Big Doors

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This is an AU story.

Chapter Twenty-One: Personal Disaster

Why did these things always have to happen at the most inopportune moments? Tasha grabbed the rungs of the ladder as tightly as she could. Couldn't whatever it was have waited until she was out of the Jefferies tube?

The ship shuddered violently, and only a tenacity learned from years on Turkana and reinforced by need and desperation allowed her to maintain her grip on the ladder, the only thing between her and falling down five decks. Even so, she was thrown forcefully against the rungs and she gasped in pain. Probably a broken rib. As soon as the ship was steady, she ran for the nearest hatch. She was almost there. Just a few more meters.

"All decks, brace for impact."

Tasha groaned inwardly, stopping and grabbing hold of the ladder again. But "impact" turned out to be a major understatement. Despite her best efforts, her grip was torn loose and she fell, down, down -

Her eyes fluttered open, though for a moment, she wasn't sure they had. It was pitch-black. She started to sit up, and immediately a sharp pain shot through her body. Unprepared, she was unable to suppress a scream. Not that it seemed to matter. No one heard.

"Yar to Sickbay." No response. "Yar to bridge." Still nothing. "Yar to anyone who can hear me. Please respond."

But the comm remained dead. She couldn't move, and she was trapped in a tiny, dark tube. She hated small spaces, had hated them ever since -

No. She wouldn't think about that. She couldn't. She tried to focus her thoughts on something else, anything else. What had happened to her?

She'd fallen from the ladder, fallen five decks to the bottom. No wonder she was hurting. She was probably lucky to be alive. Not that that was much comfort. They'd hit something, at least she hoped they'd hit something. If they'd been fired on and she wasn't there to help with their defenses -

No. She wouldn't go there either. She just hoped someone would find her. It wasn't safe here -

Yes. It was. She was on the Enterprise. She was fine. But she couldn't keep the memories at bay any longer.

"Nice, quiet place. Small. No one will find us here." The man leered at her.

"What are you doing with me?" The six-year-old's eyes were wide with fear.

"You're a very pretty girl. How would you like enough money to feed yourself and your sister for a week?"

"I would like it very much." She was trying to remember the manners her mother had taught her.

"Come here." The man began to slide off her shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"Just be quiet, and when I'm done I'll give you the money."

His hand roamed her body, sliding her pants off. She tried to run, but she was trapped. She couldn't get herself out.

She closed her eyes, praying for it to end. It hurt so much, and something inside her cried out that this was wrong, very wrong, but there was nothing she could do except to cry.

When he was done, he pulled up his pants and dropped a handful of coins beside her, as though he'd done nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't until years later that she would realize that for him, raping a six-year-old girl might very well have been normal. In that moment, all she could do was dress, collect the money, and hurry back to Ishara. She couldn't leave her sister alone too long.

"NO!" she screamed aloud. That was twenty-five years ago. No one on her ship would do something like that. She wasn't six. She could defend herself. But as much as her rational mind believed that, she couldn't help flashing back to that incident, and to another time, ten years later, she'd been trapped in a dark place.

"No! No!" The sixteen-year-old fought desperately, but it was no use. Three so-called therapists held her fast.

"There, there. You just need somewhere to cool down. You can come out when you're being reasonable."

They'd thrown her in a closet, ignoring her terrified pleading. She'd only screamed louder and longer when the doors closed, haunted by the memory of the first time she'd been raped. They'd left her in there for sixteen hours until she'd worn herself out.

"Please! Please!" Tasha screamed again, losing her fight against the memories. "Please!"

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She didn't know how long she'd been lying there, gasping in agony, screaming and sobbing with terror, fading in and out of consciousness. She wanted out. It was the only coherent thought in the jumble.

A dim light spilled over her face. She winced as her eyes adjusted, but it was wonderful to be out of the dark.

"Hello? Is someone in here?"

"I'm here!" It hurt to shout but she didn't care. She needed to get out.

"Tasha?" The voice was definitely familiar. "Hang on." A moment later, someone else climbed into the tube with her.

"Oh, my god. You're really hurt." The already-familiar voice was easily recognizable now.

"Geordi?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Help me get out, will you?" She managed to insert a wry tone into her pain-laced voice.

"I don't think that's a good idea. I want to wait until we can get you a painkiller-"

"No. Now." Her demanding tone softened. "Please, Geordi. I have to get out of here now - I'm scared." He was one of the few people in the universe who would ever hear her admit to that. "Please. I don't care if it hurts. Just get me out of here."

