Backpost: Routine Interrupted
Posted on Sun Feb 1st, 2026 @ 9:13pm by Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai & Lieutenant Commander Karim
Mission:
Port of Call
Location: XO's Quarters, Deck 2
Timeline: Mission Day 0 at 2200
[XO's Quarters, Deck 2]
[Roughly a week after At What Price, Advancement?]
[3 Days Out from Talbeethia]
There was something spare about the XO's quarters. A quiet, unlived in, quality that made Emni feel as if she were trespassing. Or perhaps like she were only a temporary denizen, the way one is at a hotel or when staying in temporary quarters on a space station. The transition of her small bundle of things from the quarters she had been sharing with Karim to the XO's quarters had been a glacial process. She'd explained to Bjorn that rushing when it felt like she'd only just established a real connection with Karim, wasn't advisable.
In truth she'd nearly requested permission not to move.
Not yet. Not while Karim's treatment was still so tenuous.
She had, after all, requested they be roommates for a reason.
Brown eyes scanned the living area slowly. More space meant that her belongings were more spread out. Yes... it did look spare.
The little black cat that was avidly sniffing at every available corner seemed far less concerned about the decor. Bringing Kyi'i along with her had been a difficult decision. The cat was, after all, Karim's pet.
But she had grown used to him during the weeks that she had kept him knowing that her stewardship of the small bundle of fur and claws could be a permanent thing. Back then she hadn't known when, or if, she'd see Karim again. It was as likely that she wouldn't as it was that she might, even with her efforts to find out what had happened to him.
In the end it was Kyi'i's sleeping preferences that had made the decision. The cat, despite having access to its owner, chose Emni's bed each night. She'd recommended that he come with her rather than asking Karim to focus on keeping not just himself, but the small creature alive.
Now, watching the cat gleefully examine his new home, she had to admit that there had been some selfishness in the decision. She'd gotten used to the cat and thought of him as hers as much as he was Karim's. Besides, perhaps it would be an easy way to get Karim to sit with her and talk when they next needed to formally engage in this treatment.
Sighing, she settled onto the couch and picked up a PADD, opening a book to read on her screen that had about as much depth to it as a puddle. Something mindless would be nice.
A sharp, precise chime cut through the quiet of the XO’s quarters.
With the kind of sigh that seemed as though it was being pulled forcibly from her toes through her whole being to exit as a physiological response, Emni looked up from her PADD> She'd barely finished the first paragraph. The first sentence even. She didn't have to inquire, though, to know who had pressed the chime--who was on the other side of the door.
The maelstrom of emotion was too familiar by now to ignore. Brows furrowing she stood and made her way toward the door.
The chime had been pressed precisely once, deliberately, with the expectation that it would be answered soon. There was not much awareness of the time of day, admittedly.
Outside the door, Karim stood rigidly upright, shoulders tense beneath his uniform. His hair clung damply at his temples, darkened with sweat, and the fabric at the back of his collar was visibly soaked through. The effort of maintaining outward composure was evident in the way his jaw was set and in the shallow, controlled rhythm of his breathing.
Whatever meditative techniques he had attempted had failed him entirely. His mind refused stillness, circling instead the same arguments and conclusions until they collapsed under their own weight, only to be rebuilt again moments later.
Debbie Gless’ quarters were not hostile. That was the most infuriating aspect of them. They were bright, loud, fragrant, and relentlessly alive. PADDs stacked at odd angles beside carefully labelled spice containers. Music bleeding softly from one corner while three different experimental meals progressed simultaneously through stages of preparation she insisted were essential. It was chaos, but not careless chaos. It was intentional, curated, and deeply personal. Karim understood its purpose, and he understood that the woman even had an affection for him and his care. He even recognised its value. He had watched how easily others were disarmed by her warmth and that same interest or care, of how quickly tension bled away in her presence.
For him, however, it was almost unbearable - especially now.
He could not think there. Could not sleep. Could not impose the order his mind demanded when already fraying at the edges. Every sound felt intrusive. Every scent pulled his focus sideways. His thoughts, already prone to philosophical recursion, had begun to spiral into questions of inevitability and purpose that no longer resolved cleanly through logic alone. The Vulcan disciplines he relied upon required silence and control. Debbie’s quarters offered neither.
His gaze lifted briefly as the seconds stretched on, eyes unfocused as if tracking something only he could see. There was frustration there, yes, but also something closer to fear. Not of losing control publicly, but of eroding it privately, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to hold.
He pressed the chime again, exactly once more.
