Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in Side sim: The Report Dilemma

Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in Side sim: The Report Dilemma

Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in Side sim: The Report Dilemma
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
The conversation slowed again, and Roman found himself unsure what else to say. He’d all but forgotten about her last upsetting question, and if he knew she was avoiding asking things because it made him upset, he’d feel bad about it. He wouldn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t ask him anything, though he knew there were a lot of questions he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, just because of how intertwined his life had been with Jay’s, a death he’d never really gotten over. And he still hadn’t told her much of anything about his family, either. “What about you? What made you want to be a yeoman?” He asked at last.

~ Roman

Could she tell him? Yes. Would she was another question. “I saw a Star Fleet officer once when I was 18. She was with another officer, but everyone seemed to forget she was there, but she was everywhere. It wasn’t just meals and coffee; I watched her on her communicator, and her PaDD, and she seemed to know what exactly had to be done all the time and the other officer seemed to be the only one who noticed all the stuff she was doing. She even knew how to find the nurses and doctors and what to ask them.”

She tucked both her hands into her lap. She was upset and sad. She hated thinking about that time and being in the hospital. Her voice was suddenly thick with her accent. “Randy convinced her ta talk ta me. It seemed like a godsend, ta be useful and go unnoticed. I never wanted ta be in Star Fleet afore that.”

Yeoman Rand

Roman felt bad for asking. He could tell she was upset, and he wasn’t sure what the appropriate response was. Finally he decided on, “I’m glad you found something that works for you, that you’re happy doing.” At least he was pretty sure she liked her job. She seemed to. “And your work is appreciated, by me at least. And it was by Carmichael.” He wouldn’t know about Rogers yet. But he assumed she liked Rand.

~ Roman

“I enjoy it. I’m good at it. I mean I won’t say I enjoy writing reports and proofing them daily, but the content of them is fascinating, if you can get past the tediousness of the headings and red tape details. At the Academy I did my senior year internship with Admiral Zuweki. I got to experience a lot of new cultures and learned a lot just by listening. On K5, while I was waiting for Sentinel to arrive, I got to hear about all the fleet movements and encounters first hand from Cpt Jensson. I even got to go with him to tour one of the newest ships when it docked. And every once in awhile I get to see some of those stars we stare up at, at night. And I get to be useful and do my share, especially since no one notices.” She did enjoy what she did, but she wasn’t passionate about it like she was acting and performing, but at least she wasn’t hiding at home. “I think Carmichael was just glad when I wasn’t around. I heard him in the Galley one night. I had already been there, working late, and Carmichael was complaining to another officer that he couldn’t escape me and that I never left him alone, that I probably had a tracker on him.” She shrugged but it had bothered her. One of her biggest responsibilities as a Captain’s yeoman was the captain’s well being and that meant ensuring off duty time and sleep and eating well. It has bothered her a great deal to hear him make such comments and not directly address them with her, and so she was left guessing and floundering on what he expected of her.

Yeoman Rand

Roman frowned. “You were only doing your job. He shouldn’t have said such things, nor should the captain of a starship be engaging in idle gossip.” To him, that sort of gossip was for ensigns, and even then, if he heard it, he put a stop to it. No one wanted to be talked about. It did sound like she liked what she did but it didn’t seem like it was her first choice, especially after she said she hadn’t even cared for Starfleet until she was eighteen. So he asked, “What would you have done had you not joined Starfleet?”

~ Roman

“Oh…um…” She fidgeted with her glass, turning it slowly one way then the other without picking it up. She wanted to be honest, she didn’t want to lie. To say ‘she never thought about it’ would be a lie. The few people who knew thought she was lying, that there was no way with her anxiety she could get on stage and perform, but on stage she wasn’t Rand, she was Miranda or Trinity or Elizabeth or Arabella or whoever the script said she was. She glanced at him and sighed, stressed over past events and possible reactions and torn with hiding her secret and staying unseen. But he saw her didn’t he? Otherwise they wouldn’t be having dinner together. She took a breath and another, putting her hands back on her lap, trying to hide the apprehension. “Umm..I…I was an actress.”

Yeoman Rand

Roman believed her. He didn’t ask her why she quit, he figured it was the anxiety, though he certainly didn’t understand the specifics. “You must have been good at it,” he said. He’d seen her in the lab that once, but that was the only time he’d seen her do any sort of acting. She had the vibrant character voices she often used when she told stories. He could see her being an actress.

~ Roman

That was the thing, Rand knew she was good. “I was. I was the female lead for the Dionysian Actors’ Guild,” It wasn’t boastful or pride, simply the truth, she’d been…amazing. And at 18 to be the lead for such a prestigious group was…well outstanding to say the least. “I did a few voice acting parts for audio and animated performances during Academy. But the media was…relentless wanting to know what happened, so I just stopped.” Randy hadn’t given up when he struggled with his grades, and ‘give up’ probably weren’t terms in Roman’s vocabulary.

