The Pain Without The Fall

Posted on Wed Jun 24th, 2026 @ 8:57pm by Lieutenant Jennifer Richardson M.D.
Edited on on Wed Jun 24th, 2026 @ 9:20pm

933 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Preamble
Location: USS Venture: Chief Counsellor's Quarters

Text books taught that in some ways grief was simple to understand. You go through five different stages that aren't linear in the form that they take but are the basics of what a person who feels emotions feel.

Denial.

Anger.

Bargaining.

Depression.

Acceptance.

Five words repeated through counselling; by friends, family, therapists and colleagues. The words were relatively used to give Jennifer some sembelance of meaning to how she was feeling each second that she drew breath and each waking moment she had to push through to see the next day.

Words used when her emotions flucated or her thoughts mixed, mashed and collided in turbulence as she tried to continuing living; when everything in her world had changed.

Five words she herself used with patients when she had to take their hand and help them through their own grief.

What nobody could ever prepare, nor protect, you from; was the moments in which you felt like your feet were falling out from under you. When the barrel of emotion hit you full on in your chest and you felt like you can't breathe. When it happens at the point that you least expect it...having dinner with friends and something about the moment triggers a memory. A birthday, an anniversary. Or just a day in which you look to the stars outside and you realize how much you miss that presence beside you.

Or when you sit opposite a friend and hear the truths that had not been told to you before. Truths that sent you into a spiral where you felt like your back at that very first day; when that very same person looked you in the eyes and changed your world forever by telling you that David wasn't coming back. He was dead.

Curling her legs further under her; Jennifer just looked to the space outside. The darkness lit by the piercing stars but it was the darkness that held her attention; almost echoing the battle inside.

David had had a choice...save somebody or save himself.

How could she hate him...his life was spent saving others; wasn't that why she the Doctor and he the combatant got on so well? They shared that mutual belief in the lives that others deserve.

But at the same time how could she not hate him? All they plans that they'd been making, the dreams that had been knitted together...in one single moment in time he'd erased the lot and let her behind.

The children they had laughed about...a little boy with green eyes like his Dad, a little girl with the empathy of her mother. Growing old in eachother arms while watching their grandchildren from the porch.

None of that was possible now because of a split single decision. How she could be anything other than mad? Furious?

It was all meant to happen in time...time that was mapped out on their horizon.

Why couldn't he have just come home? Even injured...they'd been through it before. They would have rebuilt and stepped forward again but they would still have had each other.

Why did David have to die?

Even as the words repeated in her head again, Jennifer's hand tightened in the material on her lap...Sudis' shirt from earlier. The piece of clothing a reminder of not just the hours before; but a reminder to why David had had to die...he had to die to save the lives of others. To save the life of the man who dropped into her world and for the second time in months; turned it all upside down again.

Was it faith as the Bajorian prophets would have you believe? Even when her and David had met all those years ago, was their relationship predestined to end this way? Were they only ever meant to have that short time together?

Was she always destined to love one, and...what...love the other?

That seemed silly at this very moment.

Jennifer loved David. Even in passing that love had never changed. Her husband had died but her feelings within never did. With each day she moved forward, with each hard breathe that she took; it had been that love that got her through. The memory of knowing it was real; what they'd had had been real. A love to be cherished and embraced and remembered.

But what did that mean for Sudis?

Jennifer looked down at the shirt in her hands; the material slightly damp from the tears that had fallen without her even realizing.

What would it mean to let somebody else in to that place that shed given before to David? What would it mean to share herself with somebody else, to place herself back in the hands of another and trust what path came for them next?

Would it mean leaving David behind? Diminishing all that they'd had together? Would David be happy for her? Would he be mad at her for some part of her wanting to move on?

The last question startled her a little, causing a sensation of pain in her abdomen as Jennifer's breath caught. Did she want to move on?

Last night had given a glimpse to what might be possible. To feel like a person again...to feel like a woman again. To laugh instead of cry. A lightness instead of a burden. To live instead of just going through the motions.

Above all else; she couldn't deny something had shifted. For the first time in so long, tomorrow didn't feel like something she had to strive to survive.

 

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