Star Trek Cowboy

New crew?

Her body stung like it had been attacked by a pack of angry bees, but when Kesta swam from the depths of unconsciousness to blink in the harsh glare of an overhead fluorescent light, she was too surprised to complain—surprised she wasn't dead, mostly, though for a minute she couldn't remember why she felt so shocked to be alive. Thoughts of Where am I? and Why's that light so damn bright? made thinking tough, and made remembering where she was too difficult to fathom. She focused instead on the feeling of a mattress under her back, on the sensation of a sheet ratling over her arms, she tried to sit up.

Two strong hands pressed against her shoulders before she could move an inch, gently forcing her back onto the mattress.

She looked up.

"I wouldn't," Faye murmured. "You're healing."

Kesta didn't move.

She stood near her shoulder, the woman, at the side of the long, low bed in the middle of a small room with tile floors and a tiled ceiling, barren and white and austere. Her dusky skin, the purple hair. She watched as she reached for her wrist and pressed two long fingers to her pulse, head bowed and eyes focused as she timed her thudding heart. The sheet covering her had slipped when she tried to sit up.

White bandages covered the broad expanse of her chest. Pips of cherry-colored blood dotted the fabric. At the sight of the blood, Kesta remembered everything.

" You guys saved me?"

The woman's eyes flickered from her arm to he face."You're wearing clothes this time."

And indeed she was: tights, a crop top with a jacket. A far cry from what Faye normally dresses in—but at her observation she merely snorted. She dropped hee wrist. "Are you complaining?" she asked.

"Would you be upset if I was?"

She snorted again, but a smile threatened the corner of her mouth.

"What did you give me?" She muttered, grabbing the sheet and pulling it beneath her chin.

"Painkillers." She grimaced, apology written all over her face. As Kesta's eyes closed, a contented hum in her throat, Faye fretted, "And I might have given you too much medicine. I am no doctor."

"Y'know." Kesta blinked sleepily, her face winking in and out of view. Damn, those pills worked fast. "If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse you of trying to take advantage of me."

She stared at her, clearly taken aback... but her mouth quirked.

"Tell me, Kesta. Do you always flirt with women who save?" she asked, amused.

"Only the pretty ones." She yawned again. She thought maybe she wouldn't like that, but he was wrong, because she laughed low and throaty and rich, and then a light flicked off. "There's water on your bedside. Now, rest. I have some things to see to."

Rest did sound nice—but Kesta's instincts stirred. She opened her eyes.

"Faye," she said.

She paused with her hand on the doorframe at the sound of her name.

"The Klingons?" Kesta asked.

Faye didn't move. She didn't speak. But through her lidded eyes Kesta saw her chest swell and fall with a single deep breath, followed by another that did not release. Then, like a wind through dense trees, her murmur moved through the gloom.

"Gone we are no longer in their space," Faye told her. "Sleep now, Kesta."

She was dreaming before she could shut the door.