Snip

Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in CNS Office - Nakuto looks for a friendly face

Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Civilian, Former CO) in CNS Office - Nakuto looks for a friendly face

Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in CNS Office - Nakuto looks for a friendly face

It was undeniably pleasant to catch a glimpse of a long past shadow to a woman who seemed to have been changed. But, once more, questions arises. Was this because of her choices? Or because of an environment whose unforgiving tendrils has successfully trapped the woman in their dreadful embrace? Stop. The more you question, the less you’ll hear. Tal hastily remindined herself, shaking her head to alleviate the thoughts.

“You too, Kara. Part of me thought something had finally been able to get to that durable heart of yours. It is wonderful to know, it hasn’t found you, yet.” Beveres, as much of a psychoanalyst she was, could hardly comprehend her own emotions. Ah, the irony in the dreams keeping people awake at night, was that of the irony of the healer without an idea of their own sickness. “To be honest, I don’t know.”

Impossible to miss the slight hesitation in the Counselor’s reply. The doubt. Had Kara the strength in that moment she would have seized her bat’leth and fixed herself at Beveres’s side, ready to vanquish each and every shadow that dared to threaten the young woman.
“Not this one” she silently commanded her former vessel. “You don’t get to take this one. The crew need her more than you will ever know. And so do I.”

Sensing that she had caught the Counselor in transit, the half-Klingon glanced down the dimly-lit corridor. “Might I walk with you for a moment, Counselor?” she asked hopefully. “I have great need to talk to you.”

Kara Nakuto

“Please,” Tal quickly stated, realizing her thoughts had briefly removed her from reality, replacing her with the hesitation of a surreal environment. As though Kara’s words were jumpstarting the wires of her mind, Tal removed herself from the office, listening to the distinctive, albeit screeching hiss of the doors rejoicing behind them. Gesturing with a slim, scarred hand, she made her way down the hall, choosing to keep an air of silence, until they had been walking for at least a moment or two.

The silence was comforting. Reassuring. A portend that dared to hint a return to the old days. To the old life that Kara had once known.

“What did you need to discuss, Kara?” The question emitted from her jaws, finally allowing her to overcome a portion of the blatant surprise caressing her features.

Lt. Beveres
CNS

The half-Klingon deliberated the question, examined every word and syllable as she might a rare specimen under the microscope. So much she had to tell, to ask. But the logical beginning was mired within the maelstrom of her thoughts and Kara had not the perseverance to break it free. No choice, then, but to open the floodgates and allow the deluge to simply spill from her lips.

“The corridor,” she stated as if those two words explained all. Were the scars from the incident still present in the Counselor’s mind? Or had they since been wiped out by a new and even more terrifying trauma? A doorway to another realm at the very heart of their vessel. A passageway, stretching infinitely away from them in a sickening perversion of every known law of physics. And then a tsunami of confusion and panic as, one by one, the crew became infected by the dark. Hallucinations. Hysteria. The Viking’s sickbay lain under siege by the echoes of previous nightmares, coming for each and every man and woman onboard. And in the eye of the storm, Ta’lahali Akera Beveres had stood strong, had fought bravely with her crewmates at her side. Kara still had no idea how many of them had survived.

For while the rest of the Viking’s inhabitants had charged into battle, their Captain had slipped away, had plunged headfirst into the abyss with Majandra Guerin at her side - to rescue the stolen engineers. To keep the promise she had once made, in the bowels of a great and terrible pyramid. A promise that she would never, ever leave anyone behind again. But she had failed. The two engineers, Navidson and Parker, remained out there, somewhere, in the dark. And now Majandra Guerin had been lost along with them. And she, their honourable and noble leader, had somehow found her own way back to the ship. Alone.

She dared a glance at the Kenyan by her side. Did she already know the full details of Kara’s failure? Did she judge the half-Klingon for it? Look down on her for her inability to protect those under her care? Pity her for her pathetic lack of courage? It was more than Nakuto could bear to meet the other’s eyes, lest she see reflected in their depths the shame, the humiliation, the regret crushing her very soul.

“I should not have gone,” she stated finally. “I should not have left the ship. I thought I could save them, those who had been taken. But I was wrong.”
A sigh, as if with the simple exhale of a single breath she could dissipate the stain of the previous year. “I was wrong about so many things.”

Kara Nakuto

OOC: I’m not sure if you remember this side sim, Trinity, or if my post just seems all kinds of confusing? Let me know if you don’t and I can always email you a recap so you know what the heck I’m on about, hehe!

OOC: Your post made perfect sense! If anything, it easily helped with recalling what happened. Lol! It was a rather interesting sim, to say the least.. Oof. The question is, how many of those people actually did survive?

IC:
Agony. Torment. Torture.

Whatever it was desired to be called, Tal could not forget the nasty tendrils that had wrapped themselves around the Sickbay of the Viking, sending those poor creatures into a state of mass hysteria. Creatures from beyond the grave, poking back into the lives of officers who had only recently been able to shake their elder itch faces from their pensive thoughts. Dangerous adversaries to practices they had long forgotten, threatening to spill every last secret finally buried beneath the calm exterior, as if it were nothing more than another ploy in the larger game of life. The night rested fresh upon her mind, as the sound of the simple phrase ‘The corridor.’

