Chapter Text
Part Five
Once the Bounty and the Kendra had returned to Kervala Prime, the repair work had been completed much faster than before. Because this time, Denella found that she had a lot more help from the others.
Having been told about the final moments of the battle with the Pakleds, she understood entirely why Klath had enthusiastically volunteered to help, the Klingon wanting to get away from here as quickly as possible. She was less clear on the reasons for Jirel and Natasha offering their own help, nor why they seemed eager to work on separate parts of the ship so often, as if they didn’t want to be left alone with each other. But either way, she was happy for the help.
As a result, the repairs to the Bounty were coming along well enough without her constant attention, and she had been free to focus on fixing up the Kendra with Erami. The battered Ferengi shuttle was now spaceworthy once again, well ahead of schedule.
Which was good news for her reputation as an engineer, but bad news for what she found was an increasing desire to spend time with the Bajoran.
Not that she could quite find a way to articulate that desire.
“So,” Erami smiled as she stood next to the open door of the Kendra, “I guess this is goodbye?”
“I mean,” Denella shrugged, “Repairs are all done. Unless you want me to disable the computer’s audio settings? It’s an easy job.”
“Nah. It’s annoying, but at least it gives me someone to talk to out there.”
Denella nodded, then kicked her feet on the metal landing bay. An uncomfortable silence started to foment between them, neither one quite ready to separate entirely.
“You know,” the Orion said eventually, “I wasn’t really happy with the work we did on the power junctions of the sensor array. It might be best if we strip them down completely and replace—”
“I get it,” Erami smiled, stopping her transparent attempt to prolong their time together, “But I’ve got places to be. And I’m sure you and your crew do as well.”
“They won’t care,” Denella shrugged, “Plenty of bars over in the port.”
Erami suppressed a laugh, then folded her arms and sighed, a little more seriously. “Ok, cards on the table. If I stayed so you could pretend to do whatever you want with those power junctions, and I went and booked another fancy dinner and put that - I’m just gonna say it - incredibly uncomfortable dress back on, would you run away again?”
Denella began to shake her head, but faltered immediately under the weight of the truth. There was no real point in lying.
“I, um, I might just do a fast walk this time?”
“That’s kinda what I thought,” Erami nodded sadly.
“Right,” Denella sighed, “I guess I’m not really ready for…all that.”
“And that’s cool. Still, I had a lot of fun.”
“So did I,” Denella replied, with complete sincerity, before adding, “Apart from when you nearly got me killed by a bunch of marauding Pakleds.”
“What can I say? My dates are memorable, at least. And now I know you’re less of a ‘fancy restaurant’ gal and more of a ‘pitched battle to the death inside a nebula’ gal.”
They shared a laugh, before Denella looked a little more serious again. “You wanna…keep in touch?”
“Try and stop me. I wanna know all about what you’re getting up to. And any time you wanna grab a picnic, I’ll be there.”
She paused and gestured back at the Kendra.
“Eventually. Big galaxy, slow ship.”
Denella smiled again. Both of them paused and shifted on their feet slightly, aware that they had probably reached the natural end of their conversation without wanting to acknowledge that it was over.
Then, Erami had a spark of a thought, slapping her forehead with her hand in exasperation. “Crap, I’m so stupid. Almost forgot. I got you something.”
She jumped up the steps and disappeared into the Kendra for a moment. A variety of clattering sounds indicated the intensity of the search she was conducting inside.
“Now,” she called out from inside as she searched, “Before you say anything, I know how lame this is. But…I told you there was a trader on Kervala Prime who gets deliveries from the Orpheus System, right?”
Denella immediately tensed up on hearing the name of her old home. But then Erami emerged from the Kendra with her present, and she felt her heart melt.
“I, um, just hope it’s the right one.”
The Bajoran stepped down from the shuttle’s door and handed her a single deep orange flower growing in a ceramic pot. A particular flower that, as soon as the Orion woman saw it, brought an emotional tear to her eye as she fought back a wave of memories from her childhood.
