503: Give it Time

By Zanh Liis and Dabin Reece
80907.15
The day after Once Upon a Time

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Captain’s Log: supplemental.

We've been in the Klaestron system for eighteen hours.

Having quickly come to the conclusion that this ship simply does not have the scanning capabilities that we are going to need if we are going to find Carrick before it's too late, we’ve been forced to get creative, and improvise.

Initial recon missions to the main cities on the fourth planet, based on the intel provided by TEMA haven't rendered any useful information.

I have sent Commander Blane and Ensigns Cristiane and Steele out into the field again to take a more hands-on approach to searching, starting with the lowest dives they can find and working their way up.

Meanwhile we've landed the ship, secured a docking bay in a part of town where people stop asking questions if you simply give them the right amount of latinum. Reece and I have managed to procure some equipment that should enhance the sensor grids on this bucket enough to give us a better look around.

If we can't come up with a solid lead soon, we're going to have to toss everything, including this ship out of the equation and begin from scratch. If that happens, Vox and TEMA be damned, I am going to do this my way.

Whatever it takes, we will bring Carrick O’Sullivan home.

-=Bridge of the merchant ship Rixx Rewards=-

"Anything now?"

"You know, Liisy, if you stopped asking me that every thirty seconds, I might be able to finish and actually be able to find something."

Reece slid back out from underneath the science station on the bridge of Rixx Rewards and stared at her, frowning. "This kind of help ain't helping."

"I know, I know." She handed him the next set of grid enhancers to install and lowered penitent eyes to the deck. "I'm sorry."

Reece expelled a rapid sigh and pursed his lips unhappily in an exaggerated fashion. "Excuse me Madame, but who are you?"

"What?"

"You are not my Zanh Liis. Does the new model come with a return policy? ‘Cause I'd like my old one back, please." Reece continued with his work, pausing only to point to the scattered parts around them in the order he needed her to provide them to him. "The sub-routers come next, then the new isolinear filters. Okay?"

"Okay." Liis replied, turning a hydrospanner absently in her fingers. She hoped he'd let his earlier comment go, but should have known Reece better.

"I mean it, you know. I can't get used to you this way." He took the spanner from her and set it aside, he'd need it soon.

"What way is that?"

"Defeated."

Liis waited for the punch line. She was sure he was only waiting for the perfectly timed comedic moment to deliver it, but minutes passed in silence and none ever came. "Reece,"

"Don't 'Reece' me," he insisted, shaking his soldering tool at her. "You haven't been the same since this whole Sylph thing and I want my old spitfire Crinkle Nose back. I'm going to get rusty if we let our witty repartee' lapse for much longer."

"I know I haven't been the same,” Liis replied, placing her hand where he indicated on the panel to hold a component in place as he secured it. "I just don't know what to do about it."

"Well if anyone can tell you about personal metamorphosis, it's a joined Trill." Dabin replied, squinting as he strained to tighten the leads integrating the new parts into the ancient ones already present. "Reece has literally woken up on the table time and again and had to look down just to remember, well, even the anatomy of the new host."

"So how do you deal with it?" Liis leaned on her elbow; still disbelieving she was actually asking Dabin's advice, seriously, about anything. "How do you just wake up one day and redefine everything you thought made you who you are?"

"Don't think I'm being a smart ass when I say this, 'cause I'm not. You need time, Zanh Liis."

Liis laughed bitterly. "That is one word...one concept...I swear if I never hear it again," she shook her head. "They say time heals all wounds but,"

"That's a common misconception among species who only live one lifetime." Reece interrupted, not looking up from his work. "Time heals nothing if you don't use it properly. You can't just shove your feelings down for years and years or worse, have a bunch of things you've been medically induced to forget show up instantly courtesy of some telepathic interlopers and expect that you're going to wake up tomorrow and everything will be status quo.” He gestured toward her with the isolinear rod he was holding.

“You have to allow yourself time to process all the things that have changed in you before you can begin to establish what, if anything, has remained the same."

"I'm not the only one, either." Liis mumbled softly.

"Yeah, I know that too. Jariel,”Reece stopped, not needing to say anything more. The Vedek was aware of existing in only one lifetime, even if he had seen himself in Orb visions and Sylph memories. Reece knew Jariel had just “woken up” on the proverbial symbiont-joining table as well, and he was going to struggle with redefining himself and everything he thought he knew.

