Cynndle stifled a yawn and forced his eyes to stay open after several, too-long blinks, as he stepped off the turbo lift and glanced at the wall console to confirm the time. “Almost midnight…not too bad…” he muttered and began to walk down the corridor lost in thought, thinking back on the night.

It had been almost 9 months since he had last seen Lieutenant Rebecca Thompson, no, not Lieutenant anymore, now Lieutenant Commander Thompson; he had to keep reminding himself. The last he had seen her was after the USS Dawnbringer, their old sabre class escort, was decommissioned following their engagement with a still as-of-yet unknown vessel and they were both reassigned.  He had been pleasantly surprised when he had received a message from her earlier that day saying her new ship was docked at Starbase Bravo for a day or two and wanted to know if he was free to catch up and show her around. 

Luck had been on their side as he had just finished a long stretch of long shifts earlier that day and had a day off. Following a long afternoon of reminiscing about their old ship, showing her around the station and some time in the holodeck, they ended up in a Klingon restaurant on the promenade before moving to one of the bars where they both had more than they should have. After several drinks, Rebecca’s combadge chimed abruptly bringing an end to the night. After a quick goodbye, they parted ways leaving Cynndle unsure of what to do next and how he felt.

After a couple of minutes, he stopped, bracing himself against the wall and looked around and frowned. “Where am I?” he questioned aloud, “This… definitely isn’t my deck…” he muttered before turning around, he thought, to go find the turbolift. Humming to himself as he went along he rounded a corner expecting to find the turbolifts a few meters in front of him but pulled up short as he almost walked right into a blond woman.  “Oh, umm…sorry I didn’t see you there. My bad.” he said as he blinked the sleep and slight tipsiness out of his eyes.

Coming into focus before Cynndle was, first, a pair of pajamas. They were somewhat loose-fitting. The shirt was a little short and exposed a bellybutton and the leggings showed a pair of ankles. What he noticed about the blonde woman, though, was a line of spots down her side and extending down to those exposed ankles. Proving that, yes, a Trill’s spots did go all the way down.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” came a foggy but yet familiar voice. It too sounded a bit slurred but Cynndle gave that up to his own momentarily skewed senses. “Oh hey! You’re…um…” and the blonde woman closed her eyes as though looking for something written on the back of her eyelids, “you’re…” and she started snapping her fingers as though that would help jog her memory. “You’re Sinnnn…” Snap snap snap.

Cynndle shook his head as he regained focus; missing her slow recognition of him. “Heriah” he said with a mixture of surprise but also excitement. “What are you…um…” he began to say as he looked her up and down; ‘So they do go all the way down…’ a small voice in his head said, ‘…intriguing…‘ “…doing up, out? Everything all right?” he asked as he took a step back realizing just how close he was standing to her.

“sinnn…Sinner…Cynndle! That’s it,” she said. “That’s…your name.” She smiled. It took a short second for her to continue. “Brain fog,” she said as she circled an index finger by her temple. “Couldn’t sleep. Must have decided to go on walkabout.” Heriah then took a step closer to Cynndle. Not the distance he had stepped back, but closer all the same. “I’m fine. Just…still waking up. You?”

Letting out a low snort Cynndle smiled, “Sinner…that is a first.” He looked at her and frowned slightly as she stepped forward. He could tell there was something off but pushed it aside, ‘God knows I ask strange when I am exhausted…’. “I am just heading back to my quarters. Met up with an old friend, you will be happy to hear, from the Dawn. Her new ship was passing through. It was nice…” he said with a shrug before his eyes lost focus for a second forcing him to push the tipsy haze away. “I may have had a drink or two too many…Would you like me to walk you back to your quarters?”

“How about I walk you to yours,” she said. “You do appear a bit more inebriated than I.” And through Cynndle’s continued struggle to maintain focus, Heriah seemed to sway a little. “I’m still waking up. It takes us Trill time…sometimes.”

Heriah shuffled her feet and stepped to the side to allow Cynndle passage. She held out an arm issuing him forth and started walking beside him.

Cynndle blinked, “Awaking up in the night always sucks, never wake up as quick as you should,” he said with a smile as she spoke but only half hearing.

“An old friend, huh?” Heriah asked as they slowly stepped along. “Is she cute?”

“Who, Becca?” he asked as walked along, “Cute? Yep, very…she was the con officer on the Dawn, best pilot I know. Great fun also,” he said as he thought back to some of the antics they got up to during their two years deployed together and laughed slightly. “It was nice to see her again, moved to command as well with her promotion. Expect she will be a captain soon enough, well deserved.”

“You two should stay in contact,” she said. “Some find long distance contacts difficult. But you need to keep memories from the Downbringer alive. Down-bringer…listen to me. The Dawnbringer.”

