Coy Sessions - The Many Who Live As One

Posted on Sat Feb 21st, 2026 @ 6:12pm by Commander Rosa Coy & Remal Kajun

2,346 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire

Rosa entered the counseling room with the same measured economy she brought to a helm under fire, shoulders squared to forces no one else could see, breath regulated by habit rather than comfort, and when the doors sealed behind her she remained standing a moment longer than protocol required, as if calibrating gravity before committing her weight to it.

Remal Kajun watched without intrusion, his stillness an offered vector rather than a command, and when he spoke her name he placed it gently in the room like a navigational marker rather than a summons.

She crossed to the couch and sat with care that resembled restraint rather than fatigue, arms drawn in across her ribs not to defend but to contain, as though the body she owned had become crowded territory. “I’d rather skip to solutions,” she said, voice steady, the tone of a pilot presenting a course correction.

Remal inclined his head, “Solutions are born from honesty. Let’s start with the part of you that keeps flinching,” he said, his cadence unhurried, his attention exact.

A warmth moved along Rosa’s spine with the subtlety of a current beneath calm water, her jaw tightening by reflex as sensation translated into awareness. He wants the tremor you hide, Rosa. Handzon’s voice slid in like someone’s breath against her neck, too close, too knowing.

She released a slow breath and placed her hands upon her thighs. “I’m not flinching,” she answered.

“Your breathing says otherwise,” Remal replied, folding his hands loosely. No judgment. Just presence. The kind of presence that didn’t retreat when pressure rose.

She considered the room as she might a field of debris, noting angles, distances, the smallest shift in pressure. “Then let’s call it... tension.” Her throat worked around the word.

Another flicker of heat, this time a curl at the base of her stomach. Tension looks good on you, sweet baby girl. Let him see it. Let anyone see it. The voice of Handzon prodded.

We have carried centuries through fracture and repair. Unity is continuity. The voice of Coy bore the gravity of long memory, an elder presence that neither pressed nor withdrew.

Her fingers twitched, unbidden, traitorous, so she clasped them together, knuckles whitening.

Remal watched all of this with the patience of a man who knew not to interrupt a battle he couldn’t see. “You came here because you said you wanted to understand what integration means for you,” he said. “Not in a textbook. In your own skin.”

“That’s part of the problem.” She rubbed her arms as if something under the surface kept trying to push out. “I don’t know where my skin ends, and theirs begins, anymore.”

Remal shifted just a little, leaning closer, but not enough to crowd her. “Start with the truth.”

Rosa inclined her head slightly, acknowledging without yielding. “Jet’s discipline, Hendrixi’s diplomacy, Blaze’s command presence, Alexzander’s construction of futures,” she said, enumerating not as a litany but as a chart of currents. “They present a tide, there’s this... undertow. A pull toward peace.” She wrung her hands once. “A part of me wants to stop fighting.”

Remal leaned forward a fraction, his posture inviting but not enclosing. “And the undertow you fear is singular,” he said, not as a question. "Peace frightens you.”

Heat gathered low, a sensation that translated itself into an invitation her muscles recognized before her will could name it. You speak of tides and pretend I am not the fire that taught you to feel them. The voice was velvet and ownership, confident in proximity. Attention suits you. You shine when you are seen.

Rosa’s fingers tightened against her knees until pressure returned sensation to neutral. “I experience impulses that are not aligned with my intention,” she said, tone returning to instruction. “They arrive with persuasive force. The word desire does not begin to even describe how I feel under this persuasion.”

Remal accepted the description with professional clarity. “Impulse is a signal,” he said. “Authority remains yours to interpret and to act.”

“It feels like erasure,” she snapped, too quickly, too raw. “It feels like if I stop holding the line for even a second, they’ll take more than I'm meant to give.” Her neck flushed hot, a creeping bloom of color rising to her ears. She looked away sharply.

Remal didn’t push. He let the silence widen just long enough for truth to slip through. “This isn’t about ‘they,’” he murmured. “It’s about one. It's about you.”

