Ensign Sariel Rager

This... is completely unsurprising, actually.

Your result for The Sorting Hat Test...

HUFFLEPUFF!

You scored 4% Slytherin, 28% Ravenclaw, 36% Gryffindor, and 56% Hufflepuff!

Take The Sorting Hat Test at HelloQuizzy

This gives credence to that fic full of might-have-beens, I think. :)

Sariel thought the door would stabilize once it returned to her closet.

She thought correctly... for the space of a week. It remained in place long enough for her to reunite with a few extradimensional friends--Gene, Harding, Will--and when she leaves the infirmary for the bar's front door after visiting Will, she's grateful enough that he's alive that the possibility of a vanishing multiverses's end seems that much more remote.

The next day, her clothes remain in place on the second opening of the closet. Her bathroom stays precisely as it is. All corridors and doorways lead exactly where they should. Sariel half-expects her quarters to sprout a pub entrance when she enters after her watch, and when they don't, she mutters a disparaging remark about unstable interdimensional anomalies at the far wall before going to bed. It's only when she's half-asleep that she realizes just how much like river she's sounded.

She barely has time to look for the bar over the next handful of days; a defector arrives, and in a blink the ship is skirting the Federation side of the neutral zone, playing a high-powered game of cat and mouse that ends in the surprise appearance of a Romulan official, his aides and Counselor Troi in pointed ears. Sariel isn't on the bridge during the dramatic moments of the rescue, but she is at the helm when the Enterprise reaches the nearest starbase. She's perfectly happy to have that duty - she gets to see everyone safely home, that way.

The bar doesn't reappear for another two weeks and by that time, the ship is orbiting a non-aligned world. The senior staff are wrapped up in diplomatic details on the surface, leaving the more junior officers with day-to-day operations. She's not expecting the door to a corridor on deck 13 to open on Milliways, but that doesn't make it any less pleasant a surprise.

"Oh! Emily will wait, then."

There's dust falling from the walls and ceiling.

There had been a corridor - deck nine, section two or maybe three - and then flakes of rust brown char are abruptly raining from the wood of a crumbling doorway. and there are no vibrations under her feet except a there-and-gone shudder of cracked stone and tile as someone a hundred meters distant roars his wordless agony to the cracked plaster.

Her bare feet are cold, stirring tiny clouds of grit and ash as she turns in place, gaze sweeping right to left as she moves. She comes face to rusted wheels with a gurney on it's side, a greying length of hallway, a battered metal table and tray. and there she freezes, the automatic details of course correction evaporating--come about, two seven zero mark--because that tray holds a dozen dull silver instruments, and one of them's edged with something auburn.

And one of them has a jagged edge.

She stands there for a single, frozen heartbeat and then she's in violent motion; there's a sudden explosion of sound and the wall that's now to her immediate left - the one she'd assumed was just a wall - is bursting at it's shrieking, creaking hinges, becoming a door that ejects a pair of orderlies in crisp white. One of them swears, ducks behind her, grabs her right wrist with enough force to leave fingerprint bruises beneath her nightgown's thin sleeve and gestures with his free hand for the other man to take her opposite arm. "Dammit, 214's got out again; we really gotta talk to the doctor about this one. Now come on, don't fight us or there'll be some nice restraints waiting at the end of the hall--god damn, give me a hand here!" the burly man's voice goes from long-suffering to falsely cajoling to a snarl of frustration in extremely short order; Sariel's single, desperate attempt to jerk away does nothing against her captor, but her knee collides with one of the nearby table's wobbling legs as she twists and the entire setup topples, instruments and tray spilling sideways in an echoing clatter of metal on ceramic. She registers the pain of a falling scalpel slicing a fine diagonal across her left palm and then ignores it in the next breath, staring in abject horror as the second orderly advances.

Lieutenant Hagler doesn't say a word as he steps forward. His lips are blue. Sariel's eyes are on his hands as they close about her forearm; his fingernails are the same shade as his mouth, leached of oxygen and showing it plainly. And then he's meeting her eyes deliberately, and she's staring down the cloudy gaze of the dead as his frantic gasps for breath rattle in her ear.

