Can't Quite Give Up

Posted on Tue Sep 4th, 2018 @ 8:53am by Commander Rita Paris

Mission: Holographic Horrors
Location: USS Hera, Deck 12, Corridors
Timeline: 2395

Leaving the orbital fortress, Lieutenant Rita Paris walked the umbilical that connected the USS Hera to the station at Deck 12. For her first foray aboard the station, she had chosen to seek out the piratical Baroness Von Alcott for fencing lessons, which had in turn led to a conversation that had left her maudlin and melancholy. Which had most certainly not been the point of the exercise, yet it had resulted in her wandering away depressed all the same.

Internally, she was conflicted. It seemed that she should just adapt to living in the future and start building a life for herself, maybe get drunk and get laid and just let go of her past life. While the Captain and Dedjoy were concocting a way to use the fortress’ power to ship her communicator home as one final report, it was highly unlikely that anyone, even Sonak, would be able to use it to traverse the time, space and dimensions that she herself had been catapulted in her latest freak transporter accident. After the first one, the transporter phobic seemed to attract transporter accidents. Sonak had always said that it likely had something to do with her unique quantum signature that interfered with the transporter’s beaming capabilities.

Which was small comfort to her here. She had gotten checked out by medical, but never heard any results. Which was usually the scientific version of a shrugging of the shoulders and an admission that they had no answers, in her experience. Funny thing, scientists and doctors generally didn’t like to admit when they couldn’t figure things out, and the penchant of the lost navigator to cause ionized transporters to perform not at all as designed was apparently still a mystery 127 years after her time. Let alone how she seemed to be able to remain a cohesive sentient energy field within a warp shell at times when said beaming went awry.

In truth, she was adapting to life in the futire. She could now fly anything with a nacelle, and she had adapted to the change in warp theory like a fish to water. Starships still got into unusual trouble, and the plucky explorer was still game to help work out the solutions by coordinating with the crew. The Captain seemed to understand her now, and recognized that Rita was a good officer and an asset to the starship. Hell, they were even on their way to becoming good friends. She was learning more every day about a future that was so different than the era she had left behind, yet had enough similarities for her to keep her sanity intact.

The Captain had proposed that she look up her ‘nephew’, but as she was no actual relation to the man, Rita felt uncomfortable doing so. After all, the name-dropping navigator was accustomed to having no family- she had often introduced herself early in her career as “Rita Paris- no relation”. Her father and brother didn’t particularly want her in their lives, since she refused to be a pawn of either of them. So a hundred and twenty seven years later, the withered branch of the Paris family tree found she didn’t miss them in the least. The concept of establishing family ties with extradimensional dopplegangers of their descendants didn’t exactly thrill her, either.

The Exeter she missed, that big, beautiful Constitution class starship that were no longer in service. Captain Stuart she missed. Sonak… Sonak she missed desperately.

It was as if a piece of her, a sizable chunk of her in fact, had been forcibly torn away from her. Now she was just…. Wounded. The career fleeter gal pressed on through her days, focusing on her job and reports and schedules and the myriad duties of a chief helmsman, now billeted as chief flight control officer. At night, she tried not to cry herself to sleep as in the silence the aching loneliness could not be ignored, and she clutched a body pillow tightly and cursed herself for her weakness. But she could not help it. Sonak had been the center of her universe- her partner, her lover and her t’hy’la. The only man she had ever loved, who had returned that love, despite his lack of emotion. He couldn’t feel love like she did, but he knew her mind, her thoughts and her emotions intimately, as she knew his. Sonak had always lamented that he could not return her affections- yet he did so for her in a thousand ways. In theory, without her, he would be fine. Logic would see him through, and would suffer no heartbreak.

In truth, she knew better, and he would forever feel her absence, as she felt his. While there was no logic to longing, she knew he would miss her for as long as he lived, just as she would miss him.

Common sense told her to let it go, to let that part of her soul scab and scar and become numb to the pain- but she couldn’t seem to let go of that last shred of hope. The man had never let her down, period. Even on their last adventure together-

And as soon as she thought those words, the tears tried to come, and the displaced damsel leaned against a bulkhead in the corridor as she struggled to stifle them. Walking the decks of a starship, even one mostly empty as everyone was on leave, was not the time nor place for a show of emotional weakness from a senior officer.

On their last mission together, he had hotwired a transporter panel to beam her out with a rare isotope sample during an ion storm under severe solar flares. A lesser man would have gotten her killed. Sonak had still managed to save her, even if she had ended up being reconstituted a hundred and twenty-seven years later in another dimension. The man had never let her down, ever. That’s why it was so hard for her to believe he wasn’t going to rescue her just one more time.

For weeks she had turned at men’s voices, at tones and pitches that sounded similar to his, or a turning on sighting a spot of that distinctive blue of his uniform that was no longer in vogue. She had yet to run into any Vulcan males on the Hera, for which she was grateful. It would likely result in an embarrassing display before she realized it was not her somber grey-eyed scientist. Which would be mortifying for her, and uncomfortable for the other party. She missed his presence, his calming effect on her, his touch, his counsel, his company. She missed him, all of him. When she couldn’t distract herself with work, Rita felt as though she was walking around dragging her heart behind her on the floor.

This couldn’t go on.

The experiment would be the turning point, she knew. If he and Stuart showed up, then she would say her goodbyes here and go home. Hell, after all this, maybe the starship siren might just leave Starfleet entirely and see if she couldn’t convince Sonak to take a teaching position at the Academy, and settle down with her. Put their spacefaring days behind them, and maybe even cook up a few pointy-eared blonde kids in the lab. But if no one came for her, then that would mean that in the potentially two hundred years of his life left to him, that science had never found a way, and that Sonak was not coming for her.

Just putting those words into her mind made her tear up, because her heart so desperately did not want to believe it. Despite all logic, she believed in the last kolinahr. He was her hero. He would always come for her, no matter what. Never had he made her that promise, but never had he failed her, ever. The local geniuses had found a way to give him a clue, and when he got it he would be able to change- no, he would correct her- alter and manipulate the laws of time and space, cheating them to rescue his One. He would.

But if he did not, the practical part of her recognized, she had to get on with her life- or she wasn’t going to make it. Mooning over a man who, in this universe, had died on a damnable transporter pad at Starfleet Command after being literally turned inside out was unhealthy, and she knew it. Mood swings in conversations when she tried to put him into past tense were no good for anyone involved. She had to do better. The long-lost lieutenant had to evolve, adapt and move on.

Yet that tiny voice in her heart refused to yield that last shred of hope. Because he had earned it, time and again. Her faith in him might have been unreasonable, but it was certainly not unwarranted. If it was possible, he would find a way. If it was impossible, he might just still find a way. He was the smartest, wisest and most capable man she had ever known, and try as she might, Rita Paris just couldn’t give up on the last kolinahr.

Perhaps it was because, decades in the past and dimensions away, Sonak of Vulcan refused to give up on Rita Paris.


Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcPq70Ryf08