No Wounds
Posted on Tue Sep 24th, 2024 @ 2:01pm by Lieutenant Commander Caradan Eunidas
Edited on on Sat Sep 28th, 2024 @ 4:14pm
Mission:
The Only Thing Left Was Hope
Location: Cramped Ship: XO's Office/Broom Closet
Timeline: En Route back to Earth
DISCLAIMER:
The following post describes an event of self-harm. This is only a means to tell a story for the eventual result of self-improvement (preferably with help from our cast of characters). My writing can be somewhat autobiographical and though I have never undertaken self-injury, I know those who have and have contemplated that act myself in the past. You have no obligation to read further if you do not want to, just know that Caradan is taking part in self-harm. Being a Changeling, she cannot actually be harmed thus, but does seem to enjoy the pain. If you do have thoughts of self-harm (to include suicide) please feel free to reach out to me as I do have training in the way of suicide prevention. Alternatively (and many do not know this), you can dial 988 (American Mental Health Emergency Hotline) if you feel you need to speak to someone now.
The crew were sailing back toward Earth aboard a ship provided to Aenardha through her extra-Federation allied contacts. It was big enough for the crew as it stood, but Mindo, the captain of this crew, wanted to expand his manifest before heading out in search of the Pandora. He had his own office and so did his XO, Caradan.
Caradan only accepted the position as temporary until they got back to Earth. Giving Mindo the time he needed to find an acceptable XO. The last time Caradan had lead a crew, not only did she get captured, but several on her crew died in the process of rescuing her. The possibility of that happening again was not something she wanted to allow and stepping away from the position of XO was going to be her first order of business the second Earth came into view.
For now though, she had other business. One was to continue producing a rotating security schedule. That was her assignment after all; Chief of Security. But her assignment was not to the Pandora. As she looked at her PADD again to verify…again…her assignment was to Captain Nycolas Temple. And, already, he was snatched away from right behind her; lost to whatever horrors Mystery Man had in store.
This all brought back into focus, the horrors Caradan herself endured as a POW. And she could only juxtapose her experiences onto what Temple was possibly going through. The thought enraged her and she slammed her PADD down onto her desk. It was barely a desk and she sat at it inside her, barely, office. If this ship had a broom closet, this was it. Caradan did not complain though, it provided the privacy she needed.
And seeing that she also had the time she needed…
Caradan pulled off her silk gloves exposing her pasty, humanoid mimicked, hands. Rolling up her left sleeve, she reformed her left arm to appear more human. Skin with the randomly placed freckle, fine hair, arteries, veins, nerves. Even her hand looked as human as could be. Flexing her fingers, she saw the muscles in her forearm tighten, the tendons in her wrist tense up and move about, worming blood vessels this way and that. In her head, she formed a human brain and all the nervous connections needed to feel as a human did. She touched herself, lightly sliding her right hand up and down her left arm, feeling the sensation and seeing goosebumps form on her skin.
Reforming her right thumb into a scalpel, Caradan slowly pressed it against her left wrist. Dr. Anastasia Lauda had told her time and again that self-injury was not the way forward, that it was in fact a way back. It was bad and harmful. But to Caradan, to a Changeling, it was all mimickery, and therefore harmless. Besides, Caradan decided it could not have been at all a bad thing to do. Because, the rush she got from it all felt so right, and how could something that feels so right be so wrong? Without putting more thought to it, Caradan proceeded. She felt she needed the rush.
