<USS Avalon> "How Do You Say Good-bye?"

How Do You Say Good-bye?
By Yeoman Anastaciya Sergova 


Stas?ya had been in the transporter room when the covert ops team began beaming 
back in small groups. The first time she heard the beams activate, she turned 
to the pad with anticipation. Fenner and Matthews had whisked a Romulan out the 
door. She had turned to wait again.

When the transporter was activated, she looked on in disbelief as Anna beamed 
back with John just lying there on the floor. Get up, get up, get up, she had 
whimpered over and over, the words barely crossing her lips as she pressed 
herself into the wall, making room for the medical personnel standing by. 
Please?

***

"Guess I?ll be taking your place, right hop-along?" John teased, as he walked 
her back to her quarters. 

"Not long," she smiled. "The doc fixed me up right and good. She just said stay 
off the ankle for a few days is all. There?s no way you?re getting my spot on 
Team A for good, so don?t even think about it." Stas?ya looked up into John?s 
face and smiled. He was so cute and sweet... and had such a crush on Anna... 
She knew that John only saw her as a friend, but she couldn?t help how she felt 
about him.

***

She watched as the med techs pulled the sheet over his lifeless body. She saw 
the haunted look in Anna?s eyes as they locked for just a second over the 
crowded room. Tears pooled in Stas?ya?s eyes and she didn?t even try to hide 
them. Instead, she turned and fled.

Running blindly down the corridors, Stas?ya flung herself into her quarters. 
Her room mate looked up from the book she was reading.

"Hey... what?s wrong?"

"Get out, get out, get out!" she screamed shrilly. 

It was so incredibly out of character for the always happy, chipper girl, that 
her room mate dropped her book and stared at her wide-eyed and pale-faced. 

"I said get out!!"

The desperation and utter despair in the voice caused Cassie to hurry out the 
door. It closed just as the coffee cup sitting on the table slammed into it, 
shattering into bits.

"No, no, no," Stas?ya cried as she threw herself onto the bed. "God, please, 
please if you?re listening to me just bring him back. Anything. I?ll do 
anything. I?ll never curse or lie or say anything that could ever hurt anyone," 
she sobbed over and over into the pillow. "I?ll never swear or make fun of 
anyone or..." Nothing else could come to mind as she just poured her grief out 
to God and her pillow.

***

"I like it when you smile that way," John said as he plopped down next to her 
bright and early in the holodeck. They were almost always the first two there, 
eager and ready to learn.

"Like what?" she chirped, tilting her head slightly and smiling almost shyly.

"Like you?re actually glad to see me."

"But I am. You?re the only other person around here that never gets grumpy," 
she laughed.

***

Not knowing how much later, she moved from her prone state, curling up into a 
little ball around the stuffed tiger John had given her when she had been hurt 
during that training exercise. It was nothing really, but it was something she 
had left.

"Please..." she whimpered once again, beginning the tears anew. There was no 
possible way to describe the pain, the ache she felt gaping in her chest and 
stomach.

Her room mate came back after a while, tentatively stepping into the room. 
"Stas...?" she asked quietly. The girl huddled in her bunk said nothing as 
tears still streamed down her cheeks and her lower lip quivered.

Cassie sat on the bed next to her and pushed the hair out of Stas?ya?s eyes. "I 
heard," Cassie whispered. "I?m so sorry."

"I never told him," she whimpered, pulling the stuffed animal closer, burying 
her nose in it?s soft fur. "I never told him how I thought he was the best... 
the sweetest... the... everything." Small sobs choked off anything else she 
wanted to say.

"I know," Cassie said soothingly. "I know." Cassie sat and held her hand until 
her tears subsided for the moment.



It was a very long time before either of them spoke, but Anastaciya managed to 
whisper, "I just don?t know how to say good-bye." 


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