushed them into place, scanning the room for a moment to make sure they weren't smeary enough to defeat their purpose. "Thank you," she declared after a moment, and was finally able to focus on the older woman. At her best, Madi was an observant girl, and tended to notice things about people that others missed. Under current conditions, she wound up feeling a little bad that it had taken her adding more stress to the pile for her to notice how tired Mercy looked.

"You look tired," became the well-intended statement of the obvious.

“Hmm?” Mercy looked up from where she was cleaning up the toast. She ferried all the mess into the nearest waste receptacle and then wiped her hand free of sticky jam. “Oh, do I? I suppose I have had trouble sleeping. Although I was hoping my natural charm hid that.” She came back over and nudged Madi in a cheeky way, a teasing note was clear in her voice.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and with all these extra scans there’s plenty of diversions and tasks to work through. “How are you? Honest answer rather than the usual ‘fine’ please?” Mercy took her seat, spinning in it to face Madi still.

Madelyn wrinkled her nose on the way to pulling a face at the insistence. "Plagued by existential dread," she exaggerated without actually stumbling completely away from the truth. "Though it looks like we need to become experts in producing food without using any power so that's an exciting development." The young scientist didn't manage sarcasm very well, and though she was trying to temper the panic of the incumbent fuel shortages with an attempt at good humour, all she really managed was to sound twice as fretful as normal.

“Existential dread? Oh dear.” Mercy looked at Madi with a little more scrutiny now, taking in the woman’s general demeanour and tone as she spoke. “Ah, I imagine growing plants without a light source might present the first problem.” Mercy tapped a finger against her lip as she puzzled over the problem Madi had presented. “Heat too I imagine since most plants don’t tolerate wild fluctuations or the frigid cold of space. I suppose watering is east enough to do manually providing you have the right equipment an and access point. Perhaps the first step is to combine your environmental factors wherever you can to realise efficiencies. For example ensure that your light sources emit heat if they don’t already do that you can reduce the ambient temperature in hydroponics. Instead of running heya and light seperstely, combine them. Then you could also rearrange plants so that those that will survive in the shade are further away and those that need direct light are under the lights, it might reduce the number of light devices you need…”

Mercy then blinked, realising she had gotten lost in the idea for a moment. “Sorry you have probably thought of all that already. Although… one way to reduce energy consumption might be to create a kinetically charged battery or generator. I think engineering could easily modify one of the exercise bikes from the gym and hook it up to a battery. Might take a lot of work to charge it initially but I’m sure you would have plenty of volunteers to help, considering it’s our main source of food after all.”

Mercy then gave Madi a gentle smile. “I think we are a little way off from needing to panic yet though. We are all taking measures to reduce fuel consumption and the number of scans we have run is staggering. I believe we will find something soon. You know whenever their is a problem to solve, nerds will get the job done, and we’ll… we’re the absolute nerdiest right? Makes us perfect for the job.” Mercy winked at Madi and gave her a thumbs up. “Leave the worrying to me okay? I’m a professional worrier.”

"Every professional needs a good apprentice," Madelyn pointed out, though having spent the best part of the last couple of minutes listening to Mercy categorize exactly the complications hydroponics constantly faced, the younger scientist couldn't help but feel grateful for the brief reprieve into warm humour that came from appreciating an effort despite its lack of actual assistance. Ever since they'd taken on the variety of seed stock from Relia, Finn had been like a maniac trying to figure out how to expand the amount of growing conditions their designated space was capable of providing. To be told now that it had to be done with a reduction in power allocation had been quite a blow, but given the importance of their function, the small group were used to innovating on a dime. Madelyn might not have been particularly good at dealing with the pressure of having to perform such a vital task under sub-optimal conditions but she was proud of her friend for staying on top of it. Finn, at least, seemed to have really found a way to thrive.

At least one of them had.

"If we're implementing power restrictions," the ensign wondered, moving to perch herself on the stool in front of what would predictably become her work station, since it was directly adjacent to where Mercy had been sitting, "Where does that leave our data storage solutions? Are we still able to prioritise them?" Previously, the idea of freeing up space had felt imperative and Madelyn didn't suppose it was any less of a problem that required fixing, but having ample space for digital storage wasn't going to amount to much if they drained the remaining fuel before they could utilise it.

