Posted by Lieutenant Natasha Daye (Doctor) in Captains Quarters - Dante Comes Home

Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Captains Quarters - Dante Comes Home

Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Captains Quarters - Dante Comes Home
Posted by… suppressed (5) by the Post Ghost! 👻

Snip

Without words, Dante moved and began to help clear the table. He was trying, but the frustration inside him was mounting. Nat was doing it again, pushing him away by trying to ignore the problem or bury the feelings and event they had finally spoken about after so long. He knew she didnt mean to come off cold and harsh, that it was just her way of dealing with things that made her sad or uncomfortable. Of course they could sit and watch a movie, play a game or joke around, even go out for coffee or a walk. By the time the next morning came around the event would be less because of time and sleep, and she would find it easier to ignore it again while he would feel things hadn’t yet been resolved properly and the cycle would begin anew.

He had reached out to her with care and love, and Nat in her efforts to present a tough surface and deal with the feelings had seemingly brushed the event away, and with it his desire to be close to her and support her. It was her way of things, he knew that, and accepted it as much as he loved abd accepted her. It was just who she was, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it.

“You know what” he said to Nat, dropping a stack of dishes in the replicator and recycling them, “I can’t do this whole ‘it happened, doesnt matter anyway cause it doesn’t change anything’ thing you do right now. It was our child, and you needed me, and you never told me. The mornings not going to change anything, our baby still died Nat. I cant just pass it off and bury it and be so cold, it was our baby.” He turned and took a few steps, rubbing his hands over his face. The anger was gone, now it was simply frustration and sadness. He motioned with his hands to say something, but changed his mind and simply walked into their bedroom, doors sliding shut behind him as he sat on the edge of their bed and leaned forwards, hands behind his neck and elbows on his knees while he didn’t think, just felt.

Captain Knight, CO

“Darn it. Darn it,” Natasha said kicking the wall with her shoe. Anger began to flood her body as she watched Dante walk out of the living area and into their bedroom. She stared at the door and then at the door to exit their quarters. Their quarters: the sound of those two words did not fill her with the happy content, safe and secure feelings it typically did. Right now it made her feel trapped. She had her own quarters two decks below. The room was mainly used for storage but it still was assigned to her. Natasha struggled with staying in room AA 23. If she left Natasha could avoid Knight for the rest of the night; however, that is only what it would be for: a single night if she was lucky. Dante was reeling at the news she had just shared but he would not be for long. While Dante Aligheri Knight said yes dear to 99.999999% of everything she said, it was the .000001% of the time he took a stand and did not budge. Those .000001% were very rare but they did exist. She had known the man long enough to see this would be on his radar like Borg ship ready to attack. If Daye did not get in front of this now, Dante would and he was never a pleasant man when taking his .000001% stand.

Walking to their bedroom Natasha entered seeing Dante sitting on the edge of the bed. “What would you have had me do,” she said feeling her ability to converse in a calm manner slipping away. “Cry to you…over a flipping comm line,” Natasha felt all the anger of the hours after her emergency surgery erupting to the surface again from the long-dormant abyss she had stored it in. “Beg you to come home,” her voice cracked some as she began to vent all the pent up emotions. “You would not have done that and don’t Monday morning quarterback this. You would have been distraught and upset but you would have gone on.....with your mission,” she yelled at him. “You would have sent me flowers and gotten back to me after you put out whatever fire Starfleet felt was more important than us and dont you dare tell me you wouldn’t have,” she stabbed a finger at him.

“Of course I would have gone on with my mission” Dante fired back, he could feel the anger Nat was radiating sparking his own again, “because that’s my job.”

“Oh I know about your job,” she fired back yelling in the middle of him speaking.

” It’s what I do Natasha. I was and am responsible for the lives of hundreds of people, including yours, it’s what I do, as much as I would have wanted to come home to you.” He came to his feet and stabbed a finger back at her, “You should have told me about our baby, about you. You should have let me know.” Now it was Dante’s turn to yell back, the full force of his fury coming out in a bellow he hadn’t used since the parade ground drill days at the Academy when he took Nat’s classes as a Senior Cadet and assistant to Hornsby.

“Why it would not have changed anything,” she yelled so loud she was sure the people three decks below could hear mom and dad fighting.

