Ain't No Rest For The Not-So-Wicked

[shes-intense.livejournal.com]

Brenda hasn't slept a whole night in three days.

She gets a few hours of rest here and there, but it's interspersed with nightmares like she hasn't had since her father died. They are vivid, stressful, leave her brain plowing along at a mile a minute and nothing seems to stop it.

She wonders if Jeka is sleeping well, if snake-aliens even dream, but never remembers to ask her. Instead she gets up in the wee hours and wanders the ship just to keep herself moving and to not give in to that chill that keeps crawling down her spine whenever she stands still too long.

Tonight she ends up in the queer little art gallery room, with the statue at the center that shifts according to her thoughts. Tonight none of her ideas are pleasant on their own so she tries to force something a little nicer.

She's watching her mother make pancakes, long hair down her back and a smile on her face, when she realizes she's not by herself anymore.

Comments

[shes-intense.livejournal.com]

"Tell me about it." Brenda scrubbed a hand down her face in frustration.

"... have you ever had a friend do something that made you think maybe they weren't just a friend and then turn around and pretend like it never happened?"

[unsc-rabbit.livejournal.com]

She turned her head to smirk wryly at the girl. An expression that conveyed the meaning I know exactly what you're going through.

"To be honest...before coming here, I didn't have the luxury of friends. So I can't say I know what that's like." She fell silent for a moment. "Did something happen?"

[shes-intense.livejournal.com]

"Yeah." Brenda shifted a little against the wall, then pinned Kelly with serious look. "If I tell you about this you gotta PROMISE me not another soul will ever hear it."

[unsc-rabbit.livejournal.com]

Catching the serious look, Kelly had to force herself not to smile. Despite the seeming gravity of what was about to be said, she couldn't help but find that expression amusing. She'd have to remember that. "Who am I going to tell? Chief?" She smiled wanly. "Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."

[shes-intense.livejournal.com]

"Okay point." She sighed. "You know Brainy right?"

[unsc-rabbit.livejournal.com]

"Brainiac?" A pause. "Which one?"

[shes-intense.livejournal.com]

"The one who survived." Brenda swallows hard at that, the image of B5's tousled hair just above the edge of the drape over his corpse flashing on the inside of her eyelids.

"When he was... preparing B5'S body for the memorial I went to see him and he wanted to get out of there for a while. We went up to the obs deck just the two of us."

[unsc-rabbit.livejournal.com]

She was silent a moment before nodding. She hadn't known either very well. But the loss of a crewmate was never an easy thing to bear.

At Brenda's story though, she simply listened in silence nodding for the moment. What more was there to say? She wasn't familiar with situations like that, but there didn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with it.