Think of the Fire

Posted on 01 Oct 2023 @ 3:11am by Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater

616 words; about a 3 minute read

Even in the moments where your self hatred is at its most horrible there is a little voice spouting rationality. That one dissenting opinion that tells you that maybe your friends don't hate you. It keeps you going because no matter how anxious you feel about discovering the truth, no matter how certain you are that the worst will come to pass you don't really know yet. There is still that one little voice giving that little bit of doubt to your worst thoughts...

Right up until you learn it is wrong.

Right up until you fight back that anxiety and turn to them and ask the question and get the answer you were dreading. Then it all falls apart. Hope dies and is pulled under by the currents of despair. You always think that it's better to know that to be left wondering but at least while you can wonder you can pretend there is hope.

Sofie had been trying (and mostly failing) to hold back tears as she made her way back to Galileo but as she reached her quarters she let it all out in a bundle of loud messy sobbing. They were her quarters. less than three weeks ago they had been her quarters that she shared with someone else. Less than three weeks ago she and Aria had been the best of friends. It had all changed over that brunchtime conversation, Aria had said she was leaving as she climbed the ladder of promotions. All those things she had said to reassure Sofie that day were now revealed as lies. Sofie wanted to call them horrible terrible lies but she knew better. Aria had been right to want to get away from her.

Sofie curled up in a corner of her bed, the shakes from her sobbing the only movement. Time wore on and Sofie's energy for crying slowly seeped away. She couldn't rightly say how long it had been, so lost had she been in her own little world of sadness, but eventually the tears subsided and all she was left with was the dark puddle of silence. She wanted to think of something, anything to distract her from this broken friendship, but nothing could break through the wall, nothing strong enough to overshadow her sorrow.

Well, maybe there was something...

It was starting to feel hot in the room. Sofie had been huddled up in a blanket but as temperature began to feel unbearable she just pulled the sheets closer. This was what she had been looking for. She winced as the pain came back to her hands, a memory of years ago, made fresh by the cold station. Think of the fire.

For once in her life, as the panic crept back in, Sofie was grateful for that bottled up fear and trauma. She was grateful for the cold station, letting her get this close with the memory. She was grateful she had something so powerful and destructive inside her. She'd lived with this monster for years, she knew it intimately, the hatred the two of them had for each other was sewn into the tapestry of her life in a brilliant orange thread binding every other event together. This was the ancient enemy, but it was the one she knew and now as she brought up that fear and pain it was here as an ally. There were horrors in her life worse than losing a friend.

It was part of her, for good and bad. Sofie and The Fire locked in an operatic duet that would last forever, or until one consumed the other.

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