Star Trek: Foothold - To Relieve Paine

Don't Panic

In a dark corner of a dark room, Paine Thomas sat with her back to the wall. She was tired—so tired, in fact, that at the moment she couldn't collect enough of her thoughts to remember where she was, or why she was there. She, however could feel the weariness roaming through her body like systems checks, periodically reminding her that she was alive by finding something that hurt, ached, or revolted her in a way that made the process start over from the beginning, emptying her of her will, returning her to the base state of hollow exhaustion that stripped her of thought.

The problem was, she couldn't feel her body. None of the sensations she was getting came from battered bones or bruised skin, but were instead made of memories and feelings that encroached on her dark corner with malignant promise of overwhelming her, sweeping her away into the wash of chaos and colour of an uncontrolled flood of trauma and chaos that would never bring her back to her center. Every time her mind wandered, the darkness grew shallow, the shadows a shade brighter, and she felt panic trying to rush in and consume her, and that moment was her only salvation: she was Paine Thomas, and she didn't panic—couldn't panic—ever again; death would be easier, and by far more likely.

As that subtle prompt crept in to the sanctuary of her dark corner, she realized too late that it had snuck its way in, and in an instant, colour flooded her mind and she was ripped out her sanctuary and back into the storm.

---

The stone under her was slick and wet, slippery with a skin of life. Tiny crabs scrabbled over it in the corners of her vision, glinting stalked eyes slipping through the half-dark like jewels. She ignored them, familiar as they were, and distracted as she was by the boy who crouched beside her on the other side of the rock pool, prodding gently at a pale urchin which had made its home there. Around the corner at the mouth of the cave, sunlight reflected off of wet walls and ankle-deep water, casting silvery shimmers throughout the open space with just enough brilliance to leave mystery at the edges of every line of sight. It lit his pale features beautifully, she thought, leaving no mysteries save the enigma that was the whole of him, the person he was, who had her smitten and enthralled. She tucked her chin into her knees, hiding the blush of her cheeks as she pretended to look at the tide pool murmuring quiet answers to quiet prompts that slipped from her mind even as she uttered them, until something he asked made her look up.

His voice was hard to hear, filled with echoes, and words that didn't quite mean the same thing, but weren't quite different. It was like the universal translator had glitched out, and was playing his voice in stereo, giving synonyms and recommended phrasings in overlapping tones, but she'd heard him, then, as he'd spoken, then, in the language of their childhood, and knew what he meant.

"They can't know about us, Peye. They won't allow it. Our families don't... you know. What your uncle did. They won't understand." He fiddled with a stick as he spoke, not looking at her. Wherever he prodded the anemone, it reached out in slow motion, trying to grasp at the intrusive sensation, and trying to withdraw within its strawberry stalk. She felt the same way it did, wishing she could pull away and hide within herself, but she was nothing more than a mass of grasping feelings, wishing for something to cling to.

His name was Dylan Cadwallader. His father was John, and his mother was Marie, and her father was Emyr Conway, before Paine's uncle Roye Thomas had murdered him. "There's always more to a story," her mother had always told her, but had never told her what more there was to tell. Roye was dead, now, and Dylan's uncle, Owain, was serving penitentiary duty aboard Orbital Network Control Substation 3 until his next parole hearing would undoubtedly deem him as reformed, as had the last. Owain would likely choose to exercise his right to reform again, and spend another year isolated away from his family and Wales, as, "there was always more to a story" seemed to apply to many different untold things. All of these memories unfolded from her in that moment like holograms in her mind, folding out from her head to rush back in all at once.