Thoughts and Feelings

Posted on Sat May 11th, 2024 @ 3:42am by Lieutenant Commander Rin & Lieutenant N'vok Holv

Mission: Season 6: Episode 4: Memory Lane
Location: Science Office
Timeline: MD10
2189 words - 4.4 OF Standard Post Measure

N'vok's office was crowded with holograms, it was a media overload nightmare. The Vulcan was sitting on the edge of his deck pulling one close, examining it, making notes and then pushing it away before grabbing another one. It was not quite looking a needle in a haystack, each piece he examined, reduced the stack, it was exhilarating. . . and exhausting.

When there was a chime at as door, it was the perfect time to take a break with a double-handed gesture he flattened and paused the hologram against one wall, forming a mosaic of alien images.

"Enter," he said.

Rin appeared as the door slid open. The woman who yesterday had been battered and splattered in blood had returned to her normal neat self, with the addition of a brand new pip on her collar.

"Lieutenant," she said with a nod. "I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you. I...my emotional inhibitor has finally broken and my head is full of... everything really. I need to slow it all down and, I thought perhaps some Vulcan meditation might be beneficial? You, in particular, are more willing than most Vulcans to show some emotion, and I have no wish to bury my feelings. I... just need to rein them in a bit. Would you be willing to help me?"

"N'vok, please, we are friends and colleagues," said the Vulcan "Yes, I would be honored to help. Are you in pain?" he asked standing up and pulling a chair over, offering it to Rin.

Rin shook her head as she took the seat. "Nothing like that, but's it's like I'm mentally holding my breath. I kind of don't want to feel anything at the moment because then everything comes out at once. The thing has been breaking down for years, so I'm not unfamiliar with feelings. I'm just unfamiliar with this many. I got angry at my breakfast this morning."

"I have seen what you eat, so that is understandable," he said, his face expressionless.

"I probably should be holding my breakfast to a higher standard," she replied, although unable to keep a straight face, which she normally had no trouble doing.

"Would you be willing to accept a brief mindmeld? So that I could get a more . . . detailed understanding of your situation," N'vok asked.

Rin looked uncomfortable. "I would not be personally opposed but... the last time a Betazoid looked into my head I ended up putting her into therapy. Granted, it was a long time ago. My head is better organized but...there's a lot of nightmare fuel in my head."

N'vok nodded. "Not to criticize a fellow telepath but betazoids operate on a less . . . controlled emotional level. I am willing to take the risk if you are." He gestured to the wall of holograms. "I doubt it can be more disturbing than the media we retrieved on our trip to the Slavers world."

"I watched planets die," Rin retorted, swallowing anger. "From the perspective of the destroyer."

N'vok took Rin's hand. "It was not your doing, Commander. You know that on a conscious level. Focus on the ordering of your thoughts. They are part of you and you are able to bring them into harmony with your conscious desires. Thought can direct emotion."

"I know it was not my doing," Rin said with a frown. She had been getting that lecture for a decade. "That doesn't mean the images aren't there, and it definitely doesn't mean pictures of the Slavers world are the worst images you could be exposed to."

N'vok had not expected self-pity from Rin. "I acknowledge and accept the risks, Commander," said N'vok. He placed a finger to her temple, letting the other fingers gently touch her skin below. "Your mind to my mind, your thoughts to my thoughts . . ."

Rin was angry. Not like seething, but there was a definite undercurrent of frustration. She felt N'vok still did not understand what she was describing. She would sad if he got hurt. And she was frustrated at the frustration. She knew N'vok would be sensing it, and it bugged her that she couldn't rein such thoughts in.

But there was also a sense of pleasantness. Feeling strong emotion, even negative emotion, was just a little bit ecstatic.

And then there were the thoughts she didn't want him to see, the ones that, honestly, no one should have to see. Those she kept locked away, although not and solidly as she would like. And, of course, the she struggled, the more she thought of it, and the more like it was to slip through to the vulcan.

N'vok presence was steady, like a tree to take shelter under, he did not try to probe into Rin's thoughts only to provide a calming presence. However, he could not help but to feel her roiling emotions and the ways that her remaining implants shaped the architecture of her mind.

"Rin, focus on one thing, anything, direct your mind to that task," he said both verbally and mentally. "You are the director of your emotions, you can shape and control them."

Rin tried to focus on her frustration, as it was the most obvious, only to realize the rediculousness of choosing to focus on something negative. She tried focusing on her ex-husband, James, whom she had finally admitted she was still in love with...no, that was way too complicated. Finally, she came up with her very first memory of him. She had no memory of him at the time, but she felt a unique emotion in that moment: safety. Even as a stranger, he had invoked that feeling. It had been a calm in a storm.

She felt a bit of discomfort sharing that vulnerable moment, but she pushed that away too. She could focus on that sense of safety. But those memories she kept away from N'vok, the ones from her time in the Collective, it was like they were crawling about the borders of her consciousness, trying to find a way in. That was a distraction, but one she had to accept at the moment.

"Focus," said N'vok gently. "Just one thing, let your mind come to rest on a single point, a light of shelter from the storm. Let all the rest fall away." Mentally, he was there, a still point, refusing to be buffeted or driven away by her swirling thoughts and emotions.

