A Dream That Does Not Hurt

Posted on Fri Feb 13th, 2026 @ 2:09pm by Consul Josephine Carlyle-Cragen

Mission: Season 6: Episode 6: Conglomerate
Location: Dream Land
627 words - 1.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Josephine knew she was dreaming because the light was wrong.

It wasn’t the cold blue of an ice world or the harsh white of a corridor. It was warm, filtered, as if passing through stained glass — gold and soft green and something like dawn.

She stood in a garden.

Not a real one. Not anything she could catalogue or name. The plants were familiar without being identifiable, leaves curling in impossible ways, flowers shaped like ideas rather than species. The air smelled faintly of old paper and summer rain.

“You always did prefer places that weren’t on the map.”

Josephine turned.

Arrianna stood a few steps away, exactly as she remembered her from before everything broke. Not desperate. Not hollow. Just… present. Whole.

Josephine did not rush forward. She had learned, in dreams, that sudden movement could shatter things.
“I didn’t expect you,” she said.

Arrianna smiled — the small, crooked one that meant she had always known Josephine better than she liked.

“You never did,” Arrianna replied. “You were always planning for tomorrow. I lived in now.”

They walked together without quite touching. The path beneath their feet rearranged itself as they moved, smooth stone becoming grass, grass becoming wooden decking like a starship promenade.

“You’re not angry,” Josephine said carefully.

Arrianna stopped. Looked at her fully.

“I was,” she said. “For a long time. But anger is heavy. I don’t carry it anymore.”

Josephine felt something loosen in her chest — not relief, exactly, but permission.

“I tried,” Josephine said. “I just… wasn’t who I used to be.”

Arrianna nodded.

“I know. And I loved you anyway. That was never the problem.”

She reached out then, fingers brushing Josephine’s sleeve. The contact didn’t burn or vanish. It simply was.

“I wanted you to save me,” Arrianna said softly. “And that wasn’t fair. You were still saving yourself.”

Josephine swallowed.“I would have stayed,” she said. “If I’d known—”

“I know,” Arrianna interrupted gently. “And if you had stayed, you would have disappeared. I didn’t want that future for you, even if I couldn’t stop chasing my own.”

They came to a low stone bench beneath a tree that shimmered like starlight caught in leaves. They sat.
For a while, neither spoke.

“You have a child,” Arrianna said eventually.

Josephine smiled, small and private. “Liberty.”

“She’s beautiful,” Arrianna said, with no bitterness at all. “You sound steadier when you say her name.”

“I am.”

Arrianna leaned back, looking up through the branches.

“You were never meant to be small,” she said. “Quiet, yes. But not erased.”

Josephine turned to her, heart pounding — not with fear, but with the ache of old love that had finally been set down gently.
“What happens now?” she asked.

Arrianna stood.

“Now you wake up,” she said. “And I stay here. Where memories don’t hurt anymore.”

Josephine stood as well.“Will I see you again?”

Arrianna smiled — warm, fond, complete.

“You already have,” she said. “You just didn’t know it yet.”

She leaned in, pressing her forehead lightly to Josephine’s. “Live,” Arrianna whispered. “That was always the part I struggled with.”

The light softened. The garden blurred.

When Josephine woke, the cabin was quiet. Liberty slept nearby, breath even and warm.

Josephine did not cry. She lay there, listening to the gentle sounds of the ship, and for the first time since Arrianna’s death, the memory of her did not ache. It simply existed. And that, Josephine realized, was love that had finally learned how to rest.

OOC: The former player of Arrianna did not give her consent to this post. I wrote this myself as a proper good bye to the story arc that was.