Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 22, 2021 2:18:45 GMT
[ Kaya Som | Frontier Station, CO's Office ]
[ 2381.01.19 | Four days' journey following I'm Not Lost, You're Lost ] Kaya Som had not been sullen on the journey back aboard the Starfleet diplomatic transport with a few stops along the way. She was escorted by two security, but they had very little to do other than monitor her communications and confine her to quarters at ports of call. Kaya and Charlie spent a great deal of time together, but only a small part of it did they discuss the Situation. In the same way she felt like a tide had pulled her away, another tide pulled her back. She fancied she was surrendering her decision-making to inertia, but that wasn't really true. She'd run away because she was scared and running back for the same reason. Now, after a fitful night's sleep in temporary quarters, she was standing in Captain Eastman's office. No one had told her to wear a uniform, so she hadn't. She wore the loose-fitting layers of everyday life before Starfleet. Judith Eastman
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84 
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 22, 2021 17:22:46 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]Compared to her previous conversation with Kaya, Judy was far more polished. She was neatly made up, uniformed (with the usual personal touches), and seated comfortably at her conference table beside a plate of sufganiyot[fn]See image:  [/fn], the traditional deep-fried jelly donuts normally associated with Hanukkah (a few weeks after the holiday, but food is tasty any time of year). "Good morning, young lady. Have a seat."She motioned at a chair across from hers. They'd all been re-upholstered recently, in light of the Captain's recent promotion. "It's good to see you face-to-face."Judy wasn't angry at Kaya for running away, only relieved that the young woman had returned, and that now, they could work it all out.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 22, 2021 19:58:29 GMT
[ Kaya Som | Frontier Station, CO's Office ]Kaya sat down and gave the plate of Earth pastries a long look. They meant well, but they were alien, unwelcome, and symbolized too much. She knew it was polite to take one, or at least acknowledge them, but she didn't have the energy to fake it. The Captain greeted her warmly. It was a confusing juxtaposition for Kaya. Everything was jumbled, status and duty all akimbo. Kaya took a big breath and let it out long and slow, even going as far as to rub her face with her hands and crack her cold knuckles. Her thick brown hair needed a wash. "What happens now?" Back at the Qo'noS embassy, the captain had put the choice in Kaya's hands - to fight to stay in Starfleet with her support, or take a dishonorable discharge. Kaya didn't know what to do then and she wasn't in any better position to know now. It was all so deeply strange. No one seemed angry. No one had asked her any questions. Shouldn't there be an explosion, she couldn't help but wonder. Judith Eastman
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 22, 2021 20:22:28 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]Judy adjusted her glasses, a thick, black cat-eye frame. "Well, there will be consequences, as you can imagine. What they look like will depend, broadly speaking, on two things: where you'd like to go from here, and how we got here."Judy had explored some possibilities, but she didn't want to, say, promise she could ward off a transfer, if Kaya wanted one. "So, to begin, and consider this off-the-record, how did we get here?"She helped herself to one of the wonderfully greasy pastries, taking small bites.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 23, 2021 2:58:03 GMT
[ Kaya Som | CO's Office, Frontier Station ]Kaya seemed to live in long pauses now. Thoughts that had once clamored to be let out became indistinct as soon as the door opened. Where was her voice now, that had always been so ready? Elders, save her, but had any of this been real? The buzzing again. "I had to leave," she said plainly, expression stern. "Before someone tried to kill me." Again. There. That felt right. Kaya felt herself even relax, but her expression darkened. Judith Eastman
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 23, 2021 3:21:14 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]"Before someone tried to kill me." That sounded Harmonesque in its paranoia. No, worse than Harmonesque. Kaya had a reputation for loudness, but not the kind that would make anyone want to kill her; slap, maybe (there were muttered remarks that Jenkins mistakenly thought the elderly Captain didn't hear) but not killed. "Before someone tried to kill you?" Judy repeated. "What do you mean?"Behind the glasses, Judy looked quite troubled, and more than a little confused. This wasn't what she'd assumed was the case.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 23, 2021 18:18:36 GMT
