a time to heal
One week.
It's only been one, since dark atmosphere and glaring lights and seemingly random clicks in patterns that she knows intellectually must have been a language. One week, since serrated edges and sedatives and things that make her stomach roil searching beneath her skin, and never mind she doesn't remember the majority of it consciously. One week.
Time. passes. slowly.
And for her that's almost always a blessing: duty, dinner, sleep filled with restorative dreams of home and the last violin recital the ship held, hazy holodeck adventures and that trip to Starbase 219 with her last girlfriend. Everything. When she's awake she alternates between relief and gratitude ninety-nine percent of the time, breathing-eating-listening; carpet beneath bare feet, voices she can understand, the feeling of the helm's controls under her fingers. One week has equaled a lot of rest, a lot of red tea and fruit and a handful of sessions with Counselor Troi, and a whole lot of immersing herself in the routine everyday rhythm of the shifts she's been assigned. Hell, even the mistakes she makes are welcome, or at least somewhat more tolerable, where they wouldn't have been before. She's just happy to be alive to learn from them. Anything.
Time passes slowly, when you're healing.
Sometimes it practically crawls.
She tries not to think about the other one percent of the time she spends, the random moments that catch her unaware; the hiss of an opening door that she half-imagines is accompanied by a clicked series of commands, the unexpected sight of the faded scars down her shin that she knows perfectly well will be there when she undresses, the unbidden image of a dying Lieutenant Hagler, desperate and gasping, as described by a big-mouthed medical technician who'd spent what was for her a fateful night peeping from behind partitions while on duty in another room. Slow-moving time is almost always a blessing.
Almost always.
she intends to spend a comfortable night in her quarters with the lights at half illumination and the computer set to play music that will neither jar her or put her to sleep, with a mug of something cinnamon herbal and steaming always at one hand and that new romance novel Sonya lent her in the other. Part of her knows she's either very psychologically needy or just very slowly recovering to have agreed to borrow the latest victorian whatever that the quirky engineer's been reading, but the majority of her either doesn't notice or doesn't care. the furthest ahead she's planned is a hot shower--real water, not sonic, and the use of the shampoo that will make her hair smell like watermelon. A night to level out, center herself, relish in the little things.
Little things like a hand raised to trigger the automatic door. Time passes slowly on a starship.
Especially when you're healing.
It's only been one, since dark atmosphere and glaring lights and seemingly random clicks in patterns that she knows intellectually must have been a language. One week, since serrated edges and sedatives and things that make her stomach roil searching beneath her skin, and never mind she doesn't remember the majority of it consciously. One week.
Time. passes. slowly.
And for her that's almost always a blessing: duty, dinner, sleep filled with restorative dreams of home and the last violin recital the ship held, hazy holodeck adventures and that trip to Starbase 219 with her last girlfriend. Everything. When she's awake she alternates between relief and gratitude ninety-nine percent of the time, breathing-eating-listening; carpet beneath bare feet, voices she can understand, the feeling of the helm's controls under her fingers. One week has equaled a lot of rest, a lot of red tea and fruit and a handful of sessions with Counselor Troi, and a whole lot of immersing herself in the routine everyday rhythm of the shifts she's been assigned. Hell, even the mistakes she makes are welcome, or at least somewhat more tolerable, where they wouldn't have been before. She's just happy to be alive to learn from them. Anything.
Time passes slowly, when you're healing.
Sometimes it practically crawls.
She tries not to think about the other one percent of the time she spends, the random moments that catch her unaware; the hiss of an opening door that she half-imagines is accompanied by a clicked series of commands, the unexpected sight of the faded scars down her shin that she knows perfectly well will be there when she undresses, the unbidden image of a dying Lieutenant Hagler, desperate and gasping, as described by a big-mouthed medical technician who'd spent what was for her a fateful night peeping from behind partitions while on duty in another room. Slow-moving time is almost always a blessing.
Almost always.
she intends to spend a comfortable night in her quarters with the lights at half illumination and the computer set to play music that will neither jar her or put her to sleep, with a mug of something cinnamon herbal and steaming always at one hand and that new romance novel Sonya lent her in the other. Part of her knows she's either very psychologically needy or just very slowly recovering to have agreed to borrow the latest victorian whatever that the quirky engineer's been reading, but the majority of her either doesn't notice or doesn't care. the furthest ahead she's planned is a hot shower--real water, not sonic, and the use of the shampoo that will make her hair smell like watermelon. A night to level out, center herself, relish in the little things.
Little things like a hand raised to trigger the automatic door. Time passes slowly on a starship.
Especially when you're healing.