by -=/\=- Zanh Liis
90226.1530
Eighteen hours after With Gratitude
Soundtrack: Gravity, by Embrace
-=/\=-
-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
90226.1530
Eighteen hours after With Gratitude
Soundtrack: Gravity, by Embrace
-=/\=-
-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
"I wish you hadn't had to sedate her. Again." Keiran rumbled softly. He was still smarting over the fact that someone had done the same to him in order to not carry out the assessment and treatment of his minor injuries; but more so to keep him under control.
*I'll be lookin' into just who it was made that decision...* Keiran thought, as he waited for Dalton McKay to respond.
"The lady left me no choice!" McKay whispered back. "She kept tryin' to get the bandages off her eyes. She kept insistin' that we take her to you, even though you were still doin' your best Sleepin' Beauty impression." He shook his head and sighed. "Newlyweds."
"That's right, we are that," Keiran nodded, determined blue eyes shining upon the photonic physician. "And you mind that the moment it's safe for me to do so, I'm takin' my wife outta here and straight back to Ireland."
"You'll get no argument from me on that." McKay held his hands up in a gesture of genuine surrender. "Holdin' her back would only serve to risk further injury, to her, and to me. She might just up and let that little Lair kid turn me into the fourth Jonas Brother once and for ALL."
"She could do worse, right?" Keiran teased, allowing himself a small laugh and slapping a hand down onto McKay's shoulder. "Thanks, truly. For ev'ra'thin' you've done for her."
"That's what we're here for. And what I'll be there for. I warn ya, O'Sullivan, I'll be beamin' down to check in on your wife at least once a day during your vacation."
"Understood." Keiran could handle that level of interruption if he had to, just so long as he got to take Liis as far away from her job and Starfleet as he could. *Just for a little while.*
Both men looked up as Liis stirred in her sleep, groaning softly before exhaling a slow and weary sigh.
McKay put his finger to his lips to preempt further conversation, and Keiran quietly returned to the chair where he'd been keeping vigil at her side ever since he'd awakened.
It pained him to see her like this, and he wanted nothing more than to see her smiling and whole, again. "Such a sad sigh, a chuisle," he whispered. "What's goin' on in there?"
His hand grazed her forehead, and he brushed her hair back gently with his fingertips, wishing he could rescue her from whatever it was she was fighting alone in her nightmares, even as dark memories replayed in Liis' mind in full depth and clarity.
-=Flashback: Temporal Investigations Headquarters:
Shortly before the explosions took place=-
Shortly before the explosions took place=-
The day was going as well as could be expected so far.
Salvek's inquiry was over, and he was going to go to Vulcan.
TC and Keiran, though both looking tired as they'd exchanged glances with her in passing between appointments, seemed to be holding up all right.
Even better, it was almost over.
One more formality, they'd told her, then she'd be free to go. She only had to speak to a TI shrink briefly before she would be allowed to return to her ship.
The moment she returned to her ship, she'd put someone else in command, and then she'd be on her way home.
The thought of going back to the house in Cork with no one but Keiran painted a smile upon her face; a smile she was still wearing as she was shown to the doorway of one of the medical exam rooms and then left alone in that doorway by the ensign who had escorted her.
The doors opened and she saw nothing but darkness beyond them.
She stepped in, and called for the lights.
The moment the door closed behind her and the lights came up- curiously enough in that order- Zanh Liis knew that she'd been had.
She recognized his voice before she saw his face: a face that, in her experience always wore one of only two possible expressions. One was a sterile, almost alien lack of emotion, and the second a bewildered, haunting empathy.
Apparently, there was also a third option, of which up until this moment in time she had been completely unaware.
Her mind swerved in a violent one hundred and eighty degree turn. Her stomach thundered with the intensity of a summer storm, warning that it was in clear danger of throwing itself into reverse.
She swallowed hard.
She stopped where she stood, frozen, even as the man before her held out his hand in a sweeping gesture of welcome and indicated the only chair in the room.
"Have a seat, Captain Zanh."
Klaxons wailed inside her head. She had been through psych evaluations over the years- by this point in too many ways and places to keep track of.
She had also conducted more than her fair share of interrogations in her time.
This was not to be a psych eval.
It was to be an interrogation.
