Escape Artist

Posted on 26 Mar 2013 @ 4:10pm by Crewman Athlen & Lieutenant Kiri Cho

3,855 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: Multipurpose Lab 1
Timeline: MD4 1130

ON:

Athlen had an eventful morning, meeting the new recruit Jaeih for starters. It was a refreshing look into home, even if she wasn't Rigelian. It was certainly an interesting reminder. Fortunately for him, they had dermal regenerator technology and he looked no worse for wear as he entered the multipurpose laboratory. But rather than an empty lab as he'd come to expect, he spotted Kiri Cho in the far corner. Athlen blinked and put away the PADD. "Lieutenant, sorry about that, I didn't mean to intrude." He offered her a reassuring smile.

"It's quite okay," Kiri looked up and forced her own smile in return, "I don't have an office at the moment so I've just been moving around. I can move if you need the lab." She seemed more sullen than normal today, her hair tied back but her eyes quite tired. Voice a little flat and even softer than normal. She was just reviewing the first sets of data on the system again trying to pick up on anything she missed the first time.

"We can share, if you like," Athlen offered, hovering around the door uncertain if he should come in or not.

"Okay," Kiri wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do in the lab but she wasn't doing anything that could cause problems. Not really sure if he wanted to talk to her or not she remained quiet and looked down at her work rather than at him. Despite the words given to her that night by Dawn she didn't exactly feel confident.

"Excellent," Athlen smiled and ducked in, sitting at the terminal beside hers. "Are you alright?" he asked, noting her pallor and demeanor, which was even more subdued than he usually expected from her.

"Mostly," It was also mostly a lie. Whether she wanted the attention or she didn't want to tell such a complete lie as to say there was nothing she didn't know. Kiri did mentally scold herself for it though, she should have said she was fine.

Athlen resisted the urge to put his head on the desk in front of him. Maybe it was dinner last night, or his conversation with Kiskath, but he found himself suddenly very tired of obfuscation and opaqueness when it came to non-Rigelians. Why was it that people were so hesitant and reluctant to be emotionally open? On Rigel V, if you were sad, then you were sad. And it was all right to be sad. The last person to project emotions that loudly he'd asked in his normal blunt way, and had been promptly and awkwardly shut down, so he was hesitant now to respond as was natural to him, but after a while he did anyway. He wasn't going to stop being Athlen just because he was on the Galileo. "So part of you isn't fine?" he deducted quite simply in a patient tone.

"No," Kiri looked up and looked quite uncomfortable, "I think I'm going to get better though." She didn't really want to talk about it but at the same time she did. Despite spending some time with him Athlen was her subordinate. Exactly the type of person she was meant to appear strong in front of. It wasn't exactly easy to follow a leader that you felt had no confidence in herself was it?

Athlen tilted his head toward her. "Want to talk about it?" he asked straight out. "Seems sort of like you do."

She wasn't on duty right now but that didn't change the problems she felt were present. It had been good to talk to Dawn and even Cyrus helped a little, it wasn't easy. Looking very conflicted she looked down at her desk, "You won't tell anyone?"

"No," Athlen answered easily, keying up the terminal in front of him before leaning over the side of his chair to give Kiri his full attention, crossing his arms over the back. "Not unless you're planning on hurting someone," he amended, but he sincerely doubted that was what bothered Kiri. "What's on your mind?" he asked gently.

Very reluctantly Kiri took a deep breath, "I don't really know myself very well." That more or less summed up the situation didn't it? At least the bit she felt she could even remotely talk about. Normally she would give him her full attention in return but for now she kept typing. Splitting her attention meant she didn't have a chance to think about the topic too much.

Athlen shrugged. "I'm not sure self is really a thing that is meant to be found," he said after a while of processing that and analyzing it. "In my experience, I think it's something you shape, and direct, consciously. What do you consider to be a self?"

"I don't know," Kiri wasn't the most metaphysical of people, neither did she have that much experience in psychology. Taking a deep breath she went on, "When you want to do things, is it because you want to do them or you feel you should?"

