Flight Station Three Three Seven

[Tristan Tahmores]

Tristan faltered before answering, glad for the bulky flight suit that buried the subtle shifts in body language between several insulated layers.

Calling it a sore subject felt incorrect. He felt no shame about it - it was an obstacle from his past that he'd overcome, nothing more - and so had no qualms about volunteering the information in casual conversation. Even if it had been something he'd ordinarily prefer not to reveal, sharing it with his copilot would still have felt right: it was meant to be a safe space after all, and if Tristan's own past social difficulties could help build a little common ground between the two of them in Gunner's mind, all the better.

How he'd overcome that obstacle though? That was the subject that felt sore.

"Short answer? The finest vocal coaches Naboo had to offer, and a moderately wealthy father who wouldn't tolerate having a defective son."

It was a harsh way of phrasing it, but one accurate to how Tristan had felt in his youth. As much as therapists and support groups had encouraged him not to frame his impediment as a weakness or a fault, his father had firmly and decisively instilled that thought in his mind. It wasn't even deliberate, wasn't even stated outright; but it had been explicit. Tristan was broken, and no expense would be spared to have him fixed.

Tristan shuffled a little in his seat, wondering what his father would think of him now. He'd hardly been the first son to rebel against their father, both figuratively and literally. Even before he'd found his way to the Rebel Alliance, Tristan's entrance into the Imperial Flight Academy had been a calculated defiance against his soldier through-and-through father. But there was a certain satisfaction, a certain pleasant twist of the knife that came from imagining the scrutiny that Colonel Ethan Tahmores of the Imperial Security Bureau would have been placed under when it was learned his son had defected. He hoped it stung as much as his father's words had in his childhood; hoped that Ethan felt as much a failure as a father as Tristan had been made to feel as a son.

He grimaced as the emotions disturbed by that train of thought began to wrap themselves around his words, feeling the staccato rhythm begin to infect them even as they danced across the back of his tongue. He hesitated, a moment spent organising them carefully into order, care taken to rehearse each syllable in his mind before he dared to speak them. It was difficult to hear them in his own voice, and not his father's.

"No obstacle is insurmountable if you have the motivation to overcome."

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

For agonizing seconds that felt like minutes, Kiimi waited for a response. She was already penning the narrative in her head. Disaster! Ruination! Well, better to get it over with now, rather than later, when there was actual investment and raising of hope. She sighed, pushing off from her console to rock back in her chair slightly. Of course human men were going to be impossible, because they had an entirely different set of rules and a whole different layer of mystique to them. It wasn't as if she was having any success with men of her own species, and all she had to do there was ask, and look like she had it all together. The last time that had worked was one year, three months, and five days ago. Yes, she kept track. No, that wasn't weird. She'd found a guy then who was a good combination of handsome-ish but also mildly desperate in the middle of his Kree-Arr rut to find companionship away from his mistress. And all it took was a little too much false bravado thanks to a half pint of Ka'rru'jaai rum for Kiimi to take her best limp-wristed shot. The sex was bad and quick, but if you haven't eaten steak in a year, you don't send it back because it's the wrong cut!

So maybe that was the moral of the story. Maybe she shouldn't spend her best years in the Pride Mother's service trying to valiantly tilt at moisture vaporators. Maybe she should be a little more realistic and hunt more desperate prey. Go after the ones who don't run so fast.

"So," he said, into the comm, "Does Flight Station Three Three Seven have a name, or are you going to make us guess?"

"Huh?!"

Kiimi said to no one, shocked from her self-pity with a blink of her limpid eyes. Did he just....did he just ask for her name? Okay there were a few possibilities. One - the most likely - he was going to report her for some kind of breach of protocol. That seemed like the universe sorting itself out the usual way. But...but! His voice did have a little bit of husky tone to it, didn't it? Ahh...definitely, okay probably some kind of inflection of the playful sort. Kiimiti considered the implications, chewing at the tapered edge of her left thumb claw as she did. If this was the former, he'd have asked for name, rank, and operating number wouldn't he? Yeeeaah....

Kiimi coughed into her hand, clearing her throat. Okay, a last minute reprieve. She opened the line.

"Sshe d-doess, Wrrajith Sseven-One. jI'm Kiimiti. Kiimiti Taassaurra."

