After Dark
Posted on Wed Nov 13th, 2024 @ 2:25pm by Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius Tremble & Lieutenant Mira Jayna
Edited on on Wed Nov 13th, 2024 @ 10:47pm
0 words; about a 1 minute read
Mission:
Episode 16 - Silent Cries
Location: Short Term Stay Quarters - Central Core Deck 8 - Empok Nor
Timeline: MD003 0600 hrs
Neil came awake in stages. His mind was muzzy and it felt like a Makinuk had taken a drahk in his mouth. Peeling one eye open slightly, he breathed in the air of the Visiting Officers Quarters he’d reserved for Jayna and his stay while the Pioneer was docked. They were officially off duty and this let them get away from even the thought of work.
Which was good. Neil felt absolutely no temptation to do anything at the moment. They’d went wandering after supper at club Neverwinter. The wandering had been fine. The bar hopping not so much.
It had been awhile since he’d drank that much and he was feeling it right now.
Right now, it felt like his skull was in a vise and someone was taking a lot of pleasure in trying to pop his eyes out of his head.
Jayna woke slowly, which was unusual for her. Her head ached and there was a faint memory of...something. Not the club, or the wandering. But...something. She didn't like the feeling. She shook it off for later. Neil's breathing had changed, indicating he was waking up, so she rolled over to greet him. "Good morning."
The wave of pressure eased, but Neil kept his eyes closed anyway and said, "I'll trust you on the morning bit. Not so sure if it's good or not. I really should be old enough and know better than to drink that much. I didn't think it was that much at the time but my head is telling me I'm wrong. You may need to surgically remove it. I think a butter knife might be the right tool."
Slowly. By inches he curled onto his side and used his skull to conform the pillow. Even its memory foam wasn't as reactive as he liked. Eventually he got a fist behind the material and put pressure into his eyelids, which seemed to help.
"You need water with electrolytes, and perhaps a massage." Or not exactly a massage. She found two pressure points at the base of his scalp and gently pressed just enough to release the tension. Then she moved to another pressure point at the back of his neck and gently massaged it before again applying gentle pressure. "Is this helping any?"
"Always," Neil murmured as he slid closer to her. "That not exactly a massage sounds promising," he said as he opened one eye to (at least he hoped) ogle her. "Since I'm obviously not dead, this will pass. Though spending the day in bed doesn't sound bad."
She chuckled and move to another pressure point. "A day in bed with you is always welcome. But I would rather you not be in pain at the same time." She gently probed around his head and shoulders. "You feel fine, and I agree that you did not drink enough to warrant this." There was one other thing she could do that might help ease his pain. She watched his eyes to gauge his reaction. "Neil, a mind meld might help relieve the cause of your headache."
He considered that. The thought didn't invoke a total shut down on his part, which was good. "I've had people messing with my head before," he said. "We're trained for torture. For going up against telepaths and the like. I don't know that I've given much thought to just letting anyone go wading through my brain. Fates know that we have enough telepaths aboard I probably should be more familiar."
The last was said slowly and he met her eyes. "If it's going to be anyone, it would be you. Alright," he decided, his lips twisting into a grin. "Before I lose my nerve, yeah?"
She watched his eyes, getting as much from them as his body language and words. She trusted him more than she trusted anyone in a very long time. After their parents’ death, all she had was Jayde. If she were honest, she trusted Neil more than her sister. "Okay. A mind meld takes effort. Often, we have to put up mental shields as well, which takes additional effort. And, like other kinds of telepaths, there are strict rules that have to be obeyed. That's why it's not done often and never casually." She paused before getting to her point. "I love you, and because of that, I don't think I'll be able to shield my own thoughts from you. So, while I won't look past what some call your public mind, there's a good chance you'll pick up on mine as well. If you're good with that, then I think I can help with your headaches."
"I'm no telepath," Neil commented with a wry grin. "If my DI was asked, he'd likely go into great detail on how I was a mental mosquito." Then he sobered and said, "But yeah, ok. Let's try this."
Jayna nodded and adjusted her position so she could be comfortable. Then she ran her hands across his face--more because she liked to touch him than anything. Finally, she found the proper placement for her fingers. Sometimes she used words, sometimes she just connected, but this time, she chose to speak to let Neil know what she was doing. "My mind to your mind. My thoughts to yours." Because of their relationship, it was the smoothest mind meld she'd ever performed. She took a moment to sift through his surface thoughts.
