Bad Dreams

Posted on Sun Aug 29th, 2021 @ 9:14pm by Lieutenant Cassian Pell

Mission: The Place of Skulls
Location: Pell's Quarters
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 0200

Fingers, like oily shadows, slid across the spines of books and left in their wake, dark trails of insidious thought undulating through the pristine pathways of a mind that had only known order and discipline, the delight of discovery. Laughter devoid of humor. Thoughts that curled and clung with blood-soaked thorns. Whispered suggestions like forcible intrusions.

His mind was something of a great library, crammed with books and papers, holographic images and curiosities. Whiteboards with half-written equations, Notebooks filled with ideas, crowded tables and bits of thoughts swirling about, waiting to be examined. This place was his alone. A holy place. A sacred place.

His.

Until it wasn't.

Until remembered pain that had no part in his life slid among his collected thoughts. Intruding. Disturbing. Leeching away his peace and leaving fear in its wake.

Betazoids didn't intrude. If there was a closed door in someone's mind, they wouldn't open it. They wouldn't peek behind it out of curiosity lest their own hidden places come under scrutiny in turn. It wasn't done. He had grown up among honorable people, lacking the cruelty that seemed to be so prevalent in other corners of the universe. He was, in a sense, naïve and he certainly wasn't ready. Reasonable when you grow up in a sort of modern-day salon where great minds gathered in open debate, sharing thoughts and words and so very many ideas.

Even then, with all those thoughts flying about, the library remained inviolate.

His.

Until it wasn't.

He surged back to consciousness with a screamed choked to silence in his throat, feeling the imprint of that mind even now. Someone had forced their way in. Remnants of its presence remained, returning again to haunt his dreams, cavort upon the tendrils of fear that slid down his spine.

He climbed out of bed and shrugged into a saffron colored robe; as he walked to the replicator, the ends billowed out around his bare legs as though batting away the last traces of that other. "Tea," he said softly. "Vulcan Yellow Leaf. Hot." His Balinese companion, Chairman Meow, left the comfort of his bed to join him, rubbing against his leg for a moment before going to sit a foot or two away. Meow was like that. Preferred being in the same room, never so asleep that he wasn't aware.

He took the tea with him back to bed and pulled a PADD, crammed with research, to him. Meow climbed up onto the bed and curled up near his hand. He began to pet him, slow strokes, and felt the rumble of his cat's contentment transmit through his fingers, bolstered by his own empathic senses. He balanced the PADD against the thigh of his bent leg, and sipped tea.

Banishing memories of the other's presence.

For now.