Rin tried. She really, legitimately tried. She had almost found that calm center in the middle of the storm.

And then the memories came: planets literally on fire, watched from a multitude of vantage points. The inexorable march of drones, executing their purposes without hurry, because resistance was, indeed, futile. The capture and conversion of adults and children both. And the utter impassiveness of it. Destruction without malice. Indeed, the memory itself included a sense of absolute calm... which only contributed to the horror of it.

Rin found herself held by N'vok, both physically and mentally. He held her to let her know that she was not alone and that she was unique, her own person again, not bound to a collective but part of a band of colleagues, allies, and even friends. Still be made no attempt to direct her one way or another, only to provide her with a stable point and shelter for her to find her own path.

Rin's hands closed around N'vok's arms for support. The images did little to her. She had lived with them for decades. She just didn't want hurt N'vok with them, and wasn't sure why he he could so easily remain calm in the face of them. But that calmness was what she was looking for, was it not?

She tried focusing on that, a moment of calm in the center of all the crazy that was her life.

Gary had once suggested she try "crying out" her frustration. Rin literally couldn't. Her brain wouldn't let her. She had screamed things out before. A few days after they had set down on the ice world, she had driven out into the wilderness and just screamed as a release. But she had never been able to cry like that.

And, at that moment, Rin sobbed. Not about anything in particular, just a release of everything pent up inside her from both past and present. She resisted the urge to see it as self-pity and rein it in. She resisted the temptation of focusing on something more positive, even though that was the original exercise. No, she embraced the sadness and frustration and anger, slumped against N'vok, and sobbed.

N'vok held her, letting her emotions play out. It was difficult, very difficult to stay calm and still, to just be a comforting solidity for Rin. But that was what she needed and that was what he would be.

In time, it subsided, and she worked once more to focus herself She was emotionally, and even physically, exhausted by the experience. "Have you seen enough for a more detailed understanding?" Rin asked.

"Certainly enough to comprehend your unhappiness in remembering," said N'vok, softly withdrawing from the mind meld. "What can I do to help you now, Rin? Something warm to drink perhaps?"

"Um...facial tissue?" she answered, a little embarrassed by her now running nose, which she hastily wiped when handed the means of doing so. "And tea would be nice."

As N'vok fetched the tea, Rin continued. "I'm looking for help reining in all these emotions that have suddenly manifested. Meditation or...whatever. I can't deal with it all at once. Everything gets muddled. My brain's just not used to it all."

N'vok returned with a mug of tea, some tissue, and a croissant. "I can teach you some meditation techniques, Rin, and I am happy to do so. However, a counselor may be able to help as well and have useful techniques and advice."

"I've been seeing a counselor for 9 years, and I will continue to do so," Rin assured him. She had never minded going, and she did find it helpful, but she was a little tired of people telling her to see one. "It was a condition of me rejoining Starfleet."

N'vok nodded. "Which school is your counselor from? When I was new to Starfleet, I recall gaining particular insight from Counselor D'arby who was trained in the existential psychology school of New France."

"You might be surprised by the number of people who are resistant to going to counseling, Rin, or maybe not," he said. "The Intelligence branch has a reputation of keeping itself to itself."

"You're not hearing me," Rin said, her voice straining. "I have no objection to counseling. I have been treated by multiple people, but I'm not going to look up all of their education, because I trust they know their job. Counseling *has* been helpful. I doubt they would have me go for 9 years if it was not. You are correct that I *am* aware that many people are resistant, and I am *not* surprised by the number. I *do* know my own department's reputation - primarily because it is *my* department - although implying my line of work is complicating my mental health is really rather condescending, especially since you feel the need to explain it to me as if I'm oblivious."

"Forgive me, I talk when I am working things through in my mind," said N'vok. "No insult to you or your fellow intelligencers was meant."

"However," he said sitting on the edge of his desk. "I think it may give us a key for you to use. Use your Department as your focual point; you know it and its duties inside and out, the orderly flow of work, its structure and ways. It is, if it is anything at all like my department, a source of pride and occasional frustration. So, perhaps, you are already used to channeling some emotions around it"

Rin rolled that idea around in her head as she bit into the offered croissant, which really was an improvement over breakfast. "That sounds like a promising approach. Thank you."

N'vok nods. "Excellent. Once you have settled in with a base framework, I can provide additional techniques for focusing your mind. It may take more time than you would prefer as the breakdown of the Borg technology may have caused a physical imbalance in your brain itself. Ultimately, the brain/mind valence is nearly impossible to overcome with will alone."

Rin finished her tea. "I will let you get back to work. Could you send me those files as you work through them? I'll have Intel take a crack at them?"

"You are more than welcome to study them, it is grim viewing though," N;vok said.

"We should do dinner again sometime. Or...that promotion party you threatened?"

"Indeed," said N'vok. "Is there any particular theme you would like or should I let my planning run wild?"

"Oh, it was your threat." Rin smiled. "And I'd love to see what happens when a Vulcan let's his planning go wild."