I want to forget. **CONTENT WARNING**

Posted on Tue Sep 26th, 2023 @ 11:09am by Lieutenant Commander S'hib & Lieutenant Colonel Azhul Naxea

Mission: Season 6: Episode 3: Far From Home
Location: S'hib and Naxea's temporary quarters
Timeline: MD04 1130
2832 words - 5.7 OF Standard Post Measure

Naxea, holding Sle'anna entered their temporary quarters. Her arms were growing tired from carrying the half Sequus/half Bajoran infant around a ship. Being half Sequus, Sle'anna weighed more than a Bajoran or Human infant. "Hey, I'm back. What's going on?" she called out to S'hib as she walked over to Sle'anna's crib to set the baby down.

"Is Miraj awake? I didn't know, nobody told me..." He deflected, though not intentionally... it was just one of many questions overlapping atop one another. And this just happened to be the first one he pulled out from the pile.

"I'll have to ask for permission to go see her..." He mumbled to himself, running a hand through his messy mane before turning to look at Naxea.

"Sorry, uhh... you should probably sit down, Nax."

"Yes, she's been awake for some time," Naxea said, as she finished setting Sle'anna in the crib. She turned and faced S'hib and crossed her arms. She knew that tone--it was never good news. "What happened? And why would you need permission to visit Miraj?" her eyes narrowed.

He saw her arms crossed and the way she was looking at him. And for a brief moment, he wished he was back on the bridge, staring down the gauntlet of that meeting all over again.

"I uhh, I've been relieved of duty..." He said before swallowing the lump in his long throat, already raising his hands and gesturing to let him continue. "And yes, yes... I'm confined to quarters... but it's ok! because now I can spend more time looking after Slee. So, it's not that bad, really..."

Naxea let out a sigh as she pinched the bridge of her nose, slightly rubbing the fingers across the ridges in order to calm herself. "What in the blazes did you do? Does this have anything to do with you ramming the shuttle back on the planet?". Naxea had heard of a lot of rumours about S'hib during the investigation but hadn't gotten around to confronting him about them. Why she had to hear rumours about her husband from the crew scuttlebutt instead of S'hib, Commander, or Captain Taylor was another issue.

"Oh, that? uhh no, kinda?" He replied, suddenly getting very hot and flustered, wondering for a moment if he had indeed taken his uniform off earlier for which a quick inspection with his hands affirmed that he had indeed done so.

"Look Nax, I've not been doing very well recently..." He continued as he walked across the room and sat down, his head falling into his hands for a moment.

"I've been getting angry at everything and everyone since Miraj was attacked... And the investigation didn't help. I just, I've been stuck in that same moment, with her dead in front of me..."

He paused for a moment, staring off into the distance and frowning before blinking and looking sheepishly back over at Naxea.

"I hurt one of the suspects."

"You what?" she nearly shouted at him, barely managing to control her volume so as not to scare Sle'anna as she quickly closed the distance to S'hib. "Have you ever thought of talking to me about what's bothering you? I am your wife, aren't I? But no, instead you keep it bottled up inside and jeopardize your career. Basically, you have been non-existent around Sle'anna and I since the attack. I want to see Miraj's attacker found just as much as anyone else, but you're not helping anyone right now."

"You think I don't know that?" S'hib growled through gritted teeth, his tone fierce despite keeping his words quiet. "That it doesn't eat at me like everything else has been?" He sat up, lifting himself almost as tall as she was as she stood in front of him. "How much I failed." He snorted, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. "Failed her. Failed you... Slee, the crew..."

He paused, softening his features and relaxing his muscles. "I just, I don't need you to lecture me right now Nax, okay? please? I fucked up, I know... I know!"

His eyes closed as he leaned forward, resting his arms on his legs and his face in his hands.

"You can shout at me tomorrow," He mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "But please... I just..." He trailed off, not finishing his sentence except with a long exasperated sigh.

"Just because Miraj was hurt and the attacker hasn't been caught, doesn't mean you're a failure, S'hib. You have protected the crew of this ship more times than I can count. But I am going to tell you this now and once. Talk to me about what is bothering you because I will not tolerate you losing your control around Sle'anna. You are not alone," she sat down next to him.

"I would never do that, to either of you..." He said as he slumped over somewhat, leaning into Naxea and resting the side of his head atop of hers. "But I will... talk to you I mean, it will be good practice for the mandatory counselling I'm being made to go to."

