by Landry Steele
Stardate: 101002.12
Following How Are The Mighty Fallen
Stardate: 101002.12
Following How Are The Mighty Fallen
-=Sickbay, USS Serendipity=-
Landry Steele had seen, in her twenty-eight linear years of living and then some, more dark and ugly things than she cared to count, even if she had the time and patience to try.
One by one she'd done her best to dismiss them completely or else, in the cases of the worst of all things, compartmentalize them as efficiently as possible. It was cruelly ironic that this was a trick that Tucker himself had taught her: to take the things that distressed her most and file them away inside a small corner of her mind, to be called upon in moments like this as a reminder that things can always be worse.
This time, as she tried to file through that catalog of disasters she’d locked up inside, she didn’t believe it was true. For him, there was no way things could possibly be worse.
She almost forgot to breathe as she contemplated what she was about to find on the other side of the door. She doubted any of the dark and ugly things she’d ever seen could prepare her for what she was going to see next.
"Aren't you going to go in?" The security guard asked, fidgeting his hands nervously. Her pacing was making him more anxious by the second for his long overnight shift to end.
"In a minute." Landry replied. Or three, she thought. The moment that you leave for breakfast.
"Well, my replacement will be here in,” the officer began, sounding slightly confused and only perking up when he spotted a figure in the distance. “Oh, look, here he is."
He looked up and gave an anxious nod to Dane Cristiane, wasting no time before he began to hurry down the hall, past him.
"Hey!" Dane called, "What about my start-of-shift briefing?"
"Captain said to let Steele into Brody's room. She can stay as long as she wants, but yank her out at the first sign of trouble!" The man called back over his shoulder. "Consider yourself briefed!"
"O'Sullivan would have his ass for that." Dane shook his head in contemplation. "Blakeslee, twice over. Sloppy." Dane stopped as he saw Landry looking at him with desperate, plaintive eyes. He groaned, unable to ignore them. "Why do I get the feeling you're about to ask me something that O'Sullivan will have my ass for later?"
"Because I am." Landry said. Then without warning she unbuttoned the top of her uniform and started to pull it up over her head.
"Hey, whoa, what do you...you can't get me to do anything by-" Dane protested, his hands flying up to cover his eyes. An instant later he felt her hand slap upside his head. "OW! What the hell was that for?"
"For thinking what you just thought." Landry replied. "I'm wearing something beneath it, genius. I don't want to go in there in uniform. It'll only upset him."
"He's been yelling your name for the better part of three days," Dane said softly. "Seeing you is going to upset him."
"Not if I do it right." Her eyes flashed up to him again as she straightened the shoulders of the simple sweater that she'd hid beneath her uniform. "Not if you help me."
"How?"
"Turn off the video monitors."
"You're out of your mind! The room is soundproof. He could kill you and we wouldn't know it until it was too late."
"He won't hurt me," Landry insisted, pausing while a group of nurses walked past, ready to start their shift. When she was sure they were out of earshot she resumed. "I don't know what he may say, though, and I think that whatever it is, he deserves this last chance to say it to me without anyone watching."
"And I would do this for you why?" Dane folded his arms. He was still angry at her- at least he was trying to be. The way she'd looked the last few days gave him pause, but it was difficult for him to put aside how he felt about her withholding information at the start. Though he didn’t claim to be known for total honesty, this was information that could have made the difference between life and death for everyone if they'd had it at the right time.
"Because," Landry looked once more around to ensure no one was listening, then stood on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. "At some future time in some future place, you are going to ask me to do something very dangerous and very over the line for you, or to look the other way while you do it," she explained, still whispering but returning her feet to the ground. "This is the favor you will hold over my head in order to get me to do it."
The sound of certainty in her voice, a foreknowledge of future events that Dane had only ever heard among TI agents who had experience in the field far beyond his own, chilled him through.
"Damn, I hate it when you people talk like that."
"You are one of us 'people', Cristiane. Don't you forget it."
"You're part of this crew," Dane countered, wondering just what trouble he was about to bring upon himself because he just couldn't say no. "Don't you forget that."
The expression on her face could at first glance have been called one of acknowledgement, but then he decided it seemed more correctly interpreted as a very sad sort of acceptance. "For how long?"
