White Tulips

Posted on Mon Oct 7th, 2019 @ 1:12am by Lieutenant Elara Evander

Mission: Preludes
Location: Arboretum, USS Mazerine
Timeline: 2370, 1600 Hours

Things kept changing and Elara hated it. She knew that she needed to learn to adapt, but she felt like she kept losing people. Even if Leo was annoying and sometimes mean to her, she still wasn't happy about him being gone. He'd been accepted to Starfleet Academy early at sixteen because of his exemplary work in engineering. She'd still not gotten to see Jacob, though she absolutely lived for their video talks. They weren't a replacement for them being back together, though. With Leo gone, Elara knew that the two of them could have so much more fun, also they were both older so it wasn't like they really needed a babysitter.

"You're not concentrating."

She wasn't.

Elara looked from where she'd zoned out looking at a water feature to her mom. "I still think my brain just must be weird...or broken."

Gwendolyn sighed. "You know that it's neither."

"Leo was fourteen--"

"And you're twelve," she cut in. "We've been working on you trying to learn this for about a year now. That's too much time. You need to learn it for you and for other telepaths and empaths around you." There was clear frustration in her mother's voice, but it was soft and she was clearly trying to keep it out of her voice.

Elara stared at her. "Because I'm loud?"

"Because it's about taking care of yourself and that might not seem like such a big deal right now, but it's something that's extremely important as you grow...and it's also important for people around you that may not have control over their abilities," her mother said gently. "Think about like when you first got your abilities and how you were in bed with headaches and couldn't even sleep without me shielding you...now if that was doubled."

She felt like her mother wasn't telling her something and it only frustrated her more. Elara was miserable. She'd managed to get through all the feelings and the noise in her own head over the last year and she'd thought that she'd done well, but she swore it only further made things weird between her and her parents. Their emotions sometimes made it all the harder for her to handle things, she knew that they fought about things...about her. "Sometimes I don't want it," she told her mother. "Sometimes I think I feel too much. Can you feel too much?" Elara was on the verge of tears, it was already too much...but even more so when she felt like no one understood. She felt out of the two of her parents that her mother should be able to understand the best...and yet...she felt like Leo had done the best and she continued to be the trouble child.

Before her mother had the chance to respond to her question, her father joined them. He looked tired. They both looked tired. This wasn't new. As he approached, he held up a familiar object and Elara immediately lit up, in turn he smiled the biggest smile she'd seen in a while, she moved towards him before holding out her hands for Pippin. He kissed her forehead and she just beamed up at him and held Pippin against her chest. "Thank you."

"How's your head, Angel?" Tucker asked.

Elara shrugged. She didn't really want to answer because it was a constant worry right now. It wasn't so much pain, but the flooding of emotions that really hit her. She looked down at Pippin for a moment and then looked up at her dad again. "Can I show Pippin the water?"

"Just be careful because I don't know that dragons can swim."

She giggled and nodded before running off, she held her arm out with Pippin held securely so that it was like he was flying. Elara crouched down at the edge of the water, careful not to be too close before looking back over her shoulder to see her parents kissing before her dad sat down next to her mom. Turning her attention back to Pippin, she made him fly over the water.

"I thought you said she's too big to still have Pippin?" Gwendolyn asked her husband, trying to stay quiet so that Elara wouldn't overhear.

Tucker was quiet at first. "I hate how miserable she's been," he finally responded quieter than his wife had been. "I'm afraid if we take it away, she'll get worse...and it's the closest thing we can get to giving her what she wants."

"Jacob?"

"If we could request it, I'd say we should," Tucker said. "For now, though, have you talked to Doctor Embers anymore about maybe dampening her abilities? If she's refusing to learn...or not able to figure it out--"

"You can't just cancel out a part of who she is!" Gwendolyn snapped a bit too loud.