“Ah well, I think it’s on the back burner for the moment. It’s still important but at the moment we need everyone who can be spared to work on data mining the scan results. We need to find us some deuterium before we can expend energy transferring data. We can still categorise things I suppose, and the Captain has provided a storage device. But the rest might have to wait. Plus I think food production would rate more highly than most other tasks so I suspect you should focus on that until we are in the clear.” Mercy sighed, she knew with the additional data they had gathered that it would only compound their job. She subtly tried to rub her temple to ease a headache which had begun to form.

“Speaking of the Captain, I don’t suppose you or Finn grow any plants with similar properties to mint or ginger?”

It took the distracted Madelyn a moment to pick up the oddness of Mercy's question. She'd honestly expected that the other woman's project would need to be postponed and wasn't so much surprised as she was disappointed to be proven correct. It wasn't a huge thing but, in the midst of current concerns about her own usefulness, being asked to contribute to another task that was of benefit to everyone had honestly meant more than Madi thought Mercy had really intended. Having it fall flat seemed self-fulfilling in a way that was not in the least bit comforting.

And, thus, the confused flicker of her brow came a little late and took several more seconds to develop into a fully-fledged frown. "Do you mean taste or something else?"

“Oh good question.” Mercy tilted her head to the side and thought for a moment. “Well I think the taste is important. They need to taste good, but what I’m actually looking for are plants with a diuretic property. Something that can be turned into a tea which is gentle on the stomach and helps with nausea.” She looked at Madi with no small amount of hope. “Don’t suppose you have anything like that in hydroponics?”

It struck Madi as an odd question, particularly as Mercy had used the Captain as a segue, but she gave it due consideration nonetheless. "Our herbal racks tend to be some of our more durable crops." For this reason, they had become Madi's unspoken focus for all it tended to be necessary to pitch in across the board. Certainly, the odd bout of clumsiness didn't tend to impact the robust plants much, and most of the varieties they'd propagated could handle inconsistency in conditions to an extent. "The mint is doing well, but we also took on some new species in the seed exchange with the Realians. One seems to be very similar to chamomile, though the aroma is kind of...fishy." Madi wrinkled her nose. "As in literally it smells like fish. We haven't been game to brew it yet."

Mercy wrinkled her nose at the idea of a fishy mint. “Hmmm maybe we should leave that one for the moment then. Fishy camomile sounds interesting as a sort of soup ingredient but I’m not sure it will go down well in a tea, even with other flavours to offset it. But if I may, I’d like to swing by after shift and collect some mint?”

"Uh, sure."

So far, with no context offered, Madelyn wasn't entirely sure what she was agreeing to. Not only that, she couldn't tell if Mercy was being intentionally vague or if this was another situation where there was some piece of news everyone expected to be common knowledge but she'd somehow missed entirely. It happened more often than was comfortable, even as far back as childhood, and the only reassurance she'd ever been given in regards to it had come from her grandmother. The old woman's inherently-bias opinion had been that Madelyn was quick-witted enough to always appear knowledgeable but Madi was pretty sure that was just a well-rehearsed unwillingness to look stupid as often as she felt it.

"Is everything all right with the Captain?"

One thing age and experience had attempted to teach her, however, was that pretence didn't always save pride in the long run. At least Mercy wouldn't give her too much grief for being ignorant if it was something she ought to already know.

“Hmm?” Mercy hummed to buy herself a little time. She wasn’t sure how widely know the Captain’s condition was among the wider crew so she opted for the more cautious approach. “Yes I think she will be just fine, however at the moment she is suffering from a little nausea and I remembered my Mother used to like mint or ginger tea when she felt like that, so I thought it might help.”

Then she opted to change the topic. “Although… I could use some advice if you… uhm… well it’s a little awkward and I don’t really know where to start, but would you be able to keep a confidence for me?” If anyone might understand how Mercy was feeling right about now, it was probably Madi.

