Healing continues

Posted on Tue Jun 26th, 2018 @ 12:24pm by Commander Cor Cordale & Gunnery Sergeant Val Seran

Mission: Trills and Thrills
Location: Val's quarters

Breaking the silence of the hour, there was the door chime.

Val looked up from her reading, though truth be told, she hadn't turned the page in several hours. "Enter!" she called out.

The door swished open to reveal the resident Thux, Cordale. Normally, he was chipper and even nauseatingly cheerful though at the moment neither of those described him. He was a bit sullen, a bit less vibrant. In short, he was almost a Mopey Thux. In his prosthetic hand, he held a bottle of root beer. In his living hand, two other bottles of the same.

Val's quarters were small and spartan, regular Marine quarters, usually occupied by two bunkmates, which made it ideal for a Dalacari.

"Hey. I ... I was in this neck of the woods, just scheduled another session with the counselor and all, and they recommended I try to connect with others who suffered similar events. Out of everyone there, I think the only one that I really want to talk to right now would be you." he paused, "I don't like coming unannounced empty handed, so I brought you some root beer. It's not the stuff I make, cause I'm still waiting on the batch but, the replicators here do a pretty good job. So, would you like to sit and talk? I could remote into my movie archive, and we could watch some hilariously shitty action movies from old Earth? They're hilarious, don't get me wrong."

"Or, just talk."

Cor's words took a moment to percolate. Seemed that everything took a moment longer for Val Seran to parse, with both her forms out of synch. One of them - the one with the fake arm - rose from her seat though as Cor entered and moved to give him a heart hug. It was an Earth custom she had heard of, read about, that seemed appropriate for the situation.

"I forgive you. For everything you think you did." she spoke, quietly. It was a bit off to hear the words from over there when he got the hug over here. "And, thank you, for showing me mercy." the hugging Val answered. "Movie sounds good. Drink sounds good. What's root beer?"

Cor returned the hug in kind. Just a heart felt heart hug, with the only awkwardness coming from holding the bottles during the hug. "I remember our talk. Remember what you said and..." and he just shut up and gave a nod, "Thank you." There was a pause, and then he gave another nod, "And, you're welcome."

He straightened up after the hug, and handed the Val closest to him the two bottles. "Root Beer is... well, it's a frothy drink served cold in civilized parts of the cosmos. It's pretty sweet, and the foam tends to tickle the nose unless you're like us, and have muzzles. In which case, we're safe." he actually smiled a bit. "It's hard to describe the taste to someone from another corner of the universe, though. I can't exactly say 'Well it tastes like sassafras' cause that's something you probably never had. So, give it a shot, and if you don't like it, I'm a big enough fan to down three bottles."

"I'll give it a try then." she offered, the bioform nearest to Cor offering to take one of the bottles, while the other went to get glasses.

"As for movies, hmmmmm... Computer." and the system gave a chime to indicate it was listening. "Connect my personal library of Earth movies to Val Seran's terminal and screen for allowance of access. Authorization Seven Nine Spaghetti Two." and after a moment, the computer chimed, "Request confirmed."

"Okay, so what kind of movies do you like? Crazy action stunt movies? Cheesy horror scary movies? Laugh till you puke comedy movies?" He left out any mention of war movies, or those silly buddy cop movies where one of the main characters gets killed at the end. Figure movies like that would have a much different meaning to a Dalacari.

Oh man... were the Lethal Weapon movies racist to Dalacari? Questions for another day, Cordale...

"Something calm and quiet actually, if you - " she began. " - have anything like that." the other form continue. "I did not come back right, Lieutenant. Mind hazy, thoughts difficult. My link, it - " Another focus shift. " - did not synch back up correctly. I'm off duty until I can get that sorted out."

"If I can at all."

He gave her a nod, "Calm and quiet. I *think* I have a few of those." to be fair, that ruled out 90% of his collection BUT... he couldn't just walk in, offer to help, and then leave just because things got difficult. He paused a bit, not to think but to process. "Something like this, has got to have happened once or twice before in Dalacari history. Maybe there's a doctor or something who can help you through this." he said, less of a question and more of a thought before he took a few steps in and brought up a list of his collection on his view screen and just started to cycle thought them. 'Master of Many Styles vs the Eight Crippled Masters'? No. 'King of the Assassin-' ... No. 'Fifty First Dates'? Not for someone with mental issues.

