Nightmares and longing

Posted on 13 Jan 2025 @ 2:35am by Rear Admiral Azura Ashcart

3,098 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Voices from the Dark
Location: Captain's Quarters
Timeline: Last Mission (Empty Creche)

***********Backpost*********

ON:

Keisha sat on the edge of the bathtub in her quarters, glaring daggers at the cozy bed just outside as she took various ornaments out of her hair. That bed had been her nemesis for quite some time, sleep either elusive or interrupted by vibrant nightmares. Initially, the scent of Azura on the sheets had reduced her to broken weeping, now she may just weep from exhaustion. The brush hissed through her alabaster hair gently, and she chewed her lip absently while she thought.

Azura paced the living room, his eyes flitting between the door to THEIR bedroom and the sofa that was made up for him.

Step, step, step, pause. He breathed as his eyes moved from the closed door back to the sofa. His mind was a riot of hurt, longing, need and fear. He walked towards the bedroom door and stopped, turned and headed to the sofa resigned. The fear had won. He sad on the edge of the faux bed and took his boots off, sighing.

Once she'd brushed it, Keisha braided her hair with an absent ease. She'd only done it every night since she'd left her homeworld. Securing it with a tie, she glanced at the mirror. Her eyes were red and swollen, so we're her cheeks. Savannah had changed her body, giving her more curve, and a bit of softness to her belly that she feared would never leave. As if on queue, the babe began to whine in the nursery, the cry one of hunger.

Azura finished taking his right boot off and let it drop. The soft pressure in the back of his mind that represented his daughter intensified and he looked up almost through the bedroom door. His left boot hanging by a toe seemingly forgotten as his mind froze while thinking of his little girl and the woman who bore her into this world. As his mind turned to Kas the boot dropped from his toe to the floor and his hands balled.

"I don't." He stopped and he rose to his now bare feet save for his socks "I don't know how to make her understand." He said to himself as he began pacing again. His mind wrapped in the endless longing warring with the depths of his fear and dispair.

Keisha winced at the effect the cry had on her, and held a small towel over her chest. Fortune favored her this time and she got it in place before the letdown of milk which soaked the fabric. Silent bare feet took her to the nursery, where she picked up the crying infant. Tears from great dark eyes making her own well up in response. "Just a minute munchkin" she murmered as she settled them both into the rocking chair. Savannah took to feeding like a natural, she always had, and soon there was the feel of a contented baby. Keisha however, felt a bit more like a cow than normal.

The contentment from the child filtered down into his warring mind as he stopped, looked at his socked feet and then the sofa and wondered at how he had started pacing again. The feeling from Savannah helped him as his mind, like a machine with a stick in the cogs seized up long enough for him to make it back to the sofa and sit down. He closed his eyes and took a deep, supposedly calming breath before exhaling slowly. The meditative tools he had used before his imprisonment quailed at the chaos within him providing only scant solace.

The sucking slowed from avid to simply contented and Keisha sighed deeply. She'd be able to get plenty of milk from the other side to mix with the supplement. Those Vulcan enzymes she needed to thrive, were in a bottle. When Keisha reached for the bottle, the babe however had other ideas and sent her mother a flicker of music and the image of Azura's eyes. "You want Papa to do it hmm?" Her pale lips turned up in a wry smile and she called softly "Azura?"

Azura opened his eyes, he had felt a pull from Savannah and soon after heard the lilting music of Kes' voice. The voice he had fallen in love with call his name.

"Not the same." he said to himself as he pushed up off the sofa for a second time and padded to the door edging into the bedroom as it opened.

"Yes?" his that was one of uncertainty tinged with need.

"Our daughter would like you to feed her her supplement" she said with a tiny smile. She rose, with Savannah still at her breast, to allow him to sit in the rocking chair. Nodding to it, she gently detached the girl from her, leaving her tiny lips bowed as she mouthed for the next mouthful. Milk glistened on those tiny lips and Keisha's eyes closed against a new upwelling of tears. She was just raw.

He walked fully into the bedroom and a wave of nausea flowed over him for a brief moment. His eyes locking onto Savannah's and the worries melted away was he wrapped his arm around the baby girl.
"Sit Kas." he said as he gently pushed her back into the rocking chair with is free hand, making sure to only touch clothing and not skin. He wasn't ready for that much intimacy between them yet. He grabbed the bottle with the Vulcan enzymes and slipped the nipple between Savannah's lips as he walked the length of the bedroom, into the livingroom and back. As he walked he looked at the girl child in his arms and he hummed. A new piece, one of heartbreak but also of recovery and possibly contentment. His subconscious working through music to help his mind heal.