She was tempted to insist on him calling her Kiimi, but that seemed waay too forward. They probably needed at least two more successful banters before that could happen. As Kiimi thought, she looked at the two portrait shots of the crew.

"And whjich half of Wrrajith Ss-sseven-One arre jyou? Arr T-Tahmorress, orr Arr Rrodess?"

[Gunner Rodes]

Tristan's answer left Gunner captivated. To think, he, too, had to go to therapy as a kid to get fixed. They didn't like that sort of terminology, the therapists, but when something wasn't working properly, you fixed it. That was just a fact. And that's what Tristan did. Now they had something else in common. He should tell him all about Dr. Kazall and the colour wheel. Bonding was important, between pilots. And when someone shared something personal, the right thing to do was acknowledge it. But then the potentially-hot Cizerack girl spoke, and he forgot all about that.

Kiimiti Taassaurra. So her name was Kiimiti Taassaurra. Immediately, he set to work, prodding the impractically small keyboard beside him, with his thick padded fingers. K- I- I- She was talking again. There was almost no sign of the stutter. That was good. It meant she felt comfortable, and that made him feel comfortable. M- I- T- I- The sudden radio silence encroached upon his mind like a chill. Her question returned to him, like an echo, and he leaned in close to the comm, incapable of suppressing a broad grin.

"Uh, Rodes? Gunner Rodes. The good-looking one."

With a snort of amusement, he turned to face Tristan, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

"That was sarcasm," he said, cheerfully. "It is an effective way to make light of one's faults. You are the handsome one, so I'll be the funny one. And 93 percent of sexually-active men, aged 20 to 30, agree that humour is the fastest way to get the chick on the dick."

He gave a happy sigh, and returned to his station.

"Hey, Kiimiti, want to hear a joke? The past, the present, and the future, right? Walked into a bar. It was tense."

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

"Haa-a-a-a-a-aa!"

Kiimi's laugh drew out in excitable monotone, like a comedic ululation autoblaster.

"jI hearrd that a hjyperrbole t-totalljy rrjipped jinto that ss-ssame barr and d-desstrrojyed everrjythjing!"

Her nose crinkled in amusement and she leaned in.

"jI haven't hearrd a g-g-good grrammarr joke ssjince jI wass jin qujiz bowl at Unji."

She may have overplayed her hand. Now she was talking to a man about Quiz Bowl?? That wasn't exactly the fast track to male attention!

[Gunner Rodes]

"Pffft!" Gunner's amusement passed over his lips like a wet raspberry. His face lit up, and, catching Tristan's attention, he pointed at the comm, "Hey, she's funny, too."

More to the point, though, she found him funny. That was a satisfying feeling, like scratching an itch you never knew you had. If he could somehow take that laughter, frame it, and hang it on the wall of his quarters, he would. Maybe he could extract a recording later, then, he could play it whenever he felt down. Like whale music.

T- A- A- S- The typing resumed. Kiimiti was talking, again. Gunner found himself wondering if she included his grammar joke amongst the list of poor grammar jokes she'd heard since her time in university, or if she meant that his joke was the exception, the joke to break the unfortunate run of bad grammar jokes. He opted for the latter explanation, remembering Tristan's wise counsel: stick to the facts. She had laughed, after all. His frown unfurled, and, when he spoke again, he sounded impressed.

"You went to university? I always wanted to go to university. UHC has excellent courses in xenolinguistics and psychology. I've always been interested in how people think, and, if I can learn how people think in different languages, then all the better, right?" S- A- U- R- "Intelligence is a very attractive quality in a person, for me. But you probably want to hear more jokes, like like what did the zero say to the eight? Nice belt. Heh!"

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

"jYeah, jI went to B-Behladue Poljyt-technjic jInsstjitute on n-naval sscholarrsshjip."

Kiimi self-censored the next bit, keeping a little smug grin to herself. Second in my graduating class, and that's with a double major! But bragging wasn't a good look, and she was trying to keep this fish on the line. And Gunner apparently was not only funny, but he was into xenolinguistics and smart women. It was enough to cause a moment of heavy breathing. So he hadn't gone to school, but he had a natural enough ear to one-and-done Cizeri tonal inflection and had both grammar and math jokes!

Speaking of jokes...

