Posted by Lieutenant Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2

Posted by Lieutenant Julien Smith (Doctor) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2
snip
The second Klingon was effectively blocked, Stark was down but far from out. A caitian on it’s back has many options and one that had studied capoeira extensively has even more. Stark scissored his legs flicked his spine into a half moon and launched off the floor spinning around Julien’s locked arm using the two bodies as momentum he aimed one mekleth for the Klingon’s throat and the other for the shoulder. Sailing up and over the black streak attempted to take the throat and use the other blade to launch through the air feet first at the oncoming Klingon behind it’s fellow.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Both blades met their mark swiftly and unerringly and the approaching Klingon stumbled and fell, clutching the blade sticking out of his chest. HIs momentum made him slide over the sandy floor directly before their feet as Julien stood up straight again. In the ensuing calm, Julien gave Stark an appreciative look full, his mismatched green eyes were sparkling.

“This is fun!” he said, as they heard the next pair of footsteps. Twenty minutes or so later, the program beeped, ending the level. They were both pretty drenched in Klingon blood and had left a trail of dead bodies between the spikey boulders, severed limbs and other gruesome sights that didn’t seem to register to Julien at all.

Julien pulled out a swath of fabric and started cleaning his blade. It was a holographic blade, but Stark got the distinct feeling he was watching an almost unconscious ritual. There was a satisfied almost happy gleam in Julien’s eyes as he was wiping his blade, sweat geaming on the left half of his face.
As Julien realised that this was not his real blade and that the sequence of this level was over, he quickly chucked the fabric away and made the Batleth disappear, focusing on Stark.
They had danced gracefully, well mostly Stark had, he he had just done his thing, but they were such different fighters with such different strengths that they were a perfect team. Stark had exactly what Julien was missing, and that in abundance.

“This was a great workout, I think we would do well in a real fight.” he said to Stark.

• Julien Smith

“Indeed” Stark said his dark eyes afire with a predators instincts. He took a deep breath to lower his adrenalin to manageable levels for speech stretching for battle mode into relaxation mode fluidly as only a Caitian could. “It would be worth working on some set pieces for certain situations, I admit to being excited about some of the manoeuvres we could achieve as a team harnessing our different skills”.

Julien nodded. “Yes, I’m all for it, there are quite a few possibilities. For example you could jump up via my right hand onto my right shoulder and pounce from there.” he held out his right hand at the height of his hip and made an upwards motion.

After a moment of surveying the wreckage around them with appreciation he looked up and asked “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien nodded. “Sure, ask me anything, you’re one of the very few people I can actually talk openly with.” he said.

• Julien

“You seemed to enjoy this carnage as much as I did, I was curious if it was personal feelings towards Klingons that was the reason or perhaps something more general?” Stark looked the man in the eye, “I ask only as I want to understand your feelings and motivations more, much as you need to know more about mine”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien nodded, having expected that question. “Long story short, I started out as a doctor in Starfleet, I swore the hypocratic oath. I only got involved into that black ops because thanks to my android half I was strong enough and because they had my older foster brother and I wanted to free him. There was a point in all that fighting when I intentionally kept killing instead of healing and it broke me in two. Half healer, half killer, just like my body is half human, half android. It’s irreversible and I’ve learned to live with both and find a balance. “
It was quite amazing that although he had learned to talk about it without much emotion showing, it still hurt like hell, Julien reflected silently, while seeing the vacant look of his brother’s eyes in his mind when he had finally found Damien in the Klingon main camp’s torture room.

“Ironically I don’t think I’ve ever would have become a Captain had I remained ‘only’ a fully human doctor. So yes, that dark half enjoys it and yes, I do have a special hatred for Klingons due to my months on that godforsaken colony and due to what they had done to my brother… but I’m trying to move past that.” he said.

