AN: Here we are, another chapter here!
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"Where are we going?" Carol asked.
"The holodeck," Kathryn said nonchalantly.
Kathryn was on a break or something. Carol assumed that captains could take breaks when they needed them since, from what she could tell, Kathryn didn't keep a very regular schedule otherwise. She seemed to forego sleep often, and lived off coffee that she picked up throughout the day in the mess hall along with the occasional sweet treat that Neelix produced.
Carol often brought her trays to her ready room to try to force her to consume an actual meal. She seemed to always have something to read about or consider.
Carol also assumed that nobody ever told the captain "no," especially not when she pulled them off of duty in the mess hall, offered them an outfit, and then followed them back to their quarters to wait for them to change.
Carol didn't mind the athletic-wear very much. It wasn't exactly revealing, but it was a bit tighter than what she'd normally wear, especially given that it was made with a great deal more spandex than Carol would have ever considered acceptable. Kathryn's outfit wasn't much different, however, so she assumed this was simply the same as leotards and ankle-warmers had once been—their lot in life for hitting the gym.
Kathryn proclaimed that she'd just come from sickbay—though she hadn't elaborated on that—and she needed to blow off some steam. Carol just assumed, given the outfit, that she would be learning about aerobics four hundred years in the future.
They weren't going to the gym, though. It appeared they were going to the holodecks.
"Y'all have mentioned them before," Carol said, "but what exactly are the holodecks?"
"Simulation areas," Kathryn responded. Carol nearly had to jog to keep up with the woman, who seemed to be running on more energy than usual, despite the fact that her face would have suggested she was already tired from the events of the morning. "We have the technology to create programs that run within the holodecks. You can practically be transported to another world."
Carol realized she couldn't really understand or connect to what Kathryn was saying. There was a great deal on the ship that simply felt outside of her comprehension. Instead of understanding it, really, she was focusing on simply accepting it.
She stopped with Kathryn when the woman stopped at a control panel.
"So, what are we—are we working out? What are we doing?" Carol asked.
"Target practice," Kathryn said. "As a game. Because—I need to blow of a little steam, and you need to eventually learn how to use a phaser." She touched the control panel. "Computer—load Janeway Velocity program Beta Four." Kathryn smiled at Carol. "We'll start easy. Let you work your way up."
Carol didn't have time to respond. She didn't know how to respond, really. She simply followed Kathryn into the room when the doors opened in front of them.
They stepped into a room that might have been a storage area at a Costco for all Carol knew. From a rack of things, Kathryn took a phaser. She passed one over to Carol.
Carol had seen the weapons on the belts of various people on the ship, but she hadn't actually held one before. It was much lighter than she thought it would be, and it was easy to hold. Kathryn also took a disc that she activated in some way and practically sat in the air. It hovered in front of them.
"This is just for beginners," Kathryn said. "We're set on the lowest setting. As you get more comfortable with the phaser and your aim improves, we can increase the setting."
Carol swallowed back her amusement.
Kathryn had no reason to know that Carol's aim wasn't too bad. She'd never asked, and Carol had never offered that information. There was no offense meant in Kathryn's choice of the lowest setting of her game.
"What's the object of the game?" Carol asked.
"Hit the target," Kathryn said.
Carol laughed.
"That's it? Just—hit the target?"
"Once we start, it'll be a moving target," Kathryn said. "And the game will keep score. So—I guess—your goal is to hit the target more often than I do. At least—at this level of the game."
"The rules change as we get better?" Carol asked.
Kathryn smiled.
"The rules always change, Carol, as you move up the ranks," Kathryn said with a wink. "Firing is easy. You just push that trigger button. Don't worry about missing. These phasers are just for the game. Even if you were to hit me directly, you wouldn't hurt me."
The captain looked thrilled just to be playing a game with her. Carol assumed, though, that just like people probably seldom told Kathryn "no" when she wanted something, they probably seldom actually did things like played games with her. Carol, however, wasn't one of her crew. Carol was just another woman who happened to be living with her on the same ship.
Carol shrugged.
"Let's play," she offered. Kathryn looked pleased. She moved some distance away from Carol as if to give them room to move around.
