A/N: Thank you pallysd'Artagnan and SnidgetHex for reviewing!
"Haunted"
2391
Rios hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in two years. Every single time he closed his eyes his mind took him back to that grotesque scene, to the image of his captain's blood and brain matter splattered all over a bulkhead. It was burned into his memory and no amount of scrubbing could get it out.
He'd tried alcohol for a while, and though he still drank to numb some of the pain in his waking hours, drinking to excess had only trapped him in even more vivid nightmares of watching his old man die by shooting his brains out.
Sometimes, in really bad ones, it was Rios pulling the trigger.
So he simply avoided sleep as much as he could and caught only a few hours here and there, short stints to keep him from slipping into that dreaded REM stage.
Two years. The first anniversary of Vandermeer's death had been hard, but it was supposed to get better after that, right?
Except, as the second was approaching, Rios found it hitting him that much harder.
Now it seemed as though he barely closed his eyes for a nap and the nightmares accosted him, his tortured mind forcing him to relive what he'd fought so hard to bury.
So he did the only thing he could—he stopped sleeping altogether.
He turned to coffee and stimulants to keep himself functioning. It wasn't difficult and he knew how to be responsible with the doses. It wasn't supposed to be long-term anyway, just until after the anniversary passed. Then he could go back to his regularly troubled sleep.
…
Two days later he nearly ran his ship into another while settling into orbit around a planet where they were dropping off cargo.
"Cris, watch it!" Raffi exclaimed as proximity alarms started blaring.
He startled badly, jerking the controls, which thankfully veered them away from the other ship and not into it because that had been pure knee-jerking and not a conscious realization of what had almost happened. He blinked blearily out the front window; that ship hadn't been there two seconds ago…had it?
The comm beeped with an incoming transmission and Raffi winced as she put it through. Some colorful cursing filled the air in a shrill tenor that was like claws on metal in Rios's head.
"We are so sorry!" Raffi tried to placate them. "It was an accident. Probably a malfunction in our proximity sensors."
The rest of the conversation faded out as Rios focused every ounce of concentration into settling his ship into a clear orbital path.
Raffi finally disconnected the comm link and slumped back in her seat at the ops station. She swiveled around to face him. "What the hell was that?"
"Navigation error," he managed to get out. "I'll get Enoch on it."
Raffi huffed. "Guess we won't be going anywhere until it's fixed. You want to go down to the planet and find a bar?"
"Not this time," he said distantly. Getting blackout drunk was definitely not an option right now. "I think I'm coming down with something."
Raffi narrowed her eyes at him. "You sure it was a navigation error?"
"Yes," he snapped irritably. "And I have a headache."
"Alright, whatever."
They delivered their cargo and then Raffi went off to find a place to do some of her style of partying. On some level Rios knew he shouldn't have let her go off alone like that, but he was glad of the privacy. He activated the ENH and told him to run diagnostics on everything, and then he could man the conn for as long as they were in orbit. Enoch didn't question, just happily went to work as he was told, and Rios stumbled downstairs to the lower deck and replicated another stimulant to inject himself with.
He then activated Emmet for some sparring. But after two days of no sleep, his coordination was shot and his stamina in the toilet. It took all of thirty seconds for Emmet to lay him out flat on the floor.
Emmet came to loom over him, brow furrowed. "¿Qué traes?"
Rios rolled onto his side, trying to push himself up while everything on deck spun around him. This had not been a good idea at all. Emmet wouldn't go easy on him and it would only take one hard punch to knock him out and then the dreams would come…
"Deactivate ETH," he muttered.
Emmet vanished, and Rios staggered to his feet and over to the replicator to make some more coffee. He heard Raffi beam back sometime later and slog drunkenly into her own quarters. At least she'd made it back safely. He activated the Hospitality hologram and asked him to take care of her needs in the morning. Then Rios went and locked himself in his room.
…
He stared at the corner where Alonso stood, leaning against the wall behind the bed with arms folded across his chest. He stared back at Rios.
It'd been three days—or was it four?—since he'd slept. Captain Vandermeer had shown up this morning—yesterday?—a silent figure watching Rios as wordlessly as he watched back.
Rios knew he wasn't real. His captain was dead. Had committed suicide. This was just a figment of his addled mind.
