Counseling the Commodore

Posted on Thu May 10, 2018 @ 4:28pm by Commodore Michael Aravan & Lieutenant Miki Matsutaki

Mission: Falling Star
Location: Counseling
Timeline: MD 33 || 1700 Hours

It had been a rough couple days since leaving Deep Space 10 and the shock of meeting someone that claimed they knew him even if he didn't remember them. He had searched his memories for Lieutenant Matsutaki, but with all that had happened to him in the course of the years since he had entered the Academy, he wasn't surprised he had forgotten one person and probably more

When he arrived at the Counselor's office despite the lateness of the day, the computer had informed him that's where the young woman was. Probably getting her office set up the way she likes it and reviewing her personnel and records of people who had scheduled counseling sessions with the junior Counselors.

He paused and checked his uniform that he had yet to change out of, then reached forward to press the chime. As a Commodore, he could have easily entered with his own access codes, but he considered that to be rude and no one could accuse him of that.

Miki had ostensibly finished for the day, and was taking a moment to relax. Although her subordinates were there to ease the workload, Miki, who had never had to actually organize so large a group before, found the task quite daunting. She had never really been a leader, usually content to let others take the lead, the accolades and the responsibilities for themselves. Her first day was particularly difficult, as she had the added humiliation of the travesty that was her offering of courtesies to the Commanding Officer. However, the tasks she faced was made easier to handle with the help of those of her staff that had seen Chief Counselors come and go, who had heard, it seemed, everything there was to be rumored about her first day.

She had just swing into her lap the guitar she had in her office as its only personal touch she allowed in her personal workspace, and the slender fingers of her left hand fell easily to the first chord of her favorite piece for unwinding, when the chime sounded.

"Come in," she replied as her fingers effortlessly played the first notes of her favorite composition to relax to. She only opened her eyes to the hiss of the doors opening. Upon seeing who it was, Miki sharply swung the guitar back into it's floor stand, using the momentum to snap to her feet, where she stood motionless.

"Sir..." Miki said, resolutely determined not to embarrass herself the same way twice.

"At easy," Michael said as he stepped in and the door closed. "I think we need to talk, Lieutenant."

Miki relaxed slightly, and held out a hand, inviting the Commodore to sit, "Well, talking and listening are the very things I am here to do. Normally, I don't necessarily have the luxury of knowing in advance what the conversation is going to be about. So before we get into it, I... I'd like to offer my apologies. The other day, in your Ready Room... in front of your Executive... that was... my behavior was... unprofessional. I embarrassed you in front of others, and myself in front of you. I just want you to know that I acknowledge these failings, and haven't dismissed the need for me to improve, Sir."

Miki blushed slightly as she was suddenly hit with self-consciousness. To cover this, she resorted to a shift, "These sorts of conversations, I find, usually go better over tea."
Sure, the invitation was formulaic, almost cliché, but it was universally useful. "Would you care for some?"

"I never touch the stuff," Michael said. "And yes, you did catch me off guard, but I really can't say I was embarrassed. Command has taught me that being embarrassed is a waste of time and mental resources. However, I didn't expected an introduction like you made."

Miki nodded. "To be fair, you weren't the only one caught off guard." She slowly made her way over to the small replicator set in the wall of the office. "When I saw you sitting at the captain's desk in the Ready Room, I thought someone in the Admiralty was playing some sort of weird prank that they picked up from watching some footage from 'This is your life', a mass-entertainment form from the late 20th century."

Turning her attention to the replicator, she placed a small teapot on its shelf, "Gamma vessel, water, 370 kelvin." A moment later, she lifted the now-steaming teapot off the replicator plate and carried it over to her desk, setting it down next to what at first appeared to be an odd sculpture, but which now manifested as a collection of Japanese tea utensils and bowls.

She took another tiny teapot, which had a straight handle protruding from its side, perpendicular to its spout, and lifted off its lid. Opening the small caddy, she scooped out a small measure of tea leaves, and placed it with practiced care into the pot, before lifting the teapot she had earlier taken from the replicator, and pouring an equally measured amount of hot water in with the tea leaves, then replaced the lid on the second teapot.

