Chapter Text
This time when Evangeline entered Admiral Asava’s office, she was less surprised to find Cmdr. Dalit sitting behind the desk rather than the admiral herself. She even almost smiled.
“Hello again,” Dalit greeted warmly. “Looking for the admiral?”
Evangeline nodded. “The Lovelace is about to set out for our planetary survey of Eylis. I came to report our departure to Admiral Asava.”
“Unfortunately, the admiral is indisposed at the moment. She’s meditating a trading dispute that’s undoubtedly going to take hours.” Dalit grimaced. “She is not fond of dealing with quibbling, and would rather send me, but this time she was forced to go alone. Hence it’s an excellent opportunity to reorganize her files. I’ll be sure to pass on the message, though.”
“Have they really gotten disorganized already since we last talked?”
Evangeline had always been an organized person, even before she worked on mostly Vulcan crews, so the idea of rapid disorganization felt odd to her.
Dalit laughed. “Oh, yes, Admiral Asava can absolutely throw an organized file system into complete chaos within ten minutes, and that’s not even adding all the new files she gets every day. Starfleet sure loves bureaucracy, and admirals have it terrible.”
The conversation came to a natural lull, leaving Evangeline scrambling for what to do. She wasn’t quite sure if she should excuse herself; she still had several minutes before the Lovelace was set to depart and she didn’t mind talking to Dalit. Should she continue the conversation, then? And if she should, what should she say?
“Are you excited for your survey of Eylis?” Dalit asked, saving Evangeline from her awkwardness.
“It will give me an opportunity to get to know the crew better, as well as take part in a more typical mission for this ship.”
“That sounds like a very rote answer. If that’s all you’re willing to say, I’ll accept it, but I wouldn’t mind knowing your honest answer either. I might also work for Admiral Asava, but I’m not in your chain of command so you’re free to say whatever you would like to me without consequence. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Why do you want to know?”
It was a stupid question, but it slipped out of Evangeline’s mouth nevertheless. Vulcans tended to be very proper people because of their belief in logic above all else, which meant that Evangeline usually knew exactly how to respond to them. They were never looking for frank answers, but logical ones. Evangeline would never think to share her honest feelings with any of her Vulcan friends because they always dismissed feelings as a deterrent to logic.
“Because I feel like you need a friend, and I like you enough to want to be that friend,” Dalit replied simply. “To put it in your terms, friendship is formed by shared interests and/or experiences, which our first conversation revealed to be true. I would like to continue our association.”
“I… I’m not very excited,” Evangeline blurted out. “About Eylis, I mean.”
It was a blatant avoidance of Dalit’s offer of friendship, but Evangeline didn’t know what to do with it. The friendships of her crewmates she could accept as a professional necessity, but Dalit was right that she fell outside of Evangeline’s chain of command. There didn’t need to be any relationship between them beyond distant professionality. Furthermore, Dalit was quite different from Evangeline’s other friends. Not only was she not a Vulcan, but she was also much more open and apparently cared about Evangeline’s feelings. It was something that Evangeline wasn’t sure how to deal with.
“Why aren’t you excited about Eylis?” Dalit asked, as if to prove Evangeline’s point that she cared about feelings.
“It’s… insignificant,” Evangeline mumbled.Like me, she thought to add, but didn’t. She was embarrassed by her feelings but nonetheless feeling compelled to share them after having offered Dalit the truth already. “It’s nothing like the important missions I went on when I served on the Margaret Hamilton.”
Dalit hummed thoughtfully, seeming unbothered by Evangeline’s honesty. “I can understand why you would think that. It must seem like a downgrade from your previous missions, and I won’t lie to you and say that it’s just as important, but that doesn’t mean what you are doing isn’t useful. Not everybody gets to do the glamorous jobs, you know.”
It was a sentiment that Evangeline had heard a thousand times before—that every job was important no matter how small. However, that didn’t make it feel any better to know she had been downgraded. Her dream of finally becoming a captain felt like it was slipping through her fingers, and she worried she was never going to achieve anything she wanted. She was going to end up stuck on this dead-end ship in a dead-end job for life.
“I have to go,” Evangeline finally said as a way to end the conversation. “The Lovelace will be leaving soon.”
“I hope to see you again.”
Evangeline didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t bother. Somehow, she already knew that Dalit would understand, even if it was a social faux pas.