Costume Makes the Clown

Posted on 08 Jul 2018 @ 11:10am by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alexion Wylde
Edited on on 21 Aug 2023 @ 2:44pm

3,273 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 16 - A Far Sun
Location: USS Schofield - Sickbay
Timeline: MD 03, 1317 hours

Previously on A Far Sun...

Deep underground on the planet Pleione:

Through all the commotion in the hallway, a once-locked doors had been left ajar. One of the officer’s stray shots —that had missed the intended target— had landed in the centre of that door, nudging it creaking open farther. It was through that dark opening, the silhouette of Lake ir-Llantrisant could be seen in black and white. His hat, his shoes and his socks had been long removed, and he still wore the dark slacks he’d beamed down to the planet wearing. Instead of his suit jacket, Lake had been tightly laced into a white straightjacket, with his long sleeves tied even more tightly behind his back. Somewhere around the mid-back of his straightjacket, Lake had been hooked onto the middle of the wall. There, he was suspended, halfway between the floor and the ceiling, with a gag tight firmly across his mouth. The officers hadn’t been referring to Amaranai when they mentioned the crazy one after all…

Lucero looked around the cell. He picked up the gag that was in Lake's mouth and used it to tie together Tanian's hands. He looked to Amaranai and Chaya. "Do you guys think you can grab the other two guards. We're just going to lock them in here with our buddy Tanian." The interrogator began to protest but Manuel looked him straight in the eye, "We said we'd let you go if you would get us to them without problems. You agreed. Apparently you have some sort of mental malfunction if you think that this stunt you just pulled will get you anywhere but this concrete box." He then proceeded to ignore the tied man.

Allyndra held the guards but the lights coming on from the backup and the windows did not make for a good combination. She hoped that things were going well down below.

She called the Schofield and requested the beam out. As the new wave of guards arrived at the door and shot off the locking mechanism and burst in there was nothing there but their compatriots looking rather dumbfounded.

When Draia Thero said, "Energizing," pillars of sparkling light rained down from the overhead of the transporter room aboard Schofield. Each glittering abomination against the laws of nature coalesced into members of the away team, rescued from the planet below. "...Oh," Thero said, sounding surprised, "You made it?"

Given the vacant expression in his eyes, and the lumbering manner of his footsteps, Lake ir-Llantrisant attempted to follow the away team off the transporter platform on the humanoid equivalent of auto-pilot. He wasn't consciously aware of who did it, but someone turned him back, and guided him to the central pad on the transporter platform. Lake heard a murmur of discussion and then the melody of the transporter effect, as he was beamed directly to Sickbay.

And now the conclusion...

[ON]

"...Is this real?" Lake ir-Llantrisant asked the open air. There was a wistful quality to his voice, almost ethereal; it was nothing like the way he spoke to a starship's computer. Awkwardly, he was standing beside one of the biobeds in Sickbay. He had his back to the biofunction monitor and he was twisting his trunk around, as if he was trying to to catch sigh of the back of his own head. Rather than the perfectly tailored suit jacket he had been wearing when he'd last been in Sickbay, Lake was drowning in a straightjacket. Someone among the away team had been kind enough him to unbind his arms from his torso, but Lake was struggling to manipulate his hands within the floor-length sleeves.

"Am I back on USS Hathaway?" Lake said.

Alexion glanced up from the PADD he was reading as he strolled through the doors to sickbay...and he almost dropped the PADD when he caught sight of Lake. He moved quickly to him, frowning with the simmering anger he felt at seeing him like that. "You are on the USS Schofield..." he watched his face with concern as he worked to strip the straight jacket off of him. "And I will shove whichever nurse or doctor is responsible for leaving you like this into the fire..." he muttered sharply to himself.

