Tribble Fan Fiction #7: Klingon Therapy
Tribble Fan Fiction #7
Session One: The Referral
General K’Vort, son of Martok, hero of the Battle of Donatu V, slayer of thirty-seven enemies of the Empire, and recipient of the Order of the Bat’leth (Third Class), was afraid of tribbles.
This was, in Klingon society, roughly equivalent to being afraid of pillows. Tribbles were small, round, defenseless, and had the combat effectiveness of a warm dinner roll. They did not bite. They did not sting. They did not have claws, teeth, venom, or any discernible means of self-defense. They purred. That was it. That was the whole tribble.
And yet General K’Vort, who had once charged a Jem’Hadar battalion armed with nothing but a broken bat’leth and a creative vocabulary of Klingon profanity, could not be in the same room as a tribble without experiencing what his personal physician delicately described as “acute autonomic distress response” and what K’Vort himself described as “MY HEARTS ARE TRYING TO ESCAPE MY CHEST.”
The Klingon Defense Force, in a rare moment of progressive thinking, suggested therapy.
K’Vort suggested that whoever made the suggestion be executed.
The suggestion stood.
Session Two: Dr. Troi Will See You Now
The therapist assigned to K’Vort’s case was Dr. Seren, a half-Vulcan, half-Betazoid who was either the most qualified person in the quadrant for this job or the worst, depending on how you felt about someone who could simultaneously read your emotions and judge you logically for having them.
“General K’Vort,” she said, as he lowered himself into a chair that groaned under his weight. “Thank you for coming.”
“I was ordered to come. There is no honor in thanking a man for obeying an order.”
“Noted. Can you tell me about your fear of tribbles?”
“I am not afraid of tribbles. I have a tactical response to an enemy of the Empire.”
“The tribble is classified as a nuisance organism, not an enemy combatant.”
“By your Federation. The Klingon Empire declared tribbles an ecological enemy in 2268. There was a military campaign. There was paperwork.”
“There was genocide,” Dr. Seren said mildly.
K’Vort shifted in his chair. The chair made a sound like a small animal dying.
“The Great Tribble Hunt was a necessary military operation,” he said, but even he didn’t sound convinced.
“The General’s phobia presents a fascinating case study in cultural reinforcement. Klingon warriors are trained to hate tribbles the way Starfleet officers are trained to hate temporal anomalies — instinctively, universally, and without examining why.” — Dr. Seren, case notes
Session Five: Exposure Therapy
“No.”
“General—”
“No.“
“The tribble is in a sealed transparent container. It cannot reach you. It cannot touch you. It is four meters away.”
“I can hear it.”
“It’s purring. That’s what tribbles do.”
“It is a battle cry.”
Dr. Seren took a slow breath. The tribble in the container — a small blue specimen named Lieutenant Buttons by the research staff — purred obliviously, radiating the kind of mindless contentment that drove Klingons to distraction. It had no idea it was participating in therapy. It had no idea about anything. It was a tribble.
K’Vort stood against the far wall, arms crossed, jaw clenched, both hearts hammering visibly in his neck. He was sweating — something Klingons rarely did and never admitted to. His eyes were fixed on the container with the intensity of a man watching a live photon torpedo.
“Tell me what you feel,” Dr. Seren said.
“Disgust.”
“What else?”
“Rage.”
“What else?”
A long pause. K’Vort’s jaw worked. His fists clenched and unclenched.
“They do not fight,” he said finally. “They do not run. They do not do anything. They just… sit there. Being soft. Being warm. Being content. I do not understand how a creature can exist without purpose. Without ambition. Without struggle. It is… unnatural.”
“Is it possible,” Dr. Seren asked carefully, “that what you’re afraid of isn’t the tribble itself — but what the tribble represents?”
K’Vort said nothing. The tribble purred. The silence between them was the loudest thing in the room.
Session Twelve: The Breakthrough
It happened, as breakthroughs do, when nobody was expecting it.
