Sous le même ciel

Posted on Mon Jun 16th, 2025 @ 3:23pm by Lieutenant JG Sylorik MD & Lieutenant Commander Rin

Mission: Season 6: Echoes of the Zynari
Location: Officers' Lounge, Deck 4
Timeline: MD 7, 1930 Hours
2383 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

The Officers' Lounge was quiet at this hour. Not empty, but quiet in the way certain rooms became when the hum of systems and the clinking of glassware settled into a rhythm that was more contemplative than social. A low light spilled from the ceiling panels, softening the lounge's trim and surfaces into something more inviting.

Sylorik arrived precisely at the agreed time.

He stepped forward with characteristic calm, surveying the room with a nod to its architecture before allowing his attention to settle on the small stage. A jazz sextet's instruments were arranged in neat expectation--upright bass, trumpet, a polished trombone--poised as if the players had merely stepped away mid-rehearsal. The piano's lid was half-lifted, exposing the keys underneath like a secret smile.

He did not know what led him to choose this location.

He had analyzed other possibilities, of course: the Arboretum (too open), the Observation Lounge (too formal), and even the promenade (far too many variables). But this space--its warmth and its structural symmetry seemed to him... harmonious.

And that felt appropriate.

He adjusted the sleeves of his uniform slightly. Not out of discomfort, but out of precision. He had placed his own chess set near the viewport, its board aligned to true center. Black and white. The perfect structure for a conversation.

"Would you like something to drink, Lieutenant?" came a voice from behind.

Sylorik turned in his seat to see a neatly-dressed civilian waiter with a tray and a rag, eyebrows raised, awaiting a response.

"Tarkalian tea, please."

The man nodded and disappeared.

Rin arrived promptly at the appointed time. Having been off duty for the last few hours, she was dressed in simple black pants and a long-sleeved, blue tunic. It only took a moment to locate Sylorik in the sparsely populated lounge.

"Good evening. How are you?" she asked as she took a seat opposite him at the table.

As the waiter returned with Sylorik's tea, Rin asked for coffee, and the man disappeared once more into the back area to fetch her drink.

Sylorik inclined his head in greeting. "Good evening, Commander." He gestured to the board between them. "I trust the configuration is acceptable. White is yours, should you wish it."

"Quite acceptable, and thank you," she replied, moving the first piece. "And, off-duty, 'Rin' is acceptable, should you wish to use it."

He watched the opening with mild curiosity, hands steepled in front of him. It was a standard opening--executed with no hesitation. Purposeful. Efficient. He mirrored the move with equal composure. "Then I shall endeavour to use it appropriately... Rin."

Her coffee arrived, and she took a sip before making her next move. "So, how was your day?" she asked.

Sylorik regarded the board in silence for a moment longer, then moved his knight. "It was... sufficient," he said, not as evasion, but with typical Vulcan neutrality. He glanced up, meeting her eyes. "No unexpected variables. I shared lunch with Doctor Sthilg--which has become customary when our shifts align." He sipped his tea, waiting for Rin's next move. "In the afternoon, there was a scheduled simulation in the surgical suite where I performed a septal myectomy on a Nausicaan child."

There was a brief pause, then he added, "And yours?"

The joke answer to that question among the Intel department was I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you, but she suspected the Vulcan might not understand the humor, so she refrained. Besides, out here in CIrcinus, there really wasn't a ton of classified work being done. "I've been cataloguing the data we collected from the Ajanie. We basically downloaded it as one giant block of data. We couldn't transfer their database structures. I'm just as likely to find a text on astrophysics as I am on Lonian cooking."

His brow lifted slightly--not with surprise, but with quiet interest. "Such a dataset would seem... rich with potential avenues of inquiry." He moved a pawn forward. "And when the chaos of such data processing subsides, what are you hoping to find?"

"Priority is practical information on this area of space: stellar maps, cultural and political data, available technologies," Rin replied, moving another pawn. "Things that will help us navigate our current situation and hopefully get us home. Past that, not hoping for anything specific. You don't always know what you should be looking for until you've found it. But it's not just about practical benefit. There's always value in knowledge. Even if it is just how to make a proper Alyssian stew."

Sylorik studied the board, though his attention had partially drifted. "You have mentioned cuisine twice now," he said, not as a correction but as invitation. "Do you cook? Or is your interest in the culinary purely archival?"

"Not in the slightest. The finer points of cooking are lost on me. The mentions are simply a reference to data I personally find useless, but which is of importance to others."

He inclined his head again, though it came a beat too late to feel automatic. Something in her answer--it's clarity, perhaps, or its unconcerned dismissal of sentiment--resonated more than it should have. He became aware of the sensation in that space between thought and breath: some flutter behind his sternum he had not authorized.

Returning his focus to the board, he hesitated briefly before moving a bishop. "Rin," he said, not yet certain he was entirely comfortable with using her chosen name. "Would you permit a question of a personal nature?"

"Yes." Rin looked up, watching Sylorik studying the board.

He did not look up, but felt her gaze meeting him from across the chess game. It pressed lightly against his composure, like a change in the direction of the wind. When he did speak, his tone was entirely neutral and his phrasing careful.

"You are no doubt aware," he began, "that in my role as surgeon, it is customary to know each of the crew's medical history. Your file refers to your birth name as Nicola Lynd. A change to Rin would appear to fall outside of the bounds of human naming convention." He raised his eyes from the board to hers, again feeling the unsolicited flutter once more. "May I ask why you have chosen the name Rin?"

"Of course," she replied with a hint of a smile. Her name was rarely the first question people asked about her past, and it was one of those things that had happy memories attached to it. "When I left the Collective, I didn't have memories of my former life, and we were in a remote part of space that had never been visited by the Federation. There was a group of us, and we eventually chose, each of us in our own time, to replace our drone designations with something more personal. Three of us called themselves Unique, an irony we did not appreciate at the time."

