by Jariel Camen and Dane Cristiane
81213.03
…continued from part one…
-=/\=-
81213.03
…continued from part one…
-=/\=-
“HOW DO YOU KNOW?” Milea screamed.
Dane jumped to his feet, remembering all the pain, rage, and sorrow of his childhood in an instant. “Because they also do the same things to thirteen year old boys!”
She backed away from him slowly, shaking her head. “No. You’re lying.”
“Look at me. Do you think I would make something like that up?”
Milea glared at him out of the corners of her eyes. “I’ve heard stories, about what women do sometimes. I’m not like that. I’m going to be a botanist, I have plans and dreams.”
Dane ran his hand back through his spiky hair before meeting her eyes again. “You would be surprised what fear, loneliness and an empty stomach can make you do. They come to you and offer you security no one else can. They just never tell you the price you’ll really have to pay.”
She hated every word he said, because he sounded so sincere. Jariel had warned her that if she wanted to succeed she would have to be willing to work with people like Timal, and excel at her studies.
In her own little world, she believed she could make it all on her own.
She delighted in every moment they spent studying botany, but his words of wisdom about staying in school and out of trouble was just the same tired line of bull that every adult droned on about, wasn’t it?
The man in front of her was the living embodiment of everything she had been warned about.
“Was this Timal’s idea? Or one of the doctors? Someone sent you out here to scare me, didn’t they? All you Starfleet types live the lives of heroes, what do any of you know about having it rough?”
Milea made one last attempt to try and convince herself this was all a ploy to keep her trapped here.
Dane could have absolutely exploded at her choice of words.
“You want to know about rough? My Captain grew up in that orphanage right behind you, and so did Vedek Jariel. I’ve seen days where the few people in this life that are important to me have died. My First Officer’s parents were murdered by the Romulans, long before he was assimilated by the Borg. His wife has two lungs that barely function as a result of a bombing planned by her own parents during the resistance fighting on Bajor. Do you want me to go on? I haven’t even talked about the Trill that I know yet.”
Milea spun away from him, determined not to let him see her cry.
“Look, I’m not saying whatever bad things that have happened to you in life are not important. Just that everyone has a story. I made the mistake of falling into a trap few people ever escape from. You see a Starfleet Officer who has the whole galaxy on a platter. I look in the mirror and see someone that should know he is damn lucky, because not many people end up making it into this uniform after where I’ve been. Believe me, that place is somewhere that I would hate to see anyone else ever go.”
Dane could hardly believe what he was saying. He would have torn into anyone who spoke like that to him a few years ago. Now he had so much to be grateful for, he could hardly believe it had taken him so long to at least try and make a respectable life for himself. Granted, Vox and Zanh Liis had had to push him with both hands into the fire.
“How can you ever trust anyone other than yourself? I’m the only person who can take care of me,” Milea said.
“You have to learn to trust because no one can make it on their own. I’ve tried.”
“You have people that care about you.”
Dane scoffed at the remark, “Who made your dinner last night?”
“The replicator,” she responded sarcastically.
“You know what I mean. You didn’t have to go hunting for your food last night. Someone cared enough to make sure you went to bed with a full stomach.”
Milea had gone to bed hungry so many times. Dane was right, she did matter enough to someone for them to make sure she was fed. She knew what it was like when someone didn’t care. This was better.
“You talk about having it rough,” she turned the conversation away from herself once again. “But I bet you never…” She didn’t know where to begin on the list of unfair things she’d suffered in her life.
“Go on.” He crossed his arms and leaned at an angle against the tree. “I dare you. You come up with something you’ve gone through and that I haven’t. Try really hard.”
“You’ll just make something up.”
“You know what? I don’t have time for this. I’m sending one of the Prylars out to wrangle you back into the corral and going back to work.”
Milea thought for a moment he was bluffing, but as he moved further and further into the distance, she began to panic again. “Wait!”
She ran after him, the fallen Autumn leaves on the ground crunching beneath her shoes. “I bet no one ever,”
Dane stopped and turned around. “Well?”
She searched for the words to articulate what she wanted to know, what was most important. The words in her head screamed to be let out; she just couldn’t seem to find her voice.
“People hurt me too, Milea.” He volunteered softly, stepping toward her. “My mother threw me away like garbage when I was a baby. But then, she was only fourteen, what did she know. I have no idea who my father was and probably never will. I don’t even know his name.”
Dane’s eyes were clear and cold as he seemed to go into a trance before her, remembering. “I went into the child protection system. So called.” He shivered, visibly. “I took beatings. I went without food. Some did…” he stopped and glanced at the ground. “Worse to me than either of those things.”
