[AU] Their Own Private Hell

Posted on Mon Jun 22nd, 2020 @ 6:09am by Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD
Edited on on Fri Jul 10th, 2020 @ 4:56pm

Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Escape Pod 2-C5A-4P (Deck 2)
Timeline: [BACKPOST] +8 Days

A Mission Post by Lieutenant Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Kalin 'Shae' Brennan PhD
Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Escape Pod 2-C5A-4P (Deck 2)
Timeline: [BACKPOST] +8 Days

After a thorough night’s sleep, the thirty inhabitants of what was starting to be known as “the Bubble” woke up, got dressed and got to work. The order for everyone to rest had, like a switch, snapped everyone to the realisation that the situation was no longer just a temporary emergency. For the forseeable future it had become their new reality, a fact that became painfully obvious once everyone in the crew saw the sensor display that Ensign Vieers had gotten working. A three-kilometer wide bubble, surrounded by utter nothingness in an infinite abyss, made it unquestionably apparent that escape would be a long-term endeavour, not something to be achieved through a hard afternoon’s work.

Nobody had openly questioned if they could actually escape. Not yet.

While most of the crew sorted out their new sleeping arrangements in light of Captain Temple’s orders, Cailus and Shae had the distinct advantage of their own quarters, since by sheer good luck, their home happened to be just inside the Bubble on Deck 3. While they didn’t have their little girl with them, a painful absence for them both, they nevertheless had the comfort of home and each other, and so it was that Cailus and Shae were the very first to rise the following morning.

“Here it is,” Cailus announced grimly as he and Shae rounded a corner in the poorly lit hallway, and sure enough, the bright white open hatch of the escape pod was easy to see on the bulkhead. Glancing at Shae as they approached the pod, he asked off-handedly, “Have you got that list of components for your probe?”

Shae didn't respond immediately; instead, she stared at the escape pod and the door which seemed to open like a great maw eager to gobble her up. Once she reminded herself that this was not her cage from years ago, she was able to breathe through the lump in her throat. Then she looked to Cailus with some confusion. "Hn? What was that?" she asked as she tried to shake off that moment of panic; with Cailus at her side to keep her grounded, it wasn't hard to find that calm within her to push forward to do her job.

It took a moment before Cailus realised that Shae was distracted, and more importantly, why. He placed a hand on Shae’s shoulder, a physical anchor for her to hold onto if necessary. “The list of components,” he said gently, although the distant look to his eyes made it plain that Lieutenant Griffin was talking, not Shae’s boyfriend.

Shae recognized that tone. "Right here," Shae replied, pulling the mini-PADD from her pocket. "So, is this just you being professional while on duty, or are you being haunted by old memories as well?" she ask as she accessed the list and scrolled through it to remind herself what they would need.

Cailus frowned at that, looking at Shae before huffing in irritation. “You know me too damned well,” he grumbled, returning his focus to the pod upon seeing Shae recollect herself. “Let’s just get this over with. It has be done, even if it makes us uncomfortable. Nobody else has your expertise with probes and nobody knows these pods like I do.” Then, with a look of forcing his body into movement, Cailus climbed into the escape pod itself, scowling the whole way.

Shae wasn't going to take his irritated attitude personally; as he said, she knew him too well, so she knew that his ire was not directed at her specifically, she just happened to be in his line of sight when he let it out. "Don't worry, we'll be quick about it," Shae replied, then climbed in after him. "I think we should start by taking apart the navigational systems, rebuild it into the communications array so the pod can be piloted remotely," she stated, then opened a panel to start working.

“Right,” Cailus acknowledged, moving to the opposite end of the pod and opening a drawer. Designed for four, and roughly the same size as a shuttle’s aft section, the pod was actually relatively roomy for Cailus and Shae, although for all his forced calm, Cailus’ heart was racing like a jackhammer in the confined space. Four crash seats were arranged facing each other in pairs, with a couple of LCARS displays and various cabinets arranged in the bulkheads to the side, above and below. Despite their midest names the escape pods were fully functional spacecraft in their own right, a fact that had become much appreciated by the crew in the past week. Without the escape pods to supply power and life support, the amputated remnant of the Pandora would’ve died almost immediately.

