Parted and Still Parted and Definitely not Touching

Posted on 03 Mar 2025 @ 4:18am by Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater

790 words; about a 4 minute read

Personal Log, Stardate 69413.25

Hi Morgan. It's early morning, just looked after the waterfowl. I'll be on the bridge soon. Looking forward to seeing you there. Anyway, yesterday was interesting.

Ensign Sera seems to like the waterfowl too. We had an encounter yesterday morning. Wasn't able to avoid her.

It makes me happy that we can share in our affection for the birds and then it makes me very unhappy that I feel that way. I hate these incongruities. I want to hold her again, I want to touch her again, except I do not want either of these things at all.

Definitely no touching after what happened. Yeah, mark that one down.

When I first heard the voice of the fire in my head I didn't exactly feel like I was going mad. Even now it has all been easily rationalisable even if I have yet to understand the specifics of how or why the voice came to inhabit me. I don't know what it is and neither does it but it still exists as a thing that can be made sense of. Somehow the temporal event changed or created this thing. And it is separate, we are different, we think differently we just happen to inhabit the same head. It could influence my actions with its threats and its ability to cause me pain but I was always the one who had to take those actions. My choices were not free but I was still the one who had to choose them.

I hear a voice in my head but that isn't what makes me feel like I'm going mad.

I am trapped inside myself, I say things that I don't want to, I've done things I didn't want to. I am no longer in control of my thoughts or actions. Instead I am a passenger as this bond chooses to make me say and do things that I would never choose to. It is terrifying. What will it make me do next? I don't know, all I know is that I will have little power to stop it and I will just have to watch as it chooses whatever it so desires.

And what does it desire? I think it's pretty clear what the endgame is. I don't want that. I don't want that with Lamar and I don't want that with Sera so right now that puts me in a position of desperately trying to claw back control.

There are now two fires burning inside me now, it's amusing how the metaphor always seems to be fire. Or maybe this has just been destined ever since that night.

I haven't spoken to Lamar yet. I don't know if he knows what is going on, I don't know if Sera has told him. I should tell him, for safety's sake.

Lamar is an important friend to me. In those weeks after the cold station we looked out for each other. I mean I don't know how good I was at looking out for him but he looked out for me. With Aria and Callin gone and me having put Mimi a split second away from death I felt like nobody should want me around anymore. Felt like I didn't deserve friends. He kept showing up though. He kept being there for me. He never stopped to ask if I deserved his friendship. It was freely given.

And how have I repaid him? Well if I'd never shown up to sickbay that day I'd maybe have never dragged him into my delusions. And again, during shore leave I try to show him what is going on with me and I pull him into a nightmare. Now I'm standing here like the most awkward third wheel imaginable inserting myself into his romantic life with all the grace of an earthquake.

I hope we can still be friends. I hope he'll still look out for me. I don't think I was wrong for feeling I don't deserve friends. Deserve it or not though, I want his friendship.

Sera invited me to her quarters. She wants to teach me a meditation system that could bring this all under control. I would want that, I want to be in control.

But I'd be alone with her in that room. Again, that's scary. I should choose not to go, let her know that I will find some other way to deal with this. I would choose that. I'm not the one choosing though.

When did I stop being the Sofie Ullswater I know and who am I now? Can I go back?

I hope so because I don't like where things are going.

Anyway, work to be done. End log.

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