Backpost: A Mountain to Think On

Posted on Tue May 27th, 2025 @ 7:14pm by Lieutenant JG Gwenwyn Marwol & Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai

Mission: Mean Green Queen
Location: USS Sojourner - Holodeck
Timeline: Mission Day 1 at 0000

[Holodeck]
[Shortly after "Resignation"]

The Welshman had returned home, not yet anyway. Gwenwyn stood wearing his black overcoat all buttoned up with his knitted white scarf, the very first thing he had knitted when he started at 13, staring at the Neath Valleys, standing with the trees in the breeze that carried a sharp cold while the ruins of an old stone house stood as they have stood for many many years still. It was dark, late December, it had been snowing, creeping up on your ankles and soon the sun would rise. Every medical facility had a holodeck onsite so you get up close to a diseased lung or somewhere to think. This was his thinking spot.

What was he thinking? Thinking about the battle within himself. He was injured and angry at everything. Gwen just turned in his resignation to his CO Xex, he'd spent years training as a General Surgeon and now he was expected to start his medical training over again as a General Physician. One permanent scar and he was a surgical risk, but what now? What life after Starfleet? The book, Stone Cold by Robert Swindells tells the story of 2 homeless people, Gwenwyn was thinking of Shelter someone from that very book, someone injured and thrown aside by the military who made it his life mission to rid the streets of Bradford of homelessness by violence... That book stayed in his mind but really, he'd go back to Dafydd, his uncle who ran an intergalactic circus, and ask for work like he did when he waited for a reply from the Academy. Knitting finger puppets and putting shows on at half-time while thinking about the next steps... There was never really a next step, he's from a Starfleet family, and retiring from Starfleet was always the goal envisioned...

"I always wondered about this program."

The voice, soft enough that it would hopefully not alarm, but still loud enough to carry to Marwol's ears despite the whistle of cold winter breeze between hibernating tree branches had come from the Romulan woman who had entered the holodeck. Emni had thought the sound of holodeck doors parting for her entry might have alerted him to her presence first, but when he didn't turn she knew he must be deep in his own thoughts.

"I recall seeing it pulled up from time to time on the program list for Adelphi's holodeck," she continued stopping beside the younger man. Though Emni was, typically, prepared for holodeck programs before she entered she'd left her quarters fairly quickly after Xex's call--cryptic as it was. Karim had, that week, taken up residence on her couch most nights, and she'd found herself tiptoeing upon leaving. Trading one man scarred by the downfall of the Adelphi for another. Quietly she wondered if perhaps she should have taken a turn toward counseling rather than choosing a medical doctor's trade.

She crossed her arms over the sweatshirt she'd pulled on, feeling the chill of the breeze as it pressed through the fabric before chaffing her hands up and down her arms. A million thoughts circled her head, but she spoke none of them, waiting instead for Marwol and letting her empathic sense slowly acclimate to the tumultuous bundle of uncertainty, guilt, and anger that seemed to expand outward from the surgeon like a storm cloud.

He was still deep in thought, struggling to keep a thought for that matter, everything he ever did, every life he saved, was flashing in his mind's eye as he stared at the snowy landscape. You always remember your first patient, back at Starfleet Medical, Jordan Flynn, he was a Junior while Gwenwyn was a Freshmen. Jordan fought an Al-Leyan who was bullying a Deltan Civilian on a UFP Outpost... Jordan's stomach was crushed along with his left kidney and a whole lot of bones. But he lived, kicked out of Starfleet for fighting, but he married that Deltan.

He loved a lot of things about surgery, the thrill of cutting, but the thrill of rebuilding people's lives brought emotions that were indescribable. A ghost from the past spoke... The Sojo had only a handful of ghosts from Adelphi.

"It's perfect. A quiet place to think... Though a pain to walk too," referring to how mountainous Wales was. "I'm guessing you're another Xex talked to? It's okay... Good, he's worried. Just," He briefly passed with his mouth ajar, like he was searching for the words. "I can't fix myself." He was still staring out at the valley, the distant balls of gas shone in the sky, while you could make out some light across the Valley villages. He hadn't turned to Emni, who stood in the corner of his eye.

Not bothering to address the claim that she was another that Xex had spoken to--the evidence was clear enough--Emni glanced sidelong at the man beside her. His pain, so like and yet also so different from what she'd been encountering with Karim, seemed to throb. An open wound... or perhaps a reopened wound. Something that struggled to heal. "Do you need fixing?" she asked quietly, keeping her tone level and neutral.

"I need a time machine," He jokingly said. Was joking good in psychology? He asked himself in his head, but remembered he literally fell asleep in psychology 101. "Not a clue... Probably... But, I'm sure as hell not seeing a shrink, I've had enough of them when I was at Starfleet Medical to last a lifetime." He quickly shut up, struggling to keep the tears back, but managed to do just that.

She was quiet for a long moment, giving the Gwenwyn the space to master his emotions. She thought, ironically, that Karim had given her plenty of practice in this lately. Still, his pain continued to throb in her mind's eye. Finally, she turned to face him. "You know from your training that all of us has an obligation to check in with the ship's counselor from time to time." This wasn't meant as a rebuke so much as a statement of fact. Anyone with chief in their title found themselves in this place. It was a poorly kept secret that most were less consistent than recommended. But the training had been there all the same. "I won't make you do it," she continued, "but if you won't talk to Bracco then you can always talk to me."

Her eyes traced the side of his face, pairing his expression with the turmoil she couldn't miss. She was painfully aware of the her position in that moment. When they'd served together on the Adelphi it had been different. They'd been peers and when she'd been promoted to CMO their work interactions had changed little. Now, though, she was XO and they were on a different ship and for good or ill it wasn't as simple as she wished it could be. She found herself hoping... willing him... not to fall into the trap that so many tended toward--assuming her role as Executive Officer meant she was no longer as easily approached as she had been before.

