Turmoil in the Turbolift

As soon as the ship was on its way and an ensign took over the monitoring of the ship's basic functions, it was time for T'Pren to not be on the bridge. Or anywhere near Rai. Or anywhere near anyone. In fact, she was thinking she might go put on some workout clothes and go beat the shit out of some holographic Cardassians with her bare hands, Vulcan-style. And maybe she'd pretend some of them were Rai. Maybe.

So the moment she was dismissed, she made her way to the turbolift and stepped inside, putting her back against the far wall and getting ready to let out such a relieved sigh once the doors closed and blocked out the world.

He wanted to check in on engineering, just to check the core stability and drive output. As long as Pren wasn't heading there. But then, he saw the back of her small brown head, facing away from him. He held his breath and stepped on the turbolift. He cleared his throat. "Engineering," he said.

Aaaaand there he was. T'Pren could feel Rai as soon as the door opened and she immediately stepped off to one side to give him plenty of space. To give herself plenty of space. She was an emotional mess -- mostly with anxiety surrounding the mission and her fathers -- and as the Captain entered the lift, there was a sharp spike in feelings of hurt and betrayal. But her expression didn't change and she didn't so much as make eye contact. Her hands clasped professionally behind her back and she stared directly ahead like a very good officer.

For a moment, his head swam with the possibility of things to say, and found none. He swallowed. Now probably wasn't the time, he considered. Perhaps he could clear things up when they're off duty, he thought. There had to be a way to postpone this. Which is when the turbolift came to a grinding halt, and blacked out.

T'Pren's jaw dropped. Hard. "You've got to be kidding me," she told the lift in a murmur that was practically a growl. She still wasn't going to look at Rai -- she had decided stubbornly -- and to make that more likely, she went immediately to the panel to start taking it apart so she could see about fixing things. And she mumbled curses under her breath. Some really, really spectacular ones.

"Rai to bridge? Turbo lift 1 seems to be down with us on it, could you check our power conduits? I think we've had a shortage," he said.
"I can confirm you had a plasma overheat in vent 18.81, you're going to have to do a manual override," said a bridge officer.
"Inabnet is already on it," he said. "Rai out."
He slid down to the floor.
"I can't have you angry with me for the rest of this mission Pren, we need to talk this out."

The space between T'Pren's shoulders stiffened when Rai said her name, and, worse, said he wanted to talk it out. "With all due respect, Captain," she replied coolly, playing his boundary-setting game, "I should concentrate on the override."

She kept her back to him and concentrated on the task at hand, which, due to the aforementioned anger, meant she jerked a little too hard to pull the panel from the wall and sent it clattering to the floor. "Dammit!"

"Are you okay?" he asked, genuinely concerned that she might have hurt herself.

"I'm fine," she insisted gruffly, scowling at her fingers, which did, in fact, sting a little, and then at the wiring behind the wall. She hunkered closer to it in the dark and squinted to make out what she had to work with.

"Okay, how about I just talk, then. You can stay cross with me, and that's your right, but I feel like there are some crucial things about me that you've missed. For example, the reason things couldn't have worked out between us is that I prefer men over women. I really would have liked things between us to work out. I wanted them to." He finally breathed after that long speech, and waited for her reply.

While she worked, T'Pren prepared herself for whatever it was Rai was going to say. But this was certainly not what she'd expected. She stopped working and stared blankly at the open panel for an exceptionally long time before she finally asked, her voice a low mixture of aloof and irritable with a cream filling of hurt, "Then why would you want me?"

She still refused to look at him, but at least he had her attention.

"Because you're beautiful, and sweet and I thought I might like it if I tried it," he said.

The anger wasn't gone for good. It was, like all good horror movie monsters, merely hiding long enough to let Pren and Rai feel safe. So while it appeared that the little halfie's anger melted away, looks may have been deceiving.

She softened considerably at that, letting her shoulders drop and crossing her arms in front of her chest. Was there a panel to play with? The science officer is distracted. "But you didn't," she finished the story for him quietly.

"Like I said before, it was the wrong thing to do," he swallowed. "I hope you can forgive me. I also feel you should know that I've never seen Val for any services beyond a shoulder rub and an ear to talk to. I told him he could say, whatever he wanted, and that was a mistake. I certainly wasn't, during the time we had together. I wanted to make that clear," he said. This time his voice was thicker with remorse.

There was not much to be done for the massive, roiling river of terror and anxiety moving through T'Pren at any given time, but the tributaries adding into it, the intense betrayal, the heart hurt, the abandonment...these things smoothed over like steamed satin and then the river was a little less, a little calmer. But not by much.

The half-Vulcan gave up on fixing the panel for now and finally, with a deep breath, turned around to face Rai, to make eye contact with him. "Was it really not good for you at all?" she needed to know, her brow furrowing with the worry that maybe it was her. She dropped awkwardly down to her knees in front of him and sat back on her heels.

"It's not that it was expressly not good, it's that it's not right for me."

That took T'Pren some time to mull over before she finally gave up and sat down cross-legged facing the Captain. She studied him carefully, looking for answers in his face, and also held out her hand to take his. "You mean because what you wanted was a man?"

He held her hand gingerly, letting her get a quick glimpse of his mind, which was very earnestly remorseful. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

With each of Rai's answers, T'Pren took her time deciding how she felt about each one of them and what she wanted to say or what else she needed to know. And because she was desperate for contact anyway, she wrapped her fingers more tightly around his. It was the only thing that soothed the raging current of anxiety.

"I'm not sure if I can trust you," she admitted finally, and that was where the big hurt was coming from. Not being passed over. Not jealous. But the betrayal of her trust. "I told you that all I wanted was to not hear it from someone else. And you told me there wasn't anything to tell, but that I'd know from you. But you'd already sent Val that note. And then last night..." She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes, pushing her hands over her face. She was, all in all, surprisingly calm. Not quite the mental cataclysm Rai and Val had predicted.

"I didn't know what else to do," he said. "You were falling for me so fast, I was overwhelmed and I didn't want it to get any worse."

There was irritation at that response and though Pren held onto Rai's hand so she could connect to him more directly, her expression said that she'd rather be crossing her arms and frowning at him deeply. "No, I don't care about that right now. All I care about, Darren, is: did you lie to me? Or purposefully mislead me? Did you use me? And if any of those is true, then I want how and I want why."

"No! I was just confused," he said.

"Confused about what?" T'Pren demanded, her brow knitted in ire and needful determination as she studied her Captain. "Confused about me? Confused about you? I just...if you prefer men and you know you prefer men, you...thought you might try female and see how it went? I don't..." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, intent on calming herself down. "What did you think...what did you hope was going to happen?"

"I told you, I thought I might learn to like it."

What began as another argumentative response fell away into something softer, something deeper. "But why me?" she asked again, softly this time and with emotion tightening her voice. "Why not someone like Lorelei? And why...why were you trying to learn to like it?"