Dane said nothing and Landry moved to the panel. She quickly began the work of fooling the video capture system into thinking it was updating when it was not. It would record the first sixty seconds of her inside the cell with Tucker, then it would shut off and repeat that footage on a loop continuously until she changed it back. A simple trick for one of her experience: mere child’s play. "You know, it doesn't matter," she said, answering her own question. She finally turned to Dane and nodded; squaring her shoulders to assert her readiness for something she couldn’t possibly be ready for. "I'll remember."
"I'm going to burn in O'Sullivan's private Hell for this." Dane moaned as he reluctantly keyed in the access code to release the door.
"O'Sullivan's Catholic. His own private Hell is pretty much the same as everybody else's."
"Don't count on it," he said, as she began to step forward. The part of him that wasn’t at all angry made him grab hold of her arm as she passed him, and she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "Hey, Landry. Be careful in there."
She nodded, and as the door finally opened, she tried to inhale. She found it felt like attempting to breathe at elevations approaching several thousand meters above sea level; dangerous, disorienting, and in the long term, lethal.
There was no satisfaction in the knowledge that she’d been right when she’d thought that nothing could prepare her for this.
As she stepped inward, the sight that met her seemed to sting her eyes just to behold. It brought with it an excruciating numbness, similar to that which overcomes you when you’re staring at a coffin and can’t quite believe someone you love is really inside.
Brody was sitting tucked away in the corner, his body shaking just a little, his eyes blankly staring off into distances far beyond these walls. He seemed to be whispering, but it was to someone only he could see. She couldn't be certain what he was actually saying for his secretive words were his alone.
Slowly she approached him. At first she crouched down and then finally she knelt beside him. He continued simply to stare; like she wasn’t there, but that was no surprise because it felt like he wasn’t either. Tilting her head towards him she whispered his name, but found he offered no reaction. She ticked down the seconds in her head until the live video feed cut out, and then she tried again.
“Tucker.”
Her eyes weighed heavily in their sockets and only seemed willing to move with the greatest possible effort. This all felt so futile. She forced herself to repeat his name again several times before finally, with no apparent difference to be found in how she’d spoke, her voice somehow registered.
He turned to her, though it seemed to be more towards the direction of her voice than as if he was truly seeing her there.
"Landry?" he whispered, confused that she was wherever he thought he was. He was barely audible, his voice still completely spent.
She reached out a gentle hand and ran it along the stubble that had grown upon his normally smooth, meticulously groomed cheek. "Hiya, Tuck." She tried to smile, but the result was hollow, a mere curving of the corners of her mouth without any joy in her eyes to truly light up her face. "What do you say we get you a shower and shave? You'll feel so much better afterward."
She wanted, if nothing else, for him to arrive at his destination looking as he had when he'd last been seen by his colleagues; former equals who would now be the ones passing judgment on his actions. With the single initial glance they’d be deciding his entire future. If she had anything to do with it, he'd arrive properly dressed and looking presentable.
It was the very least she could do for him.
"Oh, I," he looked down at his standard Sickbay attire and frowned. "What happened?"
"You've been sick, Tuck. Really sick. But you're getting better and they're going to let you leave here soon."
"Oh, it was...it was that..." he tried to snap his fingers as if doing so would somehow prompt completion of the memory he couldn't quite catch. It seemed appropriate that his fingers didn’t quite make the sound correctly, and he was left to furrow his brow towards them in futility.
"That bug you picked up at the conference, remember?" Landry lied. It felt so wrong. She’d done it far too easily for her own good, and been much too convincing to congratulate herself on her efforts. What else was she to do? She refused to take from him what little peace he seemed to feel, just because she was finally near him. "Your fever spiked really high, we were all so worried."
"Is that why I can't remember?" he asked, reaching out and taking hold of her hand. "There's somethin', I know I'm supposed to remember."
"I’m sure it’s nothing you need to worry about now. Come on." She slowly rose to her feet, fighting to stay standing on ground that seemed to shake and crumble beneath her. "Let's get you cleaned up."
"Have to, right?" Tucker whispered. "We're goin' out tonight. aren't we?” His eyes actually flashed concern and he cursed himself, but it was not an angry curse. “Damn, that's what I was supposed to remember. It was a surprise."
"What was?" Landry offered both of her hands and Tucker managed to get up, wobbling a little as she put her arm around his waist to steady him. She led him over to a locked door and keyed in a security code, accessing the sonic shower unit.
