"It is easy to forget that you are romulan. Sorry," Volok paused and gave Tarah an apologetic look, "To forget that you are a person. Who you are, what you are...they lose all meaning when you are isolated. It is easy to confuse insanity for sanity. Our minds naturally seek out stimulation, activities. So it creates them for you. Builds little systems for you to adhere to, things that have no true effect on your surroundings, but that make you feel a little more in control."
Tarah leaned back in her seat.
"Can I ask what systems you came up with?" She asked.
"Too many to name," Volok said with a small smile. "Sevens became very important at one point. I saw them everywhere."
"The easiest way is to give in. Allow your mind to go insane. I was tempted to." Volok frowned. "But I did not want that. I believed if I could make it through, the Tal Shiar would realize I truly was innocent and release me to my previous posting. So I recited everything I knew about medicine, and when I ran out of things I remembered, I began theorizing, and when that became dull, I practiced the defensive postures Terok and the Tal Shiar had taught me."
"It did," there was a small crack in Volok's voice, something that made him sound almost weak for a moment. He looked Tarah in the eyes. "There is no comfort in isolation. You begin to crave things you never needed before. Feeding times became my life line. I saw that food slide into my cell, I was at the crack, trying desperately to get a glimpse of feet. I dreamt of Terok, imagined him in there with me. I discussed my theories with him, my plans."
"That..." Tarah trailed off. She couldn't even begin to imagine a life without constant contact with people. Her spouses were everything, and if she could never see or touch them again, she would probably go mad. "That must have left a mark, but you seem remarkably calm."
Volok smiled again, sad and thin.
"Yes, there is a mark," Volok said, "But there is something keeping me from the edge."
Tarah blinked. Her? From anyone else, that would have been incredibly creepy. From this romulan doctor, still bound, sitting calmly across from her in his cell, it sounded...almost desperate.
"You visit often, talk with me. Remind me of who and what I am. The guards do this too, though they are less magnanimous. Still, the contact is...very welcome. I have missed contact."
A little thing I wrote after a few days of no contact from anyone. All of my characters have something about them that I am working through, or trying to find a way to deal with. Volok is how I deal with the isolation brought on by my depression and anxiety (and now this pandemic).