After out a couple of tools from a drawer, Cailus ran a hand along the ceiling of the pod before stopping at a completely unremarkable point in the grey panelling, seemingly from memory. “Navigation is here,” he said brusquely. “We can adapt the primary and secondary navigation into an improvised remote control for the pod to operate its systems. That’ll leave you tertiary navigation for flying the pod itself. It’s extremely basic, but it should be fine for a three-kilometer spheroid. There are also four micro ODN conduits that run from this point, only two of which we really need under the circumstances. That gives you two sensor emplacements that you can operate remotely.”

"Mhmm," Shae replied with a nod as she continued to remove pannelling to expose the various inner workings they would be modifying. "This would be so much easier if we had access to the computer," she lamented casually as she isolated and disabled primary and secondary navigation to scavenge for parts. All the while she could hear Cailus' heart racing, and after a week of deafening silence his heart beat was hammering in her ears; not that her own heart wasn't also racing, it was, but the longer they were in this pod, the more concerned she became about his well being. "Cailus, dearheart, remember to breathe," Shae said, reaching over to him to hold his hand for a moment, offering him the same chance to calm himself that he had given her before they entered the pod; such affectionate appellations were usually reserved for the privacy of their quarters, but no one else was around to hear it and she felt that he needed it.

The touch of Shae’s hand made Cailus jump as if he’d been electrocuted, he was so tense. Feeling slightly guilty, Cailus took Shae’s advice as he forced himself to breathe. “I know, Shae, I know,” he muttered, looking around the confined space with considerable distaste. “Bah, I’d take the damned Tholians again rather than be in one of these. The universe has a twisted sense of humour.”

"Sometimes it does," Shae said with a sympathetic sadness as she gave his hand a comforting squeeze. And despite her efforts, she could hear that his heart was still racing; she knew well that a few nice words wouldn't take away this fear he had, but she had hoped she could at least help him weather the storm. "Orders are orders and I know that no one knows more than you about escape pods, but if this gets to be too much for you, I'm sure the Captain will understand if you need to step away."

That drew a bitter, humourless laugh out of Cailus, although there was a glint of dark amusement in his eye as he resumed working above their heads. “He probably would, but really Shae, how likely do you think I am to voluntarily step away from my duty?” he asked wryly.

Shae sighed with a downcast gaze as she drew her hand back so she could resume working as well. "I know how committed you are to duty, but please don't sacrifice your well-being over this," she said softly.

“We’ve both been through far worse than this,” Cailus said as he uncoupled a cable, leaving it hanging between them. Fishing around in a locker, he flinched instinctively at some private, dark memory before returning to work with barely a moment’s pause. “Have you been in one of these before, the real thing? Had to abandon ship?”

"I've had to abandon a ship, but never in a pod," Shae said as she pulled something free from the cavity above her, and she set it aside to deal with it later. "Not long before I returned to Starfleet 'officially', I was under cover on an ill-fated ship; I just barely got to a shuttle, the explosion took out propulsion and I was left drifting for more than a week before my handler was able to come reclaim me. Then it was back to my cell, a space smaller than this... but at least I got to leave it from time to time."

Turning around to work the control surface of the pod, Cailus made a vague noise of acknowledgement. The computer controls inside the pod were the only radically different part of it to the pod that he had spent all those years in, but while that should have been a comfort, Cailus instead felt even worse. It felt cold and tight inside but most awful, Cailus suddenly remembered the atrocious stench. There had been awful sickly sweet smell of the unwashed Vulcans, plus the overlaying scent of ash from the fire onboard the Churchill that persisted right up to the end. Then there were the other unmentionable smells that often left Cailus retching for minutes at a time, but often brutalised the poor Vulcans to the point that they were forced to mind-meld just to stay conscious. And then just as they’d get accustomed to it all, they’d go to sleep, their brains would lose the adaption and five years later upon waking, they’d have to go through it all again...

