927: Diverging Roads

by -=////=- Gem Lassiter
90724.2245

-=/\=-

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change

~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

-=/\=-

-=Quarters of the Captain, USS Serendipity=-

"Liis."

The voice was very soft and seemed so far away. In the hazy unreality of sleep, Liis dismissed it and turned over onto her back.

She pulled the blanket up tighter around her, suddenly feeling cold and sighed.

The voice was persistent, and insistent in its plea to be heard.

"Liis."

She groaned. The voice was so faint; barely even a whisper and she couldn't make out even the gender of the person it belonged to at first.

She kept her eyes closed and reached her arm out across the bed. Her hand fell flat down onto the mattress, revealing to her even though barely half awake that Keiran was not beside her now.

She rolled over onto her side again and grumbled without fully forming words.

"Zanh Liis, you must listen."

Now, the voice was clear to her, and she knew just what she had to do to comply with its request.

As exhausted as she was it took Liis no time at all to slip back into dreaming, and within the dream she opened her eyes and lowered her head, tilting her face down toward the upturned face of the small woman before her.

Their eyes met, Liis' deep blue ones searching the soft green eyes of her grandmother.

"Naloy?"

"You must listen, Liis."

"I am listening." Liis assured. She instinctively moved to take hold of Naloy but upon grasping at her shoulders, Liis' hands slipped right through--- the form having no substance that could be touched. As if trying to gain possession of a ray of light, Liis' fingers came together and held tightly to nothing, simply empty.

"You must listen."

"What do you want me to hear?"

Naloy finally opened her arms and with her own slight, wrinkled hands, managed to cling to Liis' though it had been impossible for Liis to initiate such contact.

Liis shivered.

"The road diverges here. Your path from the one you have traveled in company."

"Whose company?" Liis immediately began to fear that Naloy meant Keiran's, and she found that she was now trembling.

"From theirs." Naloy offered no further explanation. "It is meant to be. Do not resist. Be at peace." She released her hold of Liis' hands and stepped backwards. Her fading, shimmering image began to disappear, as it always did in these dreams after far too short a reunion. Liis felt a familiar ache seize hold of her heart, and her voice shuddered.

"Please, I need to know-" Liis stepped forward, but she was unable to gain any ground in closing the space between them, held back by something like a force field that she could not see or feel but that blocked her just the same. "Naloy, wait-"

"You have done your best." Naloy intoned serenely, as the last of her visible presence slipped away. "It is time for them to take up the work of your hands."

Liis closed her eyes. Every time she was faced again with saying goodbye, it never got any easier.

She wondered if she would ever get to the point where she could finally let her Grandmother rest.

"It is time to let go." Naloy said with finality. "A part of me, and of them, will always be with you."

-=/\=-

Liis sat upright in bed.

She was freezing, yet she was wringing wet. Her black silk pajamas had become stuck to her like a second skin; perspiration matted her hair to her forehead and the nape of her neck.

What the dream, or vision had meant, she couldn't be certain.

All she knew was it definitely meant that change was coming, and there was no way of escaping it this time.

She felt an eerie, knowing calm of acceptance that she was unaccustomed to. She had to think that perhaps, it was the last gift that her Grandmother might ever give to her.

Liis had always been one to fight against any outside forces that tried to divert the path of her feet. She'd battled, tooth and claw, against every adversary, every injustice, and for every underdog she'd encountered in her lifetime. She always took up their most impossible causes, because she'd been born into the role of underdog, and she could not live any other way.

But this time something was different. The events of her life since her encounter with the Sylph and the paradox had changed her, how much she was only beginning to realize.

The battlements she'd built around herself as protection from the outside world had all crumbled. She had tried to take the material which remained to begin a new life in her old career, but instead of finding any whole stones at her feet from which she could begin to rebuild the walls or even lay a footpath, every time she picked up the first one to try to lay that new beginning, it turned to powder in her hands.

Losing the crew of the Zenith was, she thought, going to change the history of all who had been involved in the battle to try to save them. She could not be so arrogant as to think that she could possibly escape unscathed. Not this time.

Perhaps Tucker Brody had been right- his words prophetic in some way she had been too headstrong to understand or accept at the time.

Perhaps she was too far gone to be in command of a starship.

She rose from her bed, moved into the shower and as she stood trembling beneath scalding water, she prepared herself to put on her uniform and the four pips adorning its collar for what she knew would likely be the very last time.

