Nightmares (Part 2)

Posted on 24 Jan 2019 @ 1:17pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Lieutenant Amaranai Franklin

3,192 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 17 - Crystal of Life
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 1, Saalm's Quarters
Timeline: MD -97, 0601 hrs

[ON]

Despite the long transit time Galileo was still enduring, the days had somehow passed quickly for Lirha Saalm. Each duty shift blended into the next as if it were a constant continuation of their ongoing journey. The grind of the daily routine was sometimes hard to cope with, but for the most part, she'd settled in well and found a semblance of peace at the end of each day. Mostly - probably entirely - due to her ongoing and intimate relationship with one of her security officers. Perhaps it'd been an ill-advised decision for the captain to succumb to such feelings with one of her subordinates, but Lirha was an emotional and passionate Orion who often disregarded Human cultural taboos. The young lieutenant was both her mate and her friend, and they'd deepened their bond with each passing minute they'd spent together.

It was just past 0600 and both of them were sound asleep in Lirha's quarters. Being on the same duty shift rotation allowed them to keep a similar schedule which had benefited each of them over the past weeks. The lights were off in the captain's quarters' bedroom where Amaranai and Lirha lay in comfort with one another on the mid-sized bed, with Snuffles the Targ curled up on the foot of the mattress near their feet.

The Orion lay on her side with a green arm wrapped tightly around Amaranai who was curled up next to her. They both slept in unison, breathing softly together while their bodies recharged for the day and prepared for the next day's shift.

Amaranai would wake sometimes in Lirha's arms and have to remind herself where she was. It wasn't that the brunette was not happy to be with the captain - the captain . . . that was definitely something that should not be happening. And yet, there she was. But there were times she had to practically pinch herself when she saw the green arms wrapped around her abdomen or feel the woman's body against her.

Her insomnia didn't help her in those times that she considered herself not worthy or capable of being loved by Lirha. And the recent arguments with Charlotte were not helping either. It was in those times that Amaranai had noticed - not too many, but enough - that Lirha would become restless and begin tossing. Even Amaranai's gentle touches and soothing voice wasn't helpful until the nightmare ran its course.

It was one of those times, just before the pair had to wake for the day, that Amaranai woke. Not to the sounds of screaming or crying or even flailing. She rolled over, barely awake and reached a hand for Lirha. Her hand touched her lover's bare back and it felt cold.

"Are you okay?"

***

Inside the darkness, Lirha lay incapacitated on the same metallic surface she'd experienced in her previous nightmares. She could feel muted sensations in her limbs and torso, but couldn't move any of her appendages. Her vision was clouded and groggy, only permeated by the occasional slow-motion blur of a shadow passing across her vision. It felt like a lucid dream but was layered within another, much deeper reality.

The cold and sterile composition of table seeped uncomfortably into the naked skin along her back and legs. She could hear a faint sound, something resembling a plasma cutter but much more muted. Then she felt wetness streaming from the side of her abdomen and tried to look down.

"What is your designation?" a woman's voice asked.

***

Lirha's breath was shallow and jagged while she lay in bed. Her emerald skin was clammy and coated in sweat, and when Amaranai touched her, her legs twitched and her posture tightened.

Amaranai noticed Lirha's body tense up. This was unusual now, as they had been touching each other more intimately than this for some time. It caused Amaranai to consider that Lirha might be still in her dream state or just awakening and unsure of her surroundings - much like Amaranai at times.

"It's okay," Amaranai whispered. "I'm here."

The human woman placed a hand on the green shoulder next to her and though she wanted to kiss Lirha, Amaranai felt it was too soon.

"No need to worry, love," she said. "I've got you."

***

The darkness suddenly turned into light, and became so bright it washed out Lirha's vision and temporarily blinded her. The rustling sound of quiet unknown voices persisted, then she felt a contraption lock firmly into place around her head. It restrained her, and, like the table, felt cold and metallic. Primitive and barbaric.