"I'd rather stand, Doctor Brody." Liis took up position with her back against the closed doors. Her aim was to keep the man who would attempt to overpower her mentally in the corner in which he now stood; indicating to him that she may well be trapped inside this small locked room for the moment- but then again, so was he.
"I'd rather you sat."
"I know." Zanh said, squaring her shoulders. "That's why I'm standing."
He made notations on the PADD he held fast in his hands, his features never altering, maintaining that 'third option' look which Liis did not recall ever having seen him wear when she'd worked with him so closely in the alternate time.
That look could only be described as pure and intensive loathing, the origin of which she couldn't begin to account for, since from his perspective as far as she knew they'd never met before.
"You know who I am." He stated, eyes darting up toward her for an instant and then going back toward the PADD. He decided to make use of the chair himself; a clear attempt Zanh surmised to put her off her guard, but she would have none of it.
"Yes." She felt unseen eyes glaring at her, closing in all around her like sharks circling their prey in the water.
She glanced over toward the darkened glass panel in the wall behind Brody, raised two fingers to her brow and saluted.
"Afternoon, folks. How's the reception? Getting every word in there? Or should I speak up a little louder when I offer my one word answers?"
Brody ignored her, and Liis tilted her head down toward him.
"Because you ought to know, Brody, that's all you're going to get out of me. One. Word. Answers."
His expression changed into a snarl, his lips drooping downward.
*Ah, * Liis thought, *expression option four is now accounted for. Perhaps he really is Human.*
"In that case, I will try to use small words. Keep my questions simple. To the point. Easy to understand." Brody droned, taking a clear shot at her intelligence. Zanh would have allowed herself a laugh at this, only suddenly the idea crossed her mind that perhaps Keiran had already been exposed to an interrogation of this sort from the Brody of this time- and would have been less prepared, and on his guard, than she was given her memories.
"She cracks, just a little." Brody remarked with satisfaction, misreading the look in her eyes.
"No." Zanh replied evenly, letting the word hang in the air between them and punctuating it with a direct stare. A hundred questions tangled in her mind. How had he ended up here? Why was he the one conducting this 'evaluation'? Who had sent him and...
She fought the urge to scowl, using all of her strength to keep her eyes from flashing fury as she asked herself another, much more upsetting question.
...had William Lindsay set her up?
"Let's cut to the chase." Brody set his PADD down upon his lap, folded his hands serenely and then, came the questions. "You experienced multiple facets of an Alternate Continuity Paradox."
"Yes."
"You retain memories from each of the different branches of space-time and their outcomes that you experienced."
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Several."
"Several is not a number, Captain Zanh. The number."
Liis arched a brow, which he correctly construed as a refusal to answer.
He moved on.
"You experienced severe trauma and loss of people dear to you in those alternate lines."
Liis felt her chest tighten. There was a beat before she could force the word from her throat. "Yeah."
"Keiran O'Sullivan died. That's what your report said."
"Yes."
"And in the alternate line that he experienced, he indicated that you were the one who died instead."
"Oh?" Liis played dumb, a role which clearly did not suit her and only served to further irritate the psychiatrist.
"Zanh Liis you are wasting my time," Brody tapped a small stylus against the surface of the PADD he held, and Zanh then did something that pushed the man beyond his level of tolerance.
She smiled.
Brody was out of his chair an instant later and standing an inch from her face; so close she could feel the anger in his burning breath as he growled at her.
"You are behaving in a most unprofessional manner, Captain. If you do not comply with the requirements of this evaluation and answer my questions forthrightly, I will immediately recommend that you be suspended."
Liis didn't flinch. With measured calm and a continued stare of ice, she folded her good arm over her sling and actually leaned forward, closer to him.
She stood eye to eye with the man in height, but with his slight build and thin frame, she seemed the larger of the two of them without doubt. This time she uttered a two word sentence; one giving a clear and urgent warning.
"Back off."
"Or what, Zanh Liis?" Brody stood his ground. "Are you going to strike me? You're left handed. I wonder how much damage you can possibly do to me with the right."
He was intentionally provoking her, and as angry as Liis was and as bad as she wanted to punch his lights out in this moment, she thought of her crew and resisted.
What was more, she thought of her husband, and resisted. They had travel plans that he had his heart entirely set upon, and she would do nothing that would have her spending the rest of their allotted honeymoon time trying to put out the fire that striking Brody would start.