Everything she had accepted to be truth was lying in ruins, and could not be rebuilt from the same shattered stones in the same location.

The only remaining question in her mind was, where she would find herself when the dust finally settled.

-=Sickbay=-

Keiran took long, slow strides toward the curtained off area in the corner of the Serendipity's Sickbay.

He knew the bed it concealed all too well.

It was the very bed he'd been lying in, and risen from in a desperate attempt to save Liis from the Sylph and the memories of their shared past that were being used against her as a weapon.

He fought off the chill that tried to overtake him as he stopped where he stood.

Images flashed in his mind, first darkness and then bright light and in between, the sight of her; laying limp in his arms, slipping away.

-=Flash=-

*"No!" Keiran screamed again. "You don't understand, you have to let me do this. I know that I can help her!"*

*"Liis, listen to me, I know you can hear me," Keiran murmured in her ear softly, going ahead with what he knew he had to do. "You have to stop fighting our memories. Don't try to hold on to them, don't try to understand them, and for God's sake, stop fighting to keep them."*

*"Don't try to suffer this heartache for me, Zanh Liis. I know you want to, that you're willin' to try and Liis..." Keiran lowered his voice even further, just more than a whisper. "...I love you for that. But you can't save us by doing it. You can't save me by doing it." He blinked slowly, and tears rained gently from his face down onto hers.*

”'Tis not your burden. Was never meant to be. You didn't earn it, you don't deserve it.

”What you remember, what we were was the truth then, but you have give it up now. You have to let me carry it, for the both of us." He pressed his cheek against her hair. "I'm beggin' ya. I'm the only one who can." *

-=Flash=-

"Can I help you, Commander?"

The voice jarred Keiran back to the moment, and he shook his head slightly, a physical motion to try to clear away the thoughts that returned to him, every time he set foot in this place.

"I came ta see the Admiral."

"She's really not up for visitors."

"Am not just a visitor." Keiran gently asserted. "Am closest thing there is to family. May I?"

Seeing how no other methods had been successful in drawing Lassiter out of her silent, brooding state, Hartcort relented. "Not long. Just a few minutes."

"Is all I ask. Thank ya, Doctor." Keiran slowly and cautiously pulled the edge of the curtain back, checking to be sure that the Admiral was awake before he stepped forward toward her bed.

She was awake, but she was staring intently at the wall as if it was the most interesting sight she'd ever seen.

"Gemini."

She did not look up, nor move at all to indicate she'd heard him.

"Gem, ya can't just." He stepped around to the other side of the bed, physically blocking her view of the blank but apparently fascinating wall.

Of course he knew she wasn't really seeing what was before her. She had the look of a person seeing things in their head that no one else could. It was a look he knew well, he'd seen it enough times to recognize it instantly.

She turned over at last, and directed her stare to the curtain just as she had the wall.

Keiran sighed and folded his arms. "I know ya can hear every blessed word 'm sayin', Gemini." His voice was firm but still retained the warmth that the man was known for. "I know it hurts like Hell. I know what it's like to be kept from a son but not to lose him this way, but I-" he paused, exhaling a slow sigh.

He felt so badly for Gem but so much sadness for Gira too. She needed her mother and her mother, having lost Nicholas, wanted no one. "I know that I don' understand what you're goin' through."

"No." Lassiter said, speaking aloud for the first time since the words she had said to Rada Dengar. She continued to avoid O'Sullivan's steady gaze. "You don't."

"Y'er no’ the only one who's lost here, ya know." Keiran changed methods, trying to appeal to the tough as nails, no nonsense woman he knew still must exist beneath in some form deep within the shell before him. "Eight hundred families. They will be looking to you to lead them through this grief. But more than that," he could hold back no longer. "Your own daughter, Gem. Your own girl-"

"Do not speak to me," Gem hissed softly, "about my daughter."

"Oh, am gonna speak ta ya all right, 'cause somebody has'ta get some sense in'ta that head'a yers." His affectionate tone turned dark now, as frustration with her set in. She was, for all her sense and ability to reason, one of the most stubborn women he'd ever known.

And he'd known a few...

"Gira needs you, Gem and what's more you need her too. Ya have to..."

"I don't have to do anything." Lassiter pulled the blanket up to her chin and spoke with the tone of a rebellious teen instead of that of a seasoned Starfleet officer.

