[Cavan] Star-Crossed

[Lynzie Austin]

Star-Crossed

The Golden Gate bridge clashed against the purples and pinks of the setting sun, an abject eyesore over the bay. Though really, all the man made things were in Ellie’s eyes. Her nerves were feeling frayed and all she wanted to do was go home, that was not on the runner. Her home in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees and water, with Reynie and just have some quiet that did not include murder or just the constant chatter of other people for a few days.

However, that was not in the cards. 

Reynie took a moment to just revel in her. Pulling her by her waist into him. “So are you going to wear that red thing? It’s a fancy event after all,” he purred into her hair. 

“With the Admiralty in attendance, while it is not a dress uniform occasion,” Ellie turned, looping her arms around him. “It is also not the time to look so—”

He was clearly distracted already. “Diverting, yes,” Reynie pouted, his palms hovered in a poor attempt to feel her up. “I suppose I can’t be trying to get you in a corner in front of Brennan.”

“No, I suppose not, considering you have to give a speech in less than two hours and hobnob with these people,” she kissed his cheek and proceeded to gaze upon her closet once more. 

“Ura is gonna be there, yeah? That’ll be nice.”

“It will be, you need to put on that suit, you cannot go in your underwear,” Ellie said softly as she pulled a hanger with a black floor length dress.

“Can I go in yours?” he pleaded. “Wait… scratch that. That came out all wrong.”

Ellie let out a laugh. “Get dressed and we will see.” 

The dress was a concession more to the event than it was to function. However, it had pockets. The gauzy fabric clung to Ellie in ways that made her feel very seen. Which was not terrible, but it was not something she was overly fond of. “Any day now,” she said as she slipped her matching slingback heels on.

“Raven…” Reynie looked absolutely pale in his tux. He was struggling with his tie. “Bren-nan…”

“Let me help you,” she planted her foot in her shoes with a smile, taking his tie from his collar and starting it again. “What about Brennan?”

“Babe,” he put his hands over hers. “He, um, he, um, he—-”

“What could he have done, Aralim?” 

“He invited Katherine and Piers Brocksby,” Reynie replied sullenly, regaining his composure. 

“Okay, I do not know these people, Reynie, is that supposed to mean something?” 

“Rave… They’re my parents.”

“Fuck. Are you serious?” Ellie dropped her hands and walked back to the bed, sitting down. “I am not even going to ask why the name thing, but what?”

“He just sent me a message because of the honors, he thought I’d like them to be there,” Reynie sidled up to her. “I can take this suit right back off and we can go home, Raven.”

Ellie sat on the edge of the bed for a long, silent moment, staring at a scuff on the toe of her brand-new shoe. She could feel Reynie’s anxious gaze on her, could sense him ready to shred the expensive tuxedo right there on the spot. Then she let out a short, sharp breath, the sound of a decision being made. She looked up, and the brief flash of panic in her green eyes had been replaced by a familiar, grim determination.

“No,” she said, her voice firm. “We do not run from things we do not want to do. We just... have to manage to outlast them.”

She stood up, squaring her shoulders. She walked back to him. She took the ends of his tie back into her hands, her fingers steady and sure as she began to loop the silk.

“He invited them because you are getting an honor you deserve and I am positive that he is proud of you, ” she said, not looking at his face, focusing entirely on the task of crafting a perfect Windsor knot. “For your bravery. For your loyalty. For surviving. That is the story tonight. Not whatever... this is.”

She gave the tie a final, firm tug, smoothing it down against his shirt. She then reached up and adjusted his collar, her touch lingering for a second on his jaw.

“Besides,” she said, a flicker of herself returning as she met his eyes. “If I have to suffer through an evening of small talk and canapés, you do too. Now, we have to. Your public awaits.”

“I don’t deserve you,” he kissed her hand.

“Maybe not,” she paused for a moment to press a smiling kiss to his lips. “But I love you.”

*****

The evening air was starting to hit that crisp sweet taste that comes with night, mingling with the scent of the late blooming jasmine in the courtyard. Ellie held the crook of Reynie’s arm for fear that one of them would run off in holy terror if she were to let go. 

Ura stood by a large cement flower pot dripping with ivy, clad in a heavenly shade of gold that matched her earrings. Her little frame looked positively over encumbered by the dress, but she looked so thrilled as she jumped and waved at the sight of them. “Raven! RAVE!”

“Ura! Stawp!” Ellie hushed her as they walked up. “This is a classy event.”

“I ain’t classy and if Nik thinks he can make me act that way,” Ura practically jumped at the both of them with bone crushing hugs. “He shouldn’t have put a ring on it.”

“Gods I have missed you,” Ellie relaxed. “I do not like you being a desk jockey.”

