TITLE: Baby Steps
AUTHOR: Brenda Shaffer-Shiring
GENRE: The Orville
CODES: Friendship
CHARACTERS: Kelly Grayson, Ed Mercer
PARTS: 1/1
RATING: T (language)
DISCLAIMER: They're all yours, Seth. I'm just hanging out with them for a bit.
SUMMARY: After "About a Girl," Ed helps Kelly come to terms with her failure to win Bortus's case.

"Here you are, ma'am." The bartender placed a shot glass in front of Commander Kelly Grayson.

"Yeah, thanks. Bring me another in five minutes." Blearily, with unwonted seriousness, Kelly considered the amber liquid in her glass for a few seconds. Then she picked it up and neatly upended the contents into her mouth.

"Ma'am," the bartender said with some concern, "don't you think you should –"

"I'm not driving." Kelly slammed the shot glass to the table with a crack like a gunshot. "Not like drinking disqualifies someone from flying this ship, anyway. Or are you implying a female can't hold her liquor? Screw off!" He hesitated. "Screw off! That's an order!"

He screwed off with gratifying haste.

In his absence, Kelly glared around the room as if trying to frighten away anyone else who might be tempted to approach her with undesired solicitude. As the Orville's lounge was, uncharacteristically, empty, there was no one for that incandescent gaze to sear, nor anyone for her sharp tongue to flay. In the mood for confrontation, all of a sudden she rather regretted sending the bartender away. Oh well, he'd be back in five minutes.

In the meantime, there was always brooding.

She'd failed. She'd lost the tribunal hearing, and with it Bortus's daughter's chance to live on as his daughter. The next time she saw the little Moclan, she (? Kelly was far too drunk to dissect the finer points of pronouns) would be changed. Without choice. Without consent. Without ever knowing or touching the life that might have been.

Dammit. Damn the Moclans, for their ridiculous attitudes. Damn Clyden, for being such a conformist. Damn Bortus and Ed, for thrusting Kelly into the middle of this.

And, of course, damn me.

She had done her best. She had tried to warn Bortus and Ed of her limits. A year's worth of education on interplanetary law wasn't much, after all, even if she had done well in the course. And the length of the trip to Moclas had not been very long to read up on Moclan legalities and build a case against a millennia-old practice and the attitudes that demanded it. Still, she had done her best.

Which didn't seem like much of an argument against the obvious, painful truth: this time, her best had not been good enough.

Speaking of people whose efforts weren't good enough, it had surely been more than five minutes since the bartender had given her that last shot. Where the hell had he gone to get her next one? Scotland? "Hey," she barked in her best irate-First-Officer voice, "what happened to my drink?"

And lo and behold, the drink appeared, in the form of a half-filled bottle and an empty shot glass. But the objects were not borne by the bartender; rather, they were in a couple of very familiar hands, belonging to a man wearing a very familiar ugly civilian shirt.

Ed.

He sat the shot glass down before the seat opposite hers, claiming the seat for himself before tipping the bottle to fill both his glass and hers.

"Take it from someone who knows a little about bar-crawling, Kel," he said wryly. "It's hard to get refills when you scare off the bartender."

"Fuck you, Ed."

"Even now not a completely unappealing prospect, but I'm pretty sure we agreed that was off the table." He knocked back his own shot with an all-too-practiced neatness, and Kelly somewhat less tidily followed suit. "So when did you become a whisky drinker, anyway? Food synthesizer lose the pattern for cannabis all of a sudden?"

She'd wanted something that would leave a hangover, not that that was any of his business. "Piss off."

"Ooh, clever riposte, Counselor."

For that flippant "counselor," she almost threw the shot glass at him. "Don't you dare make a joke out of it, Ed Mercer! Don't you dare! I told you I wasn't a lawyer. I told you I didn't know enough to defend that case. And you sent me in anyway, damn you."

He gave her an earnest gaze she remembered well. "Kelly, I had to send someone. The kid – and Bortus - needed a defense, and it's not like we had time to bring in JAG."

She knew that much was true, but followed up, sullenly, "Why me? And don't give me that bullshit about my law class."

"Not bullshit. That was the main reason. The other reason is, you're one of the smartest people on the ship."