"No. You know what? You're right. You don't." Keiran turned and moved back toward the curtain. He paused before pulling it back. "I just thought it'd be a true tragedy if you lost both of your children to this disaster instead of just the one that no one can bring back to you."

He moved outside of the curtain, and he hesitated. He'd had more than enough and wanted to go, but there was one point that he just couldn't seem to let go. He cursed himself that curiosity and his instinct to protect Gira wouldn't allow him to walk away now. Reluctantly, he returned to her bedside.

"Why?"

Gem let the question hang in the air, not asking him to elaborate. She didn't need him to. She knew exactly what he meant and had no intention of giving an answer.

"What is it about her that made you favor...Nicholas...so..." he stopped. His eyes flashed a sickened, haunting sort of horror, and something between denial and instant understanding.

It was so simple. Why had he not seen it before? "God in Heaven."

Gem's eyes finally darted up toward his. Hers were burning as well, a mixture of panic and contrition, as she silently pleaded with him not to say another word. She opened her mouth to speak, and then she stopped. Her eyes suddenly narrowed, and a vehement rage overtook all else that he'd seen in them the instant before.

"Captain O'Sullivan, you are being reassigned." She said quickly, her voice regaining its forceful authority.

"Do not change the subject." Keiran persisted. "Nick. The reason he has always been your favorite. It's because he wasn't-"

"Not another word, Keiran, or I swear," Gem was now shaking, possessed by a powerful fusion of dread, fear, and desperation.

"Or what?" Keiran leaned closer, lowering his voice. "What can ya do ta me that hasn' already been done at some point in the past?”

For a moment, she seemed to actually consider that the question may be more than rhetorical.

“Fine.” Keiran scowled. “You don' want ta be honest with one of your oldest friends? Then that's your business. You want to throw away a daughter that any parent should be proud to call their own, then I can hate it with all I am but that too is your business. You want to let this destroy you, then you go right ahead and let it destroy you. I know that choice, I've faced it, I've lived with it and I warn you, nothing good can ever come of it."

He whispered now, clearly enunciating every word with intentional precision. "But don't you dare resort to threats, Gemini Lassiter." He turned again to the curtain, ripping it back with such force it almost came free from the rod upon which it hung. "It doesn't become you."

"You're taking the Zenith." She declared.

Keiran froze.

"It's already been decided. It was decided the moment that we heard that the crew had gone missing." She sat up straight in bed, suddenly all official business.

"Keiran Riley O'Sullivan, you are hereby returned to the active rank of Captain, and you will assume command of the USS Zenith immediately. You will oversee her gutting and refit, as well as handle the investigation into all that happened aboard ship and around it during the incident which resulted in the loss of her captain and crew. You will pack your bags and beam over immediately to assume these duties. Do you understand me?"

Keiran shook his head. He would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all, if only nearly nine hundred lives had not been lost to the 'incident'. His jaw set.

"I thought I understood you." He rumbled softly. "But it appears that I don't know you any more, and you sure as hell don't know me." He reached for his combadge and removed it from his chest.

"Don't you dare."

"I'll stay aboard the Sera as the most overqualified spouse in the history of Starfleet, I don't care. But I will not take the Zenith and what's more, I will not be separated again from the Captain of this ship." Keiran glared.

"I had no idea you were so attached to Commander Salvek." Gem mocked dismissively, looking downward as she fingered the edge of her sheet, betraying that his words had rattled her.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that your beloved Zanh Liis is not going to be Captain of this ship much longer." Gem threw back the covers, and moved her legs over the side of her bed. "Hartcort!" she called suddenly. "Where is my uniform?"

Lance and T'Dara came in a hurry, and Lance gave Keiran a disapproving look. "What did you say to her?"

"Is more what she's been sayin' to me." Keiran insisted. "She's lost her mind."

"I am saner than I have been in a very long time." Gem declared. "And I have duties to attend to."

"You're not going anywhere, Sir." Lance said, as he and T'Dara each took hold of one of Lassiter's arms, gently but firmly. "You are still under restriction and will remain here in Sickbay until we reach Earth."

"Then you'd better do one of two things." Gem warned sternly. "You'd better either bring Zanh Liis here, or you're going to have to sedate me again to keep me from walking out that door to get to her."

-----=/\=-----
-=////=- Gemini Lassiter
Director, The Alchemy Project