"Schofield!" Lake shouted back at Alexion, as if it was the secret word of the day and Lake had been hunting it since sunrise. Lake pivoted his head to catch sight of Alexion over his shoulder; he seemed rather unbothered by Alexion's ministrations to remove the heavy alien jacket from his body. He remembered looking back at Alexion over his shoulder in much the same manner not that long ago. Twelve hours ago? A day? At the same time, it also felt like an entire lifetime ago. It felt like it had happened to someone else. Lake remembered being angry --feeling it deep in the pit of his stomach-- but he couldn't entirely remember why anymore.


One day earlier

His eyes on the down, Lake ir-Llantrisant was sat on the biobed with his hands folded in his lap. Any semblance of composure was soon lost, as his hands fell to his sides and he gripped the edge of the biobed's mattress. He squeezed every Newton of tension in his body through his hands, trying to transfer his anxiety into the mattress pad. Lake shook his head and then he looked up, starting with his dark eyes.

"I don't know if I want to see myself," Lake said softly. "After, I mean."

"I don't know. I think you'll make a fetching human. Well, as fetching as a human can be," Alexion replied with a hint of humour in his tone as he reached out to touch his face, just keeping his hand there for a moment of reassurance before lifting the dermal stimulator up to his ear, working carefully on it. The hint of humour alluded to the fact that he was aware he looked mostly human himself, on the outside at least.

Lake's expression softened and the moment of vulnerability passed, as he felt Alexion's touch on his cheeks. "Oh, I'm always desirable," Lake affirmed in a matter of fact timbre. He wasn't trying to convince Alexion, nor convince himself. He knew it to be a truth shared between them. "Even if you give me lips like yours," Lake said, smirking slightly, "that always look like you're sucking on lemons."

Alexion laughed out loud at the words, but didn't take his eyes off his work as he shook his head. "You cocky little bastard," he shot back, unabashed. "Maybe I get that look because of the patients I have to put up with, hm?"

"Tell me more," Lake demanded, a pantomime expression of shock across his wide eyes and gaping mouth. As if he were laying a trap, Lake narrowed his eyes on Alexion and asked, "Tell me what it is about your patients that tries your patience to the very brink?"

Alexion paused, planting his hands down on the bed, either side of Lake's lap, so he could lean in closer to him with a small smile, unable to resist as he searched his eyes. "Maybe they have mouths too smart for their own good, and tongues so sharp that they might cut themselves or others with them, hm?" he said with an edge of playfulness before his violet eyes became more serious and he resumed his work. "And maybe...they have a recklessness that worries their doctor when they are about to go on a stressful away mission..."

At first, Lake leaned into Alexion. He leaned in so closely, there was hardly a breath between their lips. He practically couldn't control his body, with the way Alexion's forearms were pressing into Lake's thighs, and the way Alexion's commentary was offering back-handed compliments about Lake's wits. But when Alexion called Lake reckless, Lake backed off. He brushed one hand across the busted knee that Alexion hand mended on Lake's last tour of duty.

Lake tilted his face away, diffidently. Shifting to a formal timbre, Lake said, "Are you questioning my fitness for duty?"

"If I was, you would not be sat here, you would be sat in the counselling office," Alexion assured, arching an eyebrow with the kind of matter of factness saved for his son and his patients. "Let us say that I am just...concerned. As one man to another."

"You have nothing to worry about," Lake interjected quickly. Perhaps too quickly. With that said, Lake was then able to look up, to look Alexion in the eyes. Delicately, Lake said, "I've... lost some people. You know that. As mortal beings, losing things is what we do. It's our job." --He shrugged-- "I'll be fine."

Alexion watched his face with a slight frown at the words. He knew that feeling, of losing people. And it was one of the best words to describe it. Loss. But the thought of it being their job? "Our job is not to lose people...it is to hold on to them, whatever happens, as tightly as we can, no matter how dark the smoke and how hot the flames. And if we must cast them into the water....we hold onto them even tighter, so no person passes alone."

