Eva

Posted on Fri Jan 22nd, 2021 @ 12:39am by Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD & Eva Griffin & Cailus Griffin
Edited on on Fri Jan 22nd, 2021 @ 12:40am

Mission: The Gauntlet
Location: Starbase 242

Little Aoife seemed to have just as much love for water as her sister, though in her current condition, she didn’t have the energy to show as much excitement and splash about, but she loved it nonetheless. And to make it even more fun, she no longer had to bathe alone! But she had to be careful, Mama said, very gentle, because her baby brother couldn’t play in the water like she could, which kind of made little brother a little boring (especially since all he did all day was sleep), but Aoife was a good girl, and wanting to be an even better big sister gently help her Mama wash little Eoin.

“Thank you for your help, Aoife, you did such a good job,” Shae said as she removed Eoin from the tub and swaddled him a towel, leaving Aoife free to splash to her heart’s content. Shae, sitting on the edge of the tub where she could keep watch over Aoife, lay Eoin in her lap so she could dry and clothe him.

While Shae took care of the children, Cailus was laid out atop the bed, clad only in replicated pants. He was, much to his own satisfaction, healing swiftly. The bruises and burns were healed, the ribs repaired, the knee gradually recovering, the concussion just a bad memory. A fresh scar was visible on his shoulder, a companion to a far older scar across his chest and a thin scar on his side, but otherwise, Cailus looked more or less normal.

Nevertheless, he didn’t quite feel normal. Taking advantage of the freedom while Shae minded the children, he tried working on a padd, reading up on the eternally dull legal codes of Starfleet. It was important if he and Shae were to have any hopes of salvaging their careers, but nevertheless, he kept getting distracted by the heartwarming view of the bathroom. He could only just glance in, but the sight of Aoife helping to wash her brother brought a warm smile to his face...then the smile faltered.

Aoife. Identical to her sister in almost every way, save that this Aoife was alive, while her sister was...not. Once again, the memory of little Aoife’s body flashed in his mind, the thought briefly bringing a chill to his bones. Cailus sighed, hating the confusion that roiled within him; how the heck did you grieve for a dead child when she was right there, splashing in the bath?

Trying to refocus on the legalese (a particularly wordy explanation of how court martials worked), he couldn’t help but glance at the bathroom again. “Need some help in there?” he asked quietly, trusting Shae’s sensitive ears.

“Aye,” Shae replied as she rose, bringing out the clean, dry, and clothed Eoin, resting him on his father’s chest. “There we go,” she said brightly, her problem solved, then went back into the bathroom to get Aoife.

“Papa, help!” Aoife cried out with giggling delight as she tried to escape from her mother’s grasp.

“Papa can’t save you from bedtime, little one,” Shae said with amusement. Meanwhile, Eoin just stared at Cailus quietly, mirroring pools of icy blue locked onto one another.

Looking between the padd and Eoin, Cailus rolled his eyes, smiling despite himself. “You’re terrible for my productivity, my boy,” he remarked wryly, setting the padd aside on the bedside table. At Aoife’s antics, he raised an eyebrow as he looked down at Eoin, although he didn’t raise a finger to liberate Aoife from her maternal oppressor.

“You’re on your own with this one, Aoife,” he called back. “Mama has you now!”

More splashing and squealing came from the bathroom before Shae was finally able to capture the slippery little girl and get her wrapped into a towel.

“Och, I swear, you’re just like your sister!” Shae declared as she marched back to the bedroom, laying the wriggling child onto the bed, then she looked up at Cailus with apologetic eyes. “Sorry, I know this is all so confusing, but I’ve been trying to treat her like… like a twin, so similar yet free to be different. It’s been helping to keep them separate in my mind so that my heart can grieve,” Shae said softly as she dried off Aoife.

Watching silently for a moment where he lay, Eoin keeping his father pinned, Cailus’s eyes flicked up to Shae. “Is it working?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, it is, a little anyway,” Shae said with a slight nod. “I just keep reminding myself that we always had two all along even though we didn’t know it; we may have lost one, but we still have her sister. The more and more I say it to myself, the more true it feels,” she continued as she dressed Aoife.

“Hm,” Cailus said non-committedly. Shifting the baby to his arms, he pushed himself up to a sitting position, although Eoin’s tail ended up inadvertently tickling his father’s stomach. Ignoring the tail, he looked at Shae. “I wish I could,” he said bluntly, wincing at his own lack of subtlety. “It might have been easier if Aoife didn’t have the other Aoife’s memories, but she does, and it’s just so complicated. This Aoife didn’t meet me until a few days ago. She knows you, you gave birth to her, but me? I’m just some memory grafts that were implanted.”

He scowled. “If we can save our careers, I’m going to turn the Pandora inside out looking for how that was done.”