Oh wait, this one showed promise.

"Okay, so I have one here I think you might like. It's a story of a man, and the life he lived. It follows him from childhood, up to his school years, to some military service, to what he did when he got out. He falls in love, he saves his friends, and he does it all with a calm, simple approach." and Cor switched the screen to show the title card of the movie:

Forrest Gump.

"It's somewhat common actually, this kind of - " Val sat down on the couch, next to each other, offering Cor space to sit as well. She poured the drink as she spoke, bringing a glass of root beer to her muzzle and sniffing it, looking thoughtful. " - desynch. There are specialist psychologists on Dalacar, trained to - " The normal seamless ballet of speech and action, shared by the two Dalacari bioforms, was visibly off to one with such trained eyes as Cor's. " - deal with this kind of trauma. But they're on Dalacar. And I'm here."

Cordale gave a nod, "I'm certain we can get ahold of someone. I mean, medics are medics, see if someone in the sickbay can put a call out for you for one of those specialists. I remember when we arbitrated that ordeal with that misbehaving Thought Engine, your people really do care and take care of each other. Just something to consider." he said, raising his root beer bottle.

"As for me, good ole' regulation Starfleet Psychological. Anger management every third Thursday, and now a few more sessions to make sure I'm alright after this." he said after taking a swig. "I think spending time with my friends does a world of good above those sessions. Doctors get paid to listen, but all my friends honestly want to hear."

"There's already a call out for a Dalacari Psychologist who specializes in damaged links. Just have to hope there's one who - " She tasted the root beer, making a face with both bioforms, actually trailing off her sentence instead of seamlessly continuing it as normal. "It's - ... Interesting. A human drink, I assume? They're fascinated by - "

" - that thing, what do they call it? When there's little bubbles in the drink that explode when you drink it? Tingly sensation on - " And back again. " - tongue." And carefully she took another sip, considering the root beer for a moment before giving a shrug. "One could get used to this."

"That, Val, is called Carbonation. Humans love that fizzy feeling, so they add it to every drink they can get away with. Soda, Root Beer, hell they even carbonated their WATER at one time." he chuckled. "It's a funny feeling, and it kinda helps with the taste. Otherwise, root beer would be less a soda, and more a syrup."

Cor made a 'bleh' face at that thought.

"Carbonation, huh. Leave it up to humans I guess to figure out a way to make water explode - " she smirked, though there was little amusement in her eyes. " - and have it actually be pleasant." A nod. "Alright, let's start the movie. Forrest Gump, you said? Never seen it."

Cordale started up the film, the tale of a simple man and the extraordinary life he lived.

As the movie played, Val leaned in against Cor, just snuggling in with a soft, warm and comfortable friend, sharing a movie experience. Her two bioforms leaning against him on either side felt luxurious in and of itself.

The presence of a friend, even a new friend like Seran was, comforted the Thux. This wasn't a flirtatious gesture, or a sign of things progressing even to a simple relationship level. This was two friends, broken in different ways, comfortable with each others company.

After the movie she sat back up and looked thoughtful. "That wasn't a very happy movie." She mused. "So much innocence, constantly taken advantage of by others. And Jenny, she just - " She looked at Cor, Dalacari brows furrowed. " - gave him the runaround for so much of the movie. Hurt him, much more than he deserved."

"It's the story of the human spirit. At any other point he could have just given up. The war, the storm, Jenny, he could have just said Eff it and given up. He never did though." Cor mentioned, "But yeah, there's also the story where human beings are kinda terrible to each other, especially when there's a deformity or deficiency involved, but I'm kinda hoping we all just focus more on the indomitable spirit part." he said with a nod.

"He was a good man, honest and decent. I'd have liked to meet him."

She remained silent for a moment or two, then three, before speaking again. One of her reached out to touch his prosthetic arm, an old, outdated piece of square, blocky tube with rudimentary digits. "Is this the reason you sympathize so much - " a focus shift. " - with Forrest? Do you see yourself as deformed? Broken?" She held out her own prosthetic arm, a sleek and purposefully shaped, high tech piece of cutting edge precision engineering.