Tucking herself back into her cotton pajama's Keisha tried not to let the brusqueness of him hurt. He's not doing it on purpose to hurt you. she told herself as she raised one knee and clasped her arms around it. The fact that he wasn't hurting her apurpose meant nothing to her battered emotions however. Tears burned like fire down her cheeks, but she wept silently. She placed a disk from the breast pump into her shirt and affixed the thing to the side that Savannah had not fed from. The bottle on the tiny wooden table began to fill trickle by trickle with creamy white liquid.

He paced in and out of the bedroom his hum changing as new melodies coalesced in his mind and took shape. He would look down at Savannah happily taking the formula and he would steel glances at Keisha as he passed. The pain in her expression hurting him too. He just didn't know how to let her in, not yet, it was to soon, still to raw. The cooing of the child as she pushed the bottle out of her mouth brought Azura back to the moment. The pudgy fingers of Savannah wrapped around Azura's index finger and she pulled it into her mouth to chew on. Azura moved back into the bedroom, placed the now empty bottle down and grabbed up a spit rag. He tossed it over his shoulder without stopping his pacing and slipped Savannah so that she was facing behind him as he patted her back softly. His feet never ceasing their movement.

The baby's eyes were heavy lidded as she chomped on his fingers for a few minutes, her bubbles and babbling turning into yawns. Suddenly a loud almost sailor like burp emerged from her mouth. That sound brought a snort of laughter from Keisha

Azura laughed softly as he was headed back into the bedroom he moved through to the nursery and lay the girl child down in her crib. As he turned his hand went out to touch Keisha's shoulder but paused in midair. Instead it went up to the curve of the rocker and rested there.
"I think she will sleep for a while at least." he said softly.

She reached over her shoulder and brushed his fingers with hers, it was a gesture both full of meaning and absent of any of it, as exhausted as she was. "Sometimes 6 hours on a full belly" she acknowledged. "Never the night through, because my milk isn't enough for her."

"Because she is a baby and babies are notorious for keeping parents awake until they resemble walking dead." he replied quietly "You are more than enough for her."

"She took more of your Vulcan side than we expected. So I'm not- hence the supplement-, but I appreciate the confidence" Her voice was soft, pale eyes raising to meet his dark ones.

"I'm not talking about your milk. You are more than enough for the child. " He said softly, looking at her for a moment before heading to the sofa.

Her words caught in her throat as she watched him once more turn from her to go to the couch. She was too tired to think about it and instead of commenting, or begging him to sleep beside her...his dismissal of her simply hung in the air between them. The bed no longer smelled of him, but the undershirt in the hamper did, and she picked it up without thinking...hugging it to her chest.

With Savannah out of his arms and his mind free to wonder the old weight of worry and self doubt settled upon Azura's shoulders like the Atlas stone. He ripped at the uniform undershirt he wore and let it fall to the floor as he turned his attention to the pants he wore. Slipping out of them and leaving them in an oblong circle in the floor next to the sofa he collapsed onto the cushions laying down he rolled over so that his back was to the room.

The shirt was almost enough, that she felt secure to sleep in her bed. It was close enough to having his arms around her that she felt at least a little bit safe. She dried her tears on the fabric, trying not to sniffle as she closed her eyes against the tempest of feelings inside of her. What had she done wrong? Was the idea that she'd borne him a child repulsive to him? Were the physical changes she'd gone through in carrying said child too much?....Was she not attractive to him anymore? She whimpered into the pillow so he wouldn't hear it. (edited)

He lay there, back to the room his eyes closed as the internal fight worsened in his mind. Flashes of fake Keisha like lightening bolts in the cold blackness behind his eye lids came and went. Each flash accompanied by a sharp stab of fear. His mind fighting to square the circle that had become his life. He knew the woman in the other room was not the same one that had spent months torturing him, teasing him and ultimately breaking him. The only thing that kept him sane was the fact that that Keisha, the dark Keisha had never roamed the halls of the Redemption.

Finally exhaustion overcame Keisha, despite the fact that her turmoil and his were still at war with each other. Her racing heart calmed with sleep, and for a while she slept in the darkness of the exhausted, until the lights dawned in her dreamland in a dim sickbay.

The flashes of fear and fake Keisha slipped from his mind as the darkness behind his eyes took him and the bright corridors of the Redemption succumb to the blankness of dreams. His fevered and racing mind reached out searching for the connection and this conscious mind would not allow.

She found herself kneeling on the floor beside his broken body, and just as she had that day she fought for control of her stomach. Not, because she was pregnant this time, because of the trauma seeing this over and over wrought in her. The alarms began to scream, and Keisha sobbed forehead resting on the ground.

