Sky is Falling

Posted on Wed May 3rd, 2023 @ 4:23pm by Lieutenant Sky Jansen-Carey
Edited on on Sat May 6th, 2023 @ 7:01am

Mission: Starship Side Quest
Location: The Abysm
Timeline: Directly after "Welcome to the Abysm

***Warning potentially disturbing content***

{ON}

Sky sat locked away in a padded room, no light from the door, or anywhere else, and no sound penetrated the room. It also rendered her senses useless, leaving her alone in the pitch dark and silent. For a few moments the quiet had been bliss, but the longer she’d sat the more the lack of input, from all of her senses, the wall seemed to shrink in around her... There was no sense of time, no day, no night, she had no idea where Soran was or what was happening to him.

She jumped as there was a sound, it was familiar yet terrifying all at the same time. There was a laugh, an audible cruel and wicked laugh, one she knew only too well. She backed across the floor feeling her way with her hands until her back hit the wall. “You...you can’t be here!” She waved her hands in front of her. “You’re... dead! I watched you die!!” The laugh echoed again making her clasp at her head. “Go away!! Please...go away!”

The memory flashed before her eyes, she was just an Ensign on her first assignment aboard a starship after graduation. Her first dealings with a seriously unstable personality… So much so that he’d killed several women. He’d gotten himself cornered trying to take the medical staff hostage… She’d watched in dismay as he’d laughed as he took a scalpel… He cut himself open to avoid capture. Laughing the whole time as he’d sliced into face reveling inside of his mouth… He’d stuck the tip of his tongue through the self-inflicted wound… No… She closed he eyes...

The memory hadn’t surfaced in a very long time, until now...

The man looked Sky right in the eye, "Have you checked on your children?"

He began to laugh, along with a cruel laugh that seemed to echo and fill the space.

The words made Sky’s blood run cold. Her immediate response was to turn her senses inward, feeling for the life within to check her twins were still there. She breathed a huge sigh of relief as she felt both her children, for a moment the sheer miracle of feeling the two tiny lives inside her made her fear disappear. She calmed herself focussing on her breathing to calm herself down. For now, the twins were all she had to help with the loneliness and darkness of the cell.

The smell of smoke, hot metal and rotting flesh assaulted Sky's nostrils. She was on a city street that was in smoldering ruins. There were bodies, some in uniforms. Others in this carnage were burned beyond recognition. Men in Angosian military uniforms moved in a 'sweep and clean' formation. The young man leading them was… Soran… Sky barely recognized her friend. He had dark circles under his eyes and about a week's worth of beard on his face. His expression seemed blank as though the devastation around him had no effect. The rubble on his left moved and a small child emerged.

"Hold your fire!" Soran barked at the soldiers.

Soran looked at the small boy and pointed behind him. "Get out of here!"

The child ran past Soran and looked Sky right in the eye, with a terrified tear-filled face. "He left me to die, he'll leave you too."

Sky shook her head as she looked around the devastation before her. “No...Ren won’t leave me! He...wouldn’t leave me!!”

A second child emerged from the rubble in front of Soran. He was wearing a helmet and an officer's long coat, both of which were far too big for his small body. The sleeves of the coat were rolled up and the hem touched the ground. Soran adjusted his rifle and pointed at the child. The child threw a ball. There was an explosion and several soldiers were thrown through the air like rag dolls.

Sky sat with her head buried in her lap, her hands over it as she took cover even though she wasn’t there. "They were children, just children...”

Soran let out a shout and charged at the boy! He fired the rifle, but the shot went wild. He swung the butt of the rifle and struck the boy in the side of the head, his neck made a sickening popping noise and his helmet rolled off. The boy's head swung toward Sky.

"He killed me… He won't protect your children…"

In the dark a scream rang out as Sky watched the horrors, she couldn’t unsee what she’d just seen. There was a pitched wine that out everything but… The scream was her own… “You’re wrong! He would protect us! Soran would...” She looked at the younger version of Soran. “Wouldn’t he??"

Sky's vision dissolved into darkness… Silence…

Ichatha stood outside the chamber, he smiled and let out a sigh. He was reveling in Sky’s fear, it was almost intoxicating. The chamber was wearing her will, making it easier for Kara.

“No! I won’t believe it! I can’t!!” Sky stood up feeling her way along the wall. She needed to stay strong, and not let her fears control her. Soran had told her she was stronger than she knew, she needed to believe that.

A small candle pierced the darkness, She could hear a voice. "Focus on your breath; the foundation of life. Find your safe memory.

Sky smiled at the sound of that voice, it was that of a friend and mentor from her Academy days. “Focus... breathe...” She focussed on her breathing, memories drifting to happy times with Xavier and Tal, and those with Tony too. Her safe place was at home, she safe at the top of the tree house in their quarters where no one else could reach her. She tried to hold onto the memory, but the silence from lack of input from all her senses made it more and more difficult.

“Must concentrate... must focus... breath!” She sat rocking back and forth, humming a tune to herself from a song her mother taught her when she was little. One that comforted her when she felt unhappy. “Where are you Ren? ... don’t leave me! ... Please don’t leave me!”

"You're talking to yourself, you are alone," a voice stated. "The man's facing his own hell right now, this is yours."

Sky instinctively looked around the pitch darkness even though she knew she was alone. If she weren’t she’d have sensed someone in the room with her. Closing her eyes she tried to focus. “I’m not imagining you though am I? Who are you? What do you want with us!?”

In the darkness, she could see a woman…Her name was Haga Azuba she'd been the sole survivor of a ship the USS Washington had found while she served on that vessel. Haga had been alone for months on a decaying vessel. Sky hadn’t been able to understand the patient or help…

"Now you are alone and your sanity will be lost…" The woman began to laugh.

“No...” Sky shook her head. “I’m stronger than that! I refuse to let my fears make me weak!”

The woman's eyes were off… Sky couldn't quite place why… "That's what I said too, but you couldn't help me."

“I tried to help you, you didn’t let me!” Sky frowned. “This isn’t real... it isn’t!”

The woman dissolved, leaving Sky and darkness for a moment… She took a deep breath… She was walking the hallways of the Resolution in a nightgown. She was walking the decks of the ship when she sensed a powerful sensation, pain, terror, fear....focusing her senses she decided to help whoever it was she was picking up on…

Sky’s eyes widened as she started to put two and two together, why would she be wandering the corridors of the ship? She tried focussing on what input was coming into her mind, it was pulling her free of her loneliness. She concentrated hard.

A flurry of images began flashing through Sky's mind, they weren't her memories... They were Soran's memories...

Sky reeled at the strength of the memories, the last time she’d felt this she was inside Ren’s mind, seeing the images of his nightmare. She sank to the floor clutching at her head, she didn’t want to see those images again, she couldn’t go through it again, she wanted out of whatever this nightmare was.