A Pocket Full of Dreams, a Fist Full of What Ifs...

Posted on Sun Feb 8th, 2026 @ 9:40pm by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Tork
Edited on on Tue Feb 10th, 2026 @ 12:50am

Mission: Port of Call
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: Mission Day 4 at 1900

The sounds of pots bubbling and pans frying filled the somewhat antiquated kitchen that rested in the back of an old building that had long seen better days but had never seen an empty day since it was built. Old appliances and contraptions that felt out of place in the modern world lined metal shelves and wooden cabinets around the space, giving the entire place that lived in feel that one could seldom find inside of a holodeck; the details were just that precise. Beyond the kitchen sat a room full of tables, all of them draped with a checkered red and white tablecloth that screamed 'old world aesthetic' Even the cloth napkins looked worn and weathered, as if they weren't replicated but well used fabric that had seen a thousand wash cycles in an equally ancient washing machine. The small oil lamps that illuminated the place flickered and their lit wicks swayed and smoldered from the intermittent breeze being generated by the singular fan resting at the center of the dining space.

Amidst it all was a Ferengi, puttering about in his casual yet still fashionable clothes, a red apron covering his stocky front as he stirred and swished and poked and prodded at the various dishes all cooking at various temperatures and in various styles. The snapping and crackling of super heated oil filled the air, the burbles and hisses that accompanied it blended together to form a disjointed cacophony that was as melodic as it was chaotic. The smells emanating from each pot and pan blending together in a seductive aroma that promised a culinary masterpiece was in the making.

Outside of the holodeck, the tall willowy form of Emni t'Nai paced the corridor. Her stomach, even after having a perfectly normal lunch, seemed determined to do somersaults and despite her determination that this should be just like any other evening, she'd spent far more time worrying about what she was wearing than she would ever admit to anyone if asked. Finally, she stilled in front of the Holodeck arch. Delicate fingers fiddled with with her attire -- a dress.

She didn't own any, so had found it necessary to replicate one. It wasn't a particularly fancy dress. Comfortable fabrics lay soft against her skin with a high waist that flowed downward accentuating her height and showing off her waist. She felt downright girlish in it and had nearly discarded the notion 3 times before deciding she didn't have enough time for anything else.

"Computer," she said softly to the air inside the arch. "Time."

"The time is 1900," the computer responded in its cool neutrality.

Emni frowned and then quickly glanced back and forth down the corridor. No sign of Tork.

"Computer," she asked, "Where can I find Lieutenant Tork?"

"Lieutenant Tork is in the holodeck," the computer informed her.

A small smile of understanding settled on her lips. Of course he was. With a flip to her stomach and another nervous pet to her skirts, she moved forward, waiting for the doors to part and then stepping into a place that she had not ever imagined she'd see again.

At the far end of the empty dining room that had been revealed to Emni, a bulbous head popped up from behind the order window that separated the kitchen from view. The top of his head, his eyes, and the crest of his lobes were all that could be seen, an almost comical representation of the 'Kilroy' image that had been popular many dozens of generations ago on Earth. The way his eyes scrunched up made it plain, even unseen, that he was smiling.

"Come on in, have a seat," the engineer called out with a booming voice that could only come from someone used to filling a noise-saturated space with enough volume to be heard and taken seriously, "It's almost ready. I'm sure you can find the right table."

His somewhat vague message related directly to the view stretching before Emni. While all of the tables before her were almost identical, minus very minute differences in wood grain and hues or brown, only one of them had plates and water propositioned upon its surface. Also, sitting in the center of the table sat a single vivid blue flower that made a simple but powerful centerpiece.

