InsaneJournal

the old familiar sting
The hatch banged open on the empty locker, Rosie stumbled in. She'd already shrugged mostly out of her uniform, and now she wiggled out the rest of the way. She crumpled up the whole thing and shoved it into her locker. Now, in sweat-soaked underclothes, she collapsed in her rack, panting heavily.

She couldn't stop running the sim through her mind. It was stupid. She'd let herself get so worked up over something that was really only one step above a video game. She had to keep reminding herself that it hadn't been real, that if that sort of thing really happened she would have had a chance. Still, she couldn't wait for Tarix to hear she'd tossed her guts all over the sim-bank floor. Several words flew through her mind. "Unstable." "PTSD." "Unfit for duty."

No matter how much she replayed the sim in her head, she couldn't move past it. She couldn't believe she'd been so naive, thinking that it was just practice, just fun. She couldn't shake the feeling. She'd been tested.

And she'd failed.

Rosie sat up in her rack, shakily, and drew the "privacy" curtain. Sure, the locker was empty, but she needed the kind of privacy that was a little more guaranteed. Under her pillow was a tiny wooden box, supplied with the fruits of raiding the med kits on a few of the Raptors on deck. She hadn't even taken enough to be noticed, a vial here a needle there, and most of the high-ups had more important things to worry about besides strict inventories of the med kits.

The bottle was cool to touch, the clear liquid inside sloshed around, reflecting diamond-like and beautiful in the imperfect light of the rack. Rosie ran a finger lovingly over the label. Clinical and neat, it read "Morpha." With her right hand, she picked up the syringe that sat half-covered in a discarded rag in the little box, fitted a new needle from a tear-out package, filled it with care and set it down.

She ripped open an alcohol swab and leaned back against the bulkhead. She was too squeamish for intravenous administration, but she was an old pro with subcutaneous. She lifted her tank top to expose the soft flesh of her belly, a few errant marks from her first few attempts with the syringe dotted the skin.

The thin chain that held Zero's dog tags was in the way. She hooked it with a finger, lifting it up with her top. With her other hand, she fished out the swab and wiped it over the exposed skin. It was cold, almost refreshing. Rosie licked her lips and lifted the syringe reverently. She took a deep breath.

The stab never got any easier. Subcutaneous Morpha hurt like a bitch. However, in time the burn had become something blessed, something perfect, and she thought of it as a sort of purgatory. Her sins were numerous, and somehow the pain washed them away. There was clarity in the pain, if only for that few seconds.

Her kit put away, her head on her pillow, Rosie pulled her top down again. Zero's tags rested on the pinprick on her belly, a cool irritant. The wave would not come immediately. The peace had time still to hit. And it was in that time that she felt awful. The in between time. She closed her eyes, and the tears came. Not angry tears, the type she was well used to, these were slow, sliding into her hair, leaving wetness on her cheeks. She didn't bother to wipe them away.

She waited for peace to come.