The response didn't seem satisfying, in the sense that it didn't seem complete, but Madelyn didn't really have the confidence to spare for a direct challenge at the moment. She filed away the exchange as 'interesting' and possibly 'weird' and followed the flow of conversation, content to let Mercy dictate the course it took because anything Madelyn could think to talk about involved far too much confusion and uncertainty. "I can try," she started, not wanting to offer false hope that her advice was the type normally sought by anyone. "I mean, of course I can keep a secret, I just meant I can try to give advice."

Mercy gave Madi a small, resolute nod. The fact Madi would keep a secret hadn’t actually be a concern, if anything the bubbly Ensign just needed time to formulate her question really. “I’ve done something quite humiliating and stupid. So I would appreciate that thanks. Well… how much do you know about Vulcan culture?” Mercy fiddled with her own fingers, then seemed to realise what she was doing and blushed, suddenly reminded of the silly misunderstanding which had led her to this moment.

As much as Madi hadn't even tried to predict what the older woman was going to ask, it was safe to say she wouldn't have thought of that as a leading question even if she'd pitched a thousand other possibilities. Caught by surprise, the ensign sat in puzzled thought for a moment before trying to answer as honestly as she could. "It depends on what aspects you mean. We studied quite a lot about them, they're one of the foundational basis' for a lot of the xenological courses because we have the most data on them. That being said, that doesn't mean we have an extensive knowledge, Vulcans are private and somewhat insular about a lot of their belief structure. Official disclosure isn't as indicative as anecdotal encounters but then you have problems with validity." Madi tilted her head to one side to fix her friend with a quizzical look. "Why?"

Mercy blushed furiously and mumbled something that would at first be inaudible. She then cleared her throat and repeated herself. "I didn't realise they kiss with their fingers. I thought it was a gesture of goodbye.. so... uhm... in an effort to try and be more accommodating of Lieutenant Darru's culture... I... well twice. I kissed him twice." Mercy then made a noise of pure mortification. "I'm so embarrassed, I tried apologising too, but I kind of blacked out half way through speaking. I am not sure what I said really. He said it was okay, even said I was the smartest person on the ship, although I am sure he was just trying to be nice. But now I can't stop thinking about it all. I'm exhausted." She said the last word as a rush of air more than speech.

If one thing could be said about Madelyn's integrity, it was that her face absolutely did not let her get away with dishonesty. Already bug-eyed before Mercy was halfway through the recount, the young ensign simply stared at her colleague in reflected mortification for a few stunned seconds before pressing her hand against her cheek to partially cover her mouth with the heel of her palm. "Oh wow." There would be time enough later on for a delayed flare of inadequacy at having their superior officer play favourites with his compliments; for the time being, all Madelyn could focus on was the extreme sense of reciprocated empathy that left her stomach twisted just trying to imagine what Mercy was feeling.

"They always warned us never to take initiative unless we were absolutely sure," Madi recalled miserably, aware that it was advice that was far too late for her friend. "And he's our senior officer too, I can't believe you had the guts to touch him even if you didn't know what it meant."

Mercy groaned and buried her face in her hands. For one terribly moment she thought she might cry but she managed to keep it together at the last moment. Maybe Madi had not been the best person to confide in after all. “Thanks a heap.” Mercy just barely managed to keep some of her heart ache about the situation out of her tone. Instead the words came out flattened, as if Mercy was not quite all there.

“Well I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way, both lessons. In my defence I assumed it was like a friendly handshake. I would offer that to anyone.” She felt defensive, but considering how Madi reacted she wasn’t about to tell her that she had tried to go and accept punishment from the Captain and then woken her up too. It was bad enough Madi now probably thought her tactless and maybe a little ignorant. “But yeah, won’t be touching anyone again in a rush. I can barely look him in the eye at this point. And we were just getting to know each other better too. We’d swapped books and everything!” Mercy wasn’t prone to dramatics, but she suddenly wished the outer hull plating would disappear and she would be sucked into the cold, dark relief of the void.