“That—It’s—” she tried to say.
“I thought, I dunno, you could do some sort of clever analysis of it. Try to figure out how to program the scent right in those holosuite programs of yours.”
Denella stifled the tears that were building up inside as she took the flower from Erami’s hands. She braced herself, closed her eyes, leaned in towards the petals, and gently sniffed.
She was back at home. With her mother and father. And everything was good.
She opened her moistened eyes and blinked away the stray tears as she looked back at Erami, who smiled back at her.
“Thank you.”
She was happy.
So happy, in fact, that she didn’t even think about flinching as Erami wrapped her arms around her and gave her a warm hug, and a gentle kiss goodbye.
“Now,” Erami added, brushing away a tear of her own as she stepped back, “I really gotta go. Heard a Kobheerian cruiser just arrived in orbit. And if you thought the Pakleds were bad, you should see what I took from them.”
A long, telling pause, as Denella stared back in incredulity.
“Kidding. Obviously.”
With an enigmatic grin, Juna Erami turned and disappeared back inside the Kendra, closing the door behind her. Still clutching onto the flower in the pot, Denella stepped back to a safe distance to watch the Ferengi shuttle leave. And she decided that she wasn’t going to check whether any Kobheerian ships really had arrived in orbit today.
Best not to know about that.
* * * * *
The Kendra lifted off just as Klath, Jirel and Natasha were descending the Bounty’s rear ramp, on their way for another evening in the port itself after a long day of repair work. They reached the bottom of the ramp just as they saw K’Veth approaching them.
Jirel and Natasha shared a quick glance, and decided to give the Klingons some space.
“We’ll, um, see you there,” Jirel muttered.
Klath ignored him as they walked off, both mustering awkward nods at K’Veth as they passed. She walked up to Klath, who stood proudly next to the Bounty’s ramp.
“I thought you should know,” she began, “I have re-booked passage away from here.”
“The Brakka system?” Klath asked, recalling her previously planned destination, but finding that he didn’t really care much what her answer would be.
She nodded. Klath remained stoic, keeping his hands clasped behind his back.
“That would be for the best,” he added.
“Klath, son of Morad,” she sighed, “I truly thought that I was—”
“I know. I should have taken better command of the situation. It was your first battle, you were in charge of the weapons, I should have—”
“You still make excuses for me? Do your feelings really run that deep?”
Klath stiffened slightly, then looked down at her for the first time since the conversation had begun, fixing his gaze directly on her. “No,” he said firmly, “Those…feelings have passed.”
“They have?”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“They have,” he confirmed with a firm nod.
He was lying. He knew he was lying. He may no longer have par’Mach, but he definitely still felt something for her. Still, the important thing was for him to make sure that she didn’t know that he was lying.
She studied his face. He maintained a firm glare, as if he was staring out at a wild targ on a hunt back in the forests of Qo’noS. He may have still felt something for her, but he also knew that it was destined not to work. Not after what had happened in the nebula, in a manner that was so inexorably linked with the memories of his own dishonour.
And so, he kept his expression as firm as he could, burying whatever else he felt deep down inside him. And eventually, she nodded in acceptance.
“I see,” she replied, “Then that is how it shall be.”
He didn’t move. He didn’t even respond.
She gave him one last look, and gestured to his now blemish-free cheek. “You look a finer man now that is gone,” she said, more softly.
And with that, she turned and walked away across the landing pad. And Klath resisted every urge he felt to pursue her, instead watching her walk off the landing pad until she disappeared from view and back into the covered walkway that led back to the main port itself.
It was only when he finally turned away that he noticed he wasn’t alone.
“Hey,” Denella smiled apologetically, “I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t listening, don’t worry.”
The Kendra had long gone, up into the atmosphere and away from Kervala Prime, but Denella had kept a respectful distance from the two Klingons, only making her way over with the flower in the pot after K’Veth had left.
Klath felt a tinge of embarrassment at having more of his personal matters aired in public, but he maintained an outwardly calm expression. “It does not matter,” he offered to his friend, “The…situation is over.”
