Will I Stay or Will I Go?

Posted on 27 Dec 2015 @ 5:16am by Jynn

342 words; about a 2 minute read

We're back. And I've never been more afraid. There's no escape now. That one fleeting moment where I could have truly shed away everything that has been bothering me: gone. There's now nothing to do but wait. Await trial. Await discharge. Await the end of everything I know and love.

Will they pardon me? Almost certainly not. Will they punish me? Of course, but in what way I don't know. Perhaps thirty lashes? A good keel haul? Maybe a long walk out of a short airlock? No. None of that is going to compare to my actual sentencing. I already know what will happen. It's certainly not the first time it's happened with my species, though every time punishment is carried out it is with hopes that it will be the last time.

Maybe they will let me stay? I've heard of the possibility of 'treatments,' though the end result could be called more of a punishment than anything else. They could treat me as they do the Orions, though there are many of my kind who frown upon that. The obvious lack of control on the part of the individual treated and the possibility of it being a mandate for all of my kind? Needless to say Delta IV will not want to pursue that option. If Starfleet proposes it it will be met with fierce opposition.

No. What is most likely is that I will be sent home. A fate arguably worse than all of the above. I will be looked down on by everyone. I will barely be one of them. Barely be a Deltan. Or perhaps too Deltan, but either way I will be treated as different. A prisoner in my own home. What could possibly be worse?

To be found guilty of breaking The Oath is always accompanied by a life sentence. It doesn't matter what form it takes or who carries it out and where. Sent home; extensive rehabilitative 'training'; injection and suppression. Either way it's always the same. It's always a lifetime of shame.

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