“I had every right to know that my bride was in hospital losing our baby.” He somehow even put extra emphasis onto the word baby.

“I had a choice,” Daye yelled balling up her fists and looking everywhere but the very place where the man she loved was standing. “I could have called you. Called it an emergency. I had your codes that allow transmissions to come through. I could have placed that call but do you even have a clue as to why I didn’t,” she said rhetorically not giving him a chance to reply. “Because I could not lose you too,” she yelled loud enough that even being in the back room of his quarters someone walking past would know that Mom and Dad were having a blow out.

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dante raged, holding his hands out as a frustrated exclamation. “You think I would have dropped you like you were broken and useless to me? You think I am that goddamn shallow and narcissistic that if you didn’t fit my lifestyle I would drop you as soon as things got tough? is that all you think of me?”

“It means you had a job to do and I knew nothing would stop you from doing that job,” she threw his own words back at him. It was a cheap move and a low blow but that is what happened in fights of this nature. In the morning, she would regret half of the things she said to Dante but right now it was all about who could hurt the other more.

Placing his hands on his head in exasperation, Dante turned away from Nat and found himself looking in the mirror beside their wardrobe. Out in his pen, Bruce raised his head at the commotion and gave a huff. Then, he curled up under his blanket and tried to get back to sleep. By the sounds of things, his humans had issues and needed to throw the red ball around a bit. A crash and breaking sound made him raise his head slightly before dropping it back down again. In the bedroom, the glass Vase lay broken on the floor beside the wall. In his anger, Dante had swept it off the shelf next to the wardrobe with a fast back hand that had sent it to shatter and drop the flowers, water and glass in a heap, Dante paying no attention to the slight cut on his hand.

Natasha flinched seeing how far she had pushed Knight. He would never lay a hand on her but right now he is anger was murderous. God help anyone that tried to cross his path right now. Dante would rip them to shreds. Only two other times in the fifteen years they had been a couple had she seen him like this. Once directed at her like tonight and the other at someone else. In both instances, Daye had managed to get her anger in check and calm Dante down. Tonight, however, her emotions were clouding better judgment.

“I could not risk that you would act like you are now. That your judgment would be impaired. That your thoughts would be on me and not what you needed to do to get home to me,” she screamed and began to pace from anger, frustration, and fear.

“You had the choice” Dante turned back to her, he didn’t pace, just watched her as she walked, his voice full of anger, “but it wasn’t yours to make Nat, you took the choice away from me, kept me in the dark. Not just then, for three damn years you didn’t tell me that when we were supposed to get married and spend the rest of our lives together happily, that you, we, lost our baby too.” He stepped closer to her, once, twice, then stopped and raised his hands to her in front of him in that very Italian way of making a point. “I had every right to know, to make that choice myself. You lied to me, you never gave me the chance to do anything, no matter what I would have done! Figlio di puttana!” He swore, and when Dante used Italian, it was a sign he was rather very angry.

“And the really crazy part,” she added after taking several steps around the room and throwing her hands up. It was breaing time. The anger had peaked between them. Now it was time for honest which at times hurt worse than any other emotion. “I think I was more scared that you would have been able to function,” she said looking back at him with tears starting to spill over the rims of her eyes.

At that, Dante stopped his own tirade slightly and looked at her, his anger still very visible, but he was listening.

“That you,” her voice caught for a second in her throat as she spat out the words, “would have compartmentalized like you have been trained to do and told me that you loved me,” her voice hitched again, “and that you would be at my side soon,” she hiccuped a gulp of air in, “and that we would deal with this together.” Daye stopped for a second and wiped her eyes. It did not do much because more tears simply replaced the ones she brushed away. “Dante that thought scared me more than telling you the one dream we had was gone. I needed you. God, I needed you but I did not want to come in second at that moment so yes I lied. I hid what happened because the only thing that would have made things right was for you to turn the Broadsword around and say fudge the job yet we both know that would not have happened,” she yelled again. “You promised me that you would be there for me and you weren’t when I needed you the most.”

Daye could not stop crying as she spoke. Her anger at him was irrational. She knew it. There was nothing he could do but she needed someone or something to blame for what happened. The job was the easiest so she poured all the fear and pain into that thought.

