Reading

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: tinnitus lol when did i get old

Entry tags:

thoughts

acclimating

Fiddled around with the layout a bit and trawled both dreamwidth and lj for some icons. I used to make lj icons in middle school (real emo shit, stuff like explodingdog and Nightmare Before Christmas haha), really tempted to make some now -- can't find many for the more niche interests. Might be fun to do them in small batches. LJ icons are prob why I enjoy square compositions today haha.

I feel that interest in old web design returning, where it's tedious but pleasantly so. It's not so much trying to wrest control from something spending millions to advertise to me and will employ addictive methods to do it, but rather more trying to understand an out-of-date text. The pieces are there and they make sense and have purpose, the space between myself and the desired outcome is simply a lack of knowledge instead of disparate goals. What I make will stay how I made it, not be upended by some algorithmically driven decision to squeeze a few more pennies from its userbase without caring for its comfort.

Beginning to think I struggle with the ephemerality of the internet. These days, it feels like being an eroding raft on an angry sea. You can never be in one place for long before it crumbles in the grip of advertisers forcing it into a family friendly box.

...Omg, can I post nsfw art here??? Been meaning to draw some. I mean, there's ao3 too. Been posting my backlog of Tron art there lately, and I feel good about it. I'm not constantly checking it for likes or rbs -- gotta say, whatever flavor of brain mix I got does not play nice with the popularity contest that is posting art on most sites. After blocking Tumblr, I did a piece that I've only shared with a couple friends. That internal buzz of "oh who will like it, who will rb, will the notes number be high enough, it doesn't matter but it does i guess because i can't stop thinking about it" was gone. I made it for me. I want art to feel like that all the time.

I suspect much of this journal is going to be about my relationship with the internet haha. Trying to think of what else to put on here. A monthly wrap up of what I read and watched might be fun. I already list all that stuff in a notebook, but rambling about it into space could be good for the brain wrinkles, too. I finished Joe Haldeman's Mindbridge yesterday and it was so fucking good it propelled me into a complex action scene rewrite, one I'd been putting off for weeks. >:)

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	254	8,303	no
Monthly	9,554	217,636	5 days

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	383	8,148	no
Monthly	9,191	209,157	5 days

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	298	10,874	no
Monthly	8,808	200,788	5 days

Entry tags:

Remixing my own fic: Fives Saves the Galaxy (redux)

Sorry, this one lacks all the flavor

ilyena_sylph brings to the table, but I just had to get it down on electrons.

Fives Saves the Galaxy (Redux) (2568 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CT-7567 | Rex, Ahsoka Tano
Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, Mando'a Language (Star Wars)
Summary:

A Force Thing shoves Fives to his Commander... right after she faces Vader.

Fives Saves the Galaxy (Redux)

This place was enough to spook Fives right back into feeling like a cadet, once the world stopping spinning counter to his balance, and he could think past the taste of colors from the world going awry.

How in all the galaxies had he gone from covering Echo's six to this place — oh wait. He shook his head to stop the ringing, which worked exactly opposite of the intent, and glanced at the hand not currently holding a blaster.

Damn. This was some kind of hallucination, Force Thing, or he'd cracked his skull when he tried to catch the weird glowing tube. It was in his hand, but it was not glowing, and he was alone.

Completely alone in a hell-scape littered by dust and ash and debris.

A noise like a hunting raptor brought his head up to see a white bird, one he thought he'd seen on other worlds. He tracked its motion and it swooped toward… a person? His helmet let him zoom, and he saw a Togruta, making them the second living thing he'd found in this place, struggling down a path.

Might be dangerous, but Fives needed answers, and this was his only lead so far.

His fast jog in that direction alerted the person, making them stop and turn, though they did not attempt to make it to him or draw weapons. Just as Fives had almost gotten close enough to make out details beyond 'tall' and 'probably a woman', a ship of a configuration he did not recognize at all, adding to the weirdness of the day.

She — definitely feminine curves — tracked the ship, and he thought she looked very resigned at its leaving. Was it someone leaving her behind on purpose? Had that been her ship?

Who was she? Those were lightsaber hilts next to something like a kama, and armor over her chest as well as on her arms and legs. Something about her looked very familiar, and yet alien to him all at once.

