499: Say Your Prayers

by Carrick O'Sullivan
80901.18
Concurrent with Once Upon a Time
Soundtrack: Marble Halls, by Enya

-=Hematology Department at "The Farm":
A classified scientific research facility on Klaestron IV=-

-=Flashback: Current Timeline: Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland: 2375=-



The woman's soft, clear voice comforted the little boy as she rocked him in her arms.


She stopped singing, brushed his hair back out of his eyes and released her hold on him, settling him back down into his pillow. She pulled the quilt up tighter around him, tucking in the edges beneath the mattress. Autumn was in the air, and it had brought the first chill of the season along with it tonight.

"Sing it one more time, Ma? Please?" Carrick was small, and his voice seemed even smaller.

"Not tonight, Carrick. Go to sleep. First day of school school tomorrow, don't want to fall asleep in Sister Mary Aine's class do ye now?"

"No, Ma," Carrick yawned slowly. His mother placed a kiss upon his forehead, and her dark curls brushed against his cheek. They were so soft, and smelled like flowers... "Ma,"

"Aye, boy, what is it?"

"What do I say about Da if Sister asks me?" Though only four, Carrick was a very thoughtful and intelligent child, and the thought that all of the other children would likely have sets of parents and he would only have one made him feel like he wouldn't belong before he ever walked into the classroom.

Margaret Mary O'Sullivan's pretty face hardened, and twisted into a cold caricature of the appearance that Carrick had been used to for so long.

Until the day that she'd packed their bags and told him they had to go, and that they wouldn't ever be seeing his father again, if she could help it.

"Tell them he never came back from the war," she instructed, feeling completely justified in substituting this lie for the truth. "Because his heart never did, Carrick. He doesn't love us anymore, and we have to go on with our lives now. Without him."

"I miss him," Carrick blurted, immediately regretting it as deeply as a small child can regret anything.

"You'll get over it."

Carrick couldn't understand how the same mother who could be so warm and sweet one moment could become so angry, so quickly, if he dared to bring up the subject of his father.

Rising from the bed, she threw her shawl over her shoulders again and hurried toward the door. "You'll forget about him soon enough."

She turned out the lights and offered him one more stern admonition after tersely mumbling that she loved him.

"Say your prayers, lad, to your Guardian Angel and the Holy Mother tonight."

Obediently, as his heavy eyelids slid shut, Carrick whispered the words as close to correctly as his childish tongue could manage.

"Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom His love entrusts me here," His words slowed as he fell closer toward sleep, still wondering what it was he'd done to make his father stop loving him.

He wished he could ask that question of God tonight instead of saying his usual prayers.

"...ever this night be at my side to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen."

-=End Flashback=-


Carrick O'Sullivan tried to focus as he drifted once again toward consciousness. He didn't know how long he'd been here, but he was certain it had been a very long time.

With great despair, he discovered that he was still strapped to a cold, metal table.

His head ached, his body drained of all strength as he fought the urge to simply succumb to the darkness again and attempted to open his eyes.

He tried to determine what was on either side of him, but his head was strapped down as tightly as his arms and legs, preventing side to side movement of any kind.

He heard the sound of rustling and a low groan nearby, and he knew that someone else was here, and likely in the same condition that he was.

What the hell had happened?

The last thing he remembered clearly was the hiss of the anesthazine gas being released into the cargo bay, and sinking to his knees, unable to fight its effects. His heart began to race as he heard the sound of some sort of alarm ringing nearby, and with a shallow and haunting last gasp, the person who had been moaning beside him ceased making any noise at all.

He heard a flurry of footsteps, and then the sound of voices. He couldn't understand them clearly, everything was muffled. He attempted to lick his lips, but his tongue was devoid of moisture with which to soothe his cracking mouth.

He heard the sound of wheels against a floor and then a soft, female voice. "You keep waking up. You're not supposed to be doing that."

The young medical technician, only seen as a blur of white to Carrick, stood over him and looked at him. She had seen many young Terran males come through the facility in the past three months since she'd been assigned here, but none who looked like this one.

She had been unable to keep herself from looking at him every time she was working nearby, wondering what he'd look like if he opened his eyes.

If he spoke.

If he smiled.

Carrick groaned, and she leaned down, closer. "Shh. Don't let them hear you or they'll make me sedate you again," She didn't understand why this subject, number 71282 had been kept here for so long. Usually it was a day or two in the DNA retrieval labs, and then they were transferred elsewhere.

What happened to them after they left, she didn't know. She only knew that a lot of good was being done here, with all the volunteers coming in to donate their DNA to the research being done in this location.

Atien Rindir had also begun wishing, for the first time since she'd started working here, that getting to know the volunteers or even talking to them, wasn't against the rules.

She had risked termination of her job by breaking that rule several times in the days since this male had come in, and she had to be careful she didn't get caught.

She watched sadly as her supervisor and his team rolled out the cot that had contained volunteer 71283, who, for some reason sadly had not survived the blood filtering and withdrawal process, known simply and crudely here as "the drain."

She checked 71282's vital signs again and was relieved to see that though he must be feeling weak, his body seemed to be tolerating the stress of the procedure well.

"It's such a noble thing you're doing," she whispered, remembering to use her Standard skills this time. Carrick opened his eyes again in surprise now, as he found that he could understand her this time when she spoke.

*Noble thing? What the bloody hell is she...* he wondered. He tried to open his mouth to speak but she nervously stopped him.

"You can't talk to me. I don't want to get in trouble." She sadly turned up the dial on the sedative IV attached to Carrick's left arm, and he began to feel woozy instantly. "You must be sore from lying still so long. I promise as soon as you're sleeping again I'll untie you and do the therapy exercises on your arms and legs. You should be moving on from here very soon. Maybe even going home." She promised brightly, for that was what she was told happened to the volunteers after they were finished here.

They all went home.

In preparation for stretching his arms and legs, Atien unsecured his head from its restraining strap. She turned away to check the settings on another machine, Carrick used the last of his conscious strength to lift his head from the table, and was horrified to see that a large plastic tube seemed to literally be draining the blood from his body, and sending some through a machine with a large spinning apparatus on the front, and then diverting some through another line to a sealed canister of some kind.

He felt sick as he realized why it was he felt so weak; the lifeblood was literally being emptied out of his body.

He closed his eyes again as the woman, clearly of Klaestron descent as she had the tell-tale ridge along the sides of her head and high hairline drawn far back from her forehead, turned around to continue working on him.

Carrick had never seen a Klaestron in person before but he was certain that was what she was.

As he lost his battle with unconsciousness, he could only ask himself how the hell he had ever ended up here.

In the depths of his subconscious mind, the sound of two voices clearly overlapped and echoed in his ears; the sound of his mother's voice singing her lullaby, and the sound of his father's reading him a story at bedtime he could barely recall. Something about a King, and a horse...

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Carrick missed, dearly missed, both of his parents.

It was only now that he understood just how much that part of him that was still a little boy had held out hope that if he ever really got into trouble, that his father would sweep in and save him...like a knight on a tall white steed.

He asked himself again the question that had haunted him every day since he was so small. What had he done that was bad enough to make his father stop loving him?

*No one knows where I am,* he thought, resigning himself to the dark fate he was sure he was facing. *No one knows I'm in trouble.*

Never in his life, he thought, had he ever been so completely alone.

-----------------
Carrick O'Sullivan
Research "Volunteer"
on Klaestron IV