The rivers and the lakes that you're used to

Posted on 19 Nov 2017 @ 12:45am by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Commander Scarlet Blake

2,233 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - San Francisco, Maritime National Historic Park
Timeline: MD 31 - 1400 hours

[ON]

"Scarlet Blake!" he shouted across the beach in a full voice. He called out to Scarlet as soon as he locked eyes on her; he didn't trust she had noticed him yet. (He elongated the vowels to make doubly certain she heard him.) As they had planned to rendezvous on the beach, adjacent to Hyde Street Pier, Lake ir-Llantrisant had dressed himself scantly in Betazoid swimwear. Over his arm, he had draped a Vulcan cloak, in case he could convince Scarlet to venture into the Marine Museum with him.

"What form of morally-bankrupt engineers do you have working on your starship these days?" Lake asked aloud. With each stride, he gradually closed the distance between himself and Scarlet. "They can't even keep the replicators running? You look thinner than ever."

Scarlet couldn't help but laugh at the words, even as she glanced down at herself in sudden doubt. Did she? She wore a swimsuit rather than a bikini, despite most other women around her having opted for the two piece option. She finally shrugged, arching an eyebrow as she looked to him. "There's a lot of men who would take that as a good thing you know," she pointed out, waving a hand to him as she settled her weight on to her right leg, her other hand resting lightly on her hip. "So I'm going to take it as a compliment," she added for good measure, even if she knew full well that it wasn't. Bloody counsellors.

Moving to stand near her with his feet shoulder-width apart, Lake tilted his head towards his shoulder. "As always," he said dryly, "I respect your choices." Lake nodded at Scarlet and then he smiled a touch more genuinely. Sweeping his hands out to indicate their sunny surroundings, he asked, "How is Earth treating you?"

Scarlet nodded as she looked around the beautiful meeting place, as if taking it into consideration for her answer. "Dull," she finally replied, the nod becoming more certain with that. "Yes....pretty, but dull," she admitted with a heavy breath. She'd been a spacer all her life. She'd even been born on a ship. Maybe it was something people had to grow up with to truly appreciate. "What about you?"

Lake took a breath, and then he took another, to suck in enough air for the story he had to tell. Even once his lungs were full, his eyes betrayed how he still hadn't managed to wrap his mind around everything that had brought him to this beach. His cheeks puffed out with the held-in breath, and then he let the air out all at once.

"I consider the Earth to be harbouring a grudge against me," Lake said, leaning into the hyperbole of his statements. "I fear for my life. If I go missing, tell the Security Officers it was the Earth who did me in," he insisted. "I only traveled to this misbegotten planet for a romantic getaway, and I hadn't even been here for a week before he ended our relationship. Now I can't go home, because the starbase is being contained within quarantine protocols."

Scarlet shook her head with a weak smile, sighing heavily in sympathy for his predicament. He certainly seemed to be unlucky in love...it was a thought she kept to herself though, not sure that it would be helpful. She gave his arm a comradely pat instead. Her background in counselling made her used to being in the position of support, but it was slightly different with Lake. The shoe had been on the other foot when Lake had been her therapist. It made the dynamic ever so slightly different. Besides, he didn't need her telling him what he already knew. "Lucky that you don't need a guy to have a good time then," she said lightly, keeping it simple.

Initially, Lake's only response was to purse his lips, offering Scarlet a truly skeptical look. Nodding at her, he said, "Aren't you the ex-counselor who told me I didn't even know how to live alone?" Not only did he sound amused by her assessment of him, his pursed expression turned into a smirk, because he couldn't bring himself to disagree with her.

"I did, didn't I..." Scarlet mused on it for a moment, chuckling softly as it came back to her. She'd been a little sharp; things had still been raw. Some days, they still were. "Well then it's about bloody time you learnt to. Trust me, it's a lot less hassle."

Lake started to say, "I don't know if hassle is--" but he was interrupted by the reason Scarlet didn't know much about living alone these days.

"The Lake..." a young girl came running to him with a bright smile, her long dark hair tamed into a plait to try and keep it somewhat neat on the beach. Lily Blake wore a red swimsuit that shone with a green hue in the sunlight; it would be clear to anyone who knew the girl that she had probably picked it herself. The way she greeted him showed she still hadn't been able to get her head around the difference between Lake the name, and *a* lake. That, or she just liked how it sounded.

Crouching low to bring himself eye-to-eye with Lily, Lake opened his arms wide for a hug. "Lee Lee," he shouted out his own nickname for Scarlet's daughter. Only after Lake and Scarlet had put aside their days of post-captivity crisis counseling had Scarlet been able to introduce Lily to her old counselor, Lake. "I bet you'd like to go swimming, but how would you like to explore an aircraft carrier?" he asked, entirely too enthusiastically.

Lily giggled as she ran for a hug, holding onto him tightly, rocking from side to side...and with no sign of letting go, despite dripping water from the sea. "Yeah! I really wanna!" she responded all too easily to his enthusiasm. "Um...what'sa aircraft carrier?"

From the moment Lily crashed into him to the moment he could feel the grind of Lily transferring sand onto his skin, Lake made absolutely no effort to escape from her grasp. Their previous meetings had been brief and infrequent, if Lake was being honest with himself, but he found her personality absolutely engaging. Much like her mother. "An aircraft carrier is like a starship on the water. Except it's basic," Lake said. He rambled a little in his answer, as he hadn't been prepared for the question. "Ancient technology. I bet stepping aboard is like traveling back in time. No warp drive. No inertial dampers. But it's so basic, even a baby could pilot it."