"It depends," Athlen said honestly. "On the Galileo, I often behave in ways that I know are expected of me as a Starfleet officer, and not the ways that are natural to me. Those can make people uncomfortable, or be what you might call impolite. So I moderate myself a lot. But when I want to do something, regardless of if I do it or not, it's because I want to," he tried to explain, quirking his lip downward. "You already are yourself, Kiri," he said gently. "What you believe, what you think, the decisions you make, those are all part of you. And they can change, just like that," he snapped his fingers, "it's all a matter of what you choose to do. You aren't set in stone."

"I don't really know what I want," All her life Kiri had always done what was expected of her and she was starting to realise that. From what she should eat to what she should say, "Or what makes me, me."

"Well, what you want, starts when you stop thinking about what other people want. What you feel matters to you. What is important to you. You joined Starfleet, and you're an officer. That takes a lot of training and skill," he suggested, tilting his head. "And mental fortitude," he added on. "You aren't an empty vessel, or you never would have passed SEPS. Do you like being in Starfleet? Why did you choose this kind of life for yourself?"

"I do, and I know why I joined, I think that was what I wanted," Kiri didn't find going on any easier, "But I don't know about everything else." Kiri couldn't even say what she wanted to eat for breakfast most mornings. She didn't know what was important or where to even start looking.

"So, to put it in a more concise way, the problem you are having is that you feel like you don't know who you are, or what you want," Athlen laid it out linearly, in a perfectly Rigelian fashion. His own upbringing had caused him to be naturally oriented to conversations like this, and he didn't appear bothered. "How do you think you can solve that problem? What would you like to change, from your experience now, that has made you unhappy?"

Despite what Dawn said, people wouldn't like her unless she liked herself still nibbled away. To get people to like her more she had to like herself, to like herself more she felt she needed people to like her. There didn't seem to be much in the way of inroads into that circle. She was getting more down the more they talked, "I don't really know, spending time with people maybe?" Even that felt rather hollow right now.

"Why do you think that will help?" Athlen asked while laying out the grid pattern on his terminal. He added a few columns of data before turning his attention back to her.

"It is less lonely than being alone?" Kiri didn't really have a reason other than that. Being around people made her feel like she had a purpose, not working and being alone, didn't really seem to have one.

Athlen shrugged. "Does being with other people really solve your problem? It sounds like when you're alone, your problems just return. So, to me, that suggests that your problem isn't related to other people and what they're doing."

"Maybe," Kiri sank back slightly, "It's horrible though." Shuddering slightly she closed her eyes and took a breath. This wasn't really the direction she wanted to be going in.

"I imagine it would feel very horrible," Athlen could only agree.

"Yes," Kiri remained quiet and kept typing, not looking but trying to focus on something else.

Athlen let her wind down into quiet. On his own world he would have pursued the issue, mostly because that was the expectation. Have a problem. Work it out communally. In Starfleet, not so much. There were boundaries, and once someone put them up, they were generally followed. So Athlen turned back to his terminal as well and allowed the silence to overtake them.

Settling into to work Kiri let the time pass for a while, not really sure what to say until finally in a quiet voice, "Do you have much experience of being alone?"

Athlen looked up thoughtfully and nodded after a long moment. "I do, yes," he answered truthfully. "Did you wish to hear about it?"

"If you want to talk about it?" Kiri looked up shyly before returning to her work.

Athlen straightened up and breathed deeply. "Well," he said, trying to think of the best way to condense it. "You know Rigelians have a link to their families. Bonds, to parent-groups and clan. And to our planet at large. Sort of like Vulcans. These are formed in childhood, with the help of one's clan. I didn't have a clan. The people I was born to were vagrants, wanderers. They were killed, as far as anyone is aware, in the desert. So, I did not have any links, in here." He tapped his temple. "That is, for Rigelians, the epitome of being alone. So, when I was found, I was in quite a state." He shrugged and smiled reassuringly. "I did join a clan, but it took many years before I was able to overcome the damage of those experiences. The one thing that I did learn, was that it is impossible to connect with others, when you cannot connect with yourself."

"I see," Again that wasn't the answer Kiri wanted, those seemed to be in very short supply. It was nice to know she wasn't the only person who knew what it was like to be alone. That he even might have been in the same situation once, "I don't really know what that means?" What was there inside herself that she was meant to find?