The hardest-hearted person in the world wouldn't have been unaffected by that plea, to say nothing of the gentle engineer. "All right."

He slipped his arms around her and lifted her as carefully as he could. She gasped in pain, biting her lip to keep herself from screaming.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Just hang on. It'll be over soon. I promise."

The second they were out of the Jefferies tube, Tasha let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding and Geordi felt her relax in his arms. Whatever the issue was with that Jefferies tube, it must have been scaring the hell out of her. He cradled her to the floor and helped her lie down.

"Don't go to sleep." His voice was taut with concern. "You hear me?"

"What happened? What did we hit?"

"I'm not sure. The comm's down and we can't access the bridge - emergency bulkheads are closing all over the place. We're cut off from just about everything down here; Sickbay, Engineering, even Ten-Forward. We have no way of knowing what's happened, or what's happening now. We don't know where anyone is."

"How'd you find me?"

"A couple of us spread out with tricorders to scan for other survivors. It took awhile to find you though. We were scanning rooms, actually, but I heard something inside the tube and thought I'd check."

"I'm glad you did. How long was I in there?"

"You fell when we hit whatever it was?" She nodded minimally. "Almost three hours."

"It felt like three years."

"You're claustrophobic, aren't you?"

She looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes. "Only when I can't get out," she admitted.

"I heard you screaming through the bulkhead, that's how I found you. God, Tasha, what happened to you?"

"You don't want to know."

"Maybe not." He considered this. "How far did you fall?" He needed to keep her talking.

"About five decks."

His face showed his surprise, but he didn't say anything. Then it began to blur.

"Tasha, stay awake! You hear me? Stay awake!"

But her eyes wouldn't stay open. She tried desperately to fight against unconsciousness, but it was no use. Blissful oblivion enveloped her.

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"What have you been doing, Jean-Luc?" Beverly was mildly annoyed at best. "Please don't tell me you tried to walk on this."

"Blame the children," he grumbled. "They wouldn't get out of the lift without me, and it wasn't safe for them to stay."

Before she could respond, the door hissed open and Geordi La Forge burst though, half-hysterical and carrying the unconscious Chief of Security.

"She won't wake up." He said before Beverly could ask. "Fell down a Jefferies tube."

Beverly all but shoved the bone-knitter off to Alyssa Ogawa before helping Geordi get Tasha settled on a biobed. "Concussion, cracked skull, five broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, ruptured spleen, internal bleeding. How far did she fall?"

"About five decks."

"I think she's lucky the injuries aren't worse. Her adrenaline level's elevated too. Any idea what caused it?"

Geordi's voice dropped several dozen decibels. "She was terrified out of her mind when I found her. She'd been stuck in that tube for three hours when I found her. Something happened in the past, she wouldn't say what, but it's made her horribly claustrophobic. She relaxed as soon as I got her out, almost fell asleep right then. I tried to keep her talking-" his voice stuck in his throat.

"It wasn't your fault. I'm surprised she was awake when you found her."

"What happened?"

"We hit a quantum filament," Picard explained. "It knocked out our engines and primary systems, so when another one came at us, we couldn't get out of the way. Is she all right, Doctor?"

"She needs surgery, but she should be fine. Now, everyone who doesn't need to be here, out!"

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She didn't hurt. That was the first thing she registered when she woke.

"How are you feeling?" A soft, evenly-measured, very familiar voice.

"Okay. How long has it been?"

"Approximately one half-hour from the time when you lost consciousness until the time Geordi brought you into sickbay, and four hours, thirteen minutes, and eight point four seconds since then, measured up to the point where you finished the question."

Tasha grinned. "And how long have you been here?"

"One hour, forty-four minutes, and thirty-eight point six seconds. I sustained damage and required repair."

"That makes two of us."

"Judging by what Dr. Crusher told me, I believe your 'damage' was more severe than mine."

"Maybe. When do I get to leave?"

"You are required to stay overnight for observation."

"Are you on duty?"

"I am not."

"Then stay."

"I believe that would be possible."

"I wish these beds were wider," she mumbled.

"Do you wish me to be close to you?"

"Yes."

"I think we could find a way to make that so."

And it was thus that Beverly entered Sickbay in the morning to find Data sitting on the top of the biobed, Tasha's head cradled in his lap.

Please review. This story is doing well for reviews but my recent chapter of "Perfectly Logical" has recieved very few. I know a lot of the readers of these stories cross over so I'm mentioning that.