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EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

[Colonel Hauq | Transporter Room 1 | Deck 5 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz
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Hauq materialized alone, dressed in the unremarkable leathers typically worn by any Klingon warrior: a sleeveless black tunic under an oiled matte grey, devoid of any ostentatious finery or symbols of rank. His eyes, the blue-green of an ancient – nearly extinct – southern bloodline, narrowed as the light of materialization faded. Abnormally large hands balled into fists as his nostrils flared; an invasive stench had crept into the sterile, recycled air.
 
Romulans, Hauq nearly snarled, only just managing to control himself with an upward twitch of his top lip; a hunter targ, scenting prey.

Signs of battle and ongoing repairs were recognized, as well, along with the scents of blood, fire, and unwashed bodies. Most tellingly, he could read the visible weariness in the youth before him – a man, in all but the years and scars required to be one. Hauq nodded at his murmured welcome, averting his gaze to spare the boy further discomfort; he had neither the time nor the interest to exchange pleasantries.

“I am Hauq, son of Dorak. You will take me to your chief diplomat,” the Colonel stated.

“Is…a-are you expected…?”

“No, lad,” Hauq lowered his chin, head tilted in a curious mix of sympathy and challenge. “Nevertheless, I will see her – now.”

He heard the boy swallow, then a murmured agreement followed.

[Moments later…| Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01| USS Theurgy]

Hauq nodded to the security escort before the door swished open, leather creaking with every movement. He stepped with the confidence of a man sent to speak for another, the words already queued at the forefront of his mind – their consequences irrelevant, for whatever reaction they caused.

After coming to rest near the center of the room, Hauq slowly turned, his sharpened senses taking in the space; what had taken place here, he could not say – but he knew it was a place death had recently visited. Something lingered there, in the air; almost like an echo…an echo of a glorious struggle for survival...

A blink snapped his mind back to the moment at hand; Hauq forced his attention to settle on the solitary soul he had come to meet with an involuntary intensity. His expression was carefully controlled between the fire of justified anger and the cold demand for explanation; chin lowered, eyes wide and fierce, breath steady.

“che'wI' 'oH, qa'pu,” he named her, purposefully lacking any hint of humor. “A title you continue to earn at every turn, it seems,” a wry smirk followed, just the barest twitch at the corner of Hauq’s mouth. “The Chancellor bade me speak with you, while he and your President occupy themselves with their own discussions of state,” a pause, only momentary – enough for the woman to possibly deduce that Martok had sent him to say something the Chancellor could not? She looked exhausted onto death...perhaps her wits had fled? 

“Will you speak with me, as we are...respectful allies? Or shall I,” the Colonel flashed his jagged fangs in an ugly, cold smile – then jerked his head towards the door, “bide, and let politics make corpses of us all?”

He doubted Madsen would miss the rhetoric – nor fail to see why he had come and what he had to say – but that was beside the point. His eyes flared wide as his head dipped; a nod, but there was nothing but challenge in the gesture. He wanted her to shake off the weariness that clung to her frame like a worn cloak – he wanted to see the steel in her eye.

Most of all, he wanted her to explain just what in all the hells the Federation was doing.

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #1 –
[ Lieutenant Enyd Isolde Madsen | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

The door opened and her hand was already moving toward the water carafe on the side table — because caffeine was what had gotten her through the last six hours and caffeine was now actively working against her, every nerve ending running just slightly ahead of the rest of her body, the floor seeming to tilt a quarter-degree every time she stood still too long — and then she registered who it was and stopped.

Hauq.

Alive. Standing. Filling the doorframe with the contained displeasure that she had, in their admittedly irregular and frequently undignified history, come to recognize as his default setting when she was involved. The leathers hugging his battle-hardened physique. The blue-green eyes, which she had thought about more than was professionally appropriate and considerably less than was personally honest. The jaw set like something carved from a bad mood.

Alive.

The tightness in her chest that she had been managing since the battle — the specific, carefully maintained tightness of someone who had not yet allowed herself to check the lists — cracked along a line she hadn't known was there. Her eyes went bright, and she felt the heat of it behind her face, and she had approximately two seconds before something embarrassing happened.

So she crossed the room and hit him. Not a tap. Not the kind of restrained contact that diplomats used to communicate displeasure. A genuine, closed-fist punch to cheek, the full weight of accumulated caffeine and sleep deprivation and six hours of walking the razor's edge between history and catastrophe behind it. Her knuckles reported the impact to her brain, and her brain noted that Hauq was built like something a less imaginative species would have used to anchor a building.

She shook her hand out once and said nothing about that.

"We're skipping the part where we're polite to each other." Her voice came out steadier than she'd expected, which was something. She turned before he could respond and went to the replicator. "We're doing the part where we're two people who survived the same battle, and we talk like it. I'm too damn tired for anything else."

She did not apologize for the language. She was not going to apologize for the language.

Two waters. She set his on the desk without looking at him and took hers to the chair in front of the desk — not behind it, not the position of authority, just the chair that happened to be there, adjacent to the one he could take if he decided to take it. She sat down, tucked one foot under herself, and drank half the water in a manner entirely inconsistent with her diplomatic training.

Her stomach was still doing the thing where it felt weightless, the days of caffeine compounds from three different culinary databases doing their collective best to convince her nervous system that she was in freefall. Her feet tingled. The inside of her head felt like someone had left a communications channel open on too high a frequency and forgotten to close it.

She looked at Hauq. He had called her che'wI' 'oH, qa'pu. He had said "as we are, respectful allies" in a tone that suggested he had several pointed opinions about the current state of respectful alliances. He had mentioned Martok, and he had paused after mentioning Martok in a way that was doing a great deal of work.

