Dragons of the mind

Posted on 12 Dec 2019 @ 9:53pm by Lieutenant Commander Gemma Alexander
Edited on on 14 Dec 2019 @ 11:09pm

965 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Epilogue
Location: Gemma's Quarters
Timeline: April 21, 2389

Gemma smiled broadly to her friend and left her with a wave, "Not if I get there first!" She quipped.
Then her face falling immediately into a sober expression, upon entering the privacy of her quarters. Like the others, especially those who had been taken over, she'd been poked and prodded. Consoled and talked to over the previous weeks. People either going out of their way to show how they understood what had happened and didn't hold them accountable for being taken over or going out of their way to avoid them.

Gemma did what she usually did when she didn't want to really address something in front of others. She nodded and listened politely, said what seemed logical and got out of consoling sessions as quickly as possible. To everyone else she was properly serious about the loss of life and all but in regards to how she was handling it she gave the impression of one coming back strong after a due period of mourning.

Alexander had been lucky, she'd only been taken over for a short time. Her highjacker's unfamiliarity with Gemma and piloting meant Archer was moderately successful at doing things like slowing her reaction time or giving the alien the wrong idea such as when the Dolmquour accepted a fighter screen as a valid tactic for netting the Captain. Despite these minor successes many had still died and were injured because of what she had done while under the influence of the entity, especially as it became more familiar with Gemma's mind.

She would forever be grateful to Jolan who fired near her craft making her throw off her shot that would have hit the Captain's shuttle straight on. She wasn't sure she could have come back from killing someone she respected so highly.

The helplessness she felt then burned in her memory. Not one to be used to feeling helpless, she didn't know what to do with the feeling. It was one thing to have circumstances outside of your control. She knew and accepted that as a part of life but she'd always had control over herself. Despite the impression she sometimes gave, she was always in control of her own actions and never did anything she'd not decided to. Never drinking enough to completely inhibit her sense of control.

She sat down at her table in her quarters, nod bothering to turn the lights up from their low stand by setting. Bits of her life were in shadow. The tea plants in one corner, a small set of bookshelves in another, art on the walls, her bow, and others. She saw them with fresh eyes and felt a bit disconnected from these grounding parts of her life. Even her beloved bow held little interest as over the weeks she threw herself into her work and training, not too much though or the counselors would be on her again.

It wasn't even just what she'd done under the influence it was before hand. She should have moved faster, rallied the flight deck. Done something other than let Walsh go off by himself. She trusted him though, rather a great deal. That trust caused her to pause when she should have followed immediately despite his order to hang back. The Dolqmour used that trust against them all, that bond that held them as crewmates and fellow members of Starfleet. She didn't know what that would ultimately do to that bond of trust. She knew the old adage of a sword needing heat to be strong but eventually everything broke if pushed too far no?

Out from under her uniform tunic, around a necklace, she pulled out a tiny vital that held a small amount of dirt. From her parents yard back home in London. She held it in both hands in an attitude of prayer though her mind was carefully blank. Not for long, if she didn't fill it with something memories filled the space even as she tried to meditate. Memories that mocked her helplessness. Herself infecting others, destroying 'enemy' craft, attacking the Captain's shuttle.

She dropped the necklace vial so that it rested on her chest and opened her eyes catching sight of a book she'd left on the table before all this had happened never moving it. Seeking to distract herself she picked it up and it fell open to what had been her favorite passage in the Collected Works of Rainer Wilke, a poet.

Letters to a Young Poet:

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”

She wasn't sure what to do with that in light of recent events, she glanced up catching her reflection on a mirror. "How is any of this a princess?" She asked a little plaintively. Neither the book nor her reflection seemed to have any answers and the silence quickly retook the space her words had left.

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