Today I performed the pakra, a solitary ritual in honor of my father.
It didn’t quite work out the way I’d hoped.
I was intercepted by a Kazon ship; somehow I’d strayed into their terriotory without knowing it. Then again, since their territory changes every day, as well as the number of factions that they have, I doubt that if I would have known, I’d have been right.
In being taken their prisoner I came face-to-face with a boy, a thirteen year old boy that had been taught to hate me just because I was who I was, because I wore the uniform of people his parents hated, people his friends hated, people that his people hated. It was a viscious thing, if you stop to think about it.
Frankly, I never stopped thinking about it when I was in their cell, though I was saddened when three boys all younger than the one making the first attempt offered to kill me with no resistance.
Kar – the Kazon boy trying to earn his name in battle, or so he said – he reminded me of someone else I’d come to know. A small girl that I found hiding under my bed, when she was about his age – thirteen.
She is my friend.
To be honest I never thought she’d live long enough to be called anyone’s friend, much less anything else, certainly not long enough to earn half the nicknames she’s been graced with. But Sara’s not like any girl I’ve ever met, young or old.
She clings to life with a tenacity I wish I had.
What kind of man keeps a close to fourteen year old girl on an aged, decrepit Maquis ship, especially one that finds itself out here in the middle of nowhere. I guess the answer is only as far as the mirror, since that kind of man was me. It amazed me how little trouble she gave me, gave anyone. How she helped and trained with B’Elanna and picked up everything with a moment’s teaching or less.
And how she adapted without a fuss to being literally the youngest human aboard a ship, alongside a Starfleet-trained crew. I’ve told the Captain before that it was lucky she wasn’t on a training mission when all this happened, Starfleet likes its cadets to learn with the “hands-on” approach but this certainly wouldn’t have been their idea of doing it. And yet it was the only way for Sara really, the only way she could become trained here and accustomed to the way of doing things.
She has a temper. It’s something I’ve rarely seen, maybe on one or two occasions, when she was plain worn out and exhausted. She’s much more reslient than anyone else I’ve known, though B’Elanna comes in a close second. Sara’s skin isn’t as thick as B’Elanna’s is, she just takes care not to show that she’s hurt. Physcially or otherwise, I might add. The girl’s had her share of scrapes on my ship and still didn’t tell me a damn thing about it.
She outlasted Seska. I wonder if the times in the Maquis when Seska wasn’t especially bad to Sara, if it was due to the fact that maybe Sara was on to her. Though I can’t imagine Sara keeping a secret like that. But it’s like I’ve said before, with Sara, you never know.
I’ll admit that when I first found her that her telepathy was as much a disturbance to me as it is to almost everyone else aboard this ship, at least the ones that don’t know her like we do. Hell, even Dalby and Suder, two people that will kill in a hearbeat or less, they’ll stick up for her. It’s a shame in a way that others wouldn’t, and still won’t. Now, to me, her telepathy is just who she is. It’s a part of her, like a Trill and its host. The host is one thing, the symbiont is another, and yet they co-exist equally. However, the symbiont cannot exist without its host.
I wonder if Sara could exist without her telepathy.
There’s a great many things about that girl that people still don’t know, the origins of her telepathy being probably the biggest. It was a long, hard fight for her to be accepted here, and I’m not sure she is even now. It’s been close to five months, and people still look askance at her, trotting down the corridors in a provisional uniform (those things are hell to replicate, let me tell you), giving her skeptical looks because they know she knows what’s going through their heads.
I wonder if she knows what I’m thinking now. If she’s in her quarters she does, they’re only across the hall and her range of telepathic empathy (as I choose to call it) extends throughout whatever deck of the ship she happens to be on. It’s a wonder she doesn’t ride the turbolifts all day, because it moves so fast that she can only catch a snippet here and there of one person’s thoughts.
When did I realize that she was my friend?
To tell you the truth, I don’t really know. Maybe it was when she hid under my bed, back on the Liberty, the first night I found her. I’m old enough to know that friendship can happen that quickly, sometimes it sneaks up on you when you weren’t looking for it or thinking about it. Maybe it was the night that I watched her sleep, the way her innocent face lost all of the usual haunted shadows that ringed and still ring her eyes, penetrating into the iris and looking at you with staunch frankness.
Or maybe it was when I looked over and saw her laying on the deck, lifeless and still, after Neelix’s cheese caused a cascade failure in the gel packs.
If you had to ask me one specific instance, I couldn’t tell you. It’s like your arms and legs, something that’s always been there, something that you really don’t call special attention to until it’s hurt or even gone.
I can tell you that I’d miss it, and her, if it had reason to stop.