"Free shot to you," Kathryn said. "Just—so you get a little of the feel of things. You want to just aim at the target. Keep your hand as steady as you can. Keep your eye on the spot you want to hit, and then you just fire."
"I think I've got the idea," Carol offered.
She didn't want to come off as too cocky. She'd never fired one of the little guns and, for all she knew, it may fire entirely differently from any weapon she'd somewhat mastered on Earth. She used the first shot as just what Kathryn suggested it should be—an opportunity to get the feeling of the weapon. It required hardly any touch to send the laser beam toward the disc, and there was no kickback. It was almost like a toy more than an actual weapon. Carol made solid contact with the disc and sent it sailing away.
"Good shot!" Kathryn yelped.
Carol was wholeheartedly surprised when the disc made a sharp turn, increased its speed, and whizzed back in Kathryn's direction. It came straight for her, and she raised her own weapon, fired on it, and sent it backward with the hit. Almost immediately, the disc corrected its course and came zooming toward Carol as fast as if it had been pitched at her.
She heard herself laugh before her body even fully registered the pleasure that bubbled up inside of her over the game. She heard Kathryn laugh, too, as she raised her phaser and sent the disc off on another trip around the room that reminded her of an empty warehouse.
"You didn't say it was an attack target!" Carol barked, not feeling genuinely angry at all.
"Did I forget that part?" Kathryn teased. Each of them fired off another round of defense against the target. Carol stepped to the side, but her movement didn't matter. When the target was set on her, it tracked her. "You didn't tell me you could aim so well."
"Did I forget that part?" Carol shot back, laughing to herself at Kathryn's expression as she dodged the disc that swooped toward her head.
Kathryn commanded to the computer that it could up the intensity of the program and the two of them moved further apart to allow more room for the disc to hurl itself around and attack on either one of them. Even though the intensity increased, though, the game was still casual enough to be enjoyable. It was relaxing instead of stressful, and Carol enjoyed sharing laughter with her playing partner over nothing more than the silly movements each of them had to make in order to dodge the erratic target as it moved to attack them.
"I needed this," Kathryn mused as they played. "I left strict orders not to call me for at least an hour over something that someone else can handle."
Carol laughed to herself.
"Are you talking about what happened at the mess hall this morning?" Carol asked. Kathryn's exasperated sigh told her that she was right. "We tried to break it up. I've never seen two people more determined to…to do that, there, than they were."
"I wish that were the worst thing going on," Kathryn said. "I don't know what's gotten into everyone around here, but I'm determined to find out. The problem is, I can't seem to concentrate. And I'm no good at solving riddles if I can't even think."
Carol didn't say anything, but she felt her gut clench at Kathryn's words. She hadn't been able to concentrate all day long. She'd been constantly in and out of something like a fog. She'd come close, actually, to burning her hand on a flame, and the only thing that had stopped her was Neelix physically moving her.
The worst part was that she couldn't even explain what had her so distracted beyond calling it some kind of schoolgirl fixation.
She'd woken that morning to find the bed empty. Daryl had left early for his shift, and she'd felt such a profound sadness over his empty half of the bed that she'd been ashamed of herself. Daryl was her best friend. He'd been her best friend for years. She absolutely could not imagine her life without him. But she had no hold over him. She didn't control him. She certainly had no reason to feel sad that he'd gone to work without saying goodbye.
Her sadness had given way to an unexpected, and somewhat out of left field, wave of desire that she couldn't ignore like she usually could when she found herself wanting something more with Daryl. She wished he was still in the bed. She wished she did have some hold over him. She wished he'd woken her before he'd gone on his shift with something very specific in mind.
She'd been embarrassed, hot-faced, and nervous when she'd requested a vibrator from the magic machine that produced something from nothing. She'd worried that, hundreds of years in the future, people had outgrown sex or, at the very least, had outgrown sexual accoutrements in favor of something she didn't even know existed and could never discover unless, by some strange chance, someone let such knowledge slip. She'd been pleasantly surprised when, instead of telling her that vibrators no longer existed, the computer gave her list after list of specifications she could choose from to design the absolute toy of her dreams.
Carol had arrived a little late to her shift in the mess hall, disheveled, and still pinning her hair up. Neelix was an easy boss, though, and he didn't say anything about her tardiness.
