by Rada Dengar and Lair Kellyn
101030.6
Time: Current
-=USS Serendipity: Quarters of the First Officer=-
101030.6
Time: Current
-=USS Serendipity: Quarters of the First Officer=-
"Why can I not go with you?" Arie watched as her mother ran a brush through her hair, moving it carefully so as not to snag the dangling chain of her earring. "Am I being punished?"
"No, Arie, you're not being punished." Kellyn sighed and set down the brush. She straightened the collar on her red silk blouse but somehow, it just didn't look right. She wished this was just a standard, wear-your-uniform staff meeting. But no. O'Sullivan had to go informal on everyone and invite them down to the countryside for a bonfire and simple dinner over which to catch up with each other. Not a party, he stressed, knowing that few who had gone through the ordeal involving the Poseidon would be in any such a mood. It was supposed to be 'a staff meeting, with scenery', which in the mood she was in sounded about as appealing as a funeral, with party hats.
"Then why can I not accompany you?"
"Because this meeting is only for senior and bridge staff." Kellyn explained, tilting her shoulder down a little on the left to see if that helped her appearance any. Something was off, she just couldn't put her finger on it. "Spouses and children aren't included this time."
The child offered no response, apparently simply accepting what she’d said without a further question. Though it should have been no surprise given recent events, out of habit Kellyn was expecting to be pressed by a young lady wanting to go to a party anyway. So she turned automatically as if to check what were wrong. It was then she became aware that Arie was carrying a storage bin that held within it some very familiar items. Suddenly she grew alarmed.
"What are you doing?" she asked, fearing she knew the answer all too well.
Arie’s response was even more flat in tone than she had taken to being recently, and intentionally matter-of-fact. It was like she was trying to assert just how meaningless the task was to her.
"I am recycling these items. I do not require them anymore."
Without even really thinking about it, Kellyn span around and grabbed the bin away from her daughter's hands. Her eyes widened and her heart sank as she took in the contents. There were an assortment of items; mostly toys and books. Some were decorative items; including a small sea shell Arie insisted on keeping in her hand the entire trip back from a far off beach out of fear it’d be damaged in her pocket. They were so varied and hard to classify, that the only collective noun one could have given them, was a childhood.
Kellyn’s fingers began to sort through some of the books so she could read the titles.
"Arie, these were your favorite storybooks," she objected, her voice seeming almost incredulous as if part of her believed Arie had simply forgotten them.
"I have outgrown them."
While Kellyn had to admit this may be true; maybe Arie would have decided to recycle them eventually anyway, there was one item on top of the box, destined for recycling, that had once meant so much to Arie that it brought a lump to Kellyn’s throat that no amount of swallowing could remove. "But, Raffe was a gift from Dabin. Arie, you can't-"
"I am not a child now, Mother. I am a student of logic. I have no need of. . ." Arie paused for just a flicker of an instant and her eyes darted away, almost guiltily, as in her still childish manner, she couldn't bring herself to insult the toy to its small, worn out face. "...comfort items."
"Well maybe you don't." Kellyn said with a stern yet unreadable expression as she took the bin and set it down on her bed. "But I do. I'll take care of this."
Kellyn had been intentionally brisk in the way she’d spoken. She had hoped for some kind of reaction- indignation, irritation, anything. Instead, Arie merely folded her hands in that maddeningly calm way her father often did and turned away. "Very well. Thank you."
Kellyn's heart instantly fell a little farther, and she had to turn away herself to hide it. She drew in a slight breath, trying not to think of how with each step Arie took, and each gathering moment of silence between them, she seemed to be slipping further away from her.
Finally a little bit more centred again, Kellyn peered around the corner after her.
"What will you do while we're gone?" Kellyn called.
"Meditate."
"Wonderful." Kellyn sighed. It seemed like that was all her daughter did these days.
Once again, Kellyn stared at herself in the mirror and gave up trying to figure out what was wrong with her appearance. She took the bin and put it into the closet behind her, and then, in an uncharacteristic move, she activated the lock and secured the closet door. "She's good, but not that good yet." Kellyn muttered under her breath. "You'll still be there when I get back, Raffe. No recycling for you."