"I hadn't even gotten over that little gem of a surprise, when you hit me with another. That's where the embarrassment came in for me. Honestly, given the amount of time you, Gage, Tina and I spent together as kids, I was surprised that an introduction was necessary. When I wasn't sleeping, at school, or practicing my music and martial arts, I practically lived at your place. Made a complete mockery of my Academy psych evaluation." Without taking her eyes off Michael, she plucked a bowl from the top of the tower of bowls next to the teapot, spun it between her fingers, set it down on the table, and poured the green liquid contents of the odd teapot into it. Lifting it with the fingertips of both hands toward her mouth, she took a sip.

"If word of that fiasco gets back to Earth, some analysts in Starfleet Medical are going to have their credentials questioned," she said with a veiled chuckle. Setting her bowl back on the table, she leaned forward on her desk, her face suddenly devoid of all of its earlier mirth, "Do you really remember nothing of me in your childhood?"

"Things have been hectic since I joined Starfleet and got even more so when I was assigned to different ships since I've been in," Mihcael said slowly. "When I made Command, I was given this ship and been sent on some very dangerous missions, such as this one. I'll talk to Gage and see if he remembers you, but right now, I'm afraid that I don't."

Miki slowly nodded and straightened again. "That's understandable, I guess. There are a few years where I was so overworked that my recollection of them is... a little fuzzy too. It would be hypocritical of me to say that there is something wrong with you just because you don't remember me, I was never that memorable anyway," she trailed off a little, before snapping back to full speaking volume, "I don't anticipate this needing to become a professional issue, Commodore, and I'm sure on the personal level, it can eventually average itself out to just two old friends whose lives took very different paths that, for whatever reason, occasionally converge and run parallel for a while, before parting ways again. An acceptance of that fate, I think, would be best: least painful for me, and least confusing for you. Toward that end..."

Miki rounded her desk, leaned against its edge directly opposite Michael, takes a picture frame sitting on her desk, and holds it face-down out to Michael, "perhaps this picture from my conservatoire graduation might help. Sorry it's not direct evidence of the two of us knowing each other. You volunteered to take the picture, on some pretext involving a sudden bout of camera-shyness. Given what I was like at that age, when I was happy, and how happy I was at that particular moment, it was probably a good thing." She suffixed that with a smirking snort, "Whatever happened to that girl you arrived at my graduation with, anyway?"

The image in the frame shows Gage, in his late teens, being hit in the cheek by a sneak kiss from Miki who, apart from a blue robe and mortarboard cap, looks completely unaffected by the passage of a decade.

Michael looked at the image. It was definitely his little brother and a person who looked like a younger version of the woman standing in front of him. He frowned as a flash of memory surfaced, a woman, him and Gage laughing before his Mom yelled at them about something. He shook his head as it faded out again before he could focus. "For the sake of argument, let's say you are this person from my youth," he said. "Unforunately, I'm having a hard time remembering and we don't have anyone on board who could bring those memories to the surface."

"I'm not going to push you very hard to try, it was a long time ago. The tides of memory ebb and flow under their own moon. The memories are there, and they will rise at their own pace, whenever there is some sensory stimulus that promotes their doing so, some scent or sound that will prod your memory of your earlier years. It might even be that you catch me in one of my old habits, that does it. I'll do my best to not to blurt out your name in public," Miki said with a remorseful sigh, "or to distract you when it is important for you to focus. With that said, we should not be strangers to one another. My personal strangeness notwithstanding."

"Thank you," Michael said and meant it. It certainly wasn't easy for him to have someone from his past be there in front of him and only have a fleeting glimpse of someone that he might have known. "Perhaps I'll talk to Lieutenant Rho and see if he can pull something from my memories."

Miki nodded, "While I wouldn't normally recommend turning to an Intelligence officer for help in such things, because... well... let's just say that Intelligence isn't great at exercising the discretion of not prying into things best kept personal and private... I understand that this Lieutenant Rho is a Ullian, and a telepath is probably best equipped to help."

She leaned forward, her expression particularly serious, "Just... be careful. Whether you remember me or not, I say this not just as a Counselor, but as a friend... There may be things in the past that your subconscious has good cause to block the memory of, and which have enough of an association with earlier memories that those earlier memories have been blocked as well. Taking so direct an approach may be unpleasant, even painful."