"there'll be some nice restraints for you at the end of the--" and then she's bolt upright in bed, shivering in a cold sweat and tangled in blankets and sheets. "Oh my God, oh my--that was--"

Her left hand is sticky and sharply stinging. Blood smudges her right sleeve's hem as she clumsily rolls it to the elbow; five purpling fingerprints stare back at her.

Her stomach's turning Jaeger loops as she disentangles from the bedclothes and bolts for the stairs, racing thoughts repeating two words in as many languages as she goes.

Not again. Not again.

Sariel's door reappears somewhere around seven in the morning, bar time. Her tears have dried by then; she's stopped shaking, stopped startling at small noises, gotten up and moved away from the fire. but her eyes are red-rimmed, and the sliding panel in the wall doesn't respond when she first raises a hand.

she nows it'll still be midnight on the enterprise when she gets back, knows that the seven--no, now six hours until day watch are going to be a few seconds shy of an eternity to live through. But she's at least got her feet under her again.

she'd been desperate to keep her composure at least in part. The side of her not ruled by intellect was certain that Will, or Captain Picard, or Gene or anyone else would never have lost it in the face of memories like hers. But now that she's clear-headed again, she realizes that even senior officers, even outlaws, even soldiers need to cry once in a while. Keeping emotions bottled up is just unhealthy, for a human.

and she's alright with her reaction, in hindsight. Breaking down is part of the healing process too, after all.

she finishes aBar-provided cup of tea and washes her face before she tries the door again. this time it swishes open as she nears and she hurries through, back into her quarters and ship's night. she spends the rest of that long, long night watch in ten Forward, surrounded by only a handful of people. She can live with it; a handful is far better than none at all, in her view. By the time the chronometercycles round to 07:00 hours she's exhausted, mentally drained, and when sleep finds her in her quarters it's dreamless. Blissfully so.

the next night's routine is much the same, albeit without the truly horrible patch. She finds Ten forward once her shift is over and stays there till the chronometer ticks round to day watch, glad of the light and the warmth and the scattered company even when a pensive-looking Counselor Troi passes through. If the empath notices that Sariel's more subdued than usual, she doesn't mention it.

There are rumors flying during that fourth day. rumors of Cardassia and weapons and another war, rumors that the peace talks Jellico is hosting are failing. Rumors that Captain Picard is dead. Sariel's not on the bridge when Commander riker is relieved of his post, but she hears about it quickly enough and it, too, rattles her sharply.

And she holds on, as best she can. Because it's all she can do.

She'd have gone outside, if the weather had been anything short of freezing.

she'd have found the fragment of inlet in the lake if the rest of the shoreline and the grass before it hadn't been buried beneath three months of accumulated snow. But the icy wind and the drifts and the glimpse of frozen hell from just beyond a friend's door were enough of a three-pronged deterrent to keep her inside, to send her up the staircase, to make her draw her curtains and lock herself in. Time, she'd said. A minute.

and it hadn't helped. the opposite, in fact; she'd made it worse. Time, she'd said. A minute. An hour, a day and all the while the same thoughts were chasing themselves around her brain, spinning circles in half-remembered darkness. time, she'd said. After all, it had worked for her.

She hadn't dared say time to heal.

Even though that had worked for her, too. As much as anything could.

But she'd made it worse - she'd made him cry, made him avoid her eyes, and even after the fact she could only piece together half a reason why. she'd never been in combat before, save thirty seconds of blood and desperation in sherwood forest that counted as her second stint as a hostage more than as experience on the line. she defined the term noncombatant in a dozen ways, and knew it. Sariel was a hundred things, and had been, and continued to be; pilot, explorer, prisoner, experiment, mother hen. But she'd never been where Gene had.

And because of that, she'd made it worse.

And Gene had been half-frozen when he'd finally found the door, and now who knew what he thought of her. and Harding was God knew where, a victim of his time's horrifying ideology, maybe held down,

just like me

maybe strapped down,

just like I was

and why in God's name did everything seem that much worse when weeks separated Terra from Terran?

there are tears on Sariel's cheeks and more clinging to her lashes when her thoughts finally start reordering themselves. she's homesick. It's Christmas and she's homesick as hell, and she may have botched things spectacularly with one friend, but he's in immediate need of her and that's enough to suppress the worst of the guilt. The other friend, beyond the other door--well. There's only one thing she can do.