*I could do enough...* she thought, very nearly giving in to temptation. She stood as tall as she could.
"I have answered your questions, Doctor Brody," Liis snarled, teeth clenched. "If you have need of any more information as to what I remember or what I experienced, you're going to have to bring me up before a board and formally question my fitness for duty. That is what this is all about, isn't it? You don't think that I should remain in command of my ship."
Her unending glare finally began to unnerve him and Brody spun away, retreating to his chair. The room seemed to be getting smaller by the second. "I don't believe that anyone who retains memories of an Alternate Continuity Paradox should be in command of anything of greater consequence than a riding lawnmower." Brody answered coldly.
"And there it is." Liis said, shaking her head. "You are here with only one purpose, and that is to make me say something that's going to give you a reason to bring about that full board inquiry into my fitness to command."
She kept her voice low and her tone even. "But there's one thing that you didn't count on when you took that seat in the corner, hiding in the dark like the rat that you are. You didn't count on the fact that I know how to play this game better than you do, because I've a hell of a lot more experience at it."
For an instant, Liis thought she heard the sound of muffled voices on the other side of the wall, and she'd had quite enough of this charade.
"Is this how Starfleet treats its veteran officers now? Seeks to ensnare them with traps laid in the shadows, because those seeking to relieve a woman of her command don't have the integrity to stand before her and accuse her of insanity to her face?"
She walked over to the panel and stared directly into it, though all she could see was her own reflection in the shining surface.
"End this, Lassiter. End it now, or bring everything out into the light. I have no problem with answering charges that I'm unfit but I won't do it like this. Not with him, and not in a cage."
Liis turned away; her back to the panel, her eyes condemning Brody without a word. She soon heard an unfamiliar voice addressing him over his combadge, and she tilted her head, listening closely.
"Let her go," the voice ordered, over the sound of the doors unlocking. "It's over." Liis then heard several sets of footfalls retreating from another room nearby- another doorway.
Brody's only response to the order was to slap his badge, closing the channel.
He stood from his chair and came at her again, this time, speaking to her alone with no one listening in. Knowing that only she would hear his words emboldened him, and his tone was menacing. Threatening.
"I warn you, Zanh Liis, this is anything but over."
"What the hell happened to you here in this time, Brody?" She asked, sincerely wishing she knew and could understand.
"The Tucker Brody I knew really wanted to help people through his work, but that isn't all. The Tucker Brody I knew wasn't such an arrogant ass." She turned toward the doors, which parted as she approached. "I liked him a hell of a lot better than I like you."
-=End flashback=-
She tried once more to open her eyes, but found they were still bandaged shut. She wondered how long she'd been asleep, knowing that it must've taken sedatives to get her to finally give in to exhaustion over the desire she had to see her husband.
*My husband is here.*
Before she even detected the sound of his breathing, before she could isolate the faint, masculine scent of the cologne he liked to wear in the air around her, she knew that he was there.
He didn't have to speak, he didn't have to take a step for her to be sure. She was, simply, certain.
"Keiran?"
Lost in a waking nightmare of his own as he sat beside her, Keiran startled at the sound of her voice. She listened as he inhaled sharply in surprise, and then was warmed by the hint of a smile in his tone as he leaned close, caressing her cheek tenderly with the back of his hand.
"Hey there, you," he greeted her affectionately, "how'd you know I was here, eh? Did'ya hear me whisperin' to McKay moments ago? Or did somethin' else give me away?"
"I just," Liis reached up and grasped hold of his hand, clamping on tightly. "It's just...you.
He closed his eyes, thanking Heaven that she was awake at last. "I'd...best get the doctor."
He pulled away but she held him fast by the hand with surprising strength. "Wait," she said softly. "Kiss me?"
The words barely had the chance to leave her lips before his were upon them, and he kissed her in a way that conveyed a hundred emotions in the span of mere seconds.
"I love you too," she said in response, as she squeezed his hand again. Before she would let him go, she needed to make one more heartfelt plea. "Keiran, please,"
"An'a'thin'." He promised quickly, before she even voiced her request. "An'a'thin' you want."
"Take me home."
------------------------
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
(Ready to break out of Sickbay to finish her honeymoon if that's what it takes)
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
(Ready to break out of Sickbay to finish her honeymoon if that's what it takes)
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012