Beginning Again

Posted on Fri Apr 5th, 2013 @ 10:00pm by Lieutenant Nick Marcinko & Lieutenant Commander Leto

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: Marcinko's Quarters
Timeline: Current

* * Nick’s Quarters...for now * *

Nick opened up the door and he allowed Leto to enter first. Luckily, his quarters were still rather clean, which was an oddity for him, but he hadn’t really had anything to do the last few days and begrudgingly decided to clean for once in his life. He hoped Leto would at least be happy with that.

For a few moments, they stood silently in the middle of the living room. Finally, Leto stepped closer to him, causing him to retreat under the guise of offering a drink. “Thirsty?” he asked as he quickly moved away to the replicator. “I know I could use something.” When he turned around holding a large glass of chocolate milk, he couldn’t help but notice the surprise on her face. Probably that it wasn’t beer or some other sort of liquor.

“You know, that actually looks really good. One for me too?” She would actually have preferred a stiff shot of whiskey to settle her nerves, since being here in Nick’s quarters and feeling like a stranger was just too weird. But if they were going to really talk, they both needed a clear head.

After handing her the drink, Nick sat on the couch at the far end once he was sure Leto had settled on the opposite end. He needed to ease into this and being in such close proximity would make it difficult. Even the hug in Li’s office had put him on edge, but he wasn’t about to cause an issue in front of the Captain.

He had to take a few drinks of the milk before he could work up the courage to start talking, but he had to give it to Leto as she was waiting patiently for him to begin.

“I want to start off,” he said, suddenly noticing that his hands were shaking, “by saying that I apologize for what I’ve said recently. I was, am, hurt and a bit lost but I shouldn’t have been yelling at you.” Swallowing hard, and putting the glass down so that he could control his shaking hands better, he continued. “I, uh...I spoke to Robin last night. And--”

Leto inclined her head curiously. “You spoke to the chief counselor?”

“Yes,” he said, a bit more tersely than he meant. “Sorry,” he immediately added, frowning. “You know that this is all way out of my realm of expertise, and calling him was a big step. But he suggested that I talk to you now and that we try to work it out instead of it continuing as it is.” He inhaled deeply and let it out. “I still love you, Leto, and I don’t think that I will ever stop. And despite what I saw on the--”

He felt those dry heaves coming again, and he couldn’t stop them. He lurched a few times before he could stand up, a look of panic on his face. This wasn’t how he wanted to talk to her, at all. He had to do something, and remembered Robin slapping him, but he wasn’t able to tell Leto to do that between the heaving. So, he did the only thing he could think of: he rammed his head against the wall. Staggering backward, he had to grab the back of another chair to steady himself, but it seemed to have worked. With a look of shame he turned to Leto, wiping some spittle from his face.

“Nick!” Leto surged to her feet, rushing over to take hold of him. “Are you alright? Oh honey....” She checked his forehead gently, not surprised to note that his part Klingon head had survived the bashing just fine. “Despite everything --” she prompted, but glossed over any direct references.

He held up his hand to stop her. “Just don’t talk about it,” he said. “I can’t...I can’t even think about it without...” He began to lurch again but started to think about the fight he’d had in Saturnalia to try and take his mind off of it. “Robin said I needed some sort of distraction when that happened and that was the best I could come up with.”

Taking a deep breath he tried to continue. “I want to try to work this out, but before we go too far, we need to talk about what we see as our ‘duty’,” he said, the last word in air quotes, “and how it may affect our relationship in the future if you tend to keep doing things the way you are currently.” His eyes began to mist. “Because I don’t think I could handle going through this again.”

Leto met his gaze for a moment, then looked down. “Me either. Next time I’ll just kill him and be done with it.” Her breath hitched as she started to speak again. “I want to hear what you have to say, but there’s some things I need to tell you too.”

“I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: I love you, Leto. I don’t want to lose you for any reason,” he said as he sat down again. “I also want to reconcile, or whatever you want to call it, and I want things to be back to normal more than anything. But you should know that I’m still having some issues with this, and normal may be farther off than I would like.” He looked down, a bit embarrassed, but had to tell her. That was the whole point of this little talk. “I’ve been having nightmares off and on since...” He trailed off, not wanting to get back to puking again. “It’s really messing with me.”

She had moved over to the portal to give him, and herself, a little space. The silence stretched out between them for several seconds before she spoke. “I understand that. It’s messing with me too.” Her voice softened to a low pitch. “I....I can’t look in the mirror Nick. I feel so....filthy.”

