Forgiving in-tent

Posted on Fri Apr 25th, 2025 @ 6:34am by Ensign Mercy Mourne & Ensign Madelyn 'Madi' Moore

Mission: Remnant
Location: Back at Camp
Timeline: Evening of Day 409
3523 words - 7 OF Standard Post Measure

Mercy had been back at camp long enough for the psychedelic effects of whatever she had consumed to pass through her system. Her head was swimming and she was still trying to work out what was real and what was hallucinated. Her head throbbed like she had been on a three day bender and she groaned slightly, grateful that for the moment she had been left alone in hers and Madi’s tent.

Had she asked Darru in a date? Stats above she hoped that bit was part of the hallucination. She twisted to try and bury a groan in her bedroll but the movement caused pain to lace through her injured ankle. She hissed, suddenly being so high you said stupid things didn’t seem like the end of the world. Avira was probably going to give her a stern talking to once the woman was back in camp.

It was difficult to move quickly with frozen feet and there had definitely come a point where no amount of thawing in front of the fire had done enough to rid Madi of the sensation of bugs crawling over her skin. Field work came with its limitations in the daily hygiene department but, whilst getting grubby was expected, there was still a tipping point. Realising that she'd left changing her clothes a little late, and that she probably had maybe twenty minutes before Duncan decided she'd ditched him after all, Madi hesitated outside the tent just long enough to wonder if it was easier to go take Leroux up on the offer of borrowed clothing. It wasn't just that Mercy needed the rest, Madelyn wasn't overly sure what state she'd find her friend in, and that required...well, some sort of wits Madi wasn't sure she was currently in possession of.

"Knock, knock," she called quietly, figuring if there was no answer she'd risk trying to grab her rucksack and worry about where she was going to change after.

Mercy perked up with the sound outside the tent. "Madi?" She cleared her throat when it came out a little rough, wincing at the slight headache. "What you doing knocking? It's your tent too. You can... oh no did I say something weird to you too?" Mercy let out another groan and pulled the pillow back over her head. "Where's a hole in the ground to swallow you when... actually been there done that." She then winced, maybe Madi was mad at her for getting her into the whole mess with the temple.

It was, more or less, a coherent lament, which was an improvement on the last time Madi had seen the woman. That didn't automatically gift her the ability to keep track of what Mercy was trying to get at, though it did at least encourage the younger ensign to step into the tent and close the flap behind her. "Nothing too weird," she lied out of kindness. "By the time Duncan got me unstuck, they'd pretty much got you out too. You were doing a lot of singing," Madi offered, her tone doing its best to imply that it was a good thing.

Mercy groaned and slapped a hand over her eyes. Her fingertips were a touch on the cool side and that plus the pressure helped soother her headache just a little. “Shit I was hoping that part was a hallucination. I hope the rest is too.” She then dragged her hand down, her fingers momentarily distorting her face into a twisted, drab out version of herself. Her hand landed on her mouth as though it could stuff all the words back into her mouth. The singing really only the least of it. When she next spoke she had to lift her hand away.

“How are you? You okay?” She looked Madi over from where she was propped up against her own pack. “Thank you for rallying the rescue party. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be down there… and well if it wasn’t for me you never would have been in the first place.”

"I'm fine." At this point, Madi was starting to feel like she needed that on a recorded loop. Pulling open her rucksack, she started to empty its contents onto her cot, a somewhat disorganised effort that only highlighted the complete lack of systematic packing reminiscent of someone who had thrown things in at the last minute. She found a try pair of pants first and sat on the bed to wriggle out of her boots. "No harm done, and look at what we managed to find?" Madi hesitated before peeling off her grubby pants. "A bunch of perverted statues."

Mercy blinked for a moment before she tipped her head back and laughed. It was the kind of laugh born from sheer relief, and the absurdity of surviving. When she was done she settled into a grin. “Do you think they were anatomically accurate?” Her cheeks flushed a little. Before she had started to hallucinate there hadn’t been much else to look at while she was waiting and it was hard not to notice certain prominent features.

