Posted by Lieutenant Lauren Shan (Doctor) in Flashback - One Month after the USS Chimera
Lauren sat on the shuttle looking out the small window. The star field had revert back to pinpoints of light and not long white streak indicating they were now using impulse engines as they neared their destination. She let out a long sigh letting her vision blur some. It was easy. Her eyes were filling up and it was not due to eye strain or lack of sleep. It was due to anger and regret: two emotions that no one ever wanted to experience. Closing her eyes, Lauren’s mind drifted back to that moment.

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Three months prior on the USS Chimera…..

Lauren paced her room. The hostage situation coupled with the destruction of the Betterman colony had almost broken her. She needed something or someone to work off the tension. Reaching up Lauren activated her comm badge =/\=Rand you should come to my quarters, Shan out. =/\= She didn’t care about the subtlety right now. If Rand couldn’t separate a toss in the sheets from a relationship, she would find someone who could. He was a nice guy, but right now she was not looking for a boyfriend. She was looking for the greatest stress reliever since the dawn of time.

The chime announced his arrival a few minutes later. Lauren opened the door and let her eyes run over Rand before she spoke. She was not sure this was a good idea but with the current situation, she might have to change up her standard rule of not sleeping with men on the same ship she was posted to. Stepping out of the way, without speaking Lauren cleared a path for Rand to enter her quarters. Once he was in the room she closed and locked the door. Walking over to her small table, Lauren picked up a mug of black coffee. She had debated how to bring the subject up. She and Rand were barely knew each other but she had slept with men that had been total strangers. “Rand I have three question for you,” she posed her question.

“Number one are you seeing someone? Number two are you interested in someone? Number three have you ever had a one night stand with another officer and had to work with them the next day,” she asked the questions in a calm voice as if she was completing a medical check-in.

Rand moved to the same table and leaned on the back on one of the chairs, folding his muscled arms and raising an eyebrow ever so slightly. He noted Lauren’s posture. She seemed tense. Her breathing was rapid and a little shallow like she had recently been angry. Rand was slightly surprised at the directness of the questions so he decided to answer her questions with a directness of his own.

“No, maybe and yes,” he said as he leaned forward a little. “Why exactly would any of that be important right now?”

She felt her heart race some as he approached her. Lauren was only attracted to Type A males but she was not ready to answer to anyone again in her life for longer than a two-hour toss in the sheets. Well maybe not never but at least not right now. She sipped her coffee listening to him speak. Lauren opened her mouth to speak but waited to reply. She liked his directness until reason threatened to shatter the daydream occurring in her mind.

What the heck are you doing Shan. This is not how it works. You find one you like, get a little drunk, and then bring them home like a puppy. Rand is a nice guy; however he does not seem like the type to leave ten minutes after sex because he got his fix.

She licked her lips and returned to drinking her coffee with slow methodical sips. “We both know why I asked you here but there are conditions. I am not looking to be your BFF, pen pal, best buddy,” she let her voice trail off. “After we do this I am not going to spend my nights sending you little messages that say LOL followed with smiley emoticons. I am looking for one night…that’s all,” she said in a seductive confident tone. “The questions had a purpose, Rand. I respect honesty so are you ready to change any answer. I mean I can 100% guarantee I am a sure thing if you want it. What I don’t want,” she leaned forward closing the distance some between them. “Is to have some woman show up on my door claiming I have messed up something up between you and her. I might like being with someone for a night but I am not a homewrecker,” she said with just a hint of a break in her confident tone. This had happened in the past and Lauren was not looking to relive that experience.

“There isn’t anyone going to come to your door,” he breathed in a deep tone. His hand reached out towards her body, unclipped her comm badge and placed it on the table behind him. The clink of the metal on the table filled the silence in the room like a klaxon. Then he took her coffee from her hands placing it beside the badge.

His promise that he was hers for the night sucked the air from her lungs. Lauren felt dizzy and off balance. She needed a distraction and Rand seemed eager to comply. He had his own reasons and Lauren hers. Lauren felt his hand wrap around her waist pulling her tight to him, her hips pressing into his. Rand’s other hand crept up her back entwining his fingers in her hair. The result was her face tilting up towards his. Lauren’s lips parted to speak but were silenced by the pressure of Rand’s mouth on hers. Her mind grew foggy as she felt his arms lift her off the ground carrying her towards the bed.

