Finding the Words

Posted on Sat Aug 17th, 2024 @ 11:34am by Ensign Duncan McManus & Ensign Madelyn 'Madi' Moore

Mission: Remnant
Location: Moonshine HQ
Timeline: MD07 20:00
3697 words - 7.4 OF Standard Post Measure

It had been a heck of a day to get through on only four hours sleep.

When she'd first woken in unfamiliar surroundings, it had taken Madi a moment to piece together which version of possible realities she'd actually emerged in. The heavy breathing from the bunk overhead hadn't offered an immediate answer but sitting up and squinting in protest had eventually allowed Madelyn to focus on Mercy's sleep-mask, and the tousled chaos of hair that fanned out around it. The other scientist had still be dead to the world when Madi had quietly excused herself, not wanting Mercy to bear the burden of sharing breakfast when neither of them had got anywhere near enough sleep to make idle chit-chat particularly pleasant. A trip back to her quarters had permitted a shower, at least, and then there had been no time for breakfast before the chaos of trying to maximise the lifespan of their remaining fresh produce without refrigeration kicked in. It was all a contingency plan for now, the development of a systematic approach should it prove necessary, but for Madi that had meant an awful lot of documentation and labelling. It had kept her away from the green beans, at least, and also given her the solitude she needed to think long and hard about the last 24-hours.

And beyond that really. Mercy hadn't been lying when she'd said Madi hadn't been her usual self lately. Even digging deep enough to have some semblance of an idea about why that might be wasn't much of a relief, since existential issues were not easily solved by simply shining a light on them. The older woman's enthusiasm was a balm, however, and there was a lot about how Mercy communicated, rather than what she chose to say, that made all the difference. In many respects, it was enough that someone had noticed things weren't right and made an effort to help, though, if Madi was going to be fair, someone else had probably been trying to do that for far longer.

She left it until the evening again, though this time she'd taken care to double check the time before setting out. The first setback had been not finding him in his quarters, which had almost been enough of an excuse to turn back entirely, but Madi had double-checked the duty roster and then set about scoping out the handful of places Duncan was likely to be at this hour, especially when he was scheduled for an early start. It wasn't likely the last place she would have looked but it still took crossing off several other alternatives for Madelyn to arrive at the processing centre of Atlantis' moonshine production, relieved at least to find the engineer working on his own. It maybe wasn't an ideal location to talk, Madi wasn't sure if Duncan preferred to keep the area mostly off-limits, but she'd already told herself she couldn't let the day slip away without addressing her behaviour. Unsure of what to do with her hands, she folded her arms across her stomach and waited for him to notice her.

"Hey." Madi hoped her half-smile conveyed enough of an olive branch to be the start of a proper reconciliation.

Duncan had left the door open to what could only be described as his personal project and work place other than Benjamin who came to help once in a while to get some fresh air into the space. He turned as he felt a presence watching him and rose instantly at the voice as he had been crouching checking a valve. “Hi?” He questioned keeping his distance from her so she could decide whether to come in properly or not.

"This is where the magic happens, huh?"

A sense of natural reservation saw Madelyn hover by the entrance a moment longer before venturing forth just a few steps. By now, her capacity for clumsiness under stress was fairly well- known and the last thing she wanted was to create more mayhem on top of what she already needed to put right. Her curiosity was genuine, however, and it helped ease into the necessary conversation to bounce it first off a topic that was more about Duncan than herself for once.

"Do you think the next batch will be ready before the power restrictions kick in?"

The man raised an eyebrow but offered an easy smile to her as she broke the tension with questions around his side quest. He had been worried about the lack of power himself but he had found a way to spread up the process but also to make it work with no power. “It is where some magic happens.” He nodded moving around the crates of glass bottles to her side of the compartment. “It should but I have a process in place for drop in power usage. Wanna see?” He offered holding out his hand for a moment before he dropped his hand. “Come on.”