"No," Lake said, barely breathing the word out. His shoulders tightened, bunching up closer to his surgically-altered ears. He said, "no," again for the starbase quarantine that had separated Lake from his ex-husband in death. Shaking his head, Lake said, "no," again, because he didn't even know where his parents were right now. He tilted his head back, looking to Alexion with red-rimmed eyes that were no less defiant.

"We don't always get that choice," Lake said. He raised his hands to touch his own face; his own face felt noticeably unfamiliar. Lowering his hands, Lake began to close the buttons down the front of his suit jacket. The defiance faded from his eyes. "Are we done?" Lake asked.

"It seems so," Alexion replied quietly, physically pulling back from him to drop the tool onto the tray with a sigh. He hesitated, glancing to him with a slight frown. "Just....look after yourself down there."

Planting his oxford shoes on the deck, Lake allowed his dark gaze to cross path's with Alexion's glance. As that moment passed, Lake rose from the biobed and moved to walk away. Looking back over his shoulder, as one is wont to do, Lake replied, "I always do."


MD 122 - 1318 hours

"Schofield!" Lake shouted back at Alexion, as if it was the secret word of the day and Lake had been hunting it since sunrise. Lake pivoted his head to catch sight of Alexion over his shoulder; he seemed rather unbothered by Alexion's ministrations to remove the heavy alien jacket from his body. "Of course it's Schofield," Lake said with some relief and a veneer of normalcy. "Why would I say that? How could I forget that ugly pink upholstery?"

A slight smile pulled at Alexion's lips through his anger and worry at hearing the remark, his hands finally managing to rip the jacket from him, dropping it with disgust. He turned him to get a proper look at him, his hand gripping the side of his neck as he felt his pulse. "Lake....Lake, are you injured?"

Instinctively, Lake recoiled from Alexion's touch, even though he was really recoiling from that question. From what that question implied. From what could have happened and from what had happened beneath the skin of Pleione. It only lasted a heartbeat, though. Lake recovered enough to lean forward, to press his body against Alexion in an act of submission. "They didn't torture me, if that's what you mean," Lake said defiantly. He quickly followed with a kind of urgency, the words sputtering out of him. "But I didn't tell them anything. You have to-- you have to tell the Captain I didn't tell the natives anything. I didn't violate the prime directive!"

Alexion gripped him tightly with a frown, holding him against him with his arms wrapped firmly around the anxious man. Frankly, he didn't give a damn what he might have or might not have told them. He just cared whether Lake was alright. But it seemed important to him and he needed to try and calm him down. "Of course you didn't, she'll know that. But I'll make sure she knows," while he spoke, he eased him back on a biobed. "I am going to run a scan, make sure you are not hurt..." he said firmly, one hand remaining on his arm as the other reached to bring the arch up and set the scan going.

"I don't--" Lake started to say, and then he lay back as the support frame encircled his chest. "I don't... feel... broken," he said, not that he sounded particularly sure about that. "Not that I would be able to feel radiation poisoning," Lake added dryly, "if those alien infernal engines, down there, are antithetical to humanoid life."

Alexion kept his gaze on Lake for a long moment, rather than the readouts coming through. "What did they do to you?" he asked quietly, motioning with his head towards the discarded jacket on the floor.

"I told you," Lake said, clearly frustrated by what sounded like the same question to his ears. He bit back a snarl, and he swallowed hard, and he said, "They didn't torture me. They questioned me, they asked me questions and they restrained me. Restrained me and hanged me to a chain, latched to the back of the jacket. And then they left me. They just left me alone."

Alexion's frown only deepened, more from his reaction than the words. Whatever his protests, what had happened had clearly disturbed him. He glanced back to the readouts, convinced by the results of the scan that he only had a few sprains to heal....he was more worried about his mental state. He got rid of the arch so he didn't feel trapped, getting a hold of the side of his neck and arm to ease him back up to sit. He swallowed hard, throwing caution to the wind as he used the skin on skin contact to transfer a wave of calm and energy from himself and into Lake, just a little, to try and take the edge off the anxiety in him. It was something he rarely used in his work anymore, but he was too concerned to pass the chance up. "I'm going to heal your neck and shoulders," he said firmly, watching him closely. "Is there....anyone you want me to call?" he asked quietly. Someone who could do a better job of making him feel better.

