Musical Interlude [3/3]

Posted on Sun Aug 31st, 2025 @ 10:51pm by Petty Officer 2nd Class Khlynt Medan & Crewman Mateo Gardel

1,758 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: To Boldly Go
Location: Holodeck 2, Deck 9, USS Fenrir
Timeline: MD10, 22:00

ON - Continued from part 2

"That was a love song?" he asked finally, his voice soft with quiet astonishment. His gaze drifted out toward the sea beyond the open doors, scanning the bright edge of the horizon as if the answer might be waiting out there. "I mean… it didn’t feel like that. It felt like..." He hesitated, the sentence tapering off into nothing. It felt like grief, like longing and memory and the heavy ache of something you couldn’t quite reach anymore—but he didn’t have the words for that, not out loud.

and now the continuation

He glanced sideways at Khlynt, unsure if he was supposed to laugh or apologize for feeling something entirely different. "Guess that says more about me than the song, huh." The words were soft, self-deprecating, but not cruel. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t fold inward. He just sat there in the golden light, the warmth catching in his hair, quietly absorbing the idea that maybe the saddest melodies once came from something whole—and maybe love, too, could echo long after it had ended.

"It's...usually not played in minor," Khlynt's voice was soft, showing that he had modified the song from its original. There was no embarrassment behind it, no explanation of why, just a statement of fact. "And it is played faster, while song as a duet." And he had not had the heart to play it as originally intended, not for years.

He looked over at the sea, watching the waves for a moment. From here, they looked calm, but he knew the power behind them. If they were real and there were people down there, they'd be thrown upon the rocks. But from here, the sea was a quiet noise, dampened by distance. Dangerous and difficult things felt different at a distance.

Mateo didn’t respond right away. His gaze followed Khlynt’s out toward the sea, where the waves rolled slow and soundless against the distant cliffside. The breeze smelled faintly of salt and lemons and something older, like warmed stone. It was easy to forget, looking at it from here, how quickly water could crush you. He wondered if the man beside him thought about that too—how danger softened with distance. How sorrow did, too, if you gave it enough time and space to lose its edges.

He let his fingers drift across the strings again—not playing, not really, just tracing the shape of the chords. A song that had once been a duet. Sung faster. In a major key. It didn’t feel like a lie, the way Khlynt played it now. It felt like the truth of something... after. After loss. After silence. After whatever the promise had once been. Mateo didn’t know if that made it better or sadder.

"You still remember the original," he said quietly, eyes still on the sea. It wasn’t a question. It was something close to awe. "You just don’t play it that way anymore."

Almost without thinking, Mateo shifted his grip on the guitar and let his fingers fall into a different pattern—looser, less precise. He strummed softly, half-formed chords from an old Argentine love song his mother used to hum under her breath when she thought no one was listening. The tune wasn’t exact—he hadn’t played it in years—but the shape of it lived in his muscle memory, in the back pocket of his mind where all the things he didn’t talk about stayed folded and quiet. It wasn’t meant to be heard. It was just... there. A small, private thing shared without ceremony.

Khlynt tilted his head a little as he listened, his eyes on the water. A small smile settled on his face as he let the music flow through it. It was beautiful, the promise of a melody...there were blank spaces too in it, but more important was the emotion. Deep emotion, a whirlpool of them, kept hidden yet bubbling if you took a moment to look. He wondered what this young man hid from the world. His heart? Maybe, but he seemed to wear that in his eyes in this moment. Perhaps it was the façade that people needed, a shield, like he himself used politeness to distance himself from things. He sighed softly into the breeze, closing his eyes as the music played.

It was a beautiful thing from the heart. He'd remember it and treasure it, since such things weren't shared easily. No. Anger and malcontent was easier to deal than hope and love in this universe. Yet, some stood for those things. It was why he was here, in the hope of standing for better things than what he had lately. When the music stopped and turned his body to face Mateo, opening his eyes to watch him. "That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing it."

