734: A Little Bit Longer

by Lair Kellyn and Rada Dengar
90107.12
Concurrent with Last Stand, Two
Soundtrack: A Little Bit Longer by The Jonas Brothers

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-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-


"Put me down!"

"Nothin' doin'."

"Dalton McKay, put me down RIGHT NOW or I swear to the Prophets, I will be giving you a complete electronic lobotomy the moment that you next close your eyes and deactivate!"

Lair Kellyn kicked, feet flailing as the very tall figure of the LMH held her, literally, suspended with her legs dangling above the deck plates to prevent her from running out the door.

"I told ya. A caterpillar would have a better chance of comin' out of a cocoon as a hamster than you have of leavin' my Sickbay, young lady."

Not having any idea how she could possibly counter such a remark, Kellyn merely moaned in frustration. "MY daughter is on that ship! My husband is on that ship! I should be ON THAT SHIP!"

"Now, simmer down. You want to wake poor Zander again? His medication just kicked in. You don't want to rob him of the few minutes of peace he has before it starts to lose effect again, do ya?"

Kellyn frowned. Of course, she did not.

"Well, then, ya'll gonna stop bellerin' and tryin' to squeak past me faster than a greased piglet in a slop pit at the County Fair?"

Kellyn pouted, but she stopped struggling, knowing it was pointless. She could never match his physical strength.

"Yes."

She looked, to Dalton, exactly like her young daughter in this moment.

"Fair enough."

He gently set her down, and for a split second, she thought about making a break for it anyway...until she saw Ensign T'Dara standing quite serenely by the door, hypo of sedative already in hand, poised to use it. T'Dara nodded, and Kellyn forced an overly pleasant smile onto her lips in response in lieu of the gesture she really wanted to make.

"She makes for a good plan b, don't she?" Dalton chuckled softly, before turning concerned eyes upon Lair again. "Need I remind you Missy, that you just came pretty dang close to going lights out for good on me down on that planet? You scared half the spots off the Trill and the Angosian went whiter than a polar bear durin' a snowstorm."

"You don't need to remind me." Kellyn sighed, regretting that she had worried her friends so much. She had only hazy memories of most of the time she'd spent lying, and bleeding, on the soil of Lethus IV and she was grateful for that. One thing she did clearly remember, though, was the conversation she'd had with Rada Dengar.

She turned away; arms crossed and leaned her head against the glass partition between Sickbay and the waiting area.

She felt like she was literally climbing the walls. She needed to see Arie, to know that she was all right. To hold her close and promise her that they would protect her, that she would never be taken from them again if Kellyn had anything to say about it...

[Reece to McKayyyy,]

Kellyn knew Dabin well enough to know just from the sound of his hail that, as much as she adored him, something he was about to say was really going to make her angry.

"Here," McKay waited, thinking that the Trill's pitch indicated that he was extremely worried about something.

[Um, here's the dealeo...Rada Dengar is about to beam over with a...um...present for you.]

"What is it?"

[It...it is green. Well, its blood is, anyway,]

"SALVEK?" Kellyn shouted, grabbing McKay by the shirt and shouting into his badge. "Reece, is Salvek hurt?"

[Ow! Eardrums! No! It's not Salvek; this guy plays for the other team.]

"I don't think that means what he thinks it means," McKay mumbled to himself softly, waiting patiently and rolling his eyes to the ceiling as Kellyn held him fast and spoke into his chest as if he was a microphone stand and she was broadcasting to Radio Free Europe.

[You'll find out. I hafta go. Got important stuffado. Reece out.] Kellyn felt a crushing heaviness in her chest as Reece employed a key phrase that Arie had always used as a toddler; when she would waddle around on short, stubby legs, proclaiming that she was very busy and had 'stuff to do' the words tumbled out in such a hurry that they always became one jumbled, precious one in the process.

It was his way, she knew, of promising her that somehow everything was going to be all right.

Tolleth then began to materialise on a biobed nearby. The Romulan Chief Engineer had taken a rather nasty disruptor blast to the chest and green blood was spreading out from the wound and slowly enveloping his uniform.

It left him barely conscious, just lying there unable to comprehend where he was or how he’d gotten there. Rada Dengar materialised standing next to him and quickly found himself being pushed past; first by the LMH who was attempting to treat the Romulan and then by Kellyn, who taking advantage of the distraction, knocked Dalton McKay to the side. Before anyone had a chance to respond Kellyn had her hands latched tightly around the Romulan’s throat.

“You tell me where my daughter is right now!” She demanded, her eyes were crazy with motherly rage as she completely forgot her own injuries. “Lair Arie, where is she?”

Rada considered that perhaps it would have been better for Tolleth’s health if they’d left him where he was.

Tolleth couldn’t register any meaning to the words and he listlessly murmured in response. His eyes refused to open and all he could feel was a crushing pain in his neck and oxygen draining from his body.

Kellyn was clearly not about to accept his response. Rada grabbed her firmly by one arm and was joined by McKay and T’Dara in holding her back.

“Kellyn. Stop. He doesn’t know anything and is in no shape to tell you if he did.”

