Posted by Lieutenant Commander Katie Nunn (Counselor) in Counselor’s Office – Molly Holloway

Posted by Captain Molly Holloway (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Counselor’s Office – Molly Holloway

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Katie Nunn (Counselor) in Counselor’s Office – Molly Holloway
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
(snip)

Instead, she leaned forward on the couch, her face closer to the officer across from her. “Who are you and why do you want that information? I thought I could trust you, Commander, but I can guarantee you… I’ve fallen for this once, and I am not falling for it again.” Her tone was ice cold.

Capt. Holloway, CIO

The intense fear in Katie’s eyes began to flicker to understanding as the potential reason for Holloway’s reaction dawned on her. She straightened quickly, slightly mortified at her visceral reaction to the emotion in the room. Eventually, she was going to have to stop shrinking away like a scared little girl when someone got angry with her, she chastised herself before returning her complete focus to the CIO.

“Captain, you know who I am. I’m Commander Nunn, the ship’s counselor, and I don’t particularly want any information,” she began, then paused a moment to collect her thoughts. “You’ve mentioned him several times in your explanation of why you’re here, more than I would expect for a simply professional relationship, and so I’m curious to know whether there is something more. Individuals who have experienced trauma need a support structure, whether that be friends or a romantic partner or somewhere in between.” She paused again, her heart rate remaining slightly taxed with the chill in Holloway’s voice. She rested her hands on her thighs and dug the tips of her fingers into them, feeling the slight bites of pain of her fingernails and using that to try to center herself. “Any information shared in this room is between you and me unless I feel that you are a danger to yourself or to this crew and, let me assure you, my standards for that are quite high,” she finally continued as firm as she could manage, but there was still a slight tremble to her voice.

Lt Cmdr Nunn, CNS

It felt as if she had awaken from a bad dream. The fear in Nunn’s eyes and the way she had tried to make herself smaller on the couch… the way her arms had settled on her torso… Molly took her hands to her face for a moment, trying to clear her mind. She had seen that reaction before. No… she hadn’t seen it. She had had it. She had had that same reaction every time her father had raised his voice at her, every time his angry drunken gaze had fallen on her… and now… she was no better. She was inflicting on others the same pain. She was no better than her father had been. Only he had the excuse of his drinking problems and of his wife being dead at such an early age. What excuse did she have?

“I’m sorry.” Molly finally said. Glancing at the door she wondered how fast she could cross the room to leave. She had never been so ashamed in her life. Shaking her head for a second, Holloway stood and walked to the toy basket in the corner, picking up a soft toy in the shape of a starship, before returning to her spot on the couch. It had caught her eye when she had first walked in the office.

“I used to have one just like this.” Holloway said as she turned the toy in her hands. “Only mine had Holloway Heavy Industries’s logo on it. My uncle gave it to me. I’m sure he brought it from the company’s gift shop…” For a moment she gave the starship a wistful look. “It used to help after my dad’s outbursts…” Placing the toy by her side on the couch, Molly’s eyes finally met Nunn’s again. “You should have your ribs checked.” She smiled softly. “Trust me. I didn’t. You shouldn’t have to live with the same pain. Whoever did it to you, doesn’t deserve it.”

“Colonel Harris and I have been on a committed relationship for…” She pondered for a moment. “…almost two years now. God, time flies…” She muttered absentmindedly, more to herself than to Nunn. “I’m sorry… I know it’s not an excuse, but… that mission seems to have changed me for the worst.”

Capt. Holloway, CIO

Katie followed Holloway’s movements with her eyes and gave her a small smile that didn’t entirely reach the rest of her face. She waited a few moments to respond to her, allowing her a few moments to suppress the storm of emotions threatening to take over. This was Holloway’s time, not her time, and she needed to focus on her for now. She opened her mouth to correct Holloway on the exact nature of her injury, but closed it again, not sure that it was something that she wanted to share. Thankfully, while she was busy sorting that out, Holloway had continued on to answer her question. As she listened, a more genuine smile came over her face.

