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
Snip

Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in CNS Office - Nakuto looks for a friendly face
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

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.

“You’re not sure?” Tal repeated her statement, articulating her words, and reciprocating them in a manner intended to encourage her mind. It sounded between the sonorous hum of a welcoming smile and the stern chide of a motherly figure.

“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.”

Tal knew that there were several psychological barriers her mind could have created, in efforts to block out the trauma that could have come of her situation. Part of her wondered, what did the woman experience during her time away? Her mind, it seemed hazy, but the broken words she spoke, hardly capable of remembering anything with the vivid clarity of a normal person. Her eyes, while burning with that same glint, seemed different. Perhaps it was a newfound sense of drowsiness, a sudden bout of exhaustion from the length of her infinite travels. She couldn’t be sure.

“It’s okay, you can work as slowly or as quickly as needed, I’m not here to pressure you.” Tal hadn’t ever been the type to lie, yet her honest words felt deceitful to her mind, despite the integrity she had mustered behind them. She wanted answers, almost needed answers from the woman who had up and left on the whim of saving those caught in the tendrils of insanity. And she felt horrible, despicable for requiring all this information from her, when she likely had not been back for a vast amount of time.

Was this even Tal’s place?

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.”

“The world has a fascinating way of tearing even the most valiant of men, women and all between, into nothing more than the infinitesimal remains of a quiet murmur, which was once their voice.” A sigh escaped its cage, her ears paying attention to every word falling from her lips. However, she was mildly distracted by the thoughts ravaging her mind.

“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 the to eat save the dank and putrid air.”

“You were trapped?” Tal inquired, soft eyes raising to meet those of her dear friend, a friend whom she hadn’t been in contact with for wel over a year. “These creatures.. how come they did not destroy you? Did they offer a sense of metaphysical existence, one where their hunger was far more effective upon the mind than the body— I’m sorry, I should not be asking these questions, so soon. Forget I asked that.”

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

Her smirk was worthy of a smile, and the gentle shake of her head, indicating the amusement having suddenly perked from their dire situation. Removing herself from the turbolift, her sole meeting the hardened ground beneath them, she led the way towards the mess hall, which had always been her only shot at getting her meals, each and everyday. Ah, one day, she was going to have to fix that replicator herself. Otherwise, she couldn’t deny the fact it wouldn’t be done.

“I’m not going to stop you,” Tal glanced at Kara, the entertainment wild behind those mysterious eyes. Motioning towards the replicator, where a few Ensigns had meandered about it, she sauntered over to the machine, trusting Kara was more than aware of how to operate this. Placing in her order, she slid her hand into the retrieval, pulling out a hot mug of straight black coffee. “On a better note, how are you feeling? Mentally speaking?” She was a counselor, here to be a shoulder to lean on, and a sounding board to listen.

Lt. Beveres
CNS

The Heorot. The Viking’s unique mess hall had always represented, in Kara’s mind at least, the true emotional heart of the ship. She was acutely aware of the impromptu bars and makeshift social spaces that had been created on the lower decks, but, conscious of the need for the crew to have an escape from their ever-present Captain, she had been notable there only by her absence.
But the Heorot had been her domain, a place she could drink and feast with her crew without the formalities that duty demanded. A place where, in contravention to the rules dictated by Starfleet, the alcohol had flown freely and the cheeseburgers stocked high, courtesy of barman, chef, carpenter and jack-of-all-trades, Preston David. She missed the man immensely, missed the candour with which he always delivered the plain and simple truth, ‘called a spade a spade’ as the saying went.

Kara found a great measure of comfort in the thought of stepping once again into that hallowed space, of planting herself at the head of the banqueting table to eat and drink with abandon. And as the turbolift doors creaked open, thankfully on their desired floor, Nakuto barrelled out into the corridor and almost broke into a run in her eagerness to reach this destination.

Once inside, the warming sight of those blood red walls; the huge longship bar and singular, heavy oak table was almost too much to absorb. Moving quickly around the space, reminiscent of a small child on Christmas day, she eventually paused at the head of the table and reached down into the seat of the throne-like chair, her chair, to extract the glistening object beneath.

“Hah!” the half-Klingon exclaimed as she placed the strange object on her head. “There. Now I am beginning to resemble my old self once more. Don’t you agree, Counselor?”

So proudly she stood with the shiny, double-horned Viking helmet on her head. Although the moment was fleeting for, mere seconds later, she was marching towards the replicator in search of a meal.

“Why, I am so ravenous that even the sludge from this replicator is appealing,” she remarked as she punched in her order. A customary groan of protest was emitted by the overworked machine and then Nakuto was heading back to the table with a mountainous plate of something that vaguely resembled gagh.

Settling into her throne-seat, Kara leaned forward and squinted as she examined her food.
“It appears to be wholly deceased. Shame. Still, the starving have no time to wait for a gormet dish.”

For the next few moments the only sound made by the former CO was an animalistic chorus of slurping and chewing as she practically inhaled the pile of dead worms. Then, as if only now becoming aware of her dinner companion, she turned to Tal and attempted a belated answer to the woman’s question.

“I feel…” she began, between mouthfuls of worms, her mind performing frantic assessments in a silent attempt to formulate an answer, “I feel…disassociated,”

“For months on end I dreamed of nothing but this moment. Of finding myself back on the Viking with you and Stone and Akorem and…all of you. But now that I am here or…I appear to be here, at least…Oh Counselor,” her voice fell to a whisper, her eyes frantically scouring the walls, as if they had ears to hear her confession, “I…I am terrified at the prospect of waking up and discovering that all of this was no more than a dream.”

Kara Nakuto