By Landry Steele
100402.02
Concurrent with Raising Suspicions
-=USS Poseidon=-
With one hand behind his head and a smirk on his face, Tucker Brody appeared the very definition of self-satisfaction as he slowly rolled steel colored eyes high and away to the ceiling above.
He’d returned to his quarters, a small and out of the way spot chosen for location far more than vanity, in hopes of resting a little while. He needed his mind to be exceptionally sharp; the minimum standard of performance he set for himself as always, and for all his training and discipline he was still convinced that there was nothing better to ensure that than taking a well earned hour’s rest when you could.
It was an old-fashioned viewpoint, one very much out of step with the seemingly alcohol or caffeine fueled TI agents he'd encountered but then Tucker was raised by people who had chosen to live as though they were a few hundred years out of their time.
His mother had always been a staunch believer that no matter the depths to which the morals of people in what she called 'this Godless society of ours' sank, a young Southern gentleman, properly raised, should comport himself in a certain manner under any circumstances. He'd been raised with rules of law, rules of culture, rules du jour and of course always rules of established dogma. Tucker had for so many years tried to his level best to obey them all.
He’d failed miserably of course but at least he really had tried.
It just seemed that in the end, God couldn't be made to see reason and so when He and an idealistic young man seemed to disagree over what was right, that the 'good ol' boy' had been forced to go against Him.
Tucker rarely realized at the time that he was going against Him, or at the very least that he was about to face the wrath of an even scarier and unpredictable entity: Mama.
He recalled once having sat alone, far removed from the crowd at a congregation picnic and noticing a sad, scrawny little cat meowing pathetically as it dragged itself along by the chain link fence. It appeared to be on its last legs, more crawling than walking, and the sight was just too much for him to stand.
Taking pity on it, Tucker had gone to the picnic table and collected a large, fat fried chicken leg from a china platter in the center of the spread. It was the preacher's wife's signature dish at these events, and people were always still talking about how good the chicken had been after the following Sunday's sermon.
No one ever seemed to want to talk about the sermon.
Tucker had taken the chicken and moved as quietly as he could. There were gaggles of women to the left of him and another set of equally feminine obstacles to the right. He had a way with women that he didn't want and had no idea how to control, and it always seemed to cost him the one thing he was always short on: time.
Time to think, time to imagine the world, the universe in fact as it should and could be.
He surveyed the two potential paths to the fence and sighed. The older ladies, his mother's peers, were to the one side and would try to tell him how handsome he was 'growin' up to be'. The younger crowd on the opposite side, he decided, was much more dangerous and to be avoided at all costs.
The group of teenage girls- all of whom had spent hours applying their make-up and styling their hair just so in the hopes of getting his attention but still failed to at least hold it onto it- tried to call him over to join their conversation. The very idea made his head hurt.
Real conversation, it seemed, was something of which the whole herd of them was incapable of; giving new meaning to the tired old phrase 'small talk' as they discussed entertainment and the local gossip for which he had entirely no use.
Even if they wanted to tell him how much they wondered what he was "Thinkin' about all the time when he'd get so quiet like that”, the one or two times he'd picked one of them out to try to explain his thoughts to, they seemed to be lacking any sort of brain underneath all that hair and so ended up giggling and asking him if he was going to be at the ice cream social the following Tuesday.
Tucker hated the ice cream socials.
Deciding that the elderly ladies would be the path of least resistance, Tucker nodded politely to them as he ducked attempts to ruffle his hair or to straighten his tie as he walked past. After several "Yes, Ma'am's' and 'Thank you kindly, Ma'am's' and "Yes Ma'am, Mama does look lovely today in her fine new hat," he had finally been able to break free- contraband cat food still in hand as he knelt beside the fence where the tiny thing had finally lay down, too weak and hungry to move another step.
He took the handkerchief from his pocket and got it ready so he could remove all traces of grease from his fingers afterward and then set the plate down on the ground, pulling the skin back from the leg and starting to pick off small pieces of meat. He pursed his lips, making small kissing noises to get the cat to raise its weary eyes forward, but it wasn't until the scent of the food reached its nose that it finally turned toward him with what seemed to be the last of its strength.
"There ya go, little kitty. You need to eat this more than any of those fat cats over there do," he said softly, as he pushed the bits of chicken one by one through the fence to the delight of the hungry and appreciative animal. "I'm sorry, I should'a brought you some water too. You eat your chicken and then we'll put that right."