Kaya leaned foward, close, and put her elbows on the table. She searched the Captain's face to see if it was possible that Eastman really had no idea what she was talking about. "Are you serious? This is the problem," Kaya said with that same sternness. "How do you not know? How do you not know!" Hearing herself ask this stirred up anger that had been keeping quiet. Kaya stood up from the chair, her voice raised and her question an accusation. She was absolutely banjaxed. "How do you not know! How do you not know!? They tried to kill me. Security did nothing! Command did nothing!" She gestured haphazardly at the plate of donuts, which just sat there, useless, offending Kaya by their presence. Kaya was lost and scowling. Judith Eastman |
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 23, 2021 19:21:39 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]Judy was hurt by the anger thrown at her, not to mention troubled by the possibility that there was some kind of conspiracy afoot on her station and she wasn't aware. That is, until it finally dawned on her. Starfleet liked to talk about casualties in the passive voice, to talk about a servicemember "being killed", but not about the one doing the killing. It was a particular linguistic construct, and while she never did delve into it, it seemed to be the force behind this confusion. "You mean on Serenity." What came next weren't the typical self-deprecating cracks about her own aging brain, nor the corny jokes she could make about that colony's name. This event was far too serious, and it weighed heavily on her. "You're right; you all could have been killed," she instead acknowledged, though she reverted to the passive voice by default. "You could've been killed, because we screwed up."No, Judy hadn't been there, but she was responsible by proxy for the mistakes of those she'd put in charge. The buck stopped right at her desk. She genuinely believed that, and the slight shaking of her hand, the slight reddening of the tip of her elongated nose, gave that away. Now that senior brain had caught up, the guilt had too.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 24, 2021 17:01:38 GMT
[ Kaya Som ]Kaya noticed the change in mood from the captain and felt some sense of satisfaction. She needed that shock and offense, some kind of mirroring, some kind of reassurance that she wasn't crazy. She crossed her arms, keeping her distance from the table. But it wasn't just one thing. "And Relan. He was looking for me." The Talorian fanatic had targeted her because of what she'd seen on the Jupiter Star. She'd been nearly stabbed to death on a normal workday, right on the ship. "And the prisoner transport." Kaya hadn't been personally attacked, but anyone could have ended up dead. "And the nebula, and Perry, and the Karjurians taking hostages on the station!" There wasn't a distinction in Kaya's mind between the risk to others or risk to herself. The danger seemed everywhere and everyone was supposed to just dutifully accept it, turn up the next day, and trust that someone was looking out for them. "I feel insane! Everyone acts like none of that happened! Food and extra leave doesn't do anything! I fix computers. I'm not Velal, I'm not Niles, I'm not S'Riia. What did people expect?" Kaya rubbed her face again. She shouldn't have come back. Everything was ruined. In trying to survive, her mind had filtered out any balancing facts. Judith Eastman
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 24, 2021 18:40:14 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]Judy nodded, rather zen in the face of Kaya's understandable meltdown. Starfleet certainly seemed to have a certain kind of hell to throw at them all. "You're not the only one."There wasn't a hint of admonishment in those words. There was compassion. "Nobody's built to just absorb the traumas of service like this, not you, not your colleagues in engineering, not security... and not me. I wake up in tears, pretty often, after a nightmare about something that happened here, or something that happened years ago, during the war[fn]The Dominion War, that is[/fn]. The traumas and the tragedies haunt us all, however stoic we appear on the outside, and to serve is to make this sacrifice, to bear this burden. Anyone who claims they have this thing 100% figured out is lying, or a monster."Confident in her command, Judy wasn't shy about addressing her emotional troubles. "There are ways to lighten the load. We build our support networks of friends that make the going easier, we find pastimes that take our mind off the bad times, and we have therapy - I've spent more hours in therapy than some folks have in Starfleet. You don't have to suffer alone, like I think you have been doing, because you simply can't suffer alone. No one can."It was easier here than on the front lines of that horrible conflict, for sure, but it could still be hard. Without the right support, anyone could fall apart here.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 25, 2021 19:52:24 GMT
[ Kaya Som ]No, no, no! The captain was talking about feelings, and coping, and suffering. She wasn't listening or she wasn't hearing. Kaya knew the captain was trying. She was a good person, kind, and brave - Kaya believed this about Judith Eastman. But the captain couldn't fix this. "I don't need therapy. It doesn't matter how I feel or how many friends I have because it's just going to keep happening." She shook her head, shrugged, and looked away. This is what she didn't want, to try to explain and then sound totally crazy. It was embarrassing and pointless.