"I trust him or he wouldn't be here," Michael said. "I appreciate it, Lieutenant and in the meantime, don't be put off by my absence of memory. I'm sure that I've forgotten more than just you over the years. I get terrible migraines that make me forget my name at times."

He paused then smiled as he remembered one of her previous questions. "As for the young lady I went to your graduation with? I married her. We have two children together and two on the way."

Miki smiled at this "news". While it was a surprise to her, it also seemed to suit Michael down to the ground, as well as to go some way toward his slightly distracted behavior so many years ago. Although this meant that she was going to have to put aside any residual hopes of her own, they were the remnants of childhood and adolescence, and she had long come to the conclusion that they were probably hopeless anyway. As a consequence, she was able to smile and speak now with absolute sincerity, "Good... I had always hoped you would find someone that would make you happy, even if it was someone else..."

She groaned and lifted her hand in a halting gesture, "Ugh... look, do me a favor and just forget I said that last bit, eh? Let's just say that you being happy makes me happy, and I'm going to do my best to make sure that you remain happy, and not just for personal reasons."

"I am happy, if overworked," Michael admitted. "And consider it forgotten." The last thing he needed was someone from his past that still had a thing for him. Spencer would kill them both and their kids would be orphans. "So should we set up counseling meetings for my headaches I get on a regular from command?"

"Well... the migraines themselves would be a medical problem, and my training in that regard didn't go much further than a second year medical student. So unless you're after a traditional remedy, you'd be asking the wrong person to deal with them once they strike," Miki quipped with a smirk. "That said, I can help you find a strategy for heading them off before they occur. If you swing by gymnasium 3 any day around 1630 hours, we can get started. Just bring yourself, I'll take care of everything else you'll need."

"I barely have enough time to see my wife and I'm usually on the bridge at that hour," he said before he glanced at the chronometer. "For now, I have another meeting to go to."

A thought flashed through Miki's mind as Michael said that. "Perhaps that is the source of your migraine issue. Try stepping away a little further from the Command Chair when your duty shift ends. Not that easy, I know, but I'm sure Captain Weisz is up to the task of commanding the ship in your absence. That's a competency the big brother I was never blessed with by blood would be sure of. Now..." She stood up, and snatched up her velvet bundle, which until now had been leaning against the wall in the corner, clearly intent on leaving the office. "... walk me as far as the turbolift, I'm already 45 minutes late for my gym session, and I want to get in at least an hour's workout before dinner... unless your meeting happens to be on this deck, of course."

"No, unfortunately, it doesn't," Michael told her as he indicated the door. "As for Captain Weisz, she's a very commendable officer with a great head on her shoulders. She also oversees all the department heads, handles conflicts among the crew, gives me briefs on the thousand and one reports that come in every day, and actually helps me greatly with the running of the ship."

"As for me, I'm the commanding officer of the ship, and a Task Force Group Commander of the Asteria Division for the Task Force, which means I have a half a dozen commanding officers reporting to me which I have to handle and keep the crew and ship safe here. See? I don't have time to take time."

Miki shook her head almost mournfully, "Bakka... The fact that you don't have time to take time is the likely cause of your migraines, but if you don't take the time that you say you don't have time to take, your migraines force the time upon you, and will end up turning you into a useless lump in the process." Forgetting herself for a moment, Miki playfully tapped Michael on the shoulder with a single finger, "Sucks to be you, neh?"

The pair approached the doors of the turbolift, Miki returned to her more professional demeanor, "But seriously, I'll give the issue some thought, and look into your schedule. We may be able to tweak it a little, gather up a few minutes for you to relax, maybe teach you some simple acupressure that can help you as a stopgap when you're on the go. I'll hit the books this evening for ya."

Michael stopped and looked at her at her previous comment. "It may suck to be me, Lieutenant, but keep in mind that I am your superior and commanding officer," he told her. "As for the rest, talk to my Yeoman about my schedule. I'll look forward to what you can find." As the turbolift appeared, he turned and headed off in another direction.