"Martok sent you to say something he couldn't say in the room." She wasn't asking. She wrapped both hands around the water glass, elbows on her knees, and let the cold of it register against her palms. "Which means he has thoughts about what just happened that he needs transmitted through a channel that doesn't appear on any official record." Outside the viewport, the stars held their positions, indifferent and exact. "And you want to know what the Federation thinks it's doing." She exhaled. Short. Not quite a laugh. "So do I, some days."

She met his eyes directly — the blue-green of them, the challenge in them, the thing underneath the challenge that she had learned, over the course of their haphazard and reliably inconvenient encounters, to read as something closer to investment than anger. He was not a man who got angry at things he didn't care about. She had found that oddly reassuring. Still did.

"Ask me what you came to ask, Hauq. I'll answer what I'm able to answer and tell you plainly what I'm not."

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #2 –
[Colonel Hauq | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

The flash of fire in her eyes spoke to Hauq's soul in a way he had not prepared for; anger, fury, indignation – these were the emotive responses he had expected – yet the Diplomat's eyes had flared to life after a moment of…something else. At first, the windows of her soul widened with what seemed like relief mixed with longing, then clouded into something like regret or shame as color flooded her cheeks. Then her body language shifted entirely; shoulders set, jaw firm, brows knitted.

The blue steel of her eyes; adamant, glinting.

For a heartbeat, Hauq was entranced, given just a glimpse of the purest manifestation of Enyd: a storm of change, a catalyst – a force of nature, wild and untamed, uncontrollable, undeniable.

Joined with such a power, a man could conquer all creation – or be left to languish in its utter ruin.

He read the blow, of course; the impact registered as a mild jolt to the side of his jaw – which Hauq lifted a fraction, to spare her fist from injury. The physical sensation meant nothing – less than nothing – but the intent? The force that drove her, the motive essence that set her warrior's heart to unimaginable acts of courage and desire – he felt that; felt it reverberate through the marrow of his bones, through the furnace of his heart, down into the depths of his own soul.

Invigorating, intoxicating.

It was there and gone in the time it took her to strike, and Hauq felt himself mourn its loss more keenly than the death of his own warriors. A growl, deep in his chest, resonated as Enyd turned away from him; it was all he could do to keep from roaring his loss at the ceiling – from stripping the cloth from his chest – from tearing the stars down from heaven itself just to lay at her feet, in the hopes of feeling her power again.

She spoke, proving his point without realizing it; she had known, or deduced correctly, why he had come. Even exhausted beyond reasonable endurance her mind still remained sharp, and if Hauq had been a man of lesser constitution – Cardassian, Romulan, or mere human – he'd likely be unconscious. The strike was perfectly thrown; she’d held nothing back. The distress in her tone, the hoarseness, spoke volumes. For a moment, Hauq found himself drawn to offer aid – a word, a gesture, anything…but what could he possibly offer? He was made of far rougher material than her; like stone to silk.

His hands were made for many purposes; comfort was not one of them.

Hauq pivoted away, slightly, to the viewport – blinking – forcing his heart to slow. Silently, he repeatedly pleaded with himself; a mantra of self-control against the intoxicating flood of conflicting desire she had unleashed upon him: Remember yourself. Remember your oaths – your duty.His body tensed with the struggle; hands clenched into fists – lips and nose trembled with barely suppressed emotions.

By the time her eyes met his, he had it contained – buried deep down in his heart – chained there by thick ropes of unyielding will. His…infatuation…with her had nearly broken him. All in the span of a few heartbeats, he blinked, bewildered to the point of doubt in his own mind.

Enough, he nearly snarled. Focus.

Hauq wiped the trickle of blood that leaked through the corner of his lips with the back of his hand; the result of an annoying gash on his tongue – an injury due more to his own teeth rather than Enyd’s fist.

Still...

“Very well,” he replied in a growled murmur with the faintest of nods, then forced himself to straiten under the weight of the burden in his chest. “You…know us, Enyd Isolde Madsen; you know us well,” Hauq spoke in a rumbled baritone that spilled from his lips like a dam on the verge of collapsing beneath the weight and momentum of a flooded river. He moved – slowly, deliberately – to seat himself opposite her, his attention fixated on her face with absolute focus. “We have given much of ourselves to this venture, you and I; more than either of us had known we were capable of – I see the mark of it writ upon your soul. That…grieves me,” he admitted through clenched teeth, as close as a confession to her that Hauq could ever allow.

He let that sit in the air between them for a few heartbeats – no more.

“We aided you when we had no cause to. You aided us in return. We have faced everything – treachery, revelation, honor and glory. Now tell me why you have forsaken those oaths of shared blood spilled,” he paused to ensure Madsen felt the words, the grievance behind them, and the unspoken implications behind that. “Tell me why you allow these…politics… to distract you from a cause justly pursued against an evil that cannot be allowed to exist. Tell me why you embrace a nest of vipers at your breast, while you shun… those that would walk with you through chaos incarnate without hesitation.” His tone softened gradually, turned into something closer to confused disappointment.

Stone-faced, his gaze shifted to the glass of clear liquid then snapped back up to her eyes with a glint of amusement; an attempt to let her see that he understood more than he let on – that he was no witless barbarian – that she was not the only one with vision to see both sides of the coin.

“…and what in all the hells of creation makes you believe water to be a worthy toast to such a victory,” he smirked then, procuring a flask of bloodwine from an inner pouch. The scent of it spread as soon as he unscrewed the top, drinking deeply before setting the flask next to the untouched glass of water with another nod of encouragement, easily within Enyd’s reach.

