A/N: Thank you 29Pieces, SnidgetHex, and pallysAramisRios for reviewing!
"Anniversaries"
2395
The more years that passed, the more the pain of anniversaries blunted. It never faded completely, would always retain that bitter pang of guilt, self-loathing, and anguish. But Rios didn't drive himself into a destructive spiral again.
He holed himself up in his room, put on an antique track on Vandermeer's old record player, one of the few possessions Rios had salvaged from the ibn Majid and then his apartment before he'd been forced to flee Earth and Starfleet. The haunting sounds of Billie Holiday filled the room as Rios sank into his upholstered chair and popped open a bottle of liquor. Two glasses were set on the table, and he poured a drink into both of them. One for him, one for his old man.
The second glass was never touched; the second chair always sat empty. The gaping absence pricked Rios's chest like a knife.
He opened his cigar case and withdrew one. Lighting it up, he placed the cigar between his teeth and inhaled deeply, using the rhythmic in and out of the smoke to keep his breaths calm and steady.
I miss you, Pops.
It never got easier.
He just got used to it.
…
Unlike Rios's more tempered reaction to anniversaries now, Raffi retained her coping method of getting blackout drunk. She'd long given up trying to contact her son on his birthday. Like Rios, she locked herself in her room and replicated as much wine and vodka as she could.
Rios let her. He was in no place to judge.
But he did have the replicator monitored so that once she reached a certain point of alcohol consumption, the computer alerted him. Then Rios would get up and quietly go into her room. She was usually on the floor by then, too sloshed to protest as he gently took the bottle out of her lax grip and set it on the table before she could cross that threshold and poison herself. He slipped his arms beneath her and lifted her up, carrying her the few feet to the bed where he laid her down.
She moaned in discomfort and protest, a picture of misery only partly of her own making. Rios tenderly stroked back a frizzy curl from her forehead, then drew the blanket up over her shoulders and tucked her in. He moved around the room, picking up the empty liquor bottles and placing them back in the replicator for recycling. Then he turned out the lights and left.
He returned the next morning, slipping into the room without bothering with the door chime. Raffi was a lump under the blankets, head buried away from the soft ambient light from the ceiling panels. Rios went straight to the replicator and punched in the sequence for coffee. The earthy aroma filled the room, chasing away a bit of the odor of sweat and booze.
He sat on the edge of the mattress and waited for her to stir. He knew she knew he was there.
With a muffled grunt, Raffi slowly extricated herself from her burrow, scooting back a little to lean upright against the headboard. Rios wordlessly handed her the coffee, then with a parting squeeze to her knee, got up and left so she wouldn't find his presence a hovering nuisance.
It was their routine, after all.
…
It was the ten year anniversary of the Mars attack. Sitting in the mess hall of La Sirena, they listened to a transmission of the Starfleet memorial service. The voices that droned on sounded all the same. There was solemnity, a praise of resilience, a renewed vow to never allow a tragedy so heinous to ever happen again. And then of course the moment of silence honoring the lives lost on Mars.
Rios and Raffi nursed their alcohol in morose silence. Unlike what Starfleet was content to portray, they both knew there had been far more casualties from that singular event than just those on Mars—the Romulan people, abandoned as their sun went supernova and wiped out their planet, billions of lives lost; the survivors of both tragedies whose worlds had crumbled in an instant, left to pick up the pieces on their own.
And the people who fell through the cracks. Cast aside and forgotten. Who mourned them?
Rios and Raffi shared a commiserative look, their hands and glasses resting next to each other on the table. With a half-hearted clink, they drank to the shattered remnants of their lives.