Weightlessness

Posted on Fri Oct 24th, 2025 @ 3:54am by Lieutenant JG Aziza Diouri & Lieutenant Commander Xalanth & Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone MD/DSAPM & Lieutenant JG Leilani

2,117 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: MD003, 1440 Hours

Aziza lay on the biobed, her arms tucked carefully at her sides, chest rising and falling under the blanket. Light filtered down from the overhead panel in little white slices, making the recovery room feel serene. Her back ached--it was a dull, stubborn insistence that reminded her she was still very much here. Still alive.

Her legs felt like empty columns, weightless and strange. Numb. She wiggled a toe, half-expecting to feel something--anything, really--but nothing responded. A shiver crawled up her spine. Patience, she thought, sabr... She remembered the word, and how it delivered her through pain before. Now it had become a mantra.

Someone had mentioned a counselor would be coming. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what she was supposed to say, but the idea lingered in her mind. She didn't feel much like processing any of this trauma. She hadn’t done much of that yet; not with anyone. Not since the Dalton.

Fragments of memory drifted past her, like distant stars at warp. Faces she almost recognized. She thought of Greer and his eyes staring at her, lifeless. She remembered the hum of a thruster. And a red-scaled face with yellow eyes that had seen her through chaos. The feel of the biobed beneath her. Everything sharp and disjointed, but stitched together only by the thread of awareness that this--this bed, this recovery room, these monitors--meant safety for her.

She wanted to move, to swing her legs over the side, to stand, to walk, but everything below the waist simply refused the command. Frustration rolled through her chest like fire.

"Are you sure me being there is a good idea?" Xalanth said to his batazoid mate, who nodded.

"She remembers your eyes as a source of comfort. It will help put her mind at ease." She said before stopping and adjusting her mate's uniform slightly before stepping into the ward.

"Aziza. I'm Leilani, the ship's councillor. " She said calmly. "Please don't try to move. I've brought Lieutenant Xalanth with me. He was the officer who found you."

Aziza blinked against the lights, her lids heavy, her throat dry. Her gaze moved sideways, until it caught the red scales. She looked up to the same yellow eyes that appeared in her dreams. She remembered them in smoke and ruin, staring down at her when she wasn't sure she'd live another moment. Those eyes had become a tether in that chaos.

Her lips parted but no words came immediately. Just breath. Finally: "You..." It wasn't any louder than a sigh.

She tried to shift her legs under the blanket but again, nothing answered. Frustration clouded her expression but seeing Xalanth brought her back to that content place she remembered. Somehow, saliva seemed to wet her mouth at that moment.

"Your eyes," she whispered, to the Dragonian.

"Hey." Xalanth said softly as he picked up the water bottle at the side of the table and offered her a drink. "It's nice to see your still with us."

"How are you feeling Aziza?" Leilani asked as she took a seat on a stool next to the bed.

Aziza let the rim of the bottle touch her lips, tilting it just enough to draw a thin stream of water into her mouth. It was cold, shockingly so, and it startled her throat further awake. She swallowed with effort, then let her head fall back against the pillow.

She looked at Leilani first, then back to the yellow gaze that had calmed her. Her lips parted and the word came slowly. "Like I... left a piece of me behind." Her breathing seemed to strain a little before she added, "But still here." She blinked and her gaze remained on Xalanth. "I remember your eyes. On the Dalton."

" I know the feeling," Xalanth responded gently, offering his hand. "Believe me."

Aziza let her eyes linger on the red scales. She wanted to reach, to grasp that hand, to feel something solid beneath her fingers, but the numbness betrayed her again.

A sigh escaped her lips, unsteady. "I--I want to stand," she whispered. She tried to imagine her legs obeying her, bending and lifting, and for a fraction of a second, she thought she almost felt it--but then the empty weight returned.

She looked to the green-eyed brunette with the cheerful face. "Which ship is this?"

Sharp footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the recovery room and a few moments later Alex stepped into the doorway; her face half buried in a PaDD. It took her a minute to look up past it and she smiled to see Aziza awake and Xalanth and Leilani present. "Ah; Councillor, Xalanth. It seems that you beat me here. How is she doing?"

"As well as can be expected," Leilani replied calmly.

"You're on the Astrea." Xalanth explained to Aziza.

"The Astrea..." Aziza repeated, her mind trying to remember where she may have heard of the ship. Her eyes drifted to the ceiling for a long moment before a slight jolt of electric pain shot through her back and her arms. She winced.

Her gaze rolled back to Xalanth. "The Dalton," she murmured. "It didn't sound like this." She tried to smile but it felt insincere.

Alex came close, checking Aziza's pupillary response with a small penlight that she produced from the pocket of her labcoat. After a moment she put the light away and gave Aziza a smile. "I am going to run my fingers along the inside of your legs and across some different points to see how your nerve function is returning. Just tell me if you can feel where I touch."

As she began the sensation test Alex looked to Leilani and Xalanth questionably at Aziza's comment about the sound.

Aziza followed the doctor's hands with her eyes, not her body--watching Alex's fingers move beneath the blanket like they were gliding through a dark ocean current.

She waited for the spark. The tingle. Anything.

"I can't," she said quietly, after the third touch. "Nothing."

