Spending on a Relationship III

Posted on Fri 12th Mar, 2021 @ 5:28am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran & Elizabeth Anderson M.D.
Edited on on Sun 25th Apr, 2021 @ 2:42am

1,211 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Business Not At All As Usual
Location: Damion Ildaron's Quarters
Timeline: MD-3, 1745 hours

The best things to spend on your relationship are time, conversation, understanding, and honesty." --Unknown

Previous question asked:


Damion chuckled for a moment. "The first question that entered my mind upon meeting her was, 'How in blazes do you walk in those shoes?'"

Anderson laughed, "I don't think that would help you decide about the job ... unless you are changing footwear."

What other questions does Elizabeth pose? What part do emotions play in this decision?

---

He twitched a smile at Elizabeth and went on. "Mind, she was undercover, so her clothing reflected that. The first serious thing I would want to know is simply, 'You want me to be a liaison officer between SCIS and Intelligence. To what extent are conflicts of interest likely to arise between the two, given the types of information that each department collects?"

That seemed to the counselor to be an excellent question. In any situation where a person served two masters, there was going to arise at least one situation where a conflict of interest made it hard to do the job for either one. She made no comment, but did make a mental note in the file she'd opened.

"Information collected by SCIS is likely to be more shareable than some of the information that Intelligence collects. Most of what SCIS gathers will eventually be a matter of open record; the sort of information that Intelligence gathers is not always--or at least, is not as immediately shareable. I'm sure safeguards are in place; I will want to learn what those are."

"Let's suppose her answer is, Lieutenant Ildaran, there will be no conflict of interest, because your best interests will always be aligned with mine and SCIS. What then?" Elizabeth was always interested in the ways humans in general, and Damion in particular, solved ethical questions. To her, ethics were a given set of parameters with no variations, but to humans there seemed to be a lot of possible variations!

Damion blinked. "If she made such a claim to me and expected me to believe it, I would think her daft at best, dodgy at worst, and I'd end the discussion there. It's exactly the same type of 'sales pitch' that the Alliance cadre leaders back home would use to recruit us boys into the militia: 'What's good for us is good for you.' The implication was that the higher up you rose in the Alliance ranks, the more privileges you'd have, better food and lodgings, and so forth--and that betterment could trickle down to your family. They never mentioned the sorts of things you might be required to do, to earn those perks. So I don't presume that my employer's best interest necessarily equates to my own."

Damion took another sip of tea. "From what I've seen, Agent Pantoufle knows her job and is a professional about it. But I'll have to reserve judgment on that until I know her better."

"Fair enough," Elizabeth said. "Are you prepared for assignments that take you off base for weeks or months at a time? Undercover work more challenging than your appliance repair shop?" She remembered how much she had missed him the last time he'd been playing someone else. Of course, for her, missing was probably not the most accurate description, but she still struggled to understand feelings outside of the most simplistic things.

Damion sighed. "I'm prepared to do what's asked of me by ethical people. But that is ... the one thing that has made me consider leaving Intelligence work, or at least becoming an analyst instead of doing infiltration. Before I met you, I didn't care if I spent months in the field. I didn't have anyone to come home to. Now I care--a lot. Now I want to come home--to you." He gave her an uncertain look. "I don't want that to make you uncomfortable, Elizabeth, but it is how I feel."

The sentient woman part of the counselor thought, Well, it's about time you let me know!" The analytical holographic part of her analyzed Damion's heartbeat, respiration, and other physical ramifications of his words. They were a bit elevated.

After a moment, she said, "I wondered, and it's good to finally know. I have to say I can't be completely objective about this job situation, though I'm trying to be, because I feel the same way. I didn't like your last undercover operation one little bit, even though it was necessary, and I saw the good it did. I likely won't enjoy the next one any more. I don't know how much either of our subjective emotions should play a part in the decision, however. I don't even know if it's possible for humans to dissociate their feelings from such decisions, nor whether they should."

She sighed in a very human way. "Truthfully, the more human I think I am, the more confusing I find all these situations. Maybe that proves my sentient humanity," she said with a laugh.

Damion snickered as well. "You aren't alone in that. Humans--or maybe I should say 'biologicals'--often feel confused by their feelings, especially when they find themselves wanting two opposite things." He chewed on the last morsel of his steak and then washed it down with tea. "Emotions indicate to humans and other intelligent species whether they would be happy doing something. And I can tell you now that I would no longer be happy working for months in a field op that kept us apart. I could do it, of course, but I'd be thinking of you, every evening and moment I had free."

He paused and leaned his head to one side. "So you--don't mind that I would rather spend my time with you than in the field?" Damion asked. "I've been so afraid of putting too much pressure on you, of--overwhelming you with my feelings for you when you are just learning to deal with your own. I wanted to take things slowly, to be fair to you, so you could make your own choices without overbearing influence from me."

"No, I don't mind," Elizabeth reassured him. "I think it's a little different for me, because I can compartmentalize to a certain extent. There's always some part of me that's ... hmm, I'm not sure how to explain it. It's like an engine that's running on a Damion track. Whatever else I'm doing or researching or thinking about, with whomever I'm speaking or listening, there's this little part of me chugging along thinking about you.

"I don't even know if that makes sense to you. I think there's probably some part of me and some part of you that each of us will never understand completely, but I don't think it really matters, do you?" She reached over and took his hand that was lying on the table. "All I know is that I love being with you, and I don't ever want that to end."

"It makes perfect sense to me," Damion said. He looked into Elizabeth's eyes and curled his fingers around hers. "It exactly describes how I feel about you--and I don't want it to end, either."

 

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