Terran religion in 2369 is closer to Universalism than anything else, and the planet and colonies are dotted with variations on a theme. Everything matters: culture, personal belief, heritage, history. Sometimes there's a god, small G. Sometimes there's a tree. Sometimes there's a spirit - we are far from home, far from the bones of our ancestors. Everything matters, and nothing does; nobody on Earth cares what language you pray in, if you pray at all.

And sometimes the God being prayed to has a capital letter.

There are four candles standing in a row on Sariel's nightstand. An old-fashioned stick match lights the first on the third, clumsy strike; the first lights the second, the second lights the third, the third touches off the last and a quartet of pale flames cast their shadows on the ceiling.

and the shadows

One for Harding.

keep on changing

One for roe.

and the shadows

One for amalie.

Keep. On. changing.

And one for Kellin.

"God who is in heaven, even in a place like this..."

And Sariel kneels.

The Bar door opens on a house's front walk, all sun-bleached white stone and nearby waving palm trees and long grass just short of tangling. the lane it leads to is busy, just like the one beyond it, and a short distance off there are the strains of something upbeat and jubilant--clearly, the activity in the winding streets of Castries is matched and exceeded by the celebrations on the major roads they connect to. The people going by are in bright colors; greens, blues, yellows and a hundred others, and there's laughter and a babble of languages and yes, that man is singing at the top of his voice, and wouldn't you know he's not bad.

The masquerades and the monarchs and the road march all come later. Right now, what they're walking into is the middle of an elated afternoon at everything's start, and as it's carnival Tuesday, no one's going to mind. Just the opposite, in fact.

She'd thought nothing of it, honestly. It was round. It was baked. It smelled of lemon. What harm could it do?

she'd sniffed it, just a little, but getting cookie crums down one's sleeve while fumbling with a key really wasn't her idea of a wonderful time, so she'd waited.

She'd waited until her door was unlocked, and opened and closed again, and until she was safely seated in her desk chair with the key tucked safely back in one pocket.

Then she gave in and ate the thing. Hey, it was free food. How much more harmless could it--

Sariel.

... harmless could it get?

ensign Rager.

... harmless could it--

"Ensign Rager, plot a course for--"
"Aye sir, course plotted and laid in."
Ensign Sariel Rager, USS Enterprise, 2368, Starfleet Academy class of--

she's one and she's the other and they're parts of the same whole. "Sariel, come in out of the rain, Sariel, you're going to get yourself all wet!" and "It's the name of an archangel, you know." and "And today Sariel, you are seven! Make a wish, little shadow." and"Aye, milady Rager--" and everything is falling. into. place. Falling. into.

she's two years old, and small enough to be held in her father's arms like nothing at all and he's dancing around and around in their front yard and his voice is a sing-song as he raises her effortlessly toward the sky. "We're going to lift you up, lift you up, lift you up ma petite fille, lift you up, lift you up-" And she's shrieking with laughter the whole time and flinging tiny hands above her head.

place falling into

She's four and eating a mouthful of the beach's white sand just to try, swallowing a tablespoon of grit before she spits the rest out and wails in displeased childish surprise at the fragment of shell that leapt out at her.

Place. Falling. into.

She's five, and walking between her parents on a street crowded to bursting with people and music and wine and food and even in the twenty-fourth century people still build rolling floats out of wood and canvas and colored paper. Her mother sings along to every song, and her father doesn't stop beaming. "Look, little shadow look, it's carnival!" Her parents' feet barely touch the ground for the dancing, and she tries her best although she doesn't know the steps, and it isn't long before she's sure she loves this 'carnival' thing.

place. falling. into.

She's six, and kneeling on a floor that's a hundred years old, and wooden, and cluttered with benches that slide when they're jostled and clatter when they aren't supposed to. She's kneeling beside her mother who's beside her father, and she's learning hymns and a handful of verses and how to pray in both the languages she knows. "Can someone say aleluia?" The minister is old and Trini and his voice rolls across the room like so much muted, welcome thunder. And when it's a tiny voice that Sariel knows from primary school that pipes up "aleluia! Aleluia!" being in church gets that much nicer because all the adults laugh.

place falling into

she's seven and blowing out a line of tiny spiral candles, each one casting it's own lively dancing patterns on the forest green icing of her cake. She gets three on the first go, two more on the second and the last pair wink out in a haze of rising smoke at her third try. Her parents both applaud before someone waves the smoke away and the birthday girl asks for "A piece with a leaf, please?"

Place. Falling into

She's seven and a half and dreaming, because somehow she fell asleep between one sandy, marvelously humid summer second and the next and her front hallway's turned into a room with rafters and tables and twenty other children, and she's hiding from a dark-eyed little boy seeker and talking to a ghost who doesn't know where Curacao is even though he sounds like he should. and she's peeping round a chair at a boy who doesn't know his age, but she's younger than him like she was younger than Santi from Spain. So he can lead, and she can follow.

place because

She's ten, and in the last year at primary school, and when she asks her mother if it's alright to give Joy Varier a flower on the day before half-term, her mother says that yes, don't worry it's alright and if anyone laughs, she should tell them to grow up. but she doesn't, and she wouldn't, even if anyone had laughed. And when she hands Joy that little red flower it doesn't matter that she's dark-skinned, because she's blushing so much she might as well be chalky. she doesn't even notice when Joy doesn't keep it.

place because he

She's twelve, and watching the shuttle from Trinidad landing at the station in the harbor and while the other kids are goggling at the passengers--Bolian, vulcan, humans in a hundred shades--her eyes are on the last person to make an exit. She's waiting for the pilot walking out the hatch and when they do, she's realizing that the short hair is misleading and that's a woman, that's a Lucian, and that could be her older sister if her parents hadn't just had her and no one else. and she's little, and shy, and she doesn't dare make conversation but she starts searching the computer's library for information when she gets home. and when her father asks her what she's researching she's simple in her answer: "I want to fly, Papa."

because he

She's fifteen, and pinning old-fashioned posters of planes and early spacecraft on her bedroom walls, and when her parents give her a palm-sized model of a galaxy class starship as a Christmas present, she barely lets it out of her sight for two days. After that it has pride of prominent place on her desk, all hand-carved wood and spun glass, catching light and reflecting.

sets things right, he

she's eighteen, and her results come back; Starfleet entrance exams, admission, and she's dancing around her living room and hugging her mother and her father and then flinging both arms wide and twirling because she's going to lift up, lift up and this is everything she's wanted. Someone can definitely say aleluia! Aleluia! And she's humming hymns all night and barely stopping for breath.

sets things right, he sets things right, he sets things right, he

She's twenty-one and barely graduated, and the Enterprise is madly intimidating but Lian Tsu isn't much older than her, and Mandy Callaway is nice to everyone, and sonya's a little quirky but a truer friend was never found. and it's, "I... I can't remember how to enter the coordinates," as they're all losing sanity and sleep and it's, "Helm won't lock to those coordinates, sir," as she watches her first officer's face change trigger-swift and frightening under the bridge's lights, and it's
clickclickclick clickclick clickclickclick
there and half-formed and horribly, sickeningly blurry - there's a blade against her right leg, jagged edges and agony and there's another, plunging in just beneath her collarbone and carving left to right, and she'd thrash her way out if she could but something's laid across her chest and holding. And binding. And--

sets things right, he sets things right, he sets things right, he

and Lieutenant Hagler's dead, but she isn't, and she has Selar-Mandy-Alyssa-Em-Lian-sonya and God Almighty does she cling to them.

he sets things right and they're all falling. into. place.

She's twenty-two, and healing, and the doors to Ten Forward swish open on a pub. And there's a will in all his red-haired, well-meant volatility and the experiences it takes a library search to learn they share, and a Valerie with the sweetest disposition of almost anyone she knows, and oh God, that man was Admiral Kirk, wasn't he?

Falling into place.

And she and River are bonding over lavender tea steam and the sheer joy of flying, and Harding's tearing her apart without lifting a single, graceful finger and yes, when she next sees Seymour and the door opens on home she'll find a shuttle, rent a glider and lift him up, lift him up because she owes him that much. She promised.

Falling into place.

She'd been leaning gradually backward, unconscious reactions in motion and cascade, and as swiftly as everything else has been falling she wobbles, tilts and oh good lord but the desk chair goes over all at once, and she's got hot, overwhelmed tears welling in her eyes as she climbs gracelessly off the floor.

"... Ow. God, that was... that was... I don't even *know* what that was."

Her first clear thought is, 'thank God I'm me again! ... For better or worse.'

Her second is, 'I have at least two people to thank straight away.'

And her third? That's 'Oh bloody hell, that's the second time I've had amnesia'!

Father's Day does exist in the twenty-fourth century, contrary to what some might believe. The tackiness of certain gifts has faded with time; there are fewer ties, fewer greeting cards. There are, however, quite a few transporter credits being used by Starfleet cadets back on Earth, and any number of communication channels being opened and closed throughout Federation space--visits home haven't gone out of fashion and, apparently, neither have calls.

the channel's only hers for a few minutes, what with all the other messages going out today. With a thousand people aboard ship there's a very obvious if not tangible queue for the use of subspace radio, and by the time she gets the opportunity it's sundown in Castries. She makes the call from her quarters, backlit by shipboard illumination and in view of the old-style photographs hanging on her near wall and she swears, almost before the relay connects, that the room she's living in has nothing on the half-hidden flash of through-the-window island familiarity she gets when the channel's received.

"Sariel! This is unexpected." Kellin Rager isn't a tall man, any more than his daughter is a tall woman; he's all wiry angles and thin features, lean, almost birdlike to his wife's rounder figure and with black curls springing in a state of controlled chaos from his head. Family resemblance? Of course. And he's all-out beaming as he realizes who's on the opposite end of the line.

"Hi, Papa! Surprise?" Sariel's giggling at him through her answer, and if that smile is more Amalie's than Kellin's, it's still plenty visible. "I know I'm lightyears away, but... I thought I should call. I *wanted* to call. How are you? How's Mama?"

There's a closet door just within view over her right shoulder, and an ancient grandfather clock just over his, slowly ticking round to nine--it's dusk in Saint Lucia, and even in the halflight Kellin's fond amusement is plain because that? is so very like Sariel it's funny. "I suspected as much. The queue terribly long to get a channel out? With a thousand people on your ship I'd imagine it's been just this side of madness, am I right? Your mum's fine, so am I; we're not drowning in tourists now, at least. What about you? Have things been better since that... Ferengi incident?"

Sariel's shudder is only half mock in answer. "No having to give random passersby directions every five minutes, then? That's something, at least. Oooof. Yes, the queue is as long as you'd expect, with half the ship vying for time and bandwidth. Selar's been giving us all strange looks all day--strange for a Vulcan, that is. And..." For a second she's serious, just this side of thoughtful, just shy of voluntarily thinking back--not now, not in the middle of this. It can wait. "Yes, things have gone better. Everyone is fine, including the captain and the others in case the news reports haven't said. Our latest mission has been quiet." She leaves out her own 'thankfully', though it's more than likely on her father's mind as well if not his lips, and the add-on that the news reports probably have said. Sometimes reassurance is reassurance, all attached details aside.

"That's good to hear. quiet missions can be a blessing, sometimes." Sariel's silent, but inwardly in agreement and outwardly nodding the same; she can appreciate a quiet shift, never mind a whole quiet mission, for a score of connected and unconnected reasons. "Have you found any--"

Kellin's cut off mid sentence, cut across as the computer chimes and a barely-familiar male voice breaks in, relayed from the bridge fifteen odd decks away. "Ensign Rager? Your time's almost up. Sorry."

It's a quiet "Acknowledged," that's sent back in reply but, yes indeed, Sariel's biting back the urge to mutter aloud and mouthing "Bugger," at the farther wall with her head turned. There'll be no audible cursing in front of her father. Then louder, "Sorry, Papa. A thousand people and one comm system--it's the queue, again. I have to go." And the last is quiet, genuine - "I love you."

