Lt. Commander Yogan Yalu — Past presence
jkpbem
(( OOC: Capt. Piruzian is making a brief NPC cameo here. Blink and you’ll miss her! I made sure to clear it with the top table before writing this one up. ))
(( Subway Sam’s, Deck 225/226, Deep Space 224 ))
Yogan had caught glimpses of Captain Gaiane Piruzian a few times on previous visits to Deep Space 224–browsing in a shop, queueing at a restaurant–but never approached her. He’d changed bodies twice since they knew each other, so trying to strike up a conversation with her didn’t really make sense. “Hi, you don’t know me, but we had a tumultuous relationship twenty years ago when I was someone else. She’s dead, and then I became another someone else, who is now herself, also dead. But how have you been doing?”
The point of Symbiosis was for the symbiont to gain new experiences over lifetimes, and the diversity of his past hosts’ backgrounds and professions had made encountering individuals from previous lifetimes a less frequent occurrence than one might think. The Trill were not a numerous people, and the galaxy was vast. Yogan could probably count on two hands the number of conversations he’d had with individuals from his past lives over the past three centuries. But this situation was different. Gaiane Piruzian had found him and wanted to talk.
And so, here they were, sitting across from each other at a table inside Subway Sams, which seemed to have withstood the reputational damage from the food-poisoning outbreak they had caused earlier in the year. There wasn’t much in the way of small talk. Considering their prior relationship, the typical pleasantries would have seemed forced and unnecessary.
Yalu: How did you know I was even here?
Piruzian: When I saw that Resolution was destroyed, and that a “Lieutenant Commander Yalu” was listed among the potential casualties, it brought back some memories. Naturally.
Gaiane sipped her tea, creating a break in the conversation that seemed to swallow up the emotion of her statement.
Piruzian: So I did some checking. It didn’t take long to find out who you were––are. Who you are. I was relieved to hear you survived.
Yalu: ::smirks:: So was I. ::beat:: I was aboard a space station when Resolution was evacuated, and my away team escaped on a craft before the station’s life support failed.
Gaiane looked at Yogan with her trademark “two-meanings-in-one-look” expression. He knew what she was going to say.
Piruzian: Did you get off the station yourself? Or did someone have to drag you out because you were too busy being a hero?
Gaiane’s tone was more pointed than Yogan expected, but she wasn’t a million light years away from how things actually played out.
(( Flashback – Genesis Lab, Rinascita Station – Stardate 239810.13 ))
Keita: Let’s go, if your other team is the control room it’s right in our path.
Yalu: You go. I’ll be right behind you.
His own words pierced him, just as painfully as if they’d been fired from a phaser. Twenty-four years ago, on the bridge of the USS Valley Forge, he’d said the exact same words. They were always a lie; a cosy turn of phrase to make a fellow officer feel less guilty about leaving a comrade behind. He looked at Iljor, and saw the face of the ensign to whom Auzell had said “I’ll be right behind you,” at Chin’toka.
That ensign believed the lie. At first. Thankfully, she realized the deception and came back to scrape what was left of Auzell off the deck and carry her to an escape pod. The experience of hauling a mortally wounded officer through a wrecked ship was surely a trauma from which the young junior officer would not likely have recovered. That ensign, whose name neither Auzell nor Yogan ever learned, was the reason why Yogan Yalu existed. Why Yalu continued to exist, and would go on existing. He couldn’t put Iljor in that position. He couldn’t let whoever became Joined to Yalu next see Iljor’s face in his memory for the rest of their life.
Yalu: Scratch that. Let’s get the hell out of here. ::pointing the phaser at Scrunch:: All of us.
(( End flashback ))
Yalu: You will be pleased to know that the only hero at this table is this one.
Yogan pointed to the sandwich sitting in front of him. More out of habit than hunger, he had ordered a half-meter sausage-and-pepper hero, but the gravity of the conversation left him without much of an appetite. As he and Gaiane spoke, the massive sandwich remained untouched. The operations captain and Auzell’s former partner let out a closed-mouth chuckle, which as memory served, was about as expressive as she tended to get.
Piruzian: I’m glad. Auz was a lot of wonderful things, but her gung-ho used to drive me crazy. ::beat:: I guess I shouldn’t say that about her. Saying it to you is like gossipping behind her back in front of her face.
Yalu: No, it’s okay. She knew. ::beat:: She loved what she did, and she was great at it, but some of that bluster and swagger was really to paint over her fear.