It was only as the cat began to purr loudly with gratitude and a small triumphant smile raised the edge of Tucker's mouth that he saw his mother’s shadow hanging over him, her legs slightly shaking in that way that they would only when she was really angry.
He hated looking up, but knowing it'd be worse if he didn't he finally raised his eyes and saw her face. He didn't even need to look though really to know she was furious, and after she grasped the links between strong, bony fingers and shook the fence violently to scare the cat away, she turned on him. Mostly she only yelled of course; that was all she’d ever do when there were other eyes around. When he got home, it was an entirely different story.
She was always careful though- her 'whippin's' never left marks where anyone could easily see them.
For years he’d taken all the punishments and ignored her own contradictory behavior: misdeeds that constituted, if you went by the book, less than humble, exemplary Christian conduct. Some would say (and many did, in whispers that Tucker tried his best to ignore) that a good and devoted God fearing widow shouldn’t flirt with the preacher every Sunday.
Of course for all their talk there was just as much an unspoken public consensus that it could never be considered immoral when the preacher flirted back.
Tucker had put up with it all because he was an innocent in the world even beyond the day he’d left there; still so blindly trusting that the good would get what they deserved in the end. The meek would inherit the earth and good things came to those who were willing to wait.
He’d not be so foolish now.
Years of meekness had gotten him nowhere, and waiting had cost him the most precious of all irreplaceable commodities; time.
He had no doubt he was a very different person now than he'd been the day he got taken to the woodshed for having given away a single piece of the preacher's favorite chicken to a flea-bitten stray in front of the whole of the congregation; even though here he was still breaking the rules for what he knew was right.
He thought little of that life anymore and when he did it made him angry. He quickly tried to switch tracks on the train of his thoughts whenever the voice or actions of that woman would come back to him: in the end he'd come to believe that his mother was a prejudiced simpleton and her opinions no longer merited his consideration.
She was right about the importance of rest though, living proof of the old adage that no one can be wrong all of the time.
Tucker had not bothered to change his clothes or even to crawl beneath the sheet as he sank into bed. It'd be easier to just put on a fresh set of clothing when he woke instead of bothering to take off his already wrinkled uniform now. The minutes were ticking away on his hour of rest and he knew he could afford to take not a second longer than that.
He quickly realized though that holding still with his eyes closed may be the closest thing he'd get to rest now.
He soon discovered that he was just too preoccupied, his mind spinning quickly just as the gears and levers that clicked away within the interior mechanisms of the clock he'd replicated and placed beside the single bed. Soon he had given up on even closing his eyes.
He glanced over at the timepiece- the only thing in the room that was really his- and listened to it ticking softly as he replayed in his mind the success of all his plans so far he told himself that these were the best moments in life. Even better than victory was the careful and precise path to find it. Navigating that path was what challenged his mind. It was the challenge that he deserved; it was the challenge that was always the most rewarding part of any undertaking.
He still walked that challenging path now, he knew and so mentally measured his steps. The ship’s temporal components needed to be made operational and Denise needed to be taken from command. Thinking about that fact he reached over to the clock and brought it closer to study its face; to see if it was time yet to sow more doubt.
Placing it back down and readjusting himself in bed, he decided that it wasn’t, not just yet. Denise needed time to worry. It was too soon to visit Liis again in his role as the caring doctor with many other patients to see. The ship's repairs would be done no faster with him there to interfere. There really was nothing to do now but to rest and to wait as he planned alone.
As he considered that the smile faded from his face and given he was alone he didn’t bother to force it back on.
He instantly found that he wasn’t quite comfortable anymore and so vainly shifted his position once again. It made no difference though because there was nothing Tucker was less comfortable with than his own mistakes and try as he might he could never quite pretend he was.
Here in this Spartan and empty excuse for a home it now seemed like everywhere he could glance was attempting to drum into him that he wasn’t free from his single greatest misstep.
The fact was that he hadn't always been alone.
There was a woman and there was a time. She was the one person who’d managed to make such an impression upon him that he had allowed her to truly see the inner workings of his thoughts. For awhile, for a span that seemed to his memory to be eternal and yet at the same time had ended impossibly too soon, he had been understood and accepted for who he was.
Then that time had passed and for the first time in his life he felt alone. More than that, for the first time he felt pure, undeniable loneliness and a longing to go backwards to where he’d been. No matter how many days had come and gone since, that feeling had never really gone away.
