Stillness and Anger Pt2

Posted on Wed Apr 1st, 2026 @ 1:45am by Captain Rhenora Kaylen & Remal Kajun & Patin

2,946 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Beholder
Location: Sunfire

There was space, peace, silence - but no answer to her unbidden call for communications. She settled, allowing her mind to go deeper, looking for them, actively seeking them out. The pillars appeared, surrounded by the white mist that ebbed and flowed as though drifting on an unseen tide. Yet there was noone in the Temple. Silence. They were refusing her summons, cutting off her anger. Even Patin wasn't there. Had they stifled her old friend? Threatened her with meddling again?

"Show yourselves you cowards!" She yelled into the void, voice swallowed by the mist.

The Temple held its silence with intention. Still, the ripple reached her. Her shout moved through the layered stillness like pressure finding a seam, threading its way through folds of time until it struck something that could feel it. Patin turned at once, the shift in her posture immediate, instinctive. The edges of her form drew tighter, sharpening toward something more solid as recognition settled in her chest. That voice carried heat, carried anger, carried the kind of demand that refused to fade quietly into the background, familiarity.

Patin felt every bit of it. Her hand lifted without thought, fingers curling as though the space between them could be gathered and pulled aside. For a breath, she leaned into it, weight shifting forward, ready to step through the thin place where presence might become action.

The Temple answered in its own way. The space around her thickened, a gentle pressure rising to meet her movement, holding her in place with a quiet certainty. Like a boundary that shaped itself around her intent, firm as gravity, patient as time. They were keeping her from acting.

Patin stilled, “I hear you, Nozzie,” she said, soft and steady, the words settling into the space around herr. She shifted her weight, restless energy moving through her in small, contained motions. Her gaze remained fixed in the direction of that echo, anchored to it, caught between the urge to move and the shape of something larger holding her in place. She waited, and listened, knowing her friend needed to vent.

Rhenora stood, breath shortened in her heightened emotional state, glaring, daring the Prophets to answer. Fuming she began to pace, an odd sensation in a place that only existed in the mind and in a wormhole.

"Why will you not show yourselves? Are you afraid to face once again the consequences of your actions? Are you concerned that you'll come toe to toe with what it takes to constantly be cleaning up your bullshit. You're gutless cowards! You talk to non interference and higher judgement. I call bullshit on the lot of it. You take and you take and you take, you never GIVE, ever!" Her righteous fury reigned supreme over the silence, voice carrying through the space.

Rhenora’s fury tore through the Temple like a storm that refused to break. Patin felt every word of it.

The echo struck her where she stood, and this time she moved without restraint. Both fists slammed forward, striking the unseen boundary with a sharp, resounding crack that rippled outward through the Temple’s geometry. Light fractured along invisible lines, the space bending under the force of her intent before drawing itself tight again.

“Can’t you see she’s hurting?” Patin snapped, voice rising, heat flaring bright and immediate. She struck the barrier again, harder, the impact sending a pulse through the white expanse. The Temple bowed and recovered, elastic and unyielding.

The Prophets answered, their voices layered, steady, untouched by the violence of her emotion. You have taught us of Faith. Now witness a test of that Faith.

Patin turned toward them, anger sharp and alive in her eyes. “You’re testing her?” she demanded. “She just lost someone she cared about and you’re testing her?” Her hands spread wide, incredulous, furious. “It’s no wonder people turn their backs on you!”

The Temple held. It absorbed her anger. It measured it. Then it answered. Observe. The word settled into the space with quiet authority. The mist shifted.

At first, it seemed like a trick of perception, the white expanse folding in on itself, gathering density in a single point ahead of Rhenora. Then a shape began to form, drawn from absence into suggestion, from suggestion into something that carried weight.

A figure stepped forward. Its outline wavered, edges soft, uncertain, as though reality had not yet committed to a single version. One step brought definition. A shoulder. A hand. The faint suggestion of a face.

Another step. The form resolved into Marie Batel. Familiar. Known. Anchored in memory. Then it shifted, with each step, like a reflection caught between two surfaces, her features slid, softened, reformed. The posture changed by degrees. The line of the jaw, the set of the eyes, the presence behind them. Someone else stood there. Someone older in a way that carried history rather than time.

Rhenora’s mother.

The Temple held both truths at once. Batel and mother. Past and something deeper. The figure flickered between them with each measured step forward, as though identity itself had become fluid under the weight of the moment.

Patin went still. Her hands hovered near the barrier, fingers flexing once before settling. The anger remained, bright and sharp beneath her skin, yet something else threaded through it now. Recognition. Unease. The understanding that this moment had been shaped with purpose.