K’Vort had been making progress — if you defined “progress” as being able to sit within two meters of a sealed tribble container without activating his disruptor, which Dr. Seren did, because therapy is about realistic goals. He could now look at a tribble without flinching. He could discuss tribbles without raising his voice. He still couldn’t touch one, but they were working on it.
Then, during Session Twelve, the container malfunctioned.
Lieutenant Buttons, who had been placidly purring for the past six weeks, discovered that the seal on her container had developed a microscopic crack — probably from the vibration of her own purring, which would be poetic if it weren’t also deeply inconvenient. She pushed through the crack with the determination of a creature who has no understanding of barriers and plopped onto the therapy room floor.
Dr. Seren froze.
K’Vort froze.
Lieutenant Buttons rolled across the floor — tribbles don’t walk so much as amble, a kind of slow, purposeful tumbling — directly toward K’Vort. She was navigating by warmth. Klingons run hot. Two hearts, elevated metabolism, body temperature three degrees above human normal. To a tribble, K’Vort was a bonfire.
She reached his boot. She nuzzled against it. She purred.
K’Vort looked down. Every muscle in his body was rigid. His hand was on his disruptor. His breath came in short, sharp bursts through his nose.
The tribble purred louder. It was the sound of absolute, unconditional, unearned trust. The tribble did not know that K’Vort was a warrior. It did not know about the Great Tribble Hunt. It did not know about Donatu V or the Order of the Bat’leth or the thirty-seven enemies of the Empire who had fallen to his blade. It knew only that he was warm.
K’Vort took his hand off the disruptor.
He bent down. Slowly. Like a man dismantling a bomb. He picked up the tribble with hands that had killed without hesitation and held it in his palm.
It was soft. It was warm. It purred against his skin like a small, living heartbeat.
“It is…” K’Vort started. Stopped. Started again.
“It is not terrible,” he said.
Dr. Seren smiled. “No. It’s not.”
“I held it. It did not die. I did not die. Nothing died. This is the most confusing combat encounter of my career.” — General K’Vort, personal log (encrypted)
Final Session: Discharge
General K’Vort completed eighteen sessions of tribble-specific cognitive behavioral therapy. His final evaluation noted “significant reduction in phobic response, increased emotional regulation, and unexpected development of cross-species empathy.” Dr. Seren recommended him for return to active duty with no restrictions.
On his last day, K’Vort stood in Dr. Seren’s office with his uniform pressed and his bat’leth polished and an expression on his face that might, in certain light, from certain angles, be interpreted as something adjacent to fondness.
“The Empire will never know about this,” he said.
“Patient confidentiality is absolute,” Dr. Seren assured him.
“Good.” He paused. “The tribble. Lieutenant Buttons. What will happen to her?”
“She’ll be returned to the research colony.”
Another pause. Longer this time. K’Vort’s jaw worked in a way that suggested a war between Klingon pride and something softer was being fought behind his eyes.
“I would like to… maintain custody of the tribble.”
“You want to keep her?”
“I want to maintain tactical awareness of the enemy. It is strategically sound to keep one’s adversary close. Sun Tzu wrote about this.”
“Sun Tzu did not write about keeping a tribble as a pet.”
“How would you know? Have you read the original Klingon?”
Dr. Seren, who had spent two decades maintaining professional composure in the face of every emotional crisis the galaxy could produce, very nearly laughed.
“She’s yours, General.”
K’Vort picked up Lieutenant Buttons. She purred against his chest plate. He walked out of the office, down the corridor, and into the transporter room, carrying a tribble against his heart with the careful tenderness of a man who has learned that courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to hold the soft thing anyway.
General K’Vort’s service record shows no further mention of tribbles. His quarters on the IKS Rotarran, however, were noted by maintenance crews to be unusually warm and to emit a faint, continuous purring sound that the General attributed to “a minor fluctuation in the environmental systems.” No one questioned this. They valued their careers.
