The Lies She Tells Herself

Posted on May 26, 2014 @ 5:07pm by Selyara Chen
Edited on on Jun 05, 2014 @ 8:31am

Mission: The Tangled Webs We Weave
Location: JAROS II
Tags: Selyara, Prolog

"The lies she tells herself"

Cont. "Don't call it a comeback"

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Location: EARTH
Scene: Starfleet HQ, judicial building.
Stardate: [2.14]0403.1240
[Time Index: 7 years ago]

“ The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes
to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him,
and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect
he ceases to love.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"Selyara Chen, you have been found guilty of high treason, aiding and abetting the enemy, sabotaging the USS Patriot, theft of Federation property, unauthorized selling of Federation property, eluding arrest, and endangering the lives of the 571 crew members of the USS PATRIOT. You are hereby stripped of your rank of Captain and sentenced to life in prison at the Starfleet Stockade on JAROS II, with no possibility of parole."

It wasn't unexpected, but the verdict still hit her with such force she felt nauseous. Her vision swum for a moment and she thought she might pass out. Desperately she searched the crowd in the gallery to find the only friendly face that still existed for her. Erik Chen was sitting in the front row with her dog Briar in tow, right behind where her advocate and herself had been sitting for the last two weeks, right where he'd been sitting every moment of the trial.

He was alone. Her mother Reisa and her sister Lily, both Starfleet officers, had not so subtly begun distancing themselves from her when she arrived back on earth to be court-martialed. They didn't want to lose chances at promotions because of the traitor that they had adopted into their family. Not, Selyara had thought, a little bit bitterly, that they had really even wanted her there. She knew Erik Chen had been the only reason they had taken her into their family in the first place.

Erik had made it clear that adopted or not, guilty or not, he was still going to be there. Whether or not anyone else would be was doubtful to her.

He thought he was giving her strength, but in truth, it only made her feel worse. She didn’t deserve the kindness he had always shown her, especially not now.

She barely noticed as they put the handcuffs on again and led her out the courtroom, barely noticed Erik squeeze her hand as she walked numbly past.

She tried to kill herself that night. One of three attempts she would make that first year. After the third attempt, she realized that there was no way for her to escape the hell she'd turned her life into, gave up, and settled into the tedium of the regimented prison existence.

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Location: JAROS II
Scene: Library, Federation Stockade
[Time Index: 5 years ago]



The beginning of the second year, she kept her head down, kept out of trouble. The monotony was only broken by Erik visiting her. Once a year he came from earth to JAROS II, and visited her every day for a week. He talked about her estranged mother and sister, about the changes he’d made to the house, the garden, all like it was a normal visit to see a cherished loved one.

And then her life in prison changed.

She found herself alone in the library with the leader of one of the most powerful gangs and his right hand man. She recognized the Human and his Klingon muscle immediately, when she’d first arrived at the prison, they’d tried to get her to join their faction made up of prisoners serving life sentences. She’d ignored them, said nothing, she didn’t want to get involved.

"What do you want." She said haltingly. She recognized them, one was human, the leader of one of the prison 'gangs' and the other, a Klingon, was his right hand muscle. They were former Marines, she recalled- In prison for the torture and massacre of civilians on a backwater colony they were supposed to be protecting from the raiders that had been plaguing them. One of their company had attempted to force himself of one of the colonists, and they had killed her and her family to keep the incident under wraps. Special attention by them was not likely to be good.

"Look Krang, the stuck up c**t can actually speak." The man sneered.

"Seems like it Connor, which means she has no excuse for not talking to us, except that she thinks she's better than us." The Klingon showed his teeth.

Selyara froze, searching for the guard that normally was to be found in the hallway leading up to it. He was nowhere to be seen, whether by coincidence or design she didn’t know. Her stomach dropped.

"Don't bother looking for help, you're all alone." Connor smirked, circling her. "Don't you wish you'd joined us when we asked? You thought you were so superior to us. But now I'm going to have to teach you a lesson, and you're going to thank me and join me. If you’re a good girl, you may even have a place at my side."

He took a step towards her and she tried to step back, but found herself against the wall. She cursed herself for a fool, all that posturing, all that circling- he’d been forcing her back into that corner. He grabbed her throat and pushed her up against the wall, one hand fumbling at her prison uniform.

"No one is going to save you, so just relax, maybe you'll even enjoy it. It's only the logical thing to do. Vulcans may be strong, but they're no match for a Klingon. " His breath was foul.