The last confession saw Madi raise her eyebrows. If she was fair, her initial lack of support probably stemmed from the fact that Darru wasn't high on her list of favourite people under current circumstances. Madelyn had always been left with the impression that he didn't really know what to do with her, which was fair given that her tenure on board had been purely to garner starship experience and would have been limited to a 12-week tour had things not gone so catastrophically wrong. It still wasn't helping her pervasive sense of redundancy to feel shunted into hydroponics out of necessity and left to rot, an opinion Madelyn had arrived at after their stint on Relia had produced absolutely no encouragement or opportunity to step away from negotiations around bartering for produce to indulge in a real opportunity to put her actual qualifications to use. It had been Mercy, not Darru, who had asked for help with the storage issues. It wasn't the same as studying alien cultures but it had been something different, something useful.

And she probably only asked so she could keep earning brown-nose points.

Madi blinked at the ferocity of the unkind thought, immediately glad that Mercy couldn't read her thoughts. Guilt mingled with resentment and a dollop of jealousy to create the perfect storm, one that she was only partially-successful at navigating around as she replied, "Well if you're getting to know each other that well, maybe he didn't mind."

Mercy looked at Madi, and while she couldn’t begin to understand what the other Ensign was feeling, she had hoped for a little more comfort honestly. Maybe she had misread their friendship? It stung a little and the other woman’s body language had Mercy retreating back into her work rather quickly.

“Right… well… th-thanks for the advice. I’ll… I should get back to the data crunching. We uhm… we’ve nearly narrowed down a likely candidate for the deuterium, so… well… yeah.” She then offered Madi a forced smile, pushing down her jumble of feelings. “Sorry to have interrupted your morning with uhm… well with personal problems. Won’t do it again, promise.”

Mercy then ducked her head and turned back to her work station, her shoulders stiff as she began to bring up more streams of endless data. Maybe she shouldn’t have shared her personal problems, now Madi probably thought Mercy had thrown herself at Darru on purpose or something. Or maybe thought she was just an idiot, which would be far closer to the truth.

It was all it took for the guilt to surpass the rest, which were not comfortable things to feel in the first place and were honestly quite alien to Madelyn's usual mentality. She'd felt off-kilter for weeks but that wasn't much of an excuse, and though Madi tried her best to focus as she logged into her own workstation in preparation for the hour-or-so's paperwork she needed to cover before heading back to mix fertilizer, an overall oppression of glumness made it virtually impossible to concentrate. Being rude to Mercy was like throwing a beloved puppy overboard, the kind-hearted soul deserved a little bit better from her colleagues than to have her nose rubbed in her unintentional mess. With a slow exhale, Madi glanced across several times at the woman's profile, hoping that a moment's eye contact might give her an opportunity for reconciliation, but when ten minutes of brittle silence had passed with no such chance, the ensign slipped to her feet with reluctant nervousness and edged her way over to where Mercy was working.

"Hey Mercy." Though they were mostly alone still, Madi kept her volume down. "I'm sorry." She winced at how weak the words sounded, inadequate really for how much of a bitch she'd been. "I didn't mean to make you feel worse, you didn't interrupt anything." Without waiting for a reply, Madi grabbed onto the more generous aspects of her earlier thought process and picked up momentum. "All I meant was I'm sure you don't have to be so embarrassed, mistakes happen. Lieutenant Darru is an officer and a grown man, probably twice our age given how long Vulcan's live. He accepted your explanation, right?"

Mercy drew in a small breath as Madi’s words washed over, and then she risked a glance. She studied Madi for a brief moment before giving her a nod and a small, more genuine smile. “Thanks Mads, I appreciate that. I… you’re probably right. I’m just feeling a little sensitive I guess. Hard not to feel like an idiot when you realised you kissed your boss and didn’t even have the good fortune to be drunk at the time… or even know it was happening! What a mess huh?” She rubbed at her temple slightly, trying to chase away a headache. “And yes Da- I mean the Lieutenant fully accepted my apology, was quite gracious actually all things considered.”

Mercy then reached out to squeeze Madi’s arm in a casual gesture of friendship, however before she could make contact she realised what she was doing. “Ah sorry, force of habit, one I am trying to break before it gets me in even more trouble.” She paused again, studying Madi once mores. “You okay though? Like really?”

