BACKPOST: While You Wait

Posted on Fri Jul 4th, 2025 @ 9:56am by Delaney O'Callaghan & Leiddem Kea (*)

Mission: Shackles
Location: Betazed
2748 words - 5.5 OF Standard Post Measure

"You know, I'm starting to think your sister might actually have installed you with a tracking device."

It was fair to say that, right up until the point where she'd stepped off the transport and found her way to the medical precinct's singular coffee shop, Eva wasn't entirely sure she was going to embark upon surprise appearances. She had almost convinced herself that the initial communication with Jeassaho had been an aberration, the mixture of alcohol and stress tinged with a hint of nostalgia, and that hadn't made her angry. It was nice to be considered at all, especially when there was ample excuse to just accept the natural disconnect of circumstantial friendship. It had been the follow-up message a week or so later that had come as more of a surprise, not just for its intent but because of its part in determining an emerging pattern. It seemed less likely now that the other woman was content with losing touch, and it was certainly the case that Jeassaho thought highly enough to seek assistance when her own absence wouldn't allow her to intervene. Eva wasn't sure what to make of that, wasn't sure if the others involved would appreciate her re-emergence, but the prospect was compelling enough that she'd made it this far. Outwardly, she hadn't changed much, other than a continued trend to embrace her natural colouring rather than gloss over it with brighter shades. Inwardly, this was exactly the right kind of company to gauge how far she'd come.

There was fondness to her smile, though, because as his sister had predicted, Leiddem did look a little lost, a whole lot worried, and was completely failing to mask either despite obviously trying to. She didn't move to sit, wasn't quite ready to invite herself in like that, but there was a buoyancy to her presence that bore very little resemblance to the turbulence of her psionic capabilities last time they spoke. Balance. Something she'd been almost entirely without the last time they spoke.

"Right down to the exact table you'd be sitting at and the expression on your face.

Leiddem blinked several times as he looked up from his coffee, down and then back up. The woman was definitely stood there waiting expectantly for him to say something. He stood up hovering for just a moment before he hugged her in his usual jovial way. “She probably put it in my ass.” He said by way of greeting as he finally let her go and stepped back, looking a little less lost for a moment as he took her in. “You look good!” He surmised his thoughts together.

As someone who had always tended to tuck her emotions in amongst her actions, Eva held on just a little longer than even she had been prepared for. Their own dynamic had been simple enough, Leiddem's capacity for amassing sister-figures was legendary by this point, but he was also currently representative of a much larger sense of community that had found its way into the recovering alcoholic's thoughts of late. It was a reconnection Eva hadn't known she'd needed until Jeassaho's call. "I feel good,' she replied honestly, stepping back to conduct her own scrutiny. Whatever she saw in his face seemed to satisfy her as she relaxed into a familiar grin and added, "Your ass-controller said you'd be wearing a hole in the floor. Fancy some company?" The slight arching of her eyebrows conveyed an underlying sympathy that was actually reasonably translatable as a telepathic undercurrent. "Just in case they stick with standard procedure and take all bloody day."

"Always when they are Eva shaped." He squeezed both her hands before indicating the space across from him, before sitting down carefully in the chair. Sometimes he thought himself too large for spaces like which was why he was not pacing. "My ass-controller knows me so well, to be honest, and I am glad she reached out. Would you like something to drink?"

"I'd murder a macchiato," Eva replied, slipping into the seat opposite whilst simultaneously managing to struggle out of her jacket. A brief moment of eye contact with the barista further emphasised a complete shift in capabilities, genuine integration into a telepathic society that often tended to leave spoken interaction for the tourists. It had taken a while and there were still times when she didn't leave her apartment because she couldn't bring herself to deal with the constant sense of connectedness, but Eva was at least 'networked-in' now, as she liked to call it. Her order placed, she clasped her hands together on the table and leaned forward to study the man opposite with an expression of familiar mischief. "So you wised up finally then?" An arched eyebrow refused to let him off the hook with just that. "How many times did she have to beat you over the head to make you notice?"

“Look at you all telepathic…” Leiddem realised surprised and proud of her all at the same time. Where there had always been silence to Leiddem he realised that there was a connection to that if he tugged on with her he could connect to. “Um… I mean… not long?” He said quietly looking at his own drink smiling fondly as he thought about Delaney practically beating him.

