Mediation

Posted on Sun Nov 3rd, 2019 @ 11:53pm by Captain Henry Crow & Commander Edra Crow & Lieutenant Aemilia "Millie" Stepanova

Mission: Bless the Maker
Location: Ready Room
Timeline: MD 1

Edra walked across the Ready Room as the doors closed. This was not how she had seen this day going. At the same time, she couldn't say she was exactly surprised. But whatever was going on, it needed to be nipped in the bud right now. She took off her dress uniform jacket. Maybe it would set her apart enough to be the arbiter here. "Both of you sit," she said as she hung it up.

Knowing that she was now stuck in a room with BOTH the Captain and the XO, Millie sat---perhaps with more of an angry huff than she intended.

Henry walked around the desk and sat. "Why do I feel like I just got called into the head master's office?"

"We wouldn't be in here if you weren't dodging me." Millie's brow furrowed in frustration.

"No, we wouldn't be in here if you knew how to show some respect and knew how to use some tact!"

"Maybe if you treated me like an officer and not a small child," Millie's voice raised in frustration, "I wouldn't have to resort to acts of desperation to get you to talk to me!"

"Will both of you lay off!" Edra yelled over them both, emphasis on the last two words, as she walked back toward them. She looked sternly at Henry. "Neither of you are acting like officers, and you, over there," she pointed to the chair next to Millie. "I'm the counselor this time."

He stood after a moment and took the assigned seat, noting it wasn't as comfortable as his usual one.

"Good," she said, taking her place behind the desk."While we are here, there will only be one person talking at a time, understood?"

Henry nodded in silence. Millie likewise nodded.

She leaned forward over the desk as she spoke. She wasn't normally one to get mad, but this had gone too far. "Now, the display I saw between you two down there was abhorent! At the moment, the only good thing I can see is that we didn't have anyone who wasn't a part of this crew attending this send off. Which, I might add, is akin to a funeral. Your little spat was not only unprofessional, but irreverent. Can anyone disagree with that?"

"All I wanted to do was to meet with him. Talk about the fact that we had to retrieve these officers in the state that they were in." Millie gestured to the Captain. "He's dodged me. Made appointments and not shown. Shuffled me out of his office with every possible excuse." She folded her arms in front of her. "He could have just said 'yes' without making a scene."

Edra turned her glare to Millie. "I asked if you disagreed with my words, not for excuses, Lieutenant. Would you like to answer the question?"

Millie opened her mouth for a brief moment to say something, but thought better of it. She clenched her jaw and stared at the wall behind Henry's desk, not speaking.

When there was no answer, Edra took it as no disagreement, then turned to Henry for his answer. "Captain?"

He gave a slight shrug but didn't argue the point.

Edra backed up and sat down. She didn't like being here. She was the one to deal with interpersonal issues that couldn't be solved on their own, but she hadn't had to do it for senior officers before. "You both keep mentioning what the other did wrong. Can either of you say what you did wrong, or right?"

He almost said 'agreeing to this little meeting' but he wanted to keep breathing so he leaned back in the chair instead. "I should have corrected her in private."

Millie sighed. "You should have come to talk to me sooner."

"When I have something to talk about I'll let you know."

Millie's brow furrowed. "Should I list off all the things you haven't talked about in the last two years?" She leaned in towards Henry. "Your wife being brainwashed, being shot, DeWitt, blending your family together--"

His face darkened as his posture stiffened.

"And all of this avoidance is starting to have repercussions, Captain. You think Command hasn't noticed that my file on you is awfully sparce?" Millie sighed. "I'm getting asked a lot of hard questions that I don't have answers for, and if I don't answer their questions soon--"

He now looked at her directly. "Are you threatening me?"

Millie's jaw set. "I have done EVERYTHING I can to keep you and your family safe and together." She shifted further forward in her seat.

Edra rolled her eyes. "Can you two stop bickering for 2 minutes? And Counselor, are you incapable of answering my question instead of going off on your own tangent? Can you tell me where your fault lies in all of this?"

"That'd be a first," he quipped.