Madelyn watched her friend wallow in misery that honestly felt undeserved, knowing all-too-well that making fun of herself was just Mercy's way of trying to retreat to the comfort of insignificance. The shift in focus to Madi was a prime example and it didn't take an inherent reluctance to discuss her own state of mind for the younger brunette to avoid answering right away. The more she twisted and tweaked the knot of resentment forming in her stomach, the less she came close to unravelling it, but the effort was having some success in reshaping how Madi felt about the cause. Mercy was renown for putting herself last, for going out of her way to help others first, and so it was hardly any surprise that she had extended her good nature to include their Vulcan superior. It would have been weird for her to avoid him, if anything, given the fact that their work lives ensured constant interaction. Making peace with that as a reason to avoid blaming Mercy for what had happened certainly went a long way towards rendering Madelyn's sense of regret utterly sincere but it had the knock-on affect of adding fuel to another pre-existing fire. Frowning, she shook her head slowly.

"I'm fine," Madi lied, "You're the one who needs to be kinder to themselves. Mercy, you can't keep shouldering this much guilt and responsibility for everything. What happened wasn't your fault, it was a misunderstanding." The deep knit of her brow puzzled over the freshly-formed thought fanning fresh air onto the flames and Madi found herself crossing her arms over her chest as a flare of indignation on the other woman's part took form. "Darru's the one that owes you an apology, if anything. A one-off misunderstanding is just unfortunate, but twice? Why didn't he say something the first time?"

Madelyn raised her eyebrows at the other scientist.

"Mercy, that's really inappropriate. Like, creepy levels of inappropriate. He let you snog him and didn't say anything, despite being your superior officer, and by the sounds of it, someone you've tried to be friendly towards. He let it happen a second time because he didn't tell you the first time and that's not okay."

“Oh Madi! Heavens no! Darru’s not like that!” Mercy immediately leapt to the poor Lieutenant’s defence, although she then paused. Had the man… no surely he didn’t… “I don’t think he liked it or anything like that. If anything it just seemed to make him uncomfortable. I think more than anything he was just trying to spare my feelings. We’ve been getting a little more friendly is all and he… you know how he adapts everything to try and make us humans more comfortable. He was probably just trying spare me the awkwardness, and I mean it’s impossible. He would never see me like that, and even if he did I wouldn’t… I mean he’s handsome sure, in a kind of graceful, dignified… uhm but that’s not. He’s just kind, and was probably trying to think how to address it. And then I went and ruined everything. And he’s my superior, it would be totally inappropriate, it was inappropriate and it was my fault entirely.” Mercy stumbled to a halt, her jumbled feelings on the matter leaving her confused and with a small, uncomfortable thought. What would it be like to have kissed him on purpose? To have him kiss her back the human way? She immediately shoved those thoughts aside, her face heating up.

“No he would never take advantage like that, really. He’s a good man and very kind. And clever. He’s just not the type. I appreciate you worrying about me, but really, this one is on me.”

"And I respectfully disagree."

Now that she'd found her hill, Madelyn prepared to make camp and await death. Her anger was real, though, the same sort of anger she had anticipated being deserving of only a few minutes ago when she'd lashed out at Mercy in misguided annoyance. The idea that anyone would set her up like this, to take advantage of her perpetual desire to do the right thing by people and allow her to make such a mortifying mistake twice was, as far as Madi's new philosophy was concerned, entirely unacceptable.

"What he did to you was unkind. If he knew anything about you at all, cared anything about getting to know you in the slightest, he would have been able to tell how likely you were to keep making a mistake when it comes to physical affection." She held out the elbow Mercy had previously squeezed. "You give the best hugs of anyone on board, it doesn't take a genius to figure this out, he just either doesn't pay attention or plain didn't care."

A huff of indignation saw Madi's narrowed gaze drift towards the door, almost as if daring the Lieutenant to arrive.

"I wonder how many other cultural slip-ups he's conveniently left uncorrected."

“I honestly think he was trying to spare me. Surely you’ve noticed how he has done everything he can to adapt. He asks how people are feeling, listens to everyone’s ideas, he’s never once complained how cold it must be compared to what he’s used to. He even uses contractions sometimes to normalise his speech pattern for our comfort.” Mercy said the last one as if such a small thing could be irrefutable proof, and to her, it was.

