Chapter 10
A/N Okay, I creeped myself out a bit on that last chapter! (I might have a nightmare now!) But anyway, this one is going to start out creepy and then it'll get better from there. Remember to review!
Sometime that night, you become aware that you are no longer resting but asking for a way out. You want to wake up and see your friends through your own eyes again. You feel tired. Too tired. You see Pavel, laughing and young and hear him weeping over your aware but unfeeling self. The pull strenghens, so tired, but you think of Hikaru, he gave his life so you'd live yours. You pull away. So tired it whispers. No you shout. I'm alive and young! I don't want eternal quiet. I want to see my friends smile and be happy. I want to sing and dance and smell the flowers on a bright sunny day and I want to ride far and fast and free on a horse or on a starship and see and learn new things. Too tired to move. See no pain, just rest. Just peace. No you say calm but loud. No I'm no longer tired. I'm full of energy all my own and my friends see it in me everyday. Leave me now so that I may see you later and have more stories to tell and lessons to teach! Leave me at once. You pull away as hard as you can and harder and death loses it's grip. You snap awake to a darkened room and the whir of machines sprung to life. Bones dashes in and sees your eyes are open. He turns on a light and they protest to it after having darkness for so long.
"Darn it kid! I thought you were a goner for a while. What were you thinking making me work day and night for a week to keep you alive?" He tries to sound gruff. But his emotions spill too readily through his voice. He hugs you. Hard. When he draws back, there are a few tears dripping off his chin. You realize that you're sore. All over. The pain is bearable. You know what no pain would've meant. You are just fine. Just then, the others, who had been standing outside talking when the alarms went off, rush in to see if things are alright. They must've expected you to be dead and they saw the tears on Bones' face and for a moment look as though they've lost all hope, until their eyes land on your alert ones. Only then do they realize that Bones' tears were those of joy. The first one to react is Pavel. He rushes up and hugs you. "I can't believe you're alive y/n! I'm so happy!" The others react much the same way. Except of course for Spock, who just stands there regarding you. He nods approval and you nod back in understanding. Nobody knew of the meld. And you need to keep it that way. "Oh ya had me worried! I thought we'd lost ya for sure laddie/lassie!" Scotty says. Bones shoos everyone out saying that you still need rest. "But Bones!" You groan. "But nothing kid!" He huffs.
"Okay, but you have to stay and hold my hand all night. I don't want death to start pulling again. It was hard to resist it. I was scared." "Kid, it's not going to bother you again until it's ready to be your friend. When you're a good 150 or 200 years old." "I've been resting all week. Can't you just load me up on painkillers and let me out of here? I thought you were going to boot me outta your Sickbay with a bruise on my backside to show for it." He grins fondly. "Okay fine." He doesn't even try to keep his amusement out of his voice. He tries to load you up on food and water too, but your body still rejects it. Adamantly. Bones throws his hands up in defeat. "I'll just give you nutrients straight to your bloodstream for now. You'll have to come to Sickbay for them three times a day. Now, get out!"
You walk out. You may be able to feel your body again, and death is no longer beckoning to you, but you still feel like your emotions are hidden too deep to find again. As you wander through the Enterprise, you feel your environment all over. The roar of the engines, the vibrations they create in the walls and the air rushing in and out of your lungs. Near to the end of the day, you decide to experiment with your powers. You go to a little used observation deck. You wonder how you can both manipulate objects and have a force field. You try a few things, but they don't work. Clearly, just thinking about what you want to do isn't the key. You realize that you can manipulate the matter and electric charge.
With a little nervousness, you test the idea by trying to create a small stone out of air. You realize that you don't know which ingredients you need for that, so you settle for an ounce of gold. You have to rearrange the atomic structure before moving up to molecular levels, the process starts slowly but you are increasingly understanding what is happening. The process goes much faster the third time. Then you change the gold back into air and try to drain a little energy from the ship. You succeed. You aim your thoughts and fire a small thin lightning bolt at a case sitting on a table on the far end of the room.
It helps your thoughts to stay focused if you pretend to aim with your hand. Hand motions increase power and make it look more like magic, (the bolt had looked like it was coming from your hand.) You try another method. You change the electronic charge in the air in front of you and it fires a bolt that way too. You are concerned that someone will hear the rumbles this practice is producing. But nobody comes up to the level, certainly not into the observation deck. So you start playing Let it go in your mind from the Disney movie Frozen.
A kingdom of isolation
And it looks like I'm the queen.
You are isolated. Alone. All the time. You are the cause of your own lonelyness.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.
Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried
You see again the scene of Hikaru's death. The air rushing out of halls echos again in your ears as the air stirs in the observation deck. You couldn't have stopped what happened from happening. You hadn't known how. You killed someone because of it.
Don't let them in, don't let them see
Be the good boy/girl you always have to be
You can't let anymore of your friends see what you can do, you killed someone. At some point they would call on you to save them and you'd accidently kill them. You decide that now you can control
your abilities, you will keep them from being seen and hurting more friends.
Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know
Well now they know!
Your emotions once controlled your abilities, causing Hikaru's death, one of the two people who knew your secret is dead, the other is habitually quiet unless asked a question pertaining to a logical solution that directly effects the success of a mission. But nobody else can know. Still, two of them know.
Let it go, let it go
Can't hold it back anymore.
You are happy to control these things that once plagued you. You let go of all previous apprehension that you'd hurt someone. As long as nobody else found out, things would be fine. You decide you can't hold back from some kind of celebration. You repair the damage done to the case from the lightning bolt. Nobody will ever know the difference. You cause a miniature airfront to form, causing the wind to blow. Then you turn some of the gaseous hydrogen and oxygen to water and make it look like the resulting snow is coming from your hand.
