Dark Spiral - Lifeline

Posted on Mon Oct 6th, 2025 @ 2:21am by Commander Rosa Coy

449 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Character Development
Location: USS Sunfire

The screen flickered, her mother’s face appearing framed in perfect lighting, scarf tied just so. She smiled in that way she always did when the conversation was about her success reflected in Rosa.

“My radiant daughter,” she purred, ignoring Rosa’s red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks. “Do you know how many people have congratulated me this week? My Rosa, the joined one. Our family will be spoken of in circles it never reached before. You’ve lifted us all.”

Rosa managed a hollow, “I’m glad,” though her stomach churned.

Her mother tilted her head, studying. “But you don’t look glad. You look… used. Have you been indulging again?” She let the word linger, as if it tasted sour. “Coy’s appetites, I assume. Another girl in another bed. That’s not the legacy I imagined for you, Rosa.”

Rosa stiffened. “You don’t get to—”

Her mother cut her off with a sharp wave of the hand. “I do get to. You carry our name, even as you carry that symbiont. People see you, and they see me. Your father. Our line. And what do they see? A Starfleet officer who squanders her nights with half-clothed girls draped across her sheets. You should want better for yourself.”

Something hot surged in Rosa’s throat. A laugh, broken and bitter, escaped before she could stop it. “Better, huh? You’ll be happy to know I just came from a man’s bed then. Is that what you want to hear, Mother? That I let some faceless man paw at me because it’s more respectable in your little fantasy of my life?”

Her mother’s eyes widened, then glistened. For a fleeting second, Rosa thought she saw pride. “Finally,” she whispered. “Finally, you’ve come to your senses. I knew Coy’s influence was… well, it was intoxicating, I’m sure, but it was never real. A man, Rosa — that is a foundation. A future.”

Her chest hollowed out. The room spun. Coy’s presence flared inside her, a whisper curling like smoke through her mind:

So that’s all we are to her. An indulgence. A distraction. Never real.

Rosa clenched her jaw, knuckles tight against the desk. “You don’t understand anything,” she spat, voice trembling.

Her mother only smiled, smug and satisfied, as though she’d won some invisible argument. “I understand perfectly. You’ll see. You just need the right man.”

The channel snapped closed before Rosa could scream. She sat in the silence, Coy’s fury mingling with her own disgust until she couldn’t tell whose tears were falling harder... hers, or the echo of Coy’s.

 

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