He wasn't wrong. She would have been able to find the table in question even if it hadn't been the only one laid for dinner. Even if the room had been full to bursting with patrons and movement and noise she would have known which table. Carefully, she picked her way through the maze of other red and white checked tables to the one with the single blue flower. She knew... knew... that this was the Holodeck and no such flower existed aboard the Sojourner, but she stooped anyway, leaning across the table and inhaling slowly. The fragrance was light and delicate -- a scent you would only pick up if your nose was practically on top of the flower. For a moment memory and reality blurred and she could almost hear the background murmur of the other diners who had been here the first time they had come.

"Where did you find this program?" she called in the direction of the bustle and clatter of the kitchen where she knew Tork to be.

"Find?" Tork's voice echoed from the back, "I didn't find it, I wrote it after I left your office. From scratch... and memory." A few clangs rang out afterward, then the restaurant suddenly lost all sound save for the ceiling fan rotating lazily in the center of the room. About a minute later, the Ferengi appeared, a large serving tray propped on his shoulder, a large pot and a frying pan resting atop the surface, steam rising from the contents of both as he moved through the tables and made his way to where they had, and would once again have, a meal together.

The tray was deposited deftly onto a neighboring table before Tork seized the plates that had been sitting at each place setting at the table, a slab of protein and a healthy bundle of greens finding their way to their surfaces with all of the grace of a seasoned veteran chef. Enmi's plate was returned first, the contents looking somewhat alien but not in a grotesque or unappetizing way. The meat just looked a little odd, not pink but more of a copper blue tint, and the greens were only really green at one end, the rest of them taking on a marbled red and pink coloration. The Ferengi filled his plate next, setting it in front of where he was going to sit before he departed with the tray once more, contents now delivered, returning a few seconds later holding a bottle of wine of Earth vintage, the same one they had enjoyed together the day they'd visited the place they now occupied within the holodeck.

"May I pour the lady some wine with her dinner?" the engineer asked with a teasing smirk on his face.

Unable to help herself, Emni gaped. Her gaze jumped from Ferengi to bottle to copper blue meat to the detailed recreation around her. "You wrote this? In under six hours?"

Her eyes made the same circuit in reverse finally settling on the Ferengi flourishing the exact right bottle of wine. She seemed to remember herself then, reaching for her glass and holding it out for him to pour even as she once again surveyed the holographic restaurant. Memory sparked again. The couple at the table next to them had been older, and clearly regular diners at this establishment. It had been the woman, a stout gray haired matron with kind eyes who had recommended the wine, leaning across the space between tables as if she were imparting a particularly juicy secret. The man with her had told her to 'let the kids enjoy their date' even as she had returned to their table whispering loud enough that they could both hear about how cute they were and didn't he remember being their age?

"The program itself only took me two and a half, the real problem was that flower. The computer could replicate everything except the smell of it. Took me most of the time nailing down the right chemical composition. I've never been so mad at my younger self for being so disinterested in xenobiology as I was when I was trying to remember how the chemical bonds went for organics. I may have created two or three new kinds of noxious gas in the process..." Tork said with a small frown of concern before shrugging, "Guess it's a good thing I didn't write any of those formulae down. Less said the better, eh?"

The Ferengi poured some wine into the glass Emni had held up before pouring some of his own. He placed the wine back into the ice bucket he'd pulled it from before finally sitting down at the table. He raised his glass and tapped the rim of it gently against his companion's before taking a small taste of it. His face betrayed the smug pride that rippled through him as the liquid his his tongue. "Nailed it."

"Professor Adenfordt would be proud," Emni answered in response to Tork's xenobiological exploits. "Or disappointed depending on the noxious gasses in question. Should I be checking on your roommate?"

She raised her glass to his, the soft click of the two goblets meeting giving the moment a feeling of pomp. She had watched Tork rather than taking her own first taste, curious to see how well the replicator had done. Eyebrows creeping up at his exclamation, she swirled the glass the way she'd been taught and then took a slow sip, leaving the white liquid to sit on her tongue for a moment before swallowing.

