by **William Lindsay and Zanh Liis
80119.15
Hours after Consequences
-=/\=-
-=USS Serendipity=-
80119.15
Hours after Consequences
-=/\=-
-=USS Serendipity=-
Will Lindsay was a man good at living with the choices he’d made, even when they did bother him.
For this reason he could cope well enough with the fact that he’d sabotaged Liis’ compass to try to trick her into not boarding the Romulan ship. He could cope with not telling her about it now and indeed for a very long time in the future. Coping was good and it was an option Keiran had given him.
He was leaving it to Will’s conscience whether he told her or not and said that he wouldn’t mention it to Liis if Will didn’t; that he couldn’t cope with. Will knew O’Sullivan and he knew that, save the occasional planning for a romantic gesture, it would eat him up inside to keep anything from her.
He realised he had to tell her and approached her cautiously, making sure to stay out of the reach of her one free arm. Will considered it a truly dangerous thing, angering a woman; particularly if they were of the Bajoran variety. A man may punch you in the face, kick you in the stomach or attempt the fasten and pull method of amputating your arms, but a woman may well choose to inflict her damage on much more precious parts of the anatomy.
Even at this late hour, Zanh Liis was still sitting at her desk, struggling with only the use of her one free arm as she tried to work her way through the most recent reports on the state of the repairs to the Sera.
"Will," she nodded toward him, looking him over quickly. "Good to see you look like you're feeling better."
"Aye, and you." Will replied with a nod. He wondered if Liis even realised just how weak she'd looked when they'd left Taris' ship, seeing her now looking so strong and immersed in the duties of a starship captain it was easy not to.
"Gem Lassiter is looking for you," she casually remarked.
The look of boredom that dawned upon his face showed that this wasn't news to him. "She'll find me, when she's good and ready." Will seemed in no hurry to have that conversation at this particular moment. In fact, he had another on his mind that he very much wanted to get over with first. “Liis,” he hesitated uneasily, never quite sure how to start something like this. “We need to talk.”
Liis didn’t even look up as she dryly suggested, “You’re breaking up with me?” She then shrugged her free shoulder and added apathetically, “Oh well. I guess some things just aren't meant to be.”
Will wasn’t in the frame of mind for jokes right now. He just wanted to get this said. He spoke with none of his natural enthusiasm. “It’s about yer, um, compass.” He chose his words carefully. “The readings it gave ya when ya last saw it weren’t exactly the correct ones. I…” he trailed off.
"William," Liis shifted slightly and with annoyance, obviously very tired of having to wear the sling that her arm remained trapped in. She looked up and met his eyes directly. "Do you think that I got this far in life by being stupid?"
Her eyes told him that somehow, she knew. She couldn’t know, but she did and Will found that suddenly all words were eluding his grasp. He could only watch her as she continued.
"Well, you must if you think that I could look at those compasses and not know that they'd been tampered with." She laughed softly, the sound telling him that he should have known better.
"You had me for a minute, when you showed me the dial of mine. I could almost believe that it could be so convoluted, given the Paradox. You almost pulled it off. But then, in your attempt to completely convince me, you made the mistake that gave you away." She rose from her chair and stared out the window.
"You showed me the dial of yours. I took one look at it and I knew that there was no way that our compasses would both be so unreadable at the same time. We weren't assigned to be partners, ever. We weren't assigned to protect the same target, ever. We had never even met in this timeline until the night before my wedding. There is no way they'd both show such similar, incomprehensible readings."
"You couldn't have known-" Will objected. He didn't want to believe that his attempt at subterfuge had really been so transparent to her.
"That little speech I gave you, about how I was going to call the shots no matter what the compasses said. You think I said those things because I enjoy listening to the sound of my own voice? No. I gave it for your benefit, so that you'd know that I didn't care what the damned things said. I was going there, I was going after Arie and Salvek and I was going after Keiran."
Then the realisation hit Will of what Liis went over there knowing. “You knew that I was hiding what the compasses said from you. How’d ya know it didn’t say you were going to die over there?” Her silence told him everything. “Ya didn’t know; ya just really didn’t care.”
Liis never so much as turned from the window. “I knew that you were trying to stop me from going over there, so the compass had to say that either one or both of us was in danger. There was no way in hell I was going to allow Keiran to face the Romulans without me at his side.”
A moment of silence passed as Lindsay processed this information. Liis’ was, at that moment, in the room in body only.
Her mind was back on Taris’ ship, considering all the worst possibilities of what could have happened. Many strong people would have been over powered by these thoughts. How exactly Liis was responding Will couldn’t tell.
He felt she had to know. “The readings said that you’d be okay, Keiran was always the one at risk.”
Liis required no time to consider this information, she’d prepared herself for the decision she’d have had to make the moment they’d left Earth. “In that case, I’m glad I was over there. If something happened to him then…” she didn’t need to finish, she’d never have forgiven herself.
It was then Will first considered his actions in full and what it could have done to Liis if he’d actually succeeded and made her hesitate. The realisation stung. He was glad she was still not facing him as he did not want to look her in the eye right now
“You must hate me now for trying to mislead you." He didn't use the words 'lie to you' because William Lindsay believed more than anything else in life that truth is subjective and that one man's lie is another man's completely valid viewpoint; even if he was no longer sure of the validity of this viewpoint.
"Don't worry, Lindsay. I understand your actions and what's more, I know what you were trying to protect me from." Her eyes took on a far away sadness, and she stared at the floor.
"I've lost him before. I lived it, in the Paradox. I lived it, the moment that Jonas Vox took my compass and handed me that damned envelope and said that." She stopped, the words becoming more and more difficult to say. After another moment in silence, she struggled on.
"You thought, that if it happened again, if he were to." Liis still couldn't bring herself to say the word. "You didn't want me to see it. How could I hate you for that?" She turned her full attention back to him now, her eyes searing through him.
"Do you remember the story that I didn't think I could tell you back in Scotland, William?"
Will's complexion took on a waxen tone."The one that I didn't think I could hear?"
Liis nodded. "It's time that you heard it."
------------------
Captain **William Lindsay
Temporal Investigations
Currently aboard the Serendipity
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Captain **William Lindsay
Temporal Investigations
Currently aboard the Serendipity
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012