By William Lindsay and Keiran O’Sullivan
100305.00
Concurrent with Pygmalion's Lament
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100305.00
Concurrent with Pygmalion's Lament
-=/\=-
Soundtrack: Heartland, by Celtic Thunder
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-=Inside a running holosuite aboard the USS Poseidon=-
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-=Inside a running holosuite aboard the USS Poseidon=-
She awoke in the place where she'd last fallen.
Her head ached but not so much as her heart at the realization that her return to this hell had not been a nightmare at all.
Not this time.
She reached up and touched painful, swollen flesh along her jawline. She couldn't remember exactly why it hurt, but she was willing to bet that she'd put up some manner of fight when faced with the reality of coming back here.
She always had.
Then again, she realized it was a real possibility that she'd inflicted the injury upon herself in another frantic struggle to get out- to run. To run where, she didn't know; just anywhere. Anywhere at all in the worlds but here.
Slowly, she lifted her head.
She propped herself up in the corner where Tucker Brody had left her; unable to find even the strength to crawl the few feet that stretched on as endlessly as a wavering mirage before the feeble, thin metal bed.
Even if she was able to make it, she would find no warmth or comfort there.
She could not sink into a pile of soft pillows and disappear into the billows of a mountain of quilts.
Keiran's arms would not be waiting just beneath those covers to hold her there.
This sterile, unholy excuse for a place of rest belonged to them- to those who had put her away. She neither needed, nor wanted, any part of it. She would much rather sleep on the floor.
At least the small and shallow space she occupied-- that which her body actually took up on the floor--felt still, somehow, to be her own.
She was curled up with her arms around her legs and her chin upon her knees. She knew it to be a position incapable of protecting her from anything that they'd choose to inflict upon her, yet it was the only one she could possibly endure.
She had no idea how long she'd been here when at first she opened her eyes.
Of all that she recalled about her days and nights spent here, one thing never escaped her notice: the fact that time ceased to have any meaning in this place, except to be understood as the greatest possible distance between you and the freedom you once had.
This could very well be the end, she thought. The time when freedom never comes again.
Time moved much more slowly here than anywhere else she'd ever known. It was something beyond description as a simple irony that she'd spent so long fighting to outwit and outrun Time itself at every turn, only in the end to find herself its captive; locked up in the coldest, most unfeeling prison imaginable.
She ached for him.
She longed for the sound of his voice, for the words he'd whisper to her so tenderly to reassure her when she'd have nightmares of this very kind. His arms would enclose her; he would press his lips to her ear. The chasm within her soul would be filled with the steadying, stabilizing force of his love as he kissed away her tears and promised that he would never leave her side again.
He was gone.
Again, they were telling her that he was gone.
She didn't want to believe it this time any more than she had wanted to believe it any of the others. She thought that there should be something, anything, a single shred of irrefutable proof that she could offer them to deny the truth in their words.
She needed so much to be able to stand before the piercing eyes of Tucker Brody, call him a damned liar and much worse, and have the truth of those words to be the one thing she could still hold on to.
There should have been her rings.
There should have been so many memories that she could quote to him in evidence of things that had never happened in other timelines and that she was so certain had been real in this one.
Through the haze of her medicated mind she simply couldn't grasp onto them; every time she thought that she'd caught one that she could hold onto long enough to cite it, it vanished, slipping from her grasp leaving no trace it’d ever been.
She tried to repeat the words aloud, to force them from her own lips as though hearing them in her own voice could make her believe it was the truth.
Keiran O'Sullivan is dead.
Those four words burned a painful trail through her mind but the flame was extinguished to frozen silence before it ever made it to her lips. As before, she found that she just wasn’t strong enough to speak that word and his name in the same sentence just yet, or perhaps forever.
Every time she had tried before, save that one time that she remembered getting through it in that last paradox timeline so they'd finally set her free, it made her cry.
"Keiran is dead."
The sound of her own voice startled her.
She didn't even try to prevent those same bitter tears from falling now. There was no one here she needed to hide them from, and she had long since stopped trying to convince herself that without him, she could ever be okay.
-=Meanwhile, in the Brig=-
"A Thiarna, déan trócaire." Keiran whispered. "God forgive me but even more you, Liis. I promised ya I'd never again leave yer side."
"You know Liis will forgive ya an'a'thin', O'Sullivan, and God has nothin' ta do with this," said William Lindsay, as he continued to shift vigilant eyes around the cell for any weakness, any means of escape that he could exploit to improve their situation. "Ya know they say the Lord's awfully busy these days. That's why we have TI ta begin with."
