Cerulean Stars - Chapter 113

Chapter 113

Stardate -298335.2 - August 31,  2024, Time: 07:36:11

Rolling his shoulders to try yet again to get out the kinks that had formed from spending the night sleeping in an alley, Benjamin Sisko crouched down to hand the plate of eggs and single slice of barely toasted bread to the doctor.

"Here you go, Julian.”

“If we ever get home.” The doctor began as he pulled himself away from the wall he had been propped up against. “I promise never to complain about the station's Cardassian beds ever again.” He looked around in seeming confusion. “Where is everybody? ”

Given the circumstances of their displacement they both knew that if was doing a lot of heavy lifting, but it was better to be hopeful then despair in cases like this.

“In the food lines, waiting for breakfast.” He offered, minimizing just how depressing it had been to see in person since it wouldn’t do to let the other man know how much their circumstances were getting to him. “It's not much to look at, but it's better than nothing.” 

“I suppose so.” Bashir muttered as he began the careful task of eating the food with his hands. “Still no sign of Brooks or Dax?”

“There was a man going on about aliens in the food line.” Benjamin admitted with a grimace at the memory of the rather uncomfortable conversation he’d been forced to have with Mister Grady to figure out if the small man actually had run into their missing security officer. “But I’m pretty sure he was just schizophrenic.”

“Him and a significant percentage of this district.” Bashir muttered testily as he used his toast to scoop up bits of egg. 

Sighing, Benjamin took a moment to look up at the surrounding buildings as he considered their circumstances. “When you're finished eating, I think we should try and make our way to one of the roofs of these buildings. I want to get a better look at the place.”

“You think there might be a way out of here?” Bashir asked, perking up in sudden hope.

It wasn’t particularly likely given their lack of resources, but trying would at least keep them out of the way when things inevitably went bad so Benjamin nodded. “If there is, we'll find it.”

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Stardate -298335.1 - August 31,  2024, Time: 08:28:53

With a good night's sleep and complimentary breakfast driving her forwards, Raine had left Guinan to her all day spa trip and headed out to meet up with Jadzia at the Yerba Buena Gardens. A location the Asari had picked out because nobody was likely to look twice at a pair of overly attractive woman meeting up there.

Or at least that had been the plan before Jadzia had decided to dress up as lesbian George Washington. Now however Raine was seriously considering the merits of just walking away and pretending she didn't know the other woman.

“Tina!? Is that you?” Jadzia suddenly exclaimed, all but beaming in delight as she strode over to the bench Raine was sitting on. “I almost didn't recognize you with that new hairstyle!”

Raine shot the Trill a somewhat awkward smile. “Blondes apparently my color, who knew.”

Because she certainly hadn't, but then she'd purposefully avoided simulating what she might look like as a human to avoid obsessing about what had previously been. 

“Me.” Jadzia said, sitting down on the bench next to Raine. “The general opinion of everyone I’ve asked till now however seemed to shift between blonde and red.”

That Jadzia had apparently gone around asking others what they thought Raine’s hair color would be if she was human wasn’t even remotely surprising at this point. So with a sigh she ignored it to focus on the large number of more important issues currently facing them.

“I’ve told you before that I'm in awe of your many accomplishments, right?”

“Yes.” Jadzia admitted, an amused smile gracing the corner of her lips as she watched a pair of early morning runners jog past. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing it.”

“Great.” Raine said, clapping her hands together and shooting the other woman an almost pleading look. “Then you know I’m not saying this to be mean.”

“Did you fail your PCI classes?” She hissed, using the acronym for the academy’s pre-contact culture infiltration classes just in case someone might overhear. “Because you look like you just got done performing at the Golden Gate theater, and I better not need to explain to you why that’s a bad thing.”

The name of the game when infiltrating primitive cultures was to minimize attention, which was why Raine herself was dressed in a tank top, faux leather jacket, and pair of jeans. All together it took her from a ten down to an eight, still head turning, but there was only so much you could do without the ability to use makeup.

