Chapter Text
Oh, Kathryn, we are finally having dinner together again, and I’m tardy. I’ve brought one of my last bottles of Antarian cider as my contribution to tonight’s event. Fetching it from the cargo Bay has made me late, but you’ll forgive me once you see the bottle. We’ve had a quiet week, and in the Delta Quadrant that is cause for minor celebration. And the last time we had dinner together, you commented that you were getting tired of the replicated stuff.
That was a while ago. We haven’t had a dinner like this in weeks – a real dinner, not a working dinner when the table has as many PADDS and monitors as it does dishes. We used to try for once a week, then it tapered off to every other week, and lately the best we have managed is once a month. When we do sit down together, it’s comfortable and safe. Just two friends breaking bread together. These days, that’s enough.
I ring the chime and you tell me to come in. I make it about two steps before I skid to a stop. You are on your hands and knees on the floor, in the midst of a myriad of cogs and circuits and tiny little screws. You look up at me with a lopsided smile. “You’re late,” you say. Then you see the bottle in my hand and the smile reaches your eyes. “Unfortunately, so is dinner.”
I can’t help smiling back. “Let me guess. You burned the roast again.” Your problems with replicators, especially at meal time, are becoming the stuff of legend. I offered dinner in my quarters instead of yours, but you insisted that everything was fixed this time. Dodging your carefully organized piles, I carefully make my way to the table, where I can pour the cider.
You rock back on your heels. “Once, a long time ago, I called this replicator a glorified toaster.” You look around at the piles. “It never forgave me.”
“I didn’t realize replicators hold grudges,” I said as I hand you a glass. All the pieces have been carefully sorted, like Naomi finding all the edge pieces of her puzzle. A chuckle escapes me, despite my best intentions.
You glare at me. “What’s so funny?”
“I just left Icheb and Noami assembling a jigsaw puzzle in the Cargo Bay.” You look around and see the same thing I do – you are treating this as a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Once, not so very long ago, you would have laughed with me. Now, you grant me a knowing nod but nothing more. “Find me the thermal regulator, please. How is Icheb?”
It takes a second to find the regulator, but I hand it to you. “In a few years, he may be running the ship.”
You cock your head at me even as you connect the regulator to a circuit board. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to retire just yet.”
Before I can answer, the ship lurches dramatically, enough to cause all your little piles to spill into each other. “Janeway to bridge,” you say, tapping your communicator. “Report.”
It’s Harry Kim who responds. “That was some kind of gravimetric surge. It’s overloading our inertial dampers.”
“Source?” you ask, all business. The nascent good mood of the evening has evaporated. This is the Delta Quadrant, and the only routine is the lack of the routine. We set down our glasses, I help you to your feet and we head down the corridor to the turbolift.
“That’s a good question,” Harry says, and that is enough to tell us that whatever it is, it’s bad. Harry must be deeply lost in thought to respond so flippantly. “Seven is trying to localize it.” Then he says with urgency, “Engineering says the warp core is destabilizing.”
“I better get down there,” I tell you.
You nod. After nearly seven years, we almost don’t need words to communicate. I know how you will respond to a critical situation and you know what I will do. You get on the turbolift to go to the bridge. I head for the aft turbolift that will take me to Engineering. As I walk, I can’t help thinking that this is just business as usual for us – malfunctioning replicators, interrupted dinners and inexplicable crises. And isn’t that what makes it fun?