"Haa-a-a-a-a-a-aa!"

What a find! Sometimes it seemed like the only guys around were the sort that were too interested in working out, fashion, and all the usual vapid guy stuff. And that made it impossible to connect. It was hard to talk about future perfect verb usage in Rodian with a guy who's day's highlight was getting his eyebrows waxed. Not that all men were like that. Just usually the really hot ones.

"jYou'rre jinto xenol-l-ljingujisstjicss? That'ss one of mjy m-majorrss! Arre jyou a p-poljyglot?"

[Tristan Tahmores]

It was strange, sitting there listening to the awkward back and forth between Gunner and Kiimi. Ordinarily, it was the kind of situation that Tristan would zone out from, out of respect for the privacy of the participants. Unfortunately, this was happening through the Blackbird's comm array: something that Tristan was obligated to listen to for the purposes of protocol and safety. If this Officer Taassaurra - Tristan found Cizerack ranks a struggle, and had no idea if a Preita'rrou outranked him or not - had to urgently give a course correction or a warning, it would be irresponsible for Tristan to not have his ears on. So, Tristan sat and listened without quite listening, cringing at the awkward jokes and frowning in disbelief as Gunner somehow fumbled his way into the comm call equivalent of Kiimi's pants, or whatever the Cizerack equivalent was.

As that question trickled through however, Tristan couldn't help himself from chiming in. Not over the comm channel of course, Tristan's mic output was muted, something he triple checked before speaking, voice low enough that hopefully Gunner's headset and Kiimi's sensitive hearing wouldn't pick it up.

"Tell her you have a talented tongue," he suggested quietly, with as much nonchalance as he could muster. "She seems like the kind of girl who'd dig a little innuendo and wordplay."

[Gunner Rodes]

When Kiimiti confessed that xenolinguistics was one of her chosen majors at university, Gunner's enthusiasm was squared. The moment she stopped talking, he was already poised, ready to speak. At Tristan's intervention, however, the first word evaporated from the tip of his tongue. His open mouth split into a wide grin, and he fought hard to keep himself from laughing. Once his composure was solid, he proceeded:

"Well, I'm proficient in Bothese, Huttese, Rodese, Ithorese, and Zabraki. And, lately, I've been working on my Shyriiwook, but it's tricky to get the howling pitch right."

In a tremendous display of willpower, Gunner cut himself short. His mouth was open again, on the cusp of relating the 18 different ways to say 'Hello' in the Wookiee's native tongue, but he refrained. For his was a goal far loftier than pure academia. And, as much as he wanted to tease out of Kiimiti the details of her education in xenolinguistics, along with the details of her other university major, he didn't. He played it cool, and allowed the words to glide over his smiling teeth.

"So, you could say I have a talented tongue... but I'll let you be the judge of that."

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

Kiimi's ears warmed so fast at that remark that she unconsciously pulled them down and flush against her neck...then immediately let go in case anyone was watching. She wasn't any stranger to bawdy talk - you couldn't go a day without an hour's session of it in the High Mother's Trade Navy. But the scuttlebutt from the girls who'd slapped tails in foreign ports was that you definitely wanted to get to know a human and their tongue. But then that tongue can also speak five and a half other languages? This wasn't double entendre territory, it was entendre cubed!

Kiimi cut a furtive smile, thankful that they were still strictly voice-only on the comm so that he couldn't see it. She wondered whether the other human was egging Gunner on, or if he was being cryptic-sexy in order to maintain comm discipline. Erring on the latter, she cooked up a reply. He'd said he was fluent in Rodese, didn't he?

"N-nawo ba kanee t-tawoo ssu echaa."

That was the right phrase, right? Yeah it was, hehehe. Even an eavesdropping Rodian might think it was innocent in a vacuum and miss the randy subtext. But it was there. Kiimi chewed on her thumb. She'd run it up the flagpole. Time to see if he saluted.

[Gunner Rodes]

Though it was not the most exotic or flattering of languages, the nasally buzz of Rodese fell on his ears like sweet music. Basic was, by necessity, a boring and sterile language, valuing function over form. This gave it the universal appeal that made it the most common language in the galaxy, but it lacked the nuance of Ithorians, the poetry of the Hutts, and the apparent romance of Rodians. Everything sounded better in an alien language. But Gunner had not expected this. His eyebrows climbed, making moons of his eyes, and by the time Kiimiti was done, his mouth fell open in wonderment. Frozen, like an infant clinging to a secret, he turned to look at his partner. Tristan did not share his enthusiasm. But that was ok - he held up a hand - he'd explain later.

