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I already survived this once [ota]
A starship never sleeps. Even the third watch, in what would be the wee hours of the morning in an equivalent planetside clock, functions enough to keep a capital starship under control. Which is to say, hundreds of people are going about their duties. But, a starship does have rhythms, and this shift represents the time when people are least active socially.
Which is exactly why Hugh Cambridge sits himself down in Ten-Forward now.
Because the nightmares are back.
They haven't been around for years. Oh, they'll rear up, one night in a very long while, usually aimless strung-out sequences, endless starship corridors, shaking lights and fires and ever-morphing enemy encounters. Cambridge's nightmares are never specific things, but they're not subtle, either. He's afraid of what's coming, just like he used to be afraid of what had already happened.
He rests his forehead on the bar after the second Scotch - the real stuff, not synthehol - and begins to breathe deep and quell his panic.
-
On another night, after another nightmare, he quells it in a different way.
Open the holodeck doors - they're not locked for privacy - and there's a studio, mirrors all along one wall. Cambridge dances with a single partner - female, lovely - in some pseudo-jazz number, something old-fashioned.
It's easy to see that he's trained, on first glance. His movements are precise and practiced, and he is flexible, strong enough to do lifts, jumps. But, next to a professional dancer, he wouldn't look very good. Technique or no, Cambridge isn't an artist of dance. He doesn't elevate the dance, doesn't make it his own. He just does it. It makes him an unusually good dancer among laypeople, but not much at all among dancers.
Doesn't matter to him. He's there to be distracted, not to show off.
Which is exactly why Hugh Cambridge sits himself down in Ten-Forward now.
Because the nightmares are back.
They haven't been around for years. Oh, they'll rear up, one night in a very long while, usually aimless strung-out sequences, endless starship corridors, shaking lights and fires and ever-morphing enemy encounters. Cambridge's nightmares are never specific things, but they're not subtle, either. He's afraid of what's coming, just like he used to be afraid of what had already happened.
He rests his forehead on the bar after the second Scotch - the real stuff, not synthehol - and begins to breathe deep and quell his panic.
-
On another night, after another nightmare, he quells it in a different way.
Open the holodeck doors - they're not locked for privacy - and there's a studio, mirrors all along one wall. Cambridge dances with a single partner - female, lovely - in some pseudo-jazz number, something old-fashioned.
It's easy to see that he's trained, on first glance. His movements are precise and practiced, and he is flexible, strong enough to do lifts, jumps. But, next to a professional dancer, he wouldn't look very good. Technique or no, Cambridge isn't an artist of dance. He doesn't elevate the dance, doesn't make it his own. He just does it. It makes him an unusually good dancer among laypeople, but not much at all among dancers.
Doesn't matter to him. He's there to be distracted, not to show off.
no subject
He does look up to her, then, but the look in his eyes is a sort of bleak weighing of the options. He doesn't want a counselor right now. He doesn't think it would help. He knows exactly what the content of his emotions are; he knows his options. He is armed with all the coping mechanisms there are. But emotion needs to be felt. And, sometimes, there's nothing to do but feel it.
"I don't need a counselor, at the moment," he tells her. "I would much rather a friend. If you dislike me enough that this isn't an option - even tentatively, or temporarily - then I would prefer to be left alone."
Even this is more than he ever would have said, before Voyager. Before he had some sort of family. He misses them terribly. And he expects her to respect his wishes - expects, in fact, that she will leave.