Posted by Captain Eela Dasca (Lt. Governor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives

Posted by Lieutenant Tandra Mika (Counselor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives

Posted by Captain Eela Dasca (Lt. Governor) in Starfleet Complex- Rewriting Narratives

(snip)

Eela brushed an errant tear that rolled down her cheek. “I have,” she said simply. “I reframed them for what I know the truth to be.” She rubbed her face, feeling ever so tired. “It’s not the messages themselves that are the problem. Yes, I know they are harmful and I know it’s going to take some work and time to shift. But I-” She interrupted herself, shaking her head, trying to find the right words to make it all somehow make sense. It was all so frustrating! She wanted to pick away at the answers but perhaps there weren’t any. Well, that would be annoyingly familiar.

She looked away, recalling that terrible moment not long after she had woken up from the coma and was struggling with aphasia. What words she could speak were disjointed and some days her thoughts still felt that way. Her first coherent word had been a simple question. Crew?

When Eela looked back at Tandra, the pain of that answer sat there. Yes, she had worked through it, but it had never truly gone away, not when everything else was a constant reminder of loss. “I think people expect me to have just moved on. They could see that I was doing physically and mentally better and I went and got a new job, so my retirement must be going all right. But I didn’t retire. I didn’t walk away from my ship. It was destroyed.” She fanned out her hands to mimic an explosion. “Thirty-two percent of my crew, the people I was responsible for. And I wasn’t even there for it. I couldn’t be there for them because I was in a gods-be-damned coma! I couldn’t defend our actions, or mine specifically. Others had to. And so sometimes, yes, no matter how well things are going here, I miss feeling like I did before my accident. Where every single day wasn’t a f!$#ing struggle.” She had to force herself to breath, to try to tame the growing anger.

~Eela Dasca, Lt. Gov.

Mika gave her another long silent moment, to breathe, to cool off, to sit with what they had both said for a while. She was certain Eela really needed to talk this out and just let these things out, rather than trying to hold them in, but she was fairly sure in Eela’s current mood, she wouldn’t like Mika’s next suggestion. “Sometimes we have to try something we’ve tried before in order to be successful with it. You are in a very different place than you were before. You have gone through several notoriously stressful life transitioning events. I don’t want you to feel like I’m glossing over anything, but I have to start somewhere. Tell me this: how did you feel before the accident, and how is that different to now?”

~ Mika, CNS

Eela closed her eyes and sighed. Could she even explain it? Sometimes trying to think of the answer made it harder to have one. So instead she allowed herself to remember, to imagine any of the many moments before the accident. She could remember standing on the bridge of the Steadfast giving Benji a withering glare while he tried desperately to keep a straight face. He and a few crew had decided to pull a prank on her and she had to admit that they had managed to fool her empathy just enough to get away with it. Eyes still closed, she smiled. “Before, I felt lighter, at ease in my own skin. I had a difficult job I enjoyed but it felt natural. I wasn’t afraid to be myself. I sang on karaoke nights, I danced. I painted abstracts with watercolours. I could express myself and it was never a bad thing.”

Her eyes opened but she didn’t look at Mika. Instead she focused on her fingertips, rubbing the pad of her thumb back and forth along them. “Now, I feel bitter, afraid. I second guess myself all the time in a way I’m not used to. Forget about dancing. With the issues I have with my back and the slight vertigo from my brain injury I can get if I move too quickly, it feels risky.”

~Eela

“It was a life changing injury. There are things you can’t do anymore that you used to enjoy. It changed the way you look, because of the brace. I want to tell you to give it time, but it’s been years. I feel like you haven’t really processed it, dealt with it, in a healthy way where you can really heal from it. Do you still paint?” That was something her injuries shouldn’t prevent her from picking back up.

~ Mika, CNS