Gregor Samsa, eat your heart out

[ltlbtovik]

Nora usually slept like a log. Usually being the operative word here. She frowned, still drowsy, shifting her weight against the mattress. This wasn't her bed; even semi-cognizant, she could feel that the lumps where the person usually slept were different. She opened her eyes, ready to apologize to whomever - how had she fallen asleep in someone

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[outcastprince]

Last night had been great. It had only been him and his left hand since he had first set foot on Sha'Kwai and he was too proud (and too cheap) to pay for it after that. Vulcans weren't too friendly, anyway, so to meet up with a no-nonsense, goal-oriented human girl who didn't care what he had done with people in the past...why, that was more than he could ever ask for.

And her pain had been exquisite, a plethora of old and new, shallow and deep, most of it sharp and invigorating that made his task seem so much more rewarding. You didn't get that with every person. If he were a younger, less experienced man he might find himself wanting to establish something so he could get another shot at it, but he wasn't the glutton in the family.

But then the screaming and the panicking began and Sybok wondered what he had done wrong. He propped himself up on his elbows, concerned but groggy. "Joanna? What's wrong?"

[ltlbtovik]

"Joanna?" Nora stopped to catch her breath, staring hard at Sybok. "You mean Ensign McCoy?" So that was who that weird transporter-thing had turned her into, or at least it seemed like it. She could almost feel her blood run cold. "I'm - that's not me! It can't be me...I'm Nora."

[outcastprince]

The sickening feeling in his stomach was familiar in the worst of ways. He barely remembered the last time something like this had happened in the aftermath of really good sex, mostly because the memories were only scars in his mind from a time he didn't want to remember.

Sybok sat up all the way, the sheets pooling around his waist. "It's impossible for you to be Nora," he said, more to himself, "because you look the same as you did last night, Joanna."

His eyes darted around the room, thinking, and then he stretched out a hand to her. "Let me see something."

[ltlbtovik]

"I...okay," she said, and placed a hand in his, her mind racing a mile a minute. How had this happened? Was it something in the engine, in the fuel? People did say dilithium could be unreliable, but...surely they would've caught it in time, and she hadn't transported recently. "What are you doing?"