868: Family Album

by Gira Lassiter
90507.23
Concurrent with Cats and Dogs
Soundtrack: Enough for Now by The Fray

-=/\=-


-=USS Zenith: Officer's Quarters=-


Dane didn't know what felt heavier as he walked, just a pace behind her at all times; his boots, or his heart.

Every step seemed to take more energy and he felt as if he had no natural momentum anymore. It was as if the laws of physics were suspended here, just because of the sadness in the atmosphere.

They'd been told that families hadn't joined the crew yet. That there were only Starfleet officers aboard the Zen at the time she'd gone silent, but that information had turned out to be, in at least a few cases, erroneous.

Dane didn't know which was worse, having found evidence that a handful of entire families seemed to have disappeared together, or the last room they'd been in.

The last room that they'd been in, had contained a closet filled with packages wrapped in brightly colored paper, surely meant for a child or children, and a folded up banner intended to be hung up for a small, happy celebration.

The banner read, Happy Birthday, and Welcome Home in cheerful, block print.

The sight of it made Dane sick to his stomach.

Worse still, the sight of Gira, this way.

He'd known her long enough now, observed her in enough situations to have become rather accustomed to and fond of her natural optimism. She was bright, and she shined brightly, everywhere she went. She smiled, she glowed.

She sparkled.

But that was before the news had come. Dane thought back to the only other time he'd ever seen her eyes look so distant and troubled, and it was a memory of her with the rest of the Perseids crew, at O'Halloran's pub in County Cork after Keiran O'Sullivan's funeral in the paradox timeline.

He had really hoped that was a sight that he would never have to see again.

The two security officers signaled Dane as Gira stood quietly a moment in the quarters, straightening a bow on one of the presents absently before putting it back into the closet and closing the door.

She was a million kilometers away in her head, and even farther away, he knew, in her heart. He only wished that he knew how he could help her.

"What is it?" Dane asked, lowering his voice as one of the men gestured toward Gira and back to Dane.

"The next one," Ensign Lambert whispered, "Was assigned to Commander Lassiter."

The heaviness in Dane's heart seemed to increase by an order of magnitude. "Christ."

"Dane?" Gira was suddenly standing just over his shoulder. "What's wrong? Aren't we going on to the next one?" The teams had split the deck by sides of the hall, and the next one on the right was to be theirs.

"Why don't we switch sides. You know, break up the monotony." Dane tried to sound casual, and failed spectacularly.

"Why?" Gira asked, suddenly her voice was rising. "What about the next one?"

Dane wanted to hold her by the arms to steady her, but he resisted. His eyes held hers, trying to gauge how she might react to what she was about to hear. "The next one, it's Nick's."

Without waiting a moment, Gira approached the keypad and began to enter a series of numbers. "Don't you need Cristiane to override the...keycode for?" He stopped, seeing the doors had already opened and she was already inside.

"Nick never changes his security codes. Or he never remembers them." Gira called back. Dane followed slowly behind her, nodding that the other two should continue with their own search and leave him and Gira to theirs.

He found her standing, half of her face in shadow in the dulled light from the corridor. He called for the lights at half intensity before stepping in far enough that the doors would close behind him, and he kept his position, as he watched her take in the room.

The room was in quite a state.

Half eaten plates of food were on the table. An empty wine bottle sat in a puddle of room-temperature water that had once been ice inside a silver bucket.

Stems of what appeared to have been chocolate covered strawberries sat on a platter beside it, and Gira knew her brother well enough to know that when they went into the bedroom, the discheveled sheets would indicate that he'd been entertaining a guest the last time he'd been in the room.

"Gira," Dane said softly, and with a tenderness in his voice which surprised even him. "You don't have to do this. I can look, you can-"

"No, Dane. That's where you're wrong." She moved across the livingroom as something caught her eye. "I have to do this." She picked up the small round object and activated it, knowing before she did so what it would contain. After all, she was the one who had sent it to him.

It contained the few existing pictures that Gira possessed of them when they were growing up. Various ages, with one parent in the picture usually, as it was the case with them as with most Starfleet families that their parents were rarely in the same place at the same time after the children had been born, even before they'd divorced.

After the divorce, Gira could count the times she'd seen her father between childhood and adulthood on her fingertips. He'd been resequenced so many times, and he suffered the effects.

Sometimes, he'd remember her.

Sometimes he wouldn't.

Most times, either way, he didn't seem to want to be bothered with the boring details of parts of life as mundane as playing father to a daughter.

Dane recognized the tiny, frighteningly frail looking girl she'd been by her eyes. Large, intense eyes that looked, in every holoimage she scrolled through, a bit sadder.

