by -=/\=- Zanh Liis
90924.16
Following No Greater Love
-=/\=-
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson
-=/\=-
-=O'Halloran's Pub, Cork, Ireland=-
90924.16
Following No Greater Love
-=/\=-
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson
-=/\=-
-=O'Halloran's Pub, Cork, Ireland=-
Liis squinted as her eyes adjusted to the bright lights inside of the small, traditionally styled pub.
Pitchers of beer awaited the crew as well as a large spread of food, though it took awhile before anyone was willing to approach it.
The first man to do so took a thorough teasing from his crew mates, and for the first time, laughter broke through the sorrow choking everyone in the room.
"We should have had a pool! I'd have made a killing betting that Swenson would take the first plate of food!"
A voice from the back of the room declared, and several others burst into laughter as well.
"Captain always said that Swenson could be 'starin' at the very rope swingin' from the gallows and waitin' to die and he'd be asking for second helpings at his last meal'." The man imitated Keiran's accent fondly and most present at the very least smiled at the sound.
"You wouldn't have made any money on that bet, Foley. No one would have bet against him." Ashton Ledbetter replied dryly. Like a mother hen, he encouraged the rest of the crew to eat as well.
"Been awhile since we've seen food like this, folks. Will most likely be a long time before we see it again. Don't let the Admiral's hospitality go to waste."
Zanh Liis stayed at the back of the room a step behind Admiral Lassiter, arms folded, hating every single second of this.
Why humans insisted on having parties after funerals, she would never understand.
"Why don't you have a seat, Captain Zanh," Lassiter suggested. "There's a nice booth over there in the corner. Can I bring you something to eat?"
Liis' eyebrow elevated. Was the Admiral really offering to serve as wait staff to bring her a meal?
"Thank you, no."
"A cup of coffee, then. If they don't have any made, I'll request it." Lassiter decided.
Liis began to ask herself how this woman she did not know seemed to know her so well.
Whispers began to circulate through the pub as soon as the Admiral had spoken Zanh's name, and it only took a moment before Liis found her solitude in the corner booth was broken.
"Captain Zanh?"
Liis fought the urge to sigh and looked up to see the young woman who had been so distraught earlier. The swollen, bloodshot appearance of her eyes, clearly visible now in normal lighting, told Liis that this girl had been crying for a very long time.
"Ensign Gira Lassiter, Sir. I am...was...a flight controller on the USS Perseids. The Captain, he," she sniffled softly. "He spoke so well of you. I just wanted to offer my..."
Her shoulders began to shake, and young man stepped forward, nodding to Zanh before whispering words of comfort into Gira's ear. Slowly, he led her away.
"I'm sorry, Captain, for your loss." Gira whispered, not looking back.
"Thank you. I'm sure that..." Liis fought to force each word out, though the girl was too far away to hear. "You're going to miss him, too."
"All right, everyone. For the moment, this table is off limits. I need to dominate the Captain's attention for awhile." The Admiral announced.
She slid into the booth beside Zanh, presenting her with a steaming cup of coffee. "Double cream. That is how you take it." She was not asking a question, but making a statement.
"I'd like to ask you how you know that, but then I'm not entirely certain I want to hear the answer." Zanh held the cup in her hands a long time before finally attempting to take a sip. She found that once she did, the warmth of the beverage was welcome.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it." Lassiter took in a swallow of liquid from her own mug, and then she gazed upon Liis with earnest eyes. "I know you feel that you've failed. Tred and Fen were very concerned when they gave me their post-incident report."
Liis' hackles rose. This woman had so much power that she was the one that TEMA agents reported to?
"I should tell you that I've been in charge at TEMA for the past linear decade, give or take," Lassiter lowered her voice, though doing so was hardly necessary. Someone had sat down at the piano across the room, and though they began playing a sad song, someone else began telling a story about O'Sullivan, and one story led to another, and within minutes, the mood of the place brightened. People were laughing, sharing their memories, and celebrating Keiran's life while mourning his loss.