Suddenly realising that he felt horribly nauseous and was now even starting to sweat, Cailus hurriedly took off his uniform jacket and opened his yellow undershirt before resuming work on the pod’s basic computer. “This...um...explosion on that ship you abandoned,” Cailus said with a brave but futile attempt at his habitual dry amusement. “Might you have had something to do with that?”

"Oh Cailus, I wish you hadn't asked me that..." Shae replied, the pain of the memory laced in her voice. Why did he have to assume the worst about her past? But what really burned her was that it was true, and she hated having to shatter this image of her he had in his mind. Shae pulled another pieces of equipment free from the bulkhead, then she sat down on one of the seats to begin taking it apart. "If it helps to ease your mind about it, the decision to destroy that ship was made long before I boarded; I protested that course of action, but I had no say in the particulars of that mission."

“Ease my...what?” Cailus repeated, confused, before realisation finally struck his distracted mind, which at least jerked him from his own memories. “Damn it, Shae, I wasn’t...damn it.” Crouching down in front of Shae, he reached out and gently laid his hand over her slender wrist. “I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean it like that. I know that you’ve done some horrible things, but I would never, ever hold that against you. It was insensitive to ask.”

"It's alright, I know you didn't mean anything by it," Shae said with a sad smile, placing her other hand atop his. "I really was just trying to ease your mind, not make you feel guilty... I'm coming to terms with my past; I still don't like it, but I have to accept it for what it was, something out of my control. I just don't like talking about it because... because I want you to always see me as the person I am now; I'm doing everything I can to be the best version of myself, and that's all I want the people around me to see, not this past that lurks behind me like a shadow."

Cailus huffed in bemusement, glancing around the pod’s cramped interior. “Sounds familiar,” he said darkly, sitting himself down in the seat next to Shae. Pulling down an armrest that doubled as a computer display, he continued working on reprogramming the pod’s systems, tapping the panel absent-mindedly. “Same reason I don’t talk about Menelax. Or my time in that blasted pod. But the past just refuses to leave us alone.”

By now Cailus was feeling even worse. His stomach was in an awful turmoil, his senses were heightened, he was sweating profusely and most telling of all, he realised that his left hand was trembling. The bedeviled pod felt smaller than ever, with only careful breathing and Shae’s soothing presence stopping him for fleeing the pod outright. Even so, despite it all, Cailus grit his teeth, determined not to give up, not now, not ever. Instead, abandoning all propriety, he took off his shirt and vest to allow his chest a chance to breathe.

“Just got to finish this programming and reconfigure the ODN pathways, then Kaleri can come here and do the rest,” he grumbled, glancing at Shae. “Then we get out of this pod and stay out. That’ll be enough masochism for one day.”

Shae nodded, but her expression betrayed the uncertainty she felt; his words said one thing, but everything else about him was screaming something else! Not that she had any room to speak of, it was only by focusing on him that distracted her from the walls closing in around her. "Don't push yourself too hard," Shae reminded him, worried that this task might have been too much for the both of them.

“I know, Shae,” Cailus replied with forced gentleness, closing his eyes briefly before getting back to work. It was taking every ounce of his strength to stay focused on the pod’s systems, on Shae, rather than everything else, but by hell or high water, he was resolved to push through. Cailus tapped in the programming code with increased speed and violence, his fingers moving through sheer muscle memory, the escape pod computer virtually identical to that other one, just a bit more, just a bit more, nearly there...

And thus Cailus and Shae continued working hard, forcing themselves to ignore the demons of their memories. It was brutal, as if some sadistic bastard had concocted a cruel torture chamber for them both, but they worked nevertheless, and indeed, if the work had gone as planned, they’d have made it. They’d have finished, fled the pod and found solace in having not been broken.

But it didn’t go as planned.

