By Landry Steele
10513.2
...continued from Part One
-=Quarters of Landry Steele, USS Serendipity=-
10513.2
...continued from Part One
-=Quarters of Landry Steele, USS Serendipity=-
He was close now- far too close in physical proximity to disregard his presence any more than she could deny how far and how fast she’d fallen from the grace of such happier times.
As she glanced through salt-stung eyes out the viewport to the Poseidon once again, she could sense his conflict somehow. She hated to imagine what he was doing and planning but she couldn't deceive herself into thinking that he was doing any differently than her fears dictated he must. She could feel that he was certain he was doing what was right, and she knew just as well that he was absolutely wrong.
He'd been absolutely wrong before and refused to see it then- and it was refusal on her part to allow him to finish making her over into his ideal woman and ideal TI agent that had brought their time together to its abrupt and devastating end.
-=Flashback=-
She felt desperate and sick as she grappled her emotions, wracking her brain for a way to stop him before it was too late.
"Please, Tuck, listen to me, won't you just hear reason?"
"Don't call me that anymore," he warned, the anger marring his features as unfamiliar as it was unwelcome.
The change in tone of his voice hurt but more than that it frightened her, because it was so completely foreign to her ears. His tone and his words were those of a man forcing distance between himself and the person he was speaking to- and the very last thing she ever wanted between them was distance after all they had come to mean to each other.
"Why not? Because it's something no one else is allowed to do? Because it reminds me that you've let me know you the way that you've never let any-"
There was unmistakable pain in his voice as he interrupted.
"Because you used to call me that and I can't," he stopped and spun away suddenly, not wanting to look at her anymore.
He was now softly murmuring to himself, words she couldn't quite make out and clearly did not understand any more than the ones he'd spoken at top volume seconds before.
When someone at Temporal Investigations said that someone used to do or say something and then reacted the way that Tucker just had, it was a serious warning sign that whomever they were speaking to had better back off and not continue to press the issue.
Something was wrong- very wrong now, and she just didn't understand why suddenly he'd become so set in his ways. He was fixed as if he were a statue; chipped out of unyielding stone and equally unwilling to move.
He looked like a sculpture to her, always, in moments when he looked so serious and still. It was moments like that, in deep thought and retreating into his dizzying, intricate mind, that she was most aware of just how much he embodied the perfection portrayed in the faces of mythical gods.
Tucker was a beautiful man in every sense- and though the term more commonly used for extreme good looks in a female being- the word handsome did not seem to convey the same timelessness, the same indisputable proof, the same absolute meaning as the word beautiful did.
She was shaking now, so hard that her words broke apart into fragments as she tried to force them past her constricting vocal cords. He was so angry already that she was truly terrified to speak another word.
"Tucker, please. Please. Tell me what I've done wrong so I can fix it."
He turned on her now, and railed. "Stop asking questions! That is the first thing you can do it you want to improve the situation. Then you can do what you've done before which is know that if I ask somethin' of ya, if I ask you to trust me, that I'm lookin' out for your best interests! Don't question when I ask you for somethin' specific, Landry. Just do it for me and know that I wouldn't ask ya if I didn't need to and I didn't know it was best."
"Best for who?" Her eyes searched his, almost pleading with him to help her understand.
"For everybody!" He threw his hands into the air, his limitless rage somehow building ever higher.
"Still more questions! Still more doubts! Tell me, Landry when did you lose your trust in my vision? In my thoughts, in my ability to plan and think ahead and keep you safe? When did you lose faith in," he released a sudden, deep and anguished sigh and softened now, only for an instant, as his hand reached up and brushed back a strand of her hair. "When did you start to doubt my love for you?"
Landry shuddered as her blood seemed to freeze in her veins.
"I have never questioned you before this, Tucker, because before this I could justify everything that you asked of me. I could honor everything that I believed Starfleet to be and everything I believed Temporal Investigations to be and still do what you asked of me. I could still honor who I am as a human being and do what you asked of me. This time-."