"Well. This is not the kind of ghost I am used to seeing from the Force," the woman said once he was in view. "Nice touch, making the armor look right," and he could tell she wasn't talking to him, so much as about him, and… those marks on her cheeks really brought home why she looked familiar.

He didn't much care for the rest of her coloring — washed out, faded, a sure sign of injury — and she was so tall, so mature, but she had to be his Commander!

"Commander Tano?"

"Not in a very long time, but then… you marched far away even before the end."

Fives should not have let those words spill from his mouth, a rejection of the very idea and adding in all the things he felt about this creepy dead world, even as the bird thing came to alight upon her — his commander's! — shoulder. When he stopped blistering the air, he reached up and swiped the helmet off, so she could see him with her eyes, the real him, not just the bucket.

He wasn't sure that was the best idea as her eyes went all white, and he could almost feel the energy in the air around her. Even as he took a step back, the white faded, and she moved to reach for him, only to stumble.

Instinct had him there, steadying her, and he realized she was injured, probably severely from the marks he could see, and how pale she was. He cast about, hunting for shelter, saw a small portal leading into darkness and not much else.

"Help me get there, Fives, and then we can talk," she said softly.

"Sir, yes sir," he breathed, getting his helmet back on as he felt that she had accepted him for who he was, even if all of this was a karking holo-drama with a bad sense of humor.

Fives won the argument of 'first aid then talking', without actually having to insist all that much. He was noticing how much quieter his Commander was and really not liking it at all. Finally, satisfied all of his kit had been exhausted on her injuries, he settled beside her at her insistence.

"Got a droid popper? I need to show you a trick with it," Ahsoka said, making his curiosity light up. He found one, handing it over, then leaned in as she opened a side to recalibrate it. "This frequency, for this duration," she said, making certain he could see the settings.

"Doesn't look like that would penetrate much more than plastoid, let alone work on any droid I know of," Fives told her dubiously. "But yes sir, I won't forget the settings," he added at her very searching look.

"Good. And Fives? I'm sorry." She thumbed the switch then, and Fives felt a piercing pain in his temple, one that felt like fire inside his skull, making him grab for it. What in all of space had she done — no. What had the longnecks done that a droid popper worked like that on him?!

"Back with me, Fives?" the woman that his Commander was in this bad place was asking, every few seconds, it seemed like, or maybe time was just looping in his head.

"Yes, Commander." He brought his face up and met her eyes. "All of us?"

The sadness in her eyes said far too much, and he had to get up, walk away, just walk and move, though he didn't leave the small chamber they had found. He just kept moving.

Ahsoka Tano was an adult with montrals and lekku to rival General Ti's. There were no vod'e on her six, no one with her. She carried herself with precision, contained in the same way that older clones who had been through harrowing losses were.

There was a chip in their heads, and she had not only known about it, but short-circuited it before giving him a sit-rep.

The math was adding up to an ugly story, one he didn't want to hear, but one he knew he had to. Only… was there any good in hearing it, if he was here-now?

"How many died?"

"Too many. Vod'e and Jedi alike," she told him, voice soft and hurting. "I've rescued the ones I could, Fives. But… it doesn't help me deal with the pain anymore than it helps Rex to know he saved me."

At that, Fives came back to her, squatting in front of her, eyes lighting. "The Captain made it?"

"Yes. Him, Wolffe, Gregor — you wouldn't know him. They escaped the initial order that turned the chips on and took all of you from us." She reached out, a slender finger tracing his tat on his forehead. "You made it possible for Rex, but we lost you in that terrible mess. He told me the story, when we were hiding together.

"But now, with you here? Maybe — Maybe the Force can undo it all."

"How?" he asked her. "I mean, I want to. I'll do anything to save my brothers and the Jedi. But… how?"

She smiled. "I tell you a long story, with all of the details I know. Then you go back. I should be able to figure that much out, or the Force wouldn't have brought you to me."

Fives really took stock of her again, seeing a woman whose early confidence was now backed by fire-annealed skills. If she could make the Force do what she wanted it to —

— he wasn't going to argue. Any chance to save his brothers and the Jedi was to be taken.

"Fives?"

Echo's voice was overriding the taste of color and the sound of odors. All that Fives had learned burned in his head, written in a script he couldn't read on scavenged flimsi inside his blacks. He could feel it there, pressing against his skin like the mission he now had.