First Shae realised that the pod’s power system would need to be adapted for sensitive sensor equipment, a task that despite it all, Cailus was the best suited for with his encyclopedic knowledge of the pod’s structure. Thus came the reminder of that awful half-forgotten night, far away in the distant dark, when that other escape pod’s heating had failed. Filthy, stinking and terrified, the three survivors had nevertheless forced themselves to work in utterly frigid temperatures as they spent eleven long hours fixing the pod. Every time he and Shae exposed a new length of power cable, Cailus saw it again, felt it, and worst of all, he saw the shadows in Shae’s eyes as she relived her own private hell.

Even then, that wasn’t enough. One final task remained, to remove the now unnecessary life support equipment which would be of greater use on the ship, a necessary task that simply couldn’t wait even a few more hours, not with the life support situation still so dire. Taking a deep breath, Cailus drilled the small panel open in the bottom corner of the pod, exposing the complicated little device underneath. He reached down to begin unfastening it-

-and touched the tiny little green button that should restart the pod’s heating and save their lives, but nothing happened. There was no confirming beep, no rush of warmth, no acknowledgement. Too cold to even be angry, Cailus stiffly turned towards the other two survivors, and just as they had said they would, the two Vulcans were locked forehead-to-forehead, fingertips stuck to each other’s temples. Their filth and grime on their crimson uniforms was now replaced with the white sheen of frozen moisture, the temperature too low to be worth considering. Cailus had long since lost feeling in his feet, his fingers now virtually unusuable from stiffness, and he felt another painful convulsion wrack his back, drawing a quiet groan of discomfort.

Seventy five years, fourteen stasis cycles separated by two-day waking intervals, a lifetime in a month. His mind dulled by the paralysing cold, Cailus tried dimly to recall his daughter’s face, but failed, his breathing turning ragged. Wrapping his arms around himself tightly, he tried to think of her name and failed once more. It was cold, so damn cold, always cold, cold right to the bones. Still, Cailus knew that his beloved little girl would be old herself now, would have lived her life, the best years behind her. Her mom would be even older.

So cold...

Cailus didn’t know when he closed his eyes, but feeling a sudden wave of panic, he forced them back open, sensing the crusted ice and mucus crumpling around his eyelids. He was sitting on the floor now, huddled in the corner beside the traitorous life support system, Limil and V’Lel still locked in their mind-meld to survive. They might be dead. They had to be dead. Vulcans couldn’t survive these temperatures. They couldn’t.

But Cailus saw, or perhaps imagined, some faint wisp of vapor coming from their mouths, and he growled, forcing himself to breathe harder, his heart to breathe faster. Snapping his legs into motion, he awkwardly turned around onto his knees, he wouldn’t let them die, not them, they trusted him! Panting, he reached down into the exposed innards of the life support mechanism-

-and froze, tears finally starting to stream down his cheeks. Cailus crumpled, whimpering, driven senseless by it all. With sudden violence he slammed his right fist into the pod wall again and again and again, crying out in anguish each time, before falling to his knees, weeping openly.

“It’s so cold, so cold,” he wept senselessly, “I can’t...I can’t...”

The equipment in Shae's lap clattered to the deck plating as she moved closer, pulling him to her. As he wrapped his arms around her waist, she could feel him shivering like he was in the grips of hypothermia; stars above, it was like he was freezing! Even though in reality he was quite warm, Shae rubbed her hands over his arms as though to combat the cold. "It's okay, I'm here, you're okay," Shae said worriedly and she worked to 'warm' him, but when she felt the moisture of his tears bleeding through her leggings, she realized why he was shaking; he was breaking, and she didn't know how to help him! Shae put an arm around him as best she could, her free hand moving to smooth over his hair.

"Fear not this night, you will not go astray..." The voice coming from her surprised even her as she struggled to hold back her own tears, yet despite how her own crying affected the song, still she continued ever so softly and slowly, "Though shadows fall, still the stars find their way"

"Awakened from a quiet sleep
Hear the whispering of the wind.
Awakened as the silence grows
In the solitude of the night.

Darkness spreads throughout the land
And your weary eyes open silently.
Sunsets have forsaken all
The most far off horizons.

