Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in What is Bourguignon?

Posted by Commander Ryder Raauhl (Executive Officer) in What is Bourguignon?
(snip)

Raauhl smiled it was good for them both to enjoy seemingly normal topics, “You know its come to my attention that despite living with you theres something I actually dont know about you so fancy playing 10 questions?” he sipped his wine and had another bite to eat before adding, “I’ll start. Whats your favourite colour?” As simple question but he actually had no idea what colour she’d pick, if he was to guess a deep purple.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

OOC: I swear I read “what’s your favourite colour? and my first thought was purple! before I even read the rest of your reply.
IC:
“10 questions? I can do 10 questions, but,” and she pointed her spoon at him, “not one single question more.” She laughed, she’d answer whatever he wanted to know, but she just couldn’t resist messing with him. Her favorite color? She picked up her glass and sipped the wine thinking. The problem with having such detailed and numerous aliases was it was easy to simply pick a detail from their lives. But that wasn’t an honest answer or the one he wanted. She thought about it a moment, and then grinned. “Have you ever seen the intense shade of purple an amethyst stone turns when the light refracts inside it? That color. What’s your favorite desert?” She pulled another piece of bread off the slice and popped it in her mouth. It was really good, and she’d be quite happy if made it every night.
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

“I could have guessed purple!” He said almost half spitting out his drink when she said it, maybe they knew each other more than they thought, “I figured that its, because you have a kind of quiet dignity about you and people, seem to be drawn to your charismatic and alluring nature.” He winked from over the top of his glass before placing it down. Favourite desert he thought and then after a small amount of deliberation. “I like Eton Mess, I love the sweetness from the berries particularly strawberries, my favourite by the way ill give you that for free and well then there’s the velvety smooth cream and the crunchy meringue pieces.” It was hard to imagine he could think about dessert when trying to eat dinner. “What as a child would you always get in trouble for?”

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

She blushed, his words surprising and touching. Eton Mess? She’d never heard of it, but she’d have to remember. Get in trouble for? She laughed, immediately. “Oh I’m pretty sure you could guess what it is.” She sipped at the glass, holding it more to occupy her hands than anything. “When I was little, I was quite taken with my father. I followed him everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. When I was about 3, I guess, I started following him to work. That didn’t really get me into trouble. But, my father, was a Major General in the Betazoid military. Not that it was big, he opened a training facility when his time was up, and trained new officers who wanted to join.” She smiled thinking about it, quiet for a moment. She looked back at him, the grin returning, “But what I got in trouble for, was picking the lock on his weapons locker, and stealing his weapons to go practice with. Of course now I know it wasn’t the real locker because there was never anything dangerous in there, but I still got in trouble.” He was easily always still asleep when she left for the morning, “What is your favorite way to start your day?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

He laughed, now that did sound exactly like Casela always wanting to train and always doing it in a way that wasn’t conventional. “Peacfully” He said with a smile, “I like to wake up without and alarm or some sort of distraction maybe even to the smell of breakfast cooking I dont know, I haven’t had that kind of start to the day but I think at the moment I enjoy waking up to you being around and even Gen, when she decides enough is enough and wakes us both up.” He smiled, they really were a little family. “Whats a place you haven’t been but always wanted to go?”

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

“Gen does tend to dislike sleeping in.” It was the way with children, they were always on the go. Part of it though was her need to be with them, having lost her family and being alone for so long… wherever she’d been. “Somewhere I’ve never been?” She’d been to a lot of places, but hadn’t been sight seeing. The only place she really wanted to go was…home. She looked almost sad for a moment. “That’s hard, I’ve never really thought about it.” Another bite and a sip of the wine later, “Dakala. It’s a rogue planet eternally plunged into darkness. It’s always night, but the idea of a never ending night of camping is appealing. Dakala is home to a wide variety of bioluminescent plants and animals, and springs and vents from the hot gases that vent from the planet’s core. I’ve never seen anything like that. I think I’d like to.” She contemplated her next question. “Out of all your life times what made you the happiest?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

probably not that planet He thought, of course, Casela would find beauty and interest in a location rather desolate and uninhabitable, “I think it would be Kala, Raauhls first host she was amazing and You’d have loved her too, she was a lot like yourself actually.” His mind was filled with Kala’s memories and emotions and it both overwhelmed and thrilled Ryder. “She was a bit of a risk-taker, but the happiest was when she gave birth two twins Caleb and Andromeda, she was so happy then.” He smiled, “What was were you saddest?” The question was deep and personal but to know someone Raauhl knew you had to know them completely which included sharing their horrors.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

