A candle flickered in the light of the passing stars. Butterflies fluttered in her chest. Excitement flitted across her face. A daring dress flowed over her delicate frame. The Serenity continued its charge towards Earth, but tonight, here in Elyssia’s quarters, the table was set for two with a soft jazz melody floating lightly in the air, the troubles of the outside world momentarily forgotten.

Winding his way through sterile corridors, Commander Lewis walked like a man on a mission, but this mission was unlike any he’d ever faced before. It was so much easier to stalk a Dominion-occupied world with the Jem’Hadar hunting him. Why was he doing this? He wasn’t sure. Did he want to do it? Maybe. Was it wrong of him? Almost certainly. But wrong hadn’t kept him from torturing that Vorta, so why should it keep him from enjoying dinner with Elyssia?

The door chimed, and Elyssia looked up from the platter of hors d’oeuvres that she was setting on the table. “Come,” she said with a mix of excitement and nerves, the butterflies still fluttering in her chest.

Commander Lewis stepped through the threshold and froze. Elyssia looked absolutely stunning, and her daring dress, backless and plunging in the front to her bellybutton, how did it even stay on? Suddenly, he felt self conscious in his dark cargo pants and black compression shirt. He had clearly picked the wrong outfit, but he had no idea what one was even supposed to wear to something like this. He didn’t even know what this was. At least he’d trimmed his beard, he thought to himself. 

As the door hissed shut, Lewis  just kept standing there, rigid and uncertain, almost as if at attention. “At ease soldier,” Elyssia chuckled. It was adorable to see the seasoned spook, a man who always seemed so sure of himself, so completely unsure in this moment.

Commander Lewis tried to relax, but it didn’t work. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but the elegant table setting, the romantic candlelight, the mood music, and his date dressed to the nines, it definitely wasn’t what he’d figured. The fact they’d just gone through the crucible, almost dying on Nasera, almost dying behind enemy lines, and almost dying in the Ciatar Nebula, their recent trials just made it that much more jarring.

“Jake, this isn’t something you need to overthink. It’s just a casual dinner between friends,” Elyssia teased, sensing the dissonance in her mind. She approached him and gently took his hands in hers as she looked up at him with her bright blue eyes. “Seriously, relax.” She led him towards the table. “There’s no mission here. Just us.”

“I guess I just don’t know what us actually is,” Lewis admitted as he took a seat.

“And that’s the beauty of it,” Elyssia smiled. “Undefined is sometimes perfect. Not every mystery needs to be solved. Just enjoy it for what it is.” 

Commander Lewis contemplated those words. In his world, everything was defined. He was a Starfleet officer. He held the rank of Commander. He was assigned to the USS Polaris as Chief Intelligence Officer. He reported to Fleet Admiral Reyes, and he had an Intelligence Department and a Hazard Team that reported to him. His missions were defined by orders and executed by plan.

“Wine?” Elyssia asked, piercing his inner monologue as she appeared beside him with an ‘87 Ferenginar cabernet.

“Sure,” Lewis replied distractedly.

As he watched the deep red of the fine vintage splash into his glass, he noted how it moved. The glass constrained the liquid, and eventually it would settle, but its movements until it reached equilibrium were random. Maybe that was like him and Ensign Rel. He just wondered what their equilibrium would be when everything settled. 

Elyssia slid into her seat across the table from him. She looked at him, admiring his features, all the while sweetly smiling. She’d been longing for this moment ever since that first walk they took together through the broken streets of Nasera, listening to him share the thoughts of his heart. Most would say that Commander Lewis was a broken man, but she saw beauty in those pieces.

“You really shouldn’t have done all of this,” Lewis remarked. “It’s just so… so much more than I could have imagined.” And so was she. He still couldn’t understand why a woman like her had taken a liking to a man like him. She had a future ahead of her, and he was but a shadow.

“How can you even say that before you take a bite?” Elyssia asked playfully as she plucked a tomato-topped bruschetta off the appetizer plate. But she didn’t bring it to her mouth. Instead, she leaned across the table, guiding it towards his.

Wait, was this for him? And that plunge dress, oh what was it doing dangling like that, falling away from her skin, revealing what lay beneath? Lewis didn’t know where to cast his eyes or what to do with his mouth. As he cast his gaze away, respectfully trying not to stare, she slipped the tasty bite into his mouth. The flavors of chestnut honey and creamy ricotta overwhelmed his senses. 

“Wow,” Lewis said as he let his eyes settle back upon her. She had to know what she was doing so he let himself savor the moment. Elyssia didn’t flinch or try to cover up. His reaction flattered her.