When she moved into the living room she found Arie was already seated, eyes closed, on a cushion in the middle of the room. Kellyn said nothing. She wanted to avert her eyes, as though that would somehow make this new reality less real, but she couldn’t really turn away. Instead she merely sighed as she grabbed a black cloak from a hook on the wall and threw it over her shoulders.
Then without delay, she trudged through the halls, anxious to get this evening over with, though she wasn't sure why. After all, nothing would really change in the morning.
-=/\=- O'Sullivan Residence: County Cork, Ireland, Earth=-
Kellyn materialised on a familiar green hilltop. Perhaps it was a beautiful place but she certainly didn’t notice as she immediately began the begrudging walk down. In fact, her eyes just found the ground as she watched the indentations her boots made in the lush grass beneath her feet as she moved. Again and again the blades of grass fell, unable to do anything to stop her and with her unable to avoid them. She wondered if they felt as crushed by the blows as she felt by recent events.
She tried for just a moment out of thinking like this.
Damn it, she hated feeling this way.
She didn’t take too much notice of time but it wasn’t long before she was about to reach the perimeter of the gathering. She stopped to survey what would be her destination for the minimum amount of time she could take before she could get away without drawing undue attention.
She could see a bonfire burning close by, throwing a gentle orange glow over the world. Maybe she was just too far away but she felt no warmth coming from it, merely tasting the burn of the smoke on damaged lungs as the light wind swept it continually in her direction.
It wasn’t that it was cold, not really. It was twilight but the weather was fair and altogether pleasant for this time of year. It could be the perfect atmosphere for a quiet evening. She was however far too preoccupied to properly enjoy it.
Looking around, she debated her options. A few people were up on the porch on a swing, talking. O'Sullivan was fussing with a table piled high with food, and Salvek was standing by the fire, speaking to someone but from this angle, Kellyn couldn't tell who it was. None of these really provided much of an option anyway.
She wasn't ready to join the group, not just yet. She turned back, moving away toward a gathering of trees at the back of the garden.
How long she just stood there, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she was deep in personal consideration, staring upward at the sky as the last of the day set on the dimming blue when a voice broke the silence and her train of thought.
"I won the bet. Remember?"
Kellyn startled. It wasn't the soft voice itself that was so unexpected; it was a voice she had known very well. It was the tone of that voice which came as a genuine, and welcome surprise. For all she’d been thinking of a moment before, to be even hearing that voice sounding happy again was like a spark that hid the darkness from you for a fortunate instant. She actually felt her mouth turning up at the edge into a smirk as she turned toward him.
"You did not."
Rada Dengar laughed softly, and without thinking, he happily embraced his friend. Kellyn’s mind however had quickly returned to acknowledging all the darkness there was in the world. So he found that to his surprise instead of returning the hug that she stayed still, limp as a rag doll in his arms, and twice as sad looking. He released her, and she took a step backwards.
He watched as she tried to immediately banish the sorrow from her face. He looked happy to her for the first time in far too long, and no matter what was going on in her own life she was determined that she wouldn't be the one to change that. Rada however had been on the other side of this act far too often to buy it, and Kellyn could see that he wasn’t.
She quickly tried to change the topic to one aside from her personal struggles. In spite of how hard it was to hide how she felt while looking him in the eye, she made herself watch his response.
"How are you, Rada?" She wrung her hands, nervous to ask even though he looked so much better than the last time she'd seen him. "How are you really?"
"I’m fine…" Rada said, the words sounding far more like a question of her own condition than an appraisal of his.
She turned her head just slightly and the unchanging expression in her eyes seemed to ask him once again ‘really?’
"Really, I am," Rada added, able to tell that she was looking for more of an indication that he even knew what okay was. Though surely it would be no secret, he seemed to drop his tone before he continued, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear. "I remember, Kellyn."
Something in her countenance said she still wasn’t quite ready to believe it.
"I remember what I did," he admitted quickly, clearly having things he didn’t want to think about of his own. "I also remember Wren and Tam. I remember that I love her."
