Best Two-out-of-Three, Part 2

Posted on Sun Jul 27th, 2025 @ 11:10pm by Lieutenant JG Jacqueline Holder & Lieutenant JG Jean-Baptiste Dorsainvil
Edited on on Sun Jul 27th, 2025 @ 11:12pm

2,060 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Character Backstories
Location: 17th Street, The Castro, San Francisco, Earth
Timeline: October 11, 2381, 1620 Hours

Jacqueline began walking, not in a straight line like most young adults, rather her path resembled that of a young child with too much energy to stay in one place, skipping ahead and turning to walk sideways so she could look at JB, but still see where she was going. “It’s a bit of a walk from here still. I have sort of an idea…”

“Sometimes I like to pretend like I am someone else entirely. Maybe from a different time, or a different universe entirely. Like I’m an alien, and I’m studying all the humans around me on an under cover mission. Or maybe that I lived hundreds of years ago before all of this technology and just staying alive is an adventure.” She spoke whimsically, but also with a hint of nostalgia in her voice and in her eyes.

He fell into step beside her, turning his body just enough to keep her in his line of sight.

“What if we’re two astronauts, just awakened from a two hundred-year cryosleep. And we’re trying to figure out why San Francisco has changed so much.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not very imaginative.”

“Didn’t you ever play, you know like imagination games when you were a kid?” Jacqueline asked.

JB could feel the cheery exuberance emanating from Jacqueline at that moment. It was a pleasant sight to see, like a sparkler burning bright and hot. Though, JB wondered if maybe he was seeing a façade or if he was catching a glimpse of the girl behind the wall.

“Sure,” he replied. “When you’re the older brother, it’s necessary to have a vivid imagination.”

“So, when did you stop?” Jacqueline asked. “Imagining.” She looked at him more seriously now, settling her walk down into a more steady pace.

“I guess… when life gradually got loud enough that the stories felt too quiet to hear anymore,” he said finally with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Or maybe I just forgot how to listen to them.”

He glanced at her, almost sheepish but not overly closed off. It was as if he was half-inviting her to help him remember.

“Well if you had the power to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone you wanted to be, where would you go? What would you do?” She asked. She then looked at him sternly and added, “And don’t say, ‘Here with me,’ that’s not the game.”

Jean-Baptiste let out a low laugh. “Alright, no easy answers,” he said, finding her smiling eyes.

He breathed in slowly, tasting the sharpness of the city evening. It was a mixture of salt and something savoury from a distant food vendor.

“I think,” he started, plumbing the depths of his thoughts. “I’d be a lighthouse keeper. Some rocky edge of nowhere. I could spend the days watching the water move; the nights listening for the foghorn. And all the while sending out a beam of warm light that might save someone I’ll never meet.”

He looked at her then, waiting to see if she’d accepted his fragile premise.

“Okaaay,” she drew the word out and nodded, letting her imagination picture the scene. “I’m there. Who is with you on this rocky edge of nowhere? Are we on Earth or some distant planet that has even more open seas than we do?” She kept her pace beside him now, walking with a slight spring to her step.

JB grinned and looked forward again, seeing the sidewalk stretch out under the amber streetlights. A red streetcar bumbled past.

“Well,” he said, “I think we’re on some distant planet. Earth’s too busy these days. This place… it’s quieter. No cities. No comm traffic. Just the wind, the tide and maybe one other voice.”

“What sort of voice do you think?” She asked. “Oh, and what color are the seas?” She could tell he was painting a lonely picture, but she kept playing along, determined to make it less lonely as they went along.

JB’s eyes drifted upward as he walked–toward the stars that were still hidden by daylight and city haze. It was as though he were seeing them as they might appear in a dream.

“Dark green,” he said after a moment. “Almost black, but with light in it–like bottle glass. And the kind of waves that don’t crash so much as lean.”

He glanced over at her again, not trying to decode her face, but simply… enjoying that she was still there. That she was walking beside him.

“As for the voice,” he went on, “maybe it belongs to someone who doesn’t need to fill up silence. Someone who sits with you in it. Not to fix–just to be there.”

He hesitated and then gave a small shrug, almost sheepish.

“A sea that’s always calm. It’s hard to imagine that such a thing exists, isn’t it?” She had a faraway look in her eyes as she asked the question, seemingly thinking about more than just the sea. “And the voice that’s always there, is corporeal, or more something in the air?”

“That’s a good question,” he said, a tiny smile beginning to form. “I think maybe it started out corporeal. Someone flesh and blood. But the longer they’re there, the more they just… soak into the place.”

He was quiet for a moment, letting the Castro drift back in–crosswalk chimes, footsteps around them, the rumble of a distant streetcar felt through their feet.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind sharing space with a noncorporeal life form,” Jacqueline thought about the idea. “Though, I’d probably be too curious for it - for someone like that, I mean. I think I would have so many questions and want so many answers. I’d probably run them off.”

