Chapter Four: Conflict
AN: I don't own seaQuest. I forgot about this – again – for like a year, now, I think. But last week the SciFi channel had three whole days of seaQuest. Yes, three. And I thought, "Hey, what happened to that story….?" This is short. I'm trying to get my bearings again. :op
The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said. –Vaclav Havel
Sheila nearly fell off her bed at the angry knock on her door. And in the process, she almost impaled herself on Thingamabob. She had been trying to study for the history quiz she was supposed to take in the morning, but someone obviously had other ideas.
"Lucas!" she said in surprise after opening the door. She certainly hadn't expected the angry knock to come from him. She figured Westphalen had finally noticed that Sheila had knocked over and 'rearranged' the files on her desk when she had been hiding the other day. "What's up? You really need to get Thingamabob out of here. He almost killed me."
"How could you?" Lucas nearly spat the words at her. "How could you tell your father? You had to have known he would call her." Lucas started pacing around Sheila's room in agitation.
"Lucas, I didn't do it on purpose. He knew something was bothering me. I had to tell him. He was worried!" Sheila figured after talking to her father, he must have gone straight to Lucas' mother. She should have seen this coming. It was so like him.
"Yeah, well, you could have told him something else." Lucas stopped pacing, and glared at her.
"I'm sorry, Lucas. I am so sorry. I didn't tell him to hurt you or betray you or get you in trouble with your mother, or anything like that. I swear that wasn't my intention. I didn't even think that he would-" Sheila didn't get to finish her sentence before Lucas started in on her again.
"That's your problem! You didn't think! You assume that you or your father can fix every single little problem that happens to everyone. Well, you can't. And I won't be your little project. Stay away from me, and stay out of my life." Lucas turned and left her room, without so much as a second glance.
"Lucas!" Sheila followed him out into the hallway. "Lucas! Wait! Just listen!" She realized that he wasn't going to stop and he definitely wasn't going to listen. She didn't know what to do. She had screwed up, and now it was unclear if she and Lucas would ever be friends.
two days later
Krieg walked into the mess hall and looked around for a place to sit. Well, he could either sit on one side of the room with Lucas, O'Neil, and Ortiz, or he could sit on the other side with Sheila, Hitchcock, and Ford. He did not like having to pick sides. On the one hand, he knew why Lucas was angry. The poor kid didn't have many people he could trust and he obviously felt he had made a mistake in trusting Sheila. On the other hand, Krieg didn't think that Sheila had told her father about Lucas' mother with the intent of hurting him or betraying him. In fact, Krieg wasn't sure how much Sheila was even talking to her father, which led him to believe that she hadn't known her father would contact Lucas' mother.
Krieg sighed as both Hitchcock and Ortiz waved him over. He went to sit at an empty table in the middle of the room. He had to do something about this whole dilemna – and not just because he was the ship's morale officer. He hated eating lunch alone.