"What is your designation?" the voice asked again.

***

In the bed, Lirha's fists balled up and she painfully whispered two words -- unaware of Amaranai's presence. "..S-saalm. ....L-lirha Ssaalm..."

Amaranai noticed Lirha's hands turning into fists. It bothered the brunette to the point of sitting up. As she moved, she heard the small whisper of her name.

What the hell?"

"Lirha," Amaranai said as she squeezed the green shoulder in her hand. "Lirha, it's me, Amaranai. Are you okay?"

The Orion flinched again but this time suddenly reached out and grabbed Amaranai's wrist with force. She gasped and opened her eyes, her sharp fingernails digging sharply into her partner's skin while she turned her head to look at the intruder. "Lirha Saalm!" she exclaimed in Orion with a look of intense fear in her eyes shadowed by the room's darkness.

Amaranai was not expecting to be grabbed by Lirha, let alone grabbed with so much force. Amaranai could tell that grip had drawn blood. And while it was not something dangerous, it still hurt. Lirha spoke, but, in what Amaranai could only guess was Orion. The green-skinned woman was staring at the brunette with an unknown look in her eyes.

The security officer looked gently down at her wrist and could feel the slow stream of blood coming from the wounds.

"Lirha," Amaranai whispered. "What's wrong?"

Lirha squinted while she breathed heavily from her mouth. Her lucid dream state slowly dissipated then was replaced by reality, and the first thing she saw was the face of Amaranai with concern evident in her features. "...What? What happened?" she asked, eyes now darting around the darkness to take in her surroundings.

Amaranai stared at her lover, concerned more about the Orion than anything else.

"You don't remember?" she asked.

Before allowing Lirha to answer though, Amaranai slowly removed her wrist from Lirha's grip. She pulled it away, though, as to not really let Lirha see the marks that had been made.

"You kept calling out your own name," she continued. "You were tossing and turning." She paused to reach up to Lirha's shoulder with her other hand. "Are you alright?"

"...My name?" Lirha repeated, her chest quickly rising and falling. So it was true and it hadn't been a dream? Confusion abounded but she felt awake, not esoteric anymore. Amaranai's voice was real enough. "I'm...," she swallowed a painful dry lump in her throat, "fine," she lied, looking away.

Amaranai watched the woman as she spoke. There were subtle hints that let Amaranai know that Lirha was lying when she said she was fine.

"You're not, though," she said. "Something is wrong and you're just not willing to admit it to yourself or to me."

Lirha closed her eyes and tried to recall the lingering images of her dream as best she could before they faded away. "I don't know... It was just another dream," she replied with panted frustration. "The same bad dream. It's happening more and more now..."

Amaranai listened as Lirha talked about how she felt. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to quell the fear that Amaranai was feeling based on Lirha's actions in the past few moments.

"Okay," she said after a quiet moment. "Bad dream. But it's just a dream, right? Or is it something else? Is it still about Kreanus?"

Despite the darkness of the room, Lirha could identify a dark liquid on her fingertips. It was blood but not hers, for it appeared crimson instead of gold. She looked to Amarani, ignoring her question, and noticed her shielding her hand. "Let me see," she said, reaching for Franklin's arm to inspect it. "Did I do this?"

Amaranai noticed Lirha looking at the blood beginning to dry on the green hand and instinctively pulled away as Lirha asked for her arm. Despite her best effort (or perhaps because Amaranai wanted Lirha to see what she had done to the woman), Lirha took Amaranai's hand and questioned the injury.

"Yes," she said flatly. "When you were screaming and scared. I tried to help and this is what I got in return."

She held up the wrist and hand to show wounds that seemed innocuous but were still bleeding.

Lirha's first feeling was deep remorse followed by a basic instinct to reach for the drawer in her nightstand. She retrieved the dermal regenerator on loan from sickbay and looked up to Franklin with pained, apologetic eyes. "Amaranai...I'm so sorry. Let me heal it." She couldn't think of any other words to express her regret.

