Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in Counselor’s Office - Nakuto drops by

Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Engineer (Consultant Researcher - Yellow)) in Counselor’s Office - Nakuto drops by
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Casela sat in silence for a brief moment, contemplating. “No, it does not. Some of us need to change who we are, in order to find…well some of us will never find peace, but at least a less violent existence.” Casela motions around her office and the stores of weapons hidden there. “would it surprise you to find an operative turned counselor? Or that a Betazoid would have a life so full of blood and battle it would make a Klingon warrior jealous?” That last part may be an exaggeration since Klingon’s don’t like subterfuge, but close enough.
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS

Nakuto smiled broadly at Synthi-er’s response, having expected no less from this seemingly kindred soul.
“Ordinarily? Yes,” she replied with a grin, “but having spent several minutes now in your company, I already have the impression that nothing about you would surprise me, Counselor.”

Casela smirked, “Why thank you, Kara. That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

But there was a truth to Casela’s words that she had not previously considered. Some of us need to change who we are, in order to find a less violent existence. But at what cost to those around us?

“It was meant to be the pinnacle of my career,” she risked tentative exploration of the subject aloud, eyes lowered to stare into her bloodwine and the familiar dance of fluid shadow. “My own command. My own vessel. I remember the night of my arrival, how the shuttle’s pilot had been furious at his orders. I presumed, at the time, it was the area that seemed to terrify him. Bad business in that sector on a previous voyage, perhaps? But then I saw the ship with my own eyes.”

Thick, sticky heat against her lips. The familiar course of flame along her throat and down to the pit of her stomach. She had hoped for a tranquilising effect to soothe the constant churn within her core. But the blood of Kahless himself would have been impotent against this tsunami of harrowing recollection.

“Have you ever had that feeling, Counselor? You are walking, perhaps, through a crowded room, minding your own business. Your thoughts are on trivial matters, what to have for lunch, or who to meet for drinks that evening. Nothing about the room, or the people within it, seems out of the ordinary. But then suddenly, you feel it. Impossible to express in words, maybe, but the sensation is etched all over your body. The stiffening of the joints. The shiver as tiny hairs ripple across pimpled skin. The tightening, like a vice, around your guts to induce almost destabilising nausea. And an immediate, and irresistible, need to flee. You can not pinpoint why you feel these things and yet you know, with every atom of your being, that something in the room is very, very wrong.”

Nakuto sighed and swallowed the remainder of her wine in one gulp.

“Good instincts. You learn to live or die by them. That’s what makes you feel that way. It’s like an itch that won’t stop. It makes you want to tear the skin from your body just to get some relief. You think you hear and see things that don’t exsist, that you’ve lost your mind. That you’ve cracked under some unforseen pressure you weren’t aware you were under. And then…” Casela shrugs a little. “Then you realize the truth. You aren’t crazy.”

Unnerving, to hear one’s most primal fears launched on stranger’s lips. It was as if Synthi-er was inside Nakuto’s head, bearing witness to every moment of shame and of torment etched indelibly within. You aren’t crazy. Did she have strength, at last, to believe it?

“That is how I felt when I first saw the Viking. My ship.”

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)

“Ah. The Viking. Well only a few every came off that ship sane. Count yourself lucky.” She’d heard the stories. Seen the reports that came across her desk. She’d always wondered, what was going on on that ship. Who had done it and why. But she wasn’t assigned to the same sector as Viking and had never had the chance to ease her curiosity. She was sure, with Kara now on Leviathan and what she knew about anomalies. Someone was having ‘fun’ at the Viking’s expense. She’d keep that to herself though, till she had evidence to the contrary.
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS

“Lucky?”

A singular blink of time. Almost wholly imperceptible. But that was all that it took for Kara Nakuto to be up on her feet, her now-empty glass hurled to the floor beside her, face painted in a terrifying array of confusion and anger and shame.
“Lucky?!!!” she roared in self-targeted fury. “A crew tormented. A ship crumbling. A partner tainted and torn from my arms. A friend banished to the void and me released without her. Tell me, Counselor, what moment in that tale of failure and cowardice do you consider me to have been lucky?”

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)

Casela didn’t even flinch, though most would have. Kara Nakuto still had the fire within her to do something about it. “Those who are unlucky have no sanity left. They don’t recognize their families, friends, themselves. They can no longer perform their duties or favorite hobbies.” Slowly, with great ease and not an inch of fear or self doubt about her, Casela stood, toe to toe, eye to eye, with Kara. “So yes, lucky. Lucky for them that you survived to avenge their deaths. To see the truth of what is going on and DO something about it. You are lucky Kara Nakuto to have the brains, brawn, and resources to put a stop to it. Now the question is, is there enough fire left in you to follow it through?”
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS (Not putting up with pity parties)

“My crew are not dead.” Eyes locked with the Counselor, the half-Klingon remained solid in her own stance, even as brown eyes began to flood from years of unspilled tears. “Death would be a blessing I could accept, to have roared them into Sto-vo-kor a profound and glorious honour. But there is no closure to be found here.”

Nakuto relented, collapsed back onto the seat and fixed her gaze on a point beyond the confines of the opposite wall. “When I tell you that I lost them it is not avoidant wording but a literal statement of facts. It always amazed me how quickly the horrors of the Viking became commonplace. When drowning in a vast body of water, it can be difficult to find something to drink. On any other ship, the appearance of the portal would have been alarming. On the Viking it was merely a curiosity.”

She snorted a dry laugh, her focus returning to the immediate surroundings, the bare room no longer comforting but starkly lacking places to hide.
“I should have been more careful. But after the pyramid I…a combination of exhaustion, continued survival and pure, unrestricted ego saw me plunge headfirst into that portal as easily as one might step onto the bridge! But I had not expected the others to follow. Or for me to be the only one who made it out.”

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)

Casela nodded. “Death is often preferable to what we have to live through, Kara. I know what it is like to wake up every day and pray that it will be my last. But until that blessing comes, I am lucky enough to have the skills and knowledge to make the living easier for others.” She takes a sip of her drink, wetting a parched throat, made dry by the dessert sands of guilt. “And sometimes that is enough to make the wait for death bearable.”
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS

“I suppose one must become intimately familiar with death if they have any hope of challenging its advances,” Nakuto shrugged in agreement. “As a Starfleet Captain you are trained in how to deal with losses from your crew. You are taught to find honour in the termination of a life proudly carrying out its duty, to find dignity in sacrificing one’s twilight moments to the cause of the Federation.”

Kara paused and ran a hand through her hair, the subtle ridges on her forehead deepening as if under significant mental strain.

“It is…the endless suffering that I can not bear to think on. The denial of passage into the higher realms for continual torture here instead. I have seen enough horror in my time to torment myself with hundreds of nightmare scenarios that my friends might be trapped within. But even then, I know that nothing I could conjure up could come anywhere close to the hellish suffering they will be enduring. Because of me.”

A roar, primal and ragged, tore from her throat and echoed around the entire room. But the release seemed to do much to steady her and, moments later, she opened her eyes once again and faced Synthi-er with a new determination.
“I joined the ARU to track them down, Lieutenant,” she admitted finally. “And if it takes me the rest of my days to locate that portal and set them all free then it will have been the remainder of a life well spent.”

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)