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 25, 2021 20:34:44 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]"You're right, it'll keep happening."There was a time when that statement, from the mouth of a Starfleet captain, passed for groundbreaking; it was a time when Starfleet treated mortal peril, war, and confrontation as plagues on the verge of eradication. It was in that time that Judy Eastman had enlisted, and she had seen the rosy, cozy Khitomer consensus shattered before her eyes. "Whether it's you in that position or someone else, whether it's me in the big chair or someone completely different, this career inherently involves brushes with death; it's an inescapable fact of serving in Starfleet, and a burden we have to bear so long as we wear the uniform."In avoiding the hectoring tones of motherly admonishment, Judy bordered on professorial, a more detached manner of speaking than perhaps she wanted, but communication could be so very hard. Aware of this, she took a more personal note. "At the end of the day, Kaya, I want you to live a good life more than I want you to serve on my crew. If this isn't something you want to learn to live with, if you want to find a safer line of work, a job planetside somewhere or outside of the fleet entirely, then you have a right to make that choice. All four of my children have ruled Starfleet out as a career, so I get it, I do."
"If you choose to stay on the frontier, then we can work on ways to make it easier, but I can't promise a death-free workplace."It almost felt like an intake interview, a sort of warning Kaya should've received several years ago. Perhaps it was because they had their mother's warning, that no child of hers had as of yet joined.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 25, 2021 21:02:26 GMT
[ Kaya Som ]Kaya frowned and began to sink inside to a safer place than her aching heart. Outwardly she looked suddenly tired. It was as she'd suspected. Her paranoia was justified and she'd been right to leave. The captain cared but ultimately thought everything was as it should be. There was no reason to fight it anymore, not if Starfleet deemed her death acceptable. "I can't do this right now," Kaya said suddenly, feeling herself slide away. Eastman was now as much of a threat as anything else. "I'm tired. Can I go?" She was still in Starfleet and she still had to ask. Judith Eastman
|
|
Judith Eastman
Civilian
Grandma
Posts: 2,593 Likes: 84
Rank: Civilian/other
Position: Civil Servant
Species: Human
|
Post by Judith Eastman on Apr 25, 2021 21:31:52 GMT
[Capt. Judith Eastman(-Williams) - Commanding Officer's Office]Judy knew the face and tone opposite her. Kaya was a bit broken, and while her own long-windedness may have been the immediate cause, it wasn't the root cause. "Go ahead, get some rest," she accepted. However, she wasn't really done yet, as there was still some due diligence to be done. She raised her head slightly. "But, if I can suggest one thing: talk to someone you trust before you make any irreversible decisions."Judy could tell that she wasn't that trusted person, but she hoped Kaya had one - and she sure hoped it wasn't Avi Moz. As she resumed eating, as gracefully as ever, she didn't seem to be expecting a challenge.
Tag Kaya Som
|
|
Kaya Som
Engineering/Ops
Site Historian
Yaya! You have survived! That's too bad!
Posts: 804
Likes: 108
Rank: Senior Chief Petty Officer
Position: Chief of Engineering
Species: Trill
|
Post by Kaya Som on Apr 25, 2021 22:00:59 GMT
[ Kaya Som ]
Kaya began her exit immediately and felt a great relief doing so. As for the captain's advice, there were very few people aboard the station she could trust the moment. Charlie had already probably heard enough from her and her Starfleet friends would only fret. There was only one person Kaya could count on not to give a shit, not ask any questions, and just let her keep running.
[ Exit Kaya; fin ]
|
|
