90421.0000
by Gemini Lassiter
Following Nicholas is Missing
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
~Amelia Earhart
-=Office of the Director of The Alchemy Project Starfleet Command, Earth=-
by Gemini Lassiter
Following Nicholas is Missing
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
~Amelia Earhart
-=Office of the Director of The Alchemy Project Starfleet Command, Earth=-
[We'll be underway soon, Admiral.] The man whose indisputably handsome face Gem Lassiter knew so well gazed upon her with such sincere sympathy now for her plight that she could barely tolerate it. [Are ya sure you don' wanna come with us?]
"I can't, Keiran." She allowed herself the luxury of a small sigh between sentences. "I have responsibilities here, and even if I could get away it would raise too many suspicions. It's best for everyone if I stay here for now."
[Very well. Captain Zanh wanted me ta ask ya one last time, are ya sure you don' want us ta send Alchemy ahead?]
"I'm only going to say this once more." Gem snarled, reacting as the manner of being that she felt she was at the moment: a cornered, wounded animal. "Do not get Alchemy any closer to this than the Sera is, and if the Sera goes in to the point where there is a danger to Alchemy, I expect you to leave her behind. Clear?"
[Understood.] Keiran's hand elevated to his chin and his brow furrowed. [Is there...an'a'thin' else I can do for you, personally, Gemini?]
"Find." She began with such strength in her voice that both of them were surprised when her voice broke with unstoppable emotion, preventing her from speaking in one fluid, uninterrupted sentence. "Find my son."
[We will. I'll give you a report the moment we reach The Mixing Pot. In the meantime, if ya, think of an'a'thin' else, you know where to find me. O'Sullivan out.]
The screen went black and Gem was grateful for it, because another moment more and she would not have been able to conceal from him any longer just how close to losing control she really was.
Though she had to admit, if only to herself, that knowing what he had gone through over the years concerning his own son, she was certain he already knew.
The door chime to her office sounded, and her weary and overworked personal assistant appeared. "Admiral, will you be retiring for the evening now?" He looked as if he were silently wishing with all his might that the answer to that question would be yes.
"I'm not going home tonight, Jake. You...you go on. I'll see you in the morning."
So much for offering me the day off to make up for the late night, Ensign Jake Sandler thought to himself sadly. But what did he expect? This was Gem Lassiter, and in the three months he'd been her assistant, he'd learned that she expected of others exactly what she demanded of herself; cold, logical and almost automaton like perfection-- nothing less. "Goodnight, Admiral."
She dimmed the lights to the point they were almost extinguished completely. She listened to the echo of his retreating footsteps. Once they had disappeared and there was no other sound to be heard, Gem locked her terminal down to all but the most high priority of incoming transmissions, walked across the room, and opened the cabinet on the far wall.
Reaching inside she procured two things; a glass, and a bottle of Macallan Fine and Rare Scotch Whisky.
The bottle was marked 2329, and she had received it as a gift from her son on her sixtieth birthday. Just one month ago.
She had scolded him at first, knowing how ridiculously expensive such spirits were. But as he ever did, Nick had managed to charm his way past her initial reaction, and beyond.
Her mind replayed the moment when he'd given it to her, along with a sixty long-stemmed, deeply red roses.
-=Flash=-
"Happy Birthday, Gem. The perfect gift for the woman who is everything."
"Isn't that, 'who has everything'?"
"Whomever said it that way must never have met my mother." Nick gave her a wink and she found that, as ever, she simply could not get, or stay, angry with him. "Think of it this way. It was born the same year you were, is nearly as precious and almost as rare, but only half as beautiful to look at."
She shook her head and smiled, the singular, special smile that she reserved only for him. "Nicholas, you never give up, do you?"
"Do you expect me to? After all, you raised me to believe that giving up was never an option." For an instant he almost sounded bitter. His throat constricted and tightened around the words, strangling them just beneath the surface of his calm and unfailing charm.
"No." She said resolutely, almost sternly. Gem Lassiter was who she was and she would make no apology about that- not to anyone. Not even to Nicholas. "And you should thank me every day of your life that I did not."
She finally accepted the gift, but only as something to be saved for very special, future occasion.
"We'll drink a toast with it at your wedding." She told him, and Nick merely laughed, kissed her on the top of the head and grinned in the way that only he could.
"Gemini, my love, you know as well as I do that I'm never getting married."
-=/\=-
As the sound of his voice faded and left her thoughts once again shrouded in silence she regarded the bottle. It felt so heavy in her hands, almost as weighty as the leaden heart which somehow managed to continue beating inside her chest. For an instant desperation seemed to marry insanity, and she had the overwhelming urge to smash the bottle against the far wall.
Instead, she closed her eyes and without thinking twice, broke the seal.
She poured herself a glass, straight, and then carried it and the bottle over to the couch facing the windows.
Slowly she sank down into the cushions, remaining perched on the edge as though any minute, either of the men dominating her memory tonight might come walking through the door, and she had to be ready to leap up and rush toward them in welcome.
She directed her gaze upward into the blackness again, wondering when it was exactly that staring at the stars had stopped being something she enjoyed, and could only be something that she would do with longing.
She didn't even know what she was looking for, when she glared with such utter hatred at them.
A sign?
Perhaps, though she had given up years ago believing one would ever come. That didn't seem to stop her occasionally still hoping she'd find it.
Peace? Absolution? Redemption?
Any of it.
All of it.
She clutched the glass in her hand more tightly and swirled the liquid within. The aroma of the extraordinary single malt stunned her senses. She elevated the glass to her lips and slowly drew it into her mouth.
After the first deliberate swallow, she finished the rest with speed and abandon that would have made a true connoisseur of such a rare beverage weep.
She poured another, and as the drink bathed her throat and chest in warmth, she wondered just how much colder she would feel when the effect wore off.
She tilted her head up and back, eyes closed; battling the need to remember, while simultaneously fighting the desire to forget.
-=Flashback, Current Timeline, 2357
Office of the Director, The Department of Temporal Investigations=-
Office of the Director, The Department of Temporal Investigations=-
"Send somebody else."
"There is nobody else."
"There has got to be someone else." Gem scowled deeply at the rapidly aging face of her supervisor, Admiral Adam Galloway. "Why the hell was he the one who got to go on the Jump instead of me? It's his fault the last one was such an unmitigated disaster."
"I already told you, Gem, this is not a hearing and you're not counsel. We are not trying your case again just because you disagreed with the committee's decision."
"Damn right I disagree with it." Lassiter put her hands on her hips, her jewel green eyes taking on an almost alien quality as they burned through him. "Jonas goes on another Jump and I get suspended for a month."
"Not so much suspended as temporarily reassigned.
"To play security guard for some fossil who's old enough to be my grandfather?"
"Ambassador Braylan is old, yes, Gem, I know. But he's also the best option that Starfleet has at this point to send into these negotiations and he is going to have to be protected. We're up to our necks in this, in case you haven't noticed."
He sighed, deeply and with the sound of man threatened to be crushed by the burden resting upon his shoulders. "Ever since Galen IV the President has been after us to get a treaty signed, and we've been hard pressed to even get the Talarian government to consider sitting down at the table."
"So you're throwing them a party."
"Exactly." Galloway replied, as though implying that course of action should be obvious.
-----------------------
//// Admiral Gemini Lassiter
Director, The Alchemy Project
Starfleet Command
//// Admiral Gemini Lassiter
Director, The Alchemy Project
Starfleet Command