“I’m glad to hear that you have that support,” she commented, her voice emphasizing the truth behind her words. She paused before continuing and then, finally, uttered, “and it’s fine, this is a place where you can have any reaction that you need to and I will support you. I certainly won’t take it personally that you don’t trust me… yet.” The “yet” was mentioned with an inevitability to it, a hint that Katie didn’t plan to give up on Holloway any time soon.

Lt Cmdr Nunn, CNS

Molly shook her head. “No… It’s not fine.” She paused for a moment, looking at her shoes. “I never set out to be like this in the first place…” She sighed. “I spent so long blaming my father for everything wrong with my life that I became angry and bitter just like him.” Taking her face to her hands, Molly carried on. “Starfleet Medical has been right all along… I have deep rooted anger issues I never dealt with… only he had a good excuse for them… I don’t.”

Katie’s heart rate was slowly returning to normal and the loosening of Holloway now was certainly helping. She nodded encouragingly, not speaking in hopes that she would continue on this train of thought.

Looking up at Nunn, Molly continued. “Trust doesn’t come easy to me, Commander. It never has.” Holloway shook her head. “Every time I trusted someone I got hurt… and on a different occasions I hurt people very close to me because they trusted me too…” Somehow, the topic of the conversation was getting closer and closer to what the Starfleet Criminal Investigative Service had tried to use against her after they had been back from Beta Prime. “As for Calvin… Colonel Harris…” She corrected. “Half the time I don’t tell him what goes through my mind.” She paused. “Mostly because I’m scared that if I ever do, he’ll walk away like everybody else.” Molly scoffed, and for a second she looked lost in thought. In her mind, the same moments she relived every night showed up again. The knife, the bullets, the blood, the shuttle, and the sound… the sickening sound of the cabin decompressing… they all came in quick succession. Cal’s broken body fastened to the seat behind her… His own words echoing through her mind. You’re on your own, Wright. “I almost lost him twice.” She shook her head trying to clear her mind. “I can’t afford to lose him again.”

Capt. Holloway, CIO

Katie made a mental note to pursue a more in depth discussion of the dangerous situation Holloway had shared with Harris another time. She would have felt more comfortable making an actual note on a PaDD, but it didn’t seem like drawing attention to her role as counselor would be particularly productive at this particular time. Her hands slowly relaxed on her thighs as she got her bearings again and one finger came up to between her teeth, where she nibbled on the nail lightly as she pondered what the captain had told her.

“Well, I admit that I haven’t had a chance to spend much time with Colonel Harris yet, but you don’t get to his position with his record by being scared off by what’s going on in your partner’s mind,” she replied, gently but firmly. “My professional opinion is that, more so than needing to talk with me, you need to talk with him. If it would be helpful for me to be present, I’m always willing to meet with couples, even when one of them is the CO of the ship.” She paused for a moment and then circled back to something she had wanted to ask, “what are your coping mechanisms for the anger? I assume you’re physically active given your position in the intelligence community?”

Lt Cmdr Nunn, CNS

For the first time in the whole meeting, an amused smile spread on Molly’s lips. “Thank you, Commander, but that won’t be necessary. I mean… I’m all for couples therapy when necessary, but I don’t think me and Calvin are at that stage yet.” The thought of Calvin in a couples therapy session was an amusing one to her. However, Holloway’s expression went quickly serious again. “We’re pretty open with each other. But because we both went through so much we tend to accept the other’s evasiveness more than we should.” She nodded absentmindedly. “We need to work on that…” The words were more to herself than to the counselor.

“It sounds like you have a very aware relationship of one another,” Katie complimented. She had no intention of pushing couples therapy on the pair, but it was always good to make officers available of the variety of services that were available to them. Plus, it sounded like she was already aware of the weaknesses in their relationship. She made a mental note to follow up with the CO whenever she managed to get him into her officer for his own evaluation.