"Impossible to surprise you, you know." He laughed, brushing his fingertip over her nose. "So I booked it early. For our anniversary."
"Our anniversary isn't for three weeks." Landry played along, though she had no idea exactly how long it was supposed to have been, since they lived a life that he now only remembered in delusions.
"Exactly." He truly smiled now, and he leaned forward and tried to kiss her. Suddenly Landry's heart plummeted to the floor and she turned her face away, causing his lips to only graze her cheek. Tucker laughed.
"I am sorry, Mrs. Brody, I know that you hate little more than gettin' whisker kissed." He allowed her to lead him forward into the shower. She stepped out and after the door was shut he began to disrobe, throwing his clothes over the top to her. Something clicked in the back of his mind and he activated the cleaning cycle, sighing as the heat warmed his bones and chased away some of the sadness that he suddenly didn't quite understand. "Did you bring me a razor?"
Landry froze; this all felt so crazy. Yet after a moment's contemplation she realized that she had to fully play along with the charade.
She unlocked the supply cabinet in the corner and pulled out a standard, Sickbay issue safety razor. "There you go." He reached out beyond the door of the enclosure and took the device, then automatically began putting it to its proper use.
"You okay in there?" she asked, wringing her hands with a mixture of nerves and near physical pain.
"Oh yeah. Forgot how good a shave can feel." he answered. Then he pursed his lips and whistled a few bars of a very familiar song. Her heart felt like it was slipping out of place before he stopped for no apparent reason and rasped, "Thank you, darlin'."
Landry sighed with equal measures of relief and uneasiness, as she moved towards the replicator. Without even thinking, she put in the access code to unlock it, and then produced some fresh clothing. It was civilian wear that would at least dignify the man that she still believed existed, somewhere deep inside the shell before her. Moments later she was handing them over the top of the shower to him, and he laughed again at the gesture.
"How many years do we have to be married before you finally quit doin' that?" he asked. "It's not like there's anything here you haven't seen before."
"There's such a thing as privacy, Doctor Brody and so it'll take more years than we ever will be married before I stop handing you your clothes over the top of the shower." Landry answered, attempting humor and failing. She cared too much to laugh just now. "Do you think I can get you to eat something? Soup, at least?"
"Oh, I don't know," he frowned as he emerged, still teetering uneasily and leaning against the wall for support. She wanted to rush to him but purposely held herself back. He hated being fussed over when he was sick. If she did too much now, she might give herself away. "I'm still not feelin' right. I think I'd best wait a little longer."
"All right," she said, with acceptance for what must be; a feeling she was rapidly becoming far too accustomed to.
By the time Tucker struggled into his clothing- which she let him do on his own so as not to risk violating his stubborn need for independence- she had put fresh linen on the biobed and turned up the air recirculation units to high, freshening the room up considerably from the state it was in when she first entered it. She looked up in alarm when she saw him stop moving toward her and drop his head into his hands.
"What's the matter?" She couldn’t stop herself from rushing up to him now.
"Spinning," he rumbled, clearly struggling for his balance. "Room won't stop spinning."
"That fever really took it out of you. Better get you into bed." She pulled back the fresh sheet and patted the mattress, again forcing the smile that chiseled away at her heart a little more every second she held it in place. It felt like the heaviest of death masks, and she just didn't know how much longer she would be able to bear its weight.
"Only if you come with me." Tucker whispered in her ear, as he wrapped his arms around her from behind. The sensation was entirely familiar to Landry in a way that nearly stopped her pounding heart, but she knew that she couldn't risk forgetting for even an instant just how different the man before her was from the man that she'd fallen in love with.
"Now, I thought you didn't feel up to eating. You can't possible feel up to anything else. One must respect their limits, isn't that what you're always telling me?"
He sighed as she fussed with the pillow behind his head and he smiled at her wearily. "You are correct, Ma'am. Still," he held his arms open wide to her. "No reason you can't help keep me warm, is there?" he shivered suddenly, appearing shocked and dismayed by processing his sense of the temperature. "It's damn cold in here."
Landry bit her lip, considering that she really shouldn’t risk this. Then she reminded herself that her whole purpose in being here was to give him memories of a few perfect, fleeting moments of peace and contentment to take with him where he was going. Even if the attempt turned out to be futile, at least later she'd be able to tell herself that she'd tried.
