Characters: Katia Santiago
I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. – Victor Hugo
Katia sat and stared through the window out at the docking bay of Babylon 5 for several hours after the last of her ragtag party had departed to the station to find solace. It would be a couple days before they had to return to Minbar to meet up again with the Phoenix. Trying to gather the presence of mind to confront life again was the hardest battle Katia had ever faced. She felt she hadn’t just lost her daughters, but her whole life in just a matter of minutes back on Mars.
Kira began to cry and Kayla jumped up. As she tried to run for the door, Katia intercepted her and knelt down in front of her. “Please, Kayla. Don’t do this. I won’t hurt you.”
“No! You are NOT my Mom … she is dead … Daddy told me so. Kira, come over here now,” Kayla took charge of the situation as she finally sat up.
The words kept flowing over her in waves, engulfing her mind and refusing to let go. The pain and terror in her daughter’s eyes was enough to strangle her breath from her lungs as she realized she was the cause of their fear. How could she have expected them to know who she was? She had never seen them before that day … to blindly go into it with the hope they would know was total delusion.
Her daughters would never be hers, the time jump had been nothing more then her own wishful thinking causing a deluded dream. That is all it could be, she realized. And, the coincidence of how close her dream had been with Dunstan’s own future could be nothing more than wishful thinking. She found it hard to muster any possible hope for her future in the face of denial of the one dream she had held close for so many years.
The tears threatened once again as the thought of losing Dunstan passed through her mind. Losing her daughters was like losing her life … but losing Dunstan would be like losing her soul. It was enough to throw her into another panic, and that was just something she couldn’t face at the moment either. It seemed everything was working against her lately, and she was losing the battle to keep her very tenuous hold on herself and her life.
Slowly, she realized she had been sitting there in the shuttle for a while, and she needed to get off the shuttle and find a place to stay until their transport to Minbar arrived. Katia stood and gathered the few items she had brought with her on this endeavor and moved quickly and quietly out of the shuttle. The station’s lighting was dimmed for “night” and she moved through the bustle of security and custom’s quickly as there were few people around at this time.
She walked though the Zocalo and the suddenly raucous sounds coming from Earhart’s blared through her self-imposed isolation and despair. The temptation to grab a drink to numb the pain was almost too much for her to deny. Then she asked herself, why fight the urge … she wasn’t due back to transport to Minbar for a couple days.
The music engulfed her like a wave and she stepped through the doors, clamping down on her mind so as not to be inundated with all the idle prattle going on in all the patron’s minds. The last thing she wanted was to even worry about anyone else’s worries for the moment. She had enough of her own.
That Engineer found a table in the back of the bar, her uniform drawing some attention from several of the occupant’s of the bar, though not necessarily in a negative manner. She took a seat and waited patiently for the waitress to come around so she could order. When she did finally arrive, Katia ordered 3 large drinks, intending to drink herself into a stupor before finding a room and crashing until her transport arrived.
The death of a dream was not easily overcome.
(c) 1999 Tamara Friese. All rights reserved.
