by Keiran O'Sullivan
80612.18
. . .Continued
80612.18
. . .Continued
"I can't, Keiran," She blinked quickly to try to disperse the tears pooling in her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's not that I don't," She stopped.
She knew that words were a hollow consolation prize, salt on the wound of the man who was to her what the Native American people of Earth once referred to as being a woman's 'second warrior'. They both knew that though she did love him in her way, he would always live in the long, dark shadow cast by another.
Keiran would have to find a way to accept, somehow; that no matter what was said or done, the core of her would always, always belong to Jariel Camen.
His eyes glistened in the light as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close for the last time.
"Don't ever forget, Zanh Liis. If you remember nothing else about me at all, that I love you more than you'll ever know."
With that, Keiran told the lift to resume travel and once it reached its destination, instead of letting Liis step out of it, he blocked her path.
"Hey," She tried angrily to push his arm away.
"I'll contact you as soon as I'm back from my next jump, with my new partner," he promised, then he told the lift to descend to ground level without stopping, adding a security authorization to the order to ensure that it would.
Angrily, Liis wiped away tears as the doors to the lift locked her in.
"Don't bother."
-=One Month Later=-
He ran into the medical bay, out of breath as he skid to a stop in front of the medical officer on duty.
"Zanh Liis?" He plead, and the doctor's expression became one of sadness.
"Are you next of kin?" She asked, "I'm only allowed to show the body to,"
"Zanh Liis." Keiran's voice dropped in pitch and volume. "Now."
Jonas Vox, who had been following behind O'Sullivan's impossibly long strides and lost the battle, caught up at last and intervened.
"It's all right, Maria. Let him see her."
"Are you certain?" She looked at back at Keiran, and then at Vox again. "Should I have security stand by?"
"That isn't necessary." Vox assured her softly. "He has to see, or he won't ever believe me."
The woman moved toward a wall of stasis chambers, and she punched the access code into the panel beside the third unit, second row from the top.
The shelf slid out, and as soon as he saw her lying there still and blue, Keiran's ability to breathe deserted him.
He turned away, leaning against the wall for support.
"Satisfied?" Vox voice was accusatory, and his question had nothing to do with any curiosity as to whether Keiran might now accept the fact that Zanh Liis was dead.
He meant it to ask if Keiran was happy with the outcome of his stubborn insistence on breaking the rules. Rules that existed for a reason.
In Vox eyes, O'Sullivan's lack of discretion and self-control was the reason he'd been removed as the senior partner of their team. After that, they were both reassigned.
Liis was assigned to a less experienced operative, and that inexperience was the reason she was now lying lifeless on a shelf in the morgue.
"A moment." O'Sullivan asked, his tone void of the rage Vox had steeled himself for.
"You of all people have no right."
"A moment!" Keiran's voice rose and finally, Vox relented.
"Two minutes." Vox warned, and he and the doctor stepped out, leaving Keiran alone and staring, wide-eyed and helpless at his worst nightmare.
He reached out and touched her skin. Finding it cold and rigid, he recoiled.
This was not the way he wanted to remember her.
"Feed my heart to the lions, Zanh Liis," he whispered, the words catching in his throat as he repeated the phrase she'd used more than once in times of greatest sorrow. "I'll never again have any proper use for it."
He backed toward the door, knowing that the only way he could ever get this horrific vision of her out of his head was if he could make things right. He would make it right, if it killed him.
In this moment he was more than willing to die in her place, and only wished it was so easy that he could simply wake her, and lay down on the table instead.
"This isn't the end for you. I swear it."
-=Current Time: Office of the XO=-
"So you expect me to believe that the familiarity I have observed in you with regard to the Captain has to do with the fact that the two of you were lovers in an alternate timeline."
"To put it simply, and crudely if you must. Yes."
"I do not believe you." Salvek stated flatly, folding his hands against he top of his desk. "Zanh Liis has told me herself on many occasions that her sole purpose in taking the assignment with Temporal Investigations was to save Vedek Jariel's life. Why would she be involved, at any point in time, with anyone else?"
"You mean to tell me that your Vulcan logic will not let you consider the possibility that variances in the proper timeline occur? Come now, Salvek. You know that mistakes are often made down the line as a result of actions taken to fix previous mistakes. For a man whose wife was taken and then restored and whose own child has been brought into this very timeline by heroic acts of,"
Salvek leapt from his chair and charged beyond the desk, nearly grabbing O'Sullivan by the shirt. "Do not speak of things of which you have no understanding."
There was perceptible panic in Salvek's tone, and O'Sullivan placed a hand on his shoulder instead of backing away or mirroring his aggressive posture.
"I have as much line jumping experience as Liis does. More, actually. And I know when a story does not add up. Arie's story does not add up, Salvek, unless you factor in the possibility that she was born in another timeline then brought here to be raised by you. Then she makes perfect sense. Please know that you've nothin' to fear from me in this, if anything you should consider my knowledge of the situation to be a blessin' to ya. Arie must be protected. Forewarned is forearmed."
Salvek turned and moved to the window, staring out.
"Consider this for me, Commander. What if the biggest mistake I ever made in my life was personally corrupting the timeline? What if my selfish desire to have something. . .someone, that was never meant to belong to me set into action a series of events that I couldn't stop?"
Salvek was silent, considering the man's words carefully.
"What if you had to give up everything to go back, to make another jump and correct it. Events so damaging to you personally and physically that you were warned you'd never fully recover, if you survived at all. That is what I was willing to do, and what I did, to make things right."
"You should not be able to remember these events if they truly did take place." Salvek turned back toward Keiran. "Your memory engrams should have been erased."
Keiran laughed bitterly. "You don't say. Do you think I'd walk around with these memories if I had a choice in the matter?" He moved toward the window and, standing beside Salvek, stared beyond it to the streaking stars outside.
"It's not that the resequencing doesn't work," he explained, "it's that it stops working. That's why there are lines that Liis doesn't remember. Her resequencing stopped working at a different point in time than mine. When it worked properly, it returned her to a certain pre-determined set point. Each agent has one. The set point includes the memories of the people, or reasons, which prompted them to join TI to begin with, or remain in service. This is the twist that Liis is, as yet, still unaware of."
"In order to assure the loyalty of the operative."
Keiran nodded.
"That is. . ."
"Sick. Insidious." Keiran shrugged. "Necessary. Do you think anyone would ever stay with the job if they didn't have such motivation? Take my word for it, Commander, no one is that foolish."
"The Captain's 'set point',"
"Is Vedek Jariel," Keiran looked down to the deck beneath his perfectly polished boots. "Mine is Zanh Liis."
"And this is the only variation in the lines you recall in which you two were. . ."
"Where our feelings were. . .consummated? Yes. But," Keiran paused, "Lately, I have had the feeling there may be at least one other. At this point, I can't be certain."
*Wonderful.* Salvek thought, momentarily giving in to the sarcasm he was so used to hearing from his wife.
The men stood in silence for several minutes, lost. One in contemplation, one in mourning.
"You have given me much to consider," Salvek said, looking up at last. "I would like some time to ponder it all. Then I would like to speak with you again."
"At any time convenient for you, Sir. May I go?"
"Yes."
O'Sullivan paused as he stepped toward the door. "Commander,"
Salvek's eyes met his.
"She can never know."
Those four words, heavy with sadness, conveyed the kind of warning only a man with hard-won experience could sound.
"If she does?"
"It could corrupt the line beyond redemption."
---------------------------------
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Tormented former TI Agent
and Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Tormented former TI Agent
and Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012