" I'm an idiot....." "You're an idiot"

Posted on 09 Jan 2013 @ 12:34pm by Chief Warrant Officer 4 Cyrus Kiwosk
Edited on on 09 Jan 2013 @ 12:55pm

2,556 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo, Deck 2, Panne's Quarters
Timeline: MD 14 2145 HRS

[ON]

Cyrus paced in his quarters, he had been for hours. He needed to figure why Panne had been upset, he hadn't done anything outside of what he did anywhere else. He hadn't shamed the Lieutenant, at least not in his eyes. Whatever Kiri had said, really had been the final nail in the coffin, which was a shame because Cyrus had always enjoyed the ranting and whatever else Maenad had thrown at him.

He sat down and nursed another water. It wasn't a huge surprise that she had a massive grudge against him, in her eyes, he must not have changed at all. He had joined the SFMC, just like she thought he would, and hadn't moved forward from that way of thinking. There obviously was a problem with him, it wasn't the first time he had issues with other people. Stone, Cho, and now Panne. Maybe he did need to be a little less liberal with some of the things he said.

He tilted his head in thought, but the fact that she wouldn't even hear him out...in a lot of ways, she hadn't changed either. Kiwosk had always known about her elitism, and normally boasted himself up, but for the first time he had tried to be honest with her, it was no real surprise that she had offed him. Their heated arguement certainly hadn't helped matters either. It all semmed to fall back on two things. He wasn't a marine anymore, and he had a big mouth.

Panne was right...to an extent, he did have a tendency to talk, a lot, most times, it was a story about him and another person, he never really had taken into account how that other person might have felt. The stories he had thought were harmless might have offended some people. Kiri had shown him that. Kiwosk set his glass down and ran his hands through his hair in frustration. It hurt, it hurt because he had done the exact same thing with his mother before he had left. It was an almost identical scenario from back home before he had joined Starfleet. He looked up as an idea popped into his head.

Maenad thought he hadn't changed, because all she saw was Cyrus the Academy student, she didn't see Cyrus Kiwosk, in the same manner that he didn't see Lieutenant Panne. In his eyes, he saw Professor Panne. She had tried to tell him this near the beginning of Shore Leave, but he had been too stubborn to listen. In a lot of ways Panne was right, and that was like a knife twisting in his gut.

She was also wrong, he almost always spoke about Panne with respect, almost admiration, and he had pruchased her leading text on Xenobiology while he was in the hospital recovering. He had had his Medical Assistant deliver it to him. She wanted him to change, but he was so set on clinging to the past. His hand throbbed as he peiced the intricate puzzle together.

He had to apologize for everything, without expecting one from Panne, no matter how earned he felt an apology was. His lip was still slightly puffy from her backhand, but that was the price of miscommunication over the span of years.

Kiwosk pushed off from the chair and rolled his shoulder as he made for the room door. "Computer, Locate Lieutenant Panne."

LIEUTENANT PANNE IS CURRENTLY IN HER QUARTERS

"Perfect. Let's not try to screw this up too." Cyrus mumbled to himself as he made his way for the Turbolift. The doors swung open and he stepped inside. "Deck Two."

It wasn't long before he was in front of his Professors Quarters. He pressed the chime.

Maenad was in the middle of playing Johann Strauss II's Kaiser Waltzer on her violin with accompaniment courtesy of the ship's computer. She hadn't bothered to change after she'd blasted away from Kiwosk's sty down on deck five, and she waltzed as she played. She was in a horrible mood, and music was her solitude. If anything could make her feel better, it was music. Finally, she was smiling again as the piece came to its sad and relaxing end. The chime sounded before she could finish. "Come in," just before the piece crescendoed into its bursting end. When she turned around, there he was. The man that had started all of this.

Kiwosk was standing there. In her home. In her home. "What is it?" she asked him coldly, dropping her violin to one sand and the bow to the other.

He took one step and held his hands up. "I'm an idiot." He began.

"I was thinking about what you said, and a lot of the things you said..." He sighed. "They're true. I see you as Professor Panne, the person I bothered for hours and hours. I have a difficult time see you as Lieutenant Panne, the Chief Science Officer. " He took another step forward, stopping just off the side of the room.

"I'm stubborn, I have a big mouth, and the two have gotten me in a lot of trouble, I've given you absolutely no real reason for you to believe anything I told you earlier because I haven't treated you with any respect that you deserve and that your rank deserves. I've been a total asshat." He sighed. "I've taken out stress on you ever since I was in the Academy, I've mistreated you, and I should have taken more consideration about your feelings on anything that i've said about you. I've never meant to hurt your feelings or your reputation in anyway, but I have and I've been a jerk for not fessing up. " He sighed.

Maenad just stood there watching him speak. She looked blank and uninterested, but allowed him to continue without interruption. She didn't like that he had said asshat, but she ignored it.

"I meant what i said when you came to my quarters. I have always held you in high regard, but i never wanted you to know, because I didn't want you to know...it seems stupid I know, but you really do remind me of my mother....I...I treated her the same way right after my oldest brother Osric...Died." It was still hard to get out. "He died when I was still a teenager, and I never really got past it. When I joined the Academy, I treated all my professors the same way, but you were the only that stood up to me..." the words started flooding in as years of pent up guilt and stress shot into his mind. "I acted out and used your kindness and genorosity, and you gave me so many chances to show you that I was a different person, then and now, and all I've done is try to live in the past. " He refused to stare at the ground like a child, instead his eyes bore into the Lieutenant. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, for both everything I've done to you, to your staff in anyway. I never meant to hurt you, not here on board the Galileo . I never meant to upset Kiri. I think she's a sweet girl, that just needs nurturing, but like you've shown...and demonstrated..." He pointed to his lip. "You have proven that you already know that."