“Drink. Speak. Then, you will sleep,” his eyes narrowed, “one way or another. The time for respite is now – you would be wise to take it while you can.”

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #3 –
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Chief Diplomatic Officer's Office | Deck 08 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

The laugh surprised even her.

It came out short and genuine — not the diplomatic variety she kept on hand for situations requiring the appearance of warmth — and she shook her head at the flask he'd produced with the particular fondness one reserves for people who are absolutely wrong about what you need and completely right about everything else.

"Hauq." She held up the glass of water like evidence at a tribunal. "I have consumed enough caffeine from three separate species' culinary databases to put down a giant targ. The water is not a preference. The water is triage." She set it back down. "My blood is approximately sixty percent stimulant compound at this moment and I am one poorly-timed thought away from ripping my hair out, shredding my uniform, and running foaming at the mouth down the corridors until my nervous system remembers it's attached to a human being."

Her gaze drifted to the ceiling with a look of genuine longing.

"I had plans for that, actually. The holodecks." She let the thought sit there a moment. "When they're back online."

She looked at the flask. Then, with the air of a woman making a calculated tactical decision, she reached for it.

"Although." She turned it over in her hand, considering. "A depressant to counter the stimulant. That's not irrational. That's chemistry."

She drank. Didn't grimace. Stared at the flask for a long moment as though it had personally misled her about its intentions, then set it on the desk between them.

"Right." She slid it back toward him. "You want to know why I'm playing the long game instead of swinging the sword."

Her feet found the edge of the desk. She put them there without ceremony, let her head tip back against the chair, and felt two pins give in her bun — the whole thing beginning its slow architectural collapse. She didn't fix it.

"I'm going to tell you something that has no bearing on anything tactical," she said to the ceiling, "and I'm telling you because I want you to understand that I know the difference between losing the thread and choosing a longer one." She brought her eyes level with his. "I was engaged once." Her lips turned upward in a wry smile. "Well, actually twice, but this one was more...traditional?" Her half-shrug caused more of her hair to shake loose and again she didn't try to fix it. "On Cardassia." She watched his face. "Javec Praar. Aide to Castellan Ghemor. Former military. Son of a deposed elite." The corner of her mouth lifted, dry. "You might be offended to hear this, but I think you two would've enjoyed hunting together or some other manly pursuit where you can beat you chests and gloat over one another over a strong drink."

She let that land and kept watching as she continued, her voice matter-of-fact.

"He died in my arms. A wound that should've been mine. I felt the last push of his heart — felt his blood go from warm to not." She didn't look away. "And then I went somewhere very dark for a while." She retrieved the flask without asking and took another pull, set it back. "Specifically, I drank myself to the bottom of a bottle and then climbed back up, found a colleague I found deeply irritating, and performed an Orion dance on his desk." Her thumb traced the edge of the chair absently. "I was informed, with some precision, that if I didn't recover my composure, I would be removed from the fleet." She tilted her head. "At the time I thought that sounded like an adequate plan. Find a hole. Wallow in it. Die of misery in some unremarkable corner of the quadrant." Her thumb stilled. "I had held the man I loved while his body stopped. I had brought him there. It seemed like a fair trade."

The ship hummed around them. The stars outside held their positions with the specific indifference of things that have watched empires rise and collapse and remained entirely unmoved.

"Something intervened. I'd call it luck but luck doesn't feel like nearly dying several times on hot rock." She exhaled. "The Vulcan Forge. A pilgrimage. I have no business surviving that kind of terrain — I have gusto in abundance, but I am still human, and humans are relatively fragile when stripped of technology and pointed at ancient lava fields." Her voice had gone quieter. Not softer. "But I burned through the self-pity in there. The grief. The part that wanted to give up because giving up felt like the appropriate scale of response to what I'd lost." She looked back at him. "I came out the other side still angry. Still tired. But pointed in a direction."

She let her eyes close. In the silence, her hair finished its collapse — the bun giving up entirely, dark strands shifting loose across her shoulder. She didn't open her eyes immediately.

"I tell you that," she said, "so you understand what I mean when I say I don't lose the thread. Even now. Especially now." She opened her eyes. "When people call me names — and they do, and not all of them as generous as yours—" she gave him the wink, brief and direct, "—it's usually because the line I'm walking looks, from certain angles, like I'm walking the wrong direction."

She brought her feet down and sat forward, elbows on the desk, and when she raised her hand to count, she did it the way she did everything — without preamble.

"First." One finger. "The Infested within Klingon borders, and Martok's consolidation of power — that is not a Starfleet problem to solve. I want to be plain about that. If Theurgy remains in Klingon space running Martok's errands, the other Houses won't see an ally. They'll see a pet targ on a Federation leash, and Martok's authority becomes a question mark that his enemies will answer for him." She met his eyes and held them. "Information on fighting the Infested — freely shared. Technology, personnel when the need is specific and the ask is direct — of course. But the Theurgy cannot be seen doing Martok's interior work for him. That is a battle he must be seen winning himself."

Second finger.

"The D'ravsai Coalition." She registered whatever moved across his face and continued before he could respond to it. "I know. I know what a Romulan is to a Klingon. I am not asking you to change that. I am pointing out that there is now a new governmental power taking shape on Romulus that is not the Senate as it was, not Tal'Aura's remnant, not Shinzon's excess — it is something that has not existed before, and it has not claimed one contested planet, not rattled one disputed border, and has specifically requested to be left alone to put itself together." Her finger stayed up. "More to the point — the Tal'Shiar, which was at the root of most of the Romulan-Klingon friction that wasn't pure cultural theater — has been gutted. The new government has made clear they have no interest in sustaining it. The cells still out there are severed limbs. They'll move, they'll cause damage, but they have no heart now." She dropped the finger. "I would think Martok might find some satisfaction in that."