Family, that did not surprise her one bit. It was a simple answer, that encompassed so much. Was Kala the reason he liked her? If so....”Does that mean Gen has some distant cousins? Wait no that is not my question.” It was question she was curious about, how the Trill family unit with joined symbionts worked, but not tonight. She glanced at him sharply. Her saddest? First immediate response, being trapped in Mad Man’s compound. She started to get up, to pace, run from it. No not the best reaction out of a counselor, but she wasn’t the best patient. She made herself stay in the chair though. Fear was not the same as sadness. There were very few days of joy she could remember, not since she left on that first assignment. It would be hard to distinguish from one to the next. What made her sad? “We’d moved from the house, it was one of the first to be targeted. We were hiding in caves in the mountains. We’d been there for months, but my aunt and uncle hadn’t joined us. They were close but not in the same town. We got.....” a breath…”we got news that the Jem’hadar were headed towards them. I went after them. They ignored the children for the most part, but I got stuck behind the patrol. When I made it to their house, they were gone along with my little cousin. My dad and I tracked them for a week. We found them, eventually. Aunt Olivia and Uncle Jo’nar were dead…it was…” another breath, a long one this time, and a longer silence. “Horrific. We never found Juliet. We searched every camp, every orphanage, even among the federation. Every ‘no’, every dead end…” He didn’t want to talk about it, but it was out before she thought about it, “But that was nothing compared to the moment you died.”

Saddness swapped over him, perhaps that was the wrong answer or he just didn’t want to hear out loud that he had died, especially from her. Though he was dead he was in a kind of limbo and felt her grief, he pain and anger it was overwhelming. Their connection was anything beyond their mortal bodies and he wasn’t sure how to tell her that he felt everything she did, even now his connection to her was stronger than before but he was unable to find the words to tell her. He didn’t try to find out just what else he could do.

The irony was that she in turn felt everything he did, which was not strange being a Betazoid, but the intensity of it was. Casela was unable to turn off or control the intensity of the connection. She knew he was feeling and hearing her feelings and thoughts, at times but she was unable to determine if she was doing it or if it was some side effect of what had happened, nor was she aware that it was as constant for him as it was for her. What she did know for sure was that despite the headaches interfering with her telepathy, they did not seem to affect the connection, and that the more time that passed since…since being on the other Leviathan, it was getting stronger. We’ll have to figure this out eventually.

“What’s one risk worth whatever the cost?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

Raauhl sat back and looked at her and then to the bedroom where Gen typically spent her nights playing. “That’s an obvious answer, it would be the risk to save your lives no matter what I’d risk everything for the pair of you.” He shrugged as if to say there, easy. He thought hard about his next question and considered it carefully before finally deciding that perhaps they should stick to something more lighthearted. “Was orange a fruit before the colour or colour before the fruit?” He smiled teasingly know that by doing this he avoided any more deepening questions or worst answers.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

It had been an easy question after the rawness of an honest answer that was still too raw. The beauty of their connection was that she could feel how intensely he meant his words, the stark honesty of them, and the swirl of myriad emotions that affected that choice. His feelings towards her always held a hint of confusion for her because she had never expected her life to take such a turn. She nodded towards Gen’s door, “She adores you, you know. She’s afraid to say it, but she does.” Casela turned her attention to the question. “That’s easy, the fruit. Language didn’t develop for thousands of years after humanoids appeared on Earth and their is evidence of the citrus fruit in their early diet. Language develops out of necessity so names for food, shelter, water develop first before descriptive words.” She winked at him, “Simple linguistic and sociological anthropology.”

“Oh we have a smarty-pants over here” he teased smiling.

“What job would you be horrible at?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

“Oh this one easy, I would make a terrible Doctor I’d end up putting peoples limbs on back to front, upside down and somehow inside out!” He chuckled, “I mean me a Doctor could you imagine!?” The thought was certainly terrifying. “Ok, that’s a good question I’m going to steal it what about you? What job would you be horrible at, and you can pick the same as me” He stuck out his tongue in a rather uncharacteriscly childlike manner.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO