Hello! This was something I did while at work for a role playing site I'm a part of-just a character profile, really.^^ Set in the AU, on the Enterprise.
-Disclaimer- All Star Trek items belong to Paramount, Gene Roddenberry and anyone else. I only lay claims to C.
Enjoy!
He's a bit odd, this Cornelius. When you first meet him, he tells you to call him "C", because Cornelius sounds pretentious. He's full of words like that—pretentious, fickle, misrepresentation, relative slope incline, discombobulating. He drops them like others drop names; partially to impress, partially to reassure himself that they're real. He seems to like words. When you let one drop casually—disillusionment, if your memory is right—he pounces on it, demanding to know its meaning and how it is best used.
He's a prime candidate for therapy, if one could ever really be, based solely on his name. Cornelius Connor Cohen—his nickname "C" fit even better than you had originally thought. He tells you glumly that he never knew how to spell his name as a child, never understood that the "kuh" sound at the beginning of each part wasn't, in fact, spelled with a "K."This mistake was made so often for all three of his names that he became known as "K.K.K" affectionately by all his teachers, which is traumatic no matter how old you are—especially when your parents find out.
You didn't learn this from C, though. He wouldn't tell you. You had to look it up in his records, for whenever the subject is approached, C manages to duck out of it. This could be a kind of repressed memory, a therapist would say, but you don't dare say it lest he demand a textbook definition of "repressed."
He went into engineering because he liked the way it sounded, he says. But when you react with skepticism ("it means you don't think that it's true"), he proves it to you just by the way he says it. "Engin-eer-ing!" The word rolls off his tongue like a rarely savored ("enjoyed, liked, made to last") treat. From a man who treasures words, this one is clearly a prized possession. But he also admits that he likes it because of its maze of hiding places. He doesn't tell you why he wishes to remain "concealed," but he's very good at it. In the few days you've known him, you have always had to announce your presence ("C, it's me!") before he appears in a place that had been empty mere seconds before—or, so you'd thought. But he always greets you with a cheerful smile that lights up his entire face and a set of rapid-fire questions on your health, family, friends and work, remembering details that you can't even recall giving him, and all the while dropping those large words he enjoys so much. Eventually, he lets the discussion drift to him, but before you can ask anything more than the shallow inquiries ("not very deep questions") like "How are you," he's dragged you along into his work.
He specializes in computers. He just adores all the little bits—loves wading through code and crawling in small spaces to manage the tiny components. It's obvious there's more to his love of engineering than just the way it sounds when spoken aloud. He enjoys fiddling and will happily lecture you on the nuances of the computer for hours on end, if only given the opportunity.
He's an odd-looking man, more bird than ape, with pointed features, deep-set brown eyes, a long nose and hair that would clearly stick up if he didn't keep it carefully combed. He's thirty—"just last week!"—but he acts younger than his age. But as he works, you notice something else about him—he squints. As you watch, his brows are drawn down even farther toward the rude protrusion ("It's something that…uh…sticks out") that is his nose while he stares at the screen, and his small eyes even shrink. He leans back, leans in, and does all sorts of odd techniques, almost as if he is unable to quite understand what he's looking at. When you confront him in the second week, he seems flustered.
"Oh, you noticed that?" he asks. "Yeah. I have horrible vision. It could have gotten me disqualified from Starfleet. I couldn't have let that happen."
Why is Starfleet so important to him? You can't get that out of him, but you do convince him to tell you how he managed to not have his troubles noticed. "I have an excellent auditory memory," he tells you, a bit proudly. "My test followed someone who had fine eye sight. I just copied him."
But that is why he hides, you soon find out, when you come parading in with a blue shirt. You have to call three times before he appears from behind some massive tank, looking embarrassed. He doesn't like medical professionals, he says, because he doesn't want him to find out about his vision problems—and that he's tired of therapy, but this is added quickly and in a hurried fashion, as if he doesn't want you asking about it. He apologizes profusely ("a lot") until you accept, but your curiosity is piqued, so you look into his medical records to find out just why he avoids those in blue.
Your original assumption was correct, by the way. He does belong in therapy, but not because of the name. Cornelius Connor Cohen was born eldest of three. He had two younger siblings, a set of twins named Clarissa Cierra Cohen and Clark Caelan Cohen (his parents had a thing for Cs, he admits). They were last seen on the U.S.S. Intrepid, orbiting Vulcan.
It's hard to forget the expression on his face when you finally work up the nerve to ask him about it. He's prattling ("chattering aimlessly…?") on about a computer glitch when it bursts out of you—"I-read-about-your-siblings!"—and you're startled by the sudden silence. He's watching you, his hands still on the console, and his gaze sharp for all his claims of being "effectively blind."
"Clare and Clark?" he asks. At your nod, he nods as well, then quietly wishes you a nice day and leaves.
It's two days before you hear the story. "Clare and Clark," as he calls them, joined Starfleet a few years after him—they were seven years apart, he says, and they used to call him "storky-C!" even after they'd grown old. Clare was in sciences, Clarke in command. They'd just been about to graduate when they'd been assigned to the U.S.S. Intrepid to deal with the Vulcan crisis.
They were long gone before the Enterprise, which he'd been assigned to at the time, had even arrived.
"It was hardest on mum and dad," he says, for once devoid of those big words he loves, and his goofy smile. "I knew they were gone—I was at the sensors, and I saw it. There wasn't even enough left of them to send home."
Where were his parents?
"At home. Dad and I don't talk much. Mum's too upset most of the time. You know what they say—disaster either brings you closer or pushes you apart." Why doesn't he try?
"I feel bad, I guess. That I know and they don't—that they're not coming back. I don't want to go to them with that knowledge. Not when they still have hope." And what of others—a girl, maybe? Or a boy? But he smiles and shakes his head.
"Girl. It's a girl. But no. The Enterprise is mine—the only girl I've got or need for a while. I don't mind." He says it to your doubtful look. "Really. I've had relationships. Happy, fun, normal relationships. But a woman deserves more than I can give right now. So I'm not ready. I'll just keep working." Now he does smile, and you're relieved by his return to what you think of as "normal." "And hiding, of course. Always hiding."