Recurrence

Posted on 18 Oct 2020 @ 1:14pm by Lieutenant JG Charles McCullen

1,284 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Ghosts
Location: Officer's Quarters, USS Black Hawk

A Cardassian Legit with half a face lurched towards him, the half of its mouth that was not burned away was moving, speaking, but there was no sound. The one black eye stared at nothing. He scrambled backwards, along the debris littered deck, wanting to scream but not finding any voice. The over-sized phaser in his small hands was like hot lead, burning his palm, heavy as the sin it had accrued and useless. His back thumped against the bulkhead.

He was trapped, cold and dark. The escape pod had no power left, the air was stale and his chest burned. How long had it been? He didn't know, it didn't matter. It was dark, and cold. A burned grey hand reached out of the shadows and he jerked away.

The bridge was a cacophony of yelling, the wail of alarms, the roar of plasma fires and the staccato of explosions. He was staring at the helm control and nothing made sense. All of the controls were wrong, somehow. Unfamiliar. He didn't know what to do. The captain was yelling at him to get them out of there. He didn't know how. He turned to see a half-burned Cardassian face.

He was eight years old, standing forlorn and lost in a corridor littered with debris. Red alert lights kept the same rhythm as the heartbeat in his ears. His parents were gone, lost somewhere in the chaos, the sound of phaser and disruptor fire intermingled with angry shouting and the screaming of the dying.

A faceless man in the gold uniform of an engineer slapped a phaser into his hand. It was too big for his hand and he had to hold it with both. The weapon was heavy and hot to the touch. He heard the pained snarl, 'Kill any Cardie bastard that comes around that corner.'

A Cardassian Legit with half a face lurched towards him, the half of its mouth that was not burned away was moving, speaking, but there was no sound. The one black eye stared at nothing. He scrambled backwards, along the debris littered deck, wanting to scream but not finding any voice. The over-sized phaser in his small hands was like hot lead, burning his palm, heavy as the sin it had accrued and useless. His back thumped against the bulkhead.

A burned grey hand reached out of the shadows and he jerked away, and fell.

*thump*

The cool air of the oscillating fan he'd set up at the end of his bed washed over his sweat-slicked skin as he lay on the floor next to his bed, his breath was ragged, barely under control and for the moment, he had his eyes squeezed shut.

"Fuck." He breathed in an unsteady voice. It had always like this. The same sequence of dreams, often in different orders and in different settings, but always with Mr. Half-a-face and always the same end. Sometimes he had jerked himself awake before the dream concluded, sometimes it had ran it's course. Tonight he had fallen off the bed.

But it had been years since he'd had the dreams, counselling and time had brought them to an end before his sixteenth birthday. He hadn't even thought about... oh. The inspection of the Shran. The corpse. The self-aborted flashback. Now it made sense. That realization was oddly calming, having a legitimate explanation as to why his teenage night terrors had returned uninvited after so many years felt somehow better.

Charlie opened his eyes, stared at the bland ceiling of his quarters and took a moment to turn it around in his mind, the dream had been different, the helm thing was new, and when he thought about it it hadn't been as soul-rendingly terrifying as it once had been. Scary, unsettling, but he was not currently curled up in a ball screaming like a lunatic. He did not require a tranquilizer and there was no trauma counselor required to talk him back to sanity. Progress.

"Computer lights, low." He ordered, reaching up with one shaky hand to grab the edge of the bed and pull himself upright. "Time."

"The time is zero six thirty hours." Calm and cool as always, the computer's voice was soothing, sometimes. There was no point in going back to bed. His sheets were soaked with sweat, he only had thirty minutes before he had to be up anyway and there was no way he'd sleep again anyway.

"Computer, pyrellian ginger tea, hot, extra-sweet. And play me some music, 20th century, celtic, traditional." Charlie instructed, the replicator hummed and the computer produced some soft music. Silence was the enemy. Thought was dangerous, at least until he settled himself and stuffed all the long-thought-dead demons back into the little black boxes in his psyche where such things resided.

Charlie took his tea and settled himself down on the sofa, curling his legs up under him and pulling the thick hand made afghan blanket he'd gotten as a birthday present around his upper torso. "Computer, record a message."

"Darys, I'm missing you this morning. If I imagine hard enough I can almost imagine your arms around me, but imagination is just that. I know, I know, it's sappy nonsense, but I know you secretly love it even if you will never admit it to yourself. I miss your griping about how I talk when I sleep, and about not wearing pajamas." Charlie grinned to himself, putting on a deliberately terrible impression of his fiance. "Charlie I swear, one of these days there is going to be an emergency and you are going to run onto the bridge butt-naked and prophets guide me, I wish I could be there to see it, you little dumbass." He took a second to ride out the silly grin he had on his face and sip at his still-too-hot tea. "I can't tell you where we are or what we're doing right now, operational security, you know how it is, but I'm safe..." That part wasn't strictly true, but he was as safe as he could be and that was close enough, "... and I'm doing okay. Weird dreams, but it's a stressful situation and I'm dealing." It occurred to Charlie to tell Darys about his dream, but he knew the man would only worry and fret, and that wouldn't help anyone. "How is the study going? Last I heard from you, you said something about cultural similarities between ancient Bajorans and the... uh, what was the name? I forget, sorry." Truthfully, he neither understood or was particularly interested in xenoanthropology, but it was Darys' field of study and he wanted to hear about what the Bajoran scientist was doing, even if it was mostly gobbledygook to his untrained ears.

"The time is zero seven hundred hours." The computer interjected, sounding less calming and more irritated now. Charlie frowned at the console, "I've got to go get ready for my duty shift. You're an arrogant, stuck-up, grumpy, stubborn asshole. I love you." The string of insults had grown up between them as a kind of endearment and had become a kind of ritual. Darys regularly signed off with 'you're an uncultured, impatient, over-emotional, impulsive man-child. The thought made Charlie grin again as he cut the recording. "Computer, store in the comms buffer and transmit to Leoja Darys, Bajoran science institute, New Bajor when we're in comms range."

Right. Duty shift. Bathroom. Sonic shower. Coffee. Clothes. Yes, clothes important. Food. Go. Lieutenant McCullen threw the afghan over the back of the sofa and hauled himself to his feet.

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