Prompt: Gaila, Author's Choice - I dwell with a strangely aching heart ("Ghost House" by Robert Frost)
To Share a Journey
Gaila's pain and sorrow warred with stubbornness and determination. The battle was often well matched, but every day that she got up, every day that she forced herself through this hell of rehabilitation, was a day that determination won. And she had yet to miss a single session.
She'd long since decided not to let anyone but herself decide her fate. This was a realization made long before Starfleet and escape pods and crazed Romulans with god-complexes, and to this she clung.
But it wasn't easy, this constant battle with pain and fatigue and fury that she fought every day. Nor were the dreams that woke her shaking and sad. And that was the hardest of all, the sadness. The other feelings, the harsher ones, added fuel to her stubborn fires, but sadness merely extinguished her internal flame, leaving her empty and cold. Leaving her wondering what she could – no, what she would - do after this.
So she focused on her daily tasks and she pressed herself ever further along her treatment and when she wound up sharing pool time with Admiral Pike and his rehab specialist, she found that she had someone to share in this journey.
He, too, was angry and focused, and his drive to reach each new level drove her own. They became competitors and companions in this pilgrimage, despite never speaking more than a brief greeting at the start of each session before separating to their separate ends of the pool or clinic room.
Until the day that Gaila watched Pike take his first unaided walk across the room, short and shuffling steps not dimming the pride and satisfaction that emanated from him, emotions that she was sure were matched by her own.
He reached the end of the room and allowed himself to collapse, sweaty and openly smiling, on the mat near her, and turned to face her directly. ″Well, Cadet Gaila, I'd say we've both come a long way.″
″Yes, Admiral. I'd say we have.″ And she smiled at him in return.