“I don’t like it either, but it’s way better than pulling stiffs out of the swamps,” Ura looked at Reynie. “Is he okay?”

Reynie’s smile was a brittle, glassy thing, his eyes scanning the crowd like a tactical display. “Never better. The ambiance is… ambient." 

“I’m beginning to think you pulled this stiff out of a swamp,” Ura stage whispered. 

Ellie made a little face. “Just a bit on edge—”

“Oh. Wow. Incoming. Twelve o’clock. Don’t look, there’s two people that look like they iron their socks coming up on your left with Nik. Can’t wait to make nice with them,” Ura muttered. She pasted a brilliant, entirely fake smile on her face. “Hi, Admiral Babe! We’re just having a pre-party party!”

Reynie’s bicep turned to stone under Ellie’s hand as they turned to Brennan and his guests. “Mom. Dad,” Reynie said. “This is a surprise.”

“Admiral Brennan insisted, Reynard,” Katherine Brocksby replied, her voice as cold as frost on a winter morning. Her eyes, the same shade of honeyed brown as her son's but without a hint of their warmth, swept over him and settled on Ellie. “And you must be the colleague.”

Piers Brocksby offered a thin, perfunctory smile. “We understand you’re in... pathology.”

Ura, who had been holding her breath, let out a tiny, involuntary squeak that she quickly covered with a cough.

“Forensic pathology and xenovirology, yes,” Ellie looked at them both as skeptically as they looked at her. She had seen sturdier bone saws. “I am Doctor Elinor Fa Cavan, it is a pleasure to meet you both.” 

Katherine’s smile was a thin, polite line. “It's lovely that they’re having this ceremony, of course. Though one might argue it’s a recognition that’s about fifteen years too late.”

Ura’s cough turned into a genuine choke of outrage. Brennan’s proud, fatherly smile finally evaporated, replaced by dawning horror. The words hung in the jasmine-scented air, precise and devastating. Fifteen years. The exact timeline since his injury, since his life veered from their planned trajectory. Reynie flinched as if struck. The brittle composure he had managed to assemble shattered.

Ellie squeezed Reynie’s arm as though to say, do not worry, I got this. 

“On the contrary, Mrs. Brocksby,” Ellie spoke in a devastatingly steady tone as they walked into the venue. “The timing could not be more perfect. As you can see, Reynie had and has established himself in his field. He is a highly decorated investigator, it would seem that it is more than just a study of fortitude, but a study of longitudinal courage. They are not merely awarding a man who survived a traumatizing event. They are awarding a man that had the wherewithal to establish an entire distinctive career beyond its aftermath. In my field, the most compelling data exposes itself over time.”

They were led to a small linen wrapped table with elegant crystal stemware. Yet, despite all the finery, it was quiet enough in their group to cut the silence with a butter knife. Each person taking their place with the awkwardness that accompanied these sort of gatherings, bolstered with the added meeting of the parent dynamic. Brennan cleared his throat as he pulled the chairs for Ellie and Ura, Reynie was still clearly shellshocked. 

“You see, Doctor, while you’re waxing poetic about my Reynard— he wasn’t some common starship captain. He was one of the youngest Marine captains in a generation. He was being groomed for the Commandant's track. A war hero, destined to lead the entire Corps.” She turned her gaze to Reynie, her expression one of profound, personal offense. “And now? He's a man who pokes at the aftermath because he can no longer command the field. They're not giving you a medal for courage, Reynard. They're giving you a pat on the head for the disgraced hero who had to find a quieter, smaller pond—”

“Who needs drinks?!” Ura interrupted, pulling Ellie up by the elbow before she could beat the woman who birthed Reynie within an inch of her life. 

“Yes, drinks,” Piers seconded, looking pleadingly at Ellie. Evidently he knew full well his wife was a harpy and did little to contain it. 

Ura practically dragged Ellie towards the bar, her grip like a vice. “Breathe, Raven. Just breathe. Do not commit matricide at a Starfleet gala. The paperwork for Nik would be a nightmare.”

Ellie did not breathe. She seethed, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. She stared straight ahead, seeing not the glittering bar, but the condescending sneer on Katherine Brocksby's face. Back at the table, a profound and terrible silence had descended. Reynie looked pale, staring at his empty place setting.

Brennan, looking like a man trying to plug a hull breach with his thumbs, cleared his throat loudly. “So!” he began, his voice artificially bright as holiday candles. “Piers, Katherine, you should have seen Reynie on the Beta V case. Absolutely masterful. The Consulate was ready to blame the Orions, start a diplomatic incident. But your son, he saw the narrative everyone else missed. His work with Doctor Cavan uncovered a completely different culprit, saved us from a major political blunder. His insight is... well, it’s unique. A real asset to his division.”