Third finger. Her voice shifted slightly — not softer, but careful in a way the previous two hadn't required.

"The President." She exhaled through her nose, jaw tightening once. "I cannot control her. I would not have chosen that speech. I want to be honest with you about that — not because it changes anything, but because I think you deserve the honest version." Her hand stayed up, but her eyes moved to the viewport, then back. "What she did has put a target on her back from two directions simultaneously. From the Infested, who will read this civil unrest as the exact piece of chaos they've been cultivating — and they will use it, Hauq, because that is what they do. Reality becomes their raw material. Mother doubts child. Brother turns on brother." Her hand lowered. "And from the uninfested who genuinely believe she overstepped her authority, which is not an unreasonable reading of what happened, and who will use that belief with complete sincerity to undermine everything she tried to build with that pardon."

She sat back, the chair taking her weight fully.

"We may have just handed them the keystone." She said it flatly, without drama. "The Theurgy has been visible since the pardon. Anyone who aided us, anyone who stands near the President — they're now in the crosshairs of something we cannot fully map. And when people start denouncing each other, when the accusations begin to compound, the Infested don't have to lift a finger. The uninfested do it for them."

She looked at her hands, where they'd come to rest in her lap. Then back at him.

"And the screening." Her voice went very quiet. "The entire quadrant, Hauq. We still don't know where they come from. We don't know if more are coming. We can fight the ones we find. We can burn out the nests we locate. But the mathematics of screening a galactic population with our current tools—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Didn't finish it. Didn't need to.

"Now is not the time," she said instead, "for impulsive emotion. Not the time to doubt the people who have proven themselves, not the time to move fast because moving fast feels better than moving carefully." She held his gaze, and her voice came out level — not commanding, not soft — the tone of someone speaking a thing they have believed for long enough that it has become structural. "At the core of everything — everything, all of it, every line being held on every front — is eradicating the Infested. That's what we're protecting. That's what comes first."

Her chin lifted a fraction.

"After that, we can go back to arguing about territory and culture and whether Romulans are trustworthy and whether Federation diplomats ask too many questions." The ghost of something moved at her mouth. "I look forward to it, frankly. It'll mean we survived long enough to care about the smaller things again."

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #4 –
[Colonel Hauq | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

He watched her the way a man might sit and ponder the meaning behind an artist’s choice of color, or brush stroke; attention widened to encompass the entire work – fascinated yet detached. The little details still mattered: the way her hair fell slowly at the mercy of gravity and the micro-shifts in her posture – the way her tone shifted, once the brief internal debate had been concluded – the way weariness still pulled at the corners of her eyes and mouth, still threatened to drag her limbs down, and the way she still refused to yield.

Hauq was a man whose occupation demanded a higher level of observation; much like his fists, or blade, or choice of disruptor – he had long ago honed it into a weapon.

The chair was slightly smaller than required, forcing him to sit upright, arms draped over the rests as if he were a monarch of old, before the time of Kahless; when Madsen lounged, the Colonel’s posture remained the same – mostly because he didn’t fully trust the furniture’s architecture. The Federation seemed to enjoy building cushy, elegant things to mask their functionality; the Theurgy itself was a fine example of that – a ship built to rival any warship in the quadrant alone – yet it was riddled with fine embellishment and fanciful fillagree.

Madsen drank, then set about answering the question he’d asked.

He offered no response initially, only listened with rapt attentiveness. As humans were wont to do, the diplomat opted to take the ‘long route’ in her reply; Hauq didn’t begrudge her. He wanted to understand. Martok had requested this from him. The tale held the familiar sting of loss, something that even strangers shared if given enough time to converse. Anyone who lived long enough lost someone they loved. Madsen had the privilege of loving someone deeply – truly deeply – before that loves tragic end; yet Hauq felt no sympathy for that end. He felt bewildered that she would let such a thing – such an honorable sacrifice, such a courageous end for one so beloved – tear her down and nearly destroy her.

Such a man, Cardassian or no, deserved to live forever in her memory as an example of what love truly was: powerful, consuming, a passion that drove all sentient creatures to extreme, irrational behavior – yet fleeting, and always, regardless of how the end comes, tragic and painful.

Yet she found a way back, in the fires of Vulcan; Hauq would have recommended the Fire Wastes near the equatorial zone of Qo’noS, if given the chance, but they hardly knew each other then.

Fire is fire, he shrugged mentally.

The meaning behind the wink was understood, yet the way she categorized his ‘name’ for her was not; The Storm without End was a title, not a name – but he supposed that was merely semantics. Madsen had earned it by being exactly that: a seemingly never ending headache for Martok while the Theurgy had orbited the home-world; by design, or fate, or as some punishment for past sins, Hauq and his warriors had been left to clean up her mess. It wasn’t a term of endearment, nor was it an insult; it simply was who she was, in his eyes at least.

Madsen’s posture shifted again, into something more akin to seriousness. Hauq leaned in, resting his chin on the knuckles of his entwinned fingers, elbows resting on his knees while she counted off her points. He had expected nothing less, showing neither admonishment nor surprise at her words. His nose wrinkled at the mention of the so-called Romulan Coalition – which was just another turn of phrase for what would eventually become another Romulan blunder at government, given time – but he held his tongue. Madsen continued; her stance on the Federation president’s actions earned a barely perceptible shrug, followed with an equally brief nod of agreement.

At the end, Hauq blinked slowly; all of it, the entire speech, could be summed up in a simple answer: Madsen was playing the long game without knowing how long that game was going to last, with the hope that putting out one fire would prevent the entire quadrant from burning.