At the same time that the chime sounded again, Emni opened the door. The man before her was familiar, but not in the way that she would have liked him to be. This Karim more closely resembled the man whose room she'd broken into using a medical override than the one she'd last spoken to only a few hours before to make sure he understood, fully, that she had finally shifted to her new room. That Karim had seemed detached. There had been some emotional agitation, but nothing like this.
She took all of two seconds to evaluate him -- hair damp and curling in at his collar, shoulders, arms, even hands, tensed as if facing an onslaught -- or preparing to flee.
"Come in," she said softly and stepped aside so that Karim could enter.
Karim registered her presence only in the most cursory way. There was no greeting. No acknowledgement of the invitation. He moved forward immediately, momentum carrying him through the threshold as though the door itself were incidental. His shoulder clipped hers as he passed. Not hard, but enough to jolt.
He stopped abruptly just inside the quarters and turned, breath sharp, eyes flaring.
"Be careful," he snapped, the words landing with disproportionate force, quite tinged with emotion. "You cannot simply step into people without accounting for mass and trajectory."
The accusation hung there, misaligned with reality, but delivered with absolute conviction. He did not wait for a response. Already he was retreating, backing deeper into the room as though the space itself were compressing around him. His steps were uneven. Too fast. He turned again, then again, pacing a tight circuit between the viewport and the far wall, one hand raking back through damp hair before clenching into a fist. He did not register the familiar cat retreating away from him to safety.
"This is not an argument about manners," he said, voice rising and falling without pattern. "It is about intrusion. Physical, cognitive, existential. A failure to respect boundary conditions." He laughed once, short and hollow, then stopped as if startled by the sound. It was an alien sound, his mouth and throat clearly not accustomed to the broken sound it had made.
"They cut me open," he then continued, words accelerating now, tumbling over one another. "Not metaphorically. Not ideologically. Open. They catalogued function and utility as if coherence were incidental. As if meaning were an inefficient variable." His pacing tightened. Faster. "Surak assumed suppression was supremacy," he said abruptly. "Axiomatised restraint as virtue... but he was responding to catastrophe - not truth. Earlier Vulcan philosophy did not fear emotion. It weaponised it!"
He turned sharply, gesturing vaguely at nothing. "V’laris of Shi’Kahr wrote that emotion was the engine of ascendancy, not its enemy. That discipline without affect produces only static order. Dead order." Another horrible and humourless laugh, this one edged with something like desperation. "Niezche of Earth reached the same conclusion by a different path. Will as structure! Meaning imposed, not discovered! The universe does not care. Therefore it is irrational to pretend otherwise."
He stopped pacing suddenly, chest heaving, eyes unfocused.
"If meaning does not exist, then logic cannot derive it. And if logic cannot derive it, then Surak’s system collapses under its own false premises." Silence, taut and brittle. "I am not afraid of emotion," he said more quietly. "I am afraid that without it, nothing justifies survival at all." Only then did he seem to realise he was no longer alone. His gaze flicked briefly toward Emni, unfixed, not quite seeing her. "You should not have moved quarters," he added, tone sharp again, as if that were the true root of everything. "This was a controlled environment."
His hands trembled once before he forced them still.
"I need quiet."
Emni, through Karim's entire soliloquy, had remained just inside the door. It had closed, promptly after Karim had stepped inside and aside from recovering her balance after being clipped on his way in, she remained still and silent. There was so much there. So much to respond to, nearly all of it in a stream of consciousness jumble that jumped from one image to another to another.
"We do not live in a universe of controlled environments," she said softly, her voice sounding small and simple after the onslaught of Karim's thoughts.
She moved from the door to the replicator, quietly ordering two cups of herbal tea each with a twist of lemon and honey. She was certain that Karim might object to the sweetener as unnecessary, but necessity wasn't the point just then. Grounding was.
Sometimes it is important for one to feel good in one's body when one does not feel safe in one's mind.
It was old wisdom. Wisdom she'd offered him before. But also the kind of wisdom that a mind could so easily discard when thoughts ran loud and truth was difficult to discern from unreality.
Turning back to the Vulcan, she indicated the couch where she had been sitting. It hadn't even occurred to her that she was, for all rights and purposes, in loungewear -- comfort and ease contrasted not just in her demeanor but her actual attire.
"Sit."
It was not a request, but nor was it a demand. An expectation, if anything.
Karim did not sit.
His eyes tracked the tea, the steam rising in thin, persistent threads. Lemon. Honey. The scent reached him before he could block it, sharp and faintly sweet, and his jaw tightened as though affronted by the intrusion.
