Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne

Posted by Lieutenant Corinne Dalton/SARAH (Ships AI/Avatar) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in Counsellor’s Quarters- Corinne

(snip)

Sinclair listened and picked up on the pain and the loss… and the anger and resentment. “All of that that you are feeling is completely natural. Why shouldn’t you be angry that you were lied to? Anyone in your position would be, and have every right to be. And as far as saying you ‘should’ feel anything specific… well, that’s just kind of absurd, don’t you think? Allowing a social construct to dictate how you feel? Yes, you were in a relationship. Yes, you cared and obviously still care for him. But relationships are tricky in the best of circumstances… your current predicament I think rules out ‘best circumstances’.” and he gave her another understanding smile so she knew he was not being antagonistic. “You should not feel anything more or less than what you do. Because how you feel is a core part of who you are as a person. I don’t want you to feel as if you are doing him or his daughter a disservice by feeling angry or resentful. These are natural responses to being deceived… which you were. What you need to be mindful of is how you are going to express those emotions and, by expressing them, work through them. Does that make sense?”

Sinclair, CNS

She nodded slowly and then looked at him directly. “You want to know what makes this even worse?” Cori said with a shaky voice. “That this isn’t the first time I was betrayed by someone who said they loved me. And that mess before only proved that that person really didn’t love me, that I was just a pawn in the game played by others. And the irony, Counsellor? The person who was brave enough to tell me the truth about that, about the circumstances that led to that bodily death on the holodeck, was Jarred. I’d laugh if it weren’t so absurd!” she said darkly.

~Corinne Dalton

Sinclair didn’t laugh. He waited for a few moments in silence and then said “It’s not absurd. He obviously had some affection for you. But I think you are experiencing a problem that most people in relationships experience… that you are part of a relationship with someone who, either knowingly or unknowingly, set the boundaries for that relationship without consulting you. And that isn’t fair, you are correct. Was it malicious? Some kind of plan to use you? I don’t know. You seem to think there was a level of machination involved. Why is that?”

Sinclair, CNS

Leaning back, she closed her eyes, tilting her head slightly towards the ceiling. Oh how complicated this was! Everything was so intertwined and that made it hard to pull out a single thread to examine without it all tumbling on her at once. She exhaled abruptly and lowered her head so she could look at him. If a hologram could look weary, that was how Cori appeared right now. “Because Jarred’s ex-wife, Lilly, the mother of his child is the reason you’re still talking to me right now. She’s also a part of why I died in the first place. And I will try to explain, but it’s complicated and will take me a bit. But this is Doctor-Patient confidentiality. This is not something others know and the people involved are long gone. I don’t want you sharing this with others. It’s my story, and partly Jarred’s too,” she said adamantly.

Gathering her thoughts for a moment, Dalton reached up and pulled her long black hair forward over one shoulder. “I was a person happy to have flings. I didn’t have serious relationships and if we want to psychoanalyze that we could easily trace that to the fact that I lost two sets of parents before I was an adult.” She waved that away with a hand dismissively. “But then I met Levi Keller, our Chief of Security. He was charming, flirtatious, exactly the kind of person I’d sleep with. But it became something more. He didn’t want just sex and he practically courted me. The more time we spent together, the more I fell in love with him. And he returned those feelings.”

“Then one night, he left a message for me to meet him on the holodeck at a certain time. I figured it was another one of his lovely surprises. But when I arrived at the holodeck he told me and it was this weird desert program that whisked me in and before I knew it was some sort of war insurgency program. I was so confused but kept thinking that Levi would show up and explain or join in or something. Things escalated and then I found myself running for my life from these people with weapons. I turned a corner and found myself in an alley and the next thing I know I hear a gun shot followed by this intense pain in my back on the holodeck. The next thing I knew I was lying in the dirt in a pool of my own blood and I realized that there were no holodeck safeties and that I had just been shot in the back and was actually dying.”

“Then Levi showed up and he was panicking. I remember him holding me, and saying he was sorry, that he never meant this to happen to me. He said that he told me the wrong holodeck and that he was on the other holodeck waiting for me to show up so he could propose.” Her voice had gone rather quiet by this point.

“Long story short, but at the moment I died, a special program kicked in and preserved my consciousness, scattering me wherever it could amongst the computer network. Later on I found out that the holodeck program had been the Captain Leroux’s… Jarred’s soon to be wife. Long after Lilly disappeared after their wedding, and Levi was gone as well, Jarred and I got to know each other better. We were both devastated by these people, for different reasons of course. But he then told me the truth, the big thing that reframed everything about my relationship with Levi.” She leaned forward resting her elbows on her thighs and propping her chin in her hands.

“Jarred told me that Lilly and Levi had some sort of antagonistic relationship going on and they had a bet. That they were each trying to kill the other or something like that, and Lilly had an adrenaline addiction. She often used the holodeck without the safeties, and the program was hers. It was an honest mistake that Levi told me the wrong holodeck, but the holodeck was set up to kill Lilly.” Cori exhaled. “So Lilly lived and I got caught in the cross-fire, and some weird program I still don’t understand was added by her high ranking father to keep her from dying entirely. And I also learned that Levi was only in a relationship with me and only proposing to have plausible deniability. He wanted me to fall in love with him so I would defend him.”

~Corinne Dalton