"I'm assuming there's a reason you haven't updated to a more modern form. And I think it has - " She shifted focus back again, the one with the prosthetic arm rose up to collect shot glasses and some Dalacari booze, as the one that was whole continued speaking. " - something to do with those markings." she indicated the Ferengi writing.

Cordale gave a nod. It started slight at first, but quickly became a proud and full nod. "Well, I mean... technically I am broken. Deformed, no. Broken, yeah." he paused, "I sympathize with him because, yeah, I see a lot of his life in mine. Endless struggle for acceptance, endless uphill battles." he paused to note where her twin was going, before turning back to face her again. Gosh, talking with a Dalacari was weird.

"This, was a gift from two of the bravest Thux I ever met. I ... I grew up in a Latinum mine. Latinum is, well, it's used as currency. We all dug in the same tunnels, knew the same jokes, drank the same horrible booze. We were brothers, really. Sil and Cal." he mentioned their names, and motioned to the markings as he did so in turn, before reaching up to his own collar to tap at the hexagonal plate that hung from it. "Cor."

"One of the tunnels we were digging into collapsed one day and well, most of me made it out. My arm was pinned and crushed under a few thousand pounds of rock, and if an overseer saw that I wasn't working it'd end bad for us all. So Sil sent Cal to go get some cheap booze to numb the pain, and when I was good and fuzzy he brought a heat shovel down on my shoulder and cut me loose." his shoulder flinched ever so minutely from the memory. A flashback to a single moment of pain. "I woke up in the infirmary with this. I was upset, cause we dipped into our secret stash, but it was that or..." he just shook his head.

"We had a secret plan. See, they paid us, and I only found out later it was so they could technically say that we weren't slaves, but they got back most of it in taxes and such. Our plan was to squirrel away all the money we could, and buy out our work contracts. Figured they mentioned them enough at the meetings. See, every now and then, one of us would be promoted..." he didn't like that word, and it showed in a brief flinch, "... to foreman of our own mine. There'd be a big ceremony, they'd deal with the work contract, and that'd be it. Off they go."

"Sometimes, we'd even get letters back from them telling us how great the new mines are. After a while, though, all those letters started to sound the same. The three of us knew it was only a matter of time, so we did everything we could to work towards our goal. We were close, dangerously close and I think the Ferengi overseers knew. The next two promotions... were Sil and Cal." he just paused for a moment, inadvertently reliving those memories. "They knew they had to, and we all knew the truth. There were no promotions, just a disruptor waiting around the airlock but they stood up proud and walked towards their fate. They knew, I knew, but we had to pretend or we'd all suffer. And just like that, they were gone." he paused to collect himself.

"The silver lining? We didn't have enough funds for three contracts, but we had enough for one. Their death bought my freedom. So every time I have to fix the arm, or even replicate a new one, I put their names right there. They're with me, every step of the way."

She listened, remaining silent throughout the entire tale, even during the pauses. The one form returned with two bottles of Dalacari drink, one colored a deep red, the other black, though the two bottles carried the same label. She set down two small glasses for herself as Cor spoke, at any given moment one of her bioforms glued to his every word as the other went about its business, and one shot glass was filled with red, the other with black booze.

Even as he spoke and she listened intently, the other bioform paused a moment, then set a bigger glass down for Cor and poured a bit of the red and a bit of the black liquid, letting them mix. And even when he was done speaking and remained silent, she did as well, raising her drink. "To Sil and Cal." both bioforms spoke, and both raised a glass of different colored booze, then after the toast both tossing their drink back. It was a bit weird seeing two bioforms that did everything in synch, drinking different colored drink.

Cordale watched as she moved, each part of her. Normally like a well oiled machine, now like a machine that needed to have some belts tightened and some fittings reset. The booze raised his curiosity, especially the duality of it. Though, he... being alone... got the single glass with both contents poured into it. At her toast, he raised his glass and then tossed it back as well. There was no way he was going to be outdrank by a...

Then it hit him. Like a peppermint train being conducted by a fist made of strawberry wrapped in a velvet glove. It made his fur bristle, almost in a wave along his form. Wow, this was good stuff!

