Zara08-LOL we'll be seeing some of that soon! Mwahahaha :-p
Angel897-Thanks so much for your reviews :-)
On the outskirts of the ancient city, a once-lavish home had been built directly into the encroaching mountainside. A row of windows, now gaping holes, lined the front wall. Long ago, they had offered a magnificent view of the desert metropolis. Now, the view was nothing but a haunting reminder of Zinor's desolation.
"It's freezing," Kerry remarked, turning away from the crumbling window. She waited with the others in the foremost room of the derelict house for Carmen to return from her patrol of their new shelter. "I say we start a fire."
"You heard Ensign Riker," Orin reminded her. "We don't want to make our location known."
"So she's calling the shots now?"
"You don't want the shadow people to come back, do you?" he persisted.
Kerry groaned. "I'm not even convinced they exist. I mean, she's the only one who's seen them."
"Not necessarily," Sheppard weighed in. He forced himself to recall the grisly scene at the bottom of the cliff. "That body we found-what if it was one of them?"
"I don't know. But she's hallucinated before, when she said she heard a battle. And remember how she woke up screaming bloody murder? Who's to say she actually saw something this time?" Kerry turned a dour face to the young man. "And why do you keep calling her Carmen?"
Haykov, who had been leaning against one of the windowsills, straightened up. "Yeah, Sheppard. You never explained how she recognized you in the shuttle bay."
All attention turned towards him. He shifted on his feet. "I...uh...I saw her in Ten Forward a few times, sitting by herself. And then when we were docked in San Francisco, I stopped by a baseball game and she...well, she was sitting by herself again." He shrugged nervously when no one else moved to speak. "I just thought she was new like me and I was trying to be...you know, friendly. She never even told me her last name was Riker."
"In San Francisco..." Orin's eyes widened. "Wasn't she on trial then? I heard about that. Did she tell you why she was on trial?"
"No. We didn't talk about it at all," Sheppard replied, grateful at that moment that he didn't know more. The sudden intrigue in everyone's eyes made him uncomfortable.
"Do you think they put her on trial because of where she's from, or do you think she did something during the war? Something terrible?" Kerry glanced eagerly between the other listeners.
"It doesn't matter." Sheppard said, shaking his head. "Captain Picard knows her past. And he let her stay."
"I wonder if she knew me, back in her universe," Haykov said, stroking his chin. "I'll bet we were lovers there, too."
"Too?" Kerry scoffed.
"That probably explains the sexual tension between us." He smirked at the disgusted Kerry.
"That's just regular tension. Because you're an insufferable ass."
As the others snickered at their leader's expense, a clatter of rocks sounded from nearby. They simultaneously straightened, nervous and alert. Then a boot appeared on the windowsill next to Haykov and he jumped back in surprise.
The boot was soon followed by a cascade of familiar dark hair. Carmen planted her other foot on the sill, climbing her way in. In the light of late afternoon, the others could clearly see signs of a fight on her face. A bruise was darkening around a scrape on her cheek, and one eye looked slightly swollen.
"Don't you know where the front door is?" Kerry quipped.
Carmen leapt down, then turned around and sent her a quizzical look. "Yes, why?"
"Don't worry about it," Haykov chuckled, waving dismissively. "So what do you think? Are we safe here?"
"I didn't find anything. But the wind erases any tracks, so it's hard to tell. Still, with the mountain to our backs-and a view like this-it'd be hard for anything to sneak up on us."
"Then let's set up base," Haykov declared. "I call the master bedroom!"
"No, you should all stay in the same room," Carmen insisted. "It's safer that way."
"What about you?" Sheppard's eyes filled with sudden concern.
"I'm going to pitch a tent down there." She jerked her head towards a wide veranda below, where the shuttle rested.
"But you just said-"
"That way, if anything does try to sneak up on us, they'll have to go through me first."
Orin tugged at the collar of his uniform. "You think they might show up-those, those shadow people that tried to take you?"
"I hope so," she said, her hands curling into fists. "If I see them again, I'd like to...I'm going to….vljah hoh ghopwlj ej ghurmoh tlha'..."