The colonel spread his hands after a moment as he leaned back slightly, then mimicked her counting digits as he spoke:

One.

“We are Klingon. We will do as we have always done – with or without you. Martok will face many new challenges from the Council; enemies will gather, more blood will be shed, but in the end, the strongest will prevail.”

Two.

“There was plenty of satisfaction to be had from mauling the Romulans; we have drunk and bellowed our songs to the stars and gorged ourselves on glory. Yet we are not fools, nor are we blind; Romulans will never change – no more than humans, or Cardassians, or those genetically forged creatures that call themselves Jem’Hadar. In a decade, or a century, or a millennium, this…Coalition…will implode, or turn rancid, or be perverted into the oppressive monstrosity we just spent countless lives burning from the stars. We will be watching, and waiting, and we will not ask for permission to do what must be done.”

Three.

“Your President is a fool – on that we can agree. I can only hope the Chancellor can maintain some semblance of self-control while they speak, otherwise we may part on far less friendlier terms. I cannot control him anymore than you can control her – nor can I influence the other members of the Council – but I can keep the back-channels open, for as long as possible, should the worst come to pass.”

Hauq nodded to her.

“The screening as already begun. It will continue – likely for the entirety of our lives. Where they are discovered, will be shared; we will burn them out wherever they choose to hide, given time.”

He stood then, to pull a pouch from his belt at the small of his back.

“Your words will reach the Chancellor’s ears. To that end, he wished me to bring this; a token of personal gratitude – unofficially, by Martok himself,” he tossed the burlap sack to her. “Bloodstones. Enough for every member of your crew. We can no longer guarantee your safety in Imperial space, you see; this…situation, will reach the ears of the Council, and they will twist the facts to serve their own ends. Some will take matters into their own hands, some will not. What matters is this: should the need be great, any of you that bare one of these stones will be granted amnesty and asylum within the House of Martok, without question.”

The Colonel smirked briefly.

“The man takes life debts quite seriously.”
 

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #5 –
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Chief Diplomatic Officer's Office | Deck 08 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

She caught the pouch. The tie did not survive the catch.

Bloodstones — deep crimson, shot through with threads of darker red, each one polished to a dull gleam — cascaded across her lap, bounced off the chair's edge, and scattered across the floor in every direction with the cheerful indifference of objects that have never once been asked their opinion on the matter.

Enyd looked down at her lap. Then at the floor. Then at the remaining stones still rolling in lazy arcs toward the far corners of the room. The laugh came from somewhere genuine.

"How fitting," she said, when she'd recovered enough to say anything at all. "Absolutely fitting for the times we're living in." She gestured broadly at the scattered carnage. "Here's a boon — congratulations, you've earned it — and here it goes, everywhere but where you want it." She pressed her lips together, shoulders still shaking faintly, and looked at the stones nearest her feet without yet moving to collect them.

The laughter settled. Something quieter replaced it.

"There's a comfort in predictability," she said, almost to herself. Her eyes tracked one stone that had come to rest against the leg of her desk. "I don't mean that as an insult — I want to be clear about that." She looked at Hauq directly. "Knowing that the Klingons will always be precisely what they are. That you won't wake up one morning and find the Empire has decided to become something unrecognizable in the night." Something honest moved across her face. "Even knowing that at some point, probably more than once, I'm going to do something that earns me a Klingon dagger at my throat—" she said it with the matter-of-fact tone of a woman reading from a fairly reliable forecast, "—there's something steadying about that certainty. The shape of it is known. You can work with a known shape."

She reached over and held out the ruined pouch toward the desk. Several promptly fell out and rolled off the edge and joined their companions on the floor.
Enyd stared at them. A short, undignified snort escaped her.

"Naturally." She set the empty pouch down. "Naturally."

She leaned back and let her eyes move across the scattered stones — across the floor, her chair, the desk, one that had somehow made it nearly to the door — and when she spoke again, her voice had shed the humor without losing its ease.

"I share your skepticism. About governments. About all of them, the Federation included — perhaps the Federation most of all, because I know it well enough to know exactly where the rot tends to grow." Her thumb ran along the rim of her water glass. "But the nature of this vocation is holding two things at once. The reality that every civilization in the history of the universe has been built by fallible creatures who will, given sufficient time and pressure, fail." She lifted her eyes to his. "And the reality that in the full sweep of that same history, there have always been exceptions. Individuals, moments, choices that bent the trajectory of something toward better than it had any statistical right to be." She leaned forward and placed the glass carefully on the desk amid the remaining stones. "I'd like to work toward ensuring that everyone involved has every opportunity available to be that exception." The pause was carried by her eyes dropping briefly to the scattered bloodstones. "While preparing, thoroughly and without sentimentality, for the likelihood that they won't be."

She studied the stones a moment longer.

"Tell Martok the back channel goes both ways. Whatever door he's leaving open on his end — the same door stands open on ours." The ghost of something animated moved back into her expression. "Besides." She shot Hauq the wink — brief, direct, entirely unrepentant. "If it means I get more opportunities to be a headache for you specifically, I consider that incentive enough to maintain the relationship."

She pushed to her feet, already angling toward the nearest cluster of bloodstones on the floor. Her boot found one first. The stone rolled. Physics, entirely indifferent to rank, vocation, or diplomatic consequence, completed the rest. Enyd's arms went out — a reflex, useless — and she went forward with the committed velocity of someone who has already lost the argument with gravity, directly toward Hauq.

