[Personal Epilogue] Lt. JG Om-Zora - Get a grip
Ace Christensen
(OOC: This sort of epilogue would be set whenever things have been sorted enough that the Ronin crew can finally head back to their own quarters relatively safely. So assume that at least that much time has passed between end of mission and this one.)
((A few hours later, the aftermath of it all, the corridors of the USS Ronin))
Om-Zora wasn’t really seeing anything through blurry eyes as he all but staggered through the Ronin. Simply on autopilot. A long day. It had been a long day. He’d dealt with the death of someone around him via terrible illness before. A rare experience for an Aurelian, and a particularly deep tragedy for it. It was something of a formative experience for him, though he couldn’t remember that part of his childhood well. That one hadn’t been contagious, though. It had just been rare. More of a genetic defect that hadn’t been studied enough to be able to reverse the eventual fatality in a child fast enough. But he still felt himself in vague impressions of thought about his twin brother now. And of course, he’d worked on Vulcan ships that ran into terrible things unexpectedly in the pursuit of science. He’d worked on a medical ship as part of his time learning how to be in Starfleet specifically. It wasn’t like he’d never dealt with something terrifying.
But he’d never seen an illness as destructive as the one that had gone through the Compass Rose come so close to him. He’d never seen so many remains and so much viscera. And he’d never felt quite so much energetic grief and unfairness about it all.
He felt a burn of tears behind his eyes and paused only long enough to shake his head to force it away, and to still the shake in his hands.
(Unhelpful. Too emotional. Too public.)
oO Cher-wit, I need to get a grip. Oo
At least until he made it to his quarters. Once he was there, he could try to decompress from it all. But he couldn’t do this here. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want anyone here thinking he couldn’t handle any of this. He didn’t want people thinking they knew him well enough to try and comfort him where they couldn’t.
((Om-Zora’s Quarters, USS Ronin))
But the feeling didn’t really hit him when he got there. Too much practice holding it back. All he felt was an antsy urge to pace, or pluck his feathers.
He heard Lumi, his mother, in his head.
oO Om-Zora, it is deeply unbecoming of a man to be so unkempt. You don’t want to embarrass me, do you? Oo
Something about the reprimand gave him a discomfort he could never place every time he thought about it. Part of it, he assumed, was simply that she somehow didn’t seem to understand why he felt tempted by it. Didn’t understand that he didn’t like it any more than she did. But only with him. She didn’t understand him.
His hands briefly found the feathers on his arms, and the temptation almost got to him before he remembered that even if his mother’s words felt more self-centered than they should have been, he didn’t want to pluck his feathers. Not even in the stress of what happened on the Compass Rose, and the risk of what could have happened to everyone here, including himself.
oO It would be illogical, anyway. Oo
So he forced himself to do something else. Splash water on his face. And then looked in the mirror.
His vision was blurry. Blurrier than it usually was when he tried to look at himself in a mirror. He was so tired.
He needed to sleep.
Instead, he laid down on his bed, and spent the whole night unable to do anything other than be still and stare at the ceiling with a looming anxiety that if he actually slept, someone might find a pile of goo in the morning instead. And he wondered just how many people on the Ronin would struggle with the same paranoia.
NT / Just a quick solo sim I was thinking about.
—
Lt. JG Om-Zora
Science Officer
USS Ronin
J239802D12
Pronouns: They/she (player), He/him (character)