Gem Lassiter shook her head in amazement at the sight. "This is why they were chosen for the job that they do," she marveled. "Such a resilient lot. You'd like them, honestly. Each and every one of them. Well, maybe not Ledbetter. You've never liked him."
Liis would ordinarily have laughed, or at least smirked, at Lassiter's particularly astute observation. Not tonight.
She stared down into her cup, saying nothing.
"You were chosen for your job for the same reason, you know." Lassiter signaled to the bartender, who swept past and left an entire decanter of coffee on their table. She picked it up and refilled her cup.
"You will get through this, and believe it or not, you will feel joy again. After all," she spoke to Liis quietly, with a calm sense of knowing. "He wouldn't want you to only remember him with sadness. Try to remember the best days, Zanh Liis. Each of us is only blessed with so many. We need to hold tightly to them."
Liis thought about Keiran's letter, and how he had already asked her to do just that; to remember him and their love with happiness so that his love for her would have meaning, even though they were apart.
She felt the air was too thick to breathe suddenly, and only wanted to run.
"Admiral, you said that you needed to speak to me. If there is something in particular that you need to say, please, say it."
Lassiter drank her beverage, unaffected by Zanh's flare of temper. "All right. I'm leaving TEMA to take on oversight of The Alchemy Project."
Zanh Liis choked on her coffee.
She waved Lassiter away as she inquired if Liis was all right, and finally Zanh regained the ability to speak.
"I'm sorry, I thought you said that you were taking over our Project."
"That's exactly what I said." Lassiter continued, matter-of-factly. "Admiral Vox has been removed, and after he is reprimanded and his sentence for causing the Cascade has been carried out, he will continue on as Bureau chief at the Department of Temporal Investigations. However, Starfleet Command has decided that his days in playing both ends against the middle are over."
She sighed, glancing off in the general direction of the crowd in the distance, muttering, "You really screwed up royally this time, didn't you Jonas?"
"Sentence?" Liis curiosity was piqued. "What sentence?" She, for one, was hoping that for what he'd done he'd earned at least some jail time. Even if 'jail' at his rank meant a room rivaling that at any five star resort on Risa, with the slight difference being it had a forcefield around it.
"They're going to resequence the living hell out of him."
Liis was not expecting this, and dropped her cup.
A waiter hurried over with a dish towel and began to clean up the mess, but Liis barked at him to leave it. Meekly, he retreated.
"That's right, Zanh Liis. He's going to lose all memory of anything to do with the Project. There is no alternative."
"Unbelievable." Liis shook her head. As much as she hated Vox in this moment, she still hated TI's god-like practice of selecting who remembered what even more.
"He was all for it. If you ask me, they should have thrown his ass in jail and kept his memory intact. This way, he doesn't have to spend any more time thinking about what he's done. Coward."
Liis couldn't help but laugh incredulously at the coldness of Lassiter's insult. It was too personal a remark to be made about someone she only knew casually.
"Yes, I said it. You see, Zanh Liis, you and I have much more in common than you can begin to imagine."
She slid closer to Liis, tilted her head toward the Bajoran as she spoke at barely audible levels directly into Zanh's ear.
"I was a Jumper, in my day. So was Jonas. Of course, his name wasn't Jonas then. Even he doesn't remember what his name was then."
"Yet, you do."
Lassiter shrugged. "You know the nature of this business. It's amazing, the fragments that they miss when they resequence you."
"Yes." Zanh said, disbelieving what she was hearing. "Amazing."
"I knew him by his given name, Joseph Vale. We were paired as one of the very first Jump teams back when you were still in diapers on Bajor."
Lassiter swirled the liquid in her cup, then gestured to the waiter that he should bring another for Zanh.
"We were the reason that most of the regulations that you and O'Sullivan broke were written."
Liis eyes widened.
"But I didn't tell you that." Lassiter drained her cup dry and set it aside.
"Of course not."
"You've just met one of the two children produced by our ill-advised union. My daughter, Gira." She nodded in the direction of the pretty young Ensign. "We also have a son, Nicholas. He's slated to take command of the Zenith when she leaves spacedock next month."