"I did not request sustenance, least of all Terran," he said, too quickly. The objection lacked force. It was procedural, reflexive. He took two steps toward the couch, then stopped, standing over it rather than lowering himself. His hands flexed once at his sides. When he finally sat, it was on the edge, spine rigid, feet planted as if prepared to stand again at the slightest provocation.
The cup was warm when he took it. Hot enough to demand attention. His fingers adjusted without conscious thought, grip changing until it was tolerable. That, too, unsettled him, it seemed.
"This is manipulation," he muttered. "Somatic compliance preceding cognitive consent." He inhaled despite himself. The steam caught in his throat. His shoulders dropped a fraction before he noticed. His eyes flicked to the cup, then away, anger flaring at the betrayal of his own body.
"I am not safe in my own reasoning," he said abruptly, words spilling faster now. "And you respond by reminding my nervous system that it still functions. As if that resolves anything."
"You are welcome to be offended by my methods, but you cannot question their effectiveness. If your body continues in a heightened fight or flight state then it will continue to work against your ability to reason. It is logical to address the physical elements first in order to enable the mental the space to engage,"
Emni's reasoning, she was sure, could have holes poked in it. But that mattered little to her in the moment. She settled into the set next to Karim, shifting toward open body language, one leg pulled up, foot tucked under the other that remained planted on the floor. She gently blew on the surface of her tea and then sipped, eyed closing for the briefest moment--allowing herself to sit in that sensation as much because she needed to be grounded if she wanted to help as to demonstrate the value.
When she'd swallowed her eyes returned the Vulcan sitting uncomfortably on the edge of her couch. Absently she decided that it was now her goal for him to one day feel comfortable enough in her presence to actually lounge on the couch in whatever fashion was legitimately restful and comfortable.
"Besides that, I'm a doctor Karim. You don't treat a person's mind and simply ignore their body. And vice versa. As far as I am concerned the two are intimately intwined. You may not be afraid of emotion, but right now emotion has run rampant with your bodily functions. Let me at least help you quiet some of the noise." She brought the mug to her lips again, sipping slowly, but this time never taking her eyes off of Karim's face.
Karim’s mouth tightened.
"You are assuming the error lies in amplitude," he said. His tone was clipped, but no longer as sharp. "That the solution is reduction."
He shifted on the couch, discomfort evident now, shoulders refusing to settle. Her proximity registered fully this time. The warmth of her body. The cadence of her breathing. The fact that she was not merely present, but attentive.
"You speak of integration as though it were neutral," he went on. "As though proximity does not alter outcome." His eyes flicked to her mug, to the way she held it, then back to her face. He looked away again almost immediately. "You are very composed," he said. "You sit. You drink. You observe... And you call this grounding." His grip on the cup tightened, then eased.
"When my body responds to that," he continued more quietly, "it is not reassurance. It is intrusion." The word seemed to cost him something. "You are closer than you were before," he added, not accusing, simply stating. "And my nervous system has noticed."
Another pause. Longer.
"I am not accustomed to being monitored in this way," he said. "Not without consent. Not without purpose." His gaze dropped, unfocused, as if tracking the sensation rather than her. "If you quiet this," he added, voice lower now, "and what remains is incoherent, what then? I will not be made functional at the expense of being comprehensible."
Only after that did he take another sip of the tea.
She listened, careful to maintain her ease as much as she could. What had been a maelstrom when he'd stood on the other side of her door had been abating over the last few minutes. It reminded her of a bruise -- dark and livid at it's height, but lightening in color and tone as it healed, the evidence of it fading away even as the pain could still be felt when pressed.
Intensity, however, did not shift. Karim's emotions, in so many ways, reminded her of shouts--the cries of someone broken and desperate. One moment railing angrily against everything within its grasp and the next flowing downward and outward.
She felt the moment observation turned from a one way engagement, to a two way exchange. Confusion bloomed as he noticed her and though she couldn't follow the path of acknowledgement a small part of her thrilled at it. Grounding his body was one thing. Reconnecting him to his surroundings, herself included, was another.
"You are the one who said you needed quiet, Karim," she answered softly--her voice modulated to support her comment. "And I did not say it was neutral. Intimacy -- in this case the intimacy of mind and body working against each other -- is never neutral. It is more like an armed attack from within your own camp. It can feel like betrayal and confusion. Like rage and loss. Every one of those emotions has pared physical impulses. But you're not feeling just one of them. You're feeling... all of them..." she slowed to a halt. "At least... that's how it appears from this side of the couch."