He wasn't wrong. It was a as near a perfect replica as she could have asked for. "I certainly wouldn't be able to tell which was which in a blind taste test," she agreed, eyeing the glass appreciatively before taking another sip. When that sip, too, had been swallowed, she scanned the room once again, this time taking in the details along the edges -- kitschy wall decor, much of it made up of framed photographs and salvaged signage -- lined the walls in a riot of words and images. "We never did get our picture on the wall there, did we?" she asked.

Tork turned to look at the wall, then back to Emni, "No. We only came here that one time. Always said we'd come back, talked about it off and on for years..."

He leaned back into his chair a little and let out a soft breath, "But I often wondered what if we had. How different would our lives have been if we had made this place 'our place', had a picture hung up on that wall, made a real go of being that young couple people mistook us for and we were too flustered to argue with it."

The Ferengi took up his fork and knife, cutting into the slab of still steaming meat that he'd spent a fair amount of time getting just right. The juices contained within slowly dripped off of it as he rolled it around on the fork, examining it from every angle that a twirl would allow. Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it, because the meat soon found itself behind the jagged spines of bone that made up his teeth. He chewed the morsel with obvious pleasure, his head bobbing appreciatively as the flavors filled his palette.

"Don't tell my moogie I said this... but I think I made it better than hers," Tork snickered.

"There's plenty of things I'd like to tell your moogie and that you've eclipsed her in cooking is no where near the top of the list," Emni murmured, an old protectiveness rearing up behind her words. With it, though, was a crack in the rose color of the nostalgic setting. She, too, cut a slice of the meat, but rather than spend the time examining it she popped it into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "That is really good, though," she conceded around the bite in her mouth.

If her appreciation rang just the slightest bit hollow it wasn't because the compliment hadn't been earned, but because Emni was still stuck on the comment he had made before Tork claimed his cooking outstripped his moogie. She swallowed the meat, following it with another long, pensive, draught of her wine before speaking again.

"It was my fault," she finally said. "That we didn't come back here, I mean." Her eyes shifted from the wine in her hand to the man across from her. "I was barely suitable company that day. If you hadn't convinced my roommate to let you in we probably wouldn't have gone." Her expression, normally open with him, was careful as if she needed to hold this part of the memory at arm's length. "They'd only been gone.... really gone a few weeks at that point. It had been years since I'd left, but... some part of me had held on to hope that they would see reason. Even until that last moment. Going out felt like admitting it all over again."

"I suppose," Tork said in a neutral kind of voice that didn't quite scream agreement, but also didn't indicate refusal either. They'd gone around and around about that very topic a number of times after that first outing. It was a cycle that, while not entirely without merit, didn't always hold up to scrutiny. But that wasn't what he had wanted out of this whole endeavor, to revisit old feelings or rehash old conversations from a decade or so ago.

"We both made choices back then, not just you. I chose to let you keep that little speck of distance that you struggled to maintain. I didn't push, I didn't force, I just let things be what you thought you needed them to be. And then we both fell into a routine that felt so comfortable and familiar that doing anything else just didn't seem possible... or at least not proper," the Ferengi said, picking up his half-empty wine glass as if to accentuate his next words.

"I think over time, our feelings have changed and grown more refined... not unlike this bottle of wine we shared back then. At the time, we weren't thinking about the future, we were both hung up on our pasts. And part of that was your reluctance to stare the truth in the face and rationalize that your choice to leave home... and their choice to stay... were the right choices for each of you. It's like that quote from that dissertation from command ethics class, 'Sometimes you can make all the 'right' choices and still lose.' And it blows when that's the case. But Emni... you aren't any more alone now than you were the day we came here. For whatever value I might have in your eyes, I am here. And I will be here, one way or another, until a 'right' choice forces us apart."

Tork tipped the glass to his lips and swallowed the contents, returning the vessel upright but not setting it down as he finished his thought, "Right now, you and I are restarting from here. We're both vessels finally empty enough to be filled, unsullied, by new and different experiences. And I, for one, want those experiences to be good ones. Ones that you will cling to harder than the ones we made right after we left this place the first time. And maybe... just maybe... we'll find ourselves back here again, for real next time, and our photo will be hung with pride somewhere on the wall for others to gaze at, and wonder how they, too, can be so happy."

