The Art of Gilding Fractures, Part II
Posted on Tue Oct 21st, 2025 @ 10:19pm by Lieutenant Sivek & Lieutenant Addison Talbert
Edited on on Wed Oct 22nd, 2025 @ 2:25pm
1,962 words; about a 10 minute read
Mission:
In The Nick Of Time
Location: Sick Bay - Deck 4 - USS Herodotus
Timeline: MD005, 1040 hrs
"There is little correlation between your... paygrade... and my crimes." Sivek then realized she would be the very first person he would share his convict status with since leaving Limonu.
"I was responsible for multiple deaths as a result of unlawful experimentation," he intoned, a slightly emotional lilt in his words that betrayed his one-quarter human genes. "The official charges were negligence causing death and unlawful experimentation."
He let the words remain in the air between them. Sivek wondered if, perhaps, the doctor might choose to judge him.
She heard that quiet heaviness in his voice. It was there but very subtle. Addison's eyes did widen feeling a bit of shock, she didn't step back, nor display any sort of repulsion. Was there supposed to be a reaction as per what he had just shared. Her mind couldn't come up with an answer.
"What happened?" Addison simply asked.
Sivek moved to the nearest biobed, running two fingers along its firm but padded surface.
"The experiment was unsanctioned," he began, voice steady. "I sought to resonate an annular metaphasic particle stream into a temporal stream inside an anomaly. In theory, the design was flawless." He pressed his lips together. "The execution was not."
He turned toward Addison. "A cascade of energy propagated through the anomaly, spreading outward into space. Two VSA vessels were destroyed. The vessel I was assigned to, the Renommée, was crippled. Lives were lost. There were crewmembers who suffered temporal displacement, aging anomalies, irreparable loss. The event is on the record, should you wish to study it."
"If you don't mind translating that into layman terms, what was the supposed end result if the experiment were to be successful? And I am sorry for those losses, that is a terrible burden upon your shoulders. As to something going horrifically wrong." Addison's gaze was compassionate as to what happened. She will most definitely read over what happened if she were allowed to do so.
Sivek stood motionless for a time, his gaze remaining on the biobed, on the way the lighting reflected on its surface.
"The intent," he began, his voice low, "was to open a window--to glimpse the structure of time as one might observe the contours of a current beneath the sea. If successful, we might have determined whether they anomaly could be stabilized... or even traversed." His eyes found its way to the ceiling, as though searching there for some measure of forgiveness. "I had a personal mission: to find my mother, who disappeared--died--in the anomaly many years ago. My... longing... for her, clouded my judgment."
He drew in a slow breath through his nose before crossing back to the console. Tapping in a series of commands, he found what he was looking for. "I have uploaded the official Starfleet report--as well as the internal memos concerning my tribunal and subsequent prosecution--to the station in your office."
For a moment, Sivek felt the air between them humming. It wasn't tension but something else.
"You have lost someone as well," he said. "Your husband."
"Yes." a shimmer of grief was in her eyes, then it faded away, to compassion for him. "I am sorry for your loss."
Addison moved towards her desk to take a seat, motioning towards the other chair for Sivek to have a seat. "I was asked though, would I want to turn back time, and change the past, to save him?"
"I had thought before I had been brought into the DTI, or even knew about it, what if I could change the past, would I?" she shook her head side to side. "My answer is no, and will always be that answer."
She drew in a breathe through her nose, leaning back in her chair. "Even though I miss him, and mourn his death. I wouldn't try to change the past. It would change who I am now. And I don't want that at all. If I were to go back and save him before that stampede happened. A little girl, so young and tender in years would have died. A possible bright future being snuffed out, too soon. That is something I wouldn't want on my conscience."
Her blue eyes looked into his hazel eyes. "I can't truly fathom the burden that is weighing upon you, for what happened. It must have been horrifying to you, witnessing the devastation." her voice growing soft, then Addison went quiet. Letting the atmosphere be still, letting Sivek speak if he so wished.
Sivek did not sit at first. He stood where the light from the ceiling met the floor and held himself there for a long moment, his gaze faraway and intent, as if he were examining a thing no one else could see. Then, with a nearly silent exhale, he lowered himself into the chair across from her.
"When I was sentenced," he said, "I believed that solitude would be a punishment." His fingers, now steepled lightly, began to move as he spoke. This was a tiny, unconscious gesture he found himself performing at times. "Limonu proved otherwise. It was... a kind of mercy."
He looked down at his lined hands. They had grown soft in the past decade--not at all what they once looked like prior to his imprisonment. "The facility was built for silence. There was no cells in the conventional sense--only natural soundproofed partitions with light cycles attuned to the circadian rhythms of Vulcans. In thirteen years, I did not have contact with another prisoner. I saw prison personnel on occasion, but our interactions were brief. Speech became an indulgence. Unnecessary ornamentation."