“If so… lucky aliens.” She then snickered and relaxed a little into the bunk. Wincing as a small stretch made her feel every ache and pain. “Have you reported to the Captain what we found?”

Although she had shot Mercy a semi-exasperated 'are you serious?' response initially, it didn't take long for Madi to add her own snort of amusement. Changing out of her shirt next, which she somehow managed through an act of relatively impressive feat of contortionism to avoid over-exposure, the young ensign's expression soon switched to a grimace as she recalled the conversation with Leroux. "Yeah, though I think she already knew. Everyone's been talking about it."

“Oh great!” Mercy groaned and covered her face with her hands, feeling her cheeks burning. “Fucking fantastic. Mercy the clutz nearly kills her best friend and then injured herself in a room full of alien dong then gets all emotional with the Vulcan and tells him she wants to kiss him! Brilliant. Classic fucking Mercy.” She makes a small noise of distress before she continued.

“I don’t think I can face them, might as well just send me back to the temple. If you were really my friend you would just smother me with a pillow now and put me out of my misery.”

Madi, for her part, was already feeling better. Why she had left it so long to get changed, she couldn't quite say. There had come a point where being cocooned in front of the fire had been too comfortable and the prospect of making a dash for a cold tent had not appealed in the slightest. Cross-legged on her cot now, forgoing socks for the time being in favour of detangling her hair with the portable cleaner, she paused with the device halfway through dealing with a knot to look across at her friend, head bent sideways in a way that only accentuated the way her features contorted into a grimace of disbelief.

"Wait...what?"

“Huh? Oh yeah. Seems like today I lost my inhibitions and my dignity.” Mercy peaked out from behind her hands and looked at Madi. “Want a hand with your hair? Could help get the tangles out and braid it for you if you want?” She wiggled on her cot until she was sitting up and in a position where she could help Madi if the woman wanted it.

“And… well maybe you could give me some advice on how to make things right?”

"And I thought being stuck on a penis was bad."

As was typical, Madi realised a tad too late that her response wasn't overly supportive. Whatever mixed feelings she had about her friend's seeming infatuation with their senior officer, Madelyn had enough humility to know she couldn't exactly start pointing fingers. In fact, her own track record made it far easier to pull a face at Mercy's hopeful request, and she handed over the device and scooted to perch herself in a way that was comfortable to both of them to provide some distraction why she thought of a decent response.

"Did he seem that bothered?" All Madi could draw references from was Duncan's endless patience. She didn't think Darru was much like the engineer but it was hard to imagine he'd been rude about it.

Mercy too the device and began gently detangling Madi’s hair. There was a brief, painful throb in her chest as she remembered doing that for her little sister, but Mercy pushed it aside in favour of focusing on the conversation at hand.

“He never really seems bothered, oh apart from the tray thing. If anything he seemed… a little worried maybe? Very calm. He just said we should talk about it later. But what does that mean? Is that like a we should talk about it later over dinner because I too find you attractive? Or is it a we should talk about this later because I don’t want to let you down right now when you are injured and clearly off your tits on something?”

Mercy worked section by section, waiting until the cleanser moved through the hair freely before she went on to the next. That was until her friend words registered to her. When she paused and leaned over the woman’s shoulder so she could try and look at Madi’s face. “Wait… did you say you got stuck on a penis?”

It was, as it happened, something that Madi had already endured an above-quota amount of mortification about. Her sideways glance barely had any patience left for embarrassment and went straight for pointed pragmatism. "There was a fresco partway up I wanted to get a better look at. It's been so long since I climbed trees that I forgot it's easier to get up than it is to get down, so I was..." Her eyes flitted upwards towards the ceiling of the tent. "Stuck on the penis I was using for leverage when Duncan cleared the cave-in. Don't change the subject," she continued stubbornly. "It honestly could be either of those things."

Fixing her gaze straight ahead so as not to pull her hair from Mercy's hands again, Madi took a moment to consider the situation. Nobody would have accused her of being the fastest on the uptake but she felt relatively safe asking her next question.

"Which would you prefer it was?"