Amaranai pulled her arm back.

"No," she said curtly. "I don't want you to heal me! I want you to talk to me!"

Amaranai stood and looked down at Lirha. She was surprised that she was taking this kind of stance, not just against her lover, but her captain.

"You've got to talk to me and tell me what's going on."

The Orion's thoughts raced. She tried to listen to Amaranai but was still trying to recall the fading images from her dream-state. It was hard enough to remember - yet alone articulate - what was disturbing her. "I had another dream...a night terror," she vaguely confessed.

Amaranai wasn't calm. These night terrors had caused Lirha more panic than anything that the human had seen in her lover. She moved closer, but didn't sit on the bed.

"Darling," she whispered. "These terrors are hurting you," she continued. "And they are hurting me." She paused, moving her wounded arm behind her. "And I don't mean physically. You're not talking to me. I want to help. I just don't know how."

Lirha set the regenerator down on the bed then stood and headed to the bathroom. She now felt a strong anxiety and wrapped her arms around her nude chest while she walked to the sink. There, she slowly rinsed her face with warm water and looked at herself in the mirror for a long moment in silence.

Amaranai stood and watched as Lirha entered the bathroom. She didn't follow, figuring the captain needed a little space after the last few minutes of tension.

The captain returned to the bedroom after a couple minutes, this time clad in a thin nightgown which did little to hide her curves. "I want to tell you," she said to Amaranai, "but how can I tell you what I can't understand?"

The brunette gazed at Lirha's body in the nightgown. She really was beautiful and for some reason, was still happy to be with Amaranai. Amaranai could hear the pain in Lirha's voice and moved closer to her. Wrapping her arms around the Orion, Amaranai whispered.

"You don't have to understand it. Just tell me. I'll listen and maybe we can understand it together."

Lirha'd been dreading the moment when she was finally forced to explain what she was experiencing. It helped that Amaranai was cuddled close to her in an embrace, but she still felt apprehension. "I have these dreams, but they feel lucid," she started. "Like an out-of-body experience. They feel more like memories but it's the same one that repeats. In different variations. I don't understand it."

Lucid dreams. Out of body experience. These were complex issues that Amaranai was probably not able to grasp on her own, but she wasn't going to tell Lirha that. Not yet, at least.

"Okay," Amaranai said. "Same dream. Different variations. Can you explain it to me?"

Breaking from the physical contact, Lirha sat down on the edge of the bed and began to nervously play with her fingers. She took a deep breath then closed her eyes in an attempt calm herself and remember the nightmare. "I'm in a room but I do not know where....laying on something." She started to recall the sensations she'd felt. "Something cold, like a platform. Or a bed. Maybe metallic. And there are figures around me..I could feel their presence and see their shadows. One of them speaks to me...asks me questions..."

Amaranai moved and sat next to Lirha on the bed, her naked skin brushing the thin nightgown. She listened to the description and considered her thoughts before answering.

"Perhaps your severe torture has affected you more than you realized?" she said. "Maybe your subconscious is finally rebuilding your time on Kreanus?"

It was this moment when Lirha's greatest private fear was realized. On one hand Amaranai was trying to help and evaluate her as both partner and lover, but she was also a fellow officer aboard the starship. The captain had struggled over the past weeks with these terrors and any admission - private or not - which put her mental health in question was a treacherous path. Maybe Amaranai would then consult Lake. Then he would consult Allyndra...the only other officer aboard the vessel with power to remove her from command. Then if deemed unfit, Lirha would lose everything again.

She didn't know how to reply so she simply cast her eyes to the carpet with sadness.

Amaranai could see the internal struggle that was going through the captain's head. Talk it out and feel relieved to be able to tell someone even just a part of the horror. But also, Amaranai wasn't stupid. As a Starfleet officer, she knew that if anyone were to find out about the night terrors, Lirha's ability to command might be called into question. That wasn't something that Amaranai wanted and she knew the Orion didn't want it either.