Rin paused long enough to move a bishop on the chessboard. "A rin is a type of small bush found on Tavara, which is where we were living. Silvery green leaves with small red flowers. It was the first thing I appreciated for its aesthetic value. Up until then, I only viewed things as resources: what its function was and how could I make use of it. Plants produce nourishment, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, resist erosion, provide shade on a hot world. Its fibers can be processed into a variety of materials. But the rin was the first thing I thought of as pretty, and I saw value in that."

"I had been using the name for several years before I encountered the Federation. They informed me of my previous life, my parents, my husband. But those things were no longer part of my identity. It made no sense to adopt a previous name. It felt... artificial. Some pushed for me to do so in an attempt to reclaim my old life. But my old life is not my life. Doing so would be a move backward, not forward."

Sylorik's gaze lingered on the square of the board she'd just occupied with her bishop. There was no urgency in his next move. Instead, he allowed the silence to descend between them--not uncomfortable but purposeful.

"I find your reasoning... consistent," he said at last. "Naming is an assertion of oneness. A boundary drawn. It does not negate what came before--it redefines it. Recontextualizes it." He kept his eyes on the board, unwilling to risk being disarmed by her charm once again. "There are those who conflate history with identity. But memory alone does not make a life. Nor does the expectation of others."

His fingertips brushed one of the pawns before settling elsewhere, rotating a rook with stilled focus. "There are elements of myself others still define by my family, by my Vulcan custom, by roles I no longer inhabit. But none of those perspectives reflect how I understand my own continuity. It is not logical to let oneself be shaped indefinitely by the impressions of others." He paused, shifting his gaze between an imperiled bishop and an equally vulnerable knight, then added, "Even when those others mean well."

He did not say I understand. It would have been too much, too soon, and too easily misunderstood. But for once, he did not conceal the glimmer of resonance behind his eyes. In Rin's explanation, there was something familiar--not in circumstance, but in philosophy. And in that fragile alignment, something within him loosened by a degree, like some calibrated turn of a stuck gear from a rusted mechanism.

"They do mean well," Rin acknowledged with a nod. She wasn't quite sure what to say next. Clearly, Sylorik had things on his mind. It was equally obvious they were personal things. "If you wish to speak of your own experiences, I am a willing ear. But there's no expectation."

"To remain unmoored by the projections of others is… a discipline. One few master, and fewer still attempt."

His tone was soft, but entirely sincere. "You have succeeded where many would not have known to try."

Sylorik returned his attention to the chessboard, noting that her last move had opened a clear threat to one of his knights. He studied the knight's position for a long moment, aware--without willing it--of the echo between its exposure and his own.

The recognition stirred something unbidden. Not discomfort exactly. But something adjacent.

There was a stillness to the moment that he recognized not as stagnation but more as presence--the kind of silence that allowed one to breathe more deeply, even if one did not fully understand why.

He moved a pawn instead, quietly accepting the sacrifice of the knight.

"It is not often," he said, without daring to lift his gaze, "that one encounters resonance in another's choices." He paused and then softly added, "I do not take such moments lightly."

Rin nodded solemnly, understanding the gravity of his words. "I'm glad I can perhaps grant you a bit of solace, or at least comraderie." She quietly took the exposed knight. "It is difficult finding people who truly understand. People think they do, but... they do not. And it is infuriating when they think they know more than I about myself."

"It is... regrettable that many regard you chiefly through the lens of your former assimilation. Such paradigms often distort perception, particularly when entangled with unease or sentiment." Sylorik paused for a moment, moving a rook--it was a low, deliberate decision. One that closed off a vector but opened another further down the board. "Vulcans are similarly misapprehended. It is presumed that I do not feel, when in truth, I experience emotion quite acutely. I am capable of fear, of anger, of affection. I would presume love as well. What is visible is not always reflective of what is true."

He had not looked up as he spoke, letting the words settle once more. When silence held, he risked a glance upward where his gaze met hers--briefly and without retreat. "I was once betrothed, as is custom. The union was orderly and appropriate by Vulcan societal measures... but devoid of any true accord beyond the social status of our families. There was no love and the betrothal was ended." Sylorik looked away and toward the instruments on the stage.

"Have you ever experienced love, Rin?"

Rin nearly spat her coffee mid drink. She managed to swallow it all, but there was no way of playing it off as if nothing had happened. It was a topic she spoke of to almost no one, and it felt rather prying, although she suspected it accidental.

"Ah...ahem, so..." She tried regaining her composure. "Yes, yes I have. But he is not here, and even if we return to the Milky Way, he is married, so that is the reality of things. And I wish him nothing but happiness."

Sylorik registered the xB's reaction--not with alarm, but with a quiet subtle retraction of emotional pressure. His brow did not lift nor did he speak immediately. Instead, he let the interval stretch--just enough to dignify the difficulty of her reply.

"I did not intend distress," he said evenly, with only a slight modulation in tone. "The question was inelegant." He returned his focus to the board, his fingers pausing over a bishop without moving it. "But your answer was not." He considered something further, then added--softer, but no less sincere--"Thank you for entrusting me with it."

He made his move and returned his hands to his lap, folded neatly. "Perhaps you might share something about yourself which is not common knowledge," he offered. "Or--if you prefer--we may finish the game in silence."

"I assure you, I just did." Now, she was annoyed. The first question was, perhaps, accidentally inelegant. But now it felt more like an interrogation. "I still welcome conversation, but we may continue in silence if you choose. Small talk is clearly not something either of us seeks."

"Then I shall respect your preference."

He made no further commentary. The warmth in his tone had withdrawn--not with malice, but with precision, like a probe retracted from a wound before it could cause further harm.