It hurt her heart a little to see him withdraw, though Madi could hardly blame Duncan for the uncertainty. She hadn't exactly shown a lot of gratitude for his efforts recently. The decision to focus on something other than her own identity crisis had been spur of the moment but it felt right, at least enough that moving closer to take him up on the offer seemed best under the circumstances. She followed carefully, squeezing her small frame through gaps tight enough to make her wonder if working here for any length of time got claustrophobic. It made sense, space was at a premium and this little project wasn't exactly officially sanctioned.

"You designed all this?" She'd heard the recounts often enough but it wasn't the same as seeing his handiwork firsthand. Struck by a mixture of inspiration and admiration, Madelyn crouched to get a better look without moving close enough to do any unintentional damage.

“I did with King’s assistance in prodding the idea.” He could not claim complete credit as he would not have done it without the former MACO Commanding officer's suggestion. “My grandparents own a brewery. This I guess is my way of honouring them but they have beer I have mead at the moment has it is easier to work with after we got so much honey substitute from Relea.”

"Is it weird to say," Madi asked quietly after a moment of letting her gaze wander over the intricate assembly, "that it's oddly beautiful?" She wasn't much of an engineer, which was to say that she'd already been highly restricted from attempting even the most rudimentary of repairs within hydroponics due to a lack of intuitive skill. It wasn't something she lamented too much, having no real desire to mess with things made of too many components to keep track of, but taking the time to truly study how the flow of circuitry looped in and around itself made it occur to her that someone had done that intentionally. Duncan had done that intentionally, knowledgably, down to the finest detail. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Madelyn was momentarily distracted by something outside her own self-destructive thought cycle.

Duncan shook his head. It was not weird to him but he believed that several machines that they had met over the last couple of months were beautiful. “Not in the slightest. I think it is as well as possibly being my best work so far.” He grinned.

Madelyn didn't know what any of it did, could barely pick out something that she recognised let alone take a stab at how it functioned as part of the whole, and yet there was something very calming about studying the intricacies as one might admire a finished puzzled. Everywhere she looked, things fit together seamlessly, and judging by the countless successful batches the still had produced since its inception, all if it did exactly what it was supposed to do. A small piece of order amongst the chaos, and a reminder that she worked alongside some pretty remarkable people.

Glancing upwards, she caught his enthusiasm and returned his smile.

Then, very carefully because the last thing she needed right now was to break something, Madi rose back up and tucked her hands safely away behind her. "It must be a relief," she observed carefully, "to be able to do something more than just fix broken stuff all the time."

Duncan stepped back to give her some space to move. "I do not see fixing broken things as that. I see it as improving things." It had used to bug him that he was constantly damage-controlling things to stop breaking until Sloan had offered some wisdom that things broke for a reason so they needed improving to stop that. "It is better for my mental health to not be a fixer constantly."

It hadn't escaped Madi's notice that he kept moving away, maintaining a distance that she couldn't really blame him for. In place of the panic she'd fallen prey to far too often of late, Madi was left only with a sense of sadness. You could only push someone away so many times before they got the message, she supposed, even if it was the wrong message because you were a terrible communicator.

"Your mental health is important," she agreed softly, keeping her eyes fixed on the machine in front of them. She wasn't so much stalling for time as just trying, for once, not to force everything down an unnatural path. It felt like way too long since the pair of them had just chatted. "You said you'd figured out how to make this work without power?"

Duncan looked a little confused for a moment before he nodded. "Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks known to man. It is a wine made from fermented honey and relatively easy to produce. But because it is mead I can just leave it to its own devices as long as I have an airlock on it we will have no explosions and it will keep on fermenting." He pointed to the device at the top that was filled with water and every now and then bubbled.

Standing up on tiptoes to observe, Madi watched the concoction for a moment before commenting, "At least we'll have plenty of mead and jam." It took a second for her to realise how that sounded out of context. "We've been talking about contingency plans if we have to convert our cold storage into preserves. Lots of dried fruit and meat jerky, if we can figure out the process."

Silence crept back in, loaded with the anticipation of words unspoken. She hadn't come here to admire his handiwork, though it was nice to have an opportunity to, and if she left it too much longer then bringing up what needed to be said would feel all the more awkward. Lowering her gaze for a moment, Madi tightened her arm's grip across her stomach and let out an audible sigh.