Even after that brief moment of contact --that touch, that exchange-- Lake appeared somewhat revived. Sitting up against the biobed's headboard, there was a hint of assuredness in his posture, and his gaze followed Alexion more strongly. "There's..." Lake started to say, but he huffed out a breath of frustration when no one came to mind. "No, I-- I was never a part of the Galileo crew assembled here," he said listlessly. "Callin is a ghost to me, Constantin pulls away as soon as I get close, and I lost Gideon somewhere along the way. I can't-- I can't--" But Lake couldn't bring himself to say the Captain's name when he was feeling a wreck like this.

Lake looked up at Alexion, his dark eyes gone wide. "There's only you," he said.

Alexion held his eyes for a long moment, his chest tightening slightly for the other man...he seemed so lost. "Well, I think I am more than enough to have to handle," he said softly, a small smile on his lips as he chuckled. He kept his hand on his neck even as he reached for the regenerator, carefully starting to run it over his shoulder. "And I'm not going anywhere," he said firmly, as if to assure him it didn't matter how much he pushed him. He could be as stubborn as the sea too.

For little reason other than to be contrary, Lake said, "You're going to have to go somewhere." Only the last word had any hint of emphasis. Otherwise, he said the words tonelessly, his facial expressions unmoving. Lake did reach up to touch his face, dragging his fingertips over where his brow ridges should have been. "This boat is getting scrapped," Lake said, lifelessly. "You don't want to be here when the photon torpedoes arrive..."

Alexion's eyes closed for just a brief moment, his face tilting a touch towards the hand, almost as if he was trying to remember what it meant. He gave a soft chuckle, although it was more of a heavy breath than anything else. "Careful...you almost sounded as if you cared about this jaded old doctor."

"You were the only one," Lake affirmed. He spoke with a certainty, but he frowned lines on his face that suggested he had resigned himself to that certainty. "Aboard Hathaway, a daycare run by children," Lake said, referring to their last mission as teachers aboard a Cadet Cruise, "You were the only one I could talk to. Allyndra spends her shifts on the Bridge, and Tuula avoids me as if she had secretly diagnosed me with Tarellian plague, and forgot to tell me..."

Lake winced, as if it pained him to say it: "I. Like. Talking. To. You."

Alexion smiled at the begrudging confession, shaking his head with a slight tut. It was encouraging though; he was starting to sound more like himself again. He let his hand moved from his neck and slide a little higher, to urge his head to rest in his hand as he started to run the regenerator up the side of his neck. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone," he teased lightly. "Get back to looking like yourself, put your own clothes on, lie in your own bed, drown out the silence with some music. It will make you feel better."

His face resting in Alexion's hand, Lake breathed in and Lake breathed out. His dark eyes focused on the middle distance again, and he breathed in again and he breathed out. Without looking at Alexion, Lake asked, "Do you promise?"

Alexion let the regenerator lower at the question, watching him with dark violet eyes. His jaw tightened with resolve, his gaze firm as he watched him with a sense of authority, as if he could make it so. "I promise."

Lake raised a hand only enough to gesture vaguely towards his own visage. "I don't want to see myself like this," Lake said, and he was probably speaking about the absence of his distinctive Romulanoid features, but he was probably speaking about something else. He leveled his eyes on Alexion with an emphatic gaze. "Not in the reports, not in my personal logs," he said; "Make me whole."

Alexion nodded firmly, giving off an air of confidence, as if he could, and would, do anything to make it better. "Do not worry," he touched his cheek with a small smile to ease the atmosphere. "The sea will not have you today."

[OFF]

--

Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant
Chief Counselor
USS Schofield

Doctor Alexion Wylde
Medical
USS Schofield
[PNPC Blake]

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