"He's gone to Bajor." Liis concluded. "I hope he finds everything he's seeking there. It always felt much more like home to him than it did me, maybe it's just what he needs right now."

Reece stopped his eyebrow mid-raise at hearing Jariel had gone to Bajor; and reserved comment on the fact he wasn't the only member of the Sera's crew who had gone there in recent days seeking clarity.

"Do something for me here. Put everybody else aside for the moment. Put aside brooding Bajoran priests and time traveling, knight-errant Irishmen. Put aside Jonas Freaking Vox and the entire history of space-time as we know it."

Reece set his tools aside, and grasped her arms gently, holding them fast by the wrists.

"Look at your hands."

"What the…Dabin,"

"Just look."

Liis sighed, and gave a perfunctory glance down toward her hands. "Yeah, eight fingers, opposable thumbs. I see them."

"Do you?" Reece asked softly. "Do you see them as the tools you’ll use to build your own future from today on? Or do you see them as being tied up with strings that somebody else is operating by remote?"

He let her consider his words before he continued.

"Or worst of all, do you see them as only having any worth if they're doing something for someone else?"

Liis lowered her eyes. He had hit too close to home and she couldn't look at him anymore.

"Because the time has come for you to look inward and take care of yourself for the first time in your life. You need to start making decisions based on what’s right for Zanh Liis and not what’s right for anyone else, or what will fulfill someone else’s needs. You're heading for forty, woman. If not now, then when? You're not getting any younger you know and you've been burning that Temporal candle in the middle with a flamethrower for more non-linear years than even Reece can wrap its mind around."

"Gee, thanks. You're no spring chicken yourself."

"I know that, I'm just sayin'. Neither one of us are kids anymore, Liis, no matter how much we still like to pretend we are."

"Peter Pan is telling me it's time to grow up?" Liis laughed a little.

He tilted his head to the side. "Dabin will never grow up. But Reece had to. A long, long time ago."

"I know I'm not the reckless young Jumper I once was, but Reece..." She ran her hands up and down her arms, feeling chilled to the bone. "It's those non-linear years that are the ones I'm having problems with. What would you do if you realized one day that everything you thought you wanted wasn't what you needed at all?"

"I married the other girl." Reece replied honestly, returning to his work. "And never looked back. That’s what I did when it happened to me, and I've never been happier."

"That's just it," Liis' voice grew smaller, until he could barely make it out. "When I went to see Vedek Timal last winter, after Aertok," she reached up to fidget with her earring, again forgetting it was not there. "He told me that the one lesson he could never successfully teach me was how to be happy. And I thought," she paused,

"I thought that I never would be, or could be. That there would always be this dark, nagging abyss of doubt that would exist at the very center of me that nothing could reach. That no one could reach. So I've done my best to fill in as much of that hole as I could on my own, but something was still missing."

She held her head in her hands now. "Then these memories returned and I realized there was once a time and place where I was truly happy, and I don't know,"

She reached out and put her hands on his shoulders. "Reece, in the other timelines the thing that made me the happiest wasn't meant to be. It was so wrong as far as history went that it cost me my life, twice over in two different timelines."

She said this knowing full well that this could be true in this timeline as well.

"So tell me, why is it that I'm willing to accept that fate, dying before my time if that's my destiny, just for the chance to feel that way again? For however long it lasts?"

"Because you're humanoid, Zanh Liis." Reece answered simply, squeezing her arms in return. "That's why."

"No matter what happens now, I may have to accept that my happiest days are behind me." The last of the remaining color in her face drained away as she contemplated the thought.

"Never accept that." Reece insisted, shaking her slightly. "Hear me? Because even if you can't have what made you happy before, the fact that you felt it then proves you can feel it now. You can find something…someone else that can do it too."

He could tell from the look in her eyes, though, that she just didn't believe him.

For as long as he had known her, Jariel had been a part of whom she was on every level. He wondered if perhaps the analogy of waking up with a new host was not even sufficient to describe the change in her. Dabin had training to deal with the events he went through. He knew what to expect and when to expect it. Liis, ironically, had no such compass.

If she had found out how to be truly happy somehow, she would need to reconcile the part of her there that was happy with the part of her here that held her back. That could only come from within.

"Time, Zanh Liis." He began to work faster, ever more anxious to find O'Sullivan's son and take her home to the Sera where she belonged. "You just have to give yourself time."

-=/\=-Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012

and

Commander Dabin Reece
Chief of Sciences
USS Serendipity NCC-2012