80829.16
Following All Aboard
-=Bridge of the merchant ship Rixx Rewards=-
“Alright, clear the bridge.” TC barked as he stood up from the tactical station. “Get some grub and rest. I’ll take first watch.”
As he made his way to stand next to the captain's chair, concern crossed his face.
He glanced back when he noticed that no one was moving.“That means now. Don’t be fooled by the lack of uniform.”
Slowly the rest of their gathered team began to file off the bridge.
“Steele, I want you back here as soon as you are done eating.” TC called out after the ensign. “I want you where I can see you.”
She opened he mouth to protest but was stopped by TC’s icy expression.
“Aye sir.” Was all that she could muster before leaving. Internally, she wondered what she had done to become the lucky bearer of the title Public Enemy Number One in Dane's place.
The bridge was now clear, leaving only TC and Liis. TC walked around to lean on the back of the console in front of the captain. This was the first opportunity that he had to talk to her alone since she had abruptly left Betazed.
He folded his arms across his chest. “You should take your own advice. You could use the rest.”
"If I try I'm only going to see," she drew in a deep breath, averting her eyes to check they were still on course...
...for the twenty-third time since they'd left the Gauntlet.
She expelled her breath slowly through tightened lips. "...things I don't want to see."
"If you don't rest, when we get there you'll be too tired to see anything."
"Fine. Just as soon as we reach the half-way point." Zanh conceded. She looked up at Blane now, his face illuminated by the dim lights of the console alone.
"So. We never got to toast our scars. Would it be all right if I still asked about yours?" She spun away from him in her seat, not wanting him to feel that the request was an order of any sort. It was simply a request, from one friend to another.
She sorely wanted something, someone else to think about rather than her own struggles at the moment, and she could think of no better way to spend the luxury of this time than to use it to get a deeper sense of what had turned TC Blane into the man she so valued.
TC laughed his rare, deep, quiet laugh. The one that was only meant to be heard by those close to him; by friends and family.
“We seem to be lacking the necessary alcoholic beverages for this conversation.” He sensed that Zanh asked him as a diversion, more for herself then any other reason. Plus, he figured in the back of his own mind that he probably wanted to have this discussion. “Ask away.”
Zanh considered making a flip remark about the fact that they were also lacking the alcoholic beverages necessary just to deal with working with Dabin Reece on a daily basis, but she resisted.
She often used humor to mask her true emotions, and Blane was giving her a gift rare among men, let alone men who were Starfleet officers. Let alone Starfleet officers with a Spec Ops history. That gift was genuine openness.
She would not treat that gift with such disrespect as to joke about it.
"The ones on your back," she'd noticed them at a point when he'd turned to look over his shoulder at the Bonding. "Deep."
TC lowed his head for a second and stared at his feet. He licked his lips before responding. “Yeah. Deep.”
He looked up. “Nausicaans are not known for there gentile temperament. Certainly not towards prisoners who allegedly…” he emphasized the word. “…stole information about their top secret new phase plasma bomb.”
He shrugged. “You should've seen the other guy once I got loose.”
Zanh's expression conveyed her sorrow at the thought of what he had endured in the line of duty. She was certain that as with herself, it was very likely that the worst of his scars were the internal ones- those that most others would never have opportunity to see or know of. "Then, there is that tattoo...”
“Yes, it is a nice piece of artwork." He joked, then paused. “I got it when I passed the Spec Ops training and got accepted to a team. You know how it is, you're proud, full of yourself, young, and very very drunk.”
Zanh thought to herself about the difference between them in that moment- any time she had ever gotten drunk, it was precisely because she was anything but proud of herself at the time.
“The locations are the locations of every mission I went on and the numbers,” he paused again. “Are the number that died there. Good guys and bad.”
Liis was struck speechless.
This information did not simply speak volumes about Blane, it declared every word, page and chapter of those volumes like a bugle sounding Reveille with crystal clarity in the first light of dawn.
Knowing that he had kept count of the deaths among his foes, as well as his friends, was nothing short of astonishing.
She thought about how as bad as things had been for her with Temporal, that when the timeline was 'reset' often more lives were restored than were lost- at least among the 'good guys' as he'd called them.
*How convenient. How sanitized for the sake of the conscience.* Liis thought with more than a little disgust. *How misleading.*
She wondered now just how high that number of 'bad guys' she had dispatched in her past would be, if she were to count them with the real, honest intention of keeping track as Blane had.
Her mind flashed briefly to the conversation they'd had in the flagship's arboretum, nearly a year ago after the evening's Halloween festivities.
That was the conversation during which he had confessed to her that he had done away with the team of Yensuli hit men sent to kill not only their Away Team, but to finish collapsing the tunnels on the innocent women and children within them.
She remembered the conversation as if it had happened yesterday.
-=Flashback=-
"The fact that it haunts you,"she began softly, "that violence, that killing, for whatever reason, still bothers you," she put a hand on his shoulder, "says an awful lot about the man that you are, Thomas Cassius Blane."
She somehow addressed his next unspoken thought when she added, "When should you worry about the man you might become?" His lips parted in surprise, but he didn't speak as she concluded. "When it ceases to bother you at all."
-=End Flashback=-
The fact that even after all the corruption he'd seen since then, among even those who were supposed to be leading them- that he was still mindful of every life lost in the course of his past work, painted a crystal clear picture of the moral character of the man.
Zanh felt, in this moment, even prouder than she had ever been to call him one of her officers, and her friend.
She realized that now it was her turn. Time for a confession of sorts, and one that she dearly hated to make.
"I'm in over my head here." She explained, folding her shaking hands one over the other on top of the helm. She stared down at them intently. "I hope that my coming on this mission hasn't been a grave miscalculation by those who made the decision to send me."
“The only miscalculation has been made by Vox.” TC quickly responded. “If he would have followed his own rules we might not be in this situation. Besides, if there was anyone in the universe that was made to find O’Sullivan’s son and get him out of whatever mess he is in, it is you. Well, other than me, anyway.” He smiled weakly.
"The thing is, if the mission only involved rescuing Carrick, that would be one thing. If I knew that Keiran was out there, somewhere, safe but simply unavailable for the task himself it would be different."
She looked up at him now with the same expression of despair he had seen when he found her target-shooting in the holosuite on the Alchemy.
"To know that his life may depend on my ability to keep it together terrifies me, Thomas. Scares me to death."
TC reached over and placed his hand gently on her shoulder.
“That’s just it Zanh Liis, it doesn’t depend on just you holding it together. It depends on all of us holding you together." He allowed his words sink in a moment before continuing.
"This is something that you do not have to handle alone. I’m not going to let you.” He paused. “You are my captain and my friend. I’m here not because of you, but for you.”
He pulled his hand back and leaned back against the panel. “We will be successful because what we are doing is right. It is right not because TI says so but because we know it to be so.”
He tapped his barrel chest with his fist. “Every instinct of my being believes in this mission because I believe in and trust in you.”
Unable to express the overwhelming emotions his confidence inspired, Zanh focused her tear-blurred eyes once again on the flight data before her.
"I think we might be able to coax a little more speed out of this beast if we work together to persuade the Warp coils a bit. Think she has it in her?"
"Yes." Blane answered unequivocally. "I know she has it in her."
Commander TC Blane
Second Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012