She also arrived with her knees feeling very much like jelly. She was distracted, thinking about when she'd next sneak a session with the toy tucked away in her clothing drawer, when the couple had decided to have an intimate experience at a table in the corner. Neelix had tried to talk them out of their fraternization, as he'd called it, but they'd seemed practically unable to even hear him or Carol talking to them.
And even though Carol had thought she'd probably quenched her thirst for a while, seeing them making out like they were had only reminded her that she hoped for another round with the toy soon—especially since that was likely as good as things were going to get. Daryl, after all, possibly didn't even see her that way. He may hardly even see her as a woman. She was his friend and, she knew, he'd been very standoffish with women in the past. Even the women she'd tried to push him toward—wondering if she saw some spark of interest there—he'd refused to entertain.
She would never do anything to make him uncomfortable. But he didn't have to know who she thought about when she was alone and entertaining herself.
"That's one reason you're really lucky, you know?" Kathryn said.
Carol jumped. She fired at the disc. She'd been daydreaming. She'd lost herself in her thoughts. There was no telling how much she'd missed. Somehow, she'd continued to fire at the target even while she'd been so far away. It had to be some leftover reflex from spending so many years of her life functioning in the "on" position while danger lurked around every single corner.
"Lucky?" Carol asked. She smiled at Kathryn when the woman furrowed her brow at her and returned the disc.
"Lucky," Kathryn said.
"I'm sorry—why, again?" Carol asked, hating that she may have missed any number of things that Kathryn had wanted to share with her.
"Daryl," Kathryn said. "A long-standing relationship like that. Most of the crew left somebody at home if there was somebody at all. I know that being—being brought onboard might not have been something wonderful that happened to you, but at least you came together. I'm happy for that. At least the Araulians brought you here together."
Carol was struck, hard, by the realization of what Kathryn had said as it seeped into her mind.
She thought that they were in a long-standing relationship, and Carol got the distinct feeling she wasn't referring to a long-standing friendship. Immediately, Carol's heart pounded in her chest. She didn't know how to tell Kathryn she was wrong and, more than that, her mind immediately screamed a half a dozen questions at her about what it was, exactly, that had led the otherwise observant and astute woman to form such a hypothesis.
"Carol!" Kathryn barked.
Carol saw the disc hurtling toward her. She might have imagined that, moving as fast as it was, it was going to hurt when it made contact, but it slowed almost to stillness before it delicately touched against her and then backed off.
"Contact," the computer announced. "Match to Janeway."
Kathryn laughed.
"What happened?" She asked, walking over. "You didn't even try to hit it."
"I guess—I got distracted," Carol said, not sure how to even address the situation.
"No bother, really," Kathryn offered. "We can start it over."
As though the ship heard her, her combadge chirped immediately.
"Chakotay to Janeway."
Kathryn gave Carol a playful eyeroll.
"Go ahead, Commander," she said, a smile on her face instead of the half-scowl she'd worn earlier.
"You're needed in engineering," Chakotay responded.
"Is this not something that you can handle, Commander?" Kathryn asked. "I'm on break for at least another half an hour."
"I really think this is something you need to be involved with, Captain," Chakotay responded.
"Same as what's been going on all day, Commander?" Kathryn asked.
"A little more serious, perhaps," Chakotay responded. There was some genuine urgency to his voice. Carol was certain that Kathryn heard it, too.
"Understood," Kathryn said. "I'll come directly there. Janeway out." Kathryn looked at Carol and sighed. "You don't have to come. You can change, instead. I'm going straight there, though. I'll change after I see what fires need to be put out."
"I'm coming," Carol said. "I'd like to know what's going on."
Kathryn nodded her understanding.
"Computer, end program," Kathryn said.
Everything around them vanished, including the hovering disc and the phaser that Carol held in her hand. They were still in the warehouse type room, though, and Carol followed Kathryn into the corridors. Whether she was in her uniform or her workout clothes, Kathryn still had a certain regal quality to her. That remained true even as she half-jogged through the corridors with Carol on her heels.
Carol hadn't been to engineering yet, but she got a feeling that she didn't want to miss whatever was taking place.