The Romulan was quiet in the aftermath of Tork's musings. Not the kind of quiet that suggested disapproval or even discomfort. Merely the quiet of thought--of time spent turning over a particularly complicated puzzle in order to figure out where each piece goes. She sipped her wine slowly, considering again the taste of it on her tongue and the weight of it in her mouth. It was a white vintage and white wines, she knew, had different considerations in aging than red.

"Ok," she finally said. She chose her words with deliberate care, though the playfulness behind them was unmistakable. "What is one 'what if' that you've wondered about that you'd like to do... now that you can?"

She was, admittedly, curious. In one sense they were making up for lost time and in another their time was still at a premium. Until something shifted she wanted to eke the most of what they did have--starting with relearning what it was that he might have wanted if things had been different. "Think of it as an exercise in plotting our next date if that helps..."

"There are so many..." Tork said in between bites of his greshk, "But I guess that's what you get when you have years to dwell on it. But I think one of the more realistic ones that we might be able to replicate here would be that art class your roommate was obsessed with chirping about at every opportunity. The way she got so insufferably excited about it made me think maybe we should do something like that. Something pointless but meaningful at the same time."

He took a moment to refill his wine glass before asking, "What about you? Was there something you wanted to do together that we never quite managed?"

She considered that for a long moment. They had done so many things. As friends. As something more than friends, but less than a couple.

“There was this waterfall,” Emni started, cutting a bite of the greens and chewing it before continuing. “Do you remember it? It was too cold to swim when we were there and we both dared each other to stick our toes in. I want a redo. One where it's warm enough to get into the water and see what was behind the waterfall.”

She speared another bite of greens, gesturing with it in a sort of half shrug. “Maybe not something we can do on the ship, though,” she confessed. “Tell me one you’ve wondered about that we can't do on the ship? What's the biggest what if you’ve wondered about.”

"The biggest one can be done on the ship," the Ferengi said in a somewhat cryptic manner, "But as far as things that we can't replicate, a trip to Ferenginar was on my list of places to possibly take you. A holodeck simulation will never come close to the real thing. They never quite encapsulate the blunt force that is my people's lust for latinum."

"Why does that sound like you'd like to box my ears with something gold plated?" she asked wryly, though her eyes danced. "I know you weren't raised there, but..." she raised her eyebrows in a question, tone carefully light, "... are there people there you'd want to introduce me to or is it more a matter of baptism by immersion?"

"I don't have any ties to Ferenginar, at least from a familial perspective, but I think your description is close to the truth. Less a baptism and more of a... right of passage. More a pilgrimage of sorts. Wandering through the crowded market plazas in the capital, enjoying the premier accommodations that ring some of our most ancient swamps and lakes. Taking advantage of the opulence that latinum can buy you is something everyone should try at least once before they die. And that's coming from someone who doesn't buy in to most of the acquisition-centric rhetoric of my own people," the engineer said with a knowing grin.

"And while we're talking about your what ifs... you're really not going to tell me what the biggest one is?" she asked, unable to help the curiosity she felt.

"It's something that either will or will not resolve itself depending on how things go. Why spoil the surprise?," Tork retorted with a mischievous grin, "But tell you what. If we do resolve it... I'll let you know."

For a moment the Romulan looked as if she were about to push back. But there was something exciting about thinking she might stumble upon the thing Tork had most wondered about after she left. So she let that line of questioning drop.

She took another bite of the greshk, letting the rich oily flavor coat her tongue before chewing and swallowing. "This really is good," she commented, slicing another bite to pop in her mouth on the heels of the compliment. She chewed quickly this time, seeming in a hurry to add something to her thought. "I always wondered what it would be like to take you to a Romulan colony," she said. "Not that there's anyone there either, but... it's the closest I can get to taking you home with me."