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #6 –
[Colonel Hauq | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz‍ 

The stones had scattered everywhere; they blended into the carpet, bounced off the angled walls and furniture, then ricocheted off each other like marbles in an unpredictable display of chaos physics. Hauq closed his eyes and took a deep breath, jaw muscles tensed to control his annoyance. It was a simple toss, not even a meter; he should have just handed it over.

An apology formed on his lips, silenced as she spoke.

Her laugh somehow made it worse, pleasant as it was to hear; it served as a stark reminder of the differences between them – Enyd seemed to thrive in chaos, laughing off the consequential circumstances of what reactive causality deemed to reward her with – while Hauq was a creature of control and order whom thrived on repetitive function and predictable behavior by default.

He wasn’t sure he agreed with her musing; the Empire had changed and adapted much over the generations since its inception – but he held his council for her to continue, taking no umbrage at her words. A deep scowl pulled at the corners of Hauq’s mouth at her prophesied death at the edge of a Klingon blade, however; while that very well might come to pass, there would be no rest or respite for the one responsible – he would see to that personally.

They shared in the quiet moment that followed; two souls surrounded by a sea of red rubies. When her eyes finally met his, Hauq held her gaze evenly – right up to the moment when he nearly interrupted her with a grunt of admonishment for her apparent naivety. The diplomat continued however, appeasing him without knowing it with the follow up: optimistic pragmatism – a viewpoint he could stand behind, if not wholly agree with – but he let the matter lie.

The reason he had been sent – the obligation set by Martok – had been accomplished; there was no reason to engage in a socio-political debate on their current straits. Hauq had to admit, with a wry mental grin, that he would likely be easily outclassed in such an arena; he was a warrior, not a diplomat and certainly no politician. Even if she created more chaos at every turn, with every encounter, there was no denying her ability to find a way out of it.

The wink and corresponding comment earned a grunt of laughter. “Don’t do me any favors,” the Colonel managed to say, while his attention was directed elsewhere for the briefest of seconds.

That’s all it took.

What followed was a series of unfortunate events; Hauq detected a blur of motion out of his peripheral vision as the woman stood suddenly – his body tensed on instinct, attention snapped to the source – in the next instant, she had launched herself at him. Before his brain could fully process what had happened, the Colonel was in motion; arms and hands up and braced for action: yet he wasn’t anywhere near fast enough:

The diplomat’s face slammed into his chest with a dull smack, then rebounded as his arms purchased nothing but air; the momentum propelled him forward, then back, as his feet lost all traction. Suddenly airborne, Hauq’s eyes widened with confusion as he witnessed his own legs pinwheeling – the entire orientation of the room tilting up and backward. His back and head hit something solid – then crashed through whatever it was – and then he was on the floor, listening to yet more rocks scatter about the room. In the end, Enyd lay across his chest, somehow perpendicular to how he landed. The chair he had been sitting in was broken apart, strewn on its side.

The Klingon's head rose a fraction with a grunt of effort, voice devoid of amusement. “Your prophecy is fulfilled; my head aches. Qapla',” he grumbled, then propped himself up on his elbows. “Are you injured?”

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #7 –
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Chief Diplomatic Officer's Office | Deck 08 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

She lifted her head off his breastplate. Her eyes crossed. She held that state — staring at approximately nothing, two inches in front of her own nose — before her vision resolved itself back into Hauq's face with the reluctant cooperation of a system rebooting under protest. She blinked. Once. Twice. Gave her head a single careful shake the way a person does when they're testing whether everything is still attached.

Her fingers went to her eyebrow. She pulled her hand back and looked at it. A thin smear of red crossed two fingers. The giggle was immediate and completely without dignity.

"I went through an entire battle," she said, to no one in particular, staring at her own hand, "untouched. Not a scratch." She looked down at his breastplate — at the faint red mark her eyebrow had left on the ridged surface of his armor — and the giggle compounded into something that shook her shoulders. "I survived the battle and I bled on your chest plate." She pressed the back of her wrist against the cut, still laughing in the exhausted, helpless way that lives just on the other side of the threshold of what a person can reasonably absorb in a single day.

She pushed off him then, got a hand flat on the floor, and rolled onto her back beside the wreckage of the chair. And stayed there. The ceiling of her office looked back at her, neutral and unhelpful. She didn't move. Didn't attempt to manufacture any version of professional composure. The floor was where she was and the floor was where she would be for a moment because her body had simply filed a report and the report said: enough.

Then something dug into her hip. She frowned. Lifted her hips, reached underneath, and extracted two bloodstones from beneath her with the long-suffering expression of a woman who has accepted that the universe operates on its own terms entirely. She set them on her sternum without looking at them, lowered herself back down, and stared at the ceiling again.The stones rose and fell with her breathing.

"What do you do," she said, to the ceiling, her voice carrying the flat quality of genuine curiosity stripped of all social packaging, "to destress?" One second of silence. Then she kept going. "Not the blade-against-a-sparring-partner kind of destress. I mean the other kind." Her head turned to look at him, still flat on the floor, cheek resting on the carpet among the scattered bloodstones. "The bone-tired kind. Battle-weary. When you've used everything you have and the idea of lifting a weapon against anything, even someone you like hitting, sounds like being asked to run a second marathon immediately after finishing the first."

She looked at him. Actually looked at him — the sheer architectural fact of him, the particular solidity that suggested the words bone tired had perhaps never been required to apply — and something shifted in her expression into a kind of resigned self-awareness. She snorted.