Tolleth didn’t seem to even register that he’d been released as his head fell weakly to the side. He had a miserable, pained expression on his face, as he seemed simply to have accepted that death was coming.

“Are you sure of that? Sure enough that you’d let him be taken in and nursed back to health before questioning him if Wren and Tam were on that ship?” Kellyn demanded, sounding harsher on Rada than she’d intended.

With the fight in Kellyn, McKay doubted that T’Dara and Dengar would’ve been able to hold her back between them and so grabbed hold of her by the waist and lifted her into the air as he’d done before, allowing T’Dara to examine the Romulan. Kellyn was fighting and kicking McKay with everything she had, like an animal knowing it was being carried to the slaughter; only it wasn’t her own death she was worried about.

"You're bleedin' again! Damn it woman, willya just hold STILL!? McKay exclaimed, suddenly tilting her to the side and surveying her tunic with exasperation. It became clear that in her determination to get free, Kellyn had managed to tear the tender flesh covering her wounds, only newly regenerated.

"Are you SURE?" Kellyn pleaded with Rada again, ignoring her injury and the pain it produced in a fit of pure adrenaline intoxication.

She was willing to take his word, but no one else's, that she should give up her struggle for now.

“I’m sure.” Rada said calmly, as he was able to release Kellyn’s swinging arm and step back. “He was manning the bridge when I arrived.”

She gave a look that questioned what Rada was doing over there in the first place, but she wasn’t going to waste a second by articulating the sentiment now.

“He wasn’t involved in the main conflict and with internal sensors down had no way of tracking her.” Rada elaborated.

"He was working with Taris," Kellyn spat, her voice breaking and her eyes, blood red. "You give me one good reason that I shouldn't kill him right now, with my bare hands."

"Because he could've killed me," Rada offered softly, "and he let me live."

The rage in her softened in just the slightest amount, and it seemed that answer did something that she didn't think any he could possibly give could do.

It reached her.

Kellyn trusted Rada’s judgment and, as sickened as she was right now by the idea of sharing the room with this Romulan who was partly responsible for the kidnap of her daughter and for almost destroying their ship, she stopped fighting.

It took the wind right out of her as she went back to feeling she had no way of finding her daughter. McKay lowered her gently to the ground, still keeping hold of her as he tested the waters.

The look on T’Dara’s generally emotionless features was enough to tell Lair that she probably wouldn’t have to share Sickbay with a Romulan very long, anyway. Kellyn verified this impression by reading the scans of Tolleth's vital signs, coming across the monitors now. She knew enough of them to know that he was fading fast.

McKay wasn't sure which patient to treat first, his favorite little firecracker of a crewmate or the Other Guy. Deciding quickly that while Kellyn did need to be patched up again, she was by far the better off of the two, he knew he had to get out the spackle and see if he could paste together this Romulan fella again right quick, or he'd be taking up space in only one place. A coffin.

"Don't let her leave," McKay instructed Dengar, as he gestured for Rada to take Kellyn aside to allow them more room to work.

"You didn't see her?" Kellyn asked Rada dejectedly, "Or Salvek? Or the Away Teams? Anyone?"

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't, but that doesn't mean," Rada wanted to encourage her, but he knew first hand that the situation on the Romulan ship was grave. "I'm sure that..."

Kellyn closed her eyes, softly intoning words that she hadn't spoken in a very long time.

"Jia'kaja, tre'nu'tol'a rem," she bowed her head, and as hard as she tried to prevent it from happening, she was overcome at last with fear and grief.

Her shoulders began to shake with racking sobs. "La'por i'lanu kos, I'nar tan'a'tali nor."

Rada could only stand and watch. Kellyn was turning to a higher power for comfort and they seemed completely unable to provide it; a mere mortal like him could do nothing.

As she began to repeat the prayer a second time, Reece's voice suddenly broke through, screaming at them excitedly over the com.

[They've got her!] He shouted triumphantly. [We're going to beam her directly to Sickbay!]

Kellyn looked up at Rada, and the unaccustomed sight of tears streaming down her face took him aback quite a distance. It was something to be expected from any parent under these circumstances and yet Kellyn had never before shown such vulnerability. It made the occurrence all the more beautiful.

They exchanged a glance of a hundred meanings, and then both turned as the hum of the transporter sounded and the small, slight form of Lair Arie appeared before them.

The girl blinked, her eyes slowly adjusting to the light levels in Sickbay.

She tilted her head slightly, for a moment the very picture of her father's Vulcan restraint as she nodded respectfully to Rada.

Her carefully practiced control evaporated, though, the moment she saw the look in Lair Kellyn's eyes.

Without a word the child rushed forward into, and was enveloped by, the warm and waiting arms of her mother.

----------------------------

Commander Lair Kellyn
Research Engineering and Development
The Alchemy Project

and

Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC 2012

--=/\=--

NRPG: Thirteen years...where has the time gone?

Happy Birthday, "Arie"...

Love,

Oko-mekh

NRPG 2: Thanks for your help, Danger. Your words defined this post; I just tried to color inside the lines. LK