She leaned forward slightly, breath catching as her gaze locked onto the figure approaching Rhenora. “Easy...” she murmured under her breath, the word meant for Rhenora, for herself, for the fragile space between what was happening and what might come next.

Behind her, the Temple remained silent. Watching. Waiting. Holding the test in place.

Confusion reigned, why were they masquerading, giving her glimpses but yet no words. The anger remained, bubbling, brewing, threatening to erupt all over again.

"Use your words, Cowards, use your face, not the faces from my past. If they were here they would not be silent" her words dropped to a dangerously low intensity, but she meant every word. "You no longer have my faith, you keep taking when there is no more left to give..." there was a silent hope that something would change, that a dialogue would be opened, that something or someone would change her diminishing flicker of faith into the bonfire that once burned.

The figure stepped forward, no longer flickering between Batel and another, her hand reached out and rested on Rhenora's shoulder. "Oh my little one, my baby girl, they hurt you. Come, let me take the pain." Her arms stretched out ready to take a beating or an embrace, whichever her little Poppet would give first.

There was confusion, the indistinguishable figure sounding like her mother, but she had died so very many years ago. Rhenora took a step back, unwilling to accept this apparition. " My mother would never had shielded me from pain, she would tell me to face it, embrace it, and be stronger for it."

The figure of her mother lowered her arms. "I see. And is that what you are doing now? You've come here of your own volition to face your pain? To embrace it? Because from where I stand it looks more like a release."

Her figure was replaced suddenly by Batels as though they shared the same space. "Are you stronger? Do you believe this makes you stronger?" The figure of Batel looked around the void. "You are angry but do you even know why you are?"

"I am angry...." Rhenora paused to take a breath and calm her racing heart "because you used the woman's, who body you now portray, to do your dirty work. Without asking, without permission, without so much as acknowledge her sacrifice, how she diligently secured YOUR cast away problems for over a hundred years without so much as a Thank You from you. I don't care that you use ME, that's MY burden , but you don't use others, not like that" she was shaking with emotion.

The Batel figure paced slowly, each step deliberate, measured, as though movement itself carried meaning. "In order to attain transcendence, we had to cast away that which destabilized us, negative emotion. That was our cost. Once cast out, we bound inside a prison, protected, hidden, safe. Then, like now, we saw the potential paths laid out. We knew then, one would fracture the seal. Preparations were made necessity."

She continued her slow circuit, her expression settling into something quieter, more distant. "Marie Batel ceased to be on Parnassus Beta. That moment was known to us. We 'nudged' in an effort to correct more than one mistake. The one know as Christopher Pike required his counterpart to remain aligned with what must be." She paused for a moment, in both walking and speaking and looked directly at Rhenora.

Her tone softened, though the weight behind it deepened. "The nudge served many outcomes. Without it, the VezdaPagh would have consumed everything we know. Without it, you would not know The Batel. Without it, you would not know this anger from loss. And without knowing this anger, you would not know what you will have to give up when 'it' comes again."

A sacrifice must be made. It is as it always was. Echoed quietly through the void.

"Why are we the ones who always have to bear the sacrifice? Why is it never you?" She threw back at them, still quivering from anger and injustice.

Patin let out a slow breath through her nose, her gaze fixed on the scene unfolding beyond the boundary. Her fingers flexed once at her side, a small, contained motion, the kind that used to precede action. Now it only marked restraint. “They always say it like it’s clean,” she muttered under her breath. “Like it doesn’t leave anything behind.”

The Temple around her held steady, unbothered by the weight of its own declaration. That bothered her more than the words themselves. Her eyes flicked to Rhenora, tracking the tension in her shoulders, the tremor in her hands, the way anger and grief tangled together in a way the Prophets would never quite map correctly.

“They’re not teaching her,” Patin said quietly, something colder threading into her voice now. “They’re lining her up.”

Patin’s jaw tightened, her posture shifting just slightly forward again before she caught herself, holding the line this time with effort instead of instinct. “Careful, Nozzie..." she murmured, too soft for anything but herself to hear. “They don’t ask twice when they think they’re right.”

Rhenora waited, impatient as the temple drew to a dangerous silence, it was as if both sides were deciding their next move. Rhenora's faith hung by a thread.

Time held no meaning yet it felt an eternity there in that silence. Finally the visage of Batel / Rhenoras mother fell away, faded into the nothing. In return their voices sounded as one, not loud but bearing non-the-less.

Transcendence requires sacrifice. A sacrifice must be made. We once sacrificed all so that others would give less.

We are of Bajor The Rhenora is of Bajor. We and the Rhenora... Will be one.

The Rhenora learns loss this moment, anger another.

We learn Governance of Give and Take. To quell, We grant The Rhenora, one request.

"Come on Nozzie, this is your opening. Make it a good one." Patin uttered from the wings.

