SD 961023.19 Backlog - Episode One with a slip into Episode Two, Clean Up and Dreams Cmdr T. Blake, Liaison Officer.
Tana Ragsdale
It has been one of the hardest things Toby had ever done, getting to the bottom of why the bar owner hated Starfleet, it was more the Federation that he disliked and for many of the same reasons as most here. Because they’d all been forgotten, supplies stopped coming, equipment stopped coming, there was no protection, and people had to start looking for other means to do what needed to be done. It was during his negotiations with the bar owner that he learned of another more terrifying fact, and that was the so called Starfleet bully boys. The supposedly hired thugs that Starfleet used to take back what they supposedly had offered to the people freely and to spread fear and the heavy hand of a dictatorship. His shock and revulsion at hearing of this he didn’t even bother to hide, and he let the bar owner see it, feel it, and know it. With luck he would come to believe it, so would others, and only time would tell if others would believe that the bully boys were not in Starfleet’s employ in any way shape or form.
He’d had other run ins with the press, something that he was quickly learning would be part and parcel of his duties. What about the dead miners they asked, Starfleet sounded so sure of themselves that they could save them. What was in that cave, why was it sealed off. The diplomatic two-step that Toby had to dance was quite exhausting, he put his empathy to work in ways he’d not done in a long time. Reading people and using that to lead them to nebulous answers that answered nothing while giving the illusion of answers and that it was all under control.
All in all by the time Toby had got himself caught up to the point that he could consider himself done and take a little extra time off to spend with his daughter he was, to put it mildly, wore out. Mentally exhausted and feeling about three times his age. He rescued his daughter, or her care givers, from the daycare, and after picking up a treat, took her home to spend the afternoon with her. He’d thought he had fooled her. They ate their treats found some vids of princesses to watch, and settled on the couch together. She had insisted he lay down and had worked his boots off before she curled up with him, laying on his chest.
Rose had other ideas, laying on her father’s chest and pat patting his chest and arm comfortingly, knowing if she laid still long enough and remained quiet that her Da would fall asleep and that he needed it, she could feel it. Once he’d fallen asleep she sat up and moved to the edge of the couch to watch the vids they’d found, being watched over by the fairy lizards.
While she did that, her father dreamed. A dream that was well and truly a nightmare for any empathy or telepath, his mind was overwhelmed with emotions, and thoughts, and no matter what he tried he could not shut them out, could not find release. It was, in short, driving him mad, as in insane. Though his temper was short, and he had no patience or understanding, there was no caring therapist here. All that existed was someone who wanted to make everyone else hurt as much as they made him hurt. A dark and terrifying nebulous dream, who he was, what he was, and what was around him he could not figure out, just the pain and the desire to make others hurt as well, and no release for that desire, just a wish that he could inflict his mind on them the way they did him.
The emotions coming off her Da upset her and the lizards and they turned their attentions to shake him and try to wake him. The lizards batting him with wings and clawing, while Rose shook her Da’s shoulder and cried and yelled. When Toby did finally wake with a scream of his own, his daughter fell off the couch the lizards flew to high safe places. All four of them equally terrified of the dream, but for different reasons. Toby scooped up his daughter and hugged her close, this was the reality, this was the truth, and here was love. Rose, hugged her dad and tried to be a comfort to him to ease his fear and let him know it was all right, the lizards trilled their distress.
For the moment, Cmdr T. Blake was far from the competent commander, he was more like the scared child he held and comforted even as he took comfort from her.
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Cmdr Tobias “Toby” Blake
Liaison Onfficer