Gwenwyn knew the duties of XO from some overly ambitious child from a Starfleet family hoping to be a record-breaking youngest XO from a medical conversion. He knew, despite all of the departmental reports detailing HR, logistics, and departmental corporation, the XO was in charge of crew morale. So he just let it rip. "I'm so tired, Emni," The exhausted could be heard as he spoke breathlessly. "I keep going over and over what I could have done to avoid getting hurt whenever I wake."

Tears began to dribble out of his eyes as they slowly turned red. "When I'm asleep... It gets worse, I'm constantly punished for thinking about it all day. I dreamt about how much pain I was in last night, how sore my throat was from screaming." The tears, though silent, weren't a dribble anymore but a waterfall. Flooding over his cheekbones and disappearing as they dripped off his chin. "I don't want to be in Deep Space or the DQ (Delta Quadrant) for that matter... God, I just want to sleep!"

The deluge of emotion that traced through her in time with his words felt heavy--like rainfall that wasn't life bringing, but relentlessly punishing, turning everything beneath it to mud that sucked at your feet. 50 years as an empath meant she had training for this. The last several weeks as the personal caretaker of a PTSD-ridden Vulcan had shored her up even more. She let it run over her, felt the weight of it, and let it drain past, waiting until she could easily feel her own emotional signature beneath Marwol's pain.

"You're here, though, Gwen," she finally said. "You chose moving forward despite the pain over standing still and letting it take you. It's not a wonder you're exhausted." She paused, seeking out her next words as if feeling for the edge of a cliff that she might accidentally tumble over.

"Did you know I used to be married?" she finally asked, quietly. It wasn't information she shared regularly and though you could find it on her records, it was buried deep in her past. She didn't wait for him to answer before she continued.

"I had two partners, actually. They're both dead. And my parents. My grandmother. My siblings. All of them. They chose to stay on Romulus even when it became clear that Hobus couldn't be saved. They chose to believe that something could still be done. They called it hope. I called it folly. And I left... went to help with resettlement." The leaving had been hard. So hard. But it had been harder still to know they were gone the moment the star destabilized.

"For a long time I spent my days replaying arguments in my head. Wondering if I could have somehow forced them to leave. Questioned my respect for their positions and choices. I imagined elaborate kidnappings, and government mandates, and anything that could have had a different outcome. At night my brain conjured dreams of what they must have felt when they died. Of what it must have felt like for their emotional signals to wink out of existence in my mind." She let out a long slow breath. "It's not the same. I know it's not. But I do know something about how easy it is to torture yourself with the constant reliving of the moments... looking for a way to change something that simply can't be changed."

One thing for sure that Emini had received training as a shrink. Her words rang sort of true to his ears, the past was the past for a reason... So history could repeat itself, repeat the past history of trauma. He waited for a moment incase she might want to spill some more of her own past. "... I never knew." Emni married? He'd thought she was married to the job... Maybe she was.

"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world," he quoted, though unsure who he was quoting. "I'm throwing myself into my work, now I don't have any work left... I kept saying to myself, you're in the wrong place Blodyn" but you're the right man... The only thing that can be changed is me... But I don't want to change"

Emni gave this a moment of thought, quietly surveying the white of the slope before them. "There's changing yourself," she finally said, "and then there's healing." Finally, she turned to look at the man, shifting so she was facing him fully. Her expression was soft and open. Even with her mental walls high she could still feel his pain and understood the way that pain could form a person's responses. Every medical professional she knew of understood the way that pain drives people.

"Maybe you don't need to change," she continued. "But I don't think there's a question... if you're not sleeping and you can't seem to quit this cycle of self recrimination... that you're not done healing. You and I both know that physical wounds are only part of it. We're all wired, in some way, to respond to the trauma of injury above and beyond the physical." Gently she reached her hand out and placed it on Marwol's forearm. "Go to Bracco, or come to me, or don't do that at all. That's fine. But also take this back to the basics of your biology. If you can't rest you won't be able to function. And if you can't function you won't be able to heal. At least let me prescribe something to help you sleep. If nothing else make that a start."

Emni was right. She was always right, there was very little she got wrong, but Gwenwyn hadn't worked under her for some time now. He knew he needed help. Maybe now he needed to let someone in, someone he trusted. He soaked up her words before speaking... But nothing came out, so he shutted up and nodded in agreement.

"...Thank you," was all he managed to say. He could have prescribed himself something, yes, but a surgeon doesn't deal sleeping drugs, so he had no understanding of what to give himself, heck he had no idea how to forge paperwork because he would no doubt raise alarms.

Hand dropping back to her side, Emni stared ahead of them again, taking a moment to truly take in the scene around them. It was achingly beautiful and somehow knowing that Marwol sought out such beauty in a time of crisis gave her hope. Drawing in a deep breath she turned to him and smiled. "The scrip will be waiting for you when you're done here." She waited long enough to confirm he had heard and then faced back the way she'd come. "Computer, Arch," she called and the telltale appearance of the holodeck entryway appeared behind them. She stopped just inside the arch as the doors stood parted for her exit and looked back over her shoulder. "And Gwen, truly, any time you want to talk.... my door is open."

And then she was gone.

And the only person left, standing on holographic ground, was Gwenwyn Marwol. Alone with his thoughts again. He missed Wales, but not as much as he missed cutting, performing surgeries. The battle ahead will be tough, the toughest thing he'd probably fight in his life. But with help? He might actually recover.

Gwenwyn's eyes admiring the beauty of the Neath Valley, happy thoughts of the future entered his mind.