“I am.” Molly said as answer to Nunn’s last set of questions. “I started out as a Security officer, so physical readiness was always a required part of my job. Even while being the XO of the Monty or the CO of the Turing, I kept dedicated time at the gym or at the holodeck. It became a part of my daily routine I cannot live without, and it’s usually the first thing I do in the morning. But… as far as coping mechanisms go…” Her mind went back to her last holodeck session before leaving for Earth two weeks prior. “… the last time I tried to use my workout time as such it didn’t go too well.” She sighed. “I ended up in sickbay with a hole in my right leg…” Holloway shrugged. “There was a time when everything seemed to be getting under control. But when they took the Turing away from me, three years ago, it stopped. I thought joining Starfleet Intelligence would help forgetting about it… and it did for a year, until I came back and was confronted with the reality that I had left behind… My command was still gone, and now so was my fiancé who had waited a year for me only to find out I had—“ She couldn’t bring herself to say it. The shame she still felt for putting Ashton in the situation she had… The man that had helped her through so much, and supported her through what life had thrown at her. He had been her first true love, and yet… she had treated him as if he had never mattered to her. If she could go back in time, she would tell him not to get involved with her in the first place.

Clutching the small starship in her hands, Molly shook her head. “I can’t cope, Commander. I don’t deserve to lead a normal life after everything I did to others… and after what happened on the holodeck, I am scared that if I try to cope through physical activity, I will end up killing myself. I think that’s why Colonel Harris made this appointment in the first place.”

Capt. Holloway, CIO

“Hmm,” Katie responded, digesting the massive amount of information that Holloway had suddenly spilled to her. “I think there’s quite a bit for us to talk about here, including setting some goals for your self-care routine, but there’s one thing that I wanted to check on first. Did you turn off the safeties in the Holodeck?” She was blunt in her question but not accusing.

Lt Cmdr Nunn, CNS

An eyebrow raised inquisitively at the suggestion of goals for her ‘self-care routine’, but she didn’t ask. Instead Molly carried on to the question she had been posed. “Yes and no…” The tone was almost evasive, but not because Molly was trying to hide it. Sighing softly, she looked at the counselor before continuing. “I didn’t actively turn off the holodeck safeties…” It almost sounded like an excuse. “Meaning, I didn’t… ‘flip the switch’…” Holloway said adding air quotes. “… if I’m making any sense…” She sighed again, this time taking one hand to her face and pinching the bridge of her nose.

Her training program had always been one of her most prized possessions. Not being an Engineer, and definitely not being the best programmer, had always meant that Molly didn’t have the skills it took to create a different program every time she visited the holodeck. And honestly, she didn’t care. However, she kept that one program close to her heart. It was the place she went to when she needed to keep up with her training and it was the place she visited when she wanted to rest and spend some time away from starship life. It was her secret little nook on board every starship she had been assigned to, and it never changed. And Molly didn’t particularly like change. There was a handful of settings she could modify and that was it. She never talked about it, and there were only three people that knew of its existence, but for the first time Holloway saw herself forced to explain vaguely what it was about.

“I feel like I should fill you in on some details so that you can understand what I mean…” Molly fell silent for a moment. It was clear that there was an internal struggle going on. “When I was an Ensign, my roommate on board the Earhart helped me create a training program. She had came up with this idea for this fictional alien race that she used in her own personal training, all I needed was to choose the setting, and she would make one for me. The creatures…” She wondered if that was the appropriate name. “… are quite… vicious… but there’s several settings one can choose in order to tailor the program to one’s daily needs.” For a moment she was scared Nunn would want to know more about the program. “Among them, there’s a difficulty scale that goes from one to ten… I generally use it between one to four if I want a good run, around five and six if I want a combat oriented workout.” Molly shook her head. “That day… I turned it all the way up to ten. I didn’t know what was going to happen. But I guess…” Holloway’s shoulders slumped forward as she pondered what to say. Taking a deep breath and straightening back on her seat, Molly continued with new resolve. “Look, Commander… I can sit here all day long telling you it was an accident. But.. if I am going to be truly honest with you… I didn’t know that turning it up that high would disable the holodeck’s safeties… but deep down I was hoping it would.”

Capt. Holloway, CIO