His voice trailed off into a frustrated growl at the very idea, he just needed sleep he told himself, sleep in a Sequus bed, not the human pancake in the other room.

Naxea sighed at S'hib's comment. He was lucky he wasn't in the Brig and reduced in rank for his actions. She looked over at the crib where Sle'anna lay. Long arms reached out, batting a mobile containing the planets of the Bajoran System that sent a small replica of DS9 spinning wildly in a circle. "Our daughter just took out Deep Space Nine," she teased with a grin.

"She's definitely got Bajoran blood in her." He hummed with a content and happy tone, though very little translated to his face.

They sat in silence for a while, bodies pressed against one another as they watched Sle'annas little arms batting at the planets above her. "You're a good mother, Nax... I didn't mean to make you feel inadequate when I asked Miraj to be her second mother, It's just something my people do and I didn't give it a second thought."

He stopped for a moment, sitting back and shifting his body around to face her more. "Why you put up with me I'll never know... but I do know I love you and that I'm sorry for hurting you."

"I know you do. Just start letting me be first in your life and communicate. That's all I ask, S'hib," she said as she thought about the bed. She knew S'hib hated standard beds. Their regular quarters had their Sequus bed that S'hib liked, but their quarters had been severely damaged. "And I'll see what I can do about getting a more comfortable bed for you. I know how you hate humanoid beds."

"No it's ok, I don't want this place to start feeling like our home only for us to move again when they figure out where to actually put us."

He looked down for a moment, blinking away the moisture in his eyes. If they were tears or if he was simply tired he could not say.

"Do you remember our date on Casperia Prime?" He started, still looking at the floor. "We walked for miles through that forest, sat on top of that mountain."

"Of course I do," she replied, thinking back to that day. So much had happened since then.

"I never told you what happened after you left, haven't told anyone... I lied in my official reports and swept it under the rug, pretending it never happened."

"What happened?" Naxea asked, concerned as she looked at S'hib.

“A lot…” S’hib said as his brow furled, trying to unpack the memories flooding back into words.

“I was captured… this, you and everyone knows.” S’hib began, turning to face Naxea more.

“The Orions hunted me through the forest back to the shuttle, I fought a few of them off but they had weapons and numbers, this everyone knows… what I didn’t tell anyone was what happened in that cave.”

He looked down after this, the shame and the guilt swelling inside him.

Naxea looked at S'hib, grasping his hand into her's. "It's alright," she said softly.

"No, Naxea... It's not..." The words trembled off his lips, cold and detached.

"Of course, I went through what the others did... the beatings, the lack of food. It's the Orion Syndicate... they treat you like product rather than people."

He looked down again, this time at his hands. Intertwined in hers. He wanted to let go, feeling disgusted with himself.

How could he hold her hands after what he had been made to do with them?

"But there was a woman, a scientist I think... she took a particular interest in me." He paused again, his eyes glazing over somewhat before blinking the colour back into them as he looked back up to Naxea, the concern on her face only making the guilt that much worse.

"I guess she'd never seen a Sequus before, called me exotic." The word tasted foul as he spoke it, making his blood boil.

"S'hib, this is obviously too painful for you to discuss," she said as she squeezed his hand. She recalled when she was captured and brainwashed by the Mirror Universe Sthilg to hunt her own crew. However, he had done more than brainwash her as she recalled the violations with a shudder.

His response was near instant, loud and sharp "Of course it is!" But a slight break in his voice made him look away, his eyes watering as he let out a frustrated snort.

"I don't want to talk about it, Nax... I don't want to talk about anything, but I have to."

She took a quick look over to Sle'anna, making sure that S'hib's sudden burst didn't frighten her as she still saw that Sle'anna was playing with her mobile. She turned her attention back to S'hib. "Fine, go ahead, then."

He sighed at first, slowly reaching up to his face to rub at his eyes with the back of his hand, nuzzling a knuckle against the damp hair above his cheek.

"They uh, they would take me to this room. I remember it being circular, with lots of equipment. A lot of it I didn't recognise, but unlike the rest of the facility, this stuff wasn't second-hand. It wasn't thrown together, it looked funded and supplied properly."

He paused for a moment, realising how much he had remembered so vividly, the smell... the glare of certain lights in the ceiling, a loose tile on the floor, the screams.

"They also had this one-way viewing screen, whole place was some sort of hybrid torture, research lab... I don't know what other things they did there, but there was always blood on the floor."