Rhenora lifted her chin, a small gesture of defiance as her faith was rekindled just that little bit. "I know you can't bring her back, but can you take Marie's Pagh, her soul as she calls it, into the temple? She has no faith of any kind, her Pagh had nowhere to go, perhaps she may learn, and so may you. " it was simple, made without any hesitation or thought for herself, only ever of others.

Again a momentary silence range out.

Then, The penance has been paid.

A Pagh for a Pagh.

Reconciliation is requested in return.

The Pagh of The Batel will be 'invited'. As it was, so shall it be.

The Beholder will monitor, as she has always done.

The parameters have been adjusted.

Rhenora dared to breathe, the anger melting away like the tide ebbs. There was still frustration, injustice, and sorrow all mixed in the melting pot now raw with emotional overload. But there was also hope, and the tiniest smidge of satisfaction that she had successfully argued her care. She would still grieve, but there was still then the opportunity for discussion, debate and negotiation. They were indeed learning, or perhaps, they were beginning to bend just a little. Patin had been good for them.

"I am grateful, thank you" she said quietly, wiping tears from her eyes. She waited for a moment to see if they had anything else to say.

Watching as silence filled the space, Patin was bitter because she could not comfort her friend, and perturbed at the Prophets for forcing the separation between them. They didn't yet know how to trust her, which she thought was fair, but also knew was a lesson they needed. Her chest ached knowing her friend's Faith was shaken. Nozzie always held fast to her Faith, even in the trenches. "Don't worry Nozz..." She whispered into the nothing. "I'll teach them."

The temple faded, dissolving into everything and nothing all at once, replaced with the now low candle in her alter. She exhaled, reacquainting herself with the present then attempting to lever herself off the floor on legs and joints that sternly reminded her she needed to look after herself more. "By the Prophets I'm getting old" she grumbled.

He was standing there as she closed the small doors to the shrine, waiting, as he always would. Like a father waiting up for his Daughter who had stayed out past curfew, worried, upset, but hiding it deep within so that she would only see him on the surface. He cleared his throat as she stood. "So, did they offer anything good this time?"

"Do they ever?" She grumbled, finally gritting to her feet and massaging her aching joints. The sarcasm was heavy in her words, still tinged with the lingering anger and sorrow. She paused and looked at him, so grateful for his effortless solidarity and support. "They offered to invite Marie's Pagh into the temple. She had no specific faith and so would follow no specific path. At least now maybe, she and Patin might teach them a few things." She shrugged, stepping closer to him and wrapping her arms around his waist, snuggling her cheek into his chest, dwelling on the rhythmic beating of his heart.

He comforted her, a small chuckle in his chest, "I don't know Batel very well, but I knew Patin, and if she's joined forces to teach the Prophets we should all pray the sky doesn't burn." He hugged her, rubbing that spot on her back where she always held tension. "Come on, I poured you a glass of Spring Wine. It will help ease the worry." He pulled back and kissed the bridge of her nose, a tradition in Bajoran culture between a couple.

She relished the contact and leant into it, before following him into the living area and settling on the couch. Sure enough within a minute there was a glass of wine in her hand, and a plate of nibbles on the coffee table. She felt blessed in this moment, surrounded by love and family - so far removed from the burdens that she carried outside these doors.

" I haven't asked about your day - I'm sorry" She apologized, taking a swig of the wine and relaxing as the alcohol began to enter her system. It made her head a little lighter and her cares just that much further away. She snuggled close to Remal as he sat beside her, wine also in hand. Reaching up to kiss his lips and tasting the wine there. She felt an energy unlike she had for some time and decided to make her intentions known, rising and pulling him towards the bedroom, wine still in hand.

In between kisses, he managed to spit out, "As a counselor..." kiss, unbutton shirt... "I must inform you..." kiss "grief can cause..." kiss "... a heightened emotional state leading to" kiss, trouser removal. "...poor decision making." As he finished the words he found himself hovering over her on the bed, her fingers pressing into his chest.

"I don't... see you complaining" she whispered in between ministrations.

"However, as your husband," he smirked in that way she always liked. "I'm just going to roll with it." In his next move he rolled onto his back on the bed, flipping her over on top of him. His breath ragged, his intentions were also clear.

Later that evening they lay content in a tangle of limbs and bedsheets, the worries of the day temporarily pushed aside.

"Thank you" She whispered, kissing the bridge of his nose as he rested comfortably.

He held a tired, yet satisfied grin, "It wasn't so good as to warrant gratitude, though I guess I should be thankful for that thing you did with your tongue." He considered her words and then continued, "As for everything else, you should also know you never have to thank me. I consider my acts as your husband to be within my duties and as always, my honor." He looked over at her. "I am yours, always."

TBC

 

RSS Feed