As they continued to step forth, Cynndle noticed Heriah looking around, taking in the lighting, the carpet, the corridor access panels.

Looking over a Heriah a part of him continued to tell him something was off, a little louder than before, “How come you couldn’t sleep?”

“Oh, you know,” and her words cut off as a random person rounded an intersection and stepped by. Heriah nearly moved in a start and eyed the man, keeping eyes on him as he passed and continued in the opposite direction. “You know those times,” and the man was gone. Heriah looked forward again. “…those times when you try to sleep and an old awkward memory surfaces?” Heriah shrugged. “Everytime I closed my eyes, I was back on that Borg Sphere. So, I decided to go for a walk…to remind myself…” and she was looking about the lights, flooring, and paneling again, “…that I’m…not there…anymore.”

Cynndle nodded as she spoke but drew to a stop at the mention of the Borg so abruptly that Heriah stepped past him. “Wait, when were you on a sphere? I haven’t heard of any incidents in a long time” he said as he looked at her but his eyes looked down to her abdomen and exposed bellybutton. “Do you mean a previous host and Rex?…” he said, his voice trailing off as his tipsy mind drew connections and jumped to what could be a rather outlandish thought. He blurted it out before he even fully processed it, “Was that the traumatic past you spoke off the other day? Shit, does that mean…” as a look of concern and sadness grew on his face.

“Well yes, I uh…” and she appeared beside him, grabbing his arm, steadying him as he staggered but a bit. “I didn’t mention that? Shame on me.”

The thought sobered him up pretty quick and the conversation with Heriah from a bit more sense. Realizing what he had blurted out he held up his hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry I should not have blurted that out, we are in an open corridor.”

Heriah tugged at his arm, helping him along. “Oh,” she disregarded the situation, “the more ears that hear the less I have to repeat myself later, am I right?

Cynndle looked down at her as she tugged his arm, “Really, because you definitely seemed very hesitant to bring it up in part when you eleddued…” his speech slurred slightly and he scrunched his eyes shut for a second. “…alluded too.”

Looking around, Cynndle pulled to the right as they came to an intersection, guiding Heriah in that direction. Closer to his quarters. “I’m just over this way. So why only allude to it then in private and openly mention it now?”

“Ask me about it the next time,” and Cynndle’s continued bout against tipsiness caused her next words to become muddled and echoey, “you come for a crying…er…counseling session.” His senses returned somewhat. “And she will tell you all about it. I will tell you all about it,” she corrected. “Sorry. Still waking up.”

“Crying sessions!? Really? That’s not very counselor-like of you,” he said a questioning look in his eyes barely hiding a slight flash of anger and annoyance. He continued to walk for a moment without saying anything a slight feeling of betrayal pushing on his mind.

“You will have to forgive me. I hardly know what I am saying…or doing,” she said. “Just a lack of sleep is all.”

He stopped and turned to Heriah, “Heriah are you sure you are ok? You just seem unlike yourself?”

“I’m fine,” she said with a smile. A bit of weariness showed in her eyes. “Trust me. I feel I can get to sleep now, so I really should scoot. Can you manage the rest of the way?”

Cynndle looked at her, clearly suspicious and not fully believing her, “Ok…” he said as he looked around. “My quarters not far. You sure you are ok to get back?”

“Yes,” she said as she took a step back. “Perfectly fine. Still waking up but needing to get back to sleep. Tomorrow I need to work with a bit more refuse…ees…refugees.” She laughed at her misspeak.

With that, Heriah spun and started off. Cynndle watched as she stepped as though still getting the hang of the act of walking. Perhaps it was weariness. She did seem a bit too lively to have been sleep walking.

Cynndle walked into his quarters and sighed, “Well that was bloody odd….” he said aloud as he went to the replicator and ordered a large glass of water and some anti-intoxicants. As he took a sip of his water he thought back to the odd behaviour Heriah had been displaying and the way she spoke. As he did a disturbing thought occurred to him, ‘What if that wasn’t Heriah….she knew me but as if no personally….what if it was…’ he thought before muttering under his breath, “The Benzocyatizine injections for her isoboramine levels…”

The possible implications of this and the anti-intoxicants he had just taken cleared his head in moments and he turned to his desk and computer. “Computer, pull up a summary of the files Starfleet has on the Trill and symbiont joining as well as possible complications. Prioritize anything that mentions symbiont dominance, symbiont takeover and isoboramine imbalance.”

Looking at the number of files on the joining and his search queries he shook his head and blew a raspberry with his lips. “Good thing I am off duty tomorrow. I may be up all night.”

After an hour he ran his hand through his hair. “I think I may need to cancel my breakfast plans with Becca….”