320: To Lions: Part Three

by Keiran O'Sullivan
80611.17
Soundtrack: Two Lights by Five for Fighting

...continued from part two

-=Alternate Timeline, Eleven Years Ago=-



For the first time in the year they'd been paired as a team by TI, and the countless years of non-linear time they'd lived and worked together since and been told to try to forget, she saw tears in the eyes of the man she believed unbreakable.

"Why, God?" Keiran shouted, as he cast his eyes up toward the sky. No one was around for miles. No one with the exception of the Bajoran woman before him, could hear or question his anguished plea.

"Why can't I ever have what I need? Not even just one thing that I," he stopped, seeing that Liis had tears in her eyes now, too.

She reached up and touched his face gently as he whispered one last word of lamentation. ". . .need."

It was then Liis realized that the changes that had occurred of late hadn't just effected him, but herself as well.

Here she was, stuck in a maddening continual fight to save the life of a man she didn't even know, this Salvek the Vulcan- as well as the life of a man she had loved all of her life but who would, if she did her job right, never be able to remember her, let alone love her in return.

Why did she continue to fight?

She'd achieved no success on either front that lasted. The Universe was insistent on having the last word, and as soon as one man seemed safe, the other slipped away and she was back at the beginning, starting all over again.

She didn't know what she was fighting for any more. What was more, she didn't know why she was fighting Keiran any more.

No one had ever understood her inner conflict as he did. They lived the same life on parallel roads. They had both lost so much to the war, and so much more in the bargain to try to undo what the war had done to the course of history.

Her only remaining doubt was whether there was enough left of the man at this point to allow her to save him from himself, no matter how hard she tried.

"Need?" She echoed softly. By this point he had spun her around, her back against the tree.

He stood before her arms open in surrender, a man desperate to be understood. She had come here to try to understand, whatever that meant for them both.

"What do you need, Keiran? Can anyone really give it to you? Or is there a hole in you that no amount of love can fill?"

"Hopeless cause?" His broad shoulders fell. "I may very well be damned, Zanh Liis, for all eternity. But could Hell be worse than," he reached out to touch her face, but stopped. ". . .this?" He shuddered. "Every day you're at my side, you're right in front of me, Liis, but I can't,"

Liis lunged forward and put him out of his misery.

She knew damn well what he wanted. Whether or not he truly needed her, he did want her.

She kissed him.

Keiran pressed against her, kissing her passionately in return as the pair melted down into the meadow, and into each other.

-=0400 Hours, Current Time=-

The alarm sounded and Keiran's dream ended.

This one, like all the others, left him dazed. Wounded by the intensity of the memory of Liis in his arms, and the pain that losing her had caused him.

As he tried to open his eyes, he felt sick to his stomach. This was what Vox had feared the most in sending him here.

This was the variable that he had lied through his teeth about, swearing the memories weren't that strong.

That they weren't that clear.

The problem was, that the more he remembered of the span of time in which Zanh Liis had loved him, the more those memories became the visions that were destroying him.

How many times had he known she could love him in return, yet denied her to save her? The question tore him apart, as painful now as the memory of the time he'd given in and failed her, and she'd paid for his lack of self-control with her life.

Once again, he asked himself the same question that he asked himself every morning he awoke on the Serendipity.

*Which is the right course; holding on, or letting go?*

He answered it the same way he had every previous morning as well.

He got up, put on his uniform, and went about the business of serving as her Chief of Security, for one day more.

As he waited for the lift, he found himself unable to escape the enveloping despair which dogged him.

Liis.

Carrick.

Thoughts of each fought for supremacy in his mind, and he found himself uttering a phrase that Liis used to mumble when things got really bad during their time with TI.

"To lions."

It was a phrase she'd taken from the words of a song she used to play, over and over late at night after an especially trying time jump.

-After the jumps that ended as badly as they possibly could.

He remembered the melody first and then slowly, some of the other words to the songs came back to him.

In an especially cruel twist of fate, Keiran opened his eyes again upon hearing the lift doors part to find they revealed the face of none other than his Captain on the other side.

This older, unknowing version of the woman he had known to be Zanh Liis so many years ago. Her mere presence in a room still had the ability to render him breathless.

"Mornin', Sully." She sounded groggy, but still cheerful, in her fashion. "You're up awfully early. Share the lift?"

*Are you effing kidding me?* Keiran shuddered. He hesitated. Not wanting to seem rude, he tried to make small talk, failing miserably as he stepped into the lift at last.

"You're up early yourself. Meetings this morning?"

"I never went to bed." Liis confessed. "Destination?"

Keiran made up a destination- he didn't want her to know just yet that Salvek currently wanted his head displayed on a stake as a warning to the rest of the crew.

"You. . .really need to take better care of yourself, Captain. Without sleep, your health will surely suffer." *Pot, meet kettle,* he thought to himself. *Black.*

"Yeah, well you know what they say. We're all going to die someday, I figure I'll sleep when I'm. . .dead." Liis regarded him again for a long moment; he was definitely not himself this morning. "Keiran,"

"Please, Captain."

"What's wrong?"

He started to speak, but stopped. He very nearly told her about Carrick's disappearance, but he needed to regroup first.

He needed to call in some favors, to get people looking for the lad so he could see if he was in any real danger before he worried her with any requests for leave, or anything of the sort. He knew that as soon as she heard his son was missing, she'd offer to do whatever she could do to help. That was the kind of person she was.

As much as he hated to admit it, something in him had broken last night, and he'd pretty much given up hope that even if he found the boy, that he'd want anything to do with his father.

Carrick had made his choices, and though he was loathed to admit it to himself even more than anything else- he'd have to find his own way in life.

What troubled O'Sullivan even more, was the idea that something inside of him forbade him, even with Carrick's whereabouts unknown, to let Zanh out of his sight for long.

He'd lost all sense of anything else mattering since he'd begun to get the memories back. Nothing except the safety of Zanh Liis could truly, completely matter now.

"I'm not ready to speak of it, Sir. 'Tis. . . personal. So beggin' your pardon,"

"I'm sorry." Zanh withdrew, physically and emotionally, from the moment. This was an unaccustomed, instinctive reaction which both surprised and confused her. "I didn't mean to-"

Mercifully the doors opened, and she waited for him to depart the lift. "If I can help,"

"Thank you."

He stared at her.

"Lt. Commander?"

"Captain?"

"This is your stop, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course. I'm sorry. I. See you later, on the bridge, then. Good day to ya, Captain."

Zanh shifted uneasily, her eyes never leaving his until the doors closed between them.

*What a bloody disaster that was.* Sighing, Keiran summoned another lift. It was time to sit down with Commander Salvek; and have the talk with the Vulcan that he should have had months ago.

-----------------------
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012