Neil trusted Jayna implicitly. Probably more than anyone in his adult life (that were still alive). He purposely compartmentalized thoughts of what had happened previously with telepaths vs this. He didn't want his feelings for Jayna to jumble in with those, salting the ground they held together.
At her touch, he twitched, but ran through breathing exercises and keeping calm. His mind went sharp, then muzzy again and he felt what he could only explain as her brain sliding into his.
He was aware of a shared oneness with her. And he experienced clouded images. Feelings? Both? He got really distracted for a moment when he sensed the differences in anatomy. His brain dove at that for a brief (very teenager) feeling and he fought that away to focus more on the imagery and feelings that he slowly deciphered as hers. Those were more clouded though...she was being open but so used to keeping things bottled up. Neil likened it to looking through a dimly lit room with most things in the shadowy corners. Neat and orderly, but not used to seeing the light of day.
Jayna could feel how he compartmentalized his thoughts into the different facets of being both Marine CO and XO of the Pioneer, his strong connection with the Corps, scattered with brief moments of recreation. Those she let pass--especially the recreation before they started spending time together--looking more for the cause of his current headache.
She noticed a darker area of this thoughts and poked at it. A shaft of raw fear stabbed through her like a knife. For several heartbeats, she couldn't breathe. Then she was in a darkness so thick she thought she would drown. This is just a memory. she told herself. One Neil had contained. She willed herself to master the pain as she adjusted her fingers to focus on the cause. She saw the face of a Vorta, felt the restraints, the semi-removed pain of being tortured, of being locked in a darkness so thick she could taste the bitter, metallic sting of it. Then the darkness again, splattered with periods of intense mental and physical torture. She took several slow, calming breaths. She didn't know if this was the focus of Neil's current pain, but she wasn't going to leave it as it was. Willing herself forward, she moved deeper, to another memory similar to the first, but with a different face, a different location. Cardassian? Yes. It was clear yet shadowed, relegated to a place where it could be contained. Yet, as she touched the memory, she could see and feel it as intensely as the other one.
She gently let Neil feel her love and support, hoping it would help ease the memories as she gently guided them back where Neil kept them.
She wouldn't alter or block the memories, but she could sooth them, make them a little less painful. She treated it like a mental knot, easing the tighter places so they would relax, so the distance created by time could help make them bearable. As she mentally pulled back, the knot of fear also lessened.
She took a moment to breath, adjusting her fingers to look elsewhere for the pain. As she did so, memories of one of her own fears surfaced.
She was nine and It was her turn to break into a house to find information for the Resistance while Jayde made sure she was seen. Jayna couldn't remember if the owner had been a Cardassian or a Bajoran. All she could remember was hearing someone come home early. She fled into the basement, hoping it would be safer to hide there until whoever it was left. But they didn't leave. For hours, she listened to the footsteps above her. She assumed someone was looking for something. Even from her hiding place she could hear the sounds of furniture being moved, of doors opening and closing. She was afraid that at any moment someone would come down the stairs to find her. She felt every inch of that basement, looking for something to hide behind or in, but there was nothing. A desk that had no sides, a wooden chair, a closet with no door. It was the next day when the sun came up that she found the window, higher on the wall. She found out the next day that someone had been killed in that building while she hid.
Jayna shook her head. She needed to focus on Neil and his tension, not add any tension of her own.
Neil felt like he was washing himself in her memories. But it was more than that. The memories were like air. Moving through him but with more substance. More like water. An old memory floated through his synapses. He'd been seven and out with his grandfather, fishing on the ancient trawler. Neil had been more interested in messing with the rebreather set he'd gotten for his birthday and kept edging toward the back of the boat. Then he'd been washed overboard and his emergency gear had kicked in. But it was old kit and it delayed by ten seconds and in those ten seconds, he'd gotten a lung full of sea water and felt himself being pulled under as first the waves slapped him about then pushed him under. Neil hadn't drowned, but he'd gotten a good look at it. When his grandfather had pulled him from the water after the emergency suit had kicked in, Neil had spit water and remembered the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision as breath had left him, forced out by the sea water.
Dark water... Jayna's thoughts went to the underwater research facility. The focus of most of her recent nightmares. Images flashed through her mind of the tentacles she saw in the mirrors that dropped from the ceiling and the terrified faces of the former inhabitants trapped in those tentacles.
There were more flashes of images, of emotions. Of terror. She still had no idea how many people died in that place, how long they lived. Then, finally, of the black ooze entering Fry's suit. Of the entity ordering her to share her deepest fears. Of she and Schultz fighting to get back to the shuttle.