She folded her arms tightly over her stomach and clenched the inside of her cheek between her teeth. She didn't want to cry but she didn't know if she could stop it now, even if she bit down until she bled.
"This time it's more important than ever that you believe me," he said, bitterness overcoming him as he locked merciless eyes upon her. "But you're telling me that you aren't capable of doing that."
His glare far surpassed disapproval, it was lightyears beyond anger and resentment. It was a look of unequalled disappointment, and Landry could think of nothing that could have possibly hurt her more than feeling that she had truly failed him.
"We're not talking about letting you suggest a dress for me to wear to an Admiral's dinner or changing the color of my hair because you think it compliments my eyes." She wanted so much to look away but found herself physically unable; his power over even her smallest actions was that strong.
As near as she was to him, able to feel the heat of his body and detect the faintest scent of his skin, she wanted nothing more than to try to smooth things over with him the way that until this day she had always been able to smooth them over; by taking his mind so far off of the rational demands it was making of him that logic temporarily ceased to exist.
Moments when there seemed to be nothing in the universe to be fought for or won or lost; when the only thing that mattered to him at all was the way she could make him feel.
She had learned a secret about him somewhere along the way that she'd never dare let on; that his addiction to her- and what they had could be called nothing less than a physical and psychological dependency- was as strong as hers was to him.
That's why he'd worked so tirelessly to help further her career. That's why he'd taught her so much and invested so much time into making sure she learned how to use her intuition; not just to read people's body language and intentions but to speak to them in ways that would speed her along in her meteoric rise up the ranks.
It was the instant when such speech began to feel like intentional manipulation that her intuitive senses had begun to cry foul, and after that point she'd never been able to do it again without first thinking twice and later regretting that what she'd done.
She had told herself many times that there was nothing she wouldn't give him and nothing she wouldn't do for him if it were in her power. Today, she had discovered that as much of her soul as he owned, she still held onto the smallest sliver and that sliver was causing her so much pain than should be possible from any such small, insignificant thorn.
It seemed to her now that the greatest lesson she'd learned in all this was that the things that seem the most insignificant of all can in the end become the very things that define you.
"Tucker, please. Don't do this. You have got to hear reason this time." In an instant she regretted using that word here.
Until that point she had only denied him but now she had insulted him.
"Unreasonable?!” He demanded. “I'm the one who's being unreasonable?"
"Yes." She needed him to see that.
He couldn’t believe she was making such a big deal out of this. "I'm only askin' you to gather information, Landry. That's all. Just facts and data. I'm not askin' you to do anything that's goin' to get anybody hurt."
"Aren't you?" She lunged forward suddenly, grasping hold of him by the shoulders and clamping on as she tried to pull him nearer. Even though he hadn't changed position at all in so long, she could feel him slipping further and further away.
"Why Zanh Liis, Tucker? Why can't you just let her live her life and leave it alone? What..." she whispered now, feeling defeated as the anger in his eyes turned to ice and she knew he would never give her an answer to her questions. Still, she couldn't stop herself from speaking the very last one. "What the hell did she do to you?"
After waiting until she could bear it no longer, Landry finally let him go. Her resolve to keep her composure was gone, and her shoulders shook as she began to cry. "I've tried to become exactly what you wanted me to be. I've tried-"
"I only ever wanted to see you realize all you could be," Tucker argued. "You never had to change to be what I wanted, Landry. Don't you understand yet? Don't you know?" His own composure failed now and for the first time since she'd known him, sparse, silent tears rolled down his face. "I only ever wanted you to be all you already are."
"It's not enough," she declared. as she began slowly backing away. "I've never been enough." She had to get out of here, she had to go now. If he touched her, looking the way that he did- as if his own heart was shattering because she was breaking it into pieces, she would never be able to hold onto a single remaining conviction she possessed.