"I'd like to do that as well. I've always wondered what Romulan culture looked like up close. It isn't as if your people didn't have worlds outside of Romulus, just like we Ferengi aren't tied exclusively to Ferenginar. Even the little differences would be fun to hear you compare between the two," the man said with a smile as he finally turned his attention back to his own meal.

"There's a colony," she commented, "not far from the old border to the Star Empire. It was one of the first places I was assigned to as part of the evacuation effort. That was when I was attached to the Aurora, before I enlisted." She leaned back in her chair, snagging her wine glass's stem between two fingers and swirling the bit of remaining liquid.

"I was there on and off for about two years. It wasn't home necessarily..." she trailed off as she considered her thoughts, "but there were good people there. And it was still within Romulan territory. More authentically Romulan than the pockets that transitioned into Federation space. Maybe that's where we go."

Emni had spoken the thought before she'd even processed the implication. Not that this was a temporary arrangement, but rather the continuation of one much longer. One that would continue to the degree that visits to planets in entirely different quadrants could be considered. The wine glass found its way to her mouth and she drained it in one gulp before sliding from her chair and lifting the bottle from its ice bucket. Not even bothering to ask she topped them both up and then resumed her seat.

"Ok," she said, still warmly on the topic of thoughts entertained in the time between then and now. "What else did you think about? What... what did you imagine we were like?"

"That's hard to say. Not much different, really... just... closer?" Tork cocked his head to one side as he questioned his own reply. "Not just getting through things together, but making new memories and going through life with more of an... us... mentality to it. What about you? What sorts of scenarios are playing through your mind?"

The Romulan shook her head, a small bemused smile on her lips. "As in what should we be like now scenarios or... you know... what might have been?" she asked.

"Both," came the immediate response. The Ferengi set his fork down and leaned his elbow on the table, perching his chin atop his fist as he stared at Emni in no subtle amount of expectation.

Emni met his expectation with the kind of eye roll that suggested that not only should she have guessed his answer, but that of course he wanted both. "Fine," she answered, drawing out the i with a false put upon air.

For a moment, her gaze drifted around the space as if something in the restaurant might shake loose what she wanted to say. Finally, her eyes caught on a photograph of the original owners. It was a family photo complete with kids and a dog and everyone smiling while somehow positioned around an enormous wheel of some sort of cheese. It was such a ridiculous photograph, but somehow it fit.

"That," she said, pointing out the photograph. "Closer... but... not just like... better friends or even more romance... family. For a long long time after I was assigned to the Hargreaves that is what I fantasized about. How it happened varied. Bumped into each other on a star base... saw each other at some kind of reunion. For the first year I fantasized about receiving a message from you telling me that you'd been wrong." Her head tilted thoughtfully, looking at him. "Actually, saying quite a lot of what you said at Debbie's. When I graduated and took that assignment, it felt a bit like losing my family again. Not like... the death part... but... the part where they went one way and I went another. They were still my family... but... it wasn't the same."

For a moment she chewed the inside of her lip. "And I know that family means different things to you than it does to me. And... we never really did talk about that stuff. Because... we never did this. Not really. So... I guess I had those conversations with you in my head too. How did you feel about monogamy? Polyamory? Did you want children someday? Did you want them with me? I don't know. I wandered down all of those paths in the beginning and then... I had to stop."

She shrugged, not quite pulling off the nonchalant gesture she had tried for. "I didn't want a fabricated version of you in my head. I wanted you. And if all I could have was my friend through messages then... that was what I was going to allow myself. I wasn't doing either of us any good."

Emni scanned the man across from her, taking in body language and expression as if doing so might unlock the much easier method of feeling the things he was feeling. "Now..." a small smile pulled at her lips, "I mean I've only had a day... but... you know... maybe we'll get to have those conversations together after all."