He wasn’t even going to touch that comment, but continued on. “I think the best thing to do is just for us to start talking again, hanging out with each other, trying to get our mojo back. Because we were awesome...before, and I want that again.” He shifted in his seat. “I promise to do everything I can to forgive and forget. I don’t want this hanging over our heads anymore.”

“We can’t until you try and understand what this has done to me, Nick.” Leto rubbed her eyes slowly. “I know it nearly killed you, that you felt betrayed and hurt. But you have to see that it is no picnic for me either. I have to live with this and I can’t magically go back in time and make it disappear. I hate myself for what I did and what it’s done to you. I’ve had to watch you breaking, see the loathing in your eyes, stand here while you pushed me away, knowing you had every right to do so. That’s where I am. In a black pit, so you’re not the only one falling apart over this. I want you back too and I don’t know how to take that look from your eyes.”

He was taking a chance by asking this, but he had to know. “You could start by telling me why it had to be you? We could have sent anyone. It didn’t have to be you, especially since your mind was essentially wiped. The only reason you remember it now is because it happened in your body, just one of the after effects of the hypnosis. You weren’t actually there, so telling me that your expertise was needed is not at all true.” He shook his head now, tears beginning to sting his eyes. “I begged you not to go, Leto. You could almost say that I saw this coming, but you wouldn’t listen. You just wanted it so bad that, to be honest, it made me wonder.”

“He took my old life from me Nick. It was his fault that I had to change everything about me. If it had been you, would you be content to send someone not as experienced and hope they both succeeded and lived through it?”

“But that’s just it, experience had nothing to do with it. Your experience was nowhere to be found in that beautiful head of yours while you were down there as Imara, so, yes, anyone else could have been the bait for him.” He sighed, wondering if this would ever get resolved. It seemed to him that she still thought that her skills as Leto would have been there on the planet when she was under hypnosis as Imara, but it was impossible, at least according to Robin. “I was more concerned that you wouldn’t succeed or wouldn’t live through it, especially because Imara was just a regular Archadian woman, had no tactical training and knew nothing of Zoudin’s activities.”

He shrugged, knowing that this bit of contention would likely never get resolved and continually speaking about it would just drive the wedge further between them. “But I guess now there’s nothing to be done about it. It happened, it’s over, I feel bad, you feel bad...” He left it at that.

“Could you have left your revenge to someone else had it been you Nick?” She turned slowly to look at him. “I have to know.”

“At this cost?” he asked. “I honestly don’t know, in this situation. Before you and I were a thing? Hell no, it would have been all for me. But I made you a promise that we would be exclusive--no one else. And to me, that’s in every part of my life, including this job.” He looked blankly at her as he weighed his options. “I guess I don’t have a good answer for that, but I would hope that I would have been true to my promise.”

“I don’t know how not to be wrong then. No matter how I try to make you see, or explain how terribly this has affected me too....I don’t think I am making sense. I don’t know what to do Nick.”

He stood and walked to her. “I can understand wanting revenge, Leto. I really can. And I know that you hate that this has happened. I guess all that I want to say, though, is that this,” he said, his finger pointing at himself and then her, “could have been avoided. I would gladly take revenge any time, on anyone...but not at the cost of killing our relationship. I know, it sounds petty, but what it boils down to, for me, is that this is an ‘I warned you’ moment. I don’t want to, or mean to, keep rubbing it in your face but it just cut me so deeply that you chose that over me.” He wanted to take her hand, put his hand on her arm, hold her...something, but he simply couldn’t will his body to move any closer. “But this isn’t helping anything. You’ve made it clear how this has hurt you as well, and I understand that. There’s no need for us to continue on that. What we need to do is figure out how to move on.”

“Unless you can forgive, then it won’t happen, Nick. Nor will it happen if I don’t stop hating myself, and reminding myself how much you hate me.” She shrugged. “How do I make this up to you without losing myself any more than I have already?”

“I’ve said many things, Leto, but not one time did I say that I hated you.” He took her hand, briefly. After a squeeze he let go. “And I don’t. I love you. I don’t know how many more times I have to say that. What I do hate, however, is that this even happened. If we keep dwelling on it, then we may as well just throw in the towel, and I don’t want that.” He scoffed. “Would I be taking these steps if I did? I mean,” he chuckled a bit, “I voluntarily called Doctor Swift! That should tell you something.”

“Can you forgive and lay it aside? Focus on me and us instead of what was?” The fact that he’d taken her hand warmed her more than anything had in days.

“Well, I did just say that we needed to figure out how to move on. Forgiveness,” he started and exhaled sharply, “I want to, but I can’t just jump in. This is going to take some time, Leto, and us talking like this, trying to sort it out and work back towards getting what we had before, will help. I hope you can accept that, because flipping a switch and just acting like it never happened won’t work. We both know it did, and leaving that elephant just tromping all around the room without addressing it will only make it fester. It’s like burying the hatchet but leaving the handle sticking out so we’ll keep tripping all over it.”

Now he was concerned. It seemed that she expected him to just forgive her immediately, but he still hadn’t gotten an answer from her as to why she chose Zoudin over him, and without a moment’s hesitation. And revenge or not, her relationship with Nick should have been many times more important than posing as Zoudin’s--check that, becoming Zoudin’s wife.

He stood there waiting for a reply, and wondering if he was always going to be second fiddle to those that they were after within the realm of their work. If that was the case, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle it.

“I didn’t mean instantly, Nick, I was speaking big picture.” She licked her lips, worry worming its way back through her now. “I’ve tried to explain myself, and tell you how I feel about it all. I’ve made it clear I don’t want this sort of thing happening again. I want us back so badly I feel as if I’ll shatter from the need of it. But I have to try and get past this for me or it is going to ruin me. Do you understand that? You say you want us to work things out too. I believe that but when you can’t talk about all of it without the need to throw up, how can we? I agree, ignoring that elephant is a bad idea but part of it....we seem to have to do just that.” Her eyes grew wet with unshed tears as she looked up at him. “How will I ever be good enough again?”

“What do you want me to do? Compare sexual techniques? I don’t want to talk about that! I know it happened, you know it happened--hell, I got to see part of it! That’s all of the conversation about it that I want to have!” He was starting to get pissed again but had to force himself to calm down. “What I want to do,” he said, now speaking in a lower tone, “is never speak of...that again. I want to move on. I want to find what we had before.” Sinking down into the sofa he wiped a tear from his eye. “I want to forget it ever happened.”

“But that’s what I --” She fell silent and decided not to point out she’d said that only moments ago and he’d insisted it wasn’t a good idea to ignore things. “You’re right Nick. About all of it. Time and a little space, see how it goes. That’s about all we can do.”

“Time, yes. Space, maybe. If we just could talk about...hell, I don’t know, anything else it might be easier.” He dreaded the idea, again, but had to say it. “Maybe we should leave the discussions about our problem to when Robin is around. To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it at all, but we have to. But it kinda’ sounds like we’re saying the same thing but still disagreeing about it, and if that’s the case, we’ll never get back to normal.” He looked to her, a serious expression on his face. “I’m seriously contemplating asking Robin to erase my memory of the event.”

“He won’t and you know it.” Leto sighed and reached up to rub her temples. “I should go. I’ve not slept much and I’ve had about all the stress I can handle for a while.” She smiled faintly. “I should’ve just killed him up front. But then, Aegina would still be around. At least she’s gone for good.”

“I don’t...I don’t want you to go, Leto,” he said, standing again, almost jumping from the couch. “I was kind of hoping that we could, I don’t know, talk about anything else. Just have a normal conversation and not be upset by this for a while. I always felt better when I could talk to you.”

He fidgeted a moment before speaking again. “I wanted to surprise you with the promotion thing,” he said, trying desperately to think of anything else to talk about. “I thought it might help us out since you were an officer and I was enlisted. Now it’s not such a faux pas.”

“You know that never mattered to me but I meant what I said.” Her smile was brighter now. “I am so very proud of you. And yes it was a surprise. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since you and Li could keep a secret from me?”

“I had to take those courses here, mostly,” he said. “A few I took down in the academy section, but you were usually working so it gave me some time. It was tough to do, and I really wanted to tell you, but I wanted to surprise you more.”

“Congratulations once again. Hey, are you hungry?”

“I could eat,” he said, hoping that meant that she’d hang around a bit more. Even going out to eat would be good, as long as they were together. “And I don’t think I said it earlier, but I’m also very proud of your promotion. More than I am of mine. You really are a good spook.”

“Thanks. You cook, I am going to sit down here on the sofa.” she did so, slipping off her shoes and tucking her bare feet beneath her.

“Anything specific you want? You know what I can actually cook myself, but I can replicate with the best of them.” He smiled a bit, enjoying the sight of her getting more comfortable.

“Surprise me. Go for two today.” And now, Leto actually laughed. It felt good to be back here, in Nick’s place, if not completely comfortable, at least less would up. And as the sounds of him puttering in the kitchen reached her, she finally began to relax for the first time in days, and closed her eyes.

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Lt. Nick Marcinko
Desperately Seeking Leto

Lt. Leto
Looking For The Way Home