Haykov shuddered with delight at her threats of violence. Orin, however, felt no better. "Did they even say what they were after?" he pressed.
"No. But they were leading me towards the north end of the city, before that cat thing showed up and they all scattered like frightened targ."
"We're on the south end, aren't we?"
"That's right," she answered. "And I'll be keeping watch, don't worry." With that, she started towards the door.
Sheppard immediately followed. "Carmen, wait-"
"Stay here, Sheppard. I need to get as much rest as I can before sundown." She sent him a stern look that made him halt in his tracks. Then a faint smile softened her severity. "Just...come wake me before you call it a night, okay?"
Carmen knew she had to sleep, but found herself fighting it. She feared seeing the Borg again. She feared feeling helpless again. Desperate, she reached out for the counselor, straining with all her might to cross the distance.
Carmen?
A small, barely perceptible voice echoed across the expanse of her mind. Carmen tried to answer, but exhaustion wrapped around her senses like a fog, pulling her away.
Go to the falls, Carmen. Meet me at the falls.
Carmen trudged through the fog, searching for those familiar falls. It had become a haven for the young woman's troubled mind. Troi used to guide her to Janaran Falls as she fell asleep, and she would hide all night in that beautiful place, safe from her nightmares. She could always feel the counselor's presence there like a guardian, standing between her and the ghosts of her past.
Water. She felt water at her feet. Carmen looked down, about to cry out in relief, but found that it was not the crystal clear water of Janaran Falls. This water was frigid and still and black. And instead of a star-dappled sky, the rocky ceiling of a cave stretched overhead, perforated with red beams of light that forced their way through from the outside world.
"Counselor? Counselor, what is this place?"
A voice answered her, but it was not the counselor's. It sounded like a fearsome winter wind, bitter and howling. This was once the Chamber of Hearts. See how we are alone now? See what they have done?
"Who?" Carmen cried, shivering in the cold of the water. "What happened here?" An oppressive loneliness bore down on her, drowning all memories of warmth or affection. She fled from the water and from the loneliness, towards a staircase that had been carved into the cave wall. Then the voice spoke again.
They are coming…they are coming…
"Who?!" she shouted, stumbling through the dark.
...for you. They are coming for you…
A stony face appeared out of the wall. And then two greenish-gray hands shot out from below the face and grabbed hold of her shoulders.
"Carmen!"
"No!" she screamed. "Let me go! "
"It's okay, Carmen! It's me!"
She opened her eyes. Sheppard was kneeling at her side, his hands on her shoulders and deep lines of concern across his forehead.
"Are you awake?" he asked, unnerved by the blankness behind her eyes.
Carmen sat up and blinked several times, still trying to reclaim her bearings. "What are you doing here?" The question came out a little more brusquely than she intended.
"You...you...said to come wake you before we call it a night, remember? And, um...well...here." He set something on the ground in front of her. When she looked down, the smell of hot pancakes and maple syrup filled her nostrils. Its comfort, warm and familiar, seeped into her weary heart and chased away the last remaining remnants of her nightmare.
A grateful smile spread across her face. But when she looked up again, the young man had already withdrawn. "Sheppard! Wait!" she called.
To her relief, he appeared in the threshold of her tent. A halo of moonlight glowed behind him. "Yeah?"
Carmen drew in a deep breath. "Thank-you. And...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. The truth is...I get confused sometimes,when I wake up."
He nodded slowly, sympathetically. "Nightmares?"
"Ramhaj," she said, as if it would clear things up. It didn't. "The Klingons, that's what they called it. Haunted sleep. Counselor Troi said it's because of my Betazoid blood." Tucking the plate of pancakes in the crook of her elbow, Carmen half-crawled towards the young man. He moved hastily to the side, baffled as to where she was suddenly going. But she stopped just outside of the threshold of her tent and settled down again, making herself comfortable. Sheppard hesitated, then followed suit. He sat at her side so that they were shoulder to shoulder, facing the yellow moonlight that pooled over the desert.
"I...I think I get it," he said after a time. "The nightmares. I had them, too, after my dad's accident."
She looked over at him, searching his eyes. "How old were you?"