"It does seem that way, doesn't it?" Tork said, his demeanor matching the seriousness of the conversation for once. "Truth be told, the concept of family is very different for my people. You exploit them, they exploit you, and you learn all the ugly lessons that society has to teach you without ever having to deal with them. I don't know that it's the right way to do it, but that's how it was for me. I won't deny that I've done pretty well for myself thanks to all those little lessons in maneuvering as a child, but I know that I can't relate to the more... affectionate meaning of that word that most other people mean when they say family."

The Ferengi picked up his fork and shoveled a few morsels into his mouth, his chewing just as much a delay tactic as it was a necessity as he collected his thoughts. "I don't know that I'm so selfish that I feel like I have to be the only one you ever have in your life. Knowing what I know about your past already, harboring that kind of emotional greed wouldn't end well anyway... so monopolizing you hadn't crossed my mind then and it doesn't really apply now. Do I feel like we need to share partners like you did before? Not really. There's plenty of cultural precedence for a Ferengi to have multiple partners, even if there's still a bit of a gender bias in that arena... but I hear the Grand Nagus is working on that thanks to his own dealings with females outside of Ferengi culture."

"Children..." Tork mused thoughtfully, "Maybe? I mean... it isn't impossible to have a child with other species... Plenty of examples of half-Ferengi children running around on Ferenginar and on trade vessels and colonies. I guess I just never thought that far ahead when I was contemplating that 'what ifs'. An interesting line of thought though, I'll give you that."

"Children and pregnancy are two different things," Emni commented, a bit of her medical bearing peaking out in that comment. "I don't know if I want my own biological children. Growing up empathic on Romulus was... hard... Romulans don't love the idea of half breeds. And one that can feel your emotions..." she shrugged. "But then I haven't ruled it out either. Honestly... haven't thought of any of this for the last several years until recently."

For a moment she cast back to when these sorts of thoughts had begun to resurface and frowned. "It almost feels irresponsible to think about the future out here." She gestured around them again, though this time the motion was meant to encompass the Delta Quadrant rather than the holographic restaurant.

Tork couldn't suppress the shrug that came on the coattails of the woman's last statement, "What does it matter whether it's here or somewhere else? Any future to be had will require some sort of work on our part. The question we've been dancing around the last few times we've been together is whether we want to make an honest go of making some sort of future a reality. So I'm just going to ask it out loud this time, since I didn't when you left the Academy... Do you want to take a shot at being more than just old friends or some romantic liaison that doesn't go beyond the end of this little trip to Pathfinder?"

Something in Emni's chest squeezed and twisted, a sort of anticipatory hopeful feeling that was inescapably braided with nervousness. The answer to his question felt weighty... as if saying yes was going to irrevocably shape her future. But then again... wasn't saying no doing the same? It was ridiculous that she even hesitated, though. She knew the answer.

"Yes," she finally said and the fluttery weight she felt in her chest made its way into her voice adding an unexpected rasp of emotion to it. "I'd like to see what we might be."

The Ferengi nodded deeply, then looked Emni in the eyes, "Then I'll start doing the legwork needed to make my stay permanent." It was a simple statement, but he said it with all the confidence that one would have if the outcome had already occurred.

The what if lingered on her tongue for a long moment. It was the obvious one. The one that, after everything, seemed ridiculous to even vocalize. What if that couldn't be arranged? But that didn't matter so much now. Even if it couldn't be arranged, she'd agreed to see what could become of them. And that included not only the possibility, but the likelihood of being separated by Starfleet. Unless and until they decided that this new exploration of 'what if' was a permanent fixture for them it didn't make sense to handle it any other way.

So instead she raised her glass, tilting it toward him in a new toast. "To what we might be," she said, and took a deep drink before setting the glass back on the table.

"To what will be," Tork responded, raising his own glass.

--- A date with...

Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai
Executive Officer

Lieutenant Tork
Future Engineering Chief