Rosa’s breath hitched, just a sliver, but her shoulders jumped like she’d been struck.

He means me. Handzon's voice, slick like tar from a slow burning cigar, spoke. Go on. Tell him how you crave me when you shouldn’t. Tell him you like the fire I pour into your veins.

Her fingers spasmed again. She hid them in her lap. “You make it sound simple.”

“Not simple. Humane.”

Rosa barked a laugh, short, brittle. “There’s nothing humane about how he fits inside my mind.”

Heat curled low again, a pulse she hated herself for feeling. Did you miss me on Trill? You fought so hard not to hear me... yet here I am, and your heart still flutters.

Her chest rose sharply, betrayal by muscle memory.

Remal caught the change immediately. “Where did you go just now?”

She pressed her knuckles into her thighs until the urge to move, touch, reach, want, subsided. Just barely. “He’s trying to insert himself into the session.” Her voice cracked. “I can feel him leaning in, like a hand around my throat.”

Hand? Sweet baby girl, I’m wrapped around much more than that. Want to feel what it's like when I touch your pleasure spots?

She flinched visibly this time.

Remal’s tone grounded her with a single word. “Stay.” Not a command. A lifeline.

She clung to it.

“Rosa,” Remal went on, gentle but impossibly steady, “you are not broken for wanting what he gives you. Compulsion isn’t a flaw. It’s a wound. And wounds ache even when they’re healing.”

“I don’t want to need him.”

She studied him, measuring steadiness against the internal pressure that sought to reframe desire as direction. “There’s something else,” she murmured. “Something I haven’t... sorted.” A long swallow moved down her throat. "It keeps circling back and I don’t know why.” The admission altered her breathing despite her training. “I crossed a boundary I had set for myself. The action occurred with full awareness and incomplete authorship.”

Indignation flared, quick, wounded, deep beneath her ribs You think I forced your hand? You think I wanted to use you? The heartbreak in Coy’s tone staggered her. Rosa’s jaw clenched, eyes stinging.

She absorbed the resonance and continued. “My concern is not the event but the distribution of agency within it.” She whispered, “I just... I just don’t know who was steering.”

Remal exhaled slowly, compassion thickening the air around them. “That guilt you’re carrying,” he said, “isn’t about the moment itself.” His voice softened even further. “It’s about the fear that you’re not in the cockpit alone.”

I don’t need to rule. I just need your attention. And you never stop giving it. The intrusive warmth returned, confident and amused. The implication carried ownership without force, an attempt to equate desire with inevitability. Her pulse jumped.

Remal lowered his voice. “The part of you that fears losing to him isn’t weakness. It’s familiarity.” He let his words sink deeper, matching the rhythm of her uneven breath. “He took up space in you. You adapted. That doesn’t mean he owns that space.”

Rosa’s voice came thin, barely there. “Then why does it feel like I’d be cutting off a limb if I push him out? Or lock him away as other Trill have done?”

Remal offered the truth she’d been circling for years. “Because he has built himself upon your loneliness.”

Something inside her cracked, quietly, like a seam giving way.

Don’t listen to him. You and I, we survived together. I’m the fire in your veins, the impulse that keeps you alive. You remove me, you remove the thrill of being more than ordinary...

“Rosa.” Remal’s voice struck through the static. “Look at me.”

She did.

“What you feel isn’t love. It isn’t partnership. It’s trauma-bonding. Dependency forged under pressure. He was the loudest presence in your mind in the worst moment of your life, the emergency joining. That kind of shock wires itself deep. But dependency isn’t destiny.”

Her breathing trembled.

Remal continued, softer. “You think integration means surrender. That he’ll drown you out or vanish. But integration isn’t giving him the helm. And it isn’t erasing him. It’s putting boundaries around a voice that never had any.”

She sat again, slower, as if gravity had shifted.

“What if I don’t know where his impulses stop and I begin?” she whispered.

