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

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

Posted by Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er (Counsellor / RTF) in What is Bourguignon?
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)
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.

“And here you thought I was just hot headed and snippy. I’m a know it all too.” She took a sip of her wine grinning behind the glass, leaning back in the chair relaxing further.

“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

She laughed suddenly in surprise at his antics, and shook her head with a smile. “I would be a horrible engineer. I’ve been told that many times and proven it even more than that. Forget building things, I can’t even demolish them properly. Never leave me alone to fix something or take it apart. Now for you…what’s the most memorable gift you’ve received?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

“Ok, I’m going to be a bit… Trill here but It would have to be my Symbiote its I guess as close I will get to having a baby?” He rolled his eyes, “That sounds ridiculous but I get to grow up with it inside me and give it all my thoughts and memories and I get all of those before me and knowing that one day someone will get mine it feels me with a kind of pride.” He shrugged, “But you know anything you get me is certainly a contender.” He winked finishing his win and his plate. “So, how did you find dinner?” He asked.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

“Nothing wrong with being ‘Trill’ about it. It’s part of who you are, nothing wrong with having pride in that.” She was not surprised that being joined was of the utmost significance to him. Over the years she’d spoken to many Trill, and they had described being joined as an honored responsibility, a crowning achievement, life changing, a type of rebirth, an honor. But never had she heard it described as a gift. She smiled. That was like Ryder, he had a gentle, beautiful way of looking at life, despite the horrors they faced on a daily basis. “Nothing I could give you would come close to immortality.” She sopped up the rest of the sauce on the bread and ate it, followed by a last sip of wine. “Robust, savory, the meat was incredibly tender. I think you missed your calling as a chef. It seems to relax you. But,” and here she grinned at him, “I will be very disappointed if you don’t make this again.”

“Oh you haven’t nearly discovered my culinary skills, I think there will be plenty of meals you will enjoy! This was just one of many” He said smiling, sitting back in his chair watching her, speaking but no words coming out. They could just… be together and it feel right.

She glanced up at him one brow raised in response to his ‘words.’ The silence never seemed to stretch between them, it just was. It was never forced and never awkward. It was peaceful. Her ‘brother’ would say it soothed her battered warrior’s soul. She always thought he was being a bit poetic, she was a bit chagrinned to realize he was right.

She thought about his answer quietly as she got up taking clearing the table. The dishes went back into the replicator, the wine corked and put away and the bread she wrapped in a towel and put away. She wasn’t one to really avoid topics, she debated with herself while she put things away. “Is that something you want? To have children?”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

Having gotten up to help Cas clear the table he paused near the replicator, “It is yes but we have Gen and that for me is enough, a child of our own” He paused to look up at Cas to see her reaction, “Would be my greatest pride, but raising Gen is also equally important to me birth father or not I am her dad.” He smiled and continued to clear things up.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

Casela didn’t know what to do with his answer; she shouldn’t have been surprised by his answer. She knew him well enough to know even before she asked the question what the answer would be, but now she had a problem. How did she feel about it? Given who she was and what she was having a child of her own was the furthest thing from possibility, even from probability, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Since she was a little girl she had always known she wanted to be a mother. She adored her mother, she adored her aunt, and from the moment she held her cousin she knew that she wanted to hold her own baby in her arms. But she’d given up on that many many years ago. The closest thing she figured she’d ever come was to the orphans on Delotha, and now she had Gen and she had Ryder. For the same reason she hesitated when Rider asked her to move in, she hesitated now because she didn’t know how she felt. She argued with herself fiercely. Dreams from childhood rarely made the reality of your present. Would she risk the dangers of working for the Section on a child growing within herself no matter how much she might want it.

Was it bravery or cowardice to give up on having children, to expand their little family to give Gen siblings to put into the world a piece of herself and a piece of Ryder? Was it bravery or cowardice to embrace that dream to give up on the oath she’d given that she believed so strongly in? To walk away from it all and given a ship like Leviathan who in their right mind would bring a new life into the world after what they’d seen.

She didn’t know how to tell Ryder any of this. How to put into words the fear and the hope and the longing, to express what she longed for. Now standing next to her, he was looking at her, in a way that made her blush. Waiting to see her reaction, and she didn’t know how to tell him that she wanted all of it and she was afraid to take it at the same time. Ryder continued to tell her to not deny what they felt. This wasn’t that. It was too intense, too raw, to define by words, and so instead she spoke, without words, into that connection that neither of them realized the strength of.
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

Ryder leaned forward and kissed Casela on the cheek, “You know you frown incredibly deeply when you’re fighting some sort if internal battle ints rather endearing.” Leaning back he smiled at her, “Come on” He winked, “We have at least an hour till Gen comes back and I can think of a particular activity we could be doing in her absence.” Not waiting for her response he confiscated the towel she was using and threw it onto the side before taking her hand and leading Casela to their shared bedroom.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO

The fact he noticed really should bother her. A year ago it would have triggered a fight response in her: to train harder and longer, to spend excessive amounts of time in meditation. Transparency was weakness, but with him she just didn’t worry about it. “I’m only that transparent for you,” she kissed his cheek and whispered to him. “Don’t you dare tell anyone else. I know where you sleep.” She just couldn’t quite get rid of that brashness. “You don’t want your other three questions?” she was teasing him just a bit. The way he winked at her though made her stomach summersault, and then he’d tossed the towel somewhere. She grinned, gods she loved him. But then his words registered and she was too shocked to resist as he pulled her into their bedroom. “Ryder, I did NOT say I wanted to make a baby!!!”
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

He tried to keep a straight face and then he laughed, “Casela!” he said out loud a little taken aback by the comment. “I mean we dont have to if you dont want to, and I didn’t mean that’s… I dont know and that’s a first” He laughed again and then stood in the doorway, “I mean we dont have to but, maybes its the wine and the red meat?” He was teasing, he’d worked himself up but didn’t want to force her into anything maybe talking about babies before wanting to go to the bedroom was like talking about a shuttle crash before getting on a shuttle.

• Commander Raauhl, XO

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to. I mean…Well you were thinking it too!” She stopped right next to him in the door way, close enough he could put his arms around her. “I..we don’t have to decide…yeah okay we’ll say it’s the wine.” He was going to let her keep talking herself into a deep and deeper hole, and never stop teasing her about it. She was going to stop talking. She was already blushing. He had that effect on her. “I love you.” He still had ahold of her hand and she liked being that close to him. She wanted to try something. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. She focused and very carefully ‘reached’ for him letting him feel how she felt. She whispered to him, “Do you feel that?” Then she kissed him.
Lt Synthi-er, CNS

He nodded, he could. “I love you to Casela Synthi-er” Raauhl took pleasure in saying her name, prolonging the way he said it so it was slow and enticing. “So” He said beginning to pull her again, “Any more objection or will I really have to throw you in the brig for disobeying orders?” His smile was one of a hunger that came easy when he was with Cas and of love, love for her and what they had.

• Cmdr Raauhl, XO