“I certainly can’t argue with you on that particular point,” Shae said with an agreeing nod. She gathered Aoife into her arms, then sat on the edge of the bed to start rocking her to sleep, a venture that wouldn’t take too long seeing as how Aoife wore herself out with that bath. “I guess I have an advantage over you with all the hormones flooding my brain right now; I’d imagine I might have a harder time accepting her as she is if it weren’t for Eoin and all the Oxytocin that comes with nursing him. But I should point out that I only held Aoife once a few days after she was born, that’s not enough to form any lasting memories. The only reason the other Aoife ‘knew’ me was because I made a recording of my singing, and my brother had a scarf with my scent, and between these she was able to learn to find comfort in my voice and my scent while she was being transported to me, but I truly was as much a stranger to her as you were.”

“Yeah,” Cailus said hesitantly. With a grunt of effort, he moved up the bed to sit beside Shae, keeping a weather eye on Eoin as he maneuvered. The baby seemed to grow as drowsy as his sister, fortunately, his tail growing more still and his ears drooping. On the bulkhead, a large window provided a beautiful view of the stars, the occasional ship or shuttle passing by intermittently.

“You know, Aoife used to scare the wits out of me,” he murmured. “Ever since that day she stole my pudding in Sickbay, then even after we started dating. Learning to love that child and cope with losing Vic...that was hard. Every time I looked at Aoife, for months, I thought about Vic. Hell, I’m not sure how I ended up separating them in my mind..Now we both have to pull off that trick, and we have to do it while reminding everyone else to do it too. Nyx, Emilie, Katrine, your family...they’ll all see an identical Aoife and just...forget the old one, the one we loved. Not on purpose, I think, but there’ll be that temptation..”

“I know,” Shae replied, leaning over to rest her head on Cailus’ shoulder. Tears burned in her eyes as they delved into this topic that they had been avoiding, and for good reason given the chaos of their recovery, but now it was time to get it all out into the open so that they could finally find a way to move forward.

“I remember how you would freeze up, like you couldn’t breath, and oftentimes it was Aoife herself that helped you out of that panic. We both knew and accepted even then that grieving and healing would take time, it would be unfair of us to expect that same healing to happen any faster now,” Shae said, tears dripping one by one down her face and onto Cailus’ shoulder. “It still hits me hard, seeing this Aoife and then remembering the other in Sickbay with the incessant drone of the monitor flatline… I have wanted to do nothing but cry everytime that happens, but the children need me to be strong and so I am. Even with my little mantra about them being twins, it’s still so confusing for me, and I know one day will come when I can’t hold back the tears any longer, but hopefully then I will be ready to grieve properly. Until then, I’ve been taking things day by day, hour by hour, hell, even minute by minute when I have to, trying my best to see the child we have and not the one we lost; even with memories shared, they both deserve to be treated as their own person.”

Encircling Shae’s shoulders with his free arm, Cailus listened patiently, Shae’s salty tears faintly stinging his bare shoulder. He was quiet for a moment, his mind working. “Shae,” he said gently, “if we’re going to make this work...if our girl is going to figure this out when she’s older, if everyone else is, if we are...she needs a new name.”

Shae released a shuddering sigh, then looked down at the child in her arms. The little fox-girl, her hair still so thin and wiry, was now dry and soft from the bath, forming tiny little rings around her face as she slept soundly, so warm and safe and content in her mother’s arms.

“I know, I just… It’s so hard to think about it; she knows her name, I don’t want to take that from her,” Shae said sadly.

Cailus considered, his free hand absent-mindedly stroking Shae’s hair as he looked down at their sleeping girl. Their quarters were completely silent save their breathing, and the soft breathing of the children as they slumbered “What if we don’t take her name from her?” he murmured. “And we just...modify it? Is there a variation of Aoife?”

“Um, in standard English it would be Eve or Eva,” Shae said, then studied their daughter with a pensive gaze; there was a distinct enough difference in the way Eva and Aoife were pronounced that so long as anyone was paying attention they should know the difference, yet they were similar enough that their little girl should adapt to it easily. And hopefully with this renaming, it would help Shae and Cailus separate the girls, the one they saved and the one they lost, and see them each as individuals. “Eva, you are Eva now,” Shae said to her daughter, then nuzzled the curls on Eva’s forehead.

“Eva,” Cailus repeated softly. The decision crystallised in his mind, his stomach settling, residual tension gradually seeping out of his muscles. Sitting there in the quiet of their quarters, all four of the family cuddled together, Cailus felt like he could stay there forever...but time moved on.

“Time to put them to bed, love,” he whispered. “I’ll set Eoin down if you take Eva.”