“That’s the work.” Remal settled back. “You learn to separate skill from compulsion. Thrill from instinct. Confidence from craving. You don’t lose him, you just stop mistaking him for yourself.”

Rosa’s fingers curled into her knees. “What if peace feels empty?”

“Then we find a way to fill it. Not with noise. With you.” His gaze held hers. “Peace isn’t a void. It’s room to breathe. And you’ve never had that room, not with Handzon pressing against every corner of your mind.”

She inhaled, shaky but deep.

You don’t want peace. The whisper slithered from the edges of her awareness, viscous and coaxing. You want the rush. You want the heat. You want me. Don’t lie to him. Don’t lie to yourself.

Rosa closed her eyes. “Enough,” Rosa whispered, pressing her fingers hard against her temples. “Not you. Not right now.” Her breath shook so violently it became a shiver.

Remal reached out, not touching yet, just a hand hovering near hers. “May I?”

She nodded once.

His fingers brushed hers lightly, grounding her with simple, human contact. No pressure. No possession. Just presence. Her breathing steadied by degrees. “There you are,” Remal said softly. “Not them. You.”

Silence held the room for a long moment. Rosa finally exhaled, shaky but real. “Then how do I integrate without disappearing?”

Remal squeezed her hand once, firm and warm. “By learning the difference between unity and surrender.”

His voice gentled to a near whisper. “Integration isn’t letting them become you. It’s letting them become part of you. By expanding into a new being with Rosa at the helm.”

Rosa closed her eyes, something easing inside her chest, a knot loosening, a blade lowering. “And Handzon?” she asked.

Remal smiled, soft and knowing. “He becomes a chapter. Not your author.”

A breath left her that felt like relief and grief braided together. For the first time, the heat under her skin didn’t feel like an invasion. It felt like something she could contain. Maybe even negotiate with. She opened her eyes. “I think... I think I can try.”

Remal nodded. “That’s all integration ever asks.”

Her shoulders dropped, just a little. But enough. “For years,” she said quietly, “I thought if I lost him, I would go numb. That he was the only thing keeping me awake.”

Remal’s voice softened to a near hush. “He kept you agitated, not alive.”

“I know that now. But... part of me feels guilty for not wanting him.” Her voice broke at the end.

“He was never your partner,” Remal said. “He was a tenant who overstayed, rearranged the furniture, and convinced you the house was his. You aren’t betraying him. You’re reclaiming your home.”

Rosa let out a breath she’d been holding for years. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It held shape. Contour. Possibility.

She looked at her hands, her hands, and said, slowly, as if sculpting the words out of something solid: “I’m ready to integrate. Not to surrender. Not to be consumed. I want to know what’s me. I want to know myself.”

Remal’s expression softened with a kind of pride that didn’t presume victory, only respected the courage it took to reach this point. “Then you’re ready.”

Rosa leaned back in the chair, exhausted as someone who had climbed out of her own skin and found a new one beneath it.

Inside her mind, Handzon hissed, the sound brittle and receding. This isn’t over.

Rosa’s pulse steadied. “No,” she murmured aloud, more to herself than to him. “It’s finally beginning.”

The session ended on that quiet earthquake of a truth, less a conclusion than the first unbroken breath of a life she was finally choosing to inhabit. It was enough to show she’d taken the first step toward living with the many who live as one, without letting any of them swallow her whole.

Rosa rose from the couch with the economy of a pilot committing to a vector, weight placed where intention directed it, and when she spoke her voice carried the authority of someone who had navigated worse storms and retained command. “This is not disappearance,” she said, as much declaration as orientation.

Remal stood with her, offering presence rather than possession. The room held its shape around the decision, not a resolution but a stable orbit achieved after turbulence, and as Rosa Prilen Coy stepped toward the doors she carried the many within her without allowing any to claim the helm. The quiet that followed was structured, deliberate, and alive with the difficult grace of shared breath.

TBC

 

RSS Feed