SIM:MacKenna How She Came to Be

((Earth, 15 Months Ago))

The last rays of the sun shattered the oncoming shade in a final attempt to remain relevant despite the coming darkness. The bite of the cool night winds cut through her. All around her, the sounds of her childhood rose to meet her in the twilight moments between day and night, yet her heart shook at the view.

On the horizon, the smoke still rose from the structure, though it no longer smoldered. A tendril of grey against an ever darkening sky was the last reminder that tragedy had come to visit, and had required penance. For what, she would never know. She would just know that in an instant, everything she’d known was gone.

In that moment, the red-headed girl with the porcelain skin, who had never truly known loss of this magnitude, suddenly felt what it was to be alone.

There was a pain that rose deep within, as if demonic, scratching and scraping, dying to get out. With every step, the pain grew as it worked to fill in every empty space left by that which had been taken away. Little by little it pulled her down until she could no longer stand. And that was there they would find her days later.

Alone. Cold. Nearly catatonic.

Having collapsed from the pain, she had fallen into the tall grass of the hillside with her face towards the stars. Tears had come, the pain took what it thought it deserved, racking her with cries that had disseminated out into the night and had fallen on no ears but those of the trees and the moon herself as she hung in the air a mere sliver of a crescent, as if she had lost something too. The daylight had come, bringing with it a kind of sleep in which Ash increasingly knew less about whatever was going on around her as the minutes ticked by.

It was on that third day that the illusion of hoofbeats in the distance spurred her to move. Weak, and lacking both the energy and the will knowing the truth, it was all she could do to turn her head towards the sound. The shadows came, followed by the voices, and not long after, the all-to-familiar feel of the transporter beam.

Through it all, Ash felt nothing. She had given up.

((Earth Spacedock, 12 Months Ago))

Ash rubbed the surgical alteration of her nose. The Bajoran ridges were far from comfortable, as was the jewelry she would have to wear. With everything she’d been given from her new bosses in the Intelligence department, she took one last look at Federation tech and started moving towards the small ship that would take her to the abandoned Cardassian station that would be her home for the foreseeable future.

She had no idea that her decision to hang on and don the black collar would change her life’s path forever…

--

Commander Ash MacKenna
Intelligence Officer
USS Eagle
R238605KN0