Mateo shifted at the compliment, a subtle twitch of his shoulders like he wasn’t quite sure how to receive it. His fingers stilled against the strings, but he didn’t immediately look up. Praise always landed awkwardly on him—like a coat that didn’t fit right, stiff in the sleeves and too warm around the neck. He wasn’t used to his emotions being seen, let alone acknowledged so directly. It made his skin itch in a way he couldn’t quite explain.

"It’s not mine," he said eventually, voice low. "Just something my mamá used to hum. I don’t even know if I’m remembering it right." His thumb brushed the edge of the guitar’s body in a small, grounding motion. He didn’t say her name often, didn’t talk about her at all if he could help it. But something about the way Khlynt listened—not just to the music, but to the spaces between the notes—made it feel... safer. Not entirely safe. But enough.

He finally looked up, his gaze meeting Khlynt’s for a breath longer than usual. There was no mockery there. No expectation. Just the kind of calm sincerity Mateo wasn’t used to, but craved more than he wanted to admit. He gave a small nod, almost imperceptible, then added, quieter still, "You’re welcome."

Then, with deliberate care, Mateo set the guitar aside, resting it gently against his hip before letting his hands fall to his lap. His posture shifted—open, tentative, a soft invitation rather than a retreat. One hand traced the floor beside him, grounding himself in the texture of stone. His voice, when it came again, was quiet but steady, carrying a note of genuine interest. "Do you ever write your own? Or just... remember other people’s?"

"I am not a composer," Khlynt said with a small smile, shaking his head. He had experienced and done a lot. Composing music had not been one of them. He never saw himself as having that talent. A good ear and memory, yes. But he had never had the creativity to make music flow from the heart, to commit it onto the pages. "But I have a good memory and I enjoy music. There's a mathematics in it that appeals to me. A logic, as much as a feeling. Like...eukaryotes. They can be as small as Picozoa, or as large as the Earth blue whale, yet at the core there is the same logic...music is like that. A simple nursery song or the most complex opera, it all has the same logic in it. But..." he smiled as he looked at him, his blue eyes seeming brighter in that moment. "You also know what you like. One song can make you wince, another can make you cry."

Mateo’s mouth twitched— not quite a smile, but close. The way Khlynt spoke, folding music and biology into the same thought, should’ve felt too abstract. Too philosophical. But it didn’t. Not here. Not now. It made sense in a way Mateo didn’t expect—like a thread he hadn’t noticed before suddenly lit up under a blacklight. He tucked one knee up against his chest and looped an arm around it, chin dipping slightly as he considered the comparison.

"I like that," he said softly, after a pause. "The eukaryote thing." His voice carried a hint of surprise, like he hadn’t meant to admit it aloud. "How... everything complicated still comes from something simple. And that doesn’t make it less beautiful." He didn’t usually say things like that. Not in front of people. But the words came anyway—unpolished, but honest.

He glanced over at Khlynt, catching the brightness in the older man’s eyes, and held his gaze for a moment. "You ever notice that the songs that hit hardest... aren’t always the ones with the best lyrics? Sometimes it’s just... two notes in the right place. Or a voice that cracks at the wrong time." His fingers moved idly across his knee, restless and thoughtful at once. "It’s not perfect. It’s just real."

He looked down again, tracing a faint line in the tile with his fingertip. "I think I trust that more than the stuff that sounds flawless." The words were quiet. Maybe not even meant to be spoken aloud. But they lingered in the warm air between them, like another kind of song—unwritten, unfinished, and maybe a little truer for it.

For a moment, Khlynt just regarded the young man and his movements, taking in what he said. Something isn't beautiful because it lasts. The humming of a loved one is fairer than then clearest bell if your heart is in it, he thought, looking down as he considered it. "If it is from the heart, then it means more than the sweetest notes strung together." He gave him a small smile and sat back. "Or more, if it hits your heart. Sometimes, it is about your experiences, or your emotions in the moment. Music, like scent, can...bring you back to a time you didn't realised you remembered."

He gave the young man a gentle smile and a nod, before he started to play…and for a while, they both stayed on the holodeck, playing songs from their pasts.

OFF:

Crewman Mateo Gardel
Medical Science Specialist
USS Fenrir

&

Petty Officer 2nd Class Khlynt Medan
Counsellor
USS Fenrir

 

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