by Wren Elton
100605.1830
After Instant Regrets
-=San Francisco, Earth=-
100605.1830
After Instant Regrets
-=San Francisco, Earth=-
Rada was in such pain that Wren could barely stand it. As she’d held him in her arms the protective shell that had formed around the knowledge in his mind had cracked and given him a glimpse into the darkest depths of his own soul. He saw there a cacophony of silent screams only audible across the vast emptiness of space to the man who had caused them.
They say it was a far greater torture to see one you love in pain rather than to have the experience yourself. Yet Wren now felt both as she saw with her eyes the grimace of his pain and in her mind the images that now struck his. They were so blurred as to be meaningless; like the ink symbols smudged beyond recognition on the paper he saw spread over walls.
Yet like a long wounded animal confronted again by a familiar yet meaningless sound from its tormented youth, he knew those images meant he should be afraid. Suddenly he was shaking, his arms gripping her even tighter.
“Rada…” She found she could speak no other word and his name sounded like a desperate plea as she found she could barely breathe and knew he wasn’t breathing at all.
Yet he couldn’t hear her. She knew he couldn’t hear her because she couldn’t hear herself. The silenced images alone were too much for their senses to handle.
“Ra…
Still he couldn’t react at all as he shut his eyes so tight as if trying to blind himself from images that only became clearer as they existed in his own mind.
“Rada please, you’re hurting me…” Wren finally managed to force out a sentence through her pain and suddenly the images stopped cold, his mind once again silent as his eyes opened and he released her, falling backwards and his head smacking bluntly into the wall.
Though every instinct should have told her with what had just happened that the last thing he needed was for her to touch him again, she couldn’t help but move closer towards him. Still, she stopped herself from actually taking his arm as it moved instinctively to the space where a bump was surely forming.
“Are you okay?” she asked, so poorly hiding how uniquely special her concern for him was.
Slowly his eyes moved around to look at her, but he didn’t seem to process the concern in her face.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said with confusion, though in truth his head was throbbing in more ways than one as he regained his balance. “I just…I don’t know what happened there.”
“We should get you to see a doctor,” she said firmly.
“No, that’s not necessary,” Rada quickly answered, more afraid right now of what a doctor might tell him than the possibility of not getting treatment from them.
“Rada please you hit your head really hard,” she tried again, knowing he was not normally a stubborn man but that this was far from a normal situation.
“I’m fine,” Rada answered a little more firmly, before adding in his calmest possible tone, “Really.”
Wren knew she shouldn’t push it no matter how worried she was. She just hated him being in pain and so she felt so awkward, just wanting to take hold of him again, but she hesitated knowing what just happened before and trusting herself no more now. So she forced herself to stay back but tempting of fate was far too strong a temptation of her own as she needed to know what was going on in his mind. She nervously had to ask a question.
“What do you remember?”
“I….” Rada started, but his confusion just grew deeper and he made a sound almost like an embarrassed scoff then shook his head to indicate he had no idea how he’d ended up against that wall when the last thing he knew they’d been speaking about going to that old abandoned tavern.
He knew something had happened after that, only he didn’t know what.
Wren knew he was looking for answers he couldn’t possibly afford yet to have to find for himself.
“I was just saying I was ready to leave for the tavern. Then you just collapsed,” she offered and the explanation seemed to click in Rada’s mind as correct.
“Of course,” he said as he finally stood fully back up. “I’d better just tell Mad.”
Only then did Wren suddenly remember the old woman and she began to sense her again. Mad was afraid; having just overheard a series of events she couldn’t possibly put into their proper context and only knowing that she’d just heard this apparently sweet and harmless young man accused of hurting Wren herself. Had Wren’s mind been a little clearer then she would have made a point of showing Mad she was okay but instead she just felt the immediate need to get them both out of there.
“She already knows. We should just go.”
Though this part of her story didn’t seem quite as natural to Rada he simply nodded that he accepted it. Wren moved towards the door but before she did she had to stop off at Madelyn’s replicator. Though it was a simple model and voice control had evidently been deactivated, she was able to find how to order what she required. The machine completed its task, a little slower than the ones she was used to but it worked nonetheless, and she removed the icepack and handed it to Rada. He accepted it awkwardly but at least he did accept it.
