Musical Interlude [1/3]

Posted on Sun Aug 31st, 2025 @ 10:50pm by Petty Officer 2nd Class Khlynt Medan & Crewman Mateo Gardel

2,072 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: To Boldly Go
Location: Holodeck 2, Deck 9, USS Fenrir
Timeline: Day 10, 22:00

ON

The holodeck was a place where most people went at some point, booked it for a time to escape what was going on. With everything going to get the ship ready, the holodeck had been neglected, forgotten in the rush of other things that needed to be done.

Khlynt Medan had found holodeck 2 empty. No one there. He hadn't consulted the schedule, he had just needed a brief escape. So he had entered and started a simple programme. Just a sunny day on Earth of all places, by the sea, in a villa on the cliff side. He could smell the lemon trees, feel the breeze. It wasn't read. He didn't care.

He had conjured up a harp, of all things. It was an instrument he knew, like most string instruments. He liked the sound of it though, his fingers plucking at the strings as he hummed, quietly to himself, a song from an old past, a people without home. There was a sadness to it as he slowed it down, from the upbeat love song it had once been to something that held the sense of loss.

Music was the place he could remember his grief. A way to let it out when words were kept away, when he refused to acknowledge it. But music had been how he had fallen in love, it had been what he had given his family. And in the end, music had been their end, even as the Borg entered their home.

Mateo hovered just inside the threshold, the heavy door sliding shut behind him with a muted hiss he barely registered. The villa smelled different than the clean sterility of the ship—thick with lemon oil and something older, something earthy, like sun-warmed stone after a rare summer rain. His fingers tightened instinctively around the neck of the acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder, the familiar texture of worn wood grounding him as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. He didn’t call out. Didn’t even clear his throat. Instead, he tilted his head slightly, filtering the air, the walls, the bright slice of blue sky beyond the arched windows, until he found it: the delicate, aching pull of harp strings, faint but insistent, threading through the villa like a heartbeat too shy to demand notice.

He moved carefully, deliberately—heels lifted so his boots barely whispered against the tiled floor. Each step became a quiet negotiation with himself: left foot, right foot, avoid the crack where two tiles met imperfectly. The need to fixate buzzed quietly at the back of his mind, a thin, persistent static he knew better than to fight head-on. He let it hum alongside the music instead, following the sound down a shadowed corridor, past walls hung with faded tapestries that smelled faintly of sea salt and old linen. His heart beat faster—not from fear, exactly, but from the charged stillness of not knowing what he was about to find. The villa felt alive somehow, like if he touched the walls, they would breathe back against his palm.

The harp grew louder, sweeter, pulling him toward a pool of sunlight spilling across the floor from a pair of open French doors. Mateo paused at the edge of it, the border between shadow and light, suddenly self-conscious about tracking imaginary dirt across the pristine scene. Beyond the threshold, the world exploded into color—the whitewashed terrace drenched in gold, the deep, rolling blue of the sea yawning wide beneath the cliff, the sharp green scatter of lemon trees swaying in the breeze. And there, silhouetted against all of it, sat a man he didn’t recognize, cradling a harp like it had been carved out of something precious. His grey hair caught the sun, a fine silver halo, and his hands moved with a precision Mateo immediately, almost painfully, understood.

For a long moment, Mateo simply watched. The music wasn’t loud, wasn’t showy—it was the kind of sound you almost missed if you weren’t listening properly. Each note unfurled itself carefully, tenderly, as if the harpist was coaxing old griefs out of hiding rather than forcing them into the open. Mateo clutched the strap of his guitar tighter, the low-grade hum of his own awkwardness rising as he shifted his weight again, unsure if he should step forward or disappear entirely. He wasn’t good at... this. The intrusion. The not-knowing-the-rules. The part where he might make things worse just by existing.

But the thing that kept him rooted wasn’t guilt, or even the stubbornness that usually propelled him forward when he wasn’t welcome. It was the music. It was the way the man played—not for an audience, not even for himself, but for someone or something long since gone. Mateo knew that feeling. Knew it in the marrow of his bones. And somehow, standing there, half in shadow, the sea salt biting gently at the inside of his nose, he didn’t feel like a trespasser. He just felt... drawn.

Almost without realizing it, he slid down the wall into a crouch, setting his guitar gently across his knees, not daring to interrupt the fragile spell hanging in the warm, lemon-scented air.

There was a shift that Khlynt felt, a moment where he knew on an instinctual level that he wasn't alone. He did not stop though, the music had to come to its end or else it would be imperfect. So, he played on, bringing it to a close, his fingers resting on the strings to still the sound. The silence filled the room, except from the sound of the waves from below them. He closed his eyes, taking a moment, and it was as if it was years ago and he was home. If he turned, he'd see...

No. No, time did not flow that way. He was here. On the ship. Not El-Auria.

And he wasn't alone either.