"I don't know how to help you," Amaranai started. "But I want to help you."

She paused for several moments before speaking again.

"My love for you is more binding than my responsibilities to the uniform I normally wear."

"What do you really want to hear?" Lirha asked, driving her distressed voice straight into the darkness. "..That I've avoided my scheduled psych evals for over a month now? That I can't sleep at night even next to you? That..." the pause was deafening, "I remember things happening to me that I don't understand?" She was at a loss of what else to say, but put a concerned green hand on Amaranai's forearm. "You can't speak of this to anyone."

After Lirha asked what Amaranai wished to hear and then began spilling secrets, the brunette was unsure she had really wished to hear any of it. She was trying to be supportive, but knowing that Lirha had missed her needed psych evals? And that she is no longer sleeping? Her final words, about not telling anyone, resonated with Amaranai, however. The woman nodded and rested her own hand over Lirha's.

"I understand," she said softly. "But you need to be able to talk about these nightmares. If not with the counselor, than with me. I'm no counselor, obviously, but at least you would be able to get it out."

Lirha slowly shook her head. "It's...complicated. I can't remember once I'm awake. It all fades," she tried to explain. Amaranai's help was always welcome but the captain feared she didn't fully understand. "But when I sleep, I always seem to return to the same place."

That wasn't very helpful information, Amaranai knew, but there had to be more to it. She listened as Lirha continued and mentioned that she returns to the same place each time she sleeps.

"Alright," she concedes. "If only there was a way to see inside your mind when you were sleeping."

A Vulcan mind meld would possibly help, but that would be adding another person to the secret and Amaranai knew that Lirha would not go for that.

Twinges of anxiety started to course through the Orion again. It took her some time to determine why, but she finally realized she wasn't sure she wanted to remember everything about her nightmares. The little she'd experienced had been unsettling enough, and the thought of recalling the entirety of her dreams sounded horrifying. "Do you think that's a good idea?" she hesitantly asked. "What if these really are memories and something...happened to me?"

Amaranai stared at Lirha and placed a hand on her side.

"Perhaps you're right," she said. "But if something did happen to you," she paused before continuing. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

The Orion's eyes drifted up to Amaranai's and slightly creased around the edges. "I don't know," she confessed. "Some say ignorance is the key to happiness, for you can't fear what you don't know." Lirha then shook her head, took a deep breath, and sat up straight to try to regain her composure. She was a captain of the starship and it was absurd for her to be talking like this. Showing such weakness.

"I'm afraid I won't be of use to anyone I'm forced to recall these things. I have duties and responsibilities. An entire starship to organize," she said with some exasperation instead of trepidation.

Amaranai listened as Lirha suggested not knowing and the responsibility that was required of her as captain of the ship. There was a lot of pressure on Lirha and Amaranai understood that. She put her head down, unsure of how to continue the conversation.

"You have responsibilities to yourself, as well," she finally said.

Amaranai stood up and went to the bathroom. She turned around and looked at Lirha.

"And to me,"

She turned on the shower and stepped in to think.

Half of Lirha wanted to follow Amaranai, as she usually did. Their shower time together was a period not only for physical intimacy, but also emotional comfort. But for now, Lirha wanted to be by herself -- if only for a few minutes. She laid down on her side then watched the stars streaking by at warp speed. So much was on her mind that it was hard to focus, so she closed her eyes and tried to think of fonder memories while she waited for Amaranai to return.

Standing in the shower, Amaranai cried for several minutes with the hot water cascading down her body. It finally got too hot for her and she turned off the shower. The brunette stepped out and dried off and returned to the room only to find Lirha had fallen asleep. She sighed, half wishing the two had come up with some kind of solution. Instead, she crawled onto the bed and spooned Lirha and fell asleep.

[OFF]

--

Lieutenant Amaranai Franklin
Assistant Security Chief
USS Galileo-A

CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

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