The muscles around her mouth twitched, somewhere between a frown and a tremor. She swallowed against the taste of the antiseptic air. "It's strange," she said after a long moment. "To be so still and yet feel like I'm falling."

Alex frowned slightly and pulled a wartenburg wheel out of lab coat and pressed it against the sole of Aziza's feet a little aggressively; not enough to cause damage but to test the deeper nerves. She rolled the wheel up and down the foot for a couple of minutes, watching Aziza's body carefully.

At first, nothing. Only the sound of their own breathing.

Then, somewhere deep in the hollow space of her right leg, something stirred--a dull, faraway whisper that wasn't quite pain but wasn't absence either. It was faint, like some memory trying to poke through. Her toes twitched--barely.

Aziza gasped. "Wait--there," she whispered. "I felt... something."

Alex breathed a sigh of relief and the edges of her mouth curled up again, not quite a smile but still more than impassive. "Good news, the sensation is returning slowly; bad news, it's gonna hurt... a lot. If it gets too bad for you we'll treat the pain as a symptom though I don't want to dilute your bodies natural healing abilities, especially with a second operation down the road as soon as your body is stable and we can start getting you back on your feet. I have some cybernetics I want to place to ensure you can return to full duty."

"I think I'd prefer the pain over nothing," Aziza said to Blackstone. "Pain I can handle." Her gaze drifted down the length of her body, still hidden beneath a thin blanket. Pain almost sounded like a nice promise.

Her eyes fluttered toward Xalanth again. "When you found me," she asked, "was I conscious?"

"Barely," Xalanth responded. "Your eyes were tracking I know that."

Aziza nodded faintly. Her eyes became unfocused somewhere beyond Leilani's face, like if she only strained hard enough she might recall her last moments on the Dalton.

"I can only remember the heat," she said softly. Her eyes closed for a moment, lashes trembling against her eyelids. The medical equipment which surrounded her seemed almost alive--almost maternal. She imagined it carrying her gently through the stars, away from the wreckage that seemed to have taken everyone she knew.

When she spoke again, her voice has gone smaller, almost a whisper. "I didn't think anyone would find me." Her throat caught halfway through the sentence, but she managed to force it out anyway. She looked at Leilani. "When I saw him, I thought I was dreaming."

She tried again to move her leg--just the faintest command from her brain sent downward--but it only rewarded her with an empty response. The nerves had yet to build a bridge.

"In truth if it hadn't been the team that we had on the surface I am not sure we would have been able to get you out. Xalanth was instrumental in prepping you so we could transport you out." Alex squeezed Aziza's hand and gave her a smile. "I am sorry that we couldn't save anybody else. I know what loss like that is."

"I'd like to meet them," she said weakly. "All of them. The ones who pulled me out." Her voice was fragile but steady. "If I could stand, I'd thank each of them myself."

Her eyes moved to the ceiling again. "I wish I could remember," she went on. "How the Dalton ended up where it was. The last thing before..." She trailed off, her jaw tightening as she blinked away the haze. "The last thing I remember is Greer's eyes. He was gone, and everything after that"--she made a vague gesture toward the air above her, fingers trembling slightly--"it's all broken pieces. Smoke. Pressure. Then your face," she said, nodding faintly toward Xalanth. "And nothing made sense anymore."

Aziza continued. "My last coherent memory was with the science chief. We were going over sensor logs and charting a flight plan." Her brow furrowed, the effort of recollection clearly visible. "Then... I think we dropped to impulse. After that, everything just starts to blur."

"Councillor, once Aziza is stable do you think there is any merit to her working with mind melding to help her work through the inevitable trauma?" Alex looked over Aziza to Leilani's face questioningly for a moment. After a moment her eyes flicked back to Aziza. " I can see about arranging for you to meet the team that rescued you... well those aside from myself and Xalanth anyway. We were both on the ground."

Aziza's eyes fluttered. "Yes..." she murmured, her voice catching somewhere between surrender and agreement. "I'd like that."

Her tongue felt heavy. The word that barely made it past her lips before her head listed slightly to one side. A slight chill moved its way through her body, relaxing each muscle on its route.

"I want to remember," she whispered, though the words were now slurred.

Her breathing slowed. She felt cradled in the biobed and her thoughts drifted to her mother's hands once, long ago, pressing cool water to her brow in the desert heat. Sabr, she thought again, half-dreaming. Aziza had decided not to fight against the fatigue or the effects of the pain medication.

"Yes, i think a mind meld could help, though we should let her body rest for a while before attempting it." Came the Betzoid'ss reply, who had been quietly listening to the conversation.

"We'll see to that then once she has stabilized more. I appreciate you both being here when she awoke. Her prognosis is excellent if slow. We should probably let her rest." Alex offered her companions a warm smile and turned toward the door.

"You hear the doctor. You get some rest." Xalanth said softly as he stood up slowly.

"If she wakes and asks for us just let me know." added his Betazoid mate.

---

Lieutenant JG Aziza Diouri
Flight Control Officer
USS Astrea


Lieutenant Xalanth
Chief Security Officer
USS Astrea


Lieutenant Alexandra Blackstone
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Astrea


Lieutenant JG Leilani
Counselor
USS Astrea

 

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