Booze and Sympathy
Posted on Sun Jan 22nd, 2023 @ 1:58pm by Commander Martin Sorenson & Isabella Cerin
Mission:
Between Realities
Location: SB Esquimalt, Starfleet Lounge
Timeline: after 'To Sleep, Perchance'
2335 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure
The station was not yet open to civilians and the promenade still empty of the shops and diners and bars that would someday fill it as priority for construction had naturally gone to Starfleet facilities. However, given personnel stationed here for months, not to mention hundreds of construction crew, one 'Starfleet facility' that had gone in almost from the start was a lounge. It was not near the promenade or the expansive views from the top of the station (those were prime commercial real estate) but tucked into a section of crew quarters (nearest to officers quarters; rank had its privileges after all). It wasn't fancy, though there was a small area at one end that could be used as stage for musicians or karaoke or stand-up or whatever entertainment might keep people somewhat sane on the otherwise presently spartan station. Otherwise, there were booths along the viewports, tables scattered through most of the floor space, and a simulated wood bar running along the far wall. That was where Martin sat, nursing a single malt scotch.
"That any good?" Izzy nodded at the scotch, and slid into the seat opposite Martin without waiting for an invitation, plunking her own drink, a swirling Sumarian Sunset, on the table. "Or is it the sort of stuff you expect they'd be trying to pawn off on the construction and refit crew?" She had on the sort of silk-blouse-and-dress-pants sans blazer ensemble that was practically the 'relaxed version' uniform of her profession, and walked in the otherwise civilian-free space with the confidence of one who knows themselves to be a both authorized and justified exception a rule.
"Eh." Martin shrugged. "It's not rot gut, but definitely not high end." He took a sip and tipped his head side to side. "It's not bad, but 'not synthahol' is what really recommended it. How's yours? I'm thinking maybe I should have tried a whiskey sour."
"I've definitely had better. Whether I've had worse...Well, that depends on how closely one was watching the bartender pour back on Ferenginar." Izzy was quiet for a moment before speaking again; considering not just the 'full' experiences she'd had during their time trapped by the Tholians, but also the bizarre and myriad briefer flashes of alternate lives that had seemed to come in an all-at-once crash during their escape maneuvers: Everything from death at the hands of the Jem'Hadar conquering Earth or the terrorists who'd taken her and Yoshi hostage, to playing her career slightly differently and riding a desk at headquarters permanently, to dozens of other twists and turns. Some of them were wistful, others disturbing the extreme, when analyzed on their own. But when taken all together, what perhaps struck her and stuck with her most had been the sheer percentage of them that had featured Sarith in one way or another, as a lover or a wife. She'd sat with that for a good long number of hours in her once-again-dissarrayed quarters of shattered small objects, while packing things to move temporarily to the station, and mulled on it still despite her best efforts while inspecting and organizing the shell of the Esquimalt diplomatic office complex. "Did you...When you saw...what we saw, during the time we were trapped or the final breakout from it...was there anything that just kind of...sticks in your head, even now, and you can't quite get past it?"
"Several." The word alone carried a weight indicating just how heavily those glimpses had affected him. Martin turned the glass between his fingers, slowly rotating it as the ones weighing most heavily turned in his memory. One, however, stood out beyond the rest. "But one in particular. I saw," he swallowed, keeping his voice from catching, "...my mother, alive. She was staying with me...with that other me and his wife, preparing for the arrival of their first child." It was a little easier to talk about as long as he kept it third person - them, those other people; versions not actually connected to him. There was still an ache, an empty place where that life might have been. "Is that would mean? Feeling haunted by your might have been?"
"Kinda, yeah." Izzy sighed; debating for a moment what to say or not say given the sheer weight she could image for Martin of having seen his dead mother alive and not wanting to burden him with her own issues. "I...the woman I told you about before all of that; the RSE External Affairs staffer I used to work with. Sarith. I saw her...a lot. She showed up in multiple of those might-have-beens; a ton of them. Every time as my lover, or my wife. And I just kind of had to ask myself, was this some sort of sign from the universe, from the Prophets." Izzy's religious bent was usually played close to the vest; but occasionally it came out to play more openly under stress, like now. "That we were meant to be." A stressed, aborted chuckle was paired with a swig of the less-than-stellar drink. "A thousand reasons why it would be a bad plan; from a security angle for my career, or the approval of whatever is left of her family. But it was a lopsided enough number of appearances to really make me wonder."
Martin nodded slowly. Because of his father's position, he had a bit more understanding of exactly why the match would be bad, or at last extremely complicated for her career. Given that some of the other alternate realities burdening him involved Calley, he could more than sympathize on that point. In some ways, maybe he was more fortunate in that he hadn't seen himself only with her. Or not... "I get it. I really do..." he took a swallow of his whiskey. "Did you try to look up where she is here?"
"Yeah." Izzy looked down at the table for a moment and pulled a datachip with projection out of her pants pocket, swiping a finger to activate it in one smooth, resigned motion that revealed a cascade of text and a photo: Public database information for a Federation citizen; and possibly twisting the knife all the moreso in that fact, because it was sliding towards though not removing, somewhat ameliorating a few of the complications that might have made such a match a bad plan. "Crossed the border with her parents as a refugee in '89 and moved to a little Federation colony in the Beta Quadrant just over the line, that was gathering a decent sized Romulan population. Got her permanent residence, then her citizenship; got teacher's credentials and started teaching primary school there." Izzy dropped the other shoe with a swipe of her finger to the next bits of information she'd dug up; more text and photos for a marriage license and birth certificate. "...Then she got married in '94; has a wife and a son."
