Gaila was safe in Uhura's arms, the two of them locked away within the delicate sanctuary that was Uhura's bed. The bed covers were twisted around Gaila's feet, but none of that mattered because she was sobbing and she hurt and there was nothing that could soothe it, not any of Starfleet's best medicine, but the balm of Uhura's hand as it slid around her back and held her close.
Words slipped past her lips, but she couldn't register what they said beyond the kaleidoscope of pain that flickered across her eyes. Maybe it had been an apology. She wanted to tell Uhura that she was sorry, because she was sure that she had done something wrong otherwise her head wouldn't be throbbing right now and she would actually be able to see.
Uhura shushed her gently, and whispered something in Swahili. Gaila recognized it a lullaby, the same lyrics and the same melody that had lulled her to sleep so many nights before when the drug had rushed through her body then.
Fire burned inside her. She whimpered, recoiling away from herself. It hurts, it hurts!
It was a purging wave of heat, and she couldn't help but wonder why it wasn't drying her tears. Her limbs writhed in a brief spasm. Uhura held her tighter.
Then she was cast away, adrift in a sea of numbness, lost in the expanse of a sudden, reaching cold. And she was alone. There was nothing, nothing. A caress to her cheek that she knew she should be feeling. Skin brushing skin, sweeping the tears away. And like human pupils exposed to night, the void was expanding all around her to wash away sensation. Gaila felt fear as an acrid taste on her tongue, and because it was all that existed, she seized a hold of it and waited out the flood of black, blissful nothingness.
And suddenly Uhura was there, and Gaila was tangled up with her, and she could breathe again.
If it was what it took to suppress the pheromones so that they would let her stay, then so be it. Gaila would endure through the pain of a thousand fires and the pressure of a thousand waves to stay at Starfleet, as long as she could curl up safe with Uhura afterward, and kiss her softly with the taste of her tears still on their skin, and leave the pain behind to step beyond oblivion.