The less said about her improvement, the better, as far as Eva was concerned. Over-stating the matter came with too much risk of jinxing it, though she wasn't normally prone to superstition. It was the pressure of expectation, something she'd historically failed to handle at all, that made lingering on the topic unappealing. A tiny twitch of acknowledgement was just enough to pay thanks for the recognition whilst doing absolutely nothing to deter the intent of the twinkle in her eyes.

"It was already 'too long' by the time I left," Eva pointed out candidly. "You started making eyes at that Starfleet officer we rescued and I was about ready to throw a chair at you myself." She hesitated then and scoffed, pulling a face as if something had just occurred to her. "Angel owes me. He said she'd give up before she got through to you. I told him he'd clearly never met a true redhead before. Good for you," she added, finally cutting him some slack. "Things are good then?"

Starfleet officer? He thought, trying to think of who she meant, before he remembered the science officer from the ship, Commander Kaleetha Sloan. She had been gorgeous, but she would have eaten him alive. He had been that type of man, but Delaney made him want to be better. "Oh, you mean Commander Kaleetha Sloan? She was beautiful, but ... Delaney is all mine, and I am quite happy with her. Angel, huh?" He asked winking at her turning the tease back on her.

The interruption of her drink arriving at least kept Eva from prodding him about the clearly-understated 'quite happy'. Even without Jeassaho's predictions and her own improved empathy, Eva was pretty sure she could have picked up the reason for the softening of his eyes as Leiddem spoke. It also decently explained why he was distracted enough still to cast the occasional furtive glance towards the door. Taking a sip of the steaming coffee, she decided to cut him some slack. "Well, you know, at least one of guys who promised to keep me company behind the bar followed through." All right, a little slack.

Leiddem found himself smiling a little at that. "Good, and I was a shocking helper behind the bar. I drank more than I served." He laughed a little as he gave the doorway another glance as it wooshed open. "But aside from Angel keeping you company, what else have you been up to?" He wondered quietly.

"Oh, I haven't seen him since I left you lot," Eva corrected. "Haven't seen anyone other than Hiram actually, until your sister called me out of the blue. I've been..." A putter of lips conveyed some indecision about how to accurately answer that question. "...gluing myself back together. Reconnecting with family, getting poked and prodded in the name of medical science. I'm a special case," Eva smirked, "Who'd have thought?" After another pause, she continued. "Sold the bar back on Earth, lease the premises to a friend now, and working part-time in one here in between therapy sessions." She scrunched up her nose. "A whole bunch of boring adult stuff if I'm honest, I don't know how people live like this permanently."

"Boring adult stuff is the story of our lives right now." He laughed, glad that he was at least seeing someone familiar, and she was not just dealing with rebuilding everything with so many medical things going on. "But I am proud of you, Eva. You have come so far. You are all visible to me physically and mentally." He smiled and took a sip of his coffee.

Eva scrunched up her face, awkward again at the direct compliment. Things weren't perfect; working in a bar whilst trying to stay sober was perhaps not the smartest move, but she missed the work and hadn't really decided where to land her feet in another career yet. "I guess if we can sort our shit out, there's hope for the universe yet." She huffed with laughter into her coffee and then, predictably, changed the subject. "So I take it you guys had some fun recently? Jeassaho didn't exactly explain why she was calling me in the middle of the night to thank me for something I'm not sure I actually did."

"I feel like I have sorted out a lot of my shit to be honest," Leiddem admitted. He had finally found a woman who gave him as good as he gave out. Delaney was his balance and he loved her wildly for it. He sighed when she mentioned the fun they had gotten into. "Yeah. It is actually why we are here... or at least it gave us a warning that Delaney needed this." He was not going to take no for an answer on this but he was thankful for the warning from the future.

"Never a dull moment." Eva shook her head, unsurprised and yet still a little in awe at the crew's ability to find trouble. It had spooked her enough, and though she had turned her desire to flee into a trajectory towards an actual solution for once, there was still no escaping the fact that processing a very violent brush with death had taken some time. She had yet to step back into a simulated environment, that was for sure. "So what happened?" Curiosity had got the better of her. "Like I said, your sister gave me nothing."

