Garak: I feel like I’m unworthy of love and affection :((
Julian: Uh-oh! You’ve got an acute case of Lizard Who Doesn’t Love Himself Enough Disease! But don’t worry, it’s treatable, and I know a very good doctor :))
once your patients reach a certain level of whiny and attention-seeking there is only one appropriate, morally & ethically sound, starfleet medical-sanctioned way to shut them up.
ID: two digital sketches of lucius from our flag means death, both based on screenshots. one is of him looking to the left smiling slightly, the other shows him looking right with a scrunched up expression. end ID
favorite trope in media is “grumpy asshole character better with kids than soft friendly character” so i want nothing more than alma and louis to take a trip on the Revenge for the summer and there’s a rough storm outside, worse than the Revenge has seen in a while and enough to make the adults nervous
The kids pick up on this and they’re scared and Louis is crying and nothing anyone is doing is making them feel better. The second the crew thinks they have them calmed, a wave would tip the ship or thunder would boom and suddenly they’re spiraling all over again. Ed is already a snappy maudlin asshole in a storm and Stede’s frantically stumbling around securing things with the crew and in the chaos, the kids disappear and send the whole crew scrambling
it’s ed that finds them in the Captain’s quarters, curled up in the alcove that houses the bed and two large windows. they’re wrapped in a thick blanket together, staring out at the storm. the odd part is that Izzy is there as well, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back against one wall and foot against the other, acting as a railing to keep the children in every time the waves rock too far. he’s talking in a low gruff voice that isn’t softened in any way, just talking to them as if they were adults about all the safety measures that go into building a ship to weather a storm and all the procedures that the crew is running through to keep everything steady. when lighting strikes across the sky and thunder booms, ed flinches and braces for louis’s crying and alma’s screams but they never come. Instead, Izzy goes “That was quite a beauty, that one. Went farther than the last.” and Alma nods her head. Louis sniffles a bit but somehow looks halfway to falling asleep against his sister’s shoulder
when izzy notices ed, he stiffens and looks like he got caught doing something he shouldn’t. ed had warned him against doing anything to the children before they boarded, as izzy had made his disagreement with their presence clear. now, ed just smiles encouragingly and closes the door quietly behind him as he leaves. izzy takes the trust for what it is and turns his attention back to the storm outside as alma asks another question about the clouds.
when the storm calms enough that the crew feels comfortable resting, ed and stede return to the captains quarters and find alma and louis sound asleep with Izzy still watching over them. as ed and izzy switch places, stede genuinely thanks him with a soft smile. izzy shrugs it off but calls stede useless with less bite than usual as he leaves, so it gets counted as a win.
Stede smiled. “I got us some little treats. Look.” He reached into one pocket, withdrawing a little bundle of red. From this, he extracted a ribbon and a wooden comb. “I thought you might like to use these to tie your hair up.”
Ed took the ribbon, running it through his fingers. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”
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