Author : Katiyana
Summary : Sequel to 'Being Here'. Adjusting to altered relationships can be extremely challenging.
Disclaimer : The characters identifiable from Babylon 5 are not mine.
Notes : Thank you for all the encouraging reviews. Hope you enjoy the second part. On with the story.
Chapter 1
"Go! Keep going and don't look back. You know what to do if you need to, now go!" yelled Marcus with great effort. He hardly had any breath to spare as he fought off his assailants.
Iona swallowed a sob and kept on moving. She was practically dragging her brother and sister by the hand into the shuttle. She quickly shut the door and started up the shuttle. She was crying but she couldn't help it. Her hands were sweaty and slippery, her tears were blinding her.
"Strap yourselves in and shut your eyes tight," she ordered her siblings, more harshly than she had meant to. They obeyed her without a word. They were terrified too.
Iona managed to put the shuttle into take-off sequence in spite of her trembling hands, blurry vision and the pounding in her head. She was aware of Marcus still being relentlessly attacked. He was still near enough that she could feel a lot of his pain. She was able to pick up on strong emotions easily especially from anyone that she loved and was close to. In this case, her senses were overloaded with her emotions and that of others. Everyone was fighting furiously.
Iona could feel her siblings' terror and the emotions from her mother and her father somewhere. For a few minutes, she felt her tight control slip and she saw through the eyes of her mother. Susan was in a Whitestar. She was only slightly hurt and concentrating on the battle with an iron will.
At least her mother was okay, that was something good. The Whitestar looked like it had been battered but it was holding up. Iona knew that her mother could feel her. But Susan didn't have time to divert any attention from what she was doing. The battle was not going well. In the last instant, Iona saw something large loom up on the viewing screen of the Whitestar.
"No!" was her strangled gasp but she was pushed away forcefully by her mother's mind. She felt her mother's pain, then there was nothing. Had her mother died? Oh, please, no! She couldn't feel Marcus anymore either. Her father? She panicked as she realized that she could not feel his emotions now. What about him? What had happened to him?
"No! No! They can't be gone! They can't! They're not!" she screamed in denial, tears coursing down her cheeks. She had been handling the shuttle on auto-pilot. She had already been trained to use it since she was fifteen. She could probably fly it with her eyes closed.
"No!" she screamed again and again in absolute terror.
"Iona," came her mother's voice.
But Mama was gone. Was she not gone? What had happened? Mama's ship, what had happened to Mama's ship?
"Iona! Wake up! It's a nightmare. Iona!" said Susan, catching hold of Iona's wildly thrashing arms and holding them firmly. She continued to speak to the girl to coax her out of the nightmare. It was now a nightly occurrence.
Initially it had been Will and DJ who were haunted the most by nightmares. Iona had not been so troubled with them. But after a few weeks, Will and DJ's nightmares began to decrease in frequency. They were still very young and could bounce back quickly. There were many differences in this universe but nothing they could not adapt to fairly easily. They had everyone they knew and loved around them, for them adjusting into their new life here was going well.
Iona's nightmares had emerged and began to increase in intensity. The girl would scream and trash around and anyone who attempted to wake her up had found out that her flailing arms should first be held or she would waking up fighting the person. Susan, John and Marcus had all been hit by her as they had tried to get her to wake up.
Susan was worried as she woke Iona up and hugged her. Iona blinked as she regained consciousness, accepted the hug briefly and mumbled a word of thanks. Then she turned away and lay back, pulling the covers over herself.
Susan knew that Iona could not go on like this. She had not had a good nights' sleep in over two weeks. After being woken up, Iona would either stay awake or fall asleep and then have another nightmare. Iona was exhausted. She would not talk about it to anyone and she maintained that she was fine. Clearly Iona was anything but fine, yet she would not let anyone help her.
Susan sighed as she got back into her bed. Iona was displaying the same destructive coping mechanisms she herself tended to use. They were not healthy ways to cope. Susan acknowledged that. It seemed easier to see that in another person. She had made sure that all her vodka was hidden away.
But this could not go on. Iona was fading away. She had nearly been seriously injured when Will had accidentally knocked her over today. Thankfully Marcus' quick movement had stopped Iona from cracking her head on the floor. She was so tired that she would not even eat much. Her night terrors were draining her interest in anything and her concentration was non-existent.
Something had to change. Unfortunately Susan had no clue how to achieve that change. She only knew that she would not stand by and watch while Iona continued to suffer. There must be a way to get through to the girl. She had to find it soon.