It was part of an old proverb - innocuous, by all accounts - however, as part of a cultural revolution within Rodian society, driven by a desire to sever ties with their barbaric past, it became popular, amongst younger generations, to take traditional words of wisdom, and reinvent them for their own amusing ends. Such was the fate of Nawo ba kanee tawoo su echaa. This, Gunner knew, because, like all good students of language, he endeavoured to learn all the naughty stuff, first. And, in its new context, hearing the phrase tumble over Kiimiti's lips, made his insides knot like durasteel cables.

But what to say in return? Tristan, it turned out, was a veritable master when it came to the fine art of flirtation, but this? This was his arena, and it required a certain linguistic finesse. He grinned to himself, then. It was well known that Rodian's had great difficulty producing the sounds associated with the letters L, R, and S. Indeed, when speaking the language, non-Rodians, such as himself, made a special effort to emulate their unique lisp when pronouncing words with those same letters. What strange and curious connotations could be derived from a deliberate deviation from this commonly-embraced norm, he wondered.

Feeling more than a little pleased with himself, Gunner became intimately close with the comm, and in a low voice, said:

"Dota kuwa manchee katarrrrrrrrrrrrowww."

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

Kiimi gawked. Gawked, as she stared at her terminal. Her mother might tell her if she didn't stop gawking, she might swallow a fly, er, assuming there were any flies in the flight station. Probably not. But the way he rolled those R's!! Oh, he was having fun, and she liked it!

Willing her mouth closed, Kiimi pressed her tongue between suddenly dry lips. She pressed her suddenly-perspiring palms along her jodhpurs, fretting away the sweat as more of a compulsive behavior than anything. She wanted to turn on the video feed so badly. Wanted to watch Gunner's lips as he plied through declensions and conjugations.

"Preita'rrou?"

Kiimi nearly fell out of her chair in surprise. With a quick save, she merely swiveled 180 degrees to face the Watch Chief, a considerably less-attractive specimen of human male than the one she was considering ogling.

"jY-jy-jyesss...ss-ss..."

Chief Jegg's thin mouth pressed into an impatient line. It was a universal expression Kiimiti saw whenever the traffic snarl on her tongue got particularly backed up. Just spit it out already. He didn't have to say it.

"...ssjirr?" she finished lamely.

"Did you hear what I said?"

Kiimi's eyes were blue saucers. She hadn't heard him at all. Not even enough to infer to make something up. Oh Goddess she'd been daydreaming so hard she'd practically been paying rent in Gunner's trousers. Chief Jegg's puffy face and bald head took on a pinkish hue. Pink could be good on humans until usually when it wasn't.

The Chief sighed.

"Space tug's on dispatch to clean up the mess. Divert that HWK-290 to bay G-2. We've set up a security cordon for it."

Durasteel stiffened Kiimi's spine, and she sat straight with her chin out.

"D-djiverrtjing to bajy g-gee-two. Ya Ve!"

Jegg grimaced.

"In basic, please, Taassaurra. Get with the program, we've got a lot of traffic to clear!"

Kiimi steeled her expression back to the Chief, biting at the insides of her cheeks.

"jYess ssjirr."

Chief Jegg waggled a finger, as if to spin her chair around. Kiimi did so, side-eyeing until she was sure that he'd gone to pester someone else. Okay, so she'd been made to look like an idiot, and her honeymoon with Gunner was definitely over. Still...

Kiimi savored a little smile. She might not get to have dessert, but no harm in pilfering the cream on top. She stared down a certain blue switch on her console. With a final tamping of clawhoppers in her stomach, she got over herself and hit the switch to open a video feed.

"Wrrajith Ss-ss-sseven One. Prreparre to d-djiverrt courrsse to Bajy Gee-Two."

