Posted by Lieutenant Commander Serena Stone (Executive Officer) in Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston

Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Janna Kingston (Counsellor) in Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Serena Stone (Executive Officer) in Business As Usual - CNS Office - Tag Kingston
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Kingston nodded slowly, as much to check herself as it was to show she was taking in what Stone said. “And I’m certainly not asking you to discount your training, but I’m wondering if you can think of any surprises that could be actually positive. Doesn’t have to be related to being on duty.” As always, there were reasons for how she approached topics of conversation and this time was no different.

~Janna Kingston, CNS

She ws still and quiet for a moment. not in a guarded way, but as her gaze fell it turned inward. Introspective. She nodded after a moment with a small sigh. “I mean, sure. But” Another sigh, this one of exasperation as she searched for how to express where she was coming from. It didn’t have anything to do with duty. Or being on duty, or off duty. Well, that was a start. “It has nothing to do with being on duty. It has everything to do with.. we’re in the Wild West out here. When seconds matter help is hours away, or even days or weeks. And we’re supposed to be the help. For starters. And there are lots of people out there that don’t like us. Somebody could decide I was an obstacle and put a bomb in my quarters. Or ambush me in the dark. Or any number of things.”

“Say somebody decides to get the bright idea to throw a surprise party in my quarters for me. Yeah, that’s a fun idea. At least normally. But doing that to me is … I very bad idea. It could go fine. Or somebody might get shot, or hit. Especially if they’re close to me when the lights come up. Now, it was intended to be a good thing. It’s not a good idea to startle and scare me. Everybody’s gonna have a bad time after that. Because I’m going to feel like crap, someone else is injured or worse. And it’s just not good all the way around. Give me a heads-up first? Things go much better.”

“And no, I don’t want anybody to get hurt. Would I ever intentionally harm anybody here? No, not unless they were trying to harm me. But in the dark, surrounded by shadowy figures, I’m outnumbered, wouldn’t you immediately be ready to fight your way out of this ambush? Because, it actually is an ambush. just a friendly one. Also it’s an invasion of my privacy and space. So there’s that too.”

She still wasn’t sure she was really conveying her reality on the matter. And it probably only hurt her case. Did she sound paranoid and deranged? Probably. But she’d spent so much time seeing the worst in people. And having to deal with the nastiness most others didn’t want to, or couldn’t deal with. She doubted there wasn’t a seasoned security officer, tactical officer, soldier, or marine that felt much the same. Bad things didn’t wait for you to be on the clock. And while there was plenty of good, springing it on someone wired for combat wasn’t a good idea. And that didn’t even get into the career-enders, relationship-enders. Divorce territory like infidelity. That was always a wonderful surprise, wasn’t it? Or when someone crashed a vehicle because of bad or impaired judgement.

“I’m pretty sure that statistically there are a lot more bad surprises than there are good. Divorce. Infidelity. Assault. Murder. The list goes on. Are there good surprises? Of course. I’m all for them. But they’re few and far between. Everything else is kinda crap. I’d be happy to be proven otherwise though.”

Stone

Janna just listened, soaking up every word, move of Serena’s body, shift in tone of voice. She took it all in, and then with a slow motion that Stone could see coming, she reached out and rested her hand on Serena’s. She let the weight of it simply speak for her for a moment, along with the warmth of contact between people, but also her demeanour was soothing, calm, understanding. She let her breathing become long and even and she smiled at Serena. “I want you to take four deep breaths with me. Just focus on me and allow yourself to fall into the same rhythm.”

~Janna Kingston, CNS

Serena didn’t move to stop her, and as she made contact turned her hand over beneath Janna’s, taking hold, but not restraining, just good contact. Beneath her touch were wear patterns, semi-soft callouses across her palm and at the heel of her palm. Leftovers from a different kind of labor and one not suitable for civilized and polite society. Evidence of countless hours of training.

Janna was right, she was tense again. It only took a moment for her to synch up with the counselor, setting into a box breathing pattern.

Stone

Gaze fixed to Serena’s, Janna let her calmness radiate outward and once she felt the other woman relax she smiled. For the time being she did not remove her hand.

“When our experiences tell us that bad things happen under certain sets of conditions, it’s perfectly reasonable to be conditioned to avoid those circumstances. That’s how we survive, how we stay safe. We need that.”

“But… there can come a part where that inclination can prevent us from living fully in our lives. If we could on occasion set aside the reaction we might find there are other ways of being. But it’s not natural to set that aside. It feels dangerous, risky. And I’m not suggesting you set it aside right now. You need that. That’s okay,” Kingston said very matter-of-factly. “Instead I’m going to give you some homework and if it’s okay with you I‘d like you to come back next week and we can discuss how it went.”

~Janna Kingston, CNS