Keiran ignored him.
He'd long since learned to live with Will's disrespect for the Divine, knowing it wasn't going to change. The best thing to do, he'd learned, was to make as little a point of noticing it as possible and just go on about his praying.
“We will get to her,” Will assured him, rising from his position seated on the single bed at the back of their cell and approaching O’Sullivan at his place near the forcefield.
"We never should'a let Tucker Brody get within a thousand light-years of her. We owed her better than that," Keiran whispered bitterly.
Will knew that Keiran’s words weren’t really meant for him to hear but still thought that he should respond. Even if he only answered in anger, hearing anything outside of his own head right now couldn’t do the Irishman any harm.
"I promise ya, Keiran, we're gonna find a way outta here."
From the way Keiran failed to respond, his head never even turning from the stance it’d held for so long, Will wasn’t even sure that he had been heard.
The huge O’Sullivan looked like a stoic guard standing by orders in the exact spot where his master had placed him. For those who didn't know him as well and especially if viewed from behind as Will saw him now, Keiran could have seemed almost paralyzed with fear in this moment.
Will, however, knew Keiran O’Sullivan better than anyone else but Liis, and he sighed at the sight. He had never seen the man so anxious- or quite as angry- in all the time he’d known him.
O'Sullivan was burning up with rage inside, and Will was truly beginning to worry for the safety of any and everyone standing in the path between Keiran and Liis when that roiling fury finally reached its apex.
O'Sullivan's stance now changed along with his emotions, fueled by the knowledge of how much danger she was in. His remaining patience evaporated and his darkest fears fought to escape the strength of his grasp.
His hands fidgeted and he began to shift his weight from foot to foot as if nothing was comfortable.
For once and as eager as he was for escape, Will felt like the more patient of the two. Keiran simply seemed to be unable to accept the idea that they’d not save Liis this very moment. It was as if he somehow knew, from somewhere very deep, that she was in pain right now that would continue for every single second that they wasted here.
So Keiran’s eyes refused to leave the darkened area directly in front of their cell. He didn’t know what he was looking for but just that if there was nothing in here to escape with, as he had already concluded, then this was where it would appear. He felt certain it was his fault they were still stuck here. He should have been able to find a way out by now- he still had to find a way and he was sure that he could --he just had to look a little harder.
This brig, though in many ways identical to almost all modern Federation designs, was unfamiliar to them. Yet they were certain of two things. The first was that this was a Temporal Investigations ship; their prison designed to keep even the most trained agents as its continued prisoners.
The second was that there should be more light. Between this and the other four cells in the room was an empty floor with some basic controls, that should be lit up and manned with that light shining in here.
There was however only darkness outside the cell and there were no guards to be found. They’d been alone here ever since they’d awoken. There’d been not even a sound of the crew passing them by.
They had no idea and no way of going what was going on anywhere in the universe at that moment. It was almost like they’d just been left here and everyone else had just gone. They knew that Liis could be on the other side of this wall or she might no longer even be on this ship.
Wherever she was, Keiran was certain that if he didn't get to her soon that even if her corporeal form survived whatever it was that Brody was putting her though, that he would never again get to look in her eyes and see the light of the woman who loved him.
Her body may live on, but her soul would be as dead, and as damned, as one dragged straight down to Hell by the devil himself.
He knew she was strong. He didn't doubt that.
It was her ability to believe it- to trust that strength- that when it came to Brody he sadly had to worry about.
Neither man was anywhere near willing to give up yet though, and having observed his friend’s silence for far too long Will placed his hand on Keiran’s shoulder.
“We will get to her in time,I promise you, Keiran,” he said more firmly, and finally though Keiran didn’t turn he acknowledged Will in his way with a slight nod of his head. "She's tough, and she has all the good memories you've given her since the Paradox ta hold on to. If that isn't enough to keep her alive, then nothin' in the universe could be."
That he would get out of here and find her was something of which Keiran was certain. Still, he struggled to stand against his deep and abiding fear- as painful as any physical wound to his heart could be- that when they did get to her that he would be too late to help her.
He had to push those thoughts from his mind though. He couldn’t afford to have them until he once again held her in his arms.
He softly muttered a barely audible prayer that when he did it’d not be for the last time.
"A Chríost, déan trócaire."
-=/\=-
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=- Keiran O’Sullivan
Security Liaison
The Alchemy Project
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=- Keiran O’Sullivan
Security Liaison
The Alchemy Project