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Lessons

Posted on Fri Aug 28th, 2020 @ 5:49pm by Lieutenant JG Chance Crow

Mission: Side Stories
Location: Quarters
Timeline: 2000 hrs

"You had better be getting ready for bed!" Chance called into the other room. The small room where Kieran squealed happily, as the tower of toys he had built came crashing down around him. Even once toppled, he continued to swing his hand back and forth through the pile, further deconstructing it. He stood up, surveying it from above, and thought that maybe he could look from even higher if he stood on his bed. He climbed up on his mattress, looking down on the blocks and other items.

If watching them fall had been so much fun, then falling into them would be magical too, right. He watched the pile, starting to bounce to get a high jump off the bed. The mattress absorbed his weight then gave him a push into the air. And if he did it again he could get a little higher. Again, higher. Again. Again. Soon enough he was giggling just from the rise and fall of jumping on his bed.


In the other room Chance had had a long day, the current mission seeming more and more contrived by someone or something within the planet's own populace. For anyone to deliberately put people through the illness he was seeing was alarming and infuriating. He was now hoping for a quiet evening, but his calls for bedtime were going unheeded. A half hour ago, he'd conceded that the boy was normally good about doing what he was told, so Chance went easy on him. But now Kieran didn't even seem to be trying. It had been a couple weeks since Trisha had gone off gallivanting around again, leaving the two of them alone. Most of the time it was fine, they had a good time together. But tonight the noise seemed to be getting on his last nerve.

He stood and walked the short distance to his son's room. When the door opened and he surveyed the sight, he looked straight at the boy who had immediately planted his butt on the bed and stopped bouncing. "HEY! What is going on in here?!?" He shouted. "What did I tell you!"

Kieran's barely audible voice answered, "'s bedtime..."

"Is this what bedtime looks like?!"

After a moment he boy only shook his head.

"And why is that?"

Kieran remained silent, not quite sure what information his father was expecting from him. He stared at his toys so long they seemed to get farther away from him.

"WHY?"

With a start, the child's lip quivered a second before the tears and wailing began. As he watched the meltdown happen, guilt flooded over Chance, and he stepped over the toys to the bed where he scooped his son up and held him. It wasn't the tears that turned him, this was far from the first time Kieran had been in trouble. It was the way his boy's body jerked at his shouted question, almost as if he'd been hit. That tiny motion was what told him he'd gone too far. He smoothed his hand over the boy's black hair. "I'm sorry," he said softly, rocking back and forth.

After a few minutes, when the cries died down, Chance unlatched the boys arms from around him and sat him away enough to look at him. He wiped away Kieran's tears. "I shouldn't have been that loud. I'm sorry, okay?" When the boy nodded, he continued. "I wasn't trying to be scary, I'm just...tired." He pulled the boy closer, hugging him again. "Forgive me?" The question itself was a reminder that his kid was growing up, that he understood that request. He was past really being called a toddler anymore, sure-footed as he ran around now--and the boy loved to run around--and even losing some of his baby face to an actual kid. Chance found he consistently had these moments where it struck him how quickly time was passing.

For now, though, he felt Kieran nod his head in answer and was happy with that. "You wanna go lay down on the couch together?" When he nodded again, Chance picked him up and carried him out to the living room where there were no immediate reminders of what he'd just done, where they could both rest peacefully for now.

 

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