Edra simply glared at Henry before turning back to Millie, and holding her gaze, hoping to keep her from engaging in more bickering. A small part of her started wondering if she ought to just let them have it out. Away from everyone else was better than where this started after all.

"This is as useless as one of her ambush sessions," he muttered.

Edra just dropped her head until her fingertips were holding it up.

"Ambush? Is that why you think I'm here?" Millie braced her hands on the arms of the chair. "I was sent here because your family was in CRISIS. Not your ship, not your crew, but your FAMILY!"

"THAT'S ENOUGH, BOTH OF YOU!" Edra stood and looked to the door. "We're gonna try something else. She tapped her combadge. "Transporter, site-to-site transport, please. 3 to holodeck 2." She frowned at both of them, to keep them quiet. In a matter of moments they were all enveloped in the beam, and deposited in an empty holodeck. "Computer, lock access from the outside. Now, since you both can't seem to do anything but yell at each other, I'm giving you that opportunity. However," she said before either started, "You will both take your jackets off. As of right now, your ranks mean nothing to each other. Yell if you must, but you will remain respectful of each other. Is this understood?" She was not letting this go further until they both agreed to her terms.

Henry nodded. "Whatever speeds this up."

Millie didn't say a word, but simply unbuttoned her uniform jacket and let it fall to the floor in a heap.

Edra just shook ger head, defeated. She wanted to knock both of them out for this. She hoped this worked, getting this out.

He looked down at the Counselor as he removed his jacket. "So, who goes first?"

Millie gave a huff as she folded her arms. "Why do you not trust me?" Millie's brow furrowed. "You trust the Engineers to do their job, Security to do theirs...why do you not trust me to do mine?"

"Because I don't trust people who spend their lives digging into people's heads and twisting everything around."

"And is that what you think I'm here to do? Two years on this crew, and that's what you think I've been here to do? Dig through your head?!" Millie threw up her hands. "You've never even let me in!"

"And that is something I plan to continue."

"And for how long?" Millie took a step, closing the distance between them. "Because they're asking about your fitness for command. They want to know what the long-term ramifications of your family problems have been, and I don't know what to tell them."

"Let me clue you in on something since you want to know all the secrets. I don't give a damn about the people asking you about me because I've done enough in my life for the right folks that one call makes those people go away."

Her eyebrow quirked, and she took a step forward, now almost toe to to with Henry. "So, is that your plan? I ask enough of the hard questions, and you just make a call and make me go away?"

"Just stating a fact."

And there it was. His bluff. "What are you afraid that I'll find if you open up to me, Henry? What are you scared of letting me see?"

"You are the last thing in this universe I ever have to fear. I've looked death in the face more times than I care to remember. I've lost the love of my life. I've seen my children in danger. I've had to write messages home to crew we've buried on alien worlds or shot into space. You think I'm afraid of you?"

"No, not me. But you're afraid of what I'll find." Millie shifted back a half-step, and looked over her shoulder. "But then, it's not me that your afraid will find out the truth, is it?"

"Are you insinuating that anything said to you in confidence is open to being leaked?"

Millie turned back, shaking her head. "Not by me. But that's why you've buried it so deep and locked it away. Afraid that if you share with anyone at all, that you'll share with your wife, and that she'll never be able to look at you the same way, that she'll run away and never come back. Afraid that someday your children will find out what kind of a man their father really--"

He was seething, his hand audibly cracking as he formed and then released a fist. "I think....we've made our points clear here. For your deliberate actions against protocol in referring to me informally on duty you're suspended for the next seventy-two hours barring a medical emergency requiring you and confined to quarters for that duration.

Millie's fist clenched and her jaw set as she looked into the face of the Captain. "Am I dismissed, sir?"

"You read my mind." He said, fully aware of the irony.

Without so much as a glance to Edra, the counselor spun, snagged her uniform jacket from the floor and stormed out of the holodeck.

From the sidelines, Edra simply pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. Well, she'd utterly failed in that endeavor.

Henry stood in silence.

Edra simply walked to the door. "I'll be on the bridge," was all she said.