Gradually, She Sleeps
 

I went to her room last night. It was silent and empty, just like I felt. My mind is the only part of me that remains filled. Shards of memories fill the tangled mess of my brain. I cannot bring myself to clear the rubble, although I know I should be stronger and more capable. Going back to her room only shakes the mess again; throws it into further disarray.

The door is locked again now. I am safe for now. Now.... Now is filled with the sounds of the ship. Sounds of safety that fall upon deaf ears and a deaf heart. Words are silenced as they slip and spill into the monotone of the ship's voice. All the sounds and voices of my life are becoming one, and I am ever the more deaf to their cries. My own voice rasps louder now than ever before. The others shudder and turn away at the parting of my lips. And yet I cannot hear myself to know why. It is a bleeding pain that seeps in deep past where the sound once lived.

My mind remembers things that I do not. It hears sounds that no longer exist; sounds that have faded into a distant silent past of so long ago that I was never alive to hear them. Their current repetition is like death to me. I can hear them? in my head. Rattling around the shards of my past. Of their past. Memories upon memories, broken and rearranged, become the history of someone long dead. I wonder on occasion if I am the person that they recall, or if it is someone else. If they are hers, or would have been hers.

I sit and stare into space. The chair is cold and my sweaty skin sticks to it in the most uncomfortable places. I have a desire to crawl out of my own flesh; to rid myself of a thousand voices screaming in every follicle, every pore. My head hits the table with a heavy force. The sound of the blow echoes in my ears but reaches no safe harbor. I moan in pain, the rasp sounding loud and long but without foundation. My eyes flutter shut. The glimpses at dreams that crouch in my shadows are not welcomed. Each dream holds a fistful of my memory--the shards tearing at its delicate fabric. The pained screams of my own dreams enter the jumble that slithers amongst the shards.

I imagine? I imagine that I can beat my head against the table hard enough, and it will break open. Smoothly and cleanly, like a strange fruit. The shards, mixed in with the stabbed and bloody mess of my brain, will tumble out between the seams. I would be able to, then, grasp my memories by their broken lengths with my shaking hands. I would be able to slit up the length of my arm with the sharpest tip of the dullest memories. The action would become a memory in itself, causing the shard to grow even as it pierced my flesh.

Eventually they called for me. There was, I am sure, a fine bruise on my forehead by this time. But I am not sure if this is true, because I am even less sure of the time that they called me. I went down to Sickbay to stand over her in the final minutes.

The Doctor looked at me with sad eyes, shaking his head. I wept only briefly, the sobs shortened because I could not take them in. Next to her I stood, my hands pressing carefully on her arm. The blood flowing slow and even in her veins was audible to everyone in the room but me, and they all frowned for it. I rubbed my eyes dry on her arm, waiting for her to stir. Her eyes were still open. I ached to pull them shut, but I couldn't. Death lingered in her empty gaze, and I felt tempted to look in. But I didn't. My hands hovered over her eyes, and I could feel their heat. I could hear the sound they made as they took in the shadows cast by my hands. The shaking memories that drifted within the shadows danced upon the round surface of her eyes but refused to jump into their deathless depths. Her chest was still, two even mounds laying motionless. But I could still hear her inside. The Doctor tried to pull me away, but I opened my mouth and he shrunk back. Death rested on my lips and in my voice. I was glad not to hear it.

Her eyes remained open, and I waited for her. I waited for a long time, keeping my hands still. Not wanting to watch the ever increasing presence of death in their blue depths. Death and the dead wore blue, and they sat waiting. Leaning, using her irises as tables.

Gradually I ceased to hear anything but the songs of death emanating from her eyes. They were a lullaby, and I knew she was pulled in. Long pulled in. Gradually she faded away into their songs. Their songs were the only sound I could hear anymore. I kept waiting for her as she gradually slipped away. Her eyes still were open even as she slept.

Gradually, she sleeps.