The only one in which she was smiling was the one in which she appeared to be about five years of age, and had her arm draped lovingly over the back of a small, black and gold colored ,mixed breed dog with long, silky ears.

In the image, Dane could also have sworn that the dog itself appeared to be smiling.

"That's Angel." Gira said softly, looking at the picture and even now, just for an instant, smiling.

"She was very pretty." Dane said, not sure what else he should or could say.

"She was a stray. Followed me home from the park one day. She was really sick, half starved. She picked me out of the whole pack of kids in the neighborhood to follow home." Gira explained. "My mother was not amused. But, for reasons I still don't understand, she decided to let me keep her. That dog was the best friend I had as a child."

Gira gazed upon the image an instant longer, and then suddenly continued scrolling through the remaining images much more quickly.

It didn't even seem to be something that she wanted to do anymore, it was more something she was compelled to do, and had to finish doing before she lost her nerve.

"How old were you when she died?" Dane asked, assuming that was how the dog had left her life.

"She didn't die. At least not while I had her. My mother she," Gira stopped, shrugging.

"What?"

"She just decided one day when I was eight that the dog was too much trouble and gave her away."

Dane suddenly found he had yet another reason to dislike Gemini Lassiter.

Gira came to a picture which she'd taken herself on Nick's sixteenth birthday. It was a picture of Nick with their mother, and Dane couldn't believe it when he saw that in the picture, Gemini Lassiter was actually wearing a smile.

Her arms were wrapped tightly around one of Nick's, and he was looking at the person holding the camera with a smirk that could convey only one message as Dane saw it. That message was, I'm king, and don't you forget it.

As much as he hoped that Nick Lassiter would be returned to the Zenith safe and sound with the rest of the crew for Gira's sake as she obviously loved her brother, he hoped to hell he never met him. Otherwise, he might have to slug that smart-ass expression right off of his pretty-boy face.

Suddenly Gira deactivated the disk and returned it to its location, and began quickly searching the rest of the room. She opened her tricorder and Dane followed suit,

Her expression never changed, from the moment she set down the disk, through finding the bedroom exactly as she'd expected to, to seeing his myriad of hair product tubes strewn across the bathroom counter just as they always had been when she'd been forced to share a bathroom with him growing up.

As much as she loved him, she was glad the day that he finally left for the Academy and she didn't have to listen to her parent's endless praise of him every single moment of the day.

She hadn't been prepared for the way her mother's moods worsened once Nick had gone though, and while Gem had always had little patience for the younger of her two children, once Nick was gone, Gira couldn't believe how much worse those mood swings became.

She was very grateful when the day came for her to leave for early admission to the Academy.

They were about finished, and needed to move on, and Gira knew it. But she also knew this was a moment that she needed to experience fully, because it was going to be part of her grieving process.

She'd never been more certain of anything in her life than of what she was about to say.

Moving back toward the bookshelf, she took the holodisk and held it in her hands. She debated leaving it for now, knowing she should, but unable. Dane was about to say something when she saw the look on his face. Something Keiran had taught him caused him to blurt out, "This could be a crime scene, Gira," he regretted the words the moment they were spoken, but it was too late. Still, she did as he indicated, and put the disk back once more.

"Doesn't matter." She whispered. "They'll send it to us when they box up all his things, anyway."

"What do you mean?" Dane asked, the lump in his throat preventing him from saying anything more.

"He's gone, Dane. I can feel it." She whispered numbly, her blank expression fixed as if carved from stone.

She reached out and touched a discarded spare uniform tunic that was hanging over the back of a chair next to the bin for laundry.

"Wait, don't jump to conclusions. We don't know that."

"I know that." She insisted, slowly turning and moving toward the door. "My brother is never coming home."

As the doors parted, Gira did not look up and nearly walked into the towering form of a panicked Keiran O'Sullivan, who had only just been notified that the search had led to the First Officer's Quarters and that Gira was inside.

The moment he looked at her, he knew that he had to send her back to the Serendipity. She appeared calm on the outside, but he knew her well enough to know by the tremor in her voice as she addressed him by rank that she was close to the point of breaking.

He gave the others a nod, and they moved on to the next rooms, leaving O'Sullivan and Lassiter alone.

"You gonna be alright, Littlest?" Keiran asked softly, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Not if you keep looking at me that way." She said, before turning and hurrying into the next room after Dane.

Keiran sighed. He tapped his badge. "O'Sullivan to Salvek."

[Go ahead.]

"Just wanted to let you know," he said softly, "Am about to send Cristiane and Lassiter back, if you'll allow it."

[You feel it is necessary?]

"Aye," Keiran rumbled softly. "I have my reasons."

Ensign Gira Lassiter
Flight Controller
USS Serendipity NCC-2012