But it was better than the dreams where the back of his head was blown out—and please, God, don't turn around…
"Say something," he muttered.
The hallucination didn't.
The EMH flickered into his room, blocking his view of Vandermeer. "Captain, I'm detecting a medical emergency…" Emil furrowed his brow. "Your biochemical levels are grossly off balance. What have you been doing?"
"Deactivate EMH," Rios growled.
Emil vanished, and it was just him and Alonso again.
…
His door beeped. "Cris?"
"Piss off," he mumbled, though it may not have come out very clear, or loud enough, because in the next moment, his door slid open and Raffi stepped inside with Emil.
Rios groaned. "Didn't I deactivate you?"
"Yes," the EMH huffed. "In the middle of a medical emergency that's only gotten worse!"
"Emil says you haven't slept in five days," Raffi said.
Rios squinted at her. Had it been five days? How much longer did he need to go? He lolled his gaze back to Vandermeer. Pops.
"Cris?" Raffi said carefully, glancing at the corner. "What's going on?"
"His brain is literally eating itself is what's going on," Emil said irritably and started to move closer.
"Don't touch me," Rios snapped with unadulterated vitriol.
Raffi put a hand on the EMH's shoulder to hold him back. She then held her hands up as she cautiously approached. "Cris, talk to me."
He mashed a palm against his eyes. Everything had a fuzzy edge now.
"If you've been having trouble sleeping, why didn't you just replicate something?" Raffi pressed.
"He's been replicating stimulants," Emil answered. "In ever increasing frequency for the past five days. I checked the logs."
"What?" Raffi shot Rios an incredulous look.
"Mind your own damn business," he barked.
"It's my business when my captain is slowly killing himself," Emil replied. "Do you have any idea what sleep deprivation does to the brain? Lobes get shut down. Astrocytes work in overdrive breaking down worn cells, which in this case is all of them!"
"Cris, honey—" Raffi started, ever more compassionate.
"I can't sleep right now!" he exclaimed. "Not now. Later when- when…" When what?
"When what?" Raffi echoed the question in his head.
He stared at Alonso in the corner. Raffi and Emil briefly followed his gaze again.
"You're hallucinating," Emil deduced. "Also a side effect of sleep deprivation."
"At least he looks alive!" Rios spat. "At least it's a change from seeing his blood everywhere, from living through it again and again!"
Raffi's expression softened. "Oh, baby…"
Rios flinched away from her. "I can't make it stop," he admitted brokenly.
Undaunted, she scooted forward and pulled him against her.
"You have to sleep," Emil pressed.
"What part of 'no' don't you understand?" Rios snapped.
"Cris," Raffi broke in. "You can't keep doing this. I know it seems better than the alternative, but it really isn't." She leveled a firm look at him. "Remember when I promised not to go too far? Well, you gotta abide by the same thing. And you're crossing that line."
He shook his head miserably. "I can't go there."
"I'll be right here the whole time," Raffi whispered.
He vaguely saw her beckon Emil forward. He wanted to yell at them to go away, to not force him, but he'd long since passed his limits and everything was a fog that felt thicker than sludge. There was a hiss of a hypospray, and then blackness.
…
If he dreamed he didn't remember it by the time he floated back to consciousness. He felt heavy and sluggish, but also strangely rested. Lolling his head to the side, he prized his eyes open and blinked blearily at his surroundings. He was in his quarters, in his bed. Emil was sitting in a chair to his left. Rios groaned and turned his head the other way, ending up with a face full of curls. He squinted at Raffi's form sprawled out beside him. She didn't stir at the movement.
"Good morning to you too," the EMH quipped.
"How long?" he rasped. His mouth felt incredibly dry but he wasn't quite ready to sit up and get something to drink.
"A little over seventy-two hours."
He snapped his gaze back. "What?"
"Between the exhaustion and sedatives I employed to ensure you stayed resting," Emil replied unapologetically. "Contrary to popular misunderstanding, one cannot 'catch up' on lost sleep, but you needed a lengthy bit of rest to give your body a chance to heal from the damage you inflicted on it."
Rios groaned and rubbed a hand down his face. Emil reached for a glass of water on the nightstand Rios hadn't even noticed and held it out to him. He tried to scooch himself into sitting upright. Despite feeling rested, his head ached and his muscles felt weak.