It was a lifeline. And Reynie, hearing his professional accomplishments laid out by an Admiral—the truth of his worth, separate from his mother's venom—slowly began to surface from his shock. A familiar, wry smile touched his lips. He leaned back in his chair, the rigid posture melting into something more naturally confident.

“Admiral, you flatter me,” he said, his voice regaining its easy, theatrical cadence. “Though you’re leaving out the best part, how the actual culprit was the Consul’s own aide, motivated by a lost love affair with a Klingon opera singer. I told you, the truth is always more dramatic than fiction."

He glanced toward the bar, where Ellie was shooting daggers at the top-shelf whiskey, and his smile softened, becoming more genuine. “Of course, I’d have been lost without Raven. Hell, this one case with some Nausicaans, they had all been shot—"

“He loves you, you know,” Ura said, nudging Ellie in the ribs. “So much that he’s sitting with those godawful people.”

“Those terrible people spawned him?” Ellie put a finger up for a shot of tequila against her better judgement. 

“You didn’t know him before, but he was a stick in the mud back then Raves, like you would’ve hated that guy,” Ura also picked up a shot glass, tapped it against the bar and knocked it back in unison with Ellie. “He was like some kind of jar head edgelord. I shouldn’t say this, but Prophets be praised that he got his wires knocked loose because he became who I think he was meant to be.”

“I will drink to that,” Ellie knocked another shot back. This guy that Katherine Brocksby was speaking of was a stranger, that was not her Reynie. 

“You know why their names Brocksby and his name is what it is, right?” Ura said in a hushed gossipy tone.

“You know I do not like hearsay about Reynie—”

“It's not,” Ura put her hand up. “He changed it through the proper channels, which means he needed a witness.” She pointed at herself. “It was me and Dot, when he finally completed the paperwork. It was because his family sucks. But mainly because his dad is some kind of fancy Lord of some kind. They really think they’re important.”

“I did not think that sort of thing survived,” Ellie motioned to the bartender for refills. 

“You would think that. He has some kind of professor gig, but like, I don’t know, the wife is some kind of ball buster that just does these high society functions and he is important in some other way, they put a lot of pressure on Reynie to perform,” Ura said quietly. “He would’ve burned out anyway.”

Ellie kicked back another shot. “He would have.”

“Ladies,” a voice, strained with diplomatic panic, cut through their hushed conference. Admiral Brennan stood a few feet away, looking like a man trying to negotiate with a pair of armed warheads. “The ceremony is starting in five minutes. We… we really need to take our seats.”

Ura swiveled on her barstool. “Do we, Nik? Do we really?”

“Ura, please,” he pleaded, using her first name in a rare, desperate bid. He then turned his full, fatherly, deeply apologetic gaze on Ellie. “Doctor Cavan. Ellie. For him. He needs you sitting next to him for this. Don’t make him face that alone.”

She glanced back, the tequila was doing all the talking in her empty stomach burning its way up her esophagus as she watched Reynie putting on a performance. It was exactly that. He was acting. Like she had watched him do so many times before. Disarming hundreds of people around him, but this time, his parents were not remotely amused. Not even Piers seemed charmed by his son’s antics. He was throwing his best tricks against a wall of pure, unimpressed entitlement, and it was breaking him piece by piece. The performance was for an audience that had already walked out, years ago.

“Fine,” Ellie muttered, fueled by rage and more tequila than was probably advisable. “But I am done with this shit.” 

She strode back to the table, Ura a half-step behind like a gleeful, golden-clad wingman. Ellie did not slip gracefully into her chair. She placed her hands flat on the linen tablecloth, leaning forward, her gaze pinning Katherine Brocksby in place. 

“The ceremony is starting," Ellie stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You will sit, and you will be silent. You will watch your son receive the honor he has earned twice over. If you do not comply, I will take personal enjoyment by physically removing you myself.”

Reynie was already being ushered towards the stage by Brennan by this point and he looked paler than a ghost. If he had heard what she had just said to his mother, she was not sure if he would kiss her or kill her. Probably the former, like Ura said, he loved her. 

The stage was a stark, well-lit island in the sea of Starfleet dress uniforms and formalwear. Admiral Brennan stood at the podium, his usual joviality replaced by a grave, proud solemnity. Reynie stood rigidly at parade rest a few feet away, a muscle in his jaw twitching. 

“We are gathered here,” Brennan’s voice boomed through the hall, “to honor several acts of valor that define the very principles of Starfleet. But we also honor a journey. A journey of resilience that is, in its own way, just as heroic.”

He spoke of the incident on Veridian III, of the command decisions that saved lives, of the legendary resolve. But then he paused, looking down at his PADD.

“And while we rightly focus on Veridian III, we cannot forget the Okapia incident two years prior. A mission where then-Commander Reynard made a call that saved a diplomatic armada.”

