Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
D’Var
M y mate is breaking down in front of me. I know it is a good sign, she is opening up, but it hurts to see her in so much pain. I keep holding her, she clasps on to the bindings of my harness and buries her face in my chest. As her sobs die down and she seems to calm a bit, I caress her shoulder. “Can I please take you to our medical bay, to take care of your injuries?” She gives me a teary smile and nods.
T’Rak and O’Rec are still behind me, emotions swirl through our bond and I reach out to O’Rec.
“Can you help me in the medical bay?”
“Of course, my friend. You can comfort her while I perform the scans.”
I stand up and take her hand. “O’Rec is our medical officer. Is it okay if he joins us?”
I can almost see her mind working behind her eyes. It is clear the careful trust she feels towards me does not extend to my crew mates.
“I will be there with you,” I promise her. That seems to get her to agree, because she nods.
“Nobody will touch you L’Ren,” I add. “Nobody but me, and only if you give me permission.” I can see the surprise in her eyes, and I wonder how long it has been since she has had any control over what happened to her. The bruising on her body shows quite the telling tale and it takes everything I have and then some to contain my anger. It is not her, my anger should be shown to.
“Come with me.” I pick up the bag filled with clothes I asked O’Rec to get at the space station. I walk towards the hallway, and then I feel her small hands clinging to my wrist as we enter the first door on the left. O’Rec is right behind us and when the automatic doors slide close she lets go of me and starts fumbling with the sleeves of her cloak nervously.
O’rec gestures towards the gurney. “You have to lie down on the gurney," he says. “Also,” he starts, before he pauses to look at me.
“You have to remove your clothing,” I say. It shames me to say so I look away.
“It’s okay,” she says and she touches my arm. I look at her and shake my head. “It is not.”
“But it is,” she reassures me, when she smiles at me hesitantly.
L’Ren removes her clothes and lies down onto the gurney. It kills me seeing her like this, my tail gives an aggravated whip.
O’Rec pushes some buttons and the scan is completed quickly. The results come up instantly, and while L’Ren slides from the gurney I pick up her cloak and help her into it after she gets dressed .
“Thank you,” she says and I get a warm feeling inside. She calls to my heart this little female.
“The scans show old fractures that have not healed properly,” O’Rec points out to her. “There is internal damage in your lower abdomen and two cracked ribs. The rest is just bruising.”
I am doing my best to keep calm, but hearing O’Rec recite the damage done to her body is making me angry.
She touches my arm again. “It’s okay, D’Var.”
I turn to look at her, and she is looking at me softly.
“What’s done is done, and I think you have a way to fix the damage, right?”
O’Rec clears his throat. “We have an injection, which heals your wounds. And we also have nano-technology. I can give you a small dose to heal your bruises and to restore the wrongly healed fractures, if you want?”
I look at her, while she is fumbling with the hem of her sleeves again.
“L’Ren,” I call her out and her gaze shoots to mine. “Would you like that?” Her gaze does not meet my eyes and then it hits me.
“I will help with the injections.” Her head shoots up and she looks at me.
“I would love that," she says.
I look at O’Rec confirming with a nod.
“I want D’Var to give you the healing injections now, if that is okay,” he says. “It is best to wait on the nano-tech until you are ready for bed, because it will make you sleepy.”
L’Ren rolls up her sleeve. I take the injection from O’Rec and quickly administer it to her. She winces when the needle breaks her skin, but she does not make a peep. She is so strong, my Zarra, I am in awe of her.
After I give the used injection back to O’Rec to recycle, I am not sure what to do with myself. I look at L’Ren, and it feels like she is also at a loss for words or actions. Her eyes are scanning the room, looking everywhere but at me.
“Are you hungry?” I try, there has to be something I can help her with.
She shrugs, and I feel strangely inadequate.
“What do you need, L’Ren?” I ask her. She looks up at me and blinks.
“What do you need, L’Ren?” I ask again and I can see by the way she is biting her lip that she has thought of something but is still too afraid to ask, so I look at her and wait.
“I would really love to shower or bathe in some way. Do you have a sonic-shower here?”
I grin at her. “I have something even better, follow me!”
Lauren
D’Var precedes me into the hallway. The automatic doors of the medical bay open and close with a swoosh and we are moving towards the left.
“There are two hallways.” D’Var gestures towards the direction we just came from. “The one on the other side leads to the engine room, cargo bay and the airlock, and this one holds our personal quarters and guest rooms.”
I look further into the hallway, and I see it curves after a couple of doors.
“This is T’Rak’s room.” D’Var points to the first door on the right. He then points towards the second door on the right. “And that is O’Rec’s room.”
The doors on the right are substantially further apart then the doors on the left. There are three more doors, two between the other alien’s rooms, and one further than we are now.
“What are those?” I ask, unable to contain my curiosity.
“Guest quarters,” he says gruffly as he continues walking. He walks up to the last door on the left and pauses.
“This is the room you can use to sleep.” He steps aside so I can enter the room. It’s small but has an actual bed, and when I look to the side there is a door which I think leads to the bathroom. I walk up to it and try to open it, but I fail.
“Can you help me, D’Var?” I ask and I hear him come up behind me. He is close, and I feel myself stiffen at the nearness of another person, but when I breathe in his scent my muscles relax. He smells manly in a very good way. I sniff the air; I can’t quite pinpoint his scent. There are hints of leather, but also something more, something…
“You put your hand on the screen, here, and then you push a little bit.” D’Var pulls me out of my thoughts and he puts his hand on the screen. With a slight push, the door opens. There is a toilet and a sonic-shower behind the door. I sigh, I got my hopes up by D’Var’s reaction of ‘something better’, but there must have been some sort of miscommunication.
“Come,” D’Var says and he is walking towards the hallway again. He walks up to the last door on the right and stops.
“This is my room, our bathrooms are a bit different than the guest quarters. You can use my shower, I will leave you here and go back to my crew.”
Every time he says something considerate like this, he knocks me off my feet. It feels like he can read my mind. As though he can see my doubts before I have given words to them in my head. He is really helping me, because, honestly, I have not had freedom like this for as long as I have been in outer space. Thinking about what I need or want literally hurts; let alone how to put those needs and wants into words. Him voicing my concerns before I am aware of them, feels like a balm to my soul.
I can feel tears starting to fall again, so I quickly follow D’Var into his room. We walk towards the bathroom, and D’Var opens the door and walks in. Being that close to him in such a small space makes me nervous, so I can’t stop from fumbling with the cloak. The moment I enter the bathroom though, I forget to be nervous.
“You have actual showers? And a bath?” I cry out and I spin around in this huge bathroom with a bath that could rival a small swimming pool along with the biggest shower I have ever seen.
“We Arracate are old-school, and we take great pleasure in doing some things the old way. Bathing is one of them.”
I slowly spin around in another circle. When my gaze lands on D’Var I can see that he is beaming.
“I brought you clothes,” he says, holding up the bag he has been carrying with him since we left the Command Center.
“I will put this on the bed. After that, I will be in the Command Center and you have the room to yourself. You can open the door by pushing on the panel with your entire hand. Just like I showed you in your room.”
I nod and then I look at the shower again.
“Can you turn it on for me? Show me how it works?” I ask him. He silently shows me which buttons to push and where I can find the soap before stepping out of the bathroom then leaving his room completely.