Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Captain’s Quarters- If You Can’t Stand the Heat
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

She laughed. “Oh, it is,” Faye said as she grabbed the bottle and brought it over. “Remember, the heat of cooking activates the heat within, but the rest of the stuff makes it more pleasant as it burns your throat and tongue. The one bright side to the Romulans killing my taste buds for the first year during my recovery is that I could eat it even hotter,” she said with a chuckle.

Taking a bite, the heat was instantly searing, but then you could taste each vegetable in turn followed by the soothing blandness of the bread. It was, in her eyes, the perfect food. Followed by a generous swallow of her dealcoholized wine, it was all in all just… right.

“Okay, rules. The recipe is now your, and I’ll give you the details on the brine and the ratio for the bread, but…”-she peered at him seriously-“all I ask is that should you ever choose to share the recipe with someone, you make sure they are worthy of it. The story is mine, but if there’s anything I’ve been learning it’s that I can’t accept mine until I let people like Jaris and T’Lora be a part of mine again. But at the same time, I still don’t think just anyone is worthy of hasperat this good,” she said, her grey-green eyes sparkling.

~Faye Calloway

Alex took a bite a low moan escaped his lips and he closed his eyes and savored the flavor and the heat. Slowly chewing, he tried to imagine the dish being shared around a communal fire and with friends… and he smiled and opened his eyes. Swallowing, he said “Oh… that is good.” and he took a drink. He shook his head as he swallowed and then inhaled deeply. Looking at Faye, one eye watered and he laughed. Wiping away the tear, he said “Now this I can promise. I may share the dish, but I won’t share the recipe with anyone except my mom, if that’s okay. I think she would appreciate the dish almost as much as the story that goes with it. Vas’tur has a strong sense of tradition and the emotions connected to it. Even as a Vulcan, she is probably the most empathetic individual I know.”

Cochrane

Faye actually clapped giddily as the spicy dish provoked his perfect reaction. That was what it was all about. “I approve! I only know her through what you’ve told me and her poetry, but I suspect she’d understand. So… please feel free to share the whole story with her. I think she’d understand T’Lora.”

She considered him for a moment as she chewed another bite. “Do you have anything you’d consider a perfect happy memory, Alex?”

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked at Faye for a brief second and then he gave her question serious consideration. After a few bites and contemplation, he shook his head. “A perfect happy memory…? Honestly… no. I don’t believe I do. I have very fond memories of when I was a child… but those are tainted by what transpired between my parents afterwards. I have good memories. I have sad ones. But for me, I suppose, I have yet to find that perfect happy one.” and he took a drink and then filled up the wine glasses again.

Cochrane

Taking her refilled glass and giving it a swirl so the stone could work (if that even was what it needed to work), Faye sipped the lovely Chateau Picard vintage, rather honoured he had shared it with her. “Plenty of time for that yet,” she said softly. “And, for now, I got to share mine with you.”

Faye considered him for another moment after taking another bite of the spicy wrap. “Can we talk about her? Your mother, I mean, and everything that went down.”

~Faye Calloway

Alex figured the question… questions?… about his biological mother would come up eventually; it always did. It was, after all, extremely public (some of it); and extremely dramatic.

Speaking round a mouthful of hasparat, he nodded and said “Sure.” and reached for his glass and washed down the heat. He leaned back with the glass and looked at Faye. “What do you want to know?”

Cochrane

There were any number of ways they could discuss it, and she wasn’t trying to bring up painful things, but mother-complications were something they had in common. “was she always… unstable, or was it the fallout after everything that tipped things towards her acting out?” The record spoke of the public events but often there were signs earlier on. He had said there had been happy memories, so she didn’t want to discount that everything had been fine before Deborahs’s missteps had become public.

~Faye Calloway

“She has always had to be in control. Me, my sister, my dad… hell, she tried to make changes to my dad and Vastur’s wedding. That desire to control us is probably what made her a good officer when she was first in Star Fleet. Probably got her where it did, too. But it is always what ultimately pushed her too far.” He took a sip and sighed slightly.

Faye would disagree that someone trying to control everything made for good leadership, but she swallowed that thought in a sip of wine.

“I wish she was mentally ill… I really do. It would give a reason for what she has done. But she’s not sick… not ‘unstable’. No, Faye… unfortunately she’s just a b***h.”

Cochrane

She nodded. “I’m sorry. Not that it’s much consolation, but that bit in your record where you stood your ground as a cadet? That is what made me interested to get to know you. Everything else was too… tidy, squeaky clean. That told me mire about you as a person than the whole file,” she said with a smile.

~Faye Calloway

Alex chuckled. “Well, I must say that my record is very fortunate to have the… editors… that is has had. Now if you want to see a really pristine record, you should see my sister’s. Makes for a recruiting manual, that one.” and he laughed. “I call her ‘Snowflake’. Makes her so mad…” and he laughed again.

Faye propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand, grinning. “Too good for your own good, the both of you,” she teased.

After a moment, he paused and sipped his wine. “My sister and I come from a very long line of people who have served their governments and, in the past, countries. We can trace our family back to the late fifteenth century on Earth. And in every single generation without exception, someone from our family has served. Hell, I’m named after my Great-Great-Great-However-many-times-back grandfather who was an Admiral in the Royal Navy of England… and a knight, for crying out loud.” and he shook his head in subdued amazement… it still got him whenever he thought about it. “So we are very proud of that. And when she did what she did it really hurt us far more than she will ever grasp. Well, my sister and I… and my older brother to a certain extent… decided that that black mark on our family tree would be the last one as far as we could manage it. Our brother had already made his career, so Racheal and I decided that it was up to us. And here I am.” and he gestured broadly to the room and smiled and chuckled.

Cochrane

“Lucky for us,” Faye said. It was interesting to watch him talk about his family. They had touched on V’astur a couple times before, but they hadn’t really had a chance to delve into the rest of his family before.

“I have some extended family, technically, but I’ve never met them, and neither of my parents had great relationships with theirs, so I’m just always intrigued by other people’s situation. I’m also an only child, so I have to ask… what’s it like having a twin?” she asked before taking a bite of her disappearing hasperat. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat and her entire mouth was tingling, but it was awesome as always.

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked off in the distance and smiled. “You know, I heard my whole life about other twins who either did everything they could to be ‘twins’… dress alike, talk alike, listen to the same music, eat the same food… or went the entire opposite end of the spectrum and just hated each other. Racheal and I? It was never really a thing until ‘The Episode’, as we call what happened with the Admiral. Then it became a kind of anchor for both of us, I think. It also helped that we had each other to back us up when it came to dealing with her.” His emphasis on the last word dripped with venom.

“You mentioned the incident in the Commandant’s office, right? Well, I wish I could say that was the first time Rach and I had to take a stand against her but it wasn’t. Far from it, actually. You must know that the vast majority of the crap she did and pulled never made it into a formal report, right? For years… and I mean years… she was protected by Command. She gave our family a black eye, but god forbid she make Star Fleet look bad.” He looked at her, his piercing gaze boring into her before he finally said “No one else really knows about this, but I think we can be candid… you know she kidnapped Racheal and I? Took us from school and put us on Star Fleet vessel under orders to take us from Vulcan to Earth. Even though my dad had full custody of us.”

Cochrane