Rada was really worried with the emotion that seemed to pass over Kellyn’s face when he mentioned that word ‘love’. He had no way of knowing that she was wondering just what love meant for an emotionless ‘student of logic’. She knew Salvek loved her, but it was almost a rebellion on his part. In any case it was something that had grown over time, not something that had needed to be pushed down and out of the way in order to make your heart fit into a more limited philosophy.
"That’s wonderful, Rada. Really," she said, the genuine meaning in the emotion more covered by and not cancelled out through the sadness she felt at her own situations. "Where is she now?"
"She’s already back on the ship in her quarters," he replied, thinking of how amazing it’d felt to have transported up to the ship and walked the entire journey there with her hand in his. "I’m going to help move everything back into my quarters tomorrow. She and I spent a lot of quality time together while waiting for the Sera to return."
Kellyn’s eyebrow raised and he smiled a little shyly in a way to say he hadn’t meant ‘quality time’ in the way she may have been thinking it, but he also wouldn’t be disclosing a full list of his activities. It was a warming sort of smile to see him giving but it didn’t last long enough to have any permanent effect on her mood.
"Right now she’s happy to spend some time with Tam. We hear he had quite an adventure while we were gone."
Kellyn knew it would be common for a young boy to talk for days about the big adventure, though she also had gotten the impression from their talks that Tam wasn’t a common young boy and the events that had transpired were less than an adventure for him.
"How is he?"
"He’s…clingy. Wren doesn’t mind. After hearing what he went through though she doesn’t want to let him go far anyway." Only to a friend as close as Kellyn would Rada have felt alright about confiding what he did next. "I think she’s regretting that she didn’t check in with him more while she was gone."
Kellyn nodded slightly, sadly. She could relate all too well to looking back and wishing you’d spent more effort checking for signs that something might be wrong.
"Are you really okay?" she asked him again, and it was all too clear at this point that she was willing to talk about the condition of everyone but herself.
"Yes, I still, am. What about you?" he asked, gently but with concern.
"I’m okay," she answered softly, and Rada felt like insisting ‘No, you’re not’. "It is very good to see you looking so well again, Rada."
Rada wished he could have said the same. Yet, even though physically she’d clearly recovered more from her time under the ice on Sibalt, it was like there were just something in her that was missing this time. No, missing was the wrong word. It was like they’d taken the fire around which many of their crew were gathered, and dumped a bucket of water on top of it.
He didn’t want to push her though, any more than she’d pushed him when he was so conflicted. He wasn’t even sure what he should say. Maybe she’d talk when she was ready to talk and the best he could do would be to give her that chance to find the words on her own.
He looked up to the sky where Kellyn’s eyes seemed to have found their way again.
"It’s a beautiful evening, isn’t it?" he asked her, so much more appreciative of sights like this now that he remembered the woman that gave them meaning.
Kellyn wrapped her arms around her middle, subconsciously betraying the gnawing ache she felt inside. Still, she told herself that no matter what her own personal issues were at the moment, there was no way she was going to steal a second of this quietly triumphant return of her friend to the crew who loved him. She pasted on her best false smile, though fearing the Angosian's ability to judge it as the fragile mask that it was.
As his eyes settled upon her again, they took on a depth of concern she'd rarely seen directed toward her, and she shivered, trying to shrug the feeling off like the sudden dampness of the Earth below her feet which seemed to be climbing through her veins steadily upward, clawing and grasping for her heart.
"Yeah." She said softly, adding a second later, "beautiful." She seemed almost to choke on the word as it rattled around in the back of her throat.
"Kellyn-"
"A'right ev'ry'one, food's ready as it's gonna be." Keiran's voice called from the distance.
"Aren't we waiting for the Captain?" Zander Blakeslee asked.
"Captain's been detained. She'll be joinin' us shortly." Keiran replied.
"Kellyn," Rada repeated, but as he turned back from the voices that had momentarily drawn away his attention, he discovered that his friend and fellow engineer had already walked away.
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Commander Lair Kellyn
Engineering Research and Development
The Alchemy Project
and
Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Commander Lair Kellyn
Engineering Research and Development
The Alchemy Project
and
Lt. Commander Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012