“Thanks,” he said as he carefully applied the ice to his wound. Thankfully the skin hadn’t been broken and it looked like a lump really was the worst he should expect.
That didn’t stop Wren from worrying as they proceeded out the door and down the stairs of the building.
Her worry wasn’t helped by the silence as awkward looks and polite smiles were exchanged with each of them pretending they didn’t mind that there was nothing to say. She tried conversation and so did he but neither had ever really cared for or been all that good at small talk and the big talk was far too frightening right now.
So they pressed on with their words far too conspicuous in their absence. For Wren the moment was almost as scary as telling him everything. The one thing she’d always been able to offer him was fun. Maybe she couldn’t discuss complex engineering concepts with him, but she could always make him laugh when he was thinking about them. She could declare her victory in a debate about topics she didn’t understand simply with a kiss and sweetly asking him if he was sure he wouldn’t like to admit defeat and to move onto something else. Now she felt so boring, so hard to love.
She certainly didn’t feel like smiling but as he once more smiled at her she again smiled back with nothing to say. There had been occasional silences like this so long ago but then there’d always been something to break them. At first this had been merely banter on Rada’s part but Wren had seen through that in the very first words they’d exchanged and it wasn’t long before Rada had picked up on that too. This meant he had far less to say, or at least far less that he dared put into words, but Wren found the fact that he couldn’t hide who he was when he wasn’t being anyone else to cover it up to be a very good trade for a few meaningless words
Rada had changed a lot since those days. They weren’t the changes that one would expect in a man simply for getting older or finding a position of power. Rada in many ways always felt the weight of an organisation on his own shoulders no matter his position. Though he had taken quickly to fatherhood, as a man who cared for children as he always had, as well as one who’d already carry her a drink with all the care and diligence with which most would cradle their new born child, that wasn’t such a fundamental change. The difference was in how he acted around those he trusted, which was perhaps more the fact that he trusted them in the first place.
Rada was quite the contradiction. He was among the greatest liars but the man she’d rely the most on for honesty. He’d be terrified of offending someone by offering any negative opinion of a piece of their clothing. Yet he’d feel guilty all day for telling someone he liked their hat when he really just thought it was okay. Still, he always chose to pretend until he couldn’t anymore. How he’d changed was that now he chose to pretend far less and sometimes not at all.
One of the proudest things Wren had ever done was to teach Rada about this other more open way of living. It had also served as one of her greatest consolations when she had left as she’d been able to tell herself that he’d be able to find someone else who’d see him for all he was. She was sure they’d be someone far better for him than her.
Now as they neared the exit of the building, not a word spoken since they’d left the stairs, him finally having given up looking in her direction even those polite glances because he knew they only made things more awkward, she had to wonder what she had really done. How far back did she set his trust in those around him? Could it be any further than she’d done with her faith in herself?
She was bad; a rebel, and never one to follow anyone else’s rules, and yet she’d always believed deep down she was one of the good ones. She’d lost a lot of her certainty in that on the day another man’s child was born. Though they couldn’t possibly have been a surprise, there had been a second and far less joyful meaning to her tears as she first touched her beautiful sweet child’s Vulcan ears.
Rada trusted her now far more than she trusted herself; probably more than he realised. His footsteps unintentionally were growing a little faster in that nervous way that he’d never have allowed if he saw her as someone to fear. Maybe though he should have feared her. She certainly felt like it. For the entire journey she had refused to let herself get too close as they walked in case she’d hurt him, while never again risking him straying too far.
Many times she had told herself how different she was now. She was however reminded of a conversation she’d once overheard between two Terran children. The first one had complained that the old adage didn’t make any sense because all a leopard needed to change its spots was a bucket of paint. The other had then argued that all that meant was that the spots were the same and there was a paint covered leopard running around. It often made her wonder if she really was different now, or if she’d just learnt to look like she was.
Right now though she would have given almost anything to feel like her old self. She wished she could banter right now, but she couldn’t even stop staring at the ice on his head. It was almost like that bump alone represented the damage she feared she’d done in his mind when she’d taken him into her arms.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Wren Elton
Manager, Afterthought Café
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Manager, Afterthought Café
USS Serendipity NCC-2012