Athlen shrugged. "Maybe it's different for Trills or Terrans? For me, it meant accepting my thoughts, and my feelings, and my desires, as all right. Not acting on them, but just listening to them. Even the ones that made me feel like a bad person, or were immoral, or anything like that. All of it, the whole package of Athlen. After I started to do that, it really helped in being able to trust connecting with other people. Because they can't hurt you, here," he tapped his side, and then blinked and put his hand up on his chest where Kiri's heart would be, "here." He smiled. "If you already know everything and accept everything there is to know and accept about yourself. So you can trust yourself."

Kiri didn't want those parts. The parts that resented her parents, the parts that made her want to cry. The parts that hated other people, that wanted attention, everyone to admire her. Bits that made her want to hit, shout and scream, parts that made her desire, intimate things. To accept those, made her less. More of a failure, less of an officer. That the solution to her problems was to give into her greatest fear. To let everything show to people and face their rejection? Fear was there for a reason, fear protected her from harm. From fire, pain, danger, be it from objects or people, she should be afraid. She fell silent again, pausing in her work for a few seconds before going on. Praying it was different for her, "I see."

"It isn't the easiest course of action, but as far as I can understand most alien psychology, it's the only effective one." Athlen looked back down to his terminal and continued typing.

Maybe she was different then? Kiri would rather that was true rather than having to face herself. It was something completely counter to how she lived her life. It was a dark place she didn't want to go. There wasn't a whole lot she could say.

Athlen allowed the silence to continue.

Working a while more Kiri tried to compose herself but it wasn't really working very well. Sighing she finally answered, "I don't want to." She wanted things to be the way she wanted them. Not painful, not hard, just clear and something she can work towards.

"Most don't," Athlen said with a mild humor. "It's painful and difficult. On top of that, people think they're unique in their strangeness, or their horrible secrets. Everybody has parts of them they don't like. Everyone has parts of them that even other people don't like. It's part of being sentient. Who you are isn't about what you feel or think, it's about what you choose to do."

"Yes," Kiri knew she wasn't alone in having parts of her to hide and dislike. However she couldn't really accept it was as important, they all had identities that were good, or at least them. She didn't have her own as she saw it, which is why this mattered so much.

"Yes," Athlen agreed with a smile.

Frowning Kiri looked down at her work, that seemed to be the only place she could get the answers she wanted to have. Everyone else seemed to want to give her the worst possible option and force it down her throat. She was lost in what to say or do, not wanting to think about what they were talking about.

Athlen, for his own part, simply continued working as she became silent again.

"Do you ever have strange dreams?" The pause carried for a long time before Kiri felt brave enough to ask. They had been strange for a while now but they were different ever since that figure appeared. Remembering with waking eyes it appeared more horrifying, that disfigured body. The grip, the mouth, the sounds it made. There was less pain in them though, for scary dreams at least.

"Frequently," the Rigelian smiled, happy to bob along in the conversational current. "Nightmares, too. How about you?"

"Every night," Kiri looked at him uncertainly. She wasn't really sure how much of her dreams she should talk about. He was likely to think she was crazy, but no one had really talked to her about what was normal for dreams.

"Have you spoken to anyone about them?" Athlen asked. "Nightmares every night is usually a sign of stress in most species."

"Yes, it hasn't really helped yet," Stress Kiri could normally deal with, socially it seemed to be building up and up though. What could she do other than what she already was to change that?

"It will sooner or later," Athlen assured her. "As long as you keep an open mind."

"I don't like how long it all takes, why must it?" She was complaining now, tension, stress and anger was starting to vent, touching the keys a little harder.

Athlen shrugged. "It sounds like you are waiting for something to happen on its own," he pointed out carefully. "Counseling isn't really about being sad and then having someone or something make you feel better. It's mostly about learning to make yourself feel better."

"I know, but I still want to change the other things," Kiri couldn't really comprehend how she could make herself less lonely just by willing it. She could do it by ignoring it, but that wasn't working as well any more.

"You mean being lonely," Athlen interpreted with a tilt of his head. "In my experience, being by yourself is a physical state. So, for instance, being physically by yourself, not speaking much to people. Loneliness is the recognition that you have to rely on yourself, that other people won't - you know - rescue you from oblivion. It's tough, it's tough state to be in. I've been there. It seems like you've gotten sucked down into this recognition as though it's the worst thing. And it can be, if you don't know who you are. But you're also at this stage where you think who you are is buried somewhere, that it has to be found, instead of created consciously, you know?"