A silence began to settle between them, as Karim did not yet respond.
It was not an abrupt silence - it did not descend, necessarily. It arrived gradually, the way fog crept across a field, softening edges without obscuring them entirely. With Karim, it was clear that some silences were diagnostic.
Emni watched as his breathing shifted. The sharp, shallow pattern that had marked his arrival eased, fraction by fraction, into something slower and more even. Sweat that had darkened the fabric at his collar no longer beaded visibly along his temples. His shoulders, still tense, no longer sat quite so high.
Karim’s attention had changed; it no longer skittered across the room, catching on light and sound and movement, but now rested. First on the cup in his hands, then on the floor near her feet. Then, finally, on her.
Not scanning or analysing - but observing.
The look was perhaps more unsettling than his earlier agitation. There was intent in it now. Not control, exactly, but restraint, and several long seconds passed before he spoke.
"I am registering a concern," the former counsellor said quietly. His voice was steadier. Not calm. But no longer fractured. "I have... I have noted a pattern across recent episodes." He paused, as though choosing language with care rather than speed, his breathing still a bit shallow for his words to properly come out. "The common variable is not environment... But, proximity." His gaze did not leave her. "You," he said. It was not accusing, but simply precise. "I am adapting more efficiently in your presence than in isolation," he continued. "That adaptation is occurring without conscious intent on my part. I find that unacceptable."
Another pause, longer this time, as he was visibly straining for deeper thoughts, even if he now seemed more himself.
Emni was not a counsellor by trade, but she was a doctor and she understood the value of silence when a patient was formulating a thought. Whether you called it presence or bedside manner or just patience, it was one of the most valuable tools she had available to her. Still, a part of her dearly wanted to ask him why that was unacceptable. He had, after all, asked to be returned to her care.
"That," he said finally, "is logically why I came here." He broke eye contact then, looking down at the floor as if the surface itself required inspection. "I will not make decisions while in an altered state," Karim went on. "Nor will I ignore a variable simply because it is inconvenient."
He shifted forward, setting the cup down with deliberate care. Then, without asking, without ceremony, he reached for one of the cushions from the couch. He placed it on the floor near the wall, not close enough to intrude on her space, but not distant either.
Lowering himself down, he sat briefly before easing onto his side, back to the couch, knees drawn in slightly. It was not a position of collapse. It was controlled and intentional.
"I will remain here," Karim declared, eyes open, fixed on a point somewhere ahead of him. "While I consider this." He exhaled slowly. "You are not required to engage, Emni," he added, another short silence descending, and then he also said: "Nor to leave."
For a held breath, Emni stayed where she was, still and slow breathing. A dozen responses flew through her mind and then a dozen more at least half of which revolved around relinquishing the couch to him so he wasn't lying on the floor. Each one she considered and discarded nearly as quickly as it arose. Finally, she brought her mug back to her lips, drained it, and then set it on the table next to his. She picked up the PADD she had discarded earlier, bringing the display back to life and finding the spot where she had left off reading.
Her eyes flicked from the PADD to the still, but clearly awake, figure on the floor.
"You are always welcome in my home, Karim," she said softly enough that her words would not disturb, but loud enough to reach him. It was neither an invitation nor a simple act of hospitality. It was reinforcement. That he was not intruding. That her space was his too for as long as he needed or wanted it.
When she finally set the PADD back on the table, stretching her legs out along the length of the couch and pointing her toes toward herself until her calves and lower back tightened with the motion, Karim's breath had evened out into the steady rhythm of sleep. Carefully she stood, padding over to the replicator to dispose of their empty mugs before disappearing into the bedroom.
Kyi'i had re-entered the room sometime while she read and had curled up on the opposite end of the couch, watching his original owner through slitted, half-asleep, eyes. He was still there when she returned carrying a soft bundle of blanket that she carefully draped over the prone figure by the wall. Karim, in sleep, was calm; a stillness that resembled the man she remembered from before their run-in with the Vidiians.
She made a study of his face as she straightened. In sleep he looked younger, with all of the severity of expression and pain smoothed away. For a moment she was tempted to brush back a stray lock that threatened to fall against his closed lids.
Instead, she turned back to the couch, stooping to pet Kyi'i. The cat's rumbling purr sounded, filling the room with it's low comfort. "Keep an eye on him?" she whispered to the cat. Kyi'i merely blinked slowly back at her before she turned again to head for her bedroom.
---Backpost By---
Lieutenant Commander Emni t'Nai
Executive Officer
Lieutenant Commander Karim
Diplomatic Liaison - On Medical Leave
