Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Deck 4 Garden- Perspectives

Posted by Lieutenant Faye Calloway (Mission Specialist) in Deck 4 Garden- Perspectives

Posted by Captain Alexander Cochrane (Commanding Officer) in Deck 4 Garden- Perspectives
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Faye considered him quietly for a moment and then tilted her head. “Maybe. Only you will know that for sure. But as I am all to familiar with, a person has to be willing to do the work themselves, no matter who much encouragement they get.”

Tilting her head up again, Faye took in the leaves, which had rounded ends and curled downwards. From the side they resembled rain drops dripping from the branches and it was the most ethereal and lovely thing in the garden. She inhaled deeply, letting it fill expand her chest. “The night I was drinking and Luke gently rejected my offer to stay the night… I had just had someone call me. It was out of the blue and it was someone I had connected with just after I came to the ship. I don’t know what compelled me to tell him everything that had just gone down with Blue and the brig and my mom, but I did. And he brought up so many memories for me that I… couldn’t cope. So I drank.”

Faye sighed and turned towards him, crossing her legs on the wooden slats of the bench. “Alex, I told you about Tracken, and T’Lora and Jaris. And I told you how Cam and I escaped with them but then they died. If you think you are up to hearing a really hard story, I’d like to tell it to you. It’ll be only the second time I’ve told anyone the whole of it, and the first was on the holodeck with my mom and Zef after you left. And if you think you can hear it, you need to ask the next logical question from my story.”

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked at her. Faye was an enigma at most times… but wholly predictable at others. This was the latter. He knew from the tone of her message that there was something she wanted to tell him. So he inclined his head slightly and said “I do think I can hear it. So… what happened after you and Cam escaped?”

Cochrane

Closing her eyes for a moment, Faye just felt the rise and fall of her chest to let herself get truly in her body since she knew all too well that it was the only way she’d get through the story without the urge to slip away.When her lids slipped open, she allowed her gaze to wander over the garden as she began to talk. “We were attacked. T’Lora told us to hide in the back and we just did as we were told. But we were boarded and there was weapons fire. The doors to the storage compartment we were in opened and we were nudged out of hiding by an Orion woman and her compatriots. Mercenaries…” Faye kept talking and slowly wove the details in. The Processing centre. Kodell’s purchase and arriving at Ebu Manor. Her intense encounter with Kodell and the books. Her fight with Cameron and his subsequent escape attempt and death. Her growing rapport with Kodell, and the eventual affair. And of course, the end of it all.

Alex listened and he watched Faye as she spoke. It was a tale, to be sure. Part of his mind compared her story the old Earth saga of the Odyssey… but he listened intently.

She looked over the garden again. “I had five aliases after I left Kodell and I did odd jobs with freighter crews to survive. They were really hard years Alex. I sold the book Kodell gave me because I was between jobs at one point and it had been well over a week since I had eaten anything substantial. The last ship I had an alias on was the best of them all and something changed in me then. I don’t know if it was time and space away from Orion and that life, but despite my broodiness and intense dislike of people I starting thinking of what else I could do again. T’Lora’s voice would come in my head and I’d imagine what it might be like to attend of the fancy places she said would have eagerly taught me. So I became Faye again and that was the work experience I used when I applied to the Academy.” It was a a lot. She knew that. And she knew he’d need more than a few moments to digest it. It was okay, she wasn’t going anywhere.

~Faye Calloway

Alex looked away and stared straight ahead for some time. When he spoke at last, there was no judgement or pity in his voice. She had told her story, he had listened. Many more things made better sense to him now. How Faye was with some things. But he was glad she could share that with him. That she trusted him enough to do so.

“Okay… so why are you telling me this now, Faye? Not that I mind, not at all.” he asked, his glacier-blue eyes looking at her storm tossed gray ones. “What made you need to tell me?”

Cochrane

“A couple reasons,” Faye said slowly. “I mean, you’re my best friend, and if I can’t tell you of all people, then how can I even accept that it is a part of my story? Speaking the story aloud makes it become true again. And I guess also I needed you as my captain to understand why I freaked out when you said I had to wait to take any leave away from the ship. I understood intellectually that certain things had to work themselves out but it immediately generated that feeling of being trapped. You said I could leave the ship anytime I wanted to. It might have sounded like a choice to you, but even framing it like that made it made it a choice to cause more harm to myself. And I think we can both agree that my leaving the ship without a good reason is not in my best interest. But when I asked you not to make the Manhattan a prison, it’s because I knew first hand what it was like to be in a very pretty prison. I knew what that felt like. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” Kodell. The Tal Shiar. She knew prisons well.

~Faye Calloway