“Right,” she nodded, “I’m sorry. You ok?”
“Yes,” he replied. Another lie.
“Wanna go get drunk with the others?”
“Yes,” he replied.
That one wasn’t a lie.
* * * * *
“I mean, it’s probably for the best. What the hell do you even buy a Klingon for a wedding present, anyway?”
Natasha and Jirel sat together at a table on the lower level of the Treaty of Organia, with two tall glasses of Altair water in front of them. Even though it had been a long, hard day of repairs, they had both instinctively avoided ordering any sort of hard liquor. Natasha had silently sworn it off for a while.
“I dunno,” Jirel shrugged as he considered her question, “I’m assuming something with a lot of sharp edges.”
They shared a slight chuckle, lifting the awkward tension that had set in between them. To the point that Jirel wondered if it was acceptable to soberly broach the unbroachable topic.
“So,” he began, absently swirling the water in his glass, “About—”
“Is this gonna be about the other night?”
“…No?”
It was a feeble lie, even by his own standards, and one that elicited an unhappy raised eyebrow from his drinking partner.
“Ok, fine,” Natasha sighed, “If you really want to do this: What happened happened. There’s no point denying that. We were drunk, we were maybe feeling a bit lonely, and…it happened. But that’s the end of it. It meant nothing, and any residual feelings you might have is just because we work together, and we’ve become…friends over the past year. And that’s that. Ok?”
“That’s what you’re going with?”
She knew it wasn’t the full truth. She knew that she had felt something a bit more than just a random drunken fumble. But she was equally sure that would pass. And she was definitely sure that she didn’t want to get into the full truth. Especially not in a theme bar staffed by waitresses in gaudy 23rd century Starfleet mini dresses.
“That’s what we’re both going with,” she corrected him with an air of complete certainty, “And that’s the end of it.”
Jirel studied her face for a moment and sipped his drink.
“Ok,” he nodded eventually, “That’s the end of it.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly,” he echoed, “And, the next time we’re both a bit drunk, and a bit lonely—”
“The next time, I’ll deal with it some other way. Actually, when we walked in here tonight, I’m pretty sure that cute Andorian at the bar was checking me out.”
“What?” Jirel jumped in, a little too quickly, “An Andorian? Blue skin? White hair? Weird…antennae things?”
She nodded, maintaining an entirely innocent air as her drinking partner became more and more wound up. “I like the antennae,” she shrugged, “You know, apparently, the bigger the antennae, the bigger the—”
“You know what? I really don’t think we need to…”
He stopped himself as he saw the smirk that was taking root on her face.
“Right,” he nodded in understanding, “You’re messing with me. Again.”
“Just making sure you understand that there won’t be a next time.”
“A next time for what?”
The two seated figures quickly turned at the sound of the new voice and saw Denella and Klath arriving at their table, both without the women they had spent most of their time with on Kervala Prime up to this point. They couldn’t help but notice that the Orion looked a little happier with themselves than the Klingon, who seemed even more surly than usual.
“Oh,” Natasha floundered, “A next time for, um—”
“A next time for us to bail you out of one of your dates,” Jirel offered with a grin, gamely covering for Natasha’s flustered discomfort.
Denella took the comment on the chin, surprising herself by how unfazed she was by it.
“Yeah, fine. It was a date. And…it was nice.”
Natasha looked visibly gleeful at this, but was stopped from saying anything by a hasty raised finger from the Orion.
“But there won’t be another one for a while. So you can just go ahead and park girly time for now, ok?”
Natasha looked a little upset by this. Jirel just looked confused, before he turned to Klath.
“What about you, buddy?”
Klath looked at the others around the table a little uncomfortably, before he reluctantly shrugged his burly shoulders. “The joining will not be happening. And…I am fine.”
He cut off any follow-up questions before they arrived by studying the drinks menu on the old tricorder in the middle of the table, just as a waitress in a medical mini dress toddled over to the table, clipboard at the ready.
“What can I get for you folks?”
It didn’t take long for Klath to locate what he was looking for.