"I'm sorry for last night, Duncan. Well, for the last few weeks really. I know you were just trying to help."

Duncan frowned before his face softened and he sighed. "I know this. I did not offer you anything other than to stay and talk and get things off your chest. I like you and yes I want things to go further eventually but right now I just want you healthy. You haven't been right since I found you in the corridor with the damage control team." He said shaking his head as he leaned back against the compartment wall and just stared at her.

"I..."

Suddenly, there was too much to respond to. A desire to protest against the notion that she'd been struggling for the entire year, finding it far easier to admit to the shorter timeframe of 'since we left Relea'. The casually-admitted 'I want things to go further eventually' that, if Madi was honest, wasn't entirely a surprise but still wasn't something she'd expected to be tossed out into the open with quite so much candour. Even just the fact that he consistently placed the emphasis on her 'getting healthy', which when framed alongside the other confessions, started to make a whole lot of sense out of why Duncan seemed to consistently sense mixed signals. Perhaps it wasn't a case of uncertainty or indecision but more that he was reluctant to take advantage of someone he considered to be vulnerable. It certainly sounded like something he'd worry about but Madelyn wasn't sure what to do with the information now that she'd arrived at a better understanding. If he was waiting for her to be miraculously devoid of any stress then he'd be waiting a lot longer than a year.

"I'm finding it hard to adjust," was where she landed as a way forward. "Before, I felt out of place but it was less of a big deal because I figured it was just a temporary thing. We needed food more than we needed cultural archiving, it just made sense to help Finn set up hydroponics properly."

Finding the courage to turn towards him, Madi hugged herself tightly and tried to channel some of Mercy's home-truths into her next concession. "Since we got back on board after shoreleave, things have started to feel a lot less temporary and I guess I'm just struggling with what that means. I don't know if I'm a good enough gardener to do this for the rest of my life."

"Then we need to find you a new place on the ship." He knew several people were struggling with their place on the ship and what the new normal would be for them and everyone else. He knew his place and had carved out a niche for himself in the still and engineering. He knew that not everyone was that lucky. He looked around and saw the crates he was using to store bottles and other things in and turned over the empty ones to make impromptu seats. "Come on, sit down." He sat down and patted the one next to him.

With only the tiniest amount of reluctance, spurred mostly by a fear of screwing up yet another attempt at putting things right, Madelyn loosened her arms, allowing them to drop by her sides as she stepped over and sank onto the crate beside him. "It's not that I don't want to do my part," she tried to explain. If anything, a lot of her angst stemmed from wanting to be a productive and useful team-member instead of one that constantly felt like the green beans would be happier if she left.

"Of course, it is not about that. Your part is not what you expected, so we need to find something else." He said approaching it was a problem solver point of view rather than the dwelling on the problem. That in his opinion never solved anything.

It was, of course, how Duncan tended to approach everything. Madelyn still found herself in awe at times at how well-adjusted he seemed to be, such that she felt slightly unnerved at times by what appeared to be a lack of heartache or regret. It was one thing to understand that pragmatism was more productive but emotion wasn't rational and, every now and then she found herself wishing he'd just say something from the heart instead of always running it by his head first.

"I'm not sure what else I'd be better at," Madi pointed out, indicating that she'd at least given this partial thought at some point. "I'm pretty sure you'd launch me out an airlock if I tried to start fixing things." A faint smile was a start, a willingness to poke fun at herself still.

He made a face. "Would not be an air lock." He teased. “But you are not the best person to fix things so maybe scrub that off the list? What about other things? What jobs did you have pre Earth Starfleet and archiving?”

It took Madelyn a moment to respond. In terms of meaningful employment, she'd never really had a lot of experience. Her parents had always pushed education and were financially secure enough to support their children's scholastic pursuits without much pressure to add to the family funds. A flush of embarrassment recalled the conversation with Mercy, where the older woman had pointed out the differences in their situations, and once again Madi felt like a slightly ungrateful brat for having had all the privilege in the world and still no idea what to do with herself.

