Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Captain) in Deja Vu with the Counselor

Posted by Captain Rende Asam (Captain) in Deja Vu with the Counselor

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Sharah Fayth (Medical Officer) in Deja Vu with the Counselor
Posted by… suppressed (4) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
Sharah returned several minutes later, a PaDD in hand and a large leather cuff bracelet on her wrist. She sat back the chair she had occupied earlier and picked up the still warm tea that Cmdr Korczak had offered her. She wasn’t really sure what to expect, but she looked simultaneously nervous and determined.

=/\=Asam to Korczak. Should Eldorin and I return to your office?=/\= The captain’s voice sounded over the comm system. She had already told Korczak that she would speak to the captain and chief engineer but at the sound of the captain’s voice she looked at the counselor and nodded her assent again.

Sharah’s range was more than shocking and with all the background noise it was easy to let everything get lost together, but her mind was running towards the two people on this ship who might be related to her friend and her godchildren. It would be so easy to focus on them, to tell what they were thinking, to be influenced by their emotions, but Sharah didn’t want to be influenced by them. She wanted to do what was best for Tabris. For a lack of anything else to help her focus she sipped at the tea focusing on the flavor.

Fayth, med

=/\= Indeed. I think now is a most opportune time. Door is open. =/\= came the reply from the Counselor. He looked at Fayth and said “Relax, breathe easy. YOu are simply conveying information. What comes of that information is a concern for the future, not the present… okay?”

Korczak, CNS

=/\=Thank you, Cmdr.=/\= In their quarters Rende turned to Eldorin, placing a hand along his cheek. “We’ve waited three centuries for this El, let’s go learn about our son.”

He simply nodded, no words escaped his lips which knowing Eldorin was WELL out of character. He cupped her hand in his as he fought back a tear or two.

Fayth glanced up from her tea cup and then took a slow deep breath. The smile on her face didn’t quite reach her eyes as she took another breath and forced her shoulder to stop hunching and sat back in her chair. “It doesn’t feel quite so simple.” But maybe…just maybe if it went well the good that would come of it would balance…mistakes.

Fayth, med

A few short minutes later, that felt more like hours, Rende and Eldorin stepped through the door of Korczak’s office. Rende’s gaze passed over Korczak to the other person in the room. Young, pretty, looking as nervous as Rende did that time she posed as a Verbethic dancer. She met the girl’s gaze momentarily - all black eyes, Betazoid then. Rende moved toward the numerous chairs in the office and sat down on the small couch next to Eldorin, attempting to curb her curiosity and the most pressing question on a mother’s mind.

Rende, CO

The middle aged looking man in a uniform well out of date, but still allowed per a wonderful loophole in Starfleet regulations, sat on the couch and was stiff. Sharah would sense an odd calm about him, as though he were forcing that mental state to come through. Now he couldn’t know of her telepathic and empathic abilities, but when one is over 500 years old, and are involved in some pretty complicated and dicey affairs, you get pretty good at putting up a front. He closed his eyes and kept them closed for a little before opening them and saying, “Tank you Korczak fahr lettin oehs meet ‘ere, I do appreciate it.” Before he turned to the young woman and said kindly, “Alright den, so you’re Sharah? I ‘ear you’ve gaht to know ooehr sahn Tabris? it’s good ta meet you.”

Eldorin

Sharah sat there staring at the pair curiously, attempting to hide her reaction to their emotions. They were both outwardly calm and hard to read, but underneath she could sense their forced calm and a mixture of disbelief, hope, fear, and skepticism. It was heartbreaking. She nodded quietly with a faint smile. She wasn’t sure where to start, and Korczak certainly tell her exactly how to start. She looked down at the cuff on her wrist, turned it over and slowly undid the buckle.

It was a wide light brown leather band, with etched symbols in it. One was what Tabris told her was their family mark. Something he and his father had designed together. Then there were marks for Tabris, each of his children, and then they’d made one for her. And attached to the middle was a piece of engineering genius. Or at least Sharah thought it was. It was a small biostasis unit with the seedling of a ficus. She wasn’t sure the Cpt and CE would know it was a ficus seedling, but it was. Looking at the cuff once last time she leaned forward out of her chair and handed it to Tabris’ father. “Tabris is…very dear to me.”

Sharah

Eldorin sat and composed himself well. Well enough that is for a man who had someone in front of him with information on his son who he thought lost for the last 200+ years. He watched the woman sitting across from him undo a clasp and look at it longingly before reaching to hand it over. He took the cuff and held it for a moment as he let her word sink in. He turned it around in his hands before he saw the mark. It was different around the edges but the center was the same. He saw the design they had made, and then small marks to indicate 5 others, 4 smaller and one larger. His eyes grew wide as he said, “Dis is our mark! Look!” As he spoke he took his coffee cup and tossed the contents over his shoulder.... right onto the good counselor’s floor, as he showed Sharah a very crude representation of the mark on the bottom of the cup. “Tabris wasn’t mahre dan 14 when ‘e made dis in school, so abooeht 1991-1992 if I remember, and ‘e made dis coehp fahr me right befahre we left Ireland de first time.” He went on to describe how when Tabris was in middle to late elementary school, the two had designed the emblem to go on anything they made as a sort of family crest of sorts.

