She felt like everything itched. Like her skin was too tight, or her clothes. Confining, limiting, irritating. Something hovered over her, looming with omnipresent pressure that fed her anxiety with never a moment of peace.
Every day, Orah had to push it down, bottle it up in the back of her head, to get to any sort of state where she could still function. And she had to function. Work would not get done without her, her patrols would not do themselves, bills still needed paid, apartment cleaned and cat fed. No one else would do those things for her. Taking a break was wasted time, time that was already over due to expire. She should have died to this war a year ago, two years ago. She had died, once. She never should have made it this far, barely scraping by year after year, scar after scar creating a map over her skin. A map to all of her trauma, all of the punishment she'd suffered through, for what?
Ida stood on her asteroid and stared at the browned, withered leaves as the pressure inside of her, outside of her, all around her increased, making her heart beat a rapid pattern in her chest and her head ache. It was like fall had come to Ida-of-perpetual-spring. The trees had lost their color, faded and dried out like the time just before the first snow fall. It would have been normal anywhere else, and for all she knew, it was normal here to only have a fall or winter every ten years. How was she supposed to know? Her planet had been dead when she arrived, and it took years for it to recover. Maybe the trauma had delayed the cycle, maybe a planet that wasn't Earth had different cycles. Maybe she was making excuses because right now, the thought of adding a problem the size of a world to all of her others was enough to call a panic attack.
She hadn't brought herself here, but somehow, between leaving the hospital and never arriving home, she'd stepped off the sidewalk and into the dry, rustling grasses of Ida. She didn't want to think of her planet pulling her about like a toy on a string, but the evidence was hard to dispute. As if she didn't have enough to deal with already. As if she wasn't already drowning under the weight of responsibility in a sea of other's apathy. A leaf off one of the trees crackled as she rubbed it between her fingers, breaking it into dusty, papery bits. The garden was starting to look a bit wilted... what parts of it had managed to recover after the Blight had been destroyed. Ida had thought that was a sign the plague was finally eradicated, but maybe she'd missed some part of it. Maybe a tiny seed had hidden itself, waiting for her to relax and lower her guard. Now she'd have to spend hours of her precious time searching the asteroid for it. Time she couldn't take from work or from patrols, which meant it would have to come from her free time, and her sleep time. Another late night, another morning waking up tired and on-edge.
Sara at the hospital had commented on it.
"You work awfully hard, Orah. When was the last time you took some time off?" She'd asked. Orah had said something noncommittal and hurried off to other tasks. It wasn't any of Sara's business, honestly. They were barely work friends, bonding over stories of younger brothers. They ate lunch together when they could, but what did that matter? They still went home separately at the end of the day. Sara to her husband and two kids. Orah to a dark and empty apartment.
All this power at her finger tips now, and what did it even matter? Her apartment was still dark, still empty. She still had to cook her own singular meals, clean up a home no one else ever saw. Sleep in a cold bed by herself. No one really cared, Ida had to admit to herself. She didn't know why she let that bother her so much. No one had ever really cared, save for a few precious moments that hadn't lasted. Sara wouldn't have even noticed, if she'd been a little more careful to cover the dark circles under her eyes. People only cared when you didn't present a perfect public face. All they wanted to see was you smiling like everything was perfect. That's all that mattered to them, in the end. The image.
The search wasn't going to conduct itself, and the sooner she got home the sooner she could fall into bed and the oblivion that waited there. A blessed moment of non-existance. Not restful, not refreshing, but at least while she was unconscious she couldn't feel the anxiety any more. Ida dropped the leaf and brushed her hands off on her skirt, leaving greasy, dusty marks. She had a Responsibility, and if she didn't take care of it, no one else was going to.
She just wished that thought wasn't starting to be tinged with desperation.
Word count: 863