Mercy continues detangling Madi’s hair, but she paused a moment when Madi mentioned a fresco. “Really? What did the fresco depict? Did you learn anything about the purpose of the temple?” Typical Mercy to follow the moment of scientific endeavour before all the other details. Slowly the rest of it sunk in and she wrinkled her nose. She felt extra sympathetic for Madi that it had been Duncan to find her in particular.

“Oh Madi I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t been such a clutched I would have been there to help you and you wouldn’t have had to go through that.” Mercy briefly considered ignoring that last question. It felt painfully vulnerable, but then she remembered this was Madi. She could be honest with Madi.

“I want… uhm the first one. It would be nice if it was that. Maybe. I don’t know. I guess I just want him to be happy to? Like he’s been through a lot, and it would be nice to be the one who could make him happy… or content? Or satisfied? Are Vulcans allowed to be happy? Well if they are I’d like it if… yeah you get the picture.” It was hard enough saying this to the back of Madi’s head. How the hell would she be able to say it to Darru’s face.

“If I wasn’t sympathetic enough about everything with Duncan… I’m sorry. This is hard huh?”

It was easiest, Madelyn decided, to ignore her friend's initial questions. Some attempt to keep the conversation moving down own path was needed, after all, she didn't feel like she had the energy left to try and navigate Mercy's impressive capacity to juggle multiple lines of inquiry all at once. Choosing to focus on what was bothering the woman the most, Madi looked down at her hands without moving her head too much, using what remained of her thumb nail to dig at the residual dirt under the others. Though she hadn't meant to linger too long, she found her mind flitting back to all the thoughts she'd had, sitting alone atop a very cold, stone phallus.

"There just seems such a huge difference between 'stuck on a ship together for the rest of our lives' and 'miraculously finding a way home tomorrow'. There's way more options back home, I worry..."

That, by now, was an understatement. Madi's shoulders sagged with tired amusement as she realised.

"I don't think I want to be someone's best compromise, at least not if there's a risk of making them unhappy. There's not a lot of places to go to give a person space if things don't work out." She angled her head as much as she dared. "And I wouldn't want that for you either, so I guess just...make it worth it. Whatever you choose to do, make it worth the potential cost. We're kind of limited on escape routes."

In truth, Mercy had only ever seen things working out poorly in her mind. Struggling with feelings that she was worried we’re unreciprocated meant she had never considered what might happen if that wasn’t the case. What if miracle of miracles occurred and Darru did see her the way she so desperately wanted him to see her? What if as they were exploring something it didn’t work out. That would be so much more painful, and they worked so closely together the risk of awkwardness was almost a certainty.

“Sometimes I wish I could speak to my Grandmother.” Mercy said, with a real yearning in her voice. “Even if we do somehow find a way home, she… she wasn’t well when we left and that was a year ago now. But she always had exactly the right thing to say.” Mercy finished with Madi’s hair, and tapped the woman on the shoulder to let her know they were done before she offered back the cleanser.

"I just wish we knew one way or the other. Which I know is unrealistic and not how life works," Madi added, scooting around to sit cross-legged on the end of the cot. "But it feels like everything changes if we get home. Everyone goes their separate ways, and who knows how far apart those are."

Picking at the blanket, Madi lapsed into thoughtful silence before intentionally dragging herself out of a negative thought-spin to focus instead on what Mercy had said. "You must be a lot like her." Squinting up at her friend, Madelyn offered a rueful yet sincere smile. "Your grandmother, I mean. You're pretty good at knowing what to say." After a moment's pause to reevaluate, she screwed up her nose and added, "As long as you don't eat weird alien plants." The sparkle in her eyes culminated in a giggle, which Madi tried to curb with a snort, and that only made her laugh harder.

“Yeah? That’s sweet of you. Although my Gran is kind of fierce honestly. I think I’m a bit… uh more diplomatic.” Although that wasn’t saying much considering her grandmother was a bull in a China shop. Mercy had often been the peacemaker in the house when strong personalities had ruffled each others feathers, Mercy had learnt how to stay calm and stay smiling and do her best to diffuse situations.