She nodded and he moved over, making as much room as he could for her. She had no choice, given the narrow measurements of the surface that supported them, but to put her arms around him and rest her head against his chest.
This was so much harder than she’d expected.
She sighed softly, dangerously close to becoming completely lost in the moment. The beating of his heart was hypnotic, and as he began to lazily run his fingers through her hair she could almost believe, for just awhile, that she really had her Tucker back in her arms.
"The boys didn't get it, did they?" he asked, the moment she pulled the sheet up over them and he felt she’d finally settled in.
"Hm?" She wasn't sure exactly what to say now; a clear reminder that none of this was real. She waited, and hoped he'd offer more information to help her pretend for him a little longer.
"The boys. They didn't catch the fever from me did they? It's awfully contagious the first two days."
"No," Landry assured him gently, closing her eyes and trying to hide the fact that tears were now streaming down her face. "The boys are fine. They're staying with my Dad this weekend, remember?"
"That's right. ‘Cause it's impossible to get time alone with their beautiful mother with two rowdy young cowboys in the house,” Tucker’s voice conveyed this all really felt completely natural and everyday to him. “Did Jake get his cast off this mornin’?"
"They rescheduled for Monday, remember?" She asked, feeling a strange contempt for how easily the words had come.
She fell silent again, suddenly deeply disturbed by how easy it was to just go along with him. It was so simple to help him believe that life he remembered, the one he insisted he still had, was the one she was living too. She could so easily forget what was real herself, and she wasn’t sure she didn’t want to.
It was only in that moment she fully accepted that she couldn’t just abandon reality as she knew it for his sake now, not for his sake, or that of her broken heart. She had to remain in it, no matter how far he drifted from it, in case he should finally one day return and look for her there.
"Gonna be a miracle if that boy sees twelve." Tucker sighed. "We have got to keep him out of the treetops. Luke keeps trying to go up after him but his legs are just too short."
"He's only four. He'll catch up." Landry said, her voice breaking. Suddenly she was unable to hide her tears any longer. Her shoulders shook, and she heaved a sob against his chest. Tucker put his hand beneath her chin and made her look up at him.
"Hey, now, what's all this?"
"I’ve been so worried about you," she said, speaking with complete truthfulness for the first time since she’d entered the room. "You scared me, Tuck. You really, really scared me."
"No, it's more than that. You never usually cry. Ever! Well, not unless..." he stopped, his eyes flashing. He tried to speak more clearly and muttered a curse when he found he still had no voice. "Damned sore throat. Worst part of this whole thing." Finally, he sat up and Landry sat up with him. He leaned his forehead against hers, and suddenly his mind seemed to jump tracks.
"That's right," he mumbled, "You only cry when you're pregnant. All those hormones. You cried a hell of a lot more with Lily than you ever did with either of the boys. You..."
He stopped abruptly, his mind now in a completely different place than had been, and all the light and all the happiness faded from his face. "Something bad happened to you, Landry. To us. I, I know it- I."
"Tucker," Landry tenderly placed her hands on either side of his face and gazed at him with adoration through her tears. "The boys are fine. You're going to get better. I'm right here, beside you. Where I was always supposed to be." She reached down and grasped hold of his fingers desperately. "For now, just let that be enough. Please."
Her heart raced as he seemed to scan her features, considering, trying to understand the conflict he saw so plainly written upon them.
"You've been so sick,” she whispered. “Please. Just rest now."
"Alright, alright. Don't you worry now," he finally relented, leaning back again against the mattress and gesturing for her to retake her place against his chest. "You need to rest too. Come on."
With her heart in her throat, Landry laid her head back down and held him tight. "Go to sleep now, Tuck, okay? I'll …wake you when it's time to go," she whispered. "Just rest. Everything will be okay."
He sighed, exhaustion overcoming him again. With her close by, all he knew was that he was tired, and falling asleep in her arms sounded like the best thing in all the worlds.
"My yellow rose of Texas," he stifled a yawn before pressing his lips to the top of her head. "I love you, Landry. I always will."
She closed her eyes, certain that the last shards of her heart were now broken and falling away, piece after piece showering effortlessly down onto the ground below them with the last few blows of Pygmalion's mallet and chisel.
"I love you too, Tuck. Always."
Landry Steele
Temporal Investigations Agent
Assigned to the USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Temporal Investigations Agent
Assigned to the USS Serendipity NCC-2012