One way or another, he was going to save them all. He couldn't bear the thought of failure.

"I'm fine," he told his batch-brother, making certain that he hadn't missed any time — the commander had said he should flit right back into the moment the thing had taken him from. "Thought I saw something, but it's gone now." Not quite a lie, which made him feel better. Echo deserved truth, always, but at the same time, he couldn't bog his brother down with the weight of what was coming.

Tarkin was definitely a dead man if they wound up going on that mission, though.

He just kept his eyes focused ahead, working on clearing this sweep mission, as the need to save everyone burned in the back of his mind. He was going to need to win the Captain over, to get him to Wolffe, but Ahsoka had given him enough pieces to know how to do that.

It almost amused him, to know she had never let go of that deep bond with Captain Rex, and he wondered if it had grown to something personal, just to keep himself from going crazy.

While Fives hated bothering the Captain in his off-time, it was also the only way he was going to talk to the man alone. He saw Jesse and Kix were occupied, ruling out the rare comfort the Captain would take with their medic, and headed through the ship until he got to the cabin Rex had conceded was closer to the bridge and offered privacy for counseling soldiers in need.

He was let in to see the Commander — looking short and baby-plump cheeks with short montrals like she ought to — in with the Captain and debated how to go about this. He knew he could not involve their General, but he hadn't been warned about Ahsoka herself.

"Fives," Rex said, sitting on the edge of the berth while Ahsoka sat on the small desk, swinging her feet a little. She was searching Fives' face which felt a little unnerving after being with the older version for several days.

"I wanted to show you something I found out about the droid poppers, sir," Fives began, deciding that the first move in this was an exact copy of the Commander's with him. He settled on the Captain's side, trying not to fumble under those intent looks from Ahsoka Tano, or just the sheer physicality of invading The Captain's space. Rex leaned over when Fives opened the droid popper, and just frowned a little at the reset of the parameters.

"Doesn't look effective for much, from what little I can remember about them," Rex said.

"Only, it will help us, sir, with a persistent problem," Fives told him, before thumbing the switch for immediate use. Just as he'd done, Rex raised a hand to his temple, eyes wincing shut, face in a grimace… and Ahsoka all but teleported herself to Rex's other side, eyes not on the Captain but on Fives, even as she used instinctive Force-healing on the spot paining their captain.

"The nightmare."

Ahsoka's flat voice on those two words made Fives' eyes go wide. He knew she was Commander Vod'ika, considered more one of them than Jedi sometimes, but she knew?! Who had —

She trilled something, a familiar sound that had been used as whistle code among the cadets, a sound that meant comfort and safety and protection.

"I… you… yes, sir. The Nightmare." He set the expended popper down, and got an arm around the Captain's shoulders as Rex was bringing himself under control.

"What. The. Kriff."

"I told you I dreamed about those years again, of seeing all of you, of feeling your worries," Ahsoka said patiently. "Apparently Fives is now a part of whatever it is tying me to all of you in this."

"You don't know the half of it, sir," Fives said fervently.

"Knock off the rank stuff in here, Fives," Ahsoka told him. "I came to talk to Rex about it, he said it started for him on last sleep and he decided to go do target practice, so I wasn't channeling it off of him… which means some of the other first years probably are having it again.

"If you can help us understand, starting with what you just did to Rexter, we can start fixing it."

"The longnecks put a chip in us, to make us perfectly obedient… to the correct orders, when the time came," Fives said quietly, hoping these quarters were shielded enough to keep the General from appearing. The color Ahsoka turned, and the absolute wretched look on Rex's face said they had followed the right thought-paths… and Fives breathed out. "We can stop it.

"Because the Force decided to show me a future. One we're going to send to haran now," Fives said with all confidence.

"Trying to become a jetii now?" Rex said, dark humor flavoring the words, before he looked at Ahsoka, who had not left his side. "General?"

"No," she and Fives answered in one breath, before she tipped her head to Fives.

"He's got the Force-equivalent of the damned chip in his head, because the order can only come from one man," Fives whispered, ready to defend the truth he knew if he had to. "I don't like it, but… I can't disbelieve, not after having the chip fried in my head when I had no idea about it."