Gaiane leaned back in her chair with a satisfied look, as if she heard something she’d been wanting to hear all along. It made sense to Yogan. Their two-year relationship was a roller coaster of high highs and low lows, periods of almost euphoric soul-mate connection followed by deep canyons of misunderstanding. They were on-again, off-again, and finally, on the eve of the Dominion War, off-again for good. Initially reassigned to different ships as the first wave of fighting broke out, they were reunited six months later aboard the USS Valley Forge; Auzell at tactical and Gaiane as chief of operations. They’d only just begun moving toward on-again when came Chin’toka. And that was the end of that.
Piruzian: Better late than never, I suppose. ::beat:: It’s strange. I know this isn’t possible, rationally, but I can recognize her in you.
Yalu: Less impossible than you might think. Joining is more than just sharing memories and experiences. I’m a completely different person to who I was before Yalu. Expressions, body language, instinctual reactions from all seven of them have become a part of me. ::starts rewrapping the sandwich, smirks:: And then some things, like this, are Yogan Verso through and through.
Another one of Gaiane’s closed-mouth laughs followed, and Yogan felt the twinge of Auzell’s feelings for her. There was nothing that could ever be done about it, of course–there was no greater transgression in Trill society than reassociation–but he found it comforting that her love for Gaiane could still make his heart skip a beat.
Yalu: So, Captain Piruzian. Sector Quartermaster for the Borderlands.
Piruzian: Acting Sector Quartermaster. It’s just a temporary thing. ::beat, wry:: That’s lasted a year.
Yalu: And then what?
Piruzian: I’m getting on a bit, but there are some goals I still have on my list. I’d like to find a position at Starfleet Operations. I miss living on Earth.
Yalu: You’ve got the pips on your collar. You don’t see a captain’s chair somewhere out there with your name on it?
In the middle of drinking a mouthful of tea, Gaiane reacted nonverbally with an emphatic head shake “no” before swallowing and confirming the gesture with words.
Piruzian: Absolutely not. I learned twenty years ago that that’s not the life for me.
The Human captain gave Yogan another knowing look, and he chuckled nervously under her gaze.
Piruzian: You?
Yalu: Since you mentioned it. I’ve taken some of the first steps, yes.
Piruzian: More than a few, from the looks of your service record. Auz would be proud of the officer you’re turning out to be.
One of Yogan’s biggest fears during the first years after Joining was how he would “stack up” against his past hosts, and whether they would have considered him worthy of continuing their legacy. His zhian’tara had gone a long way toward assuaging those fears, but he still thought about it from time to time.
Piruzian: She used to talk about who would come after her. She wondered what her future hosts would be like. She even wondered if any of them would follow in her footsteps. Is that the case with you?
Yogan’s recent medical issues and the intensity of Auzell’s memories in particular had instilled a new fear: was he becoming a copycat of those who came before him? Working through those memories with friends and professionals, especially after Resolution’s destruction, helped to bring that into sharper focus for him.
Yalu: ::shakes head:: All my past hosts have influenced me. Auzell is no different. But more than just influence, I think she has helped me to see something in myself that might have been there all along.
A rare, open-mouth smile from Gaiane made Yogan blush. In 24 years, she’d not lost a bit of the spark she had the day they first met.
Piruzian: Even if Auz had lived, I don’t know if we would have gotten back together. She was bombastic and impulsive, I always felt swept up in her energy. ::chuckles:: She was a force of nature.
Yalu: That’s a good way to put it. ::beat, grins:: Diplomatic, too.
Piruzian: But I am so glad that she continues to exist. ::beat:: I hate to do this, but I have to go. I’m meeting with the Sector Quartermaster from Zeta Gelis on subspace in ten minutes.
They both stood. Yogan didn’t know the best way to say farewell, but fortunately, he didn’t have to make the decision. Gai stepped around the table and gave him a tight hug. The feeling was strange, compared to the memory, given the difference in their sizes, but Yogan accepted the gesture with deep gratitude and affection.
Piruzian: Good luck on your new ship, Yogan. I’ll be following your career with great interest. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just let me know.
Yalu: Thank you, Captain. I will.
Gaiane left the table and Yogan resumed his seat, never taking his eyes off of her until she was out of sight. Then, alone at the table, he looked down at the giant sandwich he ordered.
Yalu: Hello, friend.
[End scene]
Lt. Commander Yogan Yalu
Helm Officer
USS Resolution NCC-78145
Justin D238804DS0