Posted by Commander Shara Calloway (Executive Officer) in Deck 6 - Captain’s Dining Room

Posted by Captain Sara Kiernan (Commanding Officer) in Deck 6 - Captain’s Dining Room

Posted by Commander Shara Calloway (Executive Officer) in Deck 6 - Captain’s Dining Room
Posted by… suppressed (18) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

She chuckled. “It’s definitely come a long way from anything they had before. We’ve very fortunate. I mean, I’ll be the first to admit that anything from the land is better, but it’s also not always practical or possible. A lot of people don’t starve when they might otherwise have before.” Shara gazed wistfully across the room. “I also appreciate replicators a helluva lot more since my days on Voyager when it was use precious replicator rations, eat ration packs on the dire days, or deal with whatever our… industriously creative cook managed to put out in the mess hall.” Shara couldn’t help but feel a bit of nostalgia for those days even if she wasn’t keen to repeat them anytime soon.

~Shara Calloway, XO

“It’s definitely changed everything for the better. I mean, if everybody and anybody can, not just eat, but eat good food… what a world we live in.” Sara ate some more. “You ever stop and think about the madness of the basic level of what we call a job? Go back not nearly as far as it seems and this would be an absolute fantasy.” She sat, quiet. Watching the stars hurtle past.

-CO

Shara chewed a bite of the steak sandwich with its perfectly tender thin strips of beef. “I don’t have to go back far at all. Before the Maquis and Starfleet, I did whatever I could to survive. When I met my first husband, Edward, I was working as a waitress at a bar on a backwater colony. Busy place, with its share of roughness, but I hadn’t even graduated secondary school, Sara, so I worked at the bar at nights and took classes during the day. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, just that I wanted to have options. travelling the galaxy? Starfleet? Living on a starship? That was a fantasy for my twenty-year old self. I couldn’t even come close to imagining any of it. All I cared about was making sure I had enough for rent and food. Everything else was a luxury, including my high school diploma.”

~Shara Calloway, XO

“You’ve come a long way from that bar. I grew up in San Francisco. My dad teaches an introductory engineering course at the Academy. He’s been there… gotta be 35 years now. They’re going to have him retiring soon. It’s a legacy family I guess. One of those families where you walk in the house and there’s portraits of each generation in uniform right inside the door. There was a uniform waiting for me from the moment I was born. I outrank my dad now. First one in our family to make it this far. I worked so hard in school, in the Academy, at every assignment I’ve gotten to get here and now that I’m here I’m… I’m afraid I’ve forgotten to live along the way. When you were 20, nothing was certain. When I was 20, everything was certain. There has to be some middle ground. Where the next sandwich isn’t in question but you get to be a little bit… out of uniform sometimes.”

-CO

Shara chuckled, but she wasn’t laughing at Sara. In reality she was laughing at the irony of her whole damn life. She was laughing at her and Sara, but in the kindest way possible. “Life is bittersweet and short, Sara. I know you know this, especially after that last mission. But you want to know what my alter ego Elaine reminded me of?” she said, sandwich held in one hand.

“Sometimes you have to steal the balance. Or rather steal the moments to give you the balance. There are fun things I got to do as Elaine I would never do in uniform.” She frowned before a mischievous smirk touched her lips briefly. “Or at least I think I wouldn’t.”

~Shara Calloway, XO

Sara nodded.“Yeah. Yeah, on a level that makes sense. You remember, though, how much you had to coach me through how to not be so… starfleet?” She got up and walked over to the window. “There’s never a moment in my life that is not defined by my relationship to my job I couldn’t be prouder of our ship, our crew… but I don’t get to step back. Something in my brain just won’t let go.”

-CO

Shara studied her friend and partner-in-crime as she took a bite of the sandwich, savouring the simplicity of the ingredients and how they made a lovely combo. “Why do you think that is?” I simple question for what she suspected was a more complex answer.

~Shara Calloway, XO

“The last time I tried to let that guard down, I got hurt badly. Being the me that’s a Captain… it’s safe. And I tried, but I couldn’t quite- I started up a relationship. Couldn’t keep it up though. Couldn’t put her first.” Sara could only be grateful she had Shara to talk to. “We pulled in a pilot in a wrecked fighter. I know her. From the Academy. Things are just…” She drifted off.

-CO

Shara twirled her fork in her fingers. “Just because it didn’t work with one person, doesn’t mean it’s not possible. People say the understand the demands of the job, but trust me Sara, I do understand just how much people do not get it. But you also can be just Sara Kiernan and not be focused on the uniform. The trick is picking your moment. Or so people tell me.” She lifted her brows and gave a comical smirk. Shara wasn’t pretending to have a good grasp on it herself. “We can at least muddle through together, yes?”

“Tell me about this Academy friend. Why is it throwing you off so much?”

~Shara Calloway, XO

“Kara’s… we lived together for the first three years.” Sara had brought it up but now she was afraid to explain. “Stayed friends after. Real friends, not just checking in sometimes when one of us is feeling wistful about being cadets. But we both got promoted, got busier. Kept up, but weren’t close anymore. When she went off to do pilot training, I started my first real relationship. And then the woman I had fallen for turned out to have been a spy.” She clenched her eyes shut. “And I wonder sometimes… if my whole life would’ve taken a different direction if I’d been living with Kara that last year.”

-CO

Shara took in Sara intently, assessing her friend in a way that she did with everything, but this time it was out of genuine interest and concern. “Why do you think it would have made a difference?”

