70,000 Light-Years From Home.

Posted on Sat Dec 17, 2011 @ 3:33pm by

469 words; about a 2 minute read

(( This is a backpost to address Athena's whereabouts earlier in the timeline... this is set just after Voyager's arrival at Ocampa. ))

...I don't even know how I got here.

It was a last-second assignment change. I was supposed to stay on DS9 and do Runabout maintenance. But all of a sudden I had this memo on my PADD from some Admiral named Cooper that I've never heard of and--

--and all of a sudden I'm packing up my stuff and walking onto this brand-new sparkling Intrepid-class and I'm so very out of my depth.

(I think Dad might have pulled some strings. Probably yeah the strings. He was dissatisfied with my assignment and he got me reassigned. I mean, Harry was valedictorian, that's how he got this plum gig, even with his help I barely graduated. If The Academy was a six-year course I would have made it but...

I'm making excuses again.)

And now. And now.

"Out of my depth" has a whole new meaning. So does "depths of space."

Athena Wilson rubbed the back of her head where she'd cracked it in the Jeffries tube during... "transit."

She'd been unconscious for hours, she was lucky Lt. Carey had happened upon her...

It was patched now, thank you The EMH, it (he?) had patched that hurt and faded the scar on her forehead from when that creepy half-remembered needle popped through her brow and into her brain...

She started talking again, gazing out her cabin porthole at the sandblasted planet below.

I don't think Harry even knows I'm here. I don't blame him. I've never seen him so afraid. I didn't think he could be afraid.

Everyone's so shell-shocked. Coming to grips, doing important work on autopilot...

By the time I get home, my cat'll be long past his ninth life. Maybe Mom'll put him into a cryostasis kennel?

By the time I get home...

She trailed off again, sitting on her bed and hugging her knees. She was supposed to be sleeping now. She felt exhaustion in the marrow of her bones. But she couldn't sleep.

Sam, Jules, I'm so scared. Dad and Mom wouldn't put up with that stuff, they'd just say, 'these are the things that legends are made of, Athena Rose, stand up and be counted.' But-- normal life scares me. Being on DS9 under the nose of that wormhole would have scared me. This... this is abject terror, I can feel my brain threatening to bluescreen...

I just want to go home.

I just want to go home.

She rested her forehead on her knees and sobbed bitterly, hugging her legs so much the tighter.

The computer politely waited and timed out the recording when no further discernible speech was forthcoming.

 

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