Then there was another face wrapped in the tentacles. A larger head, empty sockets for eyes, folds of flesh where the mouth should be... She didn't see that face before, but she knew it from another nightmare.
She felt an echo of memory in Neil's thoughts. and then she was reliving his nightmare.
Through his career, he'd trained to keep his sense of self. Some things you couldn't do anything about. He wasn't a telepath or a null. Telepaths could affect him and he'd trained to keep that sense of self intact at his core. What he was experiencing now was feelings, emotions and other things through Jayna's own filter and it was messing with him. Neil's brain fogged and he stuttered through the memories that were surging to the surface. He could taste? her experiences from Kavicus's lab, including the deaths that had left their stains there as the scientist had experimented with the essence of...
He wasn't sure what Kavicus had been trying to do.
Neil wasn't that bright. But his own brain, in trying to cope with the clutter and flutter, decided to channel it through taste memories for him. Neil had enough presence to realize they were both populating darker experiences and he desperately dove for something positive from his memories. He latched onto the last holiday before he'd left for boot camp.
It had been Thanksgiving and his mother, grandfather and sister had gone full out the table had been laden to overloaded and surrounded by friends and neighbors. And he recalled the tastes and smells of that and then the music and sense of community that had been one of the things that had gotten him through boot and been a distant, but treasured memory through his professional life.
Jayna recognized that Neil was intentionally pulling them both away from the darkness. She knew better than to taint him with her own memories. Clearly she had not done enough to overcome what Kavicus did to shake her. She'd been through worse and she'd been through better. She needed to refocus. His memory did take her back to the good times on Bajor before the Occupation when she and Jayde would play in the woods. Of the family dinners when her father would tell stories of the early colonists of Bajor. But the strongest memories for her were far more recent. She could use those, she realized. What was it Alyssa told her about her experience in the pocket universe? Yes. She remembered now.
This time, she chose another method of removing Neil's tension. She'd told him she loved him, but she never shared her feelings in this way as it was something usually done between Vulcans. It might help flush out whatever stress was causing him this current pain.
Jayna allowed him to experience her own memories of their shore leave on Risa. They were just friends then, but that first kiss had been something else. Other memories followed until she felt something break loose. It was a recent memory...or rather a dream. A nightmare/ It was the face. The face she'd seen in her own dream the night before. She'd completely forgotten it. In both dreams, the face was over large. Bulbous. The eyes were so sunken they were almost hidden. Instead of a mouth, there were flaps of skin. As soon as she saw it, she knew that it was the cause of Neil's headache. But then it began to fade. Before she could hold on to it, she was back in her own head and the memory was gone.
The shared memory of Risa drew him and Neil's mind went. There shared attraction. The first kiss. Swimming naked in the pools and exploring the waterfall areas. The shared memories were almost like watching through a mirror from both sides at the same time. The smells of the water and flora. The sounds of fauna in the background and their time on the beach watching a storm grow from the sea, where it had been allowed to slip past the weather modification since, like the song said, "In every life, rain must fall," Then he saw the faces rolling in. It sparked a bit of memory. Something from a recent dream?
Or rather nightmare?
The alien features forming in the wind tossed fog that roiled in from the ocean's surface. Neil's hackles rose as something deeper within himself began reacting, but then the storm hit the beach and blew the images away.
And then he was staring at Jayna, his eyes blinking at her as his brain latched onto the now and her mind slid from his
.
"I've never experienced that in a meld before." She shook her head. "It's never been so...open." She gently caressed his cheek. "Are you okay? Is your headache gone?" As much as she wanted to process what just happened, she was more concerned about the original goal of the meld, and that was to find and alleviate the cause of Neil's headache.
"It's better," Neil confirmed as he closed his eyes and leaned into her hand slightly. "I'm a little light headed. That was. I don't know how to really describe it. Indescribable?" After a few beats he opened his eyes and looked into hers, "You ok?"
"Yeah." Mostly, anyway. Jayna still felt shaky due to the intensity of the experience. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was Neil. She loved and respected him more for the man he was and what he'd overcome. She ran her hand down his cheek and across his chest. Then she kissed him.
Neil leaned into her kiss, deciding they both needed to chase away some demons.
To Jayna, who was still feeling the echoes of the mind meld, this was a perfect way to blend their past with what she hoped would be their future.
A Joint Post By
Lieutenant Colonel Cornelius Tremble
Executive Officer, USS Pioneer
Battalion Commander, The Cure
Lieutenant Mira Jayna
Intelligence Officer, The Cure
USS Pioneer
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