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1 step forward, 1 step back

Posted on Sun Jan 20th, 2019 @ 7:41pm by Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox

Mission: Section 31-B
Location: Crew Quarters, Deck 8
Timeline: 2396, en route to Earth for Shore leave

Returning fairly early to her mostly empty quarters from an evening in Ten-Forward, Lieutenant Mnhei'sahe Dox didn't feel all that better.

The loss of three security officers under her aegis just days ago was still an open wound for the young flight control chief. And the advice that the far more experienced Captain and First Officer had for her was that it was going to hurt and try to learn to be better and not to forget why it hurt. It made her feel at least a little better to understand that the women she looked up to were going through the same thing with she was. But now she was alone again.

Captain Telvan had an entire Starship to worry about, not just one pilot. And when the day was over, she went back to her quarters to be with her wife, Maica. Rita Paris had Sonak. Thex had Tathaa. And since the mission, even Asa had their new Android friend they were taking a somewhat parental roll with. Dox was embarrassed to admit, she was just a little jealous.

She looked around her room, and her sole companion was the rubber upper torso laying in the corner on it's back from where she threw it the night before in a rage. Across it's sculpted face and chest was streaks of her dried, green blood. That was who she had to come home to and for wahtever reason, she was feeling that emptiness more keenly tonight.

Pulling the pips and comm badge from her uniform, she plunked them down on the glass table in the center of the room as she pulled her uniform top off. Then she turned back towards the dummy and stared at it for a moment. Looking at her hand, which last night had six cracked bones and split skin at her knuckes. She had hit the dummy repeatedly and with sufficient force to require Doctor Dael to intervene.

Walking over to the corner, Dox pulled the dummy into the center of the room and brought it back upright until she was looking up at it's sculpted eyes. "Somehow you turned out to be my worst roommate yet."

Then she lightly slapped it's cheek. "Or maybe I'm the bad roommate. Either way, I think it's best if we go our separate ways."

Stepping back, Dox looked up towards the celiling. "Computer. Please reclaim practice dummy for matter recying." With a chirp, seconds later, the dummy vanished in a sparkle of transporter lights. Broken down into it base molecular materials to be reused in the ships replicator systems later.

"Bye." She said with a light smile but a slightly melencholy tone.

Once the stiffness in her hands was gone, she would start just going to the holodeck for her exercises and practice where the safety protocols would keep her from hurting herself. Though she didn't want to admit, was why she kept the dummy for so long. As a way to vent her agressions on herself.

It wasn't the only way she had found over the years to do so, but it was the one she defaulted to the most. When she was young, she began banging her head on the bulkheads of the ship, usually timed with the knocking of the engines. Then it became hitting herself repeatedly. First in the legs and eventually in the face, until she had to try and explain a deeply bruised eye to her mother.

Not being caught hurting herself was the mantra she used in deciding how to do so for most of her life. But now she was trying a new tactic: asking for help when she wanted to hurt herself.

It wasn't fair to Asa to keep coming to them after the fact when the deed had been done. Or worse, like the night before when Asa had to run in and find her bleeding on the floor. From now on, Dox was going to try and accept the help that was being offered.

Try being the operative word. But for tonight, Dox was emotionally and physically exhausted. She had nobody waiting for her in that bed and feared she never would. But with how she felt right now, that was probably for the best so she wasn't inflicting herself on someone else.

So she would just try and sleep and start her life over in the morning.

 

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Comments (1)

By Lieutenant Asa Dael on Mon Jan 21st, 2019 @ 12:51pm

Poor Dox, but this is really great character growth for her.