“Do you think he has been kissed by anyone else?” Mercy blinked when Madi mentioned about other cultural slip-ups, her stomach doing an unpleasant flip. “N-not that it’s any of my business of course. I mean I am sure if he wanted to, that’s totally fine, he could have his pick. There are plenty of beautiful men and women on board and lots who don’t work in his team. And he should! He’s a nice person he deserves happiness like anyone else, especially without the complication of… not that… Oh no.” Oh fuck, Mercy had the sudden profound realisation of just how much trouble she was actually in when it came to her feelings towards Darru. Forging ahead she tried to change the direction of her spiralling thoughts.

“And you are right, I am a hugger, but not everyone likes that. If I had been a little more considerate then perhaps this whole thing could have been avoided? He’s never made a move towards touching me or shown that kind of interest. And really I just… I thought he might be lonely. Not like that, but I thought… well it’s too late now. Doesn’t matter what I thought then or how I feel now, I’ve apologised, he’s accepted, and I really don’t want this to colour your opinion of him.”

"I was assigned to Atlantis specifically to work with him." Madelyn was still staring at the door, though her expression had veered towards a unreadable neutrality. "Sort of," she added, not wanting to be misleading. "I had a few options to get up my hours, Dad suggested Atlantis because it had some non-human officers. It should have been a great opportunity."

It was all she said. The silence that followed offered no further context other than to imply the reverse to be true, that the experience working alongside representatives from other alien cultures had been anything but rewarding. Vilifying anyone, especially someone who wasn't human, would ordinarily have been the last thing Madelyn would have sought to do, much less take any relish in, but it felt good to care about something outside of her own situation for once. Mercy might not have wanted anyone in her court over this particular matter but Madelyn was determined to make sure the woman wasn't treated like a doormat just because she so conveniently took the blame for absolutely everything.

"Just remember your own worth," Madi eventually returned to the conversation, being entirely intentional in reaching across the console to squeeze the other woman's shoulder. "You deserve people to be as open and honest with you as you always are with us. Good people make mistakes, but they also apologise for them. If they can't do that..." She hitched a shoulder, allowing the sentiment to speak for itself. "Excuses are too easy. You're not the only one who suffers if he can't be trusted to communicate."

With that, Madelyn moved away, unwilling to leave Mercy feeling like she had to justify the actions of a grown man. The conversation had also provoked a deep pang of homesickness, and the loss of any ability to pick her mother's brain over matters of protocol and cultural differences. Rather than return to her workstation, Madi made a direct bee-line for the door, mostly because she was already at risk of being late but also just to give Mercy some space to think. Madi hoped at least something of what she'd said had stuck.

Mercy blinked at the door to the lab, left confused, and a little concerned. “Oh dear, I might have made a miscalculation with sharing just then.” She mumbled and chewed her lower lip. Madi had had her choice of assignment, a luxury Mercy had never been given. Although she didn’t blame the quite brilliant Ensign, Mercy had no support in Starfleet from family or friends. Had taken an academic route which had limited her options to purely research posts initially, because it had been cost effective for her particular skills and meant she could earn money to send to her family in the side. Although she didn’t hold Madi’s feeling against her, she wondered if part of the reason for the woman’s discontent was the face her expectations did not match the reality that they now all found themselves in.

Mercy loved the hydroponics bay, and saw it as a bit of a darling posting honestly. What better job than to be surrounded by plants and doing something tangibly necessary by helping feed the crew? But maybe… maybe Madi didn’t see it that way? Maybe her posting there was a disappointment. Maybe the ensign would benefit from swapping shifts occasionally? Mercy tried to decide whether she would be overstepping her bounds to suggest such a rotation, wanting to help solve the problem for the young woman. If she took Mercy’s position, she would have a chance to work with Darru more closely, and it wasn’t as if Mercy expected her own career to go anywhere. Plus Mercy had an exo-botany background prior to her work with data, even if it was in mycology.

Well that and it was far easier for her to ignore her own feelings and focus on those of Madelyn’s for a little while. “What are we going to do with that one?” She then sighed and rubbed her temple again before going back to focusing on the work at hand.

 

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