By William Lindsay and Zanh Liis O’Sullivan
100303.23
Immediately following Part One
-=A running holosuite on the USS Poseidon =-
100303.23
Immediately following Part One
-=A running holosuite on the USS Poseidon =-
Liis cried until she felt she'd run out of tears, her eyes stinging and her head pounding as she lifted it up once again.
She didn’t know what was happening to her and she was so very lost in this tiny room and even smaller life. She didn’t know who she was now. She no longer even knew who she once had been.
Her mind was such a haze of thoughts that were so contradictory that she still believed at least half could never be true.
It was an impossibility, just as everything was here.
The coverless bed that couldn’t give warmth; thin, diluted light that never could overcome the darkness.
Yet it was the door that couldn’t be opened that most seemed to be crushing down on her very soul.
There was no point in hope. Even if she could somehow overcome the erosive, destructive doubt and to believe this wasn’t her life, there’d still be no escape. There’d still be nothing she could fight and no face from the fantasy she tried to tell herself was reality with which she could interact.
Just as quickly as it’d risen her head seemed to crash down again to the ground. She felt so physically exhausted, but it was more than just that. One could sleep exhaustion away but in a million years she felt this would not be gone. She felt weak, and that rightly she should. Not a movement of which she was able could take her anywhere out of this room and so clearly she wasn’t strong anymore.
Her eyes again threatened to close, to block out everything she wished she didn’t see in her mind’s eye as clear as day. Yet as she looked along the floor out of the corner of her eye and thought about just how low she was it was then that something truly unexpected happened- a thought rising up from deep within.
There was an instant, a split second, where she realized that whatever the truth was, the choice she had here was simple.
She could believe that Keiran was dead and resign herself to the broken life that Brody indicated was all she had left, or she could fight.
She could fight him just as she had every other time- and hope that in the end, somehow she could escape the nightmare again as she had before. With that realization, she suddenly only felt fatigued again.
If I fight this particular battle, she thought, this has to be the very last time I do it.
Her fate must be in her own hands.
She was technically out of Temporal's control now, of that she was sure. She tried to remember, to focus on what Brody had said to her when she'd been here before.
Yes, she had a definite feeling that she remembered having left TI for good. Her compass being lost- blown up, somewhere.
On a starship.
During a firefight.
No, during a fire...
She'd been hurt, then. She was bleeding. She was fading fast and Keiran- he was holding her and saying something.
She tried to focus on the memory, to isolate one word, then another, to reconstruct just one sentence he'd spoken that she could hold on to.
He said my name, she thought.
He said 'Zanh Liis'.
He shouted it.
Then he said...
She fought the unrelenting desire for sleep brought on by the medication Brody had injected into her- a time released formula, as it surged in her bloodstream again and attempted to overtake her consciousness.
He said something about my eyes.
She let her eyes fall closed a moment, and in the darkness she could feel the heat and smell the fire around them, the melting of all of the internal works that composed the structure of a starship.
For an instant she remembered it so clearly. His frantic voice echoed in her head as she tried to wrench herself back into that moment in order to fight for control of this one.
"Zanh Liis! Eyes front, mind? You've gotta stay awake."
"Awake," she whispered.
Another memory accompanied that word- the lyrics to a song that he'd sung into her ear as they danced in the living room of their home back in Cork.
Keep me awake for every moment...
Now many images overlapped for an instant in her head- one dance to that song in a timeline far removed from the one she'd believed was current- from their first marriage.
Their first house.
The reality that had ended with her death the next day.
This memory, the one she'd been having just a moment ago, was definitely not of that time.
That was not a memory restored to her by the Sylph, she was certain of it.
She was certain because it was experienced from her perspective alone; whereas the ones the Sylph had resurrected in her were enhanced and intensified because they overlapped Keiran’s viewpoint with hers; overlaying the emotions they'd both felt and inextricably binding them together in her mind.
This memory was definitely not that.
In this memory she knew how to dance, and the house was different. They'd been married only days in this memory. This memory was recent.
Married.
The thought did not surprise her as it had before, either; it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
With that epiphany a rushing cascade of memories washed over her. She heard the voices from many different people, speaking words from many different dates and times- days she was sure were not something she could possibly only imagine.
"Are you ready now? To tell me what it is that's been hauntin' your dreams so. Even with me here, asleep just beside you."
"So today is a day for all of us to celebrate, not only the marriage of Liis and Keiran, but all that their union stands for. It stands for faith, for hope, and for never, ever giving up on the things that really matter. Even if History itself tells you that you’re damned for trying.”