[Gunner Rodes]

Dejection, painted, for a brief flash, in hues of cool blue, reshaped itself into surprise. The pouting lower lip fell away to form a small but perfect O, and the heavy brow leapt, making his eyes wide enough to not so much as drink in the sight before him, but gulp it down like an overzealous freshman on his first cantina crawl. After his demonstration of oral gymnastics, Gunner had expected some sort of reciprocation: an amused giggle, an aroused purr, a spot of saucy agglutination, or even some hot Trandoshan rhyming verse. Anything, but this.

There she was, Kiimiti Taassaurra, in all three of her virtual dimensions. It occurred to him, then, that maybe there was some truth to what Tristan had said: perhaps there was no such thing as an unattractive Cizerack. There was a symmetry to Kiimiti's features that was most agreeable. If he drew a line from the top of her olive-skinned brow, down her perfectly straight nose, all the way to her cute chin, he had every confidence that her measurements would be identical on either side. What was the best way to offer to measure someone's face? Later. Her eyes were blue. Like daylight side of Dac blue. And the hair - there was so much of it! The ears were a bit on the big side, though. Perhaps she was beautiful. Maybe she was just pretty. Gunner could never tell. But one thing he was unquestionably certain about was that the impromptu holo link was a blatant deviation from protocol.

"O... kay..." he said, at last, frozen somewhere between shock and uncertainty. His hand stretched out to the side, and fumbled around in the dark for a painful moment until, at last, the feed was terminated. The spectral blue shape of Kiimiti Taassaurra blinked out of existance, and Gunner relaxed into his chair with a sigh. As soon as the feeling returned in full to his extremities, he started punching commands into the twin consoles before him, and called to the back of the cockpit:

"Longshot, we have been diverted to G2. Take us in."

[Tristan Tahmores]

Oh, Gunner.

He could only blame himself for this; Tristan was well aware of that, and the act of complying with his copilot's navigational directions didn't distract him from that. He'd grown complacent. He'd sat back, enjoying the show, letting the conversation unfold without interruption or input. It had seemed like Gunner had this. By some sheer fluke, he'd stumbled onto the rare breed of woman who got moist in all the right ways with Gunner's weird linguistics routine. Honestly, Tristan's reaction had been close to awe at times; it had been all he could do to not cheer and whoop in the background, and when Kiimiti had made that final gesture - turning on the vid-feed to talk face to face; how clutch was that? - he'd practically had to bury himself behind his console so that he couldn't be seen punching the air and dancing in celebration in the background.

But then Gunner had hung up. He'd hung up. He'd reached the final tiny hurdle, and instead of leaping over it gracefully like an elegant soon-to-be-laid gazelle, he hadn't just stumbled, or ground to a halt. Oh, no. He'd stopped, taken cover, and called in an orbital bombardment to obliterate that tiny hurdle into a smoking uncrossable chasm.

Tristan's eyes were lasers, slowly but surely burning holes into the back of Gunner's skull.

"Flight Officer Rodes."

Oh, it was on now. The stern voice and the formal address was coming out.

"Sweet Skywalker, man. What the hell kind of frakked-up Forceshit was that?"

[Kiimiti Taassaurra]

Kiimi fell back in her seat with a sigh. She'd put everything out there for...an okay. Okay! Seriously? Nobody wanted to end that kind of talk with okay! It most certainly wasn't okay! Questioning hands fumbled at her hair, her cap, her laced cravat. Kiimi was the first to admit that maybe she wasn't the most beautiful woman in the fleet. Okay, so that was putting it lightly. But was it so bad that a flirting encounter would experience a complete evacuation to vacuum once she'd show her face.

Okay. Click.

Okay. Click.

She wanted to call back, but ugh, so complicated. One, Chief Jegg was probably watching her like a hawkbat now. Two, what kind of woman called back after that? In lieu of something so forward, Kiimi began to think of a more desultory approach. A few quick keystrokes saved Tristan and Gunners' dossiers, and she exported them to datastick. With them both being recon pilots, there was a chance they billeted aboard the station, instead of reporting to a capital ship with a home port at Jovan.

Now, what to do? Her shift still had another hour to it. By then, Gunner and Tristan might have left G-2 completely. Would it be creepy if she tracked down the location of his personal quarters. Ugh, yes that was probably too creepy.

"Dammjit." she muttered under her breath, turning the dataslip over in her hand.