Several long minutes passed, and this time it was Rex putting an arm around Ahsoka, letting her turn into his shoulder for comfort, before Fives got to outline what he knew, and the plan that the adult Ahsoka had helped him work out.

The 104th got assigned to a long joint mission with the 501st on the 'front line' furthest from Coruscant. Every emergency designed to pull Anakin Skywalker back to the center of things was diverted by another Jedi or unit. Naboo's Senator was rumored to have two Jedi Sentinels in her bodyguards.

A mysterious headache swept through the Grand Army of the Republic but had no discernible cause. A handful of high-ranking Fleet officers had malfunctions during evac drills. And several Senators suddenly had all of their funds frozen, pending investigation from the Security Council, based on anonymous tips.

Fives never got close to the cause of it all, but the holos of CorSec attempting to arrest the Chancellor on charges of bribery, mismanagement of funds, and inciting riots let he and his brothers see their own people take down a Sith. Too many died… and yet. It was a tiny fraction of the deaths that would be, that had already happened, because two Sith chose to play a dejarik game with the prize being the destruction of the Jedi and the Republic.

Sometimes, after, Fives would swear that he heard that strange bird of the Force, or saw a white light centered on his Commander when there was no explanation for it. He tried to push it away, tried to just be grateful she wouldn't have to be that stately woman carrying the pain of the galaxy on her shoulders.

And no one but she, Rex, and Master Plo Koon had to know he'd had anything to do with unraveling it all, something he was glad of, as Fox and Thire became the Faces of their people for their part in it all. Fives was content to face a new future with Echo at his side.

Entry tags:

recs

Various Links 4/14 - 4/20

So new job keeps me a little too occupied to surf the net.

NSFW art figures of shibari (presumed female figure)
3-Master responds to sailboat SOS
Bird fishing with bait
Big dog, very much a cat
The Lady Doorman Comic

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Daily Check In (and Mail Call!)

Post card from

kalloway! Thank you!

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	772	8,601	no
Monthly	8,510	189,547	5 days

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100words response

Testing Experience (100 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Forgotten Realms, The Legend of Drizzt Series - R. A. Salvatore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Raérilarr Aerasumé, Original Drow Character(s)
Additional Tags: Drabble
Summary:

Rae and Kastan on a test from Drizzt

Testing Experience

"I could cast a spell, you know," Rae said, but he didn't stop looking for fallen brush that was neither too wet nor too brittle for the fire.

"Father would say that's breaking the spirit of the test," Kastan told him, continuing to work on making a proper camp.

"He said we could use all we were, and I am a wizard."

Kastan looked at him intently. "And you have decades more experience, and you have more woodcraft. But I need to gain those things."

Rae nodded, conceding the point, and kept letting Kastan lead.

His partner had to learn.

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	643	11,057	yes
Monthly	7,738	180,870	5 days

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Fandom50: #8

So there are a LOT more than these 10 that I saw, loved, etc. Many that are part of the pop culture museum in my head. But ... I need to focus in on the ones that REALLY stayed with me over the years.

And I refuse to pick a favorite this year. You get my top nine with thoughts plus one that added to my issue with psych thrillers. ( A little wordy )

Current Music: "Frozen" - Madonna

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rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	91	11,057	no
Monthly	7,095	168,584	4 days

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Gift fic for me!

Waves of Grass (426 words) by chibifukurou
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Link & Zelda [Legend of Zelda]
Summary:

An afternoon nap surrounded by life.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Groove Armada - At the River

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Built Like a Brick

Friday, I am going to the lab to get blood drawn while Fox goes to his acupuncture appointment. That means this weekend I can go back to lifting and running! I have to be sedentary before these tests because exercise spikes my liver enzymes, and I'm tired of my GP pushing for a liver biopsy. I don't want one - they're expensive, invasive, and we already ran a battery of other tests that were either "negative," or "unremarkable." But it's a twice yearly reminder of how much I actually love to run, despite how much I gripe about it. I'm convinced part of the joy of running is sometimes griping about running.

Fox and I have got ourselves into one of our surprise projects. We needed to replace the frames for the raised garden beds, so we went and bought some pressure treated boards and stuff. One thing that didn't help the old beds was grass growing up around the outsides, so we thought, why not use those old bricks to pave around the beds and keep grass down? We have about 200 or so bricks Fox's parents had used to pave part of their backyard, and when they pulled them up, they gave them to us. So we got some leveling sand and laid a couple of paths down. Cool.