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Back on the shuttle heading to Starbase Halcyon…

=/\=Shuttle it docking in three minutes=/\= the Captain’s voice rang out pulling Lauren from her past. She blinked several times rapidly to clear her eyes to stop the memory at that point. The rest she would never forget no matter how hard she tried. That was the night she realized she could want more from someone. Gathering her stuff, Lauren exited the shuttle. She had left for a reason. Returning was not an option. Her life course was set long before she ever met Devon Rand.

Lt Lauren Shan, Doctor

“What do you mean ‘No’?” Rand said to the face on the screen, his voice acidic and frustrated. “How hard can it be to find one Starfleet doctor? Everywhere we go we have multiple check-ins, sign in and security clearance registrations.” The powerful Bajoran Security Officer leaned forwards, his hand on the desk in front of him and glared at the screen, “So explain to me what you mean by, ‘No’.”

“What I mean” the face replied, another Bajoran in civilian clothing stared back at him, calmly enough considering he had nothing to offer the man paying him, “is that No, I haven’t been able to trace her. We both know that she left on a sudden and urgent Leave of Absence, and we can trace the shuttle to a number of locations, but after Starbase Halcyon she goes off the grid. Completely. My men are searching the station and we can find nothing so far, so I believe she’s no longer on Halcyon. The only way she could do that is by either being removed in secret by a third party, or having help to change her identity and become someone else, I am investigating both options, but it’s going to take time. I will contact you when I have......”

Not waiting for the end of the sentence Rand grunted and reached for the screen, flicking it off and then standing. Pacing the room in silence for a few moments, he ran his hands over his face and then placed them behind his head in the time honored fashion of a man troubled by his thoughts as he stared out the view port of his quarters at the expanse of space and the asteroid field that was visible in the system they were exploring, and slowly let out the breath that he suddenly felt he had been holding for too long. His eyes soft and reflective, his jaw was nevertheless set in frustration and determination. “Where the devil are you Lauren” he said to himself, “why don’t you want to be found?”

It had been little over a month since she had left, and just under four months since the two of them had spent their first night together. Never having intended for that one night to become the next morning or the next night, or three nights, or the whole week let alone months, the relationship and feelings that he had developed for Lauren had advanced so quickly that the sudden realization that she was gone had left him suddenly bare and exposed, and the emptiness and near despair he felt had shocked him almost as much as the thought she had of left him. Rand knew that Lauren felt the same about him that he had of her, she wasn’t the sort of person to let her intimate feelings be known easily, she preferred to keep things ‘shallow’ to all appearances and not get attached, but yet she had grown attached, just as he had. Then she had left, and not just left without a word, but had slept with him that previous night, told him she loved him and always would, then drugged him and left him handcuffed to the bed. In the morning when he awoke, she was gone.

His eyes traveled over the asteroid field out there, and Rand knew that Lauren was in some kind of trouble. You didn’t just leave someone you loved without a word and disappear like she apparently had, not from a career as a doctor, and not from Starfleet. The fact that she had left without even a goodbye hurt, but the fact she had never trusted him enough to let him help her somehow buried itself into his chest like a blade, and Rand could feel that the wielder of that blade wasn’t Lauren. She needed him, even if she didn’t know it, and he couldn’t help her. Not from here.

=/\= Ensign Devon, report to the Shuttlebay for survey duty immediately =/\= came the voice over the intercomm, and Rand dropped his hands and returned to the desk where he picked up a half empty coffee cup, draining it in one before dropping it back with a clunk and picking up a small bag that was sitting beside the screen. Rand knew what he was going to do. Lauren was out there and whatever she had gotten herself into, she needed him. He could feel it as if it was a sure thing, that it was true simply because he knew it was and his mind wandered to the Prophets of his people for a moment, just a moment, and he could understand in that brief moment, why people believed in those useless Gods. Because they simply knew in their hearts, they had faith, like Rand knew in his heart that Lauren needed him.

Rand paused for a moment and reached into his pocket, taking out a page of paper that had already been well creased and folded, screwed up once or thrice and thrown away, then retrieved and smoothed out again. His breathing grew shallow as with one hand he opened it along the folds, hefting the bag over his shoulder as he did so and his eyes slowly, word by word, danced over the writing that Lauren had left him on the note that he had found lying beside the bed with his name on it. Her farewell note, a hasty and poor excuse and plea for him to forget her and move on, that she loved him and was sorry. Or that was what it said on the surface. Folding the note and placing it back in his pocket, Rand glanced out the window once more at the asteroid field and left his room, the doors quietly opening for him and then just as silently closing behind him, exactly like they had for Lauren just over a month earlier.

Ensign Devon Rand, Security