"Then even *I* could fly it...." Lily whispered back to him before covering her mouth to smother a giggle, a clear glint in her blue eyes as she watched him with the threat of mischief.

"Or not," Scarlet cut in quickly, cutting off that little adventure in the girl's head before it could flourish too far. She picked her up, holding her close as she tried to tame a few stray strands of dark hair away from Lily's face. "It sounds like a great idea, Lake," she added, a note of gratitude in her voice. It meant a lot that he'd even thought about something they could all do. Children of Lily's age weren't all officers' cup of tea. She still remembered Jonathan Holliday's face when he'd realised she was a single parent. Lake probably knew more about them than anyone else though, whether he realised it or not.

His dark eyes alighting in Lily's direction, Lake announced, "Come along. This way, then." He started tromping across the beach, taking eager strides through the sand, simply assuming the girls could keep up. Lake waggled a finger in the direction where she museum ships were docked at the pier. He explained, "You can see the very first aircraft carrier powered by nuclear fission: the USS Enterprise."

"New-clear fish-un..." Lily repeated slowly and as closely as she was able to...yet gave a firm nod as if she understood completely and utterly what he was talking about.

Scarlet chuckled as she watched Lily before looking back to the ship, her head tilting as she took the name in. It was a pretty special name in the fleet, even now. She'd had no idea that the name was rooted in a deeper history.

Supposing he didn't need to entertain Lily with strange voices or silly expressions at all times, Lake shifted his gaze in Scarlet's direction. "You can tell me the whole tale now," he said imploringly. "What brings you to Earth?"

Scarlet couldn't help but smile with amusement at the way he said it, shaking her head lightly to him. "It's not all that interesting I'm afraid. I stood in for a First Officer for a bit. They promised it would be quick, and a safe enough ship, as they go..." she glanced to Lily who was distracted by watching the ship with large eyes that were full of imagination. "Turns out it was a more...exciting voyage than expected. So when the chance came to instruct at the Academy instead? I took it," she watched her daughter, the reason for having taken the safer path. More than once.

"Pray tell," Lake asked excitedly, "in what field of study have you been shaping the impressionable young minds of Starfleet Cadets?"

"I've been trying to prepare them for the delights and stresses of Away Missions," she looked to him with something of an ironic smile, arching her eyebrow knowingly. "I'm not sure an ex-Marine was the best idea. But you can be sure those cadets won't be wandering anywhere with their heads in the clouds."

Waving an enthusiastic hand in Scarlet's direction, Lake remarked, "In that case, they assigned absolutely the correct instructor for that lesson." He frowned slightly in reminiscence. There was no true sorrow in his expression, more like wistful embarrassment. None of it slowed down his strides towards the aircraft carrier. Lake admitted, "When I first met you, I was probably a little too textbook in my technique. What's it feeling like, taking responsibility for shaping the Captains of tomorrow?"

"A little too textbook," she used his own phrase to sum it up, but with a note of humour, shaking her head. "I...have enjoyed it," she had to admit. "Seeing them develop, improve. Think. Truly think. I...have to say I'm ready to get back on to a ship though," she suspected the last wouldn't be a surprise to him. "And I'm not sure there was anything wrong with your technique. More likely, it was the patient..."

"The patient," Lake said, and now he was the one echoing Scarlet's words. "A First Officer in Starfleet and an Academy Instructor, entrusted with shaping influential minds." Slowing his stride, Lake turned to Scarlet and offered a genuine grin. "You've come so far since I first met you," Lake said, "So much more open to the experiences of the universe."

Scarlet matched his step as she watched him for a long moment in silence, her arms folding across her middle. She considered whether it was true or not. She had been so disappointed when circumstances had forced her to leave the marines. She had forced herself to make the best of her change to the regular fleet...but it had taken some time before she had been able to truly embrace it. "I don't know, sometimes I still get the urge to feel the sniper rifle in my hands," she chuckled weakly, shaking her head. "But, no matter how it came to this, life is good."

As much as Lake's professional instinct --and even more so, his personal curiosity-- craved to explore Scarlet's fixation on a sniper rifle, he knew well enough not to do so in front of Lily. Other children, he probably would have gone ahead, but Lake couldn't stand the idea of making Lily uncomfortable. He led the trio up the ramp that would take them from the beach, onto the pier. As he did, he found himself asking, "What career paths had you considered other than the Academy?"

Scarlet was silent for a long moment as she considered the question, her hand absently touching Lily's dark hair for a moment. "Nothing," she admitted quietly. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be in the marines so I made it happen. Since leaving, I put that energy into Starfleet. I...don't think I've ever thought outside of it," she admitted quietly, glancing to him with a slight frown at realising that. "That sounded worse out loud."

"No, that makes every kind of sense," Lake affirmed, as they approached the museum ship, the aircraft-carrier Enterprise. He stopped and he looked to Scarlet, looked her right in the eyes. "That means you're exactly where you want to be," he insisted.

A smile pulled at the corner of Scarlet's lips at the words, her head tilting delicately to one side. "Not quite," she said softly, her blue eyes shining with playfulness for a moment. "But once I'm back on a ship, I will be..."


[OFF]

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Galileo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
Instructor
Starfleet Academy

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