Let the storm rage on
The cold never bothered me anyway
You create a mini thunderstorm. You feel storms inside. They won't go away. You have to push all your friend away now to protect them. The thought of leaving them out of your life completely stings, but you tell yourself it doesn't. It can't. They can't know. You didn't see it at the time, but someone did know. Pavel was standing in the doorway his mouth wide open at what he was seeing.
He was sitting in the hall. He'd been following the child ever since he/she had been released from Sickbay. He'd worried for him/her. As he was sitting in the doorway of the Observation deck, expecting to hear crying, he instead heard something hit the floor, followed shortly with the sound of a glass case being broken and a loud crack of thunder. Aboard a starship. Impossible! And yet, it wouldn't hurt to look... His heart drumming a guilty tune he looked through the door and stood up in shock. A lightning bolt, coming from the child's hand?! And the air was turning slightly windy. Pavel was throughly shocked. As the child stopped his/her song and ….magic?he stumbled a little, his mouth wide open.
"Pavel?! How long were you standing there? How much of that did you see?" You ask, afraid of the answer. None is forthcoming, but the look on his face says everything. "Ok fine! I'm telekinetic! I guess we ought to tell everyone else now huh?" He slowly nods. He starts to take a step forward and then faints. When he wakes up in Sickbay he starts prattling on about what he saw, but he's too excited to be making any sense. " I saw him/her...you won't believe …...I can't see...I don't understand...how did...when did it st..." This senseless stuttering went on for about five minutes, after which Bones said, "Look kid! Settle down or I'll give you a sedative! Now, tell us what you saw."
Pavel apparently couldn't do that, he just looks at you expectantly. You take a deep breath. You do not want to do this. You have been trying to keep this secret for weeks. Oh well, better tell them now than for them to see later. "I'm telekinetic." They stare at you, waiting for more. None is forthcoming. You get uncomfortable with everyone staring after a few minutes. "You gonna show us something to prove it kid? We don't believe those kinds of things without some kinda proof." Bones says, arms crossed in a no nonsense way. "That little episode," You gesture to Pavel, still gaping at you in shock, "Isn't enough to prove it?" Spock stepped up very quietly behind Bones. "Doctor?" Bones flinched, more like jumped for the stars. "Darn it man! Give me a warning!" "I believe that the child is telling the truth." Spock apparently feels very pleased with his little joke, yes it had been a joke. He shows no indication of the joke or the Doctor's reaction. Nor did he pay any mind to the Doctor's reaction on the next thing. "You knew! Darn it Hobgoblin! Why didn't you say anything?" Bones nearly shouted.
"Not only do Vulcans place a high value on honesty, they believe strongly in keeping promises. I promised that I would say nothing to anyone. Until he/she could control it." You move closer to Spock. " I do know how to control it Spock. It impacts particles and electromagnetism. I manipulate the particles with my mind and I can make things out of air." Spock raises an eyebrow at you. "And would you now be willing to show us something?" He asks. You nod and immediately create a rock out of air and change it back. You pick up a hypospray that Bones had assigned to a patient. After looking at the chart by the patient's biobed, you decide to administer the shot and then place the hypospray gently back where you found it. All the while, Pavel starts chattering again and everyone else is staring in disbelief. "There you have it. I'm telekinetic and you just saw it for yourselves." Scotty is staring incredulously at you, but he apparently had suspected this. Maybe Hikaru had time to say something to him after all. Everyone sort of just quietly accepted the information. You had been sure that they'd all end up like Pavel. You were kind of hoping that they would proffer some funny reactions. Oh well.
As soon as Pavel is able to get up, Bones kicks him out of Sickbay. Jim keeps thinking that Hikaru''s death is bothering you. You don't really even remember it anymore. You still aren't feeling anything. As you settle into bed though, things start coming back and you can tell right off that you will start crying. Vaguely remembering what you did last time, on that first night, you go into the bathroom shared between Spock and Bones. Whoever assigned the crew quarters apparently either had no idea that these two would always argue or they thought it was some stupid joke or they were just outright insane. Apparently the excess heat from the Vulcan's quarters invaded the bathroom. Since Bones was from Georgia, he was used to such high temperatures, but whenever he showered, he'd complain about the burns the hotter water would cause, should he forget to check that Spock almost never changed the Vulcan setting back to the Human one for shower temperature. Tonight was such a night, and it had sent him grumbling up a storm.
You think of how funny that had been in order to keep your pain back until the door had shut behind you. You crawl into the space beneath the sink. You think of the Brother Bear movie and think of the song No way out. You know you can't stop hurting people. Darn compassion in this crew. It was too kind of them. Far too kind. And it had been instrumental in killing Hikaru. And yet, now you aren't even sure if he's really dead. Something keeps nagging at the back of your mind, something whispering that he's still alive. Probably just your brain denying it. Defending itself against the pain. You saw him die. You know he's gone. And yet, the nagging is still there. You ignore it. Your telekinesis is now under control. You can't hurt anyone that way at least. But you already killed someone. A best friend. And now, you had only the memories left. And it hurt. You allow the hurt to come out. Not full force, you don't make the same mistake twice, if Spock were to come in as Pavel had that first time you could stop... that's when it hit you. Pavel had said something. "If it were Spock next door, you'd have to worry." Spock was next with Vulcan ears and no sleep. You were probably ruining his meditation, or that crossed with sleep, whatever half Vulcans did. The doors were soundproof, but, Vulcans could hear through them, theoretically. The door swishes open as you are having this thought. And heat flows in. It's Spock and there's no going back. He heard you. The cabinet door opens and you look up right at the half Vulcan. "I'm sorry." You say.