Nightmares come when shadows grow.
Eyes close and heartbeats slow.

Fear not this night.
You will not go astray.
Though shadows fall,
Still the stars find their way.

Fear not this night.
You will not go astray.
Though shadows fall,
Still the stars find their way.

Who needs the light?
Fear not this night."

And so Cailus crumpled and Shae sang and they wept, the soft quaking melody flowing around the pod amidst Cailus’ tortured sobs.




It took a long while for Cailus to recover, to return to a sound (if still fragile) frame of mind. He was now sitting beside Shae on the floor, his arm around her shoulders, his head resting against hers as they settled in the aftermath of his brutal emotional sundering. Cailus was still shirtless, still sweating horribly with his heart pounding, but he was nevertheless starting to calm back down with Shae beside him.

“You were right, Shae,” he said quietly, the taint of shame undeniable in his voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed so damn hard.”

"It's alright, dearheart, you were only doing what you thought was right," Shae replied softly as she nuzzled against his cheek with silent tears still streaming down her face; he had let his emotions out in a torrent, and she had tried to keep her bottled up so she could stay strong for him, but her sorrow seemed to be seeping out regardless. "It's all we can do in here, so there's no shame in that," she added, her voice breaking slightly.

Feeling Shae’s tears against his cheek, Cailus held Shae a little tighter to him. He struggled to say something comforting, to be Shae’s rock as he always did, as she had just been his, but it was futile. The words didn’t come. Cailus knew precisely what Shae’s own private hell was, what horrific memories were resurfacing in such a cramped space, but the words just wouldn’t come. He still felt balanced on a knife point, as if the slightest jostle would send him and Shae hurtling into the abyss, even if it was just the energy to speak a few words of comfort.

Instead he simply whispered “I love you” softly into one of Shae’s vulpine ears, as much to comfort himself as to remind Shae. “Feel up to getting out of here?”

"I know, I love you too," Shae whispered back, then placed a kiss on his temple. When he suggested getting out of the pod, she was all too quick to answer. "Yes, let's," she said, then quickly clamored to her paws and offered him a hand to help him up. "No more extended jaunts in the pods, for either of us," Shae declared as they exited the pod. Shae appeared noticeably relieved to be out of the pod, able to feel the cooler air in the corridor on her clammy skin. "I know working on the pod will be unavoidable, but we'll just have to remember to pace ourselves and take breaks to walk around and catch our breath, and if we can pull something out to work on it in the hall, then even better. Agreed?"

“Agreed,” Cailus said firmly, having followed Shae out into the corridor without a second thought, not bothering to hide his sincere relief. Agitated and uncomfortable, Cailus was a far cry from the stern, ruthlessly competent officer that everyone else typically saw. Indeed, he was so out of sorts that it took a good thirty seconds before something quite important occurred to him.

“Dammit! My shirt!” Cailus cursed, looking both ways down the corridor with alarm before diving into the pod, returning seconds later with his sweat-sodden golden shirt and grey jacket. Hurriedly donning the clothes, he was downright flushed with embarrassment. “Blast it, if anyone saw me like this with you, they’d think we were doing something contrary to regulations in there...”

Though it was somewhat forced, Shae did laugh. "I'm quite certain we look a good deal happier after events such as you've suggested," she tried to joke back, but her voice as well as her wit were quite dry at the moment. "If anyone asks, we'll just say we're having a bad day, I doubt anyone will think any less of us. Now let's go see if we can find some water and some privacy in the Observation Lounge."

“Alright,” Cailus consented with a sigh. He truly despised the idea of leaving, as if he was turning his back to the enemy, but he recognised the folly of such a mindset. So, reluctantly, he walked with Shae down the corridor, unconsciously taking her hand within his after a few steps.

Even so, with Shae’s warm hand in his, Cailus couldn’t resist a backward glance at the pod. It was his imagination, to be sure, but he nevertheless saw a strange malevolent twinkle in how the light played on the open hatch, some cruel trick of the light. Almost as if the escape pod was making a promise.

As if it was waiting.