Posted by Commander Roman Alden (First Officer & Chief Science Officer) in side - sim: A Secret is a Prison

(snip)

Roman shook his head, he didn’t want to practice jiu jitsu. “Let’s go to the gym. Deck 6 should be busy today.” Apparently Roman was paying attention to the schedule. “Or we can stay up here but I don’t want to wake Randy or the Captain.”

~ Roman

“I really don’t want to wake them either.” Rand followed Roman into the corridor and started to turn away from her office. Randy wouldn’t let her do that, unless she really needed to go this way. But so far Roman hadn’t tried to stop her from avoiding her office. This meant they had to walk past Randy and Rogers’ quarters. She didn’t want to wake them by walking past, but she really didn’t want to go past her office. She knew that more than anything Roman didn’t want Randy to know he wasn’t sleeping. So she turned back the other way, for him, locked her gaze to the floor and had Roman between her and her office and started walking that way.

When they got to the lift she managed to unclench her teeth and take a full, quiet breath.

Rand

Roman stood between Rand and her office. He knew he was supposed to be pushing her harder, but especially now, he just couldn’t do it. So instead he kept himself between her and the office and once on the lift, gave her another hug. It was always beneficial to both of them. When they got to the gym, there wasn’t anyone else there. Roman started around the edge, walking besides Rand, setting a pace somewhere between walking and speed walking.

~ Roman

Rand hugged him back. She was trying, but avoiding the reminder of the explosion seemed necessary. It was bad enough having to talk to Randy about the surfacing memories (though she wouldn’t have been able to talk to another counselor about it and was immensely grateful it was Randy). She just couldn’t do it again. Randy had cleaned and organized the space after the engineering and ops crews had finished the repairs. There was no left over physical damage to the space. It didn’t feel like it though.

Rand walked beside him as they started making laps. It took her a couple minutes to find rhythm and steadiness in the pace. It wasn’t a hard pace or too much for her, but she could no longer jump into an activity but had to build slowly into it. Both because of her head and being out of shape. When they settled into a pace she asked, “Is this okay? Or would you rather walk the deck or use the treadmill?” The edge of the gym was made as a track so they had room to move, but the corridor would give more room and a longer area, and the treadmill wouldn’t restrict him to her pace if he wanted to move faster.

Rand