Maenad walked over toward her couch and set the violin and bow down, then turned back around to face Kiwosk. It had taken him a lot of courage to come here and say all of that, she knew. That had to count for something. "Is this your version of an apology," she asked him quietly.

"An apology, yes, but a clarification too." He sighed. "I've been too widemouthed and I should have realized that what I was telling Kiri could have been taken the wrong way. I'm not a marine anymore, but I've been acting like one ever since I came aboard, and that's something that I really need to clean up..." He took one last big breathe and took a breathe out his nose. "There is one last thing. I meant what I said...about you being a mother figure to me. Take it for what you will, but you've always been there to dig me out of trouble when I needed it the most. Here and in the academy.

"So, I guess I'm also thanking you for pointing out my mistakes when I needed it the most. I'll do my best to make sure I don't make them in the future..." He chuckled bitterly. "So there...I'm an idiot."

"If you are calling yourself an idiot so that I can tell you that you aren't, I'm not going to," she said. She hated it when people apologized while simultaneously insulting themselves. Calling oneself an idiot was, in her mind, a way of justifying poor behaviour. "Thank you for coming up here and telling me all this."

"No, I'm not, it's just I've acted poorly. " He sighed. "You don't have to like me, that's not why I came up here. I just wanted to clear the air with you, let you know that I'm not the same person I was, and that I should act more like the person I should be. " He smiled and shrugged. "No thanks needed really Lieutenant, You deserved as much. But can we not resort to slapping me upside the head in order to start our conversations next time? " He chuckled. "It gets messy and then we have yell at each other, much better if we talk about it." He gave a small salute before making his way for the door.

Was he really doing this? She couldn't believe him. She couldn't believe that he would seriously come all the way up to her quarters, call himself an idiot as if that made it all better, and then try and criticise her for slapping him. He wanted to talk? She did talk; she was the one who spoke with any degree of sincerity the first time, he called what she had said bullshit. "You wouldn't have needed a thorough smack if you had thought ahead," she said. "And it's easier to have a conversation with someone when you don't consider everything that the other person has to say as, what did you call it? Bullshit?"

Cyrus stopped by the door and looked back. He had said that she was being bullshit, but he knew that if he tried to explain what she had said was and what she had said wasn't would only cause a further rupture, so he decided that he would need to swallow his own pride and let her have hers for a while. "You're right, I did. I can't take it back, but it was a mistake, I broke a lot of regulations during that meeting, as did you. Things were heated, and I didn't listen to you, I heard you, but I refused to let what you said affect, me just like I always do. Which is even worse when I was the one that asked you to come in so we could talk about it in the first place. " He glanced at the door and sighed. "I'm under the distinct impression I'm not leaving yet." He was referring to their previous talk.

Kiwosk turned around and sighed. "I'm sorry for offending you, talking about you without your permission, upsetting a member of your department, yelling at you, calling by your first name, Dismissing you as I would an inferior crewmember...and hurting your wrist." He was trying not to breakdown now, as he began to realize just how unfit he had been. Stone had been right, he wasn't as experienced Security Officer as he thought he had been. Rules, regulations and more had been flung out the window whenever he spoke to Panne. His old habits were finally coming back to hurt him.

"If you're willing to talk about my actions regarding Miss Cho and yourself, by all means." He gestured forward. "I'm willing to listen to what you have to say this time through. An honest, respectable Crewmember to his superior. Whether it's you telling me off, whatever. I will listen and I won't cast it off as nothing like I have so many times before." He turned himself to face the Lieutenant, bracing for the tirade that was bound to spill from her. He wouldn't hid behind sarcasm or anger filled comments, that wasn't what a Security Officer did, and he would need to prove more than anything that he was a Security Officer.

"I'm not asking you like me Lieutenant Panne, I'm just want to fix this problem between us, a problem that I caused."

This time? Maenad knew it was all a charade. He thought he could come up here and set the terms for his apology? This was turning more and more into a justification. Her mind was clear then and it was clear now. "No, I am not willing to talk again. You just told me that you came up here after having thought about what I said the first time. Now you're telling me that you didn't listen to me, but you're willing to listen now. I'm not going over it again." Her quarters were a place that she was supposed to love. The sight of this bumbling fool was making that very difficult. He was tainting it.

"I don't care whether you want me to like you or not, " she said to him, "Or what you think I think of you. I would like to like you, but your actions since the first time we met in the turbolift have prevented that." She paused, "You can say whatever you like to me about your past and about why you act the way that you do, but the only way to get my respect and my appreciation is through how you conduct yourself. Respect is earned," she told him. "I don't know what your intentions were in coming here; I don't know if you just don't like it that I'm mad at you or that you genuinely feel guilty. I don't know, and I don't care. You could just return to that person you're renouncing tomorrow, for all I know, or the second you step out my doors. If you want to apologise, leave right now and start behaving yourself. That is how I will forgive you and that is how you will earn my respect." She watched him, hoping that he finally got it. "Now, good night."

Cyrus figured it was as good as he was going to get from Maenad. It was fair terms that she laid out to him. She had every reason to be skeptical about him. Proving himself to her was about all he really needed to hear. "Done. Good night Lieutenant. " With a quick turn he exited the room, making for his quarters.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

CWO Kiwosk
Formerly Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

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