“I convinced chef to let me use the galley this afternoon,” she explained as she fed him the rest of the bruschetta. Then she sat back in her chair, the daring dress falling back into place, snapping Lewis from his moment. “You see, before the Lost Fleet arrived, Serenity stocked up on these goodies because it was supposed to play host to a diplomatic delegation. Of course, once she turned for battle, that all went out the window, and all this was just sitting there going to waste. We get to be the lucky benefactors. Beats the replicated stuff every time.”

“Color me impressed,” Lewis remarked as he popped a canapé into his mouth. “I’ll admit that in all my years, I never learned to cook. I pretty much just eat whatever the replicator recommends based on my fitness metrics… or MREs and supplements if we’re out in the field.”

“Then there’s a whole world out there still waiting for you! Wait til we get to Earth. If we have time, I’ll take you to my favorite little spot in Paris… or really, I should say Jaxon’s favorite spot in Paris,” Elyssia offered, referencing one of Rel’s former hosts. “He was quite a foodie, and I guess I inherited it from him.”

“You see, that’s where you’ve got me beat,” Lewis replied, remembering she had far more than just the experiences of her short twenty five years. “You’ve got how many generations of experience on me?”

“Let’s see, you’re what… Fifty three? Yeah, I’ve got a couple centuries on you.”

The Trill experience always fascinated Lewis. Imagine the tactical advantage you could get from all the training your prior hosts had received, he thought to himself. But on the flipside, did your future host inherit all your darkest memories? He wouldn’t wish his nightmares on anyone. “If you don’t mind,” Lewis asked hesitantly, not wanting to pry but also genuinely curious. “What’s it like living with all those past lives?”

“It’s like a beautiful symphony,” Elyssia answered enigmatically. “Sharing my body and soul with the beautiful lives and personalities of so many to come before me, and someday being a part of those who will come after me, it is something special.” She spoke with a mystical reverence. “But I’ll be honest, it didn’t come easy. I wasn’t exactly planning on it when it happened.”

Commander Lewis wanted to inquire, but also he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. She went on explaining anyway.

“You see, I was fresh out of the Academy on my first assignment aboard the USS Allegiance when we stumbled upon a Trill Fenris Ranger on the verge of death. Before that moment, I had honestly never considered being joined. I was just going to be a Starfleet officer. But I was the only Trill aboard that small patrol ship, and an emergency joining was necessary to save Rel. That’s how my incredible journey began. It took some time to adjust. Took a year off to commune with all I had inherited, since I really wasn’t prepared for it, and now here I am.”

“How come you never considered being joined before? Isn’t that what so many Trill aspire for?”

“For exactly that reason,” Elyssia laughed. “I like to move to the beat of my own drum. You see, my people so ferociously compete for the opportunity to be joined, I just wanted to go off and be my own person. But fate had other ideas for me.” As Elyssia finished her story, she sipped her wine and looked across at her date. “What about you Jake?”

“What about me?”

“What made you into you?”

“Ummm, I’m not sure,” Lewis replied uncertainly. He wasn’t accustomed to talking about his past. “Nothing that comes close to your story, but how about this… I was very against all this cloak and dagger stuff as a young officer. In fact, I had real problems with Starfleet Intelligence and their practices. Had some pretty hostile run ins with them.”

“That surprises me given who you are today.” She’d seen him on Nasera. He wasn’t like the rest of them. They were on a mission. This was his life. He lived it, breathed it, never hesitating even when the rest of them did. It was one of the things about him that impressed her.

“Believe it or not, I was once an optimistic young man who saw Starfleet as the epitome of all that was right in the universe,” Lewis explained. “Starfleet saved me from my childhood, and I took to the stars wanting to do the same for others. But from my first internship to unanswered questions to confiscated works, time and time again, what I thought was right got blocked by spooks in the darkest corners of Starfleet Intelligence… up until the day they came to recruit me. They peeled the curtains back, connected the pieces, and helped me see the bigger picture. I realized then that the galaxy is a messy place, and sometimes lines must be crossed in order to protect all that our people take for granted.”

“Does it ever bother you what the others think?” Elyssia asked. After they’d returned, she’d been surprised by the whispers and rumors floating around the Polaris. They had sacrificed so much, and yet the speculation from her colleagues was painful to hear. Some questioned whether the team had been reckless with the lives of its officers, or what they’d done to cause the Jem’Hadar to give themselves up, and others concocted crazy unfounded rumors.

“Not really,” Lewis replied. “They don’t understand, and they don’t need to. It is the job of people like me to protect their idyllic reality.” The ignorant masses couldn’t handle the truth.

“What about Commander Drake?” Elyssia had not yet been visited by the Polaris’ JAG officer, but she’d heard from Ayala Shafir what happened down in the stardrive computer core, how Drake had drilled her, and then how Lewis had bodied him. “He seems to bother you.”