Lt Asam’s excitement hit her like a wave, but the only indication was a slighly tightened grip on her tea cup. She had gotten better over the last year and a half at controlling her reaction even if she couldn’t control how it affected her. She was startled when he threw the coffee over his shoulder and exchanged her tea cup for the coffee cup. Sharah pulled back slightly to avoid the inadvertant physical contact. Sharah had heard the story from Tabris when he had told it to his children. It was kind of neat to hear the story from the other perspective. She looked at the mark in the cup before placing it carefully on the table between them.

As he handed the cuff to Rende he looked at Sharah and said “So ‘e’s dear to you? I’m guessin you’re de larger mark, does dat mean dat you’re tahgether? Are dese smaller marks yooehr keds?” He paused a moment and looked at Rende before saying a bit softer, “Do we ‘ave grandchildren?”

Eldorin

Rende didn’t miss the small retreat of the young doctor. She couldn’t blame her, it was an uncomfortable position to be in, Rende was sure. She took the cuff and stared at the familiar mark. Eldorin still put it on everything. Her thumb rubbed over the image, it was new, the leather hadn’t aged yet.

What?! Oh no....he thought…he thought she and Tabris were together. Her mind shifted to Markus briefly and then back to those in the room. She glanced at Korczak, her expression a little desperate. Tabris was dear to her, but NOT like that. Oh and he was so hopeful, the captain too. And now she was going to disappoint them. Though Sharah adored her godchildren and loved them deeply there was also a significant amount of fear that flashed across her features at the idea. She opened her mouth to say something but nothing came out.

“Eldorin…Dat’s cavfee you just tossed on Korczak’s carpet.” Her exasperation with her husband and proximity to his own accent pulled the Irish accent out of her. It was said with all the weariness of a woman who was used to such things by now and knew her husband would continue to do such crazy things no matter how old he got. Standing and shaking the learned accent off, Rende moved toward the replicator, “Asam Cleaning kit 1.” The replicator swirled and she removed the items. She tossed an extremely absorbent towel over the liquid until what was standing was soaked into the towel. Then she sprayed the carpet heavily with a solution that would break up the enzymes in the coffee. “My sincerest apologies, Korczak.” Then she tossed another towel over it to soak up the cleaner and remaining coffee. She tossed the items back into the replicator to be recycled and returned to her seat.

Rende

“Its coffee, Captain… not an affront to my character.” Korczak said with a slight and comforting smile. “Besides… if there was a time to spill a little coffee, I think now would be one.” He looked at Eldorin and Rende, and then said “Alright… let us take this slowly, shall we? Lieutenant Fayth… would you be so kind as to tell the group how you met Tabris? And what your relationship to him is please?”

Korczak, CNS

Sharah glanced back at the counselor and nodded. She always liked Korczak’s presence. He was always so....blank and certain. She nodded again sipping at the tea. Could they sense her emotions? Tabris had only started to learn and it was difficult, Sharah knew El-Aurian empathy worked differently than Betazoid’s but she’d never been able to figure out how. Did Tabris get his lack of perception from his parents or lack of teaching? “Tabris is like a brother to me. A really old one, so perhaps Uncle is the more accurate description. The larger symbol is Tabris. I’m that one on the other side.” It was a small child like sketch of what was supposed to be a Bonsai tree. “I met him when we served on the Ark Angel together. At the time I was the lead Botanist on board and he was fresh from the Academy. He had brought a Ficus of his in to plant in the main arboretum. He said it was the only family he had left. He told me that he’d planted it when he was 16 and then took it with him when he left Earth. We um…” She wasn’t sure how much to get into. She’d been really relaxed that day and had been so fascinated by ‘Geoff’ she’d responded to Tabris’ thoughts without realizing it. “We had a disagreement. The bush was clearly female, since it’s fruit bearing, but he kept correcting me that ‘Geoff’ is a male name and to stop calling him a ‘she’.”

Oh poor dear, they had made her uncomfortable asking about her relationship to Tabris. Rende turned the cuff in her hand and saw the other symbol there. A tree for a botanist. But now she was a doctor on board. A woman of many talents. She’d argued with him when she first met him, and now they were like family. Well that would make her family too. “Geoff?” She turned a grin to Eldorin, “that little bush is still alive? I didn’t think it survived WWII.”

What else to tell them, what was too much or not enough. And their eagerness, despite their calm, was moving and heart breaking at the same time, and Sharah began to ramble. Trying to appease their curiosity, reassure them about their son. He was alive and healthy and happy. “He’s an engineer, a really good one. He wears glasses rather than getting his eyes fixed, despite my promise it won’t hurt. He wears an old fashioned 12 hour analog watch with Snoopy on it.”

Rende might have turned red at the mention of glasses and having her eyes fixed. Tabris was a bit like her, too. She was holding Eldorin’s hand and squeezed it. “We gave him that watch for his highschool graduation. I can’t imagine it still works. Nothing runs on batteries like that anymore.”

And of course the largest question floating about the room, “Tabris has four children. 3 boys and a girl.” Was that enough? Or the wrong things? Couldn’t they just call Tabris and let him tell them?

Fayth

“Four children? Four grandchildren…If you don’t mind telling, what is their mother like?”

Rende

Bump

Korczak cleared his throat slightly and said “A question for another time, perhaps. Let us keep on track with Tabris. Familial stories can regaled ina less… formal… setting.” He looked at Fayth and said “Now, please tell Rende and Eldorin what you can about Tabris specifically. And then I want all of you to take a five minute break individually and just sit and think on the changes that are coming to all involved. After that, we will discuss next steps… specifically the need for reconnection and introductions.”

Korczak, CNS