80615.19
Late Afternoon, the same day as If the Captain Ain't Happy. . .
-=Holodeck Two=-
THUMP THUMP
The sound of his fists striking the heavy bag reverberated throughout the holographic gym. The room was dimly light and dusky. The smell of old gym socks and leather permeated throughout the simulation of the 20th century boxing gym. Dust particles floated in the air highlighted by the yellowish streaks of light the filtered through the high and dirty skylights.
TC danced and ducked hopping lightly on the balls of his feet and moved side to side of the bag.
THUMP THUMP THUMP
He made three more rapid strikes two high and one low on the bag. He then suddenly stuck the bag from the side with a rapid knee strike that would have caved an opponents ribs into their lungs.
He had been at his workout for just short of a half hour. With each strike on the bag the shock flung sweat off of his body. The temperature was hot in the gym, well over eighty degrees, but that is how he liked it.
Normally he would have other holographic boxers and trainers in the gym going about their routines to add a sense of realism to the environment. Plus they provided a ready crop of opponents to spar against. But today he wanted it quiet to help him think about things.
Something was going on with several of the senior staff. The captain seemed stressed, or at the very least overtired. But that was not what bothered him. He had seen her stay awake for days on end when needed and still keep her wits about her, But today she seemed, lost, out of place. Her mind was not on the bridge and she was far shorter emotionally than normal.
THUMP THUMP
Even that did not bother him to much, her interaction with the ships chief of security and the reaction of the ships first officer where what concerned him more. Salvek was a great many things, a man with great skills, knowledge, and logic. But a good liar he was not.
"You can't bullshit a bullshitter." He muttered as he popped the bag with another punch followed by a fast elbow.
As he stopped to take a sip of fortified water before continuing his work out, the computer told Blane that someone was requesting permission to enter the program.
"Who wants in?" Blane asked.
^Lieutenant Commander Keiran O'Sullivan.^
*Interesting,* Blane thought. He wanted a chance to observe the man to see if he could begin to discern what was going on, since Salvek wasn't talking about it and Zanh Liis wasn't talking to anyone about anything.
"Arch." TC replied, instructing the computer in this manner to let O'Sullivan in. He dabbed sweat away from his brow, putting the towel over his massive shoulders afterward as he waited for O'Sullivan to appear.
Keiran was wearing a standard Starfleet issue workout suit, and he unzipped the jacket and tossed it aside as he approached Blane. "Sorry to disturb you during your workout, Commander. But I was wonderin' if I might take a jab or two at the bag myself, if you don't mind." *I need to pound something,* Keiran thought. *Into a bloody pulp.*
TC nodded. “Anything for our resident chief of security.” He took another swig of water. “I could use a break anyway. I’ll hold for you.”
Keiran nodded as TC tossed the water bottle and towel to the side and moved to the back of the heavy bag to hold it steady and to apply opposing force. The resistance would give the chief a far more solid target to hit and a better workout.
“Ready when you are.” TC called out.
*Lets see what you’ve got.* TC thought.
Keiran unleashed a volley of rapid-fire punches. He was an enormous man, seemingly as broad as he was tall, but Blane was no lightweight either, and held the bag steady as O'Sullivan continued to vent clearly obvious frustration.
When the assault finally subsided for a moment, leaving O'Sullivan sweaty and chasing his breathTC released the bag and looked up at him.
"You seem to be a man with a lot on your mind."
O'Sullivan's steely eyes didn't waver or change.
"I know we haven't gotten a chance to work that closely together since you've come aboard the Sera, but," TC stepped back and took another swig of his water. "I worked in Security for years. Also, you very well know my history with Spec Ops."
"Your point, Commander?" Keiran asked, raw nerves causing him to misread Blane's words as the introduction to an interrogation.
"Just that I know how to keep my mouth shut," Blane replied, shrugging. He moved over to a set of weights across the room and began adding more pounds to the bar before preparing to lift.
Keiran considered this offer carefully. He'd kept himself so bottled up since coming aboard, he hadn't really had a chance to find a peer whom he could talk to when things weighed upon his mind. Salvek was out of the question for obvious reasons, and while his first instinct based upon past experience told him that he could always talk to Liis, he knew that in this situation that was an option that was out of the question.
Perhaps. . .
"Ever feel like the past is breathing down your neck, Commander?" O'Sullivan asked at last, as he slumped down onto a bench and ran his hands through his spiky hair. "Like you look up from the darkness and realize the light you see ahead is the engine of an oncoming train?"