"Uh, five," he answered. "I mean...I've lived longer without him. Sometimes I have trouble just remembering his face. Remembering what it was like to have a dad. And yet, to this day, people come up and tell me how sorry they are that he's gone. He was...well, a lot of people knew him better than I did."
A trace of bitterness mingled with his final words, fading into the grief that weighed on Carmen's heart as if it were her own. She knew that kind of grief intimately. The feeling of standing in someone's shadow that loomed over her entire life, but whose face she never knew. Not until she met the counselor, anyways.
"What about you?" he asked. "How old were you?"
"Me? Oh. Well, I never knew my mother. Everyone on the Enterprise always talked about her. Everyone except for my father, it seemed. I was nine when he...when he was killed." It surprised her, how hard it was to force the words out.
"Is that when the nightmares started?"
She had just taken a rather large bite of pancake, so she had to wait a minute before she could answer. "No. Before that. The nightmares started when the war did. Seven."
"Seven?"
Carmen gulped down the rest of the food in her mouth. "I was seven. See, I didn't really have anyone to help me control my empathic senses. And after the first attack on our ship, I couldn't shut out all the fear, all the panic. So I started trying to bury my mother's side, trying to numb myself. I finally managed, but it took years." She laughed wryly. "Now the counselor is trying to bring it all back. But...I can't seem to control what comes back, and what stays behind me."
Pity flooded Sheppard's eyes. They looked almost purple in the ethereal light of the moons. They were so easy to read, like windows peering into his naked soul. There was a certain safety in that; a certain comfort in the transparency that came with his company. Carmen found herself appreciating it more and more. She studied him as he sat beside her, admiring his sand-dusted curls and the way they gently furled and unfurled in the wind. For a reason she did not understand, she felt the urge to run her hand through them.
Then he spoke again, bringing her back from that foreign place that her mind had wandered off to. "That's a long time to have ram-what was it called-ram-"
"Ramhaj," she laughed. "Yes."
"How did the Klingons deal with it? Did they help you?"
"It was the bloodwine that helped." Her devilish smile glinted in the moonlight. "Don't tell the commander, but I really miss that stuff."
A laugh burst from Sheppard. "Not to worry; I don't think the commander's interested in having a conversation with me." He leaned back onto his palms. "What about your crew? Do you miss your Klingon crew?"
Her smile waned sincere. "I miss things about them. Their loyalty. Their honesty. The way everything was so straightforward, so black and white. It made things easier for me to understand, when there was so much about those years that I could never understand."
Again, pity gathered behind his eyes. "It must have been hard," he said, so softly that she barely heard him. "To be a human and an empath and a Klingon."
Carmen drew herself up defensively. "No. I was a warrior, that's all I was." She had meant to say it with pride, but somehow, it didn't come out the way she had intended. His pity swelled.
"Carmen, I'm...I'm sorry."
"Don't do that-"
"About the other night, I mean."
She tilted her head, confused. "What do you mean?"
"When you asked me about the others, and if they thought you were crazy. I should have been honest with you. I didn't want to hurt your feelings, I guess."
Looking down at her now-empty plate, Carmen sighed. "That's alright, Sheppard. They're your friends. You didn't want to implicate them. Besides, I already knew the truth; Kerry isn't exactly subtle."
"She isn't usually like this," he insisted. "She just...I don't know. She's nervous about you. About how you're...different. She thinks that you might be dangerous."
"I am dangerous."
Sheppard laughed somewhat nervously. "I mean, that you might be a danger to...well, to us."
"That's fine. I don't care about her opinion. Only her safety." Carmen set her plate on the ground and stared at him hard. "What do you think?"
"Me?" His eyes drifted to the desert while the thoughts turned in his head. "I think...I think that you're more human than you know. And I feel safe when I'm with you. Safer than I've ever felt."
Carmen's stare faltered, dropping to the ground and then flicking over to the dusty horizon. He had meant it. The sincerity that exuded from the young man's words soothed her empathic senses like a balm.
And for the rest of the night, even after he had returned to the house so she could begin her vigil, Carmen forgot all about Janaran Falls.