by -=/\=- Zanh Liis
80702.16
…continued from part one...
-=Flashback, Alternate timeline, 2379=-
80702.16
…continued from part one...
-=Flashback, Alternate timeline, 2379=-
It had never been enough...
...and now he was lying awake again, regretting having walked away after saying goodnight to her this night more than any other he'd lived.
He could not let another day dawn before telling her the truth.
Waking her from sleep he hailed her, insisting that she get dressed, and meet him. He needed to show her something and no, it couldn't wait until tomorrow.
They happened to be ‘in the neighborhood’ as it were, having just finished up lengthy paperwork at Command concerning their last Jump.
This was the perfect chance to show Liis what he wanted to give to her, if only she would accept him as substitute for the man she still wanted, but could not have.
They materialized in the middle of the dark, empty field.
The moon was rising, and Zanh Liis looked at him as if he had completely lost his mind.
He ignored her slow hiss of irritation as he began to spread the blanket he’d brought with him out onto the soft grass below. He dropped down onto it and patted the spot beside him.
“What’s so urgent? What's here tonight, specifically, that I can’t see any other?” She was really not in the mood for an outing this evening, but he’d insisted.
“Something that you won’t be able to see for another year if not tonight and who knows where we’ll be this time next year,” Keiran explained. “Come on with ye, then.”
“Oh, wait,” She considered the date and something she’d read in a newsletter lying on the coffee table in Vox’ office earlier. She snapped her fingers, trying to remember. “It’s that thing, right? The thing they taught us about in basic Earth Astronomy.”
She knew there was one meteor shower in this system that could be depended upon like clockwork, and the article said it was coming up again soon. “Persay… Perseds…” she tried to remember.
“Perseids.” Keiran replied, smiling as she sat down beside him at last. “Also known locally as the Tears of St. Lawrence.”
“The Orbs are called the Tears of the Prophets,” she blurted automatically, even though he already knew about as much on the subject of Orbs as she did.
She felt her heart sink at simply the mention of anything religiously Bajoran, and changed the subject.
“You and your saints. Why is this St. Lawrence’s thing?”
“Because the Perseids always fall very near the anniversary of his martyrdom, which occurred in 258 AD.”
“Oh joy. What a happy thought for a lighthearted evening out with a friend. Thanks, O’Sullivan.” Liis shook her head.
*Friend. * How he’d come to hate that word.
“Weren’t there ever any happy saints?”
“Certainly not happy martyrs, I should think.”
*Well that makes sense, if none of the rest of this does. * Liis thought. “That’s sad.”
“True enough, still,” he leaned closer to her and paused, “Even sad things have their beauty, Zanh Liis.”
*What the hell is he on about? * She wondered. *Had he been to the Pub before he hailed me and said it was urgent? *
“So what is the point of all of…this? Dragging me all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere to see something I could watch on video file any…day of the…”
She stopped as soon as the first Perseid rained down above- awestruck by the light and colors as it blazed across the velvet heavens.
“The point? To tell you something I should have a long time ago,” O’Sullivan reached for her hands, and Liis looked at him in confusion.
“This is how I think of you- Liis,” Keiran whispered, his eyes leaving her face only long enough to glance up at the vanishing streaks. "Beautiful, but so sad. It kills me to see it every day..." he shook his head and exhaled a sharp, shuddering sigh.
“God, you’re as hard to hold onto as one of those shooting stars, but no less worth striving to touch. I want you to remember that no matter what may happen, I will always find my way home to you.”
“Home?” He grasped her fingers so tightly, she was growing truly distraught and ever more confused. “Keiran,”
He took her face into his hands and silenced her with a kiss.
When he finally spoke again, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I love you, Liis.”
She stared at him in silence- what could she say? She looked away, back up into the sky.
“I ask nothing of you, other than to just be aware of how I feel. Think it over, knowing that I’m a patient man. I’ll wait, however long you need if you think you might ever be able to...” He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.
“Know that if you give me a chance to try to make you happy, I will build a home for you here, and we will grow old together watching the Perseids, every summer.”
She continued to stare at him in shock, as he slowly withdrew his hand from her face.
She didn’t speak a single word to him in reply the rest of that night, but that was all right with Keiran because of what she did instead.
She simply leaned her head back against his shoulder, allowing his strength to support her as she watched the Perseids fall, one by one by one, until there were no more.
-=End Flashback=-
As this fabrication of the Perseids gracefully painted the vision of night above her on the holodeck, Zanh Liis wrapped her arms around her shoulders and wondered if there would ever come a day when Keiran would find his way back home.
Sorrow enveloped her, and she closed her eyes. Lulled by the music and the sound of the leaves rustling in the breeze above, she could almost swear she felt his presence here...
Safely concealed from the eyes of all who knew her, in this moment of solitary grief jaded Starfleet Captain and former Temporal Investigations Agent Zanh Liis silently cried herself to sleep beneath artificial stars.
-=Later=-
Feeling a hand on her shoulder, Liis stirred.
She opened her eyes and, realizing she was supposed to be alone in this program, jumped to her feet and pulled her weapon.
“Land sakes, Cap’n, put that thing away will ya? If you hit my emitter, I’ll vanish quicker than a Junebug at a blackbird convention.”
“Damn it, Dalton, I told you never to sneak up on me like that!”
“Sneak up, you kiddin’ me? I came in through the front door, same as you. Salvek had to make a few quick adjustments to my emitter to get me in around your nifty little security lock out there.”
“Why the hell would he-“
“He's been hailin’ you for ten minutes. You wanted a quarter hour to pack before the Alchemy left, but you damn near missed the boat.”
“What?”
”Computer, discontinue musical playback!” McKay shouted. Once the deck was silent around them, Liis looked up at him sheepishly.
“Sorry. I was asleep.”
“Despite a volume level that could wake the dead? My word Zanh Liis, you must be,” he paused. As she ordered the computer to end the program, he decided to ask her a question instead of continuing his rant. “Are you all right?”
“I wish people would quit asking that question! I’m ready to get back to work, that’s how I am.”
He whipped the medical tricorder that he held open, and began to scan her.
“Not while I’m supervising your care,” McKay warned sternly. “Zanh Liis, you have just been through a severe physical and emotional trauma, and for the time being I am officially relieving you of command- whether or not you happen to remember it.”
------------------------------
-=/\=-Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=-Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012