“Only in how he hurts the people who matter to me,” Commander Lewis answered. “If he had just come to me about the mission, that would have been one thing.” Lewis had assumed he’d have to deal with Drake after the mission since he knew the shark had a sense for when lines were crossed. And he was prepared for that. They’d left no evidence that could link them to what they did, and he had just planned to put up the usual walls to stop the JAG. “But he made it personal with Ayala.” He had a soft spot for Chief Shafir. He’d found her in her darkest moment, and he never wanted to see her back there again. “It probably wasn’t my best idea to throw him around like that though.”

“No, probably not, but he had it coming.” Elyssia couldn’t believe the guts on that guy to start harassing Ayala, or any of them really. Couldn’t Drake understand how difficult their mission had been? Half of their team came home in body bags, and the choices they’d made down there would live with them forever. It was just so heartless of the JAG.

“Don’t get me wrong though,” Lewis added. “Commander Drake has got a job to do, just like me. Sure, it complicates things to know he’s always lurking, trying to nail me for what I have to do, but if it weren’t for people like him, there’d be many more bad people in this world.” In the moments after Nasera, he’d just wanted the guy gone, but as he thought about it more, he remembered why Drake was there in the first place. “Commander Drake actually worked with me and Allison a couple years ago to stuff a coup attempt within the Fourth Fleet. That’s why Allison keeps him around. He is an inconvenient necessity.”

“If only he understood the same about us,” Elyssia commented. “That we had a job to do too. That we are also inconvenient necessities.” 

A pit developed in Commander Lewis’ stomach at Elyssia’s repeated uses of the word we. She might have performed admirably on Nasera, but she was still so young, so optimistic, so pure, with so much life ahead of her. He didn’t want this life for her, but those feelings confused him. Why was he feeling this way? Who was he to care for someone enough to wish them a better life? Usually, he just invited willing shooters into his merry band of morally ambiguous heathens.

“Drake will never fully understand,” Lewis offered. “But that is okay. Part of what makes him successful at his job is the zealous fervor he has from his impossibly high regard for the Federation’s lofty principles. Knowing people like him exist just means we have to be careful with what we do.” And there it was, he used the we word too.

Over the next hour, the conversation wandered through topics aplenty as the hors d’oeuvres were cleared, the main course was polished off, and dessert was had. When there were only crumbs left, the two found themselves on the couch as the conversation grew more personal.

“I’ll be honest. I don’t get it,” Lewis admitted. “What makes someone like you, a bright young star in Starfleet, interested in a washed out spook like me?”

“Your heart,” Elyssia replied genuinely, and it caught Lewis by surprise. He didn’t even think he had one after all he’d done. “No matter how many walls you’ve constructed, I see why you do what you do. You care so much for us, and for everyone really, that you never consider the cost to yourself. I admire that about you.” He put his career, and frankly his life, on the line for the team and the people of Nasera, and he never hesitated.

“But I come with baggage,” Lewis warned.

“Don’t we all?” Elyssia had the personalities of over a half dozen Trill bouncing around in her consciousness. If that wasn’t baggage, she didn’t know what was.

“Not like me. You have this idealized vision of me, but Elyssia, I’m a cold blooded killer.” Lewis was the guy who’d his sidearm to the Vorta’s head and killed it in retribution without a second thought. And it wasn’t the first time either, nor would it be the last.

“For the right reasons,” she replied without hesitation.

“There’s no promise I’ll always make it home,” he warned. This was what bothered him the most, the idea that if he got close to someone, he would eventually disappoint them when he came home in a body bag. In his line of work, that was a very real possibility, and he was honestly somewhat surprised it hadn’t happened already.

“Is there a promise for any of us?” Elyssia countered. Their last mission had made that clear as day. Brock Jordan, Jason Atwood, Nam Jae-sun, and Kora Tal, four skilled operators, almost half their team, who went to Nasera never to return. And then there were the nine hundred and thirty one other officers of the Polaris and her sister ships who died in the battle. Her thoughts drifted to Jaxon Rel and Asteria Rel, Rel’s prior hosts. It was the same story for both of them, doing the right thing and paying the ultimate price.

“No, I suppose not.”

“So why let that stop us?” Whether it was the emotions borne of their experiences on Nasera, or it was genuine understanding, she was not going to be dissuaded. 

Elyssia slid over on the couch, bringing her body against his as she wrapped her arms around him. Their lips connected, and their hands wandered. Against his better judgment, Lewis let it happen. He didn’t understand where these emotions were coming from, but he gave into them. Passions flowed, clothes came off, and they found their way to her bed once more.