He turned his head a little, looking over at the man sitting against the wall, with a guitar. "Ah," he looked at the harp and then placed it to the side, standing. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise someone else would be here." The apology was light, the polite tones that Khlynt had always used in any company he had found himself. But he took a moment to watch the youth, taking in the dark hair and eyes, the piercing, the way he held the guitar close. It was precious to him, perhaps for the instrument itself or for what it could bring. He was a beautiful thing and for a moment, the quick and intelligent eyes reminded him of his daughter. The wound was still fresh from the music, yet soothed, like plunging a burned hand in cold water.

Mateo stayed crouched low, the guitar a familiar weight against his knees, grounding him against the slow, rising pressure building in his chest. He didn’t look up right away. Instead, he kept his gaze low, fixed on the uneven grout lines of the sun-warmed tiles, the bright lemon-sweet air sharp enough to sting the back of his throat. His muscles tightened with the need to move—to stand, to explain, to apologize for stepping into something private—but his body stubbornly refused to listen. He just breathed, shallow and careful, letting the soft crash of the waves below fill the sticky silence where words should have gone.

When he finally lifted his head, it was tentative, guarded, a flicker of brown eyes half-hidden beneath a tangle of messy black-and-pink hair. His gaze caught on the man standing by the open doors, framed in golden light. Mateo took him in with quiet, compulsive precision—grey hair swept back from a face lined by time, sharp blue eyes that seemed to carry their own gravity, a posture that spoke of strength worn smooth by years of weathering, not force. His clothes were heavier than Starfleet standard, rich layers of fabric and a silk scarf that fluttered just slightly in the warm breeze. No jewelry, no obvious rank. Just... presence. The kind that didn’t need to announce itself.

"'S okay," Mateo mumbled, voice catching on the salt-laced air. He adjusted his grip on the guitar, his fingers brushing lightly against the polished wood as if to reassure himself it was still there. "I thought... it was free. I checked earlier." The words felt clumsy, too blunt, but he forced them out anyway. His hand drifted to tug at the loose sleeve of his sweater, grounding himself in the texture, in the familiar sensation of slightly frayed fabric against his fingertips. He could hear the faint rustle of lemon leaves outside, the distant creak of old wooden shutters swinging gently in the breeze.

Shifting slightly, Mateo lowered himself into a cross-legged sprawl, the guitar now cradled protectively against his chest. His knees jutted up awkwardly, his boots scuffing faint patterns into the dusty tile. He let his gaze flicker upward again—brief, apologetic—before darting away. Something about the man’s silence felt less like judgment and more like patience, but Mateo’s brain, wired tight and buzzing, still cataloged every possibility of how wrong he might be. He hated the feeling. Hated that it mattered so much. But it did.

"You play real pretty," Mateo said finally, the compliment raw and unpolished, dropping into the space between them like a pebble into a pond. He winced the second it left his mouth, feeling the heat climb his neck and settle high on his cheeks. Compliments always sounded weird in his mouth—too abrupt, too naked—but pretending he hadn’t been moved by the music would’ve been worse. He shifted his grip on the guitar again, his arms wrapping tighter around the smooth, familiar shape, as if he could absorb its quiet solidity into himself.

Without really thinking about it—without planning, which was dangerous—Mateo thumbed a few strings, the sound a clumsy, muted echo of what he had heard moments earlier. He tried to mimic the melody, picking out the notes one at a time, fingers fumbling over the progression. It was a ghost of what had been played on the harp—ragged around the edges, unsure—but there was a raw sincerity in the attempt, like he was trying to honor what he’d stumbled into rather than erase it. His brows furrowed, tongue poking out slightly between his lips in unconscious concentration as he tried to catch the shape of the tune again—and missed.

He gave a soft, embarrassed huff through his nose, shooting a sideways glance toward the older man. Not quite a full apology, but close. The guitar shifted against his chest as he stilled his hands, letting the last discordant note die away into the salt-laden air. "Guess I need more practice," he muttered, the corners of his mouth twitching into the barest ghost of a wry smile. His accent thickened slightly when he was nervous, the syllables curling with the musical cadence of his Rioplatense Spanish roots.

But he stayed. Despite the itchy pull to bolt, to flee before he could embarrass himself further, Mateo stayed seated there on the sun-warmed floor, wrapped in sunlight and silence and the faint smell of lemons. Something about this moment—fragile, imperfect, real—held him still in a way nothing else had managed to do in a long, long time.

"You have a good ear," Khlynt said with interest. The boy's attempts showed promise. The thing holding him back was most likely the audience of one rather than anything else. There was something raw and unsure with the one before him, something that Khlynt warmed to out on instinct. "And a good memory..." he moved over to him and crouched, his hands flicking the long waistcoat away from his legs. There was three feet between them, enough distance to not trap him. "You're still new to the instrument though. You hold it as if it might bite you if you...relax." He shifted to kneel, finding it easier.

For a moment he just studied him, a patient look on his face as if he was waiting for something. But he wasn't. Not really.

To be continued in part 2

Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist
USS Fenrir

&

Petty Officer 2nd Class Khlynt Medan
Counsellor
USS Fenrir

 

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