“This time it wasn’t really our fault but we had a bit of a time adventure.” He admitted, leaning across the table to look at her and explain best he could. “Past… potential futures. It was a fun trippy ride.” He said in a whisper. He had not spoken to Jeassaho in lengths aloud about what she had seen but he had gathered enough from her mental torment that she had seen several different variations of her life that left her confused and seeking comfort about the potential.

"Oh, no thank you." With typical candidness, Eva's face contorted into a sympathetic grimace. "One lifetime's worth of mess is enough to sort out." It added an additional layer of intrigue, however, given the context of Jeassaho's impromptu call now held the potential to have followed some sort of future revelation, or at least a decent facsimile of one. "Everything's sorted now though, right?"

"Yes, but it gave us a few hints of things to avoid." Leiddem sighed softly and rubbed his eyes, though the wait for Delaney to come back was unnerving him. "It is okay, though we are trying to move forward. Jeassaho and Gregnol are okay, though." He was sure of that if walking in on them making out was anything to go by.

"Well, good."

If anything, Leiddem's response had created more questions than it had answered but Eva let the matter rest, accepting at least that he wasn't his sister's keeper and anything more specific was probably going to need to come from Jeassaho herself. Reaching for the sweetener, she took a cube and ate it, crunching thoughtfully before changing the subject again.

"And moving forward brought you all the way back here. A place neither of us thought we'd visit again any time soon and look at us." She eyeballed Leiddem, having picked up enough about his family situation to hazard a few guesses. "Meeting the parents, sounds serious. And you survived, look at you go."

"It was meeting the sisters that terrified me." His parents were easy compared to his 3 sisters; it was a baptism of fire but Delaney had handled it with a lot more grace and candour than he ever could have. He was not sure he could deal with Delaney's brothers anyway near as well as she handled things.

"How long are you both here for?," Eva asked, which was in its own way an act of kindness given how tempted she was to delve into the details of why his siblings were enough to provoke a cold sweat. "There's got to be some time to get away from the family before you head back." She dipped her head to the side as if conceding to something. "It took me a while to appreciate it, but this planet is pretty unique. Even their tourist traps are classy."

"Knew it would get to you eventually." He smiled. "I love this planet, I have just never felt at ease with some of the people." He leaned forward, picking up his coffee again. "We are here for as long as we need to be," He admitted. Gregnol had not told him anything firmly when he needed to be back by.

"I guess it's a bit confronting for a non-telepath." It was, if Eva was honest, enough to deal with as half of one. "But come on, you can't bring a lady all the way home to meet the folks and not whisk her away somewhere romantically secluded." It took a moment for her to recall what she knew of the main reason for the visit, at which point Eva puttered her lips in reconsideration. "Sunshine is therapeutic, right? Head west enough and you can probably find an island with a low enough population not to freak her out."

Leiddem laughed a little at the concept of Delaney being freaked out. She had taken to Betazed and the telepathic nuances of the planet like a fish to water. She handled being on his home planet better than he handled it, in all honesty. "She is the most beautiful soul who deals with telepathy better than I do, but that is a good shout," he mused, pulling out his PADD to look at the potential before he forgot.

The slightest grimace over Eva's next sip had more to do with playful envy than the bitterness of her coffee. "Nobody likes a show-off." There was some sort of irony to the idea that a full-blooded human could not only coexist amongst telepaths, but thrive. Eva had always assumed she'd have been better off if her fathers had just given her a Betazoid mother instead, perhaps she'd been barking up the wrong genetic tree. "But I bet said show-off would love the choral lakes. Why not take her to Shaela, see if she's got an ear to match her soul." More a place of pilgrimage than a tourist destination, the township perched next to Lake Kharavell held fond memories. Eva's love of music had strong roots in childhoods spent listening to the melodic resonance caused by the wind moving through the region's unique rock formations.

Leiddem smiled and leaned out both physically to touch her hand and mentally to touch her and her thoughts, wanting to soothe the bitterness and envy that he could hear and feel. He could understand what she felt, and it mattered; it was just as valid after what she had been through. "Great suggestions and not places I would have thought off."

Across the table, Eva winked. "You know me, walking ideas generator with no off-switch." Conspiratorily, she leaned forward with a gleam. "I can even help you book it."