Turning his head and his eyes to the small view port and looking out into the blackened emptiness of space he couldn’t help but consider the only cure for this weakening disease would be if he could get her back again.
However even as his mind began to fill with a hundred other thoughts of her he dismissed that one the quickest.
He didn’t even know where she was.
He’d never get her back, and he wasn’t sure he wished to if he could.
-=USS Serendipity=-
Standing in the shambles that had once been her tidy and organized quarters, Landry's shoulders fell.
Her arms ached, a side effect of having hugged them so tightly around her body as she shook and tried, desperately, to keep from freezing in a room that could never feel warm to her now. Not with these memories sweeping in and icing over every surface within the space, including her empty, still form.
Her own skin felt alien to her now, and it was as though she was watching someone else go through the motions of moving as she stepped forward, crunching glass and injured rose stems beneath her boots as she began to clean up the mess she'd made.
If only all messes were as easy to clean up as a little broken glass and a few pieces of tipped over furniture. She was a mess that no amount of housework could fix.
This was not news to her.
She'd accepted that she'd become this way the day that she'd walked away.
She'd had to accept that the world around her would cease to make sense if it could no longer be filtered through the amazing machinery that was his mind. He had a way of cutting through everything people said, all the noise and nonsense and concentrating on what had to be done and how. He helped her to see that what she'd always felt was just instinct about the way people behaved was something more- that she really had a gift for observing behavior in others and determining their intentions, often before they were aware of them.
He joked, at times, that she was the perfect "Human Lie Detector".
He had never lied to her. Of all the things he had done, that had never been one of them.
He had also never done anything out of purely evil intentions; she really didn't believe that Tucker had it in him to be truly evil. Misguided, yes. But never truly malevolent.
She stopped moving, seized by a sudden memory, and rolled up the sleeve of her uniform tunic.
She looked down.
Hiding beneath the fabric, where no one would see that she was actually breaking uniform code by wearing it, was a simple gold bracelet. Delicate and smooth against her skin, it held a single, antique decoration.
The small charm, made in the image of a clock face, stared back at her; hands unmoving with no works behind to propel them to mark the actual passage of time. It seemed sadly appropriate to her that the one gift she'd kept of all he'd given her was the one that reflected that for her, the moment she'd said goodbye to him was the instant when time had screeched to a grinding halt and had ever since stood still.
She’d always kept this with her since that day. Sometimes she could go for what would seem in retrospect to be so long without really thinking about it beyond a passing glance. Other times, in moments like this she would just find herself overcome with the need to look upon it for a long while. She was never quite sure exactly what made it so easy to dismiss one second and so entrancing the next.
All she knew was that when she regretted her decisions the most, that to look upon this precious gift had the almost magical ability to help her remember that she’d had no choice. It was what it was and that was all it ever could be. Somehow, it seemed now with him so near that that magic was gone; it was just a powerless ornament once again.
So instead she tucked that bracelet away and moved towards her window. Her sad, vacant eyes then stared out and onto the side of the giant ship
Poseidon.
He was over there, somewhere. He was so close she could almost touch him again.
Without any real thought her hand reached up and gently brushed the cold glass, almost as if she truly believed it would pass straight through.
He’d taught her it was not such a foolish thought to have. He’d had a barrier around him much like this glass only significantly less transparent which one day she’d realized she alone had found a way to see beyond. That was such a beautiful day.
Even before that though and in a much simpler but no less meaningful way she had wanted to reach out to him. She’d watched him with such awe and fascination of his mind from that very first day, barely able to find a coherent thought as she considered running her hand so slowly along that impossibly handsome face.
-=Flashback, 2387 current timeline: Earth=-
The door chime sounded.
Landry glanced nervously up at the clock again as if seeing the face for the very first time, though she'd been watching it tick away the seconds for the past half an hour. Her heart sped up as she realized that unless the neighbor's bi-weekly order of take out from the local Chinese restaurant had been sadly misdirected, Tucker Brody had arrived at her door not a moment late.
Not a moment too soon, either.
She wondered how it was possible that the hours in one day could ever pass so slowly.
She'd done nothing but think of him since the moment he'd walked into Vox' office and given her that smile that told her she was in very, very deep trouble and it was instantly too late to get out of it unscathed.
No matter what else she was supposed to be doing she couldn't seem to shake the unsettling experience of simply having been near him, and that was not only something completely unfamiliar to her but was something that she couldn't have been prepared for nor would have even believed possible if someone had tried to warn her about it in advance.