"But I don't know how," Kiri shook her head and looked at him. His words made sense but she didn't know where to start when it came to finding herself or creating a real sense of being.

"How to... be a person?" Athlen asked thoughtfully. "I don't think it's that mysterious, really. Difficult, but rather straightforward. Standing up for yourself, asserting your own thoughts and opinions, your preferences, how your mind operates."

In some respects she already did that, to do it more though, "Wouldn't that cause problems for other people?" Being submissive meant she could avoid conflict and a level of judgement from people around her.

"Generally," Athlen grinned good-naturedly. "If they agree or disagree with you. That's how you form friend groups and relationships. You get to decide who you like and don't like, and people get to decide the same with you. It doesn't really mean anything in the long run, except that we're all different people."

"But, what if I disagree with everyone?" That was a risk that Kiri didn't want to take, to suffer rejection from people was hard enough. To have no one like her after putting in so much effort, it sounded terrible.

"What if you do?" Athlen asked in return. "In my experience," he said again, because he couldn't speak for everyone, and they weren't even the same species to begin with, "being comfortable with myself has eliminated the requirement for external validation," Athlen explained. "Sure, validation is a good thing, but it isn't the most important thing. If you disagree with everyone, which I doubt is even possible," he rolled his shoulder, "then you do. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Some people might find it irritating. Some people might find they agree with you. It doesn't matter what you do, someone's always going to dislike you, that's just how people are."

"It seems, unnatural, and scary," Kiri was grasping at excuses in the hope that maybe one of them would save her from the truth. That her life would be turned upside now and she'd have to force herself into the unknown in the hope of being accepted. She wanted a universe that suited her rather than having to change.

Athlen lifted his hands off the keyboard in front of him briefly. "Just do what makes you feel the best. It isn't really a matter of that you're this type of person and that's wrong so you have to fix it," he said dryly. "I mean, it isn't about changing or not changing, because the way you are now is wrong. You're fine. But the problem, it sounds like, from everything you're telling me, that you want to change. That what is happening now in your life, the way that you're feeling, the events that are occurring, are things that are making you unhappy. You're feeling lonely and isolated and you don't know who you are or what you want. So keeping everything the same, is that going to make you happy?"

"Its unlikely, but, I don't want it to get worse," That was the part she was worried about, she was a risk-averse person. Something as important as herself, her life she didn't want to get wrong and she still saw it as absolute facts.

"So it sounds like you have a choice to make. Between remaining unhappy no matter what, or potentially making it better with the risk of making it worse." To Athlen the path had always been rather clear. Only one of those came with the potential of happiness. "To me, out of all of those options, the only one that has any chance of making you happier is to take the risk."

"I see," Kiri contemplated what he said, what everyone had said to her so far. There wasn't that much choice really, if they were right, for the most part. Did it have to be something big? If it was small, the risk small, would that be enough?

Athlen nodded. She had fallen silent again, so he took that as a cue to return to work.

"If it's true, then I don't exactly have a choice," Kiri lamented after another minute of silent work. Going into the unknown was something she hated, research had done her more harm that good last time. Should she ask Dawn for help finding information?

"There is always a choice," Athlen contradicted mildly. "What you decide to do, what you would like to do. It isn't an easy choice, but it is there."

"There is a right choice or a wrong choice, I can't exactly pick the wrong one knowing that can I?" Kiri shook her head and clenched her eyes, "Thank you."

Athlen shrugged. "People make wrong choices all the time. Just depends on what your definition is." He smiled sympathetically. "And it's no trouble at all."

Kiri didn't agree but arguing wouldn't help. Nodding she started to drift back into work and silence. There was a lot for her to process and that wasn't even counting what risks and what to try and change, and how.

"Mm, hm," Athlen hummed to himself and pulled out his isolinear chip when it was done processing. "I have to get this back to Lieutenant Liyar. I really hope you find what you're looking for, Kiri."

She wasn't sure if he meant her social problems or her work with the sensors but both seemed to apply. Bowing her head slightly she glanced up at him, "Thank you, have a nice day." Hopefully he would keep his word and not tell anyone, and Liyar wouldn't read his mind and find out anyway.

"Take care." He bowed toward her once and ambled away out the door.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Kiri Cho
Assistant Chief Science Officer,
USS Galileo

Crewman Athlen
Sociologist, SSC
USS Galileo

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