“Bloodwine,” he grunted.
The waitress smiled and nodded gamely. “Excellent choice. Right now, we have a case of the—”
“Yes,” he replied, “Two bottles.”
The waitress took this in her stride and noted down the order, as Denella took a moment to glance over the menu herself.
“Can I get a…Bajoran springwine?”
“Aw—!” Natasha began.
“Seriously,” the Orion cautioned, “Don’t do that.”
The chastened Natasha nodded back as the waitress scribbled the order down on her old-school clipboard, before looking over at Jirel. “By the way,” she asked, “Are you Jirel Vincent?”
Jirel nodded back at her in affirmation. The waitress casually gestured over to the other side of the room.
“There’s a message for you, just came in,” she explained, “At the bar.”
The Trill looked at his colleagues and shrugged, before he stood up and walked over in the direction of the bar. The waitress also departed, to fetch their chosen drinks.
Just as she leaned back in her seat and sipped her water, Natasha saw someone else in the crowded bar, walking towards them.
“Oh my god…” she whispered.
Klath and Denella turned around to where she was looking, and saw a familiar form arrive at the table and flop down into an empty seat, looking even more dishevelled than usual.
Sunek looked around the group from under a mop of wilfully untidy hair. His face appeared to be covered in several small, but painful-looking scratches, and his garish Hawaiian shirt of choice seemed to be torn in several places.
“Well, well, well,” Natasha couldn’t resist the opportunity to say, “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Despite the scratches, and the slightly pained wince he made when he sat down, Sunek found it within himself to muster up a grin. “And you said it couldn’t be done, doc,” he scoffed, “That Caitian lady couldn’t get enough of me, I tell you.”
“Looks that way,” Denella nodded, glancing at a fresh wound on his arm with a wry smile of amusement.
“Oh yeah,” the Vulcan continued, “Spaceport fling complete. Caitian lady’s world rocked. Bucket list item ticked off. Dunno what you idiots have been up to while I’ve been away, but frankly I bet it paled in comparison with the Erotic Adventures of Sunek.”
Natasha suppressed a slight shudder at that particular title, while Denella shrugged in an entirely unconvinced manner. Klath merely growled quietly.
After a moment, the grin slipped slightly from Sunek’s scratched-up features, and he looked over at Natasha with a slightly more sheepish expression. “Hey, um,” he muttered, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “We got anything back on the ship to treat…claw marks?”
He coughed a few times to clear his throat.
“Also, hairballs—?”
“Oh god, please, no more,” Natasha cut in quickly, holding her hands up in defeat, “I will treat you when we get back if you promise to never tell me the rest of this story.”
Sunek shrugged and reattached his grin to his face, just as Jirel returned to the table. “Hey Jirel,” the Vulcan proudly called out as the Trill sat down, “Who’s got two pointed ears and totally made it with a—?”
Sunek’s unnecessary question was interrupted by the clattering sound of Jirel dropping a small padd device down onto the table in front of everyone. Everyone could see that something was wrong. Mainly because he was completely ignoring the state of Sunek, which warranted some sort of comment now more than ever.
Instead, he looked around the table, and then down to the padd, containing the message that had been left for him at the bar.
“Trouble?” Klath grunted, his senses immediately back on edge.
Jirel flicked the padd on and sat down in his seat. The others craned their necks to get a view of the screen of the device.
The padd itself was clearly a proprietary item from The Treaty of Organia. Built to resemble an old-fashioned flip-top Starfleet communicator, albeit with a small touchpad screen where the old hand controls would have been.
As far as Natasha could make out, all that was displayed on the screen was a simple string of numbers, followed by a small single ‘x’. She recognised the meaning of both the numbers and the single letter immediately.
They were a set of specific coordinates. Sealed with a kiss.
She looked back at Jirel, who now had a face like thunder.
“What is it?” she asked, in all seriousness.
Jirel grimaced deeper, then nodded at Klath, indicating that the Klingon had been right with his initial supposition.
“Trouble.”
The End