His gaze drifted over to the bulkhead, though it seemed to pass through it entirely. "For those thirteen years on Limonu, I rose at dawn, meditated, read philosophy, recalculated the events of the experiment, meditated again, and ate in silence. There were no visitors. No natural light. Simply an ordered sequence of the day's events. In that space, I could order my thoughts. The grief became... mathematical. Contained. It became a function solved for zero."
He paused, and something subtle--a weariness just shy of something almost human--passed across his expression. "But here..." His eyes jumped to a nearby medical monitor. "Here, there is too much life. Too much sound. I can feel the engines. I can hear almost hear the crew conversing. Their emotions press into me."
Sivek exhaled heavily. "And with them, my own emotions--those I believed I had dismantled--rise again. Guilt. Grief. Ghosts of the past that are as loud as they are familiar. Unmuted." He turned to Addison. "How does one calm rough water, doctor?"
Addison slowly drew in a breath through her nose, as she considered how to answer Sivek. Things like this tended to be different for those facing something like this.
The heaviness from his words, his thoughts, the grief that laced through the air. Even though he was controlling the emotions, it did settle upon them both like a heavy blanket.
She let out her breath, concentrating on him.
"I do not have an easy solution to what you ask. For each person it is different as to what they do to calm the rough waters they find themselves being tossed upon."
Her brow furrowed with concern, as Sivek had a rather heavy burden that he was carrying.
"Thirteen years of solitude to where you've been left alone with your thoughts, your meditation. The walls and mental shields you had developed are now at bare minimum at best, not being around other beings."
"Perhaps, you will need to build a new foundation to renew those barriers. I recall reading about something called the keethera and there was something that had been recited while building it. Hmmnn--Structure. Logic. Function. Control--" she closed her eyes as she tried to draw up from her memory what came next.
"Perhaps you know the rest of it?" Addison opening her eyes to regard Sivek. In all of this her demeanor had became calm, serene.
Sivek regarded her in silence for a pregnant moment. Then, at last, he spoke.
"Structure. Logic. Function. Control." He said the words softly, measured, reverently. "A mantra that is older than Surak's teachings. The structure cannot stand without a foundation. Logic is the foundation of function. Function is the essence of control..." He left the last part unsaid, as he did not feel as though he were in control right now. Not on this timeship. Not with a security detail standing just outside of the Sickbay doors.
He looked down at his hands again, as if ensuring he were alive and present. "The inner walls of a Vulcan are constructed through meditation and mental architecture. Mine were once built with certainty. They were precise, soundproofed against chaos. But years of solitude..." He hesitated. "They turned the mortar to dust. There is quiet in silence, Doctor, but also erosion."
Addison nodded, her eyes reflecting her understanding, as to what he stated.
"The keethera from what I understand. is one of the tools that can help to repair the walls or even build new ones." a pause as something had come to her mind.
"I had come across something which I take heart in the philosophy of its practice. In Japan, there is an art form which is called, Kintsugi, golden repair. Taking something which is broken and turning it into a thing of beauty."
She placed an arm upon her desk, the other supporting her chin as Addison spoke. "I translated it into my own life, mending the cracks in my own--psyche which had been broken, and piecing it together. Which I feel that is something you can do as well. It will be work though to do so. No real easy solution at all. Just need to start, taking one step at a time."
Sivek regarded her and for a long while, he said nothing. He looked away then, his eyes tracing the edge of the floor and bulkhead. "Vulcans are not taught to find beauty in imperfection. We are taught to sand it away--to file down every irregularity until only logic remains." His gaze return to her. "But logic is not gold. It mends, yes. But it does not glimmer."
He lowered his eyes and spoke after a brief pause. "I would be grateful, Doctor, if you might show me this Kintsugi."
"I would be quite happy to do so. Also--do not forget to speak to our XO Commander Sandoval, she would be able to help when it comes to regaining balance as well." Addison replied.
Sivek inclined his head. "Balance. It is a fragile thing to measure." He rose from the chair, posture drawn straight once more, hands folded neatly behind his back. "Your words have... resonance," he said finally. "And weight."
There was no sign of artifice in his tone, none of the Vulcan coolness that often sharpened into dismissal. It was sincerity in its purest form.
"I will make an effort to speak with Commander Sandoval," he added. "Thank you, Doctor Talbert."
Then he stepped out into the corridor, the Herodotus and her pulse reminding him that he was part of something bigger again.
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Addison Talbert
Chief Medical Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
Lieutenant Sivek
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Herodotus DTI-30656
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