Dark and Spicy
Posted on Thu Sep 4th, 2025 @ 7:40pm by Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren & Commodore Stephen MacCaffery
2,272 words; about a 11 minute read
Mission:
Second Light
Location: SB 369
Timeline: 242509.04
=/\= MacCafferey MacLaren Quarters =/\=
The glass sat empty in her hand, the last burn of scotch fading in her chest. Sidra hadn’t planned on drinking tonight, let alone pouring another, but the bottle gleamed in the low light, within easy reach. She stared at it as though the amber depths might explain what she couldn’t name. With a sigh, she tipped another measure into the glass.
The silence of the quarters pressed in. It should have felt like respite, but instead, there was a weight that clung to her shoulders. A cloud. A shadow she had thought would lift once the Arawyn departed, once the pomp and ceremony were done. But the gnawing sense hadn’t faded. If anything, it lingered stronger than before, an unease she couldn’t drink away, couldn’t out-swing in a batting cage.
She cradled the glass in her palm, swirling it slowly, watching the dim light catch in the ripples. For a moment, she considered leaving it untouched, but habit won, and she raised it to her lips. The taste was a bit sharp, familiar, grounding. And yet it gave no clarity.
The door hissed open, spilling a slice of corridor light across the dim room. Stephen stepped inside, still in his teaching jacket, holding his old briefcase over one shoulder. His eyes moved first to her, then to the glass.
Sidra shifted slightly, straightening in her seat as though caught in something she hadn’t meant to be doing. It had been a long time since she had drunk alone. She set the glass down on the table with a muted clink, her hand lingering on it for a beat before she looked up to meet his gaze.
Stephen let the door seal behind him and, for a breath, stayed where the corridor’s light cut the room. The class had been a grinder. His students circled a hard question in judicial law until everyone’s patience thinned but no one quit. He’d walked the ring after, slow, to let the arguments drain off. It usually worked.
He saw the scotch first, then the way Sidra straightened as if he’d caught her hand in the drawer. The reflex flashed through him, disappointment at the loneliness of it, gone as fast as it came, replaced by the cleaner thing: concern. He hung the jacket on its peg, set the old briefcase in its usual place, and took the room’s temperature before he took a step.
He softened the lights a shade and crossed to the sideboard. A clean tumbler, and added a few cubes of ice, the clink sharp in the quiet room. Then, he poured a measure of scotch into the glass, the amber liquid glinting in the dim light.. He kept his movements deliberate, ordinary, the kind that asks nothing. Only then did he speak, choosing the weather over the storm.
“Not the evening you planned?”
His voice stayed low, the kind you use with a skittish animal or a friend you love. He didn’t look at the bottle again; he looked at her.
He took the chair beside, not across, and set his glass on the table where she could ignore it or match it.
“Do you want company or quiet?” A beat. “I can do either.” She didn’t answer right away. He let the silence run, a useful river, and watched the amber hold the light in her glass. “I’m here,” he added, simpler than he’d planned. “If you want to talk, I’ll listen. If you don’t, I’ll sit.”
He took a sip. The air system whispered through the room. He set his hand, palm down, within the distance she liked to bridge when the weight finally let go.
In a mirror to him, she took a sip of scotch, then leaned forward to set the glass beside his on the table. Her hand lingered there before sliding into his, her shoulders easing with the sigh that escaped her.
The guilt followed right after. Knowing how quickly he absorbed her weather, how easily her shadows filled the room and settled on him. It wasn’t fair, but it was the way of them.
“There’s been a cloud I can’t shake,” she said finally, her voice low. “I thought it would lift when the Arawyn sailed. I thought once the ceremony was over, once the station quieted, it would feel… lighter. But it hasn’t. It’s still here, and I can’t put my finger on why.”
Her thumb brushed against his as though to steady herself, but her grip on his hand was firmer than she realized, almost desperate. Her jaw tightened, the muscles working as if she was holding back more than the words she spoke.
“I saw Indi tonight. Holodeck. Batting cages.” She gave a small shake of her head, eyes narrowing at the memory. “She’s unraveling, Stephen. Keeping the job moving, yes, but at a cost. The hours she keeps, the look in her eyes, it’s not just exhaustion. It’s something deeper.”
Her mouth pulled tight before she went on, her gaze flicking down to their joined hands, then back up to him. “I even tried your trick. Invited her to dinner. She brushed it aside, walked past it like it meant nothing.”
Sidra leaned back into the couch with a sharp exhale, her grip loosening but not letting go, eyes closing for a moment. “I couldn’t reach her. Not an inch. And that… that frightens me more than I want to admit.”
There was more she wanted to unload, a storm that pressed against the back of her teeth, but she tempered it. Her mind drifted instead to the quiet before the Arawyn’s launch, coffee in hand with Will across the table. He’d carried himself with such ease, the kind that came from never having shouldered the weight of loss directly. He knew the stories, of course, but not the living of them.
Her green eyes opened again, finding Stephen’s. Her grip on his hand tightened as she drew a breath.
“It isn’t just Indi,” she admitted, voice low. “It’s Will, too. He’s ready for more than I’ve given him. And that terrifies me.”
The words settled between them, heavier for having finally been spoken. Somehow, she knew these two things, Indi’s unraveling and Will’s looming readiness, were not the full mass of the cloud pressing down on her. What else lingered there was still hidden, waiting in the shadows, just beyond reach.
He felt the pressure before the words, a story told in the sudden, involuntary clench of her fingers against his. He let his thumb move once, a slow, deliberate press across her knuckles, a single, steadying anchor. He listened, not just to the two names she spoke, but to the exhaustion and fear woven between them. Two distinct worries, tangled together. His own thumb found the cool, worn platinum of his wedding ring, a silent, centering touch. Reset.
“Okay,” he said, his voice quiet in the dim light of the room. “Let’s set it down and look at it.” He took the two worries she’d given him and laid them out like separate pieces of evidence, giving each its own space.
“Indi first,” he began, his tone even and calm, the voice of a man building a framework to keep things from collapsing. “She’s your friend, and she reports to you. That’s two tracks, Sidra. They can’t run parallel on this.”
He gently separated their hands so he could use his own to illustrate, palms open. “The friend track is you. Just Sidra. You invite her for a walk, for coffee in your quarters, no agenda beyond the simple fact of ‘I’m here.’ If she declines, you leave the door open and you try again in a week. No pressure, only presence.”
He then shifted, his posture straightening almost imperceptibly, his voice gaining a quiet, professional edge. “The command track is for the institution, not for you. Let the chain of command carry the weight. The XO enforces mandatory duty caps. Her deputy is given explicit authority to order her to stand down. The CMO is tasked with a ‘routine’ wellness check for the entire senior staff, starting with Indi. We rotate her off the night watch for a full cycle.” He met her eyes, his gaze steady. “We document it all as a matter of operational readiness and crew safety, not as a punishment or a therapy session. You give her a way to step back without losing face. You get to keep your friend; the system provides the guardrails.”
He let that settle, a complete, actionable plan. Then he took her hand again, his voice softening as he addressed the second, heavier weight. “Will,” he said, the name costing him a tangible measure of breath. “Your fear makes perfect sense.” He paused, allowing the validation to land before continuing. “It’s also time.”
“We give him limited autonomy,” he went on, sketching the idea in the air between them. “Real tasks with clear limits and a clean abort protocol if anything feels wrong. We assign him a mentor for the first few runs, someone good, someone patient. We make after-action talks a ritual, not a scolding, a place to analyze data, not assign blame.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “We plan for both outcomes. Ops and Medical get his baseline psych profiles. We establish a non-verbal alert he can use that calls us, and only us, in. We make sure he knows that using it is a sign of strength, of knowing his limits.”
Her hand, which had been a knot of tension, finally eased in his grip. He didn’t let go.
“And the part you can’t name yet, the fear that’s just a shape in the dark, leave it there for now,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “We don’t have to force it into the light tonight. It doesn’t need a name to be real, but it doesn’t get to be in charge.”
He reached over and slid a glass of water closer to her. “You keep your friend. We get our son ready. The rest will show itself when it’s time.”
Sidra noticed the glass of water he’d slid toward her. She let out a breath that almost became a laugh and shook her head. “I’m not drunk, Mac, just dark and spicy.”
She lifted the half-drunk scotch, finished it in one swallow, never one to waste it, then set the empty glass down with a soft clink. Only then did she reach for the water, cool against her palm, taking a steady sip before settling back into the couch beside him.
Sidra smirked faintly, shaking her head. “I haven’t even appointed a deputy for the fleet yet,” she admitted, the corner of her mouth tightening. “Long overdue, and here you are reminding me why it matters.” She squeezed his hand once, her eyes narrowing with a spark of humor. “You’d make a hell of a deputy, you know. Not that I’d inflict that on you.”
The jest faded into something warmer, more earnest.
“That’s why I bring it to you. You always make me stop, separate it out, give it clarity. I couldn’t see the lines until you laid them down.”
She let herself breathe with that for a moment before his other words returned to her, and a small smile lifted her face. “Will. You know, I could see him as a doctor. Did I ever tell you that’s what I tried to do? Follow in the footsteps of the mother I never knew.” She gave a short, dry laugh. “Didn’t work out for obvious reasons. Security was a better fit for me. But Will… he’s got that precision. That order. And he’s said more than once he just wants to help people.”
Her eyes softened, though her grip stayed firm. “Ops would suit him too. He has the patience, the detail. Whatever path he chooses, though, medical, ops, anything, he needs the physical training. He needs to know what his body can do when he’s pressed, the same way he’s already learned to trust his mind.”
Sidra leaned back slightly, her smirk returning, tempered by a weary kind of fondness. “I’d be happy to work out with him. But I can hardly keep up with a teenage boy anymore, not unless I want to best him and bruise his pride. Better to push him from the nest a little, let him stretch his wings. He needs to feel his own strength, not mine.”
Her gaze found Stephen’s, steady and intent. “Whoever we trust with that role, it has to be someone solid. Someone we’d stake more than just his training on.”
The weight of her words lingered for a beat before she pushed the glass aside, shifting closer to him on the couch. She rested her arm along his, the motion deliberate, as though physically setting the cloud down between them and leaving it behind. Her eyes searched his face, softer now, the lines of strain easing as she let herself focus only on him.
“Now,” she said quietly, her voice intimate, stripped of the earlier edge, “tell me about your day, Mac.”
Commodore (ret) Stephen MacCafferey
Federation Envoy/Adjunct Professor
Vice Admiral Sidra MacLaren
Fleet Commander
Epsilon Fleet
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