"You've never felt that way in your life." She said it without accusation, simply as a reclassification of the data. Her eyes returned to the ceiling. "Alright. Different question." She lifted one of the two bloodstones off her sternum, held it up between her thumb and forefinger, studied the deep red of it catching the light. "What would you suggest. For someone in my position. Creature of chaos, currently horizontal on her own office floor, bleeding slightly, surrounded by Martok's generosity in its most literally scattered form." She set the stone back down on her sternum, watching it rise and fall. "What does a person like that do when the day is finally, mercifully over — assuming the day ever actually ends — to keep from simply dissolving into the carpet?"

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #8 –
[Colonel Hauq | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

A frown of genuine concern pulled at the Colonel’s bearded face as the diplomat laughed; Hauq had never been accused of being a well-humored warrior – Martok himself had commented more than once upon his dour, duty-bound stoicism – yet to his ears, Eynd’s amusement in the moment seemed far too close to delirious.

On guard, brows crossed, he eased his torso upright yet remained seated beside where she lay. He did not meet her eyes when she did not seek his; he had served the Empire all his life, and in that span had seen countless warriors in a similar state – exultant yet exhausted in victory, or, on the other end of the spectrum, feverish and wrathful,  drowning in glory at death’s door.

All is fleeting madness, he mused silently, distracted by his own thoughts. Yet all is good.

He began to collect the stones nearby while the diplomat collected herself – two or three at a time, dropped into the palm of his hand. There were hundreds of them; he had neither the time nor the patience to gather them all – yet this was one mess he had made with her, instead of the other way around. He could not leave her alone to accomplish it; not in her present state.

Her question earned a look of confusion from him at first, yet that melded into wry amusement after her reassessment and subsequent reclassification; he made no remark upon the matter, regardless – a warrior needn’t be boastful, nor arrogant enough to presume his own greatness. Only fools and charlatans walk such a path.

There is always someone better. Always more to learn.

Her reformed question seemed to hang in the air between them like a fisherman’s net; heavy, impossible to slip out of. Hauq’s eyes fell to the stones in his hand, considering his answer, his lips pulled down in thought. When he finally spoke, his voice was modulated carefully in tones of consideration; a low throaty rumble versus the coarse bark of dutiful respect he usually employed.
 
“You will not dissolve, Eynd Isolde Madsen; we both know you are too stubborn – too willful – to allow it. You have accomplished much this day, it is true, yet the work has only begun. You will not lie idle and allow another to continue without you in this,” he paused to glance at her, choosing his words carefully, then nodded with the briefest of shrugs.

“Were it my place,” he answered with blunt honesty, “I would see you cleansed and refreshed, as a priceless blade: restored and rested, body and spirit, for the next time I had need to draw you in battle,” he blinked, then hesitated on his words again. After a moment, he simply stopped trying to get the words out, and let his answer lie in the air between them.

Then he got to his feet.

“If I may,” a meaty, open hand extended to her in aid. “It is not my place to restore you, Eynd Isolde Madsen. That honor surely belongs to another. Yet I will, once again, help you back upon solid ground,” his lip curled as a glint of amusement reached his eyes, “and see your mess cleaned up, as well.”

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #9 –
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Chief Diplomatic Officer's Office | Deck 08 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

She watched him wrestle. Not obviously — Hauq was not a man who did anything obviously — but she had spent enough time in rooms with people choosing their words like footing on uncertain ground to recognize the tells. The fractional hesitation. The decision to stop rather than continue. The careful landing and the thing left unsaid behind it. And she listened without seeking to formulate an immediate response, letting his carefully chosen words fall on her nerves casually.

Her chest rose and fell in a long exhale, and she stared at the ceiling a final moment before letting her head roll to watch him collecting bloodstones with the methodical movements of a man who has cleaned up after considerably worse than this.

"No." She said it to the ceiling as much to him. "You're right. I'm too stubborn for my own good. And besides, the spirit of my grandmother would rise from her grave and beat the ever-loving snot out of me if I were to even think about giving up." The grin came sideways, tired but genuine. "And I'll take the blade analogy. You've a way with words, when you want to, Hauq." Her eyes tracked him moving among the scattered stones. "Priceless blade. I'm keeping that."

She shifted on the floor and the smell reached her at approximately the same moment the word cleansed finished echoing in her memory. Her nose wrinkled.

"Oh." An exaggerated sniff. "Oh, I agree wholeheartedly with the cleansed part too. A long hot shower is in order."

She took his extended hand with a bemused smile. The grip was solid and she came up off the floor cleanly. She stood, steadied, offered him a wry look, then stopped. Withdrew her hand from his. Reached into the collar of her uniform shirt with the focused expression of someone performing minor surgery and retrieved, one by one, three bloodstones that had apparently made the journey south. She held them out in her palm, looked at them, then at Hauq.

"Joint effort," she said. "The mess and the cleanup both." She set the stones on the nearest clear surface of the desk. "I appreciate it."

She turned toward the largest cluster near the far wall and crossed to them, crouching to begin gathering — then stopped. Straightened. Turned back. She stepped back to him, leaned up, and pressed a brief kiss to his cheek, then stepped back to her own space without ceremony.

"Thank you." The wryness was gone, just for a moment. "For coming here and saying the hard things to my face." Her hand moved slightly, taking in the room, the conversation, the stones, the broken chair. "And for this. I can't promise I won't be a thorn in your side again — that would be a lie and we've been too honest with each other tonight to ruin it now." She held his gaze. "But I'll give you as much warning of the incoming chaos as I'm able. That much I can promise." She let her fingers stroke the roughened skin of his cheek for the briefest of seconds before she turned back to the stones.

She gathered. He gathered. Then she straightened, a handful of stones in her palm, and her voice shifted back into its working register.

