A Five Stage Conversation (Backpost)

Posted on Sun Sep 7th, 2025 @ 2:06am by Lieutenant JG Kally Kellerman & Ensign Henry Taylor

Mission: Lower Decks
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Day Before Arrival at Tial

"All right, extend your arm gently," Kally said, helping Petty Officer Kozlowski move his right arm. As he winced, she stopped and rubbed his shoulder firmly, making him wince more. She put his arm down and picked up her tools, repairing the muscle groups around his right shoulder. "If you can't go up and down a ladder quickly and safely, you have to choose safely," she said.

"Sorry, Doc," Kozlowski said. "Sometimes they only way to reach the right junction is to crawl through the tubes."

"Well crawl more carefully," she said. "A big, strong, crewman like yourself needs a good strong shoulder." She gave him a smile and a wink.

Kozlowski chuckled. "Yeah you make a good point. Can't go lifting injector coils with a bad shoulder. Or any doctors." He gave her a wink back.

Kally grinned at him and batted her eyes, leaning in as her hands started roaming. "Well once you've had a couple days' rest, we'll see about some 'physical therapy.'"

Their quiet laughter was interrupted by the sharp slap of a padd on a counter. They jumped in surprise and Kally looked over to see Henry glaring at them.

"Is it too much to ask that we focus on our work today like professionals?" he half shouted, turning back to his terminal.

Kally frowned at him, but didn't say anything. With their arrival at Tial in less than a day, Tessa was busy in her quarters preparing, and it hadn't been easy on her head nurse as reality suddenly came crashing down. The past week had been a demonstration of possibly the worst examples of 'sneaking around' she'd ever seen. She'd caught them on multiple occasions in various rooms talking about their homeworlds while snuggled up in a corner, sharing meals, and one time teaching each other to dance. She didn't say anything, she never did, just quietly backed out of the room and locked the door. She started quietly removing items from their to-do lists, giving them extra buffer time, watching their smiles as they suddenly "had to get something from the supply closet" at the same time, or somehow always had their lunch breaks together, heading for Henry's quarters hand-in-hand and coming back....eventually. And again, she never said anything. Now, that silence was over.

"I'm sorry Peter," she said, quietly. "You're all set, come see me in a couple days if anything is sore."

He nodded and rubbed his shoulder tenderly, looking at Henry as he left Sickbay.

Kally made some notes in her padd for Kozlowski's file and put it down before walking over to Henry, her hands behind her back. "Henry? Can I see you in my office?"

Henry slammed his padd down again and stood up, walking purposefully there, Kally walking fast to match his longer strides.

As they stepped inside and closed the door, sealing them from the outside world, Henry exploded. "She can't go back!"

"Okay...well...glad we're not wasting time pretending we're talking about something else," Kally sighed, sitting down on her loveseat.

Henry fumed, pacing like a caged animal. "Primitive morals....ridiculous eugenic ideas.....barbaric political practices..." he ranted.

Kally watched him wear a path in her carpet. "How much have you slept in the last few days?" she said, noting the circles under his eyes.

"How can I sleep?" he said. "All I can think about is what's going to happen, and how much it shouldn't. She doesn't even want this! She wants to be with us!"

"Us?" Kally said, giving him a knowing look.

"Me," he said, unashamedly, staring at her as if daring her to contradict him. "She wants to stay with me, I see it in her eyes every time I look at her, and I want to be with her. All she has to do is tell us to turn around! To tell them she isn't returning. She has that freedom to choose and could do it any time!"

"No, she doesn't, and you knew that going into this," Kally reminded him. "You were specifically told."

Henry swung at the stack of padds on Kally's desk, scattering them across the floor. "It's insane! How can someone use their daughter as...as a sexual trophy?" he shouted, running his hands through his hair. "They're going to take her...they're going to take that poor, innocent girl..." he choked a bit, thinking of her. "They're going to force her to sleep with some warlord just to give birth to a child and then discard her like she's a used trinket!"

Kally winced. "Henry...it's not quite like that--"

"IT IS EXACTLY LIKE THAT!" he shouted. "She is her own person, not their political spawning machine! Their...genetic purity bank! Their culture is completely fucked up! What kind of backwards, morally bankrupt...evil kind of people think that trading their children like that is acceptable, and we shouldn't be allowing it!"

The anger of a gentle man, Kally thought to herself. She found herself getting upset just from the force of his emotions coming through and took a few breaths to get herself under control. "You know very well the Prime Directive wouldn't allow--"

"To hell, with the Prime Directive!" Henry said. "This bullshit idea of non-interference just lets stuff like this happen all over the galaxy! This stupid "live and let live" that we pretend is so noble can't be good if it allows something like this. Why can't something just be objectively wrong and we work to stop it?"