• Julien

Stark sighed, “You won’t” he said his own eyes showing his understanding, “You may lessen it, channel it, use it, force it to create good outcomes rather than darker ones, but you became a killer for a reason and just as your love for your brother will never dim neither will the reason you became a killer” He looked up and his eyes burned with intense fury, something he did not show often outside of battle, “The question we must ask is if we love killing, or love killing for a purpose, the path is chosen but we choose how we walk it”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien’s mismatched green eyes held the gaze of those pitch black unfathomable eyes as he nodded slowly once. On some level he had known from the first moment to whom exactly he had been talking, now he was sure. It was a moment of recognition between two warriors who knew, with every fiber of their being, that the dark side would never truly go away.

Yes, once upon a time in the past it felt good to revel in it, so very seductive in its sheer power, that feeling of liberation when you accepted the darkness in your soul as part of your being, the experience of the huge boost of strength and power over others that it gave you, that feeling of being almost invicible…
Just as strong and intense as the fall and the pain afterwards, when the blood-red consequences of your actions had turned into a dire, apalling reality and you saw before you the pain and suffering you had caused while on your power trip.

The long and hard fight to fight the dark impulses down after that… something he would have never managed without La’kia…

But Stark’s words sounded so right and true in Julien’s mind that his heart picked up a few paces in his chest.
‘You may lessen it, channel it, use it, force it to create good outcomes rather than darker ones’, but it was still part of him and would never go away. He looked back over the last 6 years and knew that that had been exactly what he had done.

“You know, nobody, not even Riley.. my counselor… has ever managed to explain it all in just one sentence.” but then Riley had never hurt a soul, Julien realised.

“For a purpose… always for a purpose. But the truth is… ” he took another deep breath, seeing scenes in front of his eye as he killed Klingons and a part of him… enjoyed it, enjoyed the look of fear appearing in their eyes as they inevitably realised at one point that he was a lot harder to fight than a normal human, the moment their vain superiority crumbled to dust before him…

“The truth is if I have nobody in my life for whom to force the good outcomes for…” La’kia, his crew, his children… Marishka…
it was hard now to keep looking into Stark’s eyes, but he did.

”…I probably would stop taking that harder path and just choose the easy route.” he admitted. And he found that it was an incredibly freeing feeling. Never before had he admitted that darkest of truths inside him to anybody and only now did he fully realise this truth, as he spoke it out loud for the first time. It felt extremely liberating.

• Julien

Stark let the words hang in the air until they took shape between them linking both for the fight they knew was coming in the near future. “If you truly believe that you have no one to force the good outcomes for, then you are hiding from your past with our Captain simply because she is now married and you feel it’s inappropriate to use her as a method to bend your will. Don’t hide from that aspect of your past, embrace it as something that can now become selfless because it wants for nothing in return. Lean on your need to keep her safe for a while, as I once did. Whilst you are at it you will likely find, as I did also with Laraan, that eventually you can force the outcomes for yourself because you catch a glimpse through their eyes of what they see, a hero not a villain, and from there pour yourself daily into that mould.”

Stark sighed “You and I will likely never find peace in this life, but purpose and fulfilment in protecting others will create in us as near as we can get until death takes us”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

And there it was. The answer. The a answer to why he had always, ever since he had been broken, looked for somebody to love, to take care of, to protect. Somebody to belong to him and him alone, for whom he could feel fully responsible. The answer why La’kia, the tiny sprite of a woman, so vulnerable, had drawn him out of his personal abyss 6 years ago.

Slowly he nodded. “Maybe. But I haven’t quite given up on it. When I held my newly born children in my hands I suddenly felt different.” he sighed. “Maybe peace is wanting too much, I’d settle for some plain simple hapiness.” he said.

He decided right then and there not to fall again for a woman who triggered his protective insticts first, like La’kia had. He didn’t want to love a woman and always silently wonder how much of it was really love and how much was just his pattern triggering the right response. Then something else registered in his brain.

“Laraan the head counselor? Shalahn’s sister?” he asked.

• Julien