“I don’t think you’d run them off,” he said. “I think they might like the question. Maybe they came from a place where no one ever asked.”

They walked past a mural that had been half-eaten by ivy–old faces in bright paint and partially-obscured by green. One face stared out from a gap in the leaves, right where a vine had curled into the shape of an interrogation point.

He nudged a pebble on the sidewalk with the tip of his boot. “If anything,” he added, “you’d make them feel real again. Maybe give them shape. Remind them they were once a voice with lungs.”

“And this is your happy place, you think?” Jacqueline asked hoping he’d be able to explain the appeal. “Where you would be the most content?”

He smiled at her, intentionally avoiding a response.

For a long moment, JB let the sounds of the city pass through him–a dog barking, someone shouting to somebody on the opposite side of the street. He said, “Jacqueline, I don’t think contentment is the point. I think it’s more about staying alight.”

He sighed, unsure if he was playing the game properly. He’d never been one for creating anything–at least, not this way.

“What about you?” he added, realizing the game had been overly one-sided. “Where’s your place?”

“Oh, usually some adventure. Rarely the same place twice,” Jacqueline admitted. “Almost always I’m flying some elite team of people, maybe Starfleet, maybe we’re vigilantes. And we’re on a First Contact mission, or maybe rescuing some group of people from certain disaster.”

“Maybe some day it will be real,” she added as they continued their walk. “You know we could just take a transport there if you want. It’s kind of far.”

Just as the words were leaving her lips, a flicker of movement caught his attention down the block: the Muni streetcar sliding into view. Its bell was clanging like an impatient guest at dinner. JB glanced at Jacqueline, then back to the dwindling streetcar.

“Ah–dammit,” he murmured. His hand hovered at her elbow, but not quite touching. “Come on. That’s probably our best shot at getting there, unless we want to burn transporter credits.”

“Okay, let’s go. We can make it.” The challenge of the chase made her laugh as she nudged JB with her elbow before they took off at a canter, their footsteps creating an uneven tattoo on the pavement as they pivoted forward.

His legs were still stiff from sitting so long in the theatre, but he found a surprising lightness to his step as they launched into motion.

Jean-Baptiste glanced down at Jacqueline’s feet–she was matching him step for step. The world telescoped down to the pulse in his ears, and the scrape of boots on asphalt–and of the way her shoulder kept brushing just out of reach.

He felt his heart lift–an organic joy piquing behind his ribs, buoyant and untethered. For a moment, he let himself imagine that they weren’t running for a streetcar but toward something larger, stranger, maybe even brighter than either of them could name.

The car stopped just ahead of them while they were still running, their final footsteps reaching the loading door just before it was about to take off again. Jean-Baptiste gestured for Jacqueline to get on first, and he followed close behind her. Jacqueline spotted the first set of open seats next to one another and walked toward them, half-falling into the far seat, giving JB the closest one to the door.

“Made it. Now we’ll have more energy for that epic skeeball battle we were talking about earlier,” Jacqueline teased.

Jean-Baptiste fell into the seat beside her, his chest still rising fast from the sprint. The car rocked into motion and the city began to slide past them through the windows.

He ran a hand down the back of his neck, heat still clinging to him. His pulse hadn’t settled just yet–he wasn’t sure whether it was from the sprint or the way she’d smiled at him when they reached the doors.

“Right,” he said, catching his breath and grinning. “Skeeball.”

The streetcar swayed in a gentle and familiar rhythm. JB leaned his elbow on the windowsill, hand propped against his temple, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

Jacqueline swayed back and forth along with the streetcar, sitting in a relaxed silence for the first few minutes of their ride. For a moment she thought she saw JB watching her again, but she smiled bashfully and quickly looked away, taking note of the unusual color scheme. The gold and black and warm lighting made her think of an antique store, and she made a point to try to remember to look up old photographs to see if she could identify an era the designer may have been trying to emulate.

It would have been easy to get lost in the old time feel of the car if it weren’t for the voice of the computer announcing the upcoming stops, which were frequent and constant. However, despite their many stops, they were quickly coming up on their destination.

“I think we’re the stop after this next one,” she said, as she craned her neck to look out of the front window.

He thought about the lighthouse he’d described, that silent beacon in the darkness. No one had ever plucked something like that from him. It made him feel warm inside, as though she too, were there with him.

The streetcar jolted as it slowed, the sudden shift pulling JB from his reverie. He glanced toward the window and saw the next stop approaching, a blur of neon signs.

“Looks like this is it,” he said plainly.

He stood, smoothing his jacket, the cool metal pole steady in his hand. Turning back to her, he met her eyes for just a heartbeat longer than before, and in that look, he felt calmness and comfort.

“Prepare yourself for certain defeat,” she said goading him with a playful taunt as she popped up out of her seat, and bounded her way toward the exit.

~tbc~

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