Milea looked at the ground as well. Dane could read shame in her face, and he was beginning to think that this he and this kid had a lot more in common than he wanted to imagine.
“So when I was just about to turn thirteen, I ran away. I went to the streets. Thought it would be better. Thought I could survive picking people’s pockets.”
Milea’s head jerked upward, betraying her shock.
”Oh yes. You know how to pick pockets too, don’t you? Easy money, right? Well not when your boss decides he’s keeping all of your take and if you want money to eat, you are going to have to sell something else.”
“You…you didn’t.” She simply couldn’t believe him. Not so much because she doubted things like that happen in the big cities, even on Bajor, but because she couldn’t believe that he was telling her about it so bluntly.
People always tried to dumb everything down to her, like she had no brain. Like she was still a baby. Like she couldn’t handle the truth.
“Yeah. I did. For six long years, Milea. I moved from one place to another, and eventually I was pretty well paid for what I did. But you know what? There is no price worth selling your soul for. Trust me. I know.”
She did some math in her head quickly, trying to determine how old he might be now.
As if reading her mind, he answered the question. “I’m almost twenty-three now, and I would've been dead at nineteen for sure if not for one person who helped me even though I gave her absolute hell for trying.” Dane looked up to the sky now, ashamed of himself as he thought of all he’d put Zanh Liis through.
“I screwed up. Often, and completely. But I kept going.” He tilted his head downward, trying to catch her side-cast gaze. “You’ve got to keep going. You’ve got to listen. Older people can save you from making years worth of stupid mistakes, if you’ll just admit to yourself that you don’t know every damned thing already at the age of…” he waited for her to fill in the blank.
“Twelve.”
”Twelve.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and then made her a sincere offer.
“If someone here at Altaan is mistreating you, all you have to do is say the word and I- Vedek Jariel and I,” he knew that Jariel had spoken of her and hoped that he had a good working relationship with her. Knowing the man, he was willing to bet upon it. “We will have you moved to another facility. No one is allowed to mistreat you, Milea. People will help you now. They might not be able to undo everything that has already been done, and I’m sorry for that.”
He paused and she finally looked him in the eye. Seeing the look on his face, somehow she believed that he truly was sorry for her.
“All you can do is keep moving. Just be sure when you do that you’re going in the right direction.”
He turned away, stressed out again and desperate for another smoke; but resisting because for once in his life, he didn’t want to set a bad example.
“I have to get back to work, but I’ll be on the ship, if you want to talk more later, you can ask for me, and we’ll talk.”
She shuffled her feet, digging her toes into the decaying foliage beneath her.
“Dane.”
He waited.
“Know why I was gonna run away?”
“No.”
“Because all of this, everybody being sick, it’s all my fault.”
Dane blinked in surprise. “What?”
“It’s my fault. I went to the Plains without permission to see Vedek Jariel and when I came back, I was sick and then everybody else got sick. If they figure that out, they’re going to kick me out anyway. I know it.”
“Did you know you were sick?”
“No,”
"Did you mean for other people to get sick?"
"No, but,"
“Then it's not your fault, is it?”
Suddenly Dane’s mind was back in Zanh Liis’s temporary quarters on the Alchemy; reading the letter Keiran had written to her. Knowing, by the look on her face, that even she could be hurt. Admitting what he had done and why was the first step towards his own salvation.
Zanh had almost killed him, but he had never in his life been more alive then he was when for the first time he had stood up and took his lumps like a man.
“Milea, you have got to tell them. Maybe they will be upset with you for sneaking off, but part of building a life for yourself means owning up to your mistakes.”
“You are going to tell them anyway, what’s the point?”
“Nope,” Dane began to walk off again, ready to go about his business. He talked back over his shoulder. “If you don’t want to tell anyone, your secret is safe with me.”
Milea bit her lip.
She stood, for about ten minutes, considering what to do.
Finally she knew exactly who it was that she would need to face.
If she were ever going to learn to trust anyone, or learn to take responsibility for things, there was one person in particular she would need to start with.
One thing was for sure, she was willing to try things Dane’s way, because the future he had laid out for her scared the shit out of her.
She walked to the medical tent, and stepped through the opening.
“Excuse me? Doctor Hartcort?”
Lance smiled brightly and set down the tricorder he was holding. “That’s me. Did you need something, young woman?”
“Yes… Sir.” Milea gulped. “I need to talk to you.”
Vedek Jariel Camen
Ship’s Chaplain, USS Serendipity
Currently on Bajor
and
Ensign Dane Cristiane
Communications Officer
USS Serendipity/Alchemy
Ship’s Chaplain, USS Serendipity
Currently on Bajor
and
Ensign Dane Cristiane
Communications Officer
USS Serendipity/Alchemy