Avalon

•34•

It's Always The Shadows That Remain

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Breathing in the air after spending a year of air being stuffed into your face from vents above your head was something Noel always felt most happy about fresh off board.

He never liked artificial air after his own attempts at not to die while zapped to the angels. And he'd spent his time in hospitals strapped to all kinds of breathing equipment to know and appreciate actual atmosphere.

While he still knew Earth had the best one to date this one wasn't bad either. If anything it was kinda easy to inhale most times.

However he felt the years and endless injuries and his own self-destructive tendencies had lessened that easy flow from decade ago. Maybe he won't age like regular humans or at least what Earth population was. Not that he was mutant or anything.

However something had happened all those years ago that made him not to loose years anymore.

I love the darkness and the shadows

where I can be alone with my thoughts.

His feet shuffled awkwardly across the hall and towards the reception area of the shuttle station. It will bring him to the main offices where his next step is going to be assigning a vacation time before the next round. If he compared to the Earth years this one felt ten times as long, it maybe it was because of space being space it never had exact timeline.

And if he went even deeper space indeed felt timeless.

After all it was the inhabitants of the vast area that made time real and meaningful.

Time, that's an abyss a thousand nights deep.

Centuries come and go.

Noel just wanted to get rid of that uniform of Starfleet and change into something soft and comfortable and stretch out all of his limbs one at the time and all together before smashing a hypo in his neck and three more in his back and then put on his IV bags running overnight and sleep.

Yeah, nice dreaming, bud... he told himself grumpily. He had way less time for any of that this time. The man decided to make it happen anyway. While he'll leave out getting stoned part and cut his stretch session in half with only two bags simultaneously pumping him full of good stuff there will be enough time to scramble some decent uniform for the event.

He did need to get somewhere to sit down though, and very soon. It was almost like routine that his legs made up his mind without his brain being involved at all. He just felt that whatever was left on the sensitive side was getting numb already and within next five minutes his feet will not be able to lift up from the floor at all.

Common side effect from being seated in that damn buckle seat he always hated on shuttles. They never was supposed to seat a guy with disability especially spinal kind.

Now his body was making it a point for its soul within to understand the bad treatment it had to endure and receive appropriate punishment. Like he ever took it too much to heart.

Usually his body made itself clear after enough amount of buzz to become best friends with its host again.

But this was one of the days it will have to wait at least until another daytime passed to get that dose of buzz.