"I understand. Queues are horrible things on a normal day--I love you too. I'll tell your mother hello." There's not even a half-second's silence, after that, before the channel cuts off with the customary bleep and the screen goes abruptly dark. Kellin Rager has it right in so many words: Queues are horrible things.

Sariel sits there in relative silence - ship's rhythm and mechanical hum aside - for a long minute, then two, before getting up.

The door hasn't turned up for her in two weeks.

Other doors have, obviously; Ten Forward, the bridge, turbolifts and corridor junctions and the old familiar set leading to her quarters, never mind her bathroom and closet and her friends' places. And sickbay. And Troi's office. But not that door.

That one's eluded her.

The fifteenth day is proving an unusual one; more than unusual. Try downright bizarre. Very few things trip Sariel's internal bizarre-o-meter, between the Starfleet training and the Federation's veritable patchwork of worlds and her own miniature United Nations of a group of friends, never mind the ruddy bar and the people she knows the best there. But this day has put trigger to hammer, no doubt about it.

Captain Picard is a child. Captain Picard is a tenor-voiced adolescent with a full head of hair, and beside him Ro Laren is sullen at half her size while a chirpy Keiko O'Brien looks a little like Sariel imagines Lian must have at eight years old. And Guinan... that one just bloody tops it all.

They've been working with extra care and real, spark-tangible desperation, with the captain and one of the pilots out of commission. The engineers are scrambling; Sonya and Emily Tyler and Geordi and all the rest, and Alyssa and Selar are running themselves ragged-nerved and blurry-eyed (though Selar would never admit to the former, certainly) working on a reversal, any reversal. Sariel herself stays on the bridge for what would have been Ro's early shift, pulling the second directly after her own gamma duty the better not to make anyone else scramble at the start of early watch. The starfield doesn't change, and doesn't change, and her sensors are dead silent and dark as minutes roll to hours and there's no news, no news. By the time the chronometer's clicked round to 15:00, she's long past the last of her mental midnight oil reserves and can only blink overtired, too-bright eyes up at Tess Allenby as her fellow ensign appears to relieve her for a wavering second, then two, before finally murmuring a genuine, exhausted thank you and making a wobble-legged exit through the turbolift doors.

She almost forgets to raise a hand to her door panel, and comes within an inch of plowing nose-first into unforgiving metal before catching herself, staggering with rebound, and flinging a sleep-clumsy arm up the better to be scanned at the palm. After that it's all she can do to lurch inside without hitting either side of the entrance, and she skips the lights entirely as she stumbles toward her bed and drops bonelessly onto it's foot.

On a normal day, there might be cinnamon incense to light. On a normal day there would certainly be tea, probably be vegetable soup or at the very least one variety of fruit or another, possibly be music played at low volume. But today has not been normal so far. Today has tripped wires and alarms unlike any other she's so far encountered, and it's all Sariel can do to unknot otherwise-neat laces and tug her boots off. They hit the floor, one after the other--thump, thump, but she's too drowsy and worried and sore in certain places from the half day and more of bridge duty to think coherently about picking them up. She breathes in lingering traces of cinnamon as she sinks back against her pillow and closes too-dry, dazzled eyes.

It isn't a minute before she breathes out salt air, fragrant tropical foliage and lavender and the scent of powdery, newly-disturbed white sand.

It isn't a minute before she's dreamed herself straight back to the island that raised her. And if there's the heavy trace of stronger-than-normal smoke laced in with what's familiar in the air - who's to say? She'll assume it's a bonfire. That's not unfamiliar either, after all. Never mind what's rustily present underneath it; bonfires happen all the time, at home. She's built them herself, and thrown coconut husks into their flames and leapt over their embers. This is home, and smoke is breathed in, breathed out. Cinnamon, lavender, strong tea "Sariel, come in out of the rain, Sariel--" mango and chutney and what has to be a bonfire.

Has to be.

Because this is home, seashells and calypso and 2369, with attitudes and views intact. Never mind that rust-tinged coppery scent twining with the smoke in the air.

Isn't it?

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.