Lt. Natasha Daye. medical

“A fanabla!” Dante swore again, anger and exasperation clear in him. “You never gave me the choice, even after three years!” He yelled again, “So I might have compartmentalized, of told you I would be home as soon as I could and done my job, in fact I would have. I would have armed every damn phaser and torpedo on my ship and blown every goddamn Romulan that got in my way out of the sky, and come right back to you. But I never got the chance to do that, because you Never told me our baby was dead. I couldn’t of made things right, nobody could Natasha. Dead. Our Baby was Dead. And you never told me! I couldn’t be there for you because other people got to live because of my job, and while I did that, my baby died!”

“You promised me that I would come first and I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t and I could not deal with that on top of everything else that day. So I lied and it was the right thing to do because I died that day. Knowing your precious command seat would trump even our family would have killed us so I compartmentalized and believed what I needed to believe to get through it because you weren’t there. You weren’t there Dante!”

He turned and took hold of another vase, and threw that against the opposite wall with as much force as he could, the crash was loud and clear, and as the sound of it died away the anger in him seemed to as well. He looked down at his hand, cut and bleeding but not serious, he had had worse. His own eyes were wet with sadness and emotion, tears of anger. He knew that she was right, just as he knew he was right. But she was feeling it now, not hiding it away, and he needed her to feel the loss just as much as he did, at that moment, Dante needed to share the loss with Natasha and the anger seemed the only way to crack the shell that she had built around it.

Natasha saw Dante approaching her and panicked. “No…No don’t you touch me. This is not over,” she yelled between gritted teeth as Dante tried to take her into his arms. If he held her, Natasha would break. She was not ready to forgive the universe over this. Stubborn spite and anger over events she could not change compelled her to take a few steps back trying to distance herself from him. “Get away from me,” she pushed Dante back as hard as she could. He only took one step back before he began advancing again.

Moving back to her, he took her arm and pulled her closer to him, taking her chin in his hand and making her look at him. He wasn’t rough, when it came to Nat he never thought of doing anything to hurt her, but he needed her to look at him right then even through the tears. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you” he told her, “I wish I had been, you know that. I’m here now Tasia, I want you with me. Because I love you. Are you done yelling at me yet?”

Captain Knight, CO

“No,” she said with pure hate in her voice but her body was not fighting him nor his embrace. She was where she wanted to be. Where she needed to be yet the helplessness she felt over that day three years ago still burned inside her. There was no one to blame. Much like she said to spark this conversation, it was simply bad luck. People got sick. People died. Every cruise into the black had at least a few casualties. It was selfish to think that she and Dante were immune to the universe yet that is exactly how Natasha felt. Their perfect world was shattered and Daye was still looking for someone to pay for it. “I love you. Always have and I always will,” she looked at him promising like she did countless times over the years, “but you have completely focused on the wrong thing.” Natasha felt the cold chill of adrenaline running down the length of her spine. The emotional rise causing its spike was ending. Now the physical symptoms of this would start: a drop in body temperature, exhaustion, difficulty thinking clearly, and pain.

‘Dante an ectopic pregnancy can’t proceed normally. The fertilized egg can’t survive. Medicine or surgery are the only options. If you had been there you would have had to make the call like I have had to in other situations. I would have hated you unfairly for it. The thing you need to focus and recognize is that egg was never going to be a baby because I was broken.” All the anger had left her. Only overwhelming sadness could be detected in the words she spoke. Walking over to the bedside stand Daye pulled out a medical tricorder and began to work on fixing Dante’s hand. The cut wasn’t serious but did need tending. “Ectopic pregnancy is often caused because the fallopian tube is damaged by inflammation or is misshapen. You are not shallow or narcissistic,” she said finishing treating his hand as she reiterated the words he threw at her earlier, “but that one accident could stop you from having kids. Medical is good but not perfect. We both want kids. Yes, we can adopt. Yes, we can try other methods but nothing is ever guaranteed except our chances went down by 50% that day. That is the real gut punch. Something we didn’t know we had might have wanted ruined us from ever having the thing we most wanted.” Clicking off the tricorder, she handed it to Dante.

“I am going to bed,” she stated and walked towards the bed. They had said too much, fought too much, and cried too much to fix this tonight. Daye felt defeated and wanted nothing more than to crawl under the blankets and put this night behind her like she did almost three years ago.

Lt. Natasha Daye, medical

Bump