Battle of Conscience

Posted on Tue Jul 11th, 2023 @ 2:37pm by Lieutenant Commander Keishara Davaris

1,171 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Year One: Whispers in the Wind
Location: Keishara's Quarters
Timeline: MD002 - 0237 hours

A flash. Keishara’s head shakes from side to side, a bad dream rocking her to and fro atop her pillow. The cover of the bed strewn across the bottom of the bed, half on, half clinging on for dear life.

The sound of a fist on skin. The yell of pain and the smells of perspiration and fear.

A shout for help, a cry to stop and Kei wakes up in her own bed upright. The sweat on her body made her shine under the faint light from Brighton Colony’s sun as its rays graced the windows of her quarters.

“Computer, time?” she asks as she rubs her brow and tries to gain a little of her bearings.

“0237 hours.” came the most delicate of replies.

Shuffling to the end of her bed Kei let out a sigh of defeat and frustration that another nightmare had woken her up. She’d had trouble sleeping most of her adult life but it had felt more prominent these past few weeks.

Her vest stuck to her, her fingers trying to peel it off slightly for a bit of relief, as she rose to head for the replicator for a glass of water. Her bare feet touching the carpet, her toes stretching out and feeling it beneath her.

“Water.” she stated as she reached the replicator.

“What temperature would you like?” the computer asked.

Kei sighed, “I don’t fucking care, just give me a cold glass of water.”

The computer gave no reply as if it knew better and simply produced the glass of water in a standard glass and went back to sleep. Avoiding Keishara’s wrath was something even the computers knew to do.

The nightmare had been the same the last few nights and her hand shook slightly as she drank from her glass and sat on the sofa by the windows.

Flashes of the cargo bay where she beat the Ktarian. The sounds of her fists striking his face, of his hitting the ground and the noises he made as he tried to protect himself.

Kei shook her head, placed the glass down and held both her hands out in front of her palm down. They shook and she balled them into a fist to try and stop this as she saw flashes of the bruises, the cuts from his ridges, on her knuckles. The blood she’d drawn from his skin.

“Why do I keep doing this?” she asked aloud to herself.

“Because you enjoy pain… and if you inflict it, you don’t feel it.” came a voice from her desk.

Kei looked up as the chair spun to face her. A smug looking purple woman looking back at her.

She wore a tattered robe, a collar around her neck and the faint glow of bracelets on her wrists.

“Frak…” Kei mumbled. “You’re not really here Dodian…”

“Of course I’m not. I’ve been dead a long time, sister.” she clapped her hands together in an almost giddy fashion. “But I love our chats. Your tortured soul gives me great joy and satisfaction.

Dodian had been a slave alongside Keishara, ‘guests’ of the Olenovian pirate crime family. Not for as long before her unfortunate demise in an uprising that Kei began that ultimately ended in failure, Dodian’s and many others deaths, and a serious lashing and beating to Kei that laid her out for at least 2 months.

“I don’t need this from you right now.” Kei stood to head back into the bedroom but was instantly met with Dodian, touching nose to nose. This caused Kei to fall back to the sofa.

“I didn’t call me here…” Dodian defended herself. “I’m inside your head, you know. Got a rent free space right in that special part of your hippocampus.” she prodded Kei’s skull forcing her to swat her away. “So, you lost control. Again.”

“I didn't…” Kei stopped herself. “I lost composure, not control.”

“Tell that to the spiky faced alien whose nose you broke.” Dodian chuckled. “This isn’t the war anymore Shara. It definitely isn’t Bor’a’a.”

The name alone sent shivers down Kei’s spine. Well, both did. She hadn’t been called Shara for a long, long time.

“I’m trying to hurt people less.” Kei responded.

“Doing a good job.” Dodian teased. “I mean the Ktarian can still use his eye. You really held back sis. Oh and remember that time you headbutted your friend, but the friend you’ve seen naked but don’t know how you feel about her? Or last month when you threw that phaser off Sam’s head…” she giggled. “It was delightful.”

Kei sighed.

“It was better though, I mean this time 100 years ago you would have shot him.” Dodian shrugged.

Kei closed her eyes trying to will Dodian away. That figment of her mind that always came out to play when she felt vulnerable. That voice in the back of her head encouraging her, the one that made her doubt she’d done anything wrong.

“Listen Shara, that guy had it coming. Using those pointy eared green bloods as cargo… you know what that’s like. I mean if you look at it, who's the real bad person here?” she asked rhetorically. “Sounds to me like if your wee sex friend hadn’t stopped you then the galaxy would have been a better place.”

“That’s not how this works now Dodian…”

“Ah you think because you put on a very poor quality uniform, in a horrible colour by the way… yellow never suited you… pin a badge to your chest that makes you a good person now? Please, I’ve heard what you’ve wanted to do to your Captain when you disagree. I’ve seen you play out snapping his neck in your mind. I’ve felt the fear when someone touches you when you don’t expect it. The feeling of anger you walk around with every day. Sometimes you just gotta let it out and I don’t mean fake Jem’Hadar in a holodeck.” she squealed. “OH! We should go kill someone! C’mon, that little blue breather freak is still in holding… we can get away with that right?.”

Dodian moved to the middle of the room. She pretended to be sad, as if she’d bore witness to his death. “Oh no Captain. I went to see him and he’d ripped his own breathing face thing off. Said oohhh the shame of what he’d done he couldn’t live with. Begged forgiveness from his eternal gods. You know, Vulcans love that shit right?”

Kei growled and threw the glass in Dodian's direction.

It went through her, causing her to vanish, and smashed on the wall behind.

“Spoil sport.” Kei heard with the blowing a raspberry for good measure.

“I need something stronger…” Kei said as she threw on some other clothing and headed for the DMZ.

 

RSS Feed