[Gunner Rodes]

When his name tumbled out of Tristan's mouth, Gunner froze. There was something in the way he said it that gave him the impression the lieutenant had built his name around a framework of durasteel rods. He had his attention. Gunner turned in his seat, and wrinkled his brow at the volley of colourful language Tristan launched his way. After a moment of silence, he concluded, "You're upset."

Tristan Tahmores was not, in his experience, the kind of man to upset easily. His experience was admittedly limited, but, at the very least, he knew his partner to be measured, rational, and calm - the antithesis of your average hot-headed starfighter jock. Of all the pilots he had encountered in his time with the Alliance, he was by far the least intolerable. More importantly, he was excellent at his job, and that was all that really mattered. And, as such, his opinion mattered. Gunner's eyes narrowed in a futile attempt to discern the mystery behind the new creases in his partner's face; his mouth was misshapen; he wore his feelings like a mask, but that voice, there was no mistaking the... the... the annoyance. But why?

And then it hit him. He straightened up, in his chair, and gave Tristan a nod.

"Apologies, lieutenant," his voice was back to being as impassive and professional as when they first flew together, "Had I known the Preita'rrou was going to initiate a vid-link to the ship, I would not have encouraged the conversation. It won't happen again."

[Arnan Jsorra]

* * *

Arnan fought the urge to reposition himself in his seat, listening intently to the day's escapades that Gunner had recounted. As Arnan had come to expect from his frequent patient, the retelling came with extensive detail, much of which many might have found superfluous, but that were clearly of particular importance to Gunner's mind. A lot of emphasis was placed on protocol, on how Gunner had fulfilled his duties and responsibilities in the proper way at the proper times - more so than normal, almost a subconscious fixation. It felt like preemptive justification, like a foundation laid in preparation of an excuse. As Gunner reached his account of Tristan's stern words, Arnan began to understand why.

"You believe that Lieutenant Tahmores was angry at you for breaking protocol."

It was a statement of fact, not a dismissal. There were rationales and thought processes that could deconstruct Gunner's interpretation of the scene, and perhaps steer him towards a better understanding of what Arnan expected was Tristan's intent, but for now that didn't matter: of more importance was the window that it provided, and what Arnan could hopefully help Gunner to see if he showed him how to look for it.

"As you were talking me through the events, you made a point to stress how rigorously you adhered to those protocols during the rest of your flight. If the Lieutenant's words were intended as a criticism of that one lapse, how does that make you feel? Do you believe that critique to be accurate, or unfair?"

[Gunner Rodes]

"It was a fair criticism," Gunner said at once, steeling his voice with enough certainty to hold Dr. Jsorra's doubts at bay. He was not prepared to humour any line of reasoning that might suggest his partner was at fault. He gave a nod, "Lieutenant Tahmores has a right to expect the highest standards of professionalism. One deviation from protocol is one too many."

The ceiling of Dr. Jsorra's office was not entirely unremarkable. There was a patch, to the right of his desk, about three inches across, that was a slightly darker shade of grey than the rest. It was a stimcaf stain. Gunner knew this because, the day it appeared, he insisted he inspect it. After repositioning his unused chair, he climbed to get within sniffing distance, and discovered an acute smell of Corellian dark roast. The ceiling had been cleaned since - several times, in fact - but Gunner was starting to suspect he'd never not see it. He pointed it out to Dr. Jsorra every time he visited.

Gunner stared at the ceiling while he spoke. What he liked about Dr. Jsorra's office was that his couch was positioned centrally, so, from his unique perspective, lying down on the rich green leather, he was unable to see where ceiling ended or where it began. In his mind, he liked to imagine himself in the heart of a vast expanse, with only the doctor for company. It was easier to be honest, that way. It was also easier when he wasn't making eye contact. Instead of worrying about what Dr. Jsorra might be thinking, he could dedicate his own not-inconsiderable faculties to decrypting their discussion. Presently, he wrestled with an insubordinate thought that twisted his face into a frown.

"Although, Tristan did provide me with assistance for the unconventional comms with Preita'rrou Taassaurra." His brow knotted, and he folded his arms across his chest, "Does that make him a hypocrite?"

[Arnan Jsorra]

"Almost certainly," Arnan replied with a simple shrug.

