Captain Isara Aleron: Screw Protocol
Isara Aleron
Isara had been waiting for this moment since they’d left Tavros III. She wanted to share her latest adventures with Taleia, as had become her habit. They hadn’t been dating for some time, but Isara still had some attachment to the woman and they’d managed to remain friends somehow.
She sat down at her desk and turned on the communications panel. She was about to open a channel when she noticed an incoming message in her queue. Curious, she opened it and noticed it was from the very person herself. She opened the message and began to read, her heart dropping with each word she read.
//
Isara,
I am so sorry to do this in this way. Maybe I’m just a coward, I don’t know. But I couldn’t face you and tell you this face to face. Which is what you deserve. I just hope you’ll be able to forgive me for this.
She paused. She wasn’t sure she wanted to keep reading, but she knew she needed to. However bad this might be, she needed to just get it over with.
I’ve tried to just remain friends with you, Isa, but I can’t. I need more than just an occasional long-range message from you. And I’ve started developing feelings for someone else. She’s funny, smart, and we have a lot in common. And I think she feels the same way about me. But I don’t feel free to pursue that as long as there is this lingering tension between us. And maybe there isn’t for you, I don’t know. But I feel it. So, I just wanted to tell you that I will be pulling back from you for a while. I need distance and space. Well, space we have, but I think you know what I mean.
I hope you will one day find that someone special for you. The woman you deserve, because you don’t deserve someone like me who can’t even face you and say these things. She’s out there, Isara, and I hope you find her. One day, when I feel ready, I’ll contact you again, and when I do, I hope you’ll have forgiven me for this act of cowardice and that we can try to rebuild a friendship. And, with any luck, you will have found your someone too.
Until then and will all my heart,
Taleia Venn
//
Isara stared at the screen in shock for many minutes, tears rolling down her face. She’d known it was over between them for a long time, but she just wasn’t prepared for this.
Aleron: Screw it. I’m not a schoolgirl anymore.
She wiped the tears off her face with the back of her hand, put on a comfortable dress and headed for Valhalla. She wasn’t going to be one of those Captains that was always aloof and distant from her crew, and screw what protocol said. If she didn’t have Taleia to share it with anymore, then she was going to share her life with her crew.