That evening had been nothing short of a time of change within the young soul of the Kenyan woman. It took only the torture of another to shake one of their assumptions, resulting in the true being that rested beneath those facades of delicate skin all creatures seemed to hold. It was the defining factor, as to whether or not the strength a person portrayed, was truly the variance that rested beneath, flooding their souls win the waters of perseverance and the ability to stand against the winds of adversity, a smile forced to paint across their lips, until they left being the strength, even if nothing short of feigned.

Many might have found Tal to have been strong whilst the hysteria of fellow officers threatened to consume her into their eldritch claws, but she had been portraying nothing more than a skilled facade. The face of a mother who had no desire for their child to know the pain they truly felt; that of a dog’s companion, who did not wish the canine to witness the heartbreak behind their eyes, as they witnessed their last sight. It was a wonderful act, a skit put together by the skilled hands of a broken playwright, whose pen could only allow so much ink to caress the paper beneath.

It was a night nobody could forget, from the people tormented by their own minds, to the souls hellbent upon assisting them. And Kara.. Kara had leaped headfirst after them, seemingly doing everything within her power to pursue the others, in efforts of saving those ripped from the crooked fingers of Viking’s precarious embrace. She had departed the ship, her mission unknown to the young Kenyan, who found the following months to be difficult, adjusting to the vast changes the Viking went through. Of course, change was the essential process of all existence, but that didn’t mean it was desired.

Tal need not have asked the question struggling against her mind, determining whether or not Kara had been successful in her endeavors. It was evident within the conscientious words spewigform her lips, that any and all efforts had resulted in nothing less of the original empty-handedness they had all found themselves experiencing. Albeit, was it wise to pity Kara for her failed attempts? Should Tal judge her, condemn her for leaving her ship in search of a few souls? Judge her, for a decision Tal could not begin to imagine what it must have been like to make? Had she had right? That worth, to judge what she did not understand? No.

Releasing the breath she had held within the confines of her imprisoned lungs, she shifted her gaze from the ground, beholding Kara, with a gentleness she had not expressed prior. “Life has a funny way of making certain you don’t get what you want, and only what you need.” Beveres rolled her shoulders, relieving the tension that had built up along her spine, from sitting back in that hard chair for far too long. Once at the turbolift, she awaited its arrival, inclining her head to the NE who dared to pass the Klingon civilian and her much smaller companion.

“Did you find anything you were looking for, Kara? Anything in the madness you chose to follow, in all effort to save those souls?” There was no judgement in her words, only hope that Kara had learned. However, she found she did not like the terms she had chosen to use, as she stepped into the turbolift, awaiting to be joined by her old friend, as the door slid shut, before them.

“What happened out there?” The soft question breached the silence of the air, once unbreakable, only to be shattered by a single, gentle question. “What happened to you?”

Lt. Beveres
CNS

What happened?
The question was a simple one at its surface, the calming ripple of Tal’s voice too professional to betray the unease swirling in the depths below. And yet for a time Kara found herself overwhelmingly incapable of providing an answer.

Moving into the turbolift, her focus on the shifting of her weak and heavy limbs was an addictive distraction from the chaos in her fractured mind.
What happened?

“I…am not entirely sure,” the half-Klingon confessed eventually, the admission filling the silence enough to buy her some time. But deep down she knew that eventually, the Counselor would require a full and honest answer. She deserved nothing less. None of them did.

“It was…featureless, at first,” Nakuto continued, her subconscious attempting to view the events of the past year from a safe distance, as if the tale were merely a fictional re-enactment, a holodeck adventure from which release could be sought at any time, with the simple thumb of a button. But to remember was to return and as Kara continued her monologue the pull of the event horizon grew stronger and more potent in its malevolence.

“It was as if someone had bored a hole into time and space itself. Plain grey walls stretching out endlessly. Unchanging. Unending.
We walked for what felt like days. Time became…transient. Unpredictable. Occasionally we would hear a call, from Navidson or Parker. But the source proved impossible to pin down.”

A pause. Her features wrought with the strain of concentration, as if the release of words from her lips required a gargantuan effort.

“It was not a conscious decision, by any of us, to split up. It was almost as if we were compelled to do so by an outside force. The tunnel, it…changed, appeared differently to each of us. Where I saw a deviation to the left, Maj could only view a path straight ahead. It took no more than a second for the shift - from a Captain, in control of an experienced and competent away team. Into a victim, alone, scared…and hunted.”

“I wandered then. I wandered endlessly, forwards, backwards, north to south and east to west and every infinitessimal course inbetween. But there was nothing. It became so dark that I presumed my eyes to be blinded. So cold that I thought my blood frozen within my veins. I stumbled, over and over, the floor crawling with lifeforms I could not see or hear or feel or smell…but they could bite. My flesh became a welcome meal, their feeding frenzied and desperate, their hunger and thirst mirrored by my own except…there was nothing for me to eat save the dank and putrid air.”

She swallowed dryly, her own hunger suddenly immediate and demanding.
“Gods, I am starving!” Nakuto gasped, her tale broken by the deep and cavernous rumble of her empty stomach. With a glance towards Tal and the glimmer of a smirk curling across her lips, she asked, “Do you mind if we eat while we continue our talk?”

Kara Nakuto