~Shara Calloway, XO

Sara opened her eyes. “I might never have met Nessa. I would’ve been with someone who’s… she’s a wildcard off duty, but on duty she’s the steadiest person you’ll meet. She’s actually trustworthy. Proven it time and again. I’d have all those memories instead of… this massive scar.” She held back tears. “Maybe it’s stupid to still be hurt over something that ended way back when.”

-CO

Shara shook her head. “Nonsense. We carry with us both things that help us grow and evolve and also things that can hold us back. But there can be a point where the latter can shift into the former. Trust me on that one”

She set down her sandwich and folded her arms on the table. “I went over fifty years carrying the pain of having to give up my first child. I told no one about the baby I called Lila in my head. Having Nadine in my life again didn’t happen by accident. I had to be ready to face those memories and the realities it would impose on the life I was living now. I needed to have met and fell in love with a man that made me feel safe enough to share my burdens with. And when I did? He brought her into my life and it’s been the most uprooting and also healing thing. Along with reuniting with Faye. I went from being a lone wolf to having a true family, Sara. But I didn’t set out for that.”

“Maybe Nessa is the key for you in some way. There might be a lot of negative about her and those memories, but I bet when you’re ready for the healing, there will be something to be gained from it all. That hard part is we rarely get a say in what that looks like. You just have to be open to accepting it.”

~Shara Calloway, XO

“I went to see her. A while ago. I was expecting to feel something. She’s been locked up for so long, and she wasn’t even who I thought she was when it was happening. Maybe there’s something missing that the version of her I fell in love with. But that version of her was a lie.” Sara’s face turned sour. “Maybe I just need to stop thinking about her. She’s a part of my past and best left there.”

-CO

“Or maybe acknowledging the things about her that you loved are things that are important for you. Just because they were made up for her, doesn’t mean they are made up in someone else. And, again I know this from experience, but falling in love requires us to be vulnerable and that can be extremely difficult when we’ve had such difficult experiences. Maybe Nessa is a part of your past, but if you’re still thinking about her, you’re not done yet. What being done looks like for you only you can know thought.”

Shara gave Sara a soft smile. “Did I ever tell you about the man I almost married after I got back to the Alpha Quadrant?”

~Shara Calloway, XO

Sara smiled back at Shara. “No, you didn’t. I knew, of course, that you’d found Micah but we hadn’t talked much about before he came along.” She couldn’t deny her curiosity about Shara’s past.

-CO

Shara nodded slowly. “His name was Reid. We met while I was doing my initial training with Intelligence, after I’d accepted a commission. He was charming and we hit it off. After eight months of dating, he proposed. I said yes. But…” Shara took a deep breath. “I felt uneasy and I couldn’t figure out why. But two months later I called it off because I realized that he wasn’t Edward, and I wanted him to be.” She shrugged. “It was only a few years after the Maquis were massacred, and I wasn’t there so I hadn’t really gone through a full grieving process, especially after I had learned that Faye survived. So I decided to wait until I met someone and I didn’t want them to be anyone but themselves. And it took a lot longer, but I ended up meeting Micah and he was everything-no, more- that I needed.” Shara broke into a sort of beaming smile that was often reserved just for Micah.

“All I’m saying is, we don’t know what we don’t know. If you’re thinking about Nessa, maybe there’s something there still that you have to acknowledge before you can actually move on. Because if you were ready to, you would have.”

~Shara Calloway, XO

Sara mulled that over. It made sense. It also had the tremendous downside of requiring introspection and, her soul shuddered, perhaps visits to the counselor. “Do you think that meeting Micah closed that? Put a final button on it by moving on?”

She thought it over and shook her head. “I think more that I had gotten to a place in my life where I was able to accept what Micah could offer me, without putting conditions on it. As he pointed out, with our line of work and the lives we’ve had, it was rather amazing to find someone who understood all of it without needing to be told all of it. Because our lives had been all about secrecy, that understanding was huge.”

She sighed. “I was a stereotype those first three years. Kara and I were best friends and I was happy with that. But if she had told me she was interested, I would have dropped everything for her. And it’s not like I’ve been holding a torch for her all these years. But having her in our medbay- I guess I’m wondering if I didn’t miss red flags about Nessa, I ignored them.”

-CO

“Maybe you did,” Shara said gently. “But so what? We all make mistakes, make choices that in the long run turn out to be crappy. It’s part of life and growing, Sara. Maybe, instead of worrying about what you missed back then, focus on what you’ve learned, what you’ve gained. Because at the end of the day, we are all a product of our experiences. If you hadn’t had that experience with Nessa, would you be here the captain of the Asimov now? Maybe, but also maybe not.”

~Shara Calloway, XO

“When she got arrested, I became very career-oriented.” She shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I hadn’t disregarded my life off-duty. But now I’ve been in command for a few years, having an actual life doesn’t sound bad. Just not sure where to start.”

-CO

Shara smiled and let out a soft chuckle. “I swear I said the exact same words not all that long ago. I can’t say what is the right path from you, but from my experience, start small. You tried to let someone in and it didn’t work out. That’s hard, but it’s also okay. It takes time for people like us to find out footing when we’re embarking on an adjusted path. Start small. Maybe get to know more of the crew. You’ll figure it out.” Shara grinned. “And in the meantime, I’m happy to have more meals and conversations like this. Anytime, Sara. I mean that.” And she did. Shara wasn’t the best at being a friend, but she was trying and learning.

~Shara Calloway, XO

“Thank you, Shara.” Sara smiled to her XO. “I appreciate your help.” She resumed her seat. She knew she had turned to the right person. Shara was the best possible person to help her figure this out. Then she sat with Shara and started eating her meal again.

-CO