Mercy then let out a chuckle. “If Gran had seen me high as a kite she would likely have raised an eyebrow and been glad I was finally letting loose. She would be so disappointed that it was an accident.”

Mercy hesitated then sudden beer fear fizzing in her brain. “Oh no, don’t tell me I asked to kiss you too?” The joke had prompted a bubble of anxiety in Mercy’s gut. “Wait I didn’t say anything weird to you too did I?”

Still breathless from the unexpected release of tension, Madelyn frowned in amusement, her features contorting in a comical expression of exaggerated confusion. "You were a bit expressive but you weren't insane. No, you didn't try to kiss me, and they'd already got you out by the time Duncan cleared the path and rescued me from Bonehenge." Peering down the length of her nose, Madi added, "The doctor could probably tell some stories though."

Leaning forward, mindful of Mercy's leg, Madelyn gave the other woman's arm a squeeze. "Look, remember the idiot I made of myself after one glass of moonshine? If it wasn't for you, I'd probably still be avoiding Duncan, so maybe you just need to give yourself the same pep talk you gave me."

Mercy was relieved that she hadn’t said anything too bad to Madi although at the mention of the doctor she seemed to freeze. A groan left her throat. “I’m going to be apologising to Avira for weeks.” However the shame lodged in her throat and she made a strangled giggle sound.

“Did you just call it Bonehenge?” She snorted and shook her head, highly amused. She then let out a heavy sigh. “Well shit you are probably right. I mean Darru is a decent man, he will at least be kind.” She flopped backwards on the camping bed and covered her face with her hands. “At least if I talk to him planet-side there are plenty of places to go hide and lick my wounds if it goes sideways.”

"No throwing yourself down a hole though, even if it is a pretty good strategy for uncovering unexpected things." With a glance down at her friend's injured ankle, Madelyn's brow twitched with faint concern before she asked, "Are you going to be able to walk around on it much, do you think?" It had suddenly occurred to her that, amidst all the entertainment, she'd forgotten the need to replace all the samples Mercy had been forced to leave behind, or at least find a way back down to retrieve them.

“Doctor Avira said it was a torn something something. Easy to fix up on the ship, but gonna be sore until then. Not sure I will be able to go too far from camp but should still be able to hobble to get plant samples… although I think the Doctor would probably scowl at me and tell me I’m supposed to rest.” Mercy shrugged, she had never been so good at staying still. Work made her happy and she was sure with a big stick to lean on and one of the folding camping chairs, she should be good as long as she didn’t wander too far. “Was gonna hunt for a walking stick or something… and maybe ask a good friend to help me set up near some interesting shrubbery.” She waggled her eyebrows at Madi.

"Actually, I was kind of thinking I might ask the Captain if I can go back down." Madi's features twisted with indecision. "The hole, I mean. Duncan brought back a field recorder but there wasn't a lot of time to take many snaps and it seems a shame to just leave it buried without any attempt to document. I can at least try to grab some of the samples we left behind." After her conversation with Leroux, the young ensign felt like there was a chance the Captain would be okay with diverting resources to a safer descent but the prospect of asking for it was already tying Madi's insides in knots. "But either way, we'll figure something out." She smiled at her friend. "I should let you get some rest."

“Thanks Madi, if… if you go back down can you take some samples of the mushrooms? I think we can probably grow them on the ship.” Mercy then wiggled until she was comfortable. “Only if it’s not too much trouble.”

"Of course it isn't."

For a moment, Madi felt guilty leaving her friend, and even more because she hadn't exactly confessed that it was partially because Duncan was waiting for her to return. Torn between loyalties, she tried to placate her conscience with the suggestion that Mercy needed to rest and felt a rush of generosity prompting an urge to over-compensate.

"We'll get all your samples back, I promise. And everything else..." Madi searched for the right words. "If he's a smart guy, he'll be flattered. At least this way, you'll know."

Frozen in a moment of self-reflection, Madi then smiled as she closed the tent-flat. "Night, Mercy. I hope you feel better in the morning."