Then we realized we didn't have enough to go all the way around and needed more bricks. We pulled the trailer out and started getting it ready to go buy bricks at Home Depot and realized the trailer was in rough shape - some of the boards were rotting out, and the braking system was shot. New project - fix the trailer. A week later, that's all done and we go to buy a pallet of bricks only to find they're on sale for like ... twenty five cents a brick. We bought a pallet and then the next day unloaded it so we could go buy another. It was a manual job - turns out the tractor's lifting capacity is a little under what that pallet weighed and it didn't seem worth possibly blowing a hydraulic line.

So, second pallet acquired and finally unloaded. Take the pallets back to HD for our deposit back. Then we saw this article on UF's website about building raised beds out of concrete blocks. You can guess where this is going.

It's coming along really well, and it'll look great when it's done. We're hoping to finish up by the middle of next week. All that brick will create a heat island, but I'm thinking of dousing the concrete blocks with water twice daily - once with morning plant watering, and again later in the afternoon. Plus nothing much grows in summer's worst heat. I've missed all the spring planting times and won't be setting anything out until September at this point, but the garden will be absolutely top notch. I've also bought and planted a couple of salmon-pink azaleas, because I've wanted new ones for a couple of years. And I didn't want a "standard" fuschia one.

Man I can't wait to go for a run Saturday.

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	208	9,721	no
Monthly	7,004	157,312	4 days

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rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	494	8,156	no
Monthly	6,796	147,093	4 days

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rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	192	8,567	no
Monthly	6,302	138,687	4 days

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rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	1,308	12,217	no
Monthly	6,110	129,665	4 days

SO CLOSE to catching up on my word count. Ahh well.

Entry tags:

recs

jenab)
Crowd Sourced Tumblr Comic, High School Gay Meet Cute and Development

Entry tags:

rl: health

Daily Check In

*\o/*	Word Count	Step Count	Headache?
Daily	2,203	12,007	no
Monthly	4,802	117,274	4 days

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FTH 2025: The Romulan Way postscript

A Lesson Learned (2180 words) by Sharpest_Asp
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Rihannsu
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Leonard "Bones" McCoy/Spock
Characters: Spock, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu
Additional Tags: Established Relationship(s)
Summary:

After extraction, Bones is still chewing over what happened, and Spock has concerns.

AO3 Link

A Lesson Learned

Ael i-Mhiessan t'Rllaillieu knew that the Starfleet Intelligence officer had passed something of importance to McCoy. She toyed with the idea of taking it from him before delivering him to Kirk, but she decided that perhaps 'playing it straight' with him might gain her a better path in any future endeavors requiring the Enterprise officers.

"Please, sit," she invited, once the man had arrived. She pointed to the decanter awaiting him with a storage canister next to it. "A gift, for your courage in recent events."

McCoy inclined his head, then met her eyes. "You took a risk, played the Rook's Gambit perfectly even, but… what do you want, that you're offering me a gift?"

She smiled, settling back in the chair that emphasized her diminutive size. Such tactics still worked on others of her own kind… but not this canny Terran. He just seemed warily amused, and she could appreciate that.

"Your operative chose to stay, wiping out any potential gains beyond what you yourself gathered while there," Ael said aloud.

McCoy gave a small snort. "Yes, she did pass off her notes," he said to the hinted question. "I haven't read them all yet. What little I managed was mostly a history lesson."

That struck Ael in her heart; the operative understood that a people were the sum of their past? If she were to ever set foot on ch'Rihan again, perhaps she should find the operative once more, and investigate a potential alliance.

"It would be interesting to know how our history and culture are perceived by one who began outside of it," Ael managed to say in completely neutral tones.

"Let me finish reading it — due diligence and all — and I'll copy anything that doesn't compromise Starfleet Intelligence," McCoy said in that particular slow, stretched dialect of his.

Sometimes, 'playing it straight' had its own advantages, Ael decided, agreeing to that, and the necessity of his first reading.