She bit her lip and nervously twisted her fingers around each other.
She'd rehearsed just how she wanted to act when he arrived, though her plans for calm and distant behavior flew straight out the window the second she realized that he really was just on the other side of the divide. Without even realizing what she was doing she’d grasped the handle and yanked it open, the thought occurring to her only when it was far too late for attempts at deception that she’d just given away she’d been nervously waiting there for him.
He pretended not to notice, or perhaps he’d expected her to be so diligently prepared all along. His smile was warm and his eyes were burning; lit by a fire so bright within him that Landry nearly had to look away as his gaze focused solely on her.
"Evenin', Landry."
The way he drawled her name gave her goosebumps.
She managed a weak nod in reply.
He laughed softly at her obvious inability to speak. Not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable he shifted his focus, and his eyes, away from hers. He looked her over, and then his slight smile became a true grin. "You really are hidin' your light under a bushel, wearing that Starfleet uniform."
Not missing the intonation, and shivering slightly because of it, Landry suddenly felt much more confident in her choice of the modest but not at all unflattering black dress she'd chosen.
She looked away, her face reddening and again, Tucker laughed but not in a mocking way. "We'll have to get you used to hearin' those kind of things about yourself. Ain't right for a lady as lovely as you to go through life without knowin' how truly...
appreciated, her beauty is by the men around her."
Landry parted her lips, which suddenly felt as parched as a Vulcan desert, to try again to speak but found she was still unable.
"Do you have a wrap? Might be a little chilly. 'Course, I'd be happy, as a gentleman, to lend you my jacket later if you should happen to need it."
"Thank you," she finally managed to choke out, and she decided- on purpose- to leave her wrap behind as just the thought of wearing his jacket was undeniably appealing to her on a level she couldn't articulate.
"Shall we?" He extended his arm, and Landry looped hers through it, feeling dizzy as he drew her nearer and she caught once again just the faintest hint of his cologne; not enough to be overpowering but just enough to ensure that not a single one of her senses could deny his masculine appeal.
He led her out into the street and he exhaled slowly after breathing deep the evening air. "Really is a perfect evening, and the world's at our feet, Landry. There's nothin' out there in this world tonight that you can't have, if you just say the word. So tell me..." He turned those bright, remarkably brilliant steel gray eyes toward her and she felt her knees weaken. "Startin' with dinner. Where can I take you?"
Maybe it had something to do with how amazing he looked in the light of early moon, or just how easily she could get lost in his beautiful voice, but she was utterly bereft of words. All it took was a look from him to take her breath away, and then when he asked her where she wanted to go for dinner she was still barely able to stutter out any sort of a response.
After another moment of her silent self-doubt, she saw moving across his features the same look he’d given her in Vox’s office when he felt she was playing dumb.
Again he asked, a little more forcefully. "Landry, I asked you because I'd really like to know. What kind of food would you prefer for dinner tonight?"
This time she answered with the first possibility that came into her mind. "Italian?" She said the word as a question and he couldn't help but shake his head a little.
"You askin me the question or yourself, darlin'? Let's try again." He grinned at her. "Italian." He spoke the word as a statement and she couldn't help but laugh a little. She didn't recognize herself all of a sudden; never had a man had this effect on her.
"Italian," she concluded.
"I happen to know just the perfect place."
Just as promised, a short walk later, he revealed that he really did know just the right place. Landry had lived in this neighborhood for a year but she had never noticed this restaurant before.
It was tiny, and yet it wasn't truly hidden, it was one of those little gems scattered in and among the larger establishments in town that gave this city its unmistakable charm.
The place was intimate but not isolated, and as the maître d' recognized Tucker immediately and swept them past a line of waiting customers toward the best table in the small and exclusive dining room, Landry observed that it seemed to be populated only by couples in love.
As they were led to their table, she actually realized she was thinking it was the type of first date place a man might take a woman back to later on in their courtship with a specific purpose in mind: to ask him to marry her.
She was grateful that Tucker had been looking away as the thought and the expression which accompanied it surely would have captured his attention. Fortunately, she'd been spared, or so she thought, as he pulled out her chair for her and she sat down gratefully, though somewhat awkwardly, as no man had done that for her before.
He sat down across from her, and she had to wonder from the expression on his face if he hadn't caught a glimpse of her sentimental daydream. His eyes reflected a deeper sort of warmth now, and she shivered with the sense that he somehow knew she’d been having thoughts to which she had no entitlement just yet.