Raffi let out a soft moan and shifted, then opened her eyes. "Hey," she said, bolting upright immediately. "How are you feeling?"
Rios grimaced. "Sane," he mumbled, embarrassed by his lapse over the past several days.
"Well that's good." Her eyes regarded him sympathetically. "Did you dream?"
"Not that I remember." He couldn't help glancing toward the corner to see if Vandermeer was still there. He wasn't, and Rios felt a strange pang of loss at that, even if the visage had only been a ghost.
Raffi pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed. "So, two years, huh?" At a look from him she elaborated, "I looked it up. Figured it had to be something, like that time it was Gabriel's birthday."
Rios dropped his gaze to his lap.
"You could have talked to me about it," she prodded.
"I was trying not to relive it."
"Yes, and your method worked so well for you," Emil interjected.
Both Rios and Raffi shot him a scowl.
"Weren't you programmed with a bedside manner?" Raffi sighed.
The EMH's brows shot up indignantly. "Of course I was. What do you call sitting bedside vigil for three days and anticipating my patient's needs?" He gestured to the glass of water Rios was still holding, then rose to his feet primly. "Speaking of which, I will replicate you something nutritious to eat. Since I noticed from the lack of logs that you failed to keep yourself properly fed recently as well." He walked over to the replicator across the room.
Rios glowered, ready to deactivate him, but a sharp look from Raffi stayed his tongue.
"He does care, you know," she said softly.
"He's just an EMH."
"You and I both know that's not true."
Rios couldn't look her in the eye.
Emil came back over with a plate full of eggs and toast, and Rios couldn't look at him either. He accepted the plate and picked at the food.
"I'm also programmed with a vast library of psychological profiles and therapy methods," Emil spoke up.
"No." Rios shot the EMH a warning look.
Emil sighed. "Very well."
"How about," Raffi put in, "you program a threshold alert to activate the EMH when the dreams reach a certain point, and Emil will just wake you up."
Rios's brow furrowed in thought.
"That's hardly conducive to a proper night's sleep," Emil argued.
"Neither are traumatic nightmares," Raffi countered.
Emil sighed again. "Point taken."
Rios was still mulling over the idea. He couldn't avoid sleep forever, as this had just proven. And he knew from experience that he couldn't avoid the nightmares. Raffi's suggestion wouldn't even keep him from having them, but if he could cut them off before they reached a certain point…
"Can you do that?" Rios asked the EMH.
Emil nodded. "We can set a monitor for heart rate, breathing, even movement."
"And you will wake me?"
Emil looked almost hurt by the implication of otherwise. "Of course."
Rios exhaled slowly. He supposed it was worth a try.
"The anniversary was two days ago, by the way," Raffi spoke up gently.
Rios blinked. So he'd made it past it.
"Do you want to do anything to, I don't know, commemorate it?"
Commemorate his captain's death that to the rest of Starfleet was a dishonorable tragedy blackening a good man's otherwise distinguished career? Or the cold-blooded murder that had preceded it that Rios had covered up?
…Or that Alonso's suicide was Rios's fault.
"No," he said hoarsely.
No, he didn't want to commemorate that.
…
There was yelling. Angry, spiteful words brutally delivered in the heat of the moment when everything Rios thought he knew about the man he considered his father came crashing down. Why did he have to explode like that? Why couldn't he have just listened, just understood?
It was like he'd pulled the trigger himself. He watched the anguish bleed from Vandermeer's eyes, replaced with a deadened hollowness. The phaser in the captain's hand moved upward…
Something ice cold splashed in his face, and Rios jolted awake with a harsh gasp. He twisted in a tangle of sheets as chilled water ran down his beard to dribble onto his chest. Blinking the liquid from his lashes, his vision focused on Emil standing a few feet away, an empty glass in hand. Rios gaped at him in bewilderment.
Emil set the glass down on the nightstand and wordlessly tossed him a hand towel.
His breathing started to calm down and Rios sat up a fraction to wipe himself off. "That's the method you chose?" he said when he finally trusted his voice not to waver.
"I figured you would appreciate expediency while also maintaining respect for personal space."
Rios paused to consider his EMH. Yeah, Rios did appreciate those things. After a moment, he inclined his head in silent gratitude.
Emil gave a subtle nod of acknowledgement. "Good night, Captain."