He stopped again, a memory of what he had tried so hard to forget replaying in his head.

"I didn't want to do it, didn't want to hurt any of them... but I didn't have a choice..." He muttered softly, his internal monologue spilling out.

"It's... I think it's why I got so angry, with everything... because they chose to do what they did to Miraj, they had the choice... and they still did what they did."

"If I could punish them," He continued, before leaning forward. Placing his face into his own hands as he fought defiantly against his own tears.

"Then maybe I could feel better about what I did." He wept, scrunching his fingers into his mane, gripping his head tightly.

Naxea took S'hib and wrapped her arms around him. "S'hib, you're not at fault for what happened. Rise above your anger towards others. I know it's not easy but you have so much going for you right now and many who care for you. None more so than me."

"But you don't know what I did Nax," He said, turning his head in his hands to stare at her briefly, grief-stricken across his features. "And I know when I tell you, it will change everything... it will change how you look at me."

"What did you do that is so bad?" Naxea asked more insistent. She knew it was hard for him to say whatever was bothering him but she was beginning to grow tired of him beating around the bush as humans liked to phrase it. Why you would beat around a bush, hell why even beat a bush? 'Not now, Naxea,' she told herself.

He looked at her one last time, soaking in her features, the genuine concern on her face and the love behind her eyes before burying his face in his hands once more, leaving his snout hanging between the palms of both.

"They..." he started, pausing to swallow the bitter taste of words yet to come out.

"They would bring other prisoners in, mostly women...but men too and told me I had to, um..." He swallowed again and sighed heavily, the last dreg of joy in his soul leaving in that instant.

"Had to rape them, which I didn't... at first." He added quickly after confessing.

"But every time I refused, Nax... they shot them in the head, I still flinch when I hear a disruptor go off." His voice trailed off slightly, the bright flash of green engulfing his mind and then red, nothing but pools of red.

"But the worst part is they didn't even threaten me or give me a chance to think they just, they just killed them if I didn't do what they said!" His voice continued to crack as he spoke, now completely unable to look up at the woman beside him as tears streamed down his face and into his hands.

"I didn't want to do it! but I didn't want them to die either... I just, I... I don't want to remember anymore."

Naxea let out a long sigh as she digested what S'hib had told her. She thought about the best way to respond. After several moments, she placed her hand underneath S'hib's chin, lifting his face until she could look at him.

"You had no choice, S'hib. No more choice than when I was brainwashed into hunting our own crew."

“How much do you remember?” he asked softly, resting the weight of his head in her hand.

“We never really spoke about it did we… about anything either of us has been through.” In that moment he clasped a hand under hers and sat up more, relief washing over him and carrying away the despair in his heart.

"I remember mostly everything," she replied with a sigh. "I don't remember much about the procedure that the Mirror Sthilg did but I remember the hunt and attacking you. It was like I was in someone else's body, unable to control my actions."

“I remember it too…” he said thoughtfully, his mind still racing as he sat there in a moment of silence, still resting in her hand.

“But, I still have you… and Slee and for that I'm very grateful. Even if I am a bit rubbish at showing it…” He sat up now, grasping her hand with both of his as he looked over at Sle’anna in her crib.

“I do love you, and every moment we’ve spent together.”

Another moment of silence crept in as he looked down at the floor, still thinking, always thinking. “I should have said something sooner, it just… it got so much harder the longer I didn’t say anything, I got comfortable ignoring it, dealing with other problems first even if they weren't important.”

"Well, I love you too and you're important to Sle'anna and I," Naxea said softly. "Just focus on us. Whenever you get angry about something, try to think of Sle'anna, ok? This incident with Miraj isn't worth your career."

He nodded softly in response, before standing gently tugging away from her hand. "I'm gonna go shower, but it uhh, It's been a few days so I might be a while..."

He clicked gently away, turning slightly to look back at Nax. "It doesn't have a higher setting like our old one, takes forever to get at my undercoat..."

Naxea glanced at Sle'anna still busy battling her mobile. 'That kid has too much energy,' she thought before looking back at S'hib. "Well, I could help with that," she teased, grinning mischievously.

"No it's ok, It's pretty cramped in there..." S'hib yawned before almost tripping over his own hoof as he stopped and looked back. "Oh, you mean... oh!"

He stared at her for a moment, like a deer caught in the headlights before finally turning to move for the bathroom.

"Ugh... just um, just give me five minutes and then come in." He said hurriedly as he ducked and disappeared into the bathroom.