At the table, Ellie went still. Okapia? She had never heard of it. She looked at Reynie, seeing the new layer of tension in his posture. Ura reached across the table and held her hand with a gentle squeeze. 

Brennan, seeing he had said enough, moved on. “The story for many would have ended with Veridian III. But for Captain Aralim Reynard, it was a beginning. He forged a new path with the same courage, becoming an Investigator whose unique insight has saved countless lives. He proved that heroism isn’t a single moment in time; it’s a quality of character that endures.”

He lifted the Star Cross. “Captain Reynard, for your exceptional valor at Veridian III, for the sacrifice at Okapia, and for the profound courage you have demonstrated every day since, Starfleet Command proudly presents you with the Star Cross.”

The applause was thunderous. Ura was on her feet, whistling. Ellie clapped, her hands steady, but her mind was reeling. 

Reynie stepped to the podium, the weight of the medal, and now this new revelation, palpable. He looked out, his eyes finding Ellie’s. He saw the question in her gaze, the concern mixed with her defiance.

He took a breath, his voice was already raw. “They tell you to be prepared for anything in command,” he began. “But you’re never prepared for the silence after the explosion. Or for the long road back.” He touched the medal. “This… represents the man I was. A man who carried… a lot. But the journey back… that forged the man I am. I’m not the same person I was then. And I am deeply, profoundly grateful for that.”

His eyes held Ellie’s. “Some paths aren’t chosen for us. They’re built by us, piece by piece, often with the help of those who see the person you’re meant to be, not just the one you were… and who help you lay down the weight you should never have had to carry alone.”

He paused, letting the solemnity hang in the air for a perfect beat. Then, a familiar, wry spark returned to his eyes. “They say command is about making the hard choices,” he said, his voice shifting, becoming lighter, sharper, and dripping with theatrical irony. “And they’re right. For instance, the choice between a life of starched collars and strategic deployments…” He paused, a wicked grin spreading across his face as he gestured to the medal on his chest. “…or a life where you get a shiny new paperweight for surviving your own spectacular failure, and then get to go poke dead things with the most brilliant woman in the quadrant.” He winked at Ellie to uproarious laughter. “Frankly, I made the right choice. Reynard, OUT.”

Ura howled with delight, pounding the table. Brennan clapped him on the shoulder and pulled him into a paternal hug. Ellie watched it all, her heart swelling with a fierce, proud love. Then her eyes cut to the Brocksbys.

Katherine rose from her chair with a cold, deliberate grace that silenced the celebration at their immediate table. She did not look at her son. She fixed her gaze on Ellie, her expression one of pure, undiluted venom.

“I see now the kind of... influence he’s chosen to surround himself with,” she said, her voice low but carrying with cutting clarity. “You've turned my son into a vulgar, performing clown. Congratulations.”

“And he is absolutely perfect,” Ellie smiled back at her, tucking her hair behind her Vulcan ears just to watch that look of pure appall on Katherine’s face. The woman turned on her heel with the most undignified snort. Piers, looking utterly defeated, gave a helpless, apologetic shrug and scurried after his wife as she strode from the ballroom, a vortex of icy disapproval in her wake.

The silence they left behind was louder than the applause.

But then Reynie was there, at Ellie’s side, his hand finding hers. He had seen the tail end of it. He looked from Ellie’s furious face to the retreating backs of his parents, and he let out a slow, quiet breath. 

“Well, good riddance to them both,” he said, pulling her to his side. “Don’t let the door hit them both in the ass on their way out.”

“How did you put up with them?”

“Babydoll, I joined the Marines,” Reynie slung his arm around her neck, pecking a kiss to her cheek. “They’re droll as hell. They think banana pudding is spicy, these people.”

“That was a good speech,” Ellie put her head into the crook of his shoulder. 

“If you want to listen to more speeches, we can stay, or we can go home.”

“Home please,” she whispered.

Reynie held her tighter for a moment, his chin resting on her head. He took a deep breath, as if steadying himself for one last, grand performance, this one just for her. “Okay,” he said softly. He did not move to leave. 

Instead, he gently turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. The noise of the party faded into a distant hum.

“You know,” he began, his voice low and incredibly earnest, “when I said you helped me lay down a weight I should never have had to carry alone... I meant that. You didn’t just help me build a new path, Ellie… you’re my home. Despite of how tonight has been—-”

Ellie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She really wished she had food in her stomach and not a flight of tequila shots in her. He slowly sank to one knee right there on the ballroom floor, his eyes glistening, a soft, tremulous smile on his face. He reached into his pocket.

“So, Elinor Fa Cavan,” he said, his voice clear and sure, cutting through the last of the evening’s tension. “My brilliant, terrifying, perfect Raven... Will you marry me?”