Unravelled

Posted on Mon Oct 31, 2022 @ 2:28am by Civilian Opal Oliver (Deceased) Dr
Edited on on Mon Oct 31, 2022 @ 2:51am

2,433 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: Station Brig
Timeline: BACKPOST - MDs 3 & 4

MD3 - LATE

Opal had moved every mountain she could, by pure will power and badgering constantly until she had convinced someone, several someones for that matter, that she was needed by Caleb to administer essential ongoing treatment to his injured leg. Once, a while ago, she had been exasperated that he wouldn't let her extract the old shrapnel from the leg and put an end to his suffering and pain with regard to it and they had been involved in several rather emotive discussions about why he had been so determined to keep the self-reminder that it somehow brought him. She was unhappy that he was punishing himself and not entirely sure what for, but now, as it was giving her a reason to have access to see him, she had to take back her objections for a while at least as it served a very important means to make contact.

She arrived at his "cell" - and prison cell was more what he was incarcerated in right now - bright and confident, full of an air of entitlement to be there, a large med-bag in her hand, accentuating the reason (excuse) for her to be allowed in, as had worked for her so far.

The guards posted outside his door were on rotation but she had been here often enough that most of them knew and expected her. They made a big deal about searching her med-kit - as always - and she made a point of keeping lots of medical equipment and supplies in it, but never yet risking anything untoward. Perhaps she might eventually need them to have been lulled into a false sense of security about how there never was anything wrong with the contents, as full and bulky as they always were. It was a plan b, and it might never be able to be utilised, but one never knew and she was leaving no stones unturned when it came to keeping any possible paths open for Caleb's use, if ever he got a chance to come up with something spontaneous.

"Good morning" she chirped to the guards and handed over her kit for inspection and scanning. She was excited to be about to see Caleb, there was no doubt, even though it was so hard to see him cooped up and being treated so minimally, just because he wasn't cooperating with these invaders. She didn't like to be hostile to anyone but these 'beings of doubtful parentage' were really getting under her frustrated deep need to protect him.

With the checking done, she was admitted and she went straight to him, not giving away any personal contact whilst being observed. As usual, the guard got tired of watching them and closed the door behind her, going off to get himself a hot drink of some kind - again, a habit that had been fallen into and which Opal was keeping a note of, just in case it ever came in useful.

She chattered about Caleb's leg and other boring matters until the guard locked them in and was seen to go off a short distance away to the replicator on the far side of the suite in the outer area of the brig itself. Speaking in a low tone and yet breaking off between sentences to speak more loudly with matters that were mundane and which it didn't matter who heard them, such as medical nothings, she set up a habit of this, over several visits as she tended his leg and administered whatever nonsensical scans or just pain relief, whichever seemed to cover the need for her to be there.

Getting this established, Opal managed to get a much more relaxed attitude established towards her from the guards, even managing to cross their rotations of shifts so they were all used to her, just in case the timing might have to be altered when it finally came.

Opal returned to the Lotus as often as she dared, making that appear random and informing Eve through her contacts there, of what was transpiring.

It was Opal's hope that Eve might have some news for her to say that her work was making any form of inroad into helping with whatever plans might be afoot. All she could do was try her best and keep up her hopes.

At the worst, at least she was getting to see Caleb and talk to him, if nothing else could be done for now. The one most important thing was not to let the situation get them both down and she was trying her best to keep his spirits up but it wasn't easy to try to bring any joy to his bleak situation. She just hoped that having someone's moral support and love could help to keep his own hopes bolstered even just a little bit.

Sighing as she left the brig after her latest visit, Opal let her fixed smile stay in place until she was past all the possible "eyes and ears" of any "enemy" faces or cameras. Making it to her own quarters, she sank onto the bed, pulled the pillows close and quietly cried to herself.

When was this nightmare ever going to end and why was there so little she could do to help? Without bothering to get up to eat, she rolled over and let exhausted, lonely and sorrowful sleep take her fitfully into more nightmares, only to awake to this one again in the morning. She wanted to scream, to do something totally out of character and violent, such was the frustration and helplessness that she felt.

But Caleb's deep, gorgeous eyes seemed to be there in the room somewhere. She couldn't let him see her like this (even if it was in her imagination that he was actually there, looking). She got up, showered, washed and dried her hair and set it into a style she knew he liked and set off for work in Sickbay, looking forward to the time this afternoon when she could go to the Brig "for his treatment".... at last a genuine smile returned. She started her rounds with her other patients and got absorbed in her day until the time crept around at last.

With genuine joy in her heart and a spring in her step Opal went to the Brig, making sure to adhere to her established routine and whilst her smile stiffened as she saw the conditions he had to endure, the small space he was held in and the dim lighting he had to bear, presumable in an attempt to being his spirits down, she worked her way to him, through all the bits of red-tape, the searches and the pretended banter with the guards she was accustomed to now.

Once at his door and let in, Opal's heart stopped beating for a moment as she fought not to hurl herself into his arms and refuse to be peeled away ever again.

Easing her breathing back to normal from stopped, she walked towards him. "Good afternoon, Commander" she said briskly and began to unpack her medkit. "How are you feeling today? How is the pain from your leg?" her voice quavered just a little and she hoped no-one would be able to detect that.

No-one perhaps but Caleb himself?

