Being Laura Stout

Posted on Sat Jul 23rd, 2011 @ 2:58pm by Laura Stout

Mission: In Our Time of Need
Location: Promenade & Nexus Club
Tags: Anyone

Her name was not Laura Stout no matter what the ID said.

It was a good ID, good enough to get her in and out of Kheeta 5, good enough, even, to fool the base computer. One day Merc was going to tell her how he'd swung the tech-encrusted plastic, what strings he'd pulled to get her a card that could fool a Starfleet computer. But right here and right now all she knew was that the ID wasn't hers and the subterfuge rankled somewhere deep in her soul.

She clenched her fist, feeling the dull, shinny edges of the card dig into her palm. She didn't have to use it.

Someone jostled her from behind as she stood, indecisive, in the middle of the promenade. The someone, a Trill in duty uniform, turned around, smiled a distracted apology and continued into the throng. The bright emerald green of the woman's collar fixated her and she felt the blood drain from her face and her heart begin to pound. Just a glimpse was all it took. It hadn't even been him, The Marine, different face, different hair, different freaking species, but gods, that green. She closed her eyes against a surge of memory but it pounded through her head, as vivid, as horrifying as the real thing.

Every muscle in her body tightened, twisted. Breathe, she thought, just breathe. One, two, three ... Gods, she wanted a fix.

The thought and the sudden, bone-deep need snapped her eyes open and propelled her into motion. She moved through the flow of people, stepping around them, brushing past them, unmindful of the annoyed looks and the few muffled exclamations; a woman on a mission. She needed out of here, somewhere she could dull the edges of need with booze, or at least the smell of it.

Three months she'd been clean. Merc had said it would get easier but it didn't feel that way. It felt like her insides were going to eat her outsides, if the sudden tremor under her skin didn't shake her to bits beforehand.

There was a turbolift ahead of her. Its doors opened and it disgorged passengers. She made for it like a drowning woman.

"Deck 20," she said.

The lift hummed, stopped, opened.

Finding the bar was almost instinctive and she homed in on an empty bar stool. The bottles at the back of the bar glittered like old, old friends and the smell of spirits wafted past her nose with a comforting hello. The tremor in her hands eased and the need slackened.

So much for her self-control. A glimpse of a marine uniform and she was ready to throw herself away on booze and drugs.

She wasn't ready for this, wasn't ready to be herself again.

Laura Stout wouldn't have these problems, she thought. Say hello Laura Stout.

"Hello," she said.

The depths of her soul could rankle all they liked.