Spock raised an eyebrow at the distinctive blue liquid in the tumbler that Len was nursing. The fact he was taking his time about the drinking only added to the concerns Spock had about the long-term effects of his partner having been in the hands of the Romulans. As the objective had not been met — Lieutenant Commander Haleakala-LoBrutto remained in place within the Romulan Star Empire — Spock worried that Len was being overly emotional.

"The only being in this room carrying emotional baggage is you, worrying over me," Len said, despite Spock never having stated any of his concerns. They were not touching, so it was improbably astute of Len to have deduced Spock's appraisal. Spock did not deny it, settling himself with the ka'athyra to quietly play, knowing that Len did enjoy the music. If he was unobtrusive enough, perhaps the good doctor would face this mission and move forward.

His fingers began working the strings, trying the arrangement he and Nyota had been working on, an ancient Terran ballad called "Georgia on My Mind". He noted when Len started humming along, finding the tonal and key shifts easily, and when Len softly sang 'Other eyes smile tenderly/ Still, in the peaceful dreams, I see', Spock decided that the man might just be relaxed enough to open up. Yet as the song ended, Len merely finished the last of the Romulan ale, set the tumbler aside, and picked up his PADD to study.

Should he just ask outright? Spock knew such blunt probing had gone awry in the past, but that was before… everything had changed for them. Between Len's retirement, his own return to Vulcan and attempt at kolinahr, the pair had moved into yet another phase of give and take in their evolution.

Spock's mother had opined that while Jim was t'hy'la, a bedrock of Spock's existence between two worlds, Len was the eshikh-salan that blew through all of Spock's more careful decisions. As usual, Spock found her observations of the matter correct, nor would Spock ever fully walk away from the random factors Len introduced, short of death.

"Ael gifted me the ale," Len said, most of an hour later, setting down the PADD. "Might be the last time any of us see or hear from her again. She's pretty damn angry at what the Rihannsu have become."

"I refuse to calculate the odds of the veracity of that statement, given the interesting ambit in place through the last encounters," Spock pointed out. He was, however, running the statistical probabilities of that being the beginning of true discussion of the mission Len had undertaken. "Do you wish to speak of your time with Naraht on her vessel?"

Len gave a smile. "That lieutenant is one tough cookie," he said, amused and showing no sign of hiding pain behind the incongruous description of their Horta crew-member.

Spock merely arched an eyebrow at the description, moving forward now that he had the necessary opening to Len's experiences.

"I find myself grateful for his assistance to the Commander in her mission to extract you from Romulus."

"Should start saying ch'Rihan, and use Rihannsu," Len chided softly. "It's ch'Havran for the other world, the one we call Remus."

"Terrans have a long history of persisting in naming the worlds and peoples of the universe in their own language," Spock pointed out. "You are chief among them for retaining the human nomenclature."

Len grimaced in response to that. "I know," he acknowledged, "but something about this stay there has put a burr under my saddle to try. Maybe it's a dichotomy in my own head now. Romulans are the bastards that we fought, losing ships and people without laying eyes on them for so long.

"The Rihannsu are a people that live out their lives with social strictures dividing their people nearly as deeply as some caste-based Earth cultures."

"Illogical, but quite human, in such a division of awareness," Spock said after weighing that.

Len leaned back in the chair, fidgeted a moment, then stood up to prowl the quarters. Spock carefully said nothing, only shifting slightly so that he nor his instrument were taking up any of Len's pathway. Rather than play, Spock began testing the texture of the strings, one at a time, while mostly reading what he could of his partner. Mercurial mood shifts were something to watch for, yet so far, Spock was only sensing deep thoughtfulness that required physicality on Len's part to settle.

"How much of the history do your people still have, Spock?" Len asked, once he had paced out the quarters enough to settle by catching one hip on the table, other leg balancing him on the decking.

"Obviously not as much as was needed, or — logically speaking — we would have shared cultural knowledge to aid in the war, to end it more swiftly, and prevent the losses."

"They don't have it all, but they know where they came from. Some of their social distinctions tie all the way back to them living Vulcan, or so it sounded like, once I had time to listen to what Terise sent back with me." Len sighed deeply. "Arrhae. She really is Arrhae, not Terise."

Something in his tone cued Spock to focus more fully on him, to weigh the words with the body posture. It wasn't, as Spock presumed initially, that they had failed to extract the Starfleet Intelligence officer.