It occurred to Martin that the last was both a reprieve of sorts and a kick in the gut. "So, renewing her acquaintance is not a likelihood. At least it's a possibility," he offered by way of half-hearted consolation. "I had to look too. I didn't meet other-me's wife, but I saw her picture and had a name. It took some digging, but I found her...or rather her obituary." He shot the rest of his drink. "She was on Mars in '85. And now I can't help wondering, if I'd stayed on earth would we have met and fallen in love, settled down together back home...would she still be alive then?"
"Damn. Sorry." The words were profanity; but the tone was sympathy. The war with the Dominion. The Mars attack. The nova and all that had come with it. The seemingly half-destablizied local Federation politics that were popping up of late the last decade. Sometimes it seemed to Izzy like they had been unfortunately fated to live in very 'interesting' times where the hits didn't stop coming, and she sighed. "For my part, I asked myself, when I did what I did, in '85...Did I do it because I thought it was the right thing, and because I considered her an almost-friend? Or was it because maybe I was falling in love with her, and didn't know it?" Izzy slid the datachip back in her pocket. "Not sure I came up with a clear answer, honestly."
"Does it matter? She and her family are alive because of you. I mean, official policy notwithstanding, you did the right thing." The statement was made with a certainty Izzy might not feel, but Martin did. In the same position, he'd have done everything in his power to save as many as he could and consequences be damned. In fact, given that one of the short glimpses during the breakout suggested he was prisoner somewhere, it was possible he had at least tried. "But I understand wrestling with the ambiguity. In at least one other timeline there's apparently a part Romulan ex-wife, that I... that is, he, still loves." He signaled the bartender for another drink, in part for an excuse to shift from saying anything more. When he looked back, he wore a wry look. "Based on what I saw, I seem less fated to find a particular soul mate, or any long term relationship."
"Oh, you've already found it." Izzy let the statement rest for a beat with a wry look of her own, taking the transition as it came but nursing her own drink more slowly. "It's caffeine."
Martin puffed a laugh. "I suppose addiction is a kind of relationship," he remarked dryly. "The other possibility would be medicine, since being a doctor seems to the root of the half the break ups in just this timeline."
"That sort of thing was was...pretty consistent for me, too, I guess. What I chose to do with my life. Not universal, but a preponderance." Izzy considered, from her own visions. "When there were variations, it was mostly whether I stayed doing it, or if there was something else I chose instead, it was tangential - I was in the fleet, in one of them, or working a permanent headquarters gig, or on the Council staff, that sort of thing."
He nodded. "In most of what I saw I was a doctor, though there were some odd variations - a musician, a First Contact specialist, a marine in some universe where the Dominion War never ended - that one dropped into our medbay and wouldn't let go of his rifle, which I'm not sure was more disturbing for me or the rest of the staff." His mouth twisted and took a drink. "Though a close runner up is the version that decided to be just like my Dad." He dipped his head, giving her a half-smile. "No offense."
"Can't really take any, since I decided to be just like my grandma; minus the Cardassian-driven career interruption, that is." Izzy swirled the barely-acceptable cocktail. "The Dominion decided to cross over to visit us, too." She grimaced. "I've put in to have the carpets replaced because I doubt they'll get the coffee and Jem'Hadar blood stains out of them." Transferring all the secure materials she'd been safeguarding during their time trapped by the Tholians off the Vesta before the repair crews took over and into the Esquimalt offices had taken practically a whole day itself, when she counted setting things up to receive them. Still. In the end, her hands were clean, disturbing as all the experiences had been: She and her (very small) staff were alive; the information entrusted to them was secure; and she'd sent a note of thanks (and a bottle of something much better than they served at this regrettable bar) to Captain St. Lacroix to thank her for providing the guards that had helped to ensure that.
"Yeah, I recall treating a few people who had that timeline drop in," Martin said ruefully. "Plus Borg and one where the Romulans didn't go into denial about Hobus and decided to evac their population into Federation space behind a wave of warbirds." He was deeply grateful his Calley hadn't shown up in medbay until after that crossover had faded back to their own timeline. "I'm glad you came out of it okay. For all the stress of medbay, I don't envy you being confined to one small space for whole time."
That one had definitely, Izzy recalled, been a concern for a time in the lead up years to the Hobus disaster; the consideration of whether or not the Empire would decide to handle it's problems at the tip of a spear, or rather, a disruptor. In the end, they'd fortunately proven too encumbered by other problems to go that route, or even, unfortunately, a less bloody one, and failed in the extreme. "It was...You know that old saying about long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror? Pretty much that. Still - " She shrugged and took a sip of her drink " - my post. My files. My responsibility. I made it work. Worried more about Kairishana, really; can't be easy to keep your head in the game when you have a spouse and kids on board in the emergency shelters."
"I suppose that's one advantage of not having a family..." Martin remarked wryly, and lifted his glass. "To being married to our careers?"
Izzy lifted her own glass in return and laughed slightly, if wearily, clinking glasses with Martin with one hand and flicking a finger at the Federation-seal lapel pin (and comm unit) pinned to her collar with her other hand and a droll tone. "Indeed. The Federation definitely skimped on the ring, though."