No one is going to save you.

No one is going to save you, Selyara.

The thought bounced around her head until something snapped. She was tired of being a ‘good girl.’ She was sick to death of being the damsel in distress, the punching bag for every bad thing that happened, the one to always be the victim, in danger, needing rescue.

She was not going to be the victim again.

Her hand snapped up, grabbing his face and her lips twisted in a grotesque mask as all of her emotions from the last few years escaped.

"You may be big, but you're stupid." Her voice was thick with anger "You should at least know your victim if you're going to single them out. I'm not just a Vulcan, logic is not my master. You are going to be very, very, sorry."

She didn't know what she was going to do, only that she wanted to hurt him badly, hurt him permanently. And then he hit her, his hand squeezing around her neck, and her reaction was immediate, instinctual. She reached out and touched his mind.

It was so easy. His mind was an open book, and she was tearing the pages out of it. She shredded through his psyche, her anger and fear lending her telepathic powers strength she hadn't realized was possible. She stopped, sickened, but the damage was done.

Connor reeled back his mouth opening and shutting noiselessly, a primitive reflex.

Like a carp. Selyara thought distantly as she looked into his empty eyes. The lights were on, but Connor was definitely no longer home. She stepped over him and advanced towards Krang.

"You can either work for me, or you can pray that you can kill me before I do the same thing to you. " She could already see the answer in his eyes; feel his fear tugging at the corners of his mind. Death in combat may be nothing to a Klingon, but the half-life she'd doomed Connor to- well that was something else entirely.

He bowed to her.
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Scene: Selyara's cell
[Time Index: Present day]

Selyara stood in the middle of her cell, a massive tower of playing cards in front of her. She added a card to the tower, a look of concentration on her face. It was a daily ritual for her, a way to organize her thoughts, clear her head, and more importantly, to allow her to review all the secrets she knew. A frown creased her brow. There was a pattern forming, and she was so close to seeing it, but something was missing, a piece of information that would make it coalesce.

She stepped back and slammed her fist into the wall. Impasses were the bane of her existence, with the absence of information to arrange or a problem to solve, her mind began to wander towards introspection. Introspection was dangerous. So instead she focused her attention on the anger, cultivating it, letting it grow.

As she stood seething with frustration her door opened. She whirled towards it.

"WHAT." She snarled. The guard took a step back, and well he should. She was a fearsome sight, taller than most men and covered neck to ankle in tattoos. Whatever softness there had been about her she'd long since shed, cutting it away with the precision of a surgeon until all that was left hard edges. She'd earned a reputation for ruthlessness as well- It was rumored more than one prisoner who had crossed her had taken their life after she'd brought them in for a little conversation. She could find your insecurities and the hidden wounds, expose them, and widen them until they consumed you.

"I've brought the new prisoner." The guard stepped aside to shove a scowling Romulan into the cell. "Enemy combatant, so treat him gently. You have five minutes."

It was a ritual that the Stockade warden would have adamantly denied, but it was part of a symbiotic relationship that had grown in the last seven years. In return for near free run of the stockade, extra privileges and creature comforts, Selyara delivered a portion of the information she gathered. The prisoners tolerated it both because she never delivered information that could gain them more time, and because they knew she held secrets that could earn them lifetime tickets to much less congenial prisons.

"There are two ways to do this." Selyara said to the Romulan as she turned back to her tower of cards. "The easy way: You let me take the information I want, and in exchange you may request any information you want from me once, and once only. There is also the hard way: You resist, I take whatever information you have that I want much less gently anyway, and you get nothing."

She advanced on the Romulan and grabbed his wrist, letting her mind extend and delicately pick through his to see what he had of use to her. At first she felt his mind resist, but then give in.

"Good choice." She opened the cell door and pushed him into the hallway.

She turned back to her tower and placed the last of her cards.

She smiled and with a quick flick of her hand sent the tower flying apart.

She finally saw the pattern, and it was time to act.

She wrote a note on a slip of paper and walked down the hall to another prison cell. Wordlessly she slipped the paper under the door.

The prisoner inside picked it up to read.

It's time.

Send the message: Things have changed. I want out . -Selyara

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NRPG: Well THAT was nerve wracking! So out of practice. Kind of abrupt jump, but I didn't really want to over burden you with dark material. Gotta space out the angst ;)

Alix Fowler

Selyara Chen Prisoner 88717
Traitor to the Federation
Starfleet Stockade JAROS II