He caught his breath, in almost a gasp. Almost. He could easily handle his liquor, after all. "Wow. That's a hell of a kick."

"Well, yeah, you took both components into a single body." Val managed a smile, a very soft one, for the first time since she'd returned from the planet.The booze helped. "Daargor manale. Golden Sunrise. The contrasting tastes between the two components - " focus shift again " - create a very interesting sense of duality, conflicting tastes and smells over shared senses. Very common in - " She held the bottles up again as if to offer him more. " - upper end Dalacari cuisine as well. More?"

"Oh yes, please." he held up his glass. "Just, one at a time." he managed to smirk, "So, this is high Dalacari life, eh? Two plates, two drinks, no wonder you guys love to explore."

Two small glasses poured for Cor, though he'd find that the two components really were meant to be experienced together, rather than separate."I've never really thought about it." she mused, refilling her own glasses as well.

As she sat back down she absentmindedly ran her hand over her prosthetic arm. "I'm married, but I haven't seen my husband in over six months." She held up the arm with the black wristband, as if to demonstrate. "He's in a clinic for single Dalacari. Wasn't a few months after we got married when we - " " - had an accident that cost me an arm and him a body." She tossed back her Golden Sunrise. "I've been lost ever since. Trying to escape, I s'pose. Running away."

Cor didn't know much about the Dalacari, but what he knew told him that that... was bad. "Shit.... I'm sorry." he said, though he felt that 'sorry' was like putting a band-aid on a beheading. Seems they both knew what it was like to lose someone. Trouble was, she got to go visit the man she lost whenever she wanted.

What she could visit was a mere shadow, dim and faint, of the man she loved. A living reminder that what she'd vowed to spend the rest of her life loving, was gone. Living memories, faded and broken ones, but enough to tether her, holding her back from actually moving on. "Yeah." she sighed. "Me too."

Cordale took a swig of one of the two components of the binary booz'ahol, and made another face. "You're right, they're meant to be together."

And that remark, so innocent, focused entirely on the drink, broke Val even if Cor didn't realize the double meaning. Possibly you had to be a Dalacari to get the other meaning immediately. Where she was moving to stand up to pour anther drink, she hesitated, wavered, then sat back down again. A sniff, another, and both parts of Val just broke down sobbing.

Somewhere in the Thux brain, Cordale went over the last few moments in some form of inner Instant Replay, and found that figuring out what happened was far less important than providing comfort. The closest form got a living hand on her shoulder, and Cor offered Val a proverbial shoulder to cry on.

The sobbing turned in to full blown bawling, which fortunately didn't last very long. eventually it petered out into just sniffling, until even that faded. "Sorry." she offered, sitting back up again, wiping her eyes, even though the fur on her face was matted down. "Aw, no, I ruined your shirt."

"A shirt's less important than a friend." He said, unable to immediately find a napkin or tissue to offer. "Besides, it's a company shirt." he offered with a hint of a smirk. "You alright?"

"I'll let you know when I've freshened up a bit." she mused as she headed to the small shower area. A minute later she came back, having cleaned up a bit. "I'm not alright. But - " she set about refilling their drinks glasses. " - a bit better than I was before. Thank you."

Cordale gave a nod when she returned. "Better... is all I think we can hope for. You're welcome." he flexed the fist of his prosthetic limb. "Thank you. I'm sure Sil and Cal would appreciate what you said." he paused for a moment, regarding the Dalacari Binary Booze. "Any more of this, and I'm going to need to borrow the couch." he said, motioning to the two glasses.

"So, mind if I borrow the couch?" he asked, offering to stay to keep her company, and possibly subject her to more cheesy Earth cinema.

"Sure. But I won't be held responsible if you - " she sat down as well. " - oversleep or are too late for your work shift tomorrow." she mused as she looked at the list of movies again, "I'm off duty. Medical leave. At least until I get this - " focus shift again. " - link sorted out. Is this one any good? I've heard it mentioned somewhere I think." as she highlighted one of the movies.

Princess Bride.

"I'll set an alarm, so no worries." he mentioned, settling a little deeper into the couch. As for the movie.

"Oh, it's a classic."