Shae nodded, then rose to take Eva (stars above, that was going to take some getting used to regardless of how similar the names were) to her own little room with her own little bed. Shae had considered co-sleeping to help ward off any nightmares, but so far Eva had been sleeping well, and the few upsets she’d had were minor and easily sated. Besides, there was such a thing as too much of a good thing, and she was keeping Eoin in their bed to make night feedings easier, so throwing an extra kid into an already full bed was just insane!

Kneeling beside the little bed, Shae laid Eva down and pulled up a special blanket that could adapt to Eva’s body temperature to ensure she didn’t get too hot or too cold. Shae stared at the sleeping girl, teasing her fingers through Eva’s curls; how could such a beautiful sight fill her with such joy but also such heart wrenching sorrow at the same time?

“Sleep well, my little love,” Shae said, then returned to the main bedroom, easing out of her clothes and into her pajamas. All throughout her pregnancy, she had remained thin and lithe, but it was apparent that she had put on a little bit of a belly because now her stomach was even flatter than before.

“So,” Shae said as she climbed into bed, “are you ready to tell me what’s been on your mind? You’ve been tense this afternoon, more so than usual. I thought the meeting with Captain Wolfe would help put you at ease,” she said as she settled in and pulled Eoin closer to her.

Lying on his back, Cailus made an amused sound as he watched Shae settle in. “There are times when you’re damn near telepathic,” he grumbled, although he smiled as he looked at Shae, the baby snuggled in between them. Cailus shifted to his side, simply taking in the sight of Shae and Eoin in the starlight from the window behind him. “I’m just...not used to being on this side of the line, Shae. That’s all. I’m a cop, security on a ship. I’m usually the one doing the interrogation, not the one being interrogated. I enforce the law, protect people.”

He paused, thinking back. “I’ve done things in the past. Hurt people on the job, when I had to. The only reason they didn’t have me on charges after Menelax was politics. This is just the first time that I’ve been in the position you were, when we met.” His eyes traced Shae’s youthful face, her alien eyes, her pale skin and cream hair. “I don’t regret what we did, not for a second. I’m just not used to this. Being a prisoner. Breaking the law.”

Shae simply nodded as she listened, her eyes softening with understanding. “I would say ‘sorry’ for drawing you into my world, but that would also mean apologizing for our relationship, our love, our marriage, and this I simply will not do,” Shae said softly, reaching out to caress his cheek lovingly. “So far, the confinement hasn’t bothered me since I’m restricted to so much rest, but I do understand what you’re feeling. It is an awful feeling, being a prisoner, but I’ve also found it to be liberating, and I’ve been focusing on that part to distract myself from the presence of guards.”

“Some guards,” Cailus replied in a disgruntled whisper, an eyebrow perked up skeptically. “Poor positioning, bad awareness, improper adherence to protocols for managing prisoners. My staff on Pandora wouldn’t get caught dead working to those standards.”

Shae smiled, stifling a giggle so she wouldn’t wake the baby. “Aye, I think I could have taken them both out, even in my condition,” she remarked. “Ever the perfectionist, even in confinement. Have I told you how much I love you? Because I do, like, a lot, especially for your commitment to excellence,” she said with a teasing grin.

“I love you too,” Cailus replied wryly, although he still looked at Shae fondly. “And not just for your scientific standards...mainly because I don’t understand half of the work you do.” He sighed, his hand idly reaching over to stroke Shae’s flank, not quite ready to sleep yet. “Are you ready? In case we get discharged? Civilian scientists don’t get to play with all the same toys.”

“Actually, in my field, civilians can have access to better toys,” Shae said smugly, then sighed. “But yeah, I’m ready. I feel confident that our case is compelling enough to get just a slap on the wrist, but if it ends with a discharge… As long as I have you and Eva and Eoin, then I’ll be happy; my family is all I need.”

Cailus smiled, glancing down at Eoin as the baby slept soundly. “Priorities,” he murmured. “You’re right. We’re together, and we’re safe now.” His smile faded as he remembered how that had come about; the fighting, the killing, the slaughter. Still, there would be other times to deal with what he and Shae did. Banishing the dark memories, he relaxed into the pillow.

“Sleep, love,” he murmured. “We have work to do tomorrow. I have to make sure those second-rate security officers have taken care of the family sword...if they’ve damaged it in any way, I’m going to break them...”

“I’ll gladly help,” Shae replied with a yawn. “By the way, you looked so sexy wielding that blade. Even burned and bloodied, I was so turned on by the sight of you.”

Although his eyes were closed as Shae replied, both eyes shot back wide open at the last. “Shae,” he admonished her gently under his breath, although the thought nestled in his brain nevertheless. Smirking as he closed his eyes again, he added in a whisper, “...but I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I blame the hormones,” Shae said with a smirk, then closed her eyes to sleep.