386: For This One Wish

by Keiran O'Sullivan
80630.1200
Immediately following A Time to Speak
Soundtrack: Two Lights by Five For Fighting

-=County Cork, Ireland, Earth=-

(...continued)


"I'll go." She promised. "First, do something for me, Keiran. Please."

His first instinct was to promise her anything. Yet at the last moment he held back, knowing there was the very real danger she may ask something of him that he was simply incapable of.

He waited for her to specify what she wanted before moving or speaking again.

"Stop wearing it, Keiran."

"What?"

She let the tips of her fingers gently brush against the ring on his left hand. "This. Stop wearing it."

"Zanh Liis,"

"Unless it's not there. You tell me it's not there, and this is only the O'Sullivan family crest to you and I'll withdraw the request." Liis tugged at the ring twice before letting go.

He knew better than to pretend it wasn't there. She'd see the deception in his eyes and simply rip the ring from his hand to inspect it herself; looking for the inscription where she would indeed surely find it.

"Don't ask me that, Liis. Please."

She reached up, taking his face into her hands. "This timeline, here and now, is all we've got. You can't find happiness if you won't even try. You told me yourself, when..."

*When I was dying and you were holding me as if your own life depended upon mine.* She finished the thought in her head without speaking it aloud.

"Keiran, you have to let go."

"In my own way," he promised. "In my own time."

There was that word again. Time.

"The very thought of you suffering that way, I," she stopped and shook her head. "Give me this one thing, at least. This small peace to take away with me."

"All right, darlin', all right. Don't cry," he whispered, finally brushing her hair back gently out of her eyes. "I'll take it off."

He removed the ring from his hand and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

"Thank you."

Now that it was really the end, she didn't know what she was going to do without being able to turn and see that he was just over her shoulder, keeping watch.

She threw her arms around him, and held on.

Her embrace was so intense, so emotionally and physically powerful that Keiran reeled.

As painful as it was he returned it just the same, holding her close. Just in case the Fates were so unkind that this was to be the last time he would ever see her in his lifetime- in this version of history or any other.

"I don't think I can say goodbye," she confessed, burying her face into his shoulder.

"'Tis not goodbye, Zanh Liis," he whispered, running his hand through her hair before placing a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Could never be."

He stopped just short of telling her that he loved her.

She already knew.

"The Steady Hand to Victory," Liis whispered the saying into his ear in Bajoran this time, as she finally released her hold on him.

She stepped back and tapped her badge.

"Zanh to Serendipity." Her voice was hoarse and broken as she gave the word. "One to beam up."

He held his hand up in a silent gesture of farewell; his eyes staying fixed on hers until the last shimmer of her image had faded with the beam of the transporter.

Then she was gone, leaving Keiran standing alone once again in the empty meadow, a man somehow out of his time, still trying to get home.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the ring.

He tilted it toward the newborn moonlight, examining the interior of the band. Staring at the inscription that she had been so eager for him to forget.

It was the stardate of their wedding anniversary.

He gently ran his fingertip over the numbers before slowly sliding the ring back into place, where it had been since the day she put it on him.

"I'm sorry, Liis," he whispered to the open sky. "It stays."

His hands shook as he carried out his last duty of obligation before leaving this location.

He unclipped the Temporal Compass from his belt.

Apparently, in some twisted way History was now, at least for the moment, satisfied.

They were both alive. She was going her way, he was going his...and the compass had once again gone dark.

He sighed deeply, then reached up and tapped his badge just as she had done.

"O'Sullivan to Perseids,"

[Here, Captain. Are you finished down on the planet?] The voice of his First Officer Ashton Ledbetter inquired from aboard the ship assigned to Keiran's command.

-The ship that Keiran had once named in honor of Zanh Liis' favorite celestial light show.

He shuddered, looking up into the starry sky over Ireland.

*Serendipity, too, was still up there somewhere...*

"Aye," he spoke at last. "Just about."

[Ready to beam you aboard at your command, Sir.]

"Stand by."

Keiran's vision went blurry as he stared into the distance. The ghostly image of the house that once was filled his senses again- even as memories of Zanh Liis did.

He could smell the flowers in their garden. See the warm light radiating from every window, spilling out of their home to light the dark as day came to an end.

He heard again the unmistakable sound of her laughter as she pretended to trip over his feet so he'd think she still didn't know how to dance. He felt the shiver he'd experienced as her eyes lit up, every time he pulled her near to kiss her.

Keiran's skin tingled with the memory of her touch, his heart safely anchored by the weight of her emotions.

The last song they had ever danced to played out in his head.

*If only we'd had more time.*

As despair threatened to overtake him completely, it gave way to a stunning realization.

This was the beginning of a time they had never experienced before.

An old English proverb whispered hope into his ear in the way that nothing else had, through years of stolen time.

"Every dog hath its day."

Could it be that if he just held on, that he too would have his day and be victorious over the greatest adversary he'd ever faced- Time itself?

His mind began spinning with newly established facts that sparked a cascade of possibilities.

At the end of this Jump they were both alive. What was more they were both aware, even though they were apart.

This was, to his knowledge, the first time that she had retained her memories of him-what could that mean for their future?

Could he have opened her heart just enough that perhaps the next variation of the timeline would be the one that finally brought them together- for good?

The very thought was enough to give the man a rope to hang on to, and a renewed sense of determination to continue the work entrusted to him.

The image of their house, which had been so clear a moment before began to flicker and fade like the waning flame of a dying candle.

Keiran snapped his eyes shut tightly.

He was going to hold on to that vision- to what he saw and experienced in this place with his heart, not his eyes- and it was going to sustain him.

That fact that she would remember would sustain him.

He sighed softly as he finally responded to the increasingly frantic hails of his First Officer, who was worried that the com line had gone quiet.

[Captain O'Sullivan?]

"Aye, 'm here." Keiran whispered, eyes still closed so his last memory here would be the one of what had once been, instead of what currently was.

He reminded himself of the age old saying, so commonly used among those in his profession:
'There will always be another time.'

"Energize."
Captain Keiran O'Sullivan
USS Perseids, NX 57871
Timeline Control Division
Temporal Investigations

-=/\=-