All By Myself - Part 8 - (BACKPOST)

Posted on 03 Aug 2025 @ 6:29pm by Lieutenant Commander Raviran Dattek-Winters & Lieutenant JG Cajag Lagnas

1,138 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: The Festival of Unity
Location: Cag's Quarters - USS Cygnus
Timeline: (Backpost)

Previously:

After fixing - if you could call it that - her hair and with her face and body washed and clothed, she somewhat timidly emerged into the unknown - or at least unremembered quarters that were apparently temporary to the Trill.

"erm.... was it Caj? I'm sorry I've forgotten, I think......" she asked as she rounded the doorway and emerged.


Continued:


"Yes" said Caj as he passed Ravi a glass of fresh orange juice. "I was about to make some fresh and real pancakes. Can i interest you in some?"

"....pancakes?? OH YES please!" she brightened instantly at the thought,

Caj poured milk into a bowl, with Andorian Fleck Eggs and milk from a wild Yakventu Cow. He pulled out a sonic whisk from the drawer. A small metal bullet-shaped item that when held over the bowl; and a little finger motion made; stirred the batter with a mini reverse tractor beam

Ravi was getting more and more hungry as the preparations progressed. "Thank you" she said as she was passed the orange juice which she then began to sip and make approving sounds of appreciation as the taste became more and more delightful.

"Good Right" Caj Smiled "that Oj is from Qo'noS. The Federation embassy has a small orange grove on the premises. Best Orange juice in the verse i say."

Taking an exploratory sip, Ravi's eyebrows displayed her pleasantly surprised experience. "This is delicious!" she declared. "I agree with your description 100%" She continued to sip it with more confidence now and had finished most of it in a very short time. "Just what the doctor ordered -or I would have done if I'd known how good it would be!"

Caj took a sip of the orange juice and then began to serve the pancakes as he did Caj said apologetically "Look I am really sorry. This sort of thing has not happened to me since my academy days." He gestured around the room and at Ravi with his frying pan. "Before being posted here to the Cygnus. I was on secondment away from Starfleet as a lab assistant, it was very......"Caj searched for the right words "demanding of my time, so i did not get out much at all for a very long time. So can i please say sorry if i have done anything untoward"

"Thank you for that" Ravi said, appreciating the honesty and feeling calmer now that the initial surprises were beginning to get explained.

"I..... I don't erm.... I don't get out much myself. As you can probably tell from the state i'm in right now so I think I should also apologise to you for anything I might have done or said in a similar vein. I'm sorry that I can't remember the specifics if I did but that doesn't mean that I'm not sincere in saying Sorry to you as well."

"maybe we should try it again.....you know go out. Except this time lets not get blind drunk and wake up semi naked on the floor."

"Try it again?" Ravi sounded horrified. "I think we need to find out how much trouble we're already in from this attempt first?" she responded, holding her forehead as if she was having trouble keeping the weight of it aloft.

"So thats at no then.....?" asked Caj trying not to sound disappointed and that somebody had kicked his favourite puppy. "Well then. If we are keeping this professional Ma'am I better get my uniform on and we can report our selves to station security,"

Ravi's confusion meant she missed the disappointment in Caj's response and as an image of Maralen's stern face had just flashed before the back of her eyes, she took in a breath. "Um.... hold on a bit....." she said, drawing out the words slowly as if in an attempt to slow down the proceedings by slowing how she spoke. It didn't work.

"We don't know yet IF we did anything wrong to report ourselves for......I mean, if all we did was wreck the decor on that wall, then we could just - you know - paint it over? and we wouldn't be in so much trouble..... IF we actually are, In trouble that is?" Ravi's head was starting to hurt again.

"Look...... I'm half Cardassian, I can - and do - drink Kanar and this kind of wreckage doesn't descend on me in the morning usually. Do you have any idea what we were drinking? " she thought a bit more.............. "or smoking? Or Taking? Perhaps? I don't do those kinds of things, but something has totally blown my universe apart and not in the nice way I would have liked it to......." she finished her pancakes, one because they were SO delicious but also because something told her, from beyond a wall of some kind, in another place where she was a sensible person...that the nutrition would be helpful......... ~Hmmm... another place?~ she thought ponderously.

"Could we have done that? Do you think?" she asked, not really believing it could have been possible but pointing at the wall in a suspicious way.

Caj who was feeling very rejected looked flatly “Look I’m no ship’s counsellor ok. But don’t know about you but I have spent a lot of time recently dealing with a lot of classified ‘time’ in a confined period of ‘time’ with a limited amount of time to deal with it. I couldn’t/cant talk to anyone about it in my ‘time’ there and that is a lot of stress and a lot of pressure in a significant amount of time!” Caj was getting a little cross with this whole thing. “So for me this is probably some sort of post trauma coping mechanism. Now I don’t partake in anything urrmmmm recreational. But I do have a drink but before last night had not had a drink in a very very long ‘time.’ Maybe it’s the same for you I don’t know. I mean your ship did get blown up and you lost a lot of your crew. That’s got to mean something right?….you know what.” Caj was now frustrated and cross. “This my place and my mess. So will you please leave and let me get to cleaning up?”

Ravi's breath was taken away by the surprise of what Caj was saying. She had missed his disappointment earlier but now he had missed what she was trying to suggest and had tried to make sense of what she had actually said literally.

"I..... but......" she stammered a bit. "I ...... no..... you don't understand......" she began to try to explain.


TBC


A JP by:

Ensign Cajag Lagnas
Science Officer
USS Cygnus

and

Lieutenant Raviren Dattek-Winters
Chief Medical Officer
USS Cygnus

 

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