"And that's the story of the time Keiran managed ta set his vestments on fire when he was an altar boy. Durin' Easter Sunday services, no less."
Keiran's voice. Will's voice. Mary Clare's voice.
She fought off sweeping, nauseating dizziness as she forced herself to focus.
It was her own voice that next rang in her ears, the words barely audible over the rushing of her own blood.
"Thomas, I know you. I know you won't talk to the Counselor and I know that you won't talk to anyone else about it either. So please, talk to me. We both came to Turner's Cross today for a reason. Tell me yours."
Thomas.
Yes, she remembered this event specifically; it could not have been a hallucination.
They were in the pub- O'Halloran's. In Cork. Not all that long ago. What had he said to her?
She murmured softly to herself, insisting that her brain must free the memory and return it to her fully now- there was no other way out.
She battled and struggled on, until finally, she recalled at last the sound of the voice of TC Blane.
"To remember. Which is funny, really, Zanh Liis, because I've done nothing since the last time I remember being at that damned church but try to forget it."
She heard the ringing of the piano, a chorus of voices singing...
She had tried to run, but Blane wouldn't let her. He forced her to face her fear. He held her fast there, water from the day's rain falling from her hair onto the floor all around them.
'Goodnight, and joy be to you all'.
Liis jumped.
There was something--something that if she was really living in the timeline where Keiran had survived long enough to marry her- would be unmistakably evident. It would be as plain as the ridges on her nose, if it truly had ever been real.
It was something of which Brody would have no knowledge- and so if all around her was only some sort of unreality of his own making, he couldn't have thought ahead to remove it.
Her hands shook as she reached up and tugged at the shoulder of her Medical-issue shirt, to the point the fabric began to tear in her attempts to draw it down over her shoulder so she could see.
She only needed to see one letter.
She turned her head, forcing it back unnaturally and painfully.
She whispered only one word as she dropped her eyes down toward her exposed skin.
"Please..."
There it was.
On the back of her right shoulder, the tattoo she'd gotten that day in Cork, as TC Blane stood by grinning at her, shaking his head as he held onto her leather jacket for her.
She could barely make out the S in SHTV but seeing it was enough to confirm the existence of the whole: the coat of arms was there, and getting that tattoo was something she was entirely certain she'd never done in any other timeline.
The reality of the image, permanently painted upon her skin at the point of an artist’s needle, was just the thing she needed to see to confirm that she was, in fact, still in command of her faculties.
None of this nightmare was real.
With the realization came a sound- a thundering, inescapable pounding in her head- but it wasn't pain this time.
It was the sound of drums.
Drums she'd heard before.
She fought to remember where, as the faintest hint of a melody accompanied them in her mind.
She heard musical voices- a tapestry of fine, masculine voices all singing in harmony.
A room full of O'Sullivans...all with wives and children. Gathered together, to send Liis and Keiran off and back to the Serendipity after the end of their proper honeymoon in the countryside.
This was another memory far too real to deny, and it held her transfixed now.
The pounding of the drums. The look in Keiran's eyes and the sound of his voice whispering in her ear, as his brothers sang with fire and conviction, that he would love her until the day that he died and that they would never be parted, ever again.
That nothing, and no one, could ever break their bond.
The words of the chorus of the song they'd sung echoed in her mind-comprising a petition to a higher power for protection and mercy against a raging sea.
They repeated again and again with the driving sound of those drums, and her heart skipped backwards.
"Lord have mercy," she whispered, remembering the translation. "Christ have mercy."
Suddenly, she not only believed but absolutely knew with everything she was that it was the higher law of love that would be her savior now.
It was a love forged out of pure fire; bonded to her soul through the actions of an angel in the form of a man that would help her tonight, in his absence, to save her soul herself.
Brody was a liar, and she would get out of here and find Keiran again, wherever he was.
Her triumph in the realization was short lived, as the medication levels in her blood elevated to the point she could no longer stave off the marching advance of unconsciousness.
Yet even as she fell flat once again to the floor before her, her mind was more awake and truly alive that it had been in so long.
So even as she closed her eyes she spoke softly to the empty room, as she hoped in ways she’d never hoped before that upon waking again, she would still remember their absolute, unquestionable truth.
"An Lámh Fhoisteanach Abú," she murmured. "Keiran, I love you."
-=/\=-
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis O’Sullivan
Commanding Officer
USSSerendipityNCC-2012
Captain William Lindsay
Interim Director
Temporal Investigations
and
-=/\=- Zanh Liis O’Sullivan
Commanding Officer
USSSerendipityNCC-2012