Elara turned and looked over at them wide eyed and in the process knocked Pippin into the water, which then pulled her attention back to her dragon. She panicked and immediately reached in for it, even though it was a shallow pond, she looked it over to ensure no damage had occurred. She didn't care about her wet sleeves, just that Pippin was okay. As soon as she was sure he was okay, she held him tight to her body, not caring that she was getting the front of her dress wet as well. She turned her attention back to her parents and noticed they'd gone quiet and that her mother was pinching the bridge of her nose, Elara swore that she did that a lot lately.

"Sorry, Angel. We hadn't meant to scare you," Tucker tried to cover.

"I'm sorry," Elara whispered, feeling like this had to be another fight that was about her. Her mother might shield herself but she could read her father's face and she could feel the vortex of emotions twisting in the direction of worry, frustration, and upset.

Her mother's head popped up and she looked at her next. "No, I'm sorry, Elara. It's fine, Pippin's okay, right?"

Elara just nodded.

"Why don't you show him the white tulips? Weren't you talking about how you wanted to sit in a whole field of them?" Gwendolyn prompted.

The white tulips were on the other side of the arboretum from where her parents were sitting, which only reinforced to Elara that her parents were discussing or fighting about her. She figured that she wouldn't add to it. She was too tired to do anything more than get up and move towards the destined flowers with Pippin in her arms. Once over there, she settled down on her stomach, placing Pippin between the tulips, and stared at him. "They're talking about me again," she whispered. "They like Leo better…"

When Elara was out of earshot, Gwendolyn looked to Tucker. "We've been over this. Betazoids are all different, especially ones who are only partially so. Some develop abilities and some don't...and some are stronger than others." She sighed. "Elara's headspace isn't the same as mine or Leo's...she's very different and I don't know how to get her to focus."

"Could we reach out to someone on Betazed? Or someone from the community on Starbase 211?"

Gwendolyn didn't respond right away. "If I knew someone personally, I'd have suggested Betazed last year. I don't think it would go over well to just send her there without knowing anyone or anyone knowing her." She paused. "And I thought you were against going back to Starbase 211?"

There were clearly conflicted feelings. "It could help her, though?"

"She wouldn't want to come home even if it did help, Jacob's there… Her tether to him is something special, I don't know how to describe it."

"But her mind--"

Holding up her hands, Gwendolyn tried to go ahead and explain it in another way to Tucker. They'd been over it before, but she'd thought up another analogy for it. "Think of Elara's normal brain...just her own thoughts and feelings as something quiet like classical music that's played on piano. It's something that you feel calm...and could fall asleep to."

"Okay."

"Add in something like that jazz that you listen to," Gwendolyn said after a breath. "That's your emotions. Layer in different kinds of music for every other person on this ship that can't shield their own emotions." She waited, hoping that he was processing what she was saying. "Some of that, Elara's filtering out or muddling it together with other layers… That's not how it was for Leo."

"So what do we do?"

"If you want to send her to Starbase 211, then maybe it wouldn't be horrible that she gets that time to spend with Jacob and even though I know we said we wouldn't try to transfer back...maybe it would be for the best?" Gwendolyn put it out there. "But why don't we give it a couple weeks to think over? If we're leaning towards it, we can always send a message and see if it's a possibility. I don't want to say anything to Elara until we've decided and have set up plans if that's the direction we go in."

Tucker nodded and sat there in silence for a few minutes before speaking up again. "I just want our happy little girl back again."

"Well, then Pippin definitely stays…"

"Maybe Pippin needs a friend."

Gwendolyn couldn't help but laugh at that. "Let's go and see how they're doing," she said getting up and holding her hand out to him. They moved hand and hand over to where Elara was laying before sitting down with her. "What are you and Pippin doing?"

Elara didn't look at them, instead of just focusing on Pippin. "Thinking…"

"You mind if we quietly think with you guys too?" Tucker asked.

Looking between her parents, Elara then just shrugged before turning back to Pippin. She wondered if this meant that they were done fighting or whatever they were doing. Whatever it was, things felt a little less upsetting.