She didn't want him, of all people to hear it nor have any idea that anything was wrong or unusual about today. Covering herself, well, she hoped it would do that, she began to talk quite quickly, going through medical mumbo-jumbo for the ears of those still around, outside the door as it finally closed behind her, leaving laser bars of screening so they could be seen clearly from without but giving the smallest token of privacy to his medical examination and treatment.

His response had been bland, perhaps even grumpy for the benefit of any listening ears other than their own, yet these were the little moments... an exchange of unseen tender looks, a caress that was disguised amongst the medical care and wound dressings, that kept her heart beating.

It had been a routine kind of visit, one of the dozens she had worked so hard to fit into the "normal" of the brig day to day cycle and if she had ever even had a tiny inkling that this was going to be the last, she would have been desperate enough to have done something crazy to try to bring the plan forward and make her/the resistance's move.

As it was, she had been unaware that anything was changing........

* * * * * * * * MD4

When Opal left the Lotus Lounge unsuccessful in her attempts to find Eve again, she went to tend to her patient and Love, Commander Ryan in the Brig, She had not been informed he wasn't there so when she arrived and found him gone, she was shocked and very worried.

Seeking out the most senior guard she could find, she demanded to see her patient.

So much for the rapport and under the radar, "cover" she had thought she had been building up. The nasty sneer the Xi-Cadian gave her was another shock as he had been apparently un-noticing of her before. "You've missed your chance, woman. The Cardassian Station Commander has taken him to somewhere private where the likes of you, STARFLEET ...." he snarled, the word, dripping with malice not seen by Opal before now "...can't molly-coddle him any more."

His triumphant laugh made Opal's blood run cold and her hope and heart sink so low that she just stood still, choking on perfectly good air, unable to get any into her winded lungs. Inside the scream that was enveloping her mind a carnal idea blossomed suddenly like a spark in a lightning cloud igniting the air all around it into sheet lightning.

Lightning was the speed with which Opal Oliver dropped her Medkit so it fell open, dived in with both hands and withdrew two 'sharps' - One a form of laser scalpel and the other a little ultrasonic 'bone reconstructor' - both very useful in healing patients' wounds but now about to be even more so in inflicting them.

The screaming left her mind and emitted from her seared lungs as she flew, demented with frustration, pain, loss, fear for Caleb and despair that he wasn't within the reach of any of her or the Resistance's means of rescue any more. This nasty little man and his gloating pleasure, spite and merciless glee at the torture he knew he was inflicting on her and no doubt that which his Cardassian friends were likely taking over inflicting on her Love right now, incensed her and over-rode all her Hippocratic beliefs and vows turning her into a wild and desperate heart-broken harpie, mourning the man she loved to distraction, feeling his pain as if it were her own, exploding with the frustration of being beaten to the post so that her hopes of rescuing him were now smashed and decimated.

Opal flew with the kind of super-strength that is only displayed by those trying to defend their most precious loves and/or children and she stabbed the two complicit guards from either sides of her path to the evil face in front of her. She took one down with the Scalpel, severing his outstretched arm above the elbow, causing him to join in with the sound of her own screaming and the other, 'restructured' horribly through the middle of his torso. The latter dropped - dead before he hit the floor - just seconds before the former finished slumping, bleeding dark green, betraying his very different race to her own red blooded one.

She didn't give either a second look as she was already almost upon the original offender, both her weapons returning deftly to the front before her face was in his own.

What she spat at him as he was taken by surprise by the unexpected speed and aggression that bore down on him, was not the kind of language a nice young lady was encouraged to even know, let alone scream out, but none the less, the broken doctor was no longer the person she was brought up to be. She had become a mad-woman, a human missile with a mission of dreadful and bloody vengeance that even she had no real concept, other than the inner pain from which it was emerging, searing her mind, body and soul.

Ensign Opal Oliver MD was finally overcome by new guards who entered the Brig in response to the alarms that were now ringing out. She was found in a complete horror-movie scene, gore and different colours or shades of blood everywhere and she, herself, in a state of finally silent, introverted collapse, unresponsive to even pain, staring too horrified, too damaged and too traumatised, into her own darkness. Resembling a living corpse, with nothing going in and nothing coming out either, not even as they roughly shackled her and dragged her away. Silent and without any sign of life behind her dead eyes or shut-down mind.

No report was ever filed in Starfleet, because no-one from the Federation ever knew what she had done and so the dreadful end of the devoted doctor passed unwitnessed by anyone other than her own broken self - and the tormentors whose own lives she deemed forfeit in response to their cruelty and crimes. She had delivered her own judgement of Hellfire and fury and given up her own life in payment, but not until those whom she deemed immediately responsible, had been dealt with by her own hands.

If Commander Caleb Ryan were to have eventually survived this whole invasion and the resulting monstrous war-crimes that had ensued, then even he might never get to hear that his gentle, loyal and heartbroken lover, had avenged at least a few of the most hideous sufferings he had endured at the hands of three of the most unpleasant and evil of his tormentors - all witnessed and patched up by her - thus arming her own pain, frustration and fury on his behalf.

Whatever cruel end she finally came to, no trace of Ensign Oliver's remains were found once the invasion was over but no matter how many war criminals might or might not escape retribution, when all was said and done, at least she had made sure that three of those - who didn't live as if they had their own 'divine force of good' to make its own judgement upon them - had still met up with hers instead.

 

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