He actually seemed to be slightly amused.
He didn't torment her long, though. Instead, he began studying the wine list, with every intention of buying at least one bottle of the very best in the house.
For Landry this provided the most remarkable opportunity. It gave her the chance just to study him, staying so still so she didn’t leave the possibility he’d realize what she as doing, and she could observe how with such concentration and careful yet powerful consideration he made his decision. It was mesmerizing, and in this moment it almost hurt to be an entire table away from him.
Suddenly her surroundings, as lovely as they were, seemed to dissolve around her into an altered state of unreality; her mind and eyes fixed only on him. She studied him as intensely as he did that menu, trying to commit to memory every detail of the way he looked at this moment; only then he spoke again and she wasn’t sure she could count on remembering anything other than the sound of his soft, resonant voice.
“Well darlin’, what do ya think? 89
Rayas or the
Cambrian?”
“The
Cambrian,” she answered quickly, and without thought.
“Really?" He was intrigued. "Why?”
Landry suddenly had the feeling she’d made precisely the wrong choice and hurried to undo the damage as fast as she could.
“If you prefer the
Rayas, that’s…”
Brody sighed, a short but somehow unending sigh that left Landry incapable of continuing.
“Never said that. I only asked why.”
“Well, I…” Landry started but couldn’t finish and quickly found her cheeks burning, her eyes falling to study the flickering flame of the candle in the centerpiece on the table before her. She offered no further response.
For a moment he said nothing either, but his eyes never strayed from her face.
“I take it you don’t know much ‘bout either wine. Ain’t a thing wrong with that,” he finally responded. “Only concern to me is that you thought you had’t pretend.”
Landry quietly muttered something which started off on track to be an apology but couldn’t really succeed as one because she couldn’t actually offer any explanation. Somehow her cheeks, which already seemed to contain a dangerous amount of her blood, just seemed to be getting redder.
“It’s alright,” Brody continued. “I know why you did what you did. With what I said before, you concluded that I wanted you to be more decisive. You wanted to give me what I wanted.”
Landry nodded slightly, realizing how true it really was even though she hadn’t consciously thought of it that way when she had done it.
“Don’t,” he added softly, but saw quickly that from her response that she was taking the word in a very different way than he'd intended to speak it. “I’m not telling you what not to do,” he continued gently. “I’m sayin’ you don’t have to. You don’t have to be what anyone else wants you to be. You certainly don’t have to try with me.”
For a few seconds she could find no words at all, but now it was for a very different reason.
“Okay. I won’t,” she finally answered, her eyes gradually moving back up to his as she tried to grasp that he was real. The irony that she was not doing as he asked in order to do so was lost at present; she just felt so amazed that he would care enough to encourage her like this.
When she saw the warm and ever so slight smile of approval that had returned to his face another, softer grin came back onto hers. Somehow the way he looked at her now just made her blush even more.
“You see, I know who you are Landry Steele,” Brody murmured, in such a low tone the words were almost like a dark, deep secret being whispered between friends.“More importantly I know exactly who you
could be. You can do things, see things, even
feel things”, he punctuated the last two words with a grin that seemed to make her heart threaten to stop if not to go straight into reverse,“that most can’t even
dream of. There’s only one thing missin' that you need to have it all.”
“What’s that?” Landry asked quickly, as though she expected no less than had he suggested he was about to reveal the very meaning of life.
He considered just saying the word plainly, but then thought better of it.
Instead, he leaned over the table towards her almost as if he intended to kiss her. Landry intuitively moved into him, when at just the last second he turned instead to breathe more than whisper the word into her ear.
“Me.”
Landry closed her eyes, nearly swooning and utterly unable to prevent the chain reaction of emotions and sensations that his sudden closeness caused.
She had a thrilling and terrifying feeling that she was spinning out of control; that things were already moving at a speed so great that there would be no way to safely navigate any steep drops or hairpin turns that may lie unseen around corners up ahead.
She was truly powerless against his charms, and as she grasped hold of the arms of her chair to try to keep from listing to the side as the room spun around her, she realized that she was definitely on a path from which she couldn't turn back.
She would only realize later just how little control she'd had over the situation from the very start.
She was merely along for the ride.
From the moment she first saw him Tucker was in the driver's seat; with one hand on the wheel, one on her heart, and the pedal pressed flat to the floor.
Ensign Landry Steele
Temporal Investigations
Aboard the USS Serendipity NCC-2012