Title: Dreaming (#11, The Drabble Bin)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Character: Joanna
Summary: Comment!fic based on this pic prompt at jim_and_bones and norfolkdumpling‘s remark about an apocalyptic vibe.
Previous Drabbles: The Old Four | Those Neighborhood Hoodlums | Trapped | A Cage of His Own | Of Perky Starfleet Bottoms | An Hour Past | War of the Bots | The Best Substitute | Surprise Meeting | Little Help

The summer season had turned to winter since the clouds of dust and debris took over the sky. Joanna knew the sun still existed and their little planet continued to orbit it but, being unable to see or feel anything beyond darkness and cold, she often imagined the rest of the universe had lost its light right along with them.

But that was a silly girl’s thinking, an inner voice would say afterwards. Space and all of the life in it had moved on. Only they were stuck behind this veil, as if the planet had been exiled for its folly.

When her father came home with the night’s dinner, she said, “Why can’t we leave this place?”

“Where would we go, poppet?” he asked in return, peeling off two scarves and the patchwork overcoat she had sewn for him from the fabric materials they had bartered for weeks ago. His face and hands were reddened and dry from his excursion. So were hers, despite that she had stayed behind. Most days, her skin felt as though it would split apart like old leather; at the joints and around the soft tissue of her mouth sometimes it did.

“Away,” she said. “To the stars.”

His shoulders sagged like always when she spoke of escape. Wordlessly, he opened the flap of his satchel and laid a package of frozen meat on the small table between them. At least they could still make fire to cook with, though some people thought it was too dangerous because the smoke had nowhere to go. The atmosphere is ruined already, they said. One day we will have sucked up all the oxygen and will drown standing up.

That’s foolish talk, her father had told her. Just bitter people being bitter. Bitterness didn’t help them survive any better than hope.

Secretly she thought they were right. In school, an experience which now felt like it was make-believe, she had learned that plants made the oxygen for them to breathe. The trees and flowers were dying everywhere she looked, falling to rot at the wayside of the rest of the carnage that had been a civilization in its prime. Someday, even if it was a long, long time from now, no one would be able to live on Earth. It would be like the moon or Mars or the vacuum of space itself.

No one would want to come here at all.

As if her father could sense her thoughts, he said sharply, “Light the kindling.”

She did, carefully watching for stray sparks. What little they had they couldn’t afford to lose. A burning building might warm their very bones and light up the world so she could see all of the little details she’d forgotten but the aftermath would be just as devastating as the day the bombs took their house.

“…and Grandma’s farm and the park and the gas stations and Daddy’s hospital,” she murmured under her breath. It was a game she played, trying to remember all of the places that she could. Her dreams were vivid enough that she could hear the crinkle of a candy bar wrapper and feel the seat of a car under her hands. Sometimes she thought she smelled things too, like the detergent her father used to buy or the heavy perfume of the next door neighbor who often babysat Joanna after school. She remembered too how the old lady scolded, “Little girls shouldn’t spoil their appetites before dinner.”

The taste had gone out of the world, though. It was all grey ash and cardboard to her tongue. That was the chemicals of the bombs, her father said. They were invisible but seeped into everything. Spoiled everything.

As the meat cooked in the little pan they’d salvaged from somewhere (Joanna couldn’t even remember all the places they’ve walked, the broken things she has seen), her father sat next to her and tucked her close to his side. It was important to share body heat when it was so cold, she understood that, but really Joanna just liked knowing he was there. She turned her face into the rough fabric of the jacket he always had on, the one he had been wearing the day the sun shone for the last time. A hand stroked her hair.

“Can’t we go away?” she asked again, plaintively.

“I wish so, Jo,” he said.

She waited for the rest.

“But there are no more stars.” His voice was sad.

For a lot of people, Joanna knew, the darkness took away more than colors, brightness, and the warmth they were used to. It stole the ability to dream. She hugged her father more tightly and promised herself she would dream for the both of them, no matter how difficult that kind of dreaming became.

The Tower

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