"Get up damn it. We're losing him! Get UP!" a male voice snarled at her. Hank, she realized faintly as she pushed herself up off the ground. Sterilizing her hands, she took the laser scalpel. The room darkened, and the scent of mold and dampness came to her. No. That was wrong.

Azura's eyes opened and he was again back in the cave. It was the sound of the water dripping that made him realize just where he was. The moist warm air caressed his naked body as he lay on the metallic cold bed. He shuddered to himself as he knew what was happening, the dreams were back... well kind of back. His fingers pressed against cold stone but, it wasn't stone it was metal, that was wrong. That realization sent a shot of panicked fright pulsing through him like an overly excited pulsar.

"What's wrong with the air filtration system? Get someone on it?" She snarled, her voice rough with the tears she was only just holding back.

Her fingertips caressed Azura's sickly pale cheek and snapped for 4 units of blood before she carefully activated the scalpel over his abdomen. She knew what she was looking for, and she knew that he had an aortic injury and that he was bleeding out.

His eyes blinked as he lay on what felt like a biobed. The soft beeps and chirps of the equipment, that wasn't visible sounded. The moist warm air mixed with dry cool air as the rictus grinning face of faux Keisha came into his view.
"Ah, there you are, you are awake again my sweet. I know you will be happy to help me. After all I haven't had any broken bones come into sick back in ages. I need to make sure my skills don't rust, you don't mind do you it's for the crew after all Captain."

The cool feel of the fake Keisha's skin on his as she gripped a finger and the sickly popping sound of bones snapping followed by an all to real flash of intense pain in his hand followed. He gasped in the warm and cool air as it flowed over his body and he growled as the pain set in.

A bone fragment clinked to the surgical table beside Keisha as she strove to maintain his blood volume, and repair the aorta which was putting out blood at a mighty rate. "Drop the temperature in here, and start the bed to cooling him, maybe we can stop the rapid blood loss." she said her voice breaking as she went back in with a tiny regenerator, the scalpel still in her bloody hand. "Please Azura, if ever there was a time to be stubborn, its now. Hold on. Please." her voice broke with the last word, as again emerald liquid coursed over her hands.

He squeezed his eyes closed as he breathed through the pain and the sickly sweet voice of the fake Keisha cooed in his head.
"Oh dear, well that's a simple fix just a little broken finger." her cold hands taking his finger and pulling it straight before the whirrrr of a bone setter could be heard fusing the bones back together. "See now, all better, though I wouldn't use that for a while..." there was a dip in the woman's voice "Though you know fingers are good and all but I need more time mending bigger bones." with that a heavy thud echoed through the cave as something large and heavy impacted just below his knee.

A cramp went through her right hand, phantomlike and sharp, and she looked at it for a minute. Her eyes were momentarily drawn from her hand and Azura's slowly beating heart, to his hands. She loved his hands, they were so sensitive and fit perfectly in hers. They had been what had initially told him her interest, for she'd touched him by accident. Bruises were darkening over his body, and his heart was slowing. "Get some of those long bone fractures healed, and dump a liter of saline in him for volume's sake."

Azura grunted again as the pain in his leg intensified. The calm logical part of his mind informed him that he had just received a blunt force impact about half an inch below his knee. From the pain he knew it was a ragged break. His breath came quick and shallow as a cold sweat popped up over his body and the keening sweet laugh of the dark Keisha pierced his mind. Her cold flat eyes looking down on him as she grinned.
"There that's much better, a nice compound fracture of the leg. Oh look, it appears part of your bone found it's way outside your skin. That simply will not do."

That cold logical part of his mind registered something, a sound. Not a sound from him, no he didn't give faux Keisha the pleasure of hearing him scream. He had shunted all the pain and fear into a little box in the back of his head placed the largest cap stone he could find on it and shut it out of his mind to whimper and rage there. The cool, clean air mixed with the damp warm air and flowed over his body again as the pain intensified and the sound was recognized as a blood curdling scream of shear terror. It took several heartbeats for Azura to realize the source of the scream was himself, ripped from a ragged throat as he shot bolt up right on the sofa. Eyes wide and searching as the adrenaline coursed through his veins and his heart thumped like a warp core about to loose containment. He swung his legs over the edge of the sofa, winced at the phantom pain just below his knee and hobble ran out of his quarters in nothing but his underwear, his pants being pulled behind him caught on his foot and he ran.

Bloodshot eyes on the biobed opened, to drip emerald tears as the same scream erupted from the throat of the man she was operating on. It startled her so much that she fell backwards and landing, not on the decking but in a thump of fabric. She was tangled in her quilt...on the floor. Not covered in his blood. Her panicked heart thundered in her ears as she tried to take a deep breath and instead sobbed like a child. That had been worse than watching him die under her hands...

 

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