"I came here fresh out of school," she reminded him quietly. 'The only thing outside normal chores I ever really did was babysit." Leaning to the side, she bumped him playfully as a distraction. "Do you think you need adult supervision?"

“Oh sassy…” he teased back before shaking his head. “I only need it off duty but I was thinking of the captain once the baby comes along and I am sure there will be more coming eventually.” He mused thoughtfully. There was no one really trained onboard in childcare.

Madelyn stared at him for a moment. "What do you mean 'once the baby comes along'?" Her eyes widened as she recalled Mercy's bizarre request for nausea remedies. "Wait....really?"

Duncan raised an eyebrow at the question before the credit dropped and he realised that the woman really did not know about Leroux being pregnant. "Really!" He assured. "I feel a bit bad for her as Sloan is gone by all rumours." He commented, thinking of the crewmen he had got talking to about it all. No one was judging the Captain as things were complicated out there but the impression he got was Leroux seemed to be avoiding the crew at busy meal times.

Stunned silence became the only response. The prospect of raising families on the ship had come up several times during idle conversation, probably around the time that Lexi's engagement had become public knowledge and the non-descript nature of 'the future' began to suggest a form that allowed people to move forward rather than stagnate in wait of the unknown. It was those kind of conversations that had first started to unsettle Madelyn, since she found herself with no profound response to what shape her own future might take. She had always wanted children, had always ended up the one mustering her hoard of younger cousins, but the idea of raising children as things currently stood seemed unsustainable. Her heart went out to Leroux, who she could only imagine would have preferred better timing if nothing else.

"That's so scary," she eventually empathised, her tone quiet. "With our fuel issues and then all the longer-term problems we might face..."

Duncan found himself nodding. It was scary and he did not envy the woman in the slightest but what was done was done and there was no changing it now. "Yeah so maybe you have a skill that might be needed." Duncan prodded thoughtfully as he saw her go quiet as her empathy shined through.

Casting him a dubious sideways look, Madelyn said nothing at first. The situation didn't sound like a career advancement opportunity to her but she was still too caught up in trying to wrap her head around raising a child under their current circumstances. If anything, the first year or so would be the easiest. Once the kid was mobile and had thoughts and opinions of its own about how to entertain itself, the real fun would start. How did you baby-proof a starship anyway?

"I'll help, for sure, if the Captain needs it." It didn't require an official title, Madi just couldn't see how the woman was going to manage without help. "I, just..." Reaching up, she nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll figure something out. The whole point is that you shouldn't need to worry about me. And I shouldn't be making scenes at midnight when I was the one woke you up to start with." She winced at that. "My chronometer's fixed now, so at least that shouldn't happen again."

He knew that she would help in whatever way she could and maybe that would be enough for her to perk up and get something to cling to for the future. "Okay I will worry as much but you can make a scene if you need to, and if your chronometer breaks, bring it to me." He teased gently and nudged her shoulder.

With a roll of her eyes, and a reluctant laugh, both far more reminiscent of her usual reaction to his incessant teasing, Madelyn was struck by a moment of profound gratitude and realised she felt better than she had in weeks. If nothing else, she'd actually managed to reconnect with one of her closest supports in a way that had avoided further alienating him. There would be time to prod him about what 'eventually something more' actually meant; right now, Madi was relieved to have something close to the way things used to be.

"Or you could," just shot back, jostling him sideways again, "just do your job and make sure the ship works in the first place."

"Oh, you are sassy tonight." He laughed jostling her back with a smile. He felt like for a moment things were on the up again. "I like this side of you but you are right I should make sure it works better first." He agreed looking around. "It's not much but it's good."

Madelyn wasn't sure she was quite in a place yet to agree but, following his gaze around the intricacies of his workmanship, she could at least agree that aspects of it were helping to improve matters. Leaning her head sideways until it gently bumped against his arm, she exhaled once and then nodded, the friction creating a small patch of shared warmth.

"It's plenty. And you're right, it's great."

Maybe one day she'd work up the nerve to explain to him what that actually meant.