Yeoman Rand

Roman knew of the group, but he didn’t know much about it. “I’d quit, too. Media are vultures,” he said and his tone indicated he’d probably had experience with that particular topic. He wished she could’ve gone on, because it seemed like she had wanted to, but he also found himself glad she hadn’t, because then she would never have been in Starfleet. It was a selfish thought.

~ Roman

Rand nodded, “It’s a good word for them. Circling above what’s dead or nearly so, waiting on it to die, to get their ‘share’ of it.” Then another small confession, released in a small rush of a sigh, “I didn’t stop acting because of the media, the media wanted to know why I left. A reporter even managed to get into my hospital room once. The only time I’ve ever seen Randy hit someone.” The memory was sad and upsetting but the nervous tells had stopped.

Yeoman Rand

“Your hospital room? What happened?” Roman asked. He had an internal chuckle at the idea of Randy hitting someone. Despite how well they got along, Roman did not see Randy as the violent type. He nodded to her description. His family wasn’t often in the media, at least not when he’d known them, but it did happen. Now… well, he was glad no one on the ship seemed to have seen his sisters and made the connection to his name. It probably helped that they’d changed their names in marriage, but he was sure their original names were known by everyone who bothered to follow them.

~ Roman

Oh she hadn’t meant to say that, but it was so easy to talk to Roman. He was really very sweet and calm. Where she was always running in overdrive. She kind of picked at a pleat in her skirt and where she’d been looking in his direction now she was looking at her hands. She sighed, a slight smile actually crossing her face, “We opened in London, 4 days. I had taken parts with the group before, but this time it was really official. I turned 18 that week and I was going to sign on with them. See my parents or Randy always went with me to the after parties and they made sure to buffer me from the worst of it. Most of the time I would stay in costume and pretend to still be that character.”

She suddenly stopped picking at her skirt and smoothed it like she had just realized what she was doing. “The third night they didn’t come. It was a smaller turn out and we all thought it would be good practice for me, to be on my own, since I would be traveling. The…the director thought my parents coddled me too much, so he..he arranged for the press to be there. They were everywhere and it just didn’t stop, the questions and jostling the recorders in my face and the questions weren’t just about the performance or my acting but personal and invasive.” She was breathing too hard, and her eyes had started to contract a little, the memories extremely vivid.

Roman took her hand, like she normally did for him, trying to help her calm down. Her story evoked anger in him, both at the director who thought he knew better and the press, shoving their damn microphones and cameras everywhere, but this story was years old, and it wasn’t like there was anything he could do, and his anger passed quickly. Instead he just felt bad for her, and he listened to the rest of her story intently.

“I told the director I didn’t feel well. I wanted to stop, I needed to stop, that I needed him to call my parents. He…he didn’t listen. They....at first they thought I had a heart attack. They had to cancel the last performance. I was diagnosed with stress cardiomyopath, brought on by severe stress from the party. The doctors called it broken heart syndrome.” The name alone she felt was pathetic enough.

Yeoman Rand

It was no wonder she had to quit with that information. Roman was no doctor and he didn’t know the specifics, but he did know the basics of heart function, and he knew the basics of what ‘broken heart syndrome’ was. Too much stress too quickly and wham, essentially a heart attack without the arterial blockage. Roman didn’t have anything to say, besides perhaps a few choice obscenities for that director that he didn’t speak aloud, right away, instead he kept hold of her hand. “That’s awful,” he said after a moment’s silence. Roman didn’t think it was pathetic at all, it was a known and well-researched phenomenon, and given her history with anxiety he felt the director should’ve known something like that could happen. “I am sorry that’s how your acting career ended,” he said, and he meant it, that was an awful outcome for the set of events.

~ Roman

“It was,” was all she said, but her fingers curled around his hand that was holding hers. She hoped she hadn’t started crying, that would be horrible and she would never get over the embarrassment. After a few shakey but slow breaths she’d managed to ease the need to run, to quiet the memory. “You don’t need to be sorry, Roman. It’s no one’s fault but my own. I’m the one who gave up.” She attempted a shrug and then picked up her drink again, sipping slowly. “But that’s when I met Lt Gaulette, the Yeoman. And after the doctors cleared me I went to San Francisco and joined Star Fleet to become a yeoman. I like what I do, it suits me.”

Rand

“It’s no one’s fault, certainly not your own,” said Roman and he pulled her into a hug. He remembered Scott the gossip telling the lab staff she’d seen a video of Rand, published by the group Rand had mentioned. He’d told her to stop spreading other people’s business around the ship. Now he was glad he was so hard on that sort of gossip, it clearly wasn’t something Rand liked telling everyone about. “And we all know you keep this ship running as our yeoman.” He said it with a little smile, he meant she was really good at her job.

~ Roman