"But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Hypocrisy as a term is often just another way of verbalising the concept of do as I say, not as I do. That is an extremely important social construct, that stems from the earliest days of sentient evolution. Hypocrisy is how risk is managed, at the expense of one for the protection of many. Hypocrisy is the backbone of the premise of maturity and adulthood, older members of society prohibiting younger ones from access to alcohol, narcotics, pornography, politicial activity, firearms, explosives, and more, all in the interests of safeguarding them until they are deemed ready, and mature. It is the foundation of the chain of command that governs the military, the hypocrisy of a commander instructing a soldier or pilot to take a risk that they would not take themselves, because those are the respective roles to which they are each assigned."

Gunner Rodes was a fascinating patient, one who thrived on systematic thought, and struggled when the unpredictable and irrational behaviours of those around him strayed away from what seemed rational. It would have been easy to dismiss that struggle, to state that sentient beings were inherently unpredictable, and to derive confusion or anxiety from that was simply illogical. There was a rational structure to sentient behaviour, though: the same rational structure that allowed the discipline of psychology to exist in the first place. Gunner was hardly here for a crash course in fundamental psychology, and yet at times, such an avenue served him best: to be encouraged to analyse his situations clinically, and to search for the patterns and systems that led to understanding.

"That said, I believe you may be working with a faulty premise."

Arnan's expression adjusted into a frown, deliberately exaggerating his body language to help convey the intention behind his words: not the simple question that they might initially have seemed, but one with added depth that warranted additional consideration.

"Would you consider Lieutenant Tahmores to be a friend?"

[Gunner Rodes]

The trouble with Dr. Jsorra was he often said things that warranted further analysis, but scarcely allowed for it. Gunner understood: what he thought he wanted to talk about wasn't what he needed to talk about. He hadn't always understood it, however. Indeed, it was a concept that had taken him years to understand. Even in his late teens, he'd been known to waste entire hours of Dr. Kazall's time with questions about the nobility of white lies, the comedy of falling over, and the etiquette of public erections. There was an argument to be made, he thought, that some of those discussions were examples of time well spent, but he also had an appreciation for his responsibility in facilitating the therapist's role. And despite all this, there were times when he lapsed into a fixation. His mouth hung open, barely stemming the flow of a hundred questions about nature of command and the intrinsic need for dual standards. It had been a point well made, and he was intent on discussing it further, until...

"No. We're not friends." Gunner had given this some thought, "A friend is someone who chooses to spend time with you when they don't have to. We spend a lot of time together: training, missions, the mess hall. But it's all part of our routine. It's professional."

His thoughts drifted back in time, to memories of his old friend, Red. They used to spend so much time together. Red liked the outdoors. Gunner hated it, but for Red, he'd weed the garden, and till the soil, and plant seeds all day long. When they were done, his shirt would be sticky with sweat, and his hands would be filthy. It was the sort of thing that usually sent him into a fidgeting frenzy. But not with Red. The dirty hands and sweaty shirt became intrinsically linked to their friendship, and he liked that. And when Red wasn't around, he noticed. He felt it. His thoughts returned, then, to Tristan.

"My flight suit is like a sauna. It's like I've been swimming when I take it off. But I don't mind. I miss him, sometimes. Do you think I should tell him?"

[Arnan Jsorra]

Arnan remained patiently silent as the tangle of thoughts and rationalisations cascaded from Gunner. It was easy to think of the thoughts as broken, the ramblings of a mind that was programmed wrong, Arnan knew better. His thought processes might have been a winding mountain path, but everything made sense, as long as you knew which strands you were following.

"I am intrigued by your analysis," Arnan responded, ignoring Gunner's immediate question for now. "You describe your relationship as being purely professional, and yet you are fighter pilots. Members of the Rebellion and the Alliance - and any military, really - who serve in such close-knit roles, as pilots, foot soldiers, mechanics, special forces, are notorious for the bonds of friendship and cameraderie that form between them. The performance of their duties requires an inherent level of trust, and that trust often is built on a knowledge and understanding of each other, and on the intense shared experiences that they encounter. Those are the same building blocks as friendship."

His fingers laced together, as he wove his analysis into a query.

"With that in mind, and given his background in Rogue Squadron - the archtypical example of such a close-knit unit - do you think that Lieutenant Tahmores would consider you a friend?"