"Hypothetically." She deposited the stones into the salvaged pouch without looking at him. "If the Theurgy crew needed to procure supplies. Parts. Resources. Off the record." She looked up before he could respond. "Before you tell me what you think of that — consider what the President said, and the pushback already moving through official channels. We have a pardon that exists on paper and is being contested in practice. We have a ship that needs repair and people who want us functional and accountable while making sure the means to become functional stay closed or watched." She set the pouch down. "I don't know this for certain. But I know I would do that if the roles were reversed, and I'm not even the most devious person I know." She tilted her head. "So. Off the record. Would you know which direction to point us — if it came to that?"

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #10 –
[Colonel Hauq | Diplomatic Suite | Deck 2 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy] Attn: @Ellen Fitz

His eyes tracked her movements in relative silence while they gathered up the stones – simply attentive, nothing more – ready to react should the diplomat's limited endurance give out; or should some other unfortunate turn of event transpire – the woman was a walking storm of chaos, after all. It behooved one to expect the unexpected anywhere she trod, at all times.

The Klingon guard-commander had barely finished reminding himself of that assessment when Eynd performed another act that verified the fact – unintentionally, of course – yet the effect on him remained, nevertheless:

Upon her approach, Hauq stood to his full height; the stones scattered at his boots forgotten, the handful held in his palm creaked as his hand tightened into a fist – a gesture of restraint, of control, not anger. Something in her eyes, in the language of her movement, demanded his attention from somewhere deep within; it called to something beyond the towers and battlements he’d built there, the fortress of himself he’d crafted with meticulous care and preparation in order to function in spite of everything duty required.

Unexpected, to say the least.

He barely registered the brief press of her lips – the mind, heart, and spirit each raced to process the situation at unequal velocity – which forced a slow blink from under the depths of his brows, drawn together in an effort to comprehend what she had done. Then the words. Her appreciation registered, valued for its simple honesty coupled with the fact that it had not been required; before he had beamed aboard, Hauq had prepared himself for the worst of outcomes from this conversation – certainly not this.

The moment passed as quickly as it had come: the diplomat withdrew as Hauq managed only a nod – followed by a subtle growl from the chest – more of an effort to regain himself than any expression of irritation or discomfort. Whatever sorcery she’d vexed upon him faded, its loss somehow more profound – which added another layer of confusion he briefly wrestled into mental submission before it was hurled from the ramparts of his mind.

Hauq returned himself to the task at hand.

Moments passed.

Stones were collected.

The Colonel had half filled his empty flask with them when her voice filled the room again, steady once more. The question almost instantly pulled his features into a stone-chiseled mask of disapproval, which she noticed, of course; yet he listened while she continued – then allowed himself a moment to consider a response.

The stones clinked in their temporary container as he stood.

“There…are a few possibilities that come to mind,” Hauq hesitated, as something close to uncertainty crossed his face briefly. “Such…establishments…have proven problematic for the Empire on more than one occasion, mind; havens for dishonorable scoundrels, rapscallions, and all manner of ill-mannered, deplorable miscreants,” his lips pulled into a fanged grin. “I wish I could be there when you lot show up.”

The levity passed.

“Still,” he growled, “you risk solving one problem by inviting countless more with such a solution.” He paused to reach a decision, rattling the stone-filled flask like a dice-dealer in a gambling hall. Ultimately, Hauq realized, it was not his place to decide; he had been sent to establish a contact between Martok and this ship outide sanctioned lines of communication – what the Chancellor chose to use it for was beyond his purview.

The Colonel nodded, once. “I will make official inquiries; verifiable intelligence, once approved, will be transmitted. I can offer no more,” he admitted grudgingly, yet knew that she would understand. “Unofficially, if this ship happened to turn towards the borders of the Syndicate and Hegemony…well, you’d likely find what you seek without any assistance at all.”

With that said, the Colonel approached the burlap sack upon her desk and dumped the blood-wine damped stones within; at least triple what she had managed to collect.
 
Hauq frowned at her then, before he turned to collect more.

Re: EPI S: Two sides, same coin [Day 03 | 0930]

Reply #11 –
[ Lt. Enyd Isolde Madsen | Chief Diplomatic Officer's Office | Deck 08 | Vector 01 | USS Theurgy ] @Dumedion

"That's worth considering, actually." She crouched to sweep a cluster of stones toward her palm, not looking at him while she worked through it. "If some of the crew happened to find themselves at those establishments anyway — for the purposes of acquisition and mayhaps a wee bit of procurement tourism— they could operate as eyes for Martok. Or for your investigations, if there are any running." She stood and deposited the stones into the pouch, noting how many he'd already collected with an inward smile. "Whatever he wants done with what they observe. It's not the cleanest arrangement, but it's functional." She glanced at him sidelong. "I agree with your assessment on creating problems by solving problems." The laugh she gave was short and genuine. "That tends to be how it goes even when you do everything correctly, because the book was written for circumstances that were already behind the times the moment someone put them to paper. Reality doesn't move in straight lines." She picked up another stone. "I stopped expecting it to somewhere around Cardassia."

Hauq's suggestion about the Syndicate and Hegemony borders earned him a half-smile and a wink. Watching him deposit a massive amount of gems in comparison to her efforts, Enyd rolled her eyes, muttering under her breath, "It isn't a competition."

They worked in silence for a moment, the clink of stones a steady rhythm between them. Then she straightened, and something in her posture shifted — the change she made when she was moving from one matter to a different one entirely, shoulders settling, chin lifting a fraction.

"Different subject." She turned to face him more fully, a handful of stones still loose in her palm. "Has Martok heard anything — rumors, secondhand intelligence, anything at all — about a gathering of factions near Breen space? Recently." Her eyes were steady on his, reading the response before he gave it.
 
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