"Landry-"
"No matter how much I let you chisel away to make me your perfect officer, perfect woman, perfect-"
"Wife, Landry." His voice broke. "I wanted to make you my wife."
"No." She shook her head firmly. "Don't- don't do that. Don't you say that word." She stepped backward, feeling her way toward the door. She slapped her hand blindly behind her for the release, knowing he'd secured it so no one could easily enter from outside until they were finished with their conversation. "Don't you dare say you wanted a real life for us. If you did then this couldn't possibly be the way we're going to end."
"Landry." He rushed forward toward her, sweeping her into his arms and clutching her desperately against his chest.
He buried his face into her hair, sobbing and squeezing her so tightly that she couldn't draw another breath. "We will end if you don't listen to me and I-" he drew back, searching her eyes, her face, what remained of her withering soul for any indication that she could somehow, trust him still. "I'm begging you."
Landry finally gasped for air but it did nothing to take away the feeling of suffocation as her heart seemed to have seized in her chest.
Tucker Brody did not beg- anyone, for anything.
Yet he was begging her now, and she didn't know how she could possibly deny him.
Still she knew that it was too important- The Alchemy Project was too important- to ever do what he was asking her to do and risk its downfall. Even if it did mean their end.
She could only choke out his name, once again that single endearing syllable that she alone had been allowed to use.
"Tuck-"
"Landry, I love you," he whispered, kissing her with an emotion that she could only identify as pure panic in an attempt to reach her one last time.
She pulled back and pushed him away.
"No," she said, without a shred of conviction worthy of convincing either of them she meant it.
"God, Landry, please,"
"No." She spoke the word more forcefully this time and finally accepted what she must do.
She backed the last few steps out the door and into the empty corridor beyond. Tears fell down her face as she forced her eyes to close and prayed that they would somehow wash away the memory of the hurt in his face before it became the memory that would haunt her dreams for the rest of her days.
"Please," he tried once more. "Landry, don't go."
-=End Flashback=-
That moment would never leave her and those last words were nearly enough to overpower her.
Despite the fact she was doubtful she could survive without him, she'd known she couldn't stay without losing the very last of who she was to the darker sides of his desperation. So finally she had done the one thing she knew she must.
She’d heard his pleas and still forced herself to walk away; blocking out as best she could his pain; pain that hurt so much more than her own.
She had taken the assignment on the Serendipity, as ordered, but not accepted the job that Tucker wished her to take on along with it and that had sealed their fate.
Every morning when she awoke in the small, lonely bed in these quarters instead of the warm and welcoming one that he'd shared with her, she regretted that decision.
Even though she still knew it was the right one- the only one- every single morning she only hated more that she'd had no other possible choice.
She'd written to him once- a letter that she'd left on his doorstep before leaving Earth and was entirely certain he'd seen, because she'd watched from around the corner as he'd torn the envelope apart and his eyes took in every word.
Then she had watched as he held the pages between his thumbs and index fingers and torn it into shreds.
She'd promised she'd always look out for him, as best she could.
She pleaded with him again to give up his obsession with this one particular person and their position in Starfleet, but he would not.
She had always believed that keeping his secrets and keeping an eye on him was the best way to ensure his safety. She never believed him capable of doing anything- anything of the sort he was doing now.
She had been so very wrong and that only reminded her that in spite of every way it felt, her decision must have been right. The more she thought of it, the quicker she came to a sickening realization; she had no more choice now than she had the day that she'd walked away.
She couldn't keep his secrets anymore, no matter how much she wanted to. If she did he would end up getting himself, if not all of them, killed before this was over.
It had to end.
She had to do everything she could to see to it that if nothing else, even if he lived to be court- martialed, then Tucker would be judged in the future to have only been terribly wrong- not to let History step forward as judge, jury and executioner and pronounce him dead wrong instead.
Landry Steele
Temporal Investigations Agent
Aboard the USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Temporal Investigations Agent
Aboard the USS Serendipity NCC-2012