"Things are, and we do," Kally said, evenly. "But you know this isn't about moral relativism, it's about the damage that upheaving their society would do." They were getting off track and Henry was practically foaming at the mouth. "You need to take a breath and calm down."

"No, what I need to do is go down to that planet and tell her father what's what," he said. "I need to go tell her she can't go. I need to tell her she needs to stay and spend the rest of my life making her glad she did. Hell, we could see about medically preserving some of her ova, and they can breed them all they want! I could tell her I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I could just go have the Captain marry us right now! Then take a runabout, head for Federation space and never look back."

"And you'd start a war on her planet," Kally said. "She'd have to live every day knowing everyone she's known and cared about is in danger, because of her. And that's not even the worst scenario. They would strip her of her title, her heritage, everything she is. She wouldn't be giving up her world for you, she'd be giving up her life and her sense of self. It would hurt her more than her life on Tial ever could. That's no way to live, and not something you can build a love story on."

Henry stopped walking. He stood still, wavering and starting to buckle. He finally collapsed onto the loveseat next to her and even as he sat, he continued to sink, his shoulders slumping, his back curving and his body folding in half as he put his head in his hands. He started crying, softly at first but growing in intensity.

Kally rubbed his back gently, not saying anything and letting him get it out of his system. She knew nothing she could say could dull what he was feeling, and she wasn't going to rush him along.

"What do I do, Kally?" he said, his voice quiet, hollow, tortured. "How do I save her?"

Kally shook her head. "I don't know if you can. Love isn't a fairytale, Henry. It doesn't just 'conquer all.'"

"Well, why the hell not?" Henry said. "It's supposed to, damnit." He sat back on the couch and choked back a sob. "We have thousands of stories about it, why can't this be one of them?"

Kally sighed and rubbed his arm, wishing she knew. "I wish I had answers, Henry," she said. "You're both in a bad situation. But you both have had something invaluable: time together. You have a memory of each other that they can't take away. She will never forget the young nurse who gave her her first kiss, and she'll always know what love is, no matter what happens after. And maybe...someday that will help change things."

"Someday," he scoffed. "A century from now, sure. Not in time to save her from her fate."

Kally gave him a long, hard look. "What if it did? What if it took a century? One hundred years from now, her planet learned the benefit of true love and united. They joined the Federation, and they allowed their people to marry whomever they wanted...would you go to her and be with her? Would you wait one hundred years to see her again?"

He stared at the wall and through it, looking all the way down those hundred years. "Yes," he finally said, his voice barely a whisper.

Kally nodded. "And would you do anything for her now?"

He choked again and took a shuddering breath. "Anything. Just tell me what to do."

"Absolutely anything?" she said. As he nodded, she turned his face to look at her. "Even if that anything was letting her go?" The look of pain on his face almost made her cry in sympathy, but she held it together. "Well?"

Finally, he nodded, tears streaming down his face. He leaned over, burying his face in his hands.

"Then you have to do that," Kally said softly. "You have to show up tomorrow and be by her side. You have to be strong for her, and you have to say goodbye without making it harder for her. You have to let her go."

He wiped his eyes and ran a hand over his face. "I don't know how I'm going to live my life after this," he said.

"You don't have to," Kally said. "You just have to get through tomorrow. Then the day after that, and the day after that. We can reassess down the road."

He nodded. "I guess that's the only move left," he said, going quiet and sitting back, staring at the wall.

Kally sighed. "Go home, Henry," she said. "Get to bed early and get your dress uniform ready, and we'll face tomorrow together.

He nodded and stood up, walking out of her office without looking back or giving so much as a thank you.

Kally sat back and wiped her eyes, debating about checking in on Tessa, but knowing that would only make things worse. She suddenly had an urge to go see Cally, but the Captain was on the bridge. "Kellerman to Kellerman," she said, tapping her combadge.

"Hey, Kal, you okay?" Katie said, hearing her sister's voice.

"Kat, can you come to my quarters?" Kally said.

There was a pause as Katie evaluated her sister's tone. "I'm in the middle of something a bit involved, can I meet you in thirty?"

Kally smiled. "You bet. Thanks, love. Kally out." She stood up and logged out for the day. As she left for her quarters, she decided she was going down to the planet tomorrow, both to see her favorite trainee off...and to ensure nothing went wrong.