*The new flagship," Zanh thought. *This woman is so well connected, it's frightening.*
"A word of advice, Zanh Liis. Don't ever have children."
Liis thought surely she must be joking, but the sorrow in Lassiter's features said otherwise. "It's not that I don't love them. It's that Starfleet took them in hand as soon as they hit their teen years and refused to let go. They never had a choice in the matter, because of who their parents were." Her words chilled Zanh through. "Consider yourself warned."
Liis tilted her head in understanding.
"So. Jonas is getting a slap on the wrist as far as I'm concerned, considering the damage he caused. Especially what he has done to you, and to Keiran."
Just hearing O'Sullivan's name caused Liis physical pain. She nearly doubled over at the sensation of a knife twisting in her stomach. "How much do you know, exactly, about what he did to us?"
"I know about your memories, about how he allowed Keiran to go on the one way Jump. It amazes me still that you and your crew were able to take such a hopeless mess and bring about any sort of positive outcome at all."
"The outcome wasn't positive for Keiran."
"It was never meant to be, Zanh Liis. But I hope it brings you some comfort at least to know that he saved so many others, instead of suffering the meaningless death that would have occurred had you not intervened." She drew a deep breath. "If you'd failed, every single member of his beloved Perseids crew would have perished along with him."
Liis sat up straighter in her seat. "Including your daughter."
"Yes." Lassiter could barely speak the word.
"I'm glad that..." Liis offered sincerely, watching Gira interact with her crew mates, who clearly adored her, "That she's all right."
Lassiter was now the one sitting silently, staring at the table.
"Where do we go from here, Sir?" Liis asked.
"Well that depends. Can you handle knowing that Jonas Vox' ex-wife is going to be your new boss?"
Liis tilted her head back and forth in thought, considering. "I can handle knowing that a woman as forthright as you are will be my new boss."
"Fair enough."
The pub door opened, and another face familiar to Zanh appeared. "Oh no," she groaned. "Salvek sent the kid to fetch me. Be right back."
Liis exited the booth and began curling her index finger repeatedly toward herself, signaling for Dane to approach.
"I'm sorry, Captain. The Commander insisted that I check on you. Make sure you're all right."
"Make sure I'm not getting drunk, you mean. Go home. Tell the nosey Vulcan that I'm still stone sober and that I'll beam up when I'm damn good and ready and not a moment before."
"Yes, Sir." Dane turned back to the door, prepared to do just that.
Seeing the sadness etched so deeply into his features where the scowl usually was, Liis held him up.
She knew there was no one else on the Sera, save herself, taking Keiran's death as hard as he was. "Dane. Wait."
She indicated the group at the bar. "This is the crew of the Perseids. They came after you'd gone, to offer their respects, in fact, they..." She leaned closer, whispering into his ear exactly what they'd done.
Dane exhaled sharply, trying to control an unexpected wave of emotion. "Really?"
"Yeah." She gave him a gentle push forward. "I'm sure that they'd appreciate it if you offered them your condolences on their loss."
Dane was taken aback by the opportunity she was providing, but he was also grateful for it.
He approached the bar and within moments was shaking hands and introducing himself to the others.
Out of the corner of her eye, Zanh observed a look of utter amazement cross Cristiane's face when he turned around, and almost walked directly into Gira Lassiter.
He blinked several times, and very slowly offered his hand to her. She shook her head at him, then indicated the bandages that were protecting the still healing burns on her hands and arms. Dane lowered his eyes humbly, withdrawing his hand. Lassiter looked up at him shyly from beneath long, dark bangs, and alarms rang off in Zanh's head.
*Oh no you don't, hormone boy,* she thought, *Not the Admiral's daughter...* Before she could intervene, the older Lassiter here present called for her return to their conversation.
As Liis sat back down the door opened again, and a cheer went up when several people recognized the newcomer.
"I'll be damned," Lassiter shook her head. "It's William Lindsay."
------------------------
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012