TC stopped putting the weights onto the bar as he thought back to the things he had done with Spec Ops as well as in defense of his friends and shipmates and how it did indeed come back to bite him in the ass. He moved to sit on the bench and faced Keiran. The funny thing about the large man's question was that TC honestly did not think about it all that often. TC lived his life with mostly a clear conscience about his past.
“I’m living proof of how the past can surge forward to snag you.” He said at last. “But if your asking if I dwell on the fact that my past is not spotless. Then the answer would be no. Sure I am well aware of it, but it is gone and by. The future is tomorrow and out of my hands until it get here. That is what make today so important and special.” He reached down and grabbed his water bottle, taking another swig. “That is what it is named present, because it is.”
TC stared at the man seated across from him. “Anything I can do to help?” He asked bluntly.
*What if time was not linear to you and you weren't even sure anymore what was future and what was past?* Keiran thought, but of course he could not say the words aloud.
"I don't think anyone can help with the actual situation I'm facing," he tilted his water bottle slowly from side to side, fixing his eyes on the liquid as it sloshed back and forth inside the container with the gentle to and fro motion of his hand. "Have you ever had something you really wanted just exceed your grasp, Blane? Something so close that you knew you could reach it if you truly tried? Yet, because of all the other factors in play you knew you just had to choke on it, and keep your hands behind your back?"
"Wasn't it Browning who said that a man's reach should exceed his grasp?"
"Ah, 'or what's a heaven for'. . ." O'Sullivan knew the quote, all too well. "Maybe that is what heaven is for. But sometimes, it feels like the striving is a one way ticket to the opposite location."
TC was not sure where this was all going. What he was sure of was the man’s past had returned to bite him in the ass somehow. He had lost something, or had given it up long ago, but he did not have a choice. Now, the regret had caught up to him.
“Was it worth it?” TC asked suddenly.
Keiran continued to look at his bottle of water. “What?”
“Whatever you walked away from?” TC stared at him with his icy blues eyes. “Either it was a woman or a child. A man does not come apart at the seams for anything else.”
"The child was taken from me, and I have done nothing but try to get back to him ever since," Keiran said, though the fact remained that Maggie's keeping Carrick from him all these years was considered by him to be his most bitter failure. "I'm still trying." He set the water bottle down and finally looked TC full in the face.
"And the woman?"
"I have never walked away from her yet, even when it would have saved my sanity, perhaps, to do so. The question I am faced with now, is whether or not it would be best for me to walk away today. For her sake. Or whether it's safer for her if I remain where I am, and find a way to keep from her," he stopped."
Suddenly, a spark ignited in Blane's mind, setting alight a firestorm of memories. Comments O'Sullivan had made in passing...observations Blane had made about O'Sullivan since the man had come aboard. Things which, in and of themselves at the time seemed innocent enough now struck TC with what they full force of what they truly meant.
"You're talking about the Captain," TC glared at the Chief, thinking suddenly this man may pose a threat to Zanh Liis' well being, he just wasn't entirely certain how. "Aren't you?"
Keiran didn't answer. He simply jumped up from the bench and moved toward the exit.
“Stand fast O’Sullivan.” TC said as he rose from the bench. “We’re not done here.” His tone suddenly changed from an easy listening compatriot to one akin to a drill sergeant.
Keiran's hackles rose. He didn't take kindly to a man taking that tone with him- especially a much younger one. He had to keep in mind, however, that the man in question was the ship's second officer and a full rank above him.
Blane made it sound so simple; in his eyes there was the past, the present and the future. Two of those he could do nothing about. It was a perspective that made sense to everyone. Everyone, except those used to traversing spans of time -often in the opposite direction- from the future, skipping the present and returning to the past. He stopped himself from making the first rather rude suggestion he had for Blane, and asked a question of the man instead.
"Are you accusin' me of somethin', Commander?"
"Nothing of the kind. You should just know that I take my loyalty to my Captain very seriously," TC advised. "If anyone were to bring any harm to her," he let the statement hang, he needed to add nothing to it to get his point across.
"That is the one thing you need never worry about, Commander Blane," Keiran assured him, as he picked up his jacket and called for the arch. His retreating steps activated the exit, exposing the Sera's corridors beyond. "I'd sooner die by my own hand than ever harm a hair on the head of Zanh Liis."
Commander TC Blane
Second Officer/Chief of Operations
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012