“What's wrong with how I look!?” Jadzia demanded, holding up her arms to examine the suit for a moment before shooting a glare at the disguised Asari.

Taking a moment to double check that nobody was in listening range, Raine pointed at the combadge proudly displayed on Jadzia's suit jacket. 

“Combadge that will be picked up in any photo or video you get caught in.”

She adjusted her finger to point at the jacket.

“A striped three piece men's suit in a style that went out of fashion a hundred years ago.”

She trailed her finger down to the Trill's legs.

“A skirt and tights that look like they're part of a completely different outfit.” 

Her finger rose back up till it was pointing at the other woman's dark hair staring at the disaster for a moment before shaking her head.

“Why?” She asked at last, completely stupefied by Jadzia's choice of hairstyles.

“It's how Lela used to do her hair.” Jadzia returned, running a hand defensively over her hair.

Several things suddenly clicked together in Raine's mind, and she narrowed her eyes at the other woman. “Have you been relying on Dax for your entire sense of style?”

The way Jadzia suddenly avoided meeting Raine's gaze might as well have been an admittance of guilt.

“Not my entire sense of style.” Jadzia whined, sounding oddly young in that moment. 

Raine really should have expected it with how much of a wallflower Jadzia had reportedly been before being joined with Dax. But she was just so used to thinking of Jadzia as being capable of everything, that her mind had just skipped over the possibility that her odd fashion and hair choices over the years might not be intentional.

“Well.” Raine began as she got to her feet. “This is San Francisco, so we shouldn't have too much trouble finding a store with something relatively forgettable to stick you in. Or a stylist who takes walk-in appointments.”

Letting out a sigh Jadzia rose from the bench and looked Raine in the eye. “I take it this wouldn't be appropriate for the party tonight either?”

Unfortunately that wasn't really a question Raine could answer with any certainty, as she'd never actually been to a dinner party hosted by a billionaire before.

“It might be?” She admitted with a shrug. “I apparently have to go in a little red dress though.”

“You have to?” Jadzia repeated, eyeing her in confusion.

Grimacing, Raine nodded. “It was the only high end party appropriate outfit my friend left for me. So I'm working under the assumption that there was probably some reason for that.”

The other option was that it was the time traveler trolling her, in which case the Asari was going to make sure whoever it was suffered for the annoyance whenever it was in the future that they eventually met.

“After we get you set up, we're going to need to go hunt down a portable computer and some data storage.”

She had ended up coming to that particular decision during breakfast while listening to a particularly annoying child blare YouStream videos loud enough half the dining hall could hear it. And the Asari really hoped the department of temporal investigations wouldn’t be too upset over what she was planning to do.

“I have a terminal back at my hotel room.” Jadzia offered. “I've been using it to search for any signs of Ben and Julian.”

“It’s not for that.” Raine told her, eyeing the groups of people that were beginning to filter into the gardens with a frown.

“Come on.” She continued, grabbing the Trill’s arm and pulling her towards the mission street exit. “Things are starting to pick up, and we should probably get moving before the tourists with smartphones start showing up en masse.”

Because if her memory was in any way accurate, it was inevitable that some smart ass would decide to take a video of the oddly dressed lesbian pair, and that was exactly the type of high risk publicity time travelers like them didn’t need.

“Just to be clear.” Jadzia put forward as she followed along. “I wouldn’t even know where to start in putting together something to get us back.”

There hadn’t been much of an expectation on Raine’s part that the Trill would be able to, but that wasn’t anywhere near as much of a concern as it probably should have been given the Asari knew there was an exceedingly high likelihood that O’Brien would be able to get them back. Though on the off chance he couldn’t, she already had a couple of ideas in mind for potentially getting back to their own time.

“I didn’t figure you would.” She admitted honestly. “This is so we have something to bribe the archivists with when we get back.”

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Author’s Notes: I’m sure relying on O’Brien will be absolutely fine, after all, what’s the worst that could happen?