"Your sense of humanity has been impacted by the Lieutenant Commander's choice?" Spock theorized aloud, and Len's nod confirmed it. "You do not have all of the data necessary to evaluate her choice decisively," Spock pointed out.

That got a chuckle. "I know. I'm not indicting my entire species for the choice of one person deciding they'd rather be the one they went to study. I'm just thinking, carefully, on what it would take for me to ever make that kind of choice, how it would play out, and what it would mean in the long run.

"In the end, I know I am too ornery, mean, and stubborn to ever be anything but human, so it's all just a philosophical exercise in my head."

Len's hand shifted on the table, a deliberate motion, and Spock answered it by moving his nearer hand to the table, fingertips just touching the doctor's. The contact sharpened the forged bond that had existed ever since the aftermath of Spock's divorce, and a new level of meaning came sharply into focus for Spock.

"I would find you as complementary in my life if you had ever made her choice," Spock said, voice gone deeper with the gravity of what Len had been wondering. "You, and Jim, each inhabit a point of existence that is unique, offering insights into living that I would otherwise lack, no matter how illogical you and he both persist in being."

Len covered Spock's fingers with his own at that, smiling. "I know. But part of that illogical persistence is chasing will'o'wisps in our heads.

"I'm hoping she landed on her feet, that she will keep surviving, and maybe be as happy as she seemed to think life there could make her. In the meantime, I'm going to be my human self, make sure her data doesn't fall into a black hole of bureaucracy, and do what I can to make a certain Vulcan's life as messy as ever."

"Hardly 'messy', though I may extend 'disorganized' on a regular basis," Spock answered with complete seriousness… outwardly.

"Care to read the copy I made for myself? So you can decide how it accidentally slips into your father's hands for historic reconciliation?"

"I accept. Though it may be less my Father and more T'Pau or a historian she trusts. Much as your people are not ready to have the enemy known so thoroughly, I deduce that Vulcan will have to have time, and more research, to accept the shared histories."

"I'm not betting against that, no matter how emotional that sounds," Len said, teasing, before he moved to get the PADD and hand it over. "I've got a shift in Sickbay, so take this with you now."

"Appreciated, Doctor," Spock said, rising to leave, sliding into the professional cast of their relationship, no matter that they had just been touching so intimately, open in their minds to one another through the skin to skin contact. It was another facet of being themselves.

Spock would say I am out of my mind with some Vulcan aphorism of his, but I think I need to record this anyway. Arrhae, you impressed me. You went into a brand new existence, seeing it from the outside, and you found points of reference that made it work for you. Maybe whatever guided you into Starfleet was a fundamental need for everything to be in its exact place, knowing day in and day out what was truly expected.

Len paused then, thinking about it a little longer before flicking the recorder back on.

I can't understand you, or your choice. Even with a strong incentive, I can't imagine ever leaving behind who and what I am, what made me everything I am. But that's not stopping me from seeing your choice as right for you. I can hope you never come to regret it. I can wish for a day when I find out how it all turned out for you. And I can forward your mission, the one to learn about them, to others, so that maybe, someday, it's not a you and us situation.

Satisfied, he cut the recording off, locked it in his private files with the code that meant it would be available after his death — whenever that happened — for archivists. Joanne would also be able to unlock such entries, if he ever went missing long enough. He half-wondered what his daughter would have made of Terise's choices, and if she'd understand Arrhae.

That was one more of the conversations that wouldn't happen until a whole mess of things got declassified earlier than Len anticipated. He shook his head a bit at the thought, then stood up to go meet Spock in his quarters. He was looking forward to finding out just what his friend had found in the words Arrhae had sent back with him, about how the Rihannsu came to be, how they had broken from their Vulcan roots to shape into the culture that had, very nearly, ended all hopes of a Federation before they had bloomed.

He was certain Spock's insights would be cutting, in a dry and logical way — of course. He just also knew that Spock, child of two worlds himself, would recognize the shaping of the writer, see the way Terise had embraced Arrhae, finding the dictums of that life easier to bear.

It wasn't that far a cry from Spock's attempts to shape himself into a 'proper' Vulcan, but with less cutting away of the self, less denial of existing emotions, and more a growing into the new shape that answered unknown desires. It just might take a bit of time for Spock to admit that much out loud.