She scoffed. "With Isaac aboard? Or the doctor?"

He refilled their glasses. "I said 'one of.' You might remember that Isaac didn't even really understand the issue. And Doc Finn didn't acquit herself all that well on the stand, did she? I don't think either of them would have done better." He raised his shot glass to clink against hers before they downed the liquor. "I don't know if JAG would have done better."

She wasn't sure, what with the way her head was buzzing, but it didn't seem to her that that made sense. "Come again?" Of course the Judge Advocate General's office would have done better. They were actual lawyers. Who, you know, actually knew a lot about law.

"Seriously, Kel?" Ed set his glass back on the table with exaggerated care. "Sure, they're fancy-ass lawyers. They could pull out all the bells and whistles. But would they be able to get a different result? Would they be able to make the Moclans let that kid still be a girl? I'm not seeing it."

"You don't think anyone –?" Kelly's voice rose in protest.

"Jesus, Kelly, we showed them one of their most respected authors was female, and that didn't help. You really think getting a better argument up there would have done it?"

"Then what was the point? Why did we have to go through this at all?"

"Because we didn't know that! Because we had to try." He picked up the whiskey bottle, waved it around for a second indecisively, as if considering refilling their glasses, before setting it back down. Kelly wasn't sure whether to be angry or grateful. "And maybe it wasn't all for nothing anyway."

"Ed. We lost. The baby's male now." Though she should have been sufficiently anesthetized by now, the words still hurt her throat. "Do you want to explain to me what anybody gained?"

"Well, for one thing, we got our case out in front of the whole planet." She shrugged, unconvinced. "You showed them a little of what women can do. Heveena showed them a little more. Maybe that'll get a few people thinking. Maybe the next baby girl gets her chance."

"Maybe." She sighed, not adding the obvious or maybe not. "That doesn't help this baby."

"No." He leaned toward her. "But you know what does?"

"What?"

"Bortus. Guess what I saw him making, down in the synthesizer section?"

Guess who's not really up to answering riddles? "I give up, Ed. What?"

"A stuffed Rudolph toy."

She blinked, trying to parse the words through the liquorish fog in her brain. "A Rudolph – oh! Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer." By now, the whole ship knew the story of how Malloy and LaMarr had convinced Bortus to give his baby girl a chance of remaining female by showing him a copy of the old stop-action Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The tale of the fictional reindeer had convinced the Moclan that his daughter should be allowed to see if her uniqueness might let her make a difference, as well.

"Yeah."

"For the baby?"

"Clyden didn't strike me as a fan," Ed said drily. "Of course, for the baby."

"But that means –" She had a half-formed thought, but couldn't articulate it.

"I don't know what it means." He pushed the whiskey bottle aside, leaning in again. "But I think it means this baby's going to hear a few stories about what people – reindeer, whatever – can do when they're different. And who knows, maybe when the baby's old enough, she – or he – can make their own choices."

Even knowing that might be the most optimistic possible take on the situation, Kelly let herself feel the tiniest bit of hope. "Maybe." Maybe the next baby – maybe this baby – wasn't starting at Ground Zero any more. Maybe she, Kelly, had something to do with that. Maybe.

"Baby steps, Kel. Baby steps." He carefully capped the bottle, then walked to the food unit with exaggerated caution, murmuring what sounded like a recipe into its verbal processor. A glass materialized, filled with an odd, vaguely orange concoction. He brought it to the table, set it down deliberately in front of her. "In the meanwhile, drink up."

"Huh? What the hell is this?"

"Hangover cure. Drink up."

"I don't want– "

"Yeah, but I'll need my first officer in the morning. Drink it, Kel." He stopped short of making that an order, but she had the distinct impression that he wanted to – and of course, he always could. Reluctantly, she complied, even though the beverage tasted disgustingly like the worst sort of toothpaste. The buzzing in her head receded ever so slightly.

"Now let's get you back to your quarters. Crew's already got enough to gossip about." Knowing that was true – she didn't really think the lounge was empty by accident – Kelly levered herself to her feet and headed to the door. A familiar hand found the center of her back to steady her, then made its way around her waist. "I've got you."

After everything that had happened, on this day and other days, Kelly knew that was true. And for now, she was willing to let herself accept it.

END