Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 23:05:06 -0500 (EST) From: Susan-chan Subject: USS OBERON: The Quiet Place Death! She would rather *die* than see another one she loved destroyed. Iona saw the conflict in slow motion. She saw the crystalline creature's blow a century before it landed, a blow she *knew* deep in her soul would kill Owen. Owen, who Descartes had died for. Owen, who was her *friend*! No! She launched herself at the fighting pair. Her feet were like lead, but somehow, somehow she had to get between them. If she could only exchange her life for Owen's, that would be enough. She barely felt the strong hand grabbing her arm, holding her back. All she could see was Owen and his enemy, and she could not reach them fast enough. The blow landed. "OWEN!!" The scream seemed to originate outside herself, but she knew the voice was hers. Then the world was made of glass that shattered all around her, and the shards scattered all about her consciousness. And she was falling... falling in a void of madness. Madness that was that same scream, echoing through the universe. Then the shards of the world were gone, and she was floating somewhere beyond time, shielded from the madness from a force that was so foreign, yet so familiar. 'Echante'.... The symphony crescendoed around her. It was a symphony too beautiful for sounds, a symphony she was both discovering for the first time and awakenking to knowledge that it had always been there since she came to the OBERON. Now she heard it in its fullness. It surrounded her comforted her and sang her to sleep.... ********** It's hard to believe everything that can happen in a day until it happens. It was probably midnight, ship time, when the door to the arboretum materialized out of the holograms, opening to admit Dr. Adam Crown. He'd changed clothes since returning to the OBERON. It seemed so unusual to see him in civvies that he seemed like a different person. Iona looked up from the flowers to catch a momentary glimpse of him, haloed by the harsher light of the coridoor, his tawny hair falling in glowing cascades around his shadowed face. He was unimaginably handsome. She smiled distantly. "I didn't expect to see you here." "I asked the computer about you," he admitted. "I wanted to make sure you were all right." She'd been catatonic from the scene on the Forever World until her return to the OBERON, so unresponsive during the subsequent debriefing that it was difficult to tell if she'd really understood what was going on. Adam's heart had ached for her, but he'd hardly been able to think of a means of comfort with the maelstrom of unsettling discoveries that had been surrounding him. Only now, when his own unanswered questions kept him from the escape of sleep, could he really devote the time to her welfare the he'd always hoped to be able to give. A stream originated in the unseen ceiling of the arboretum, splashing softly down in a multi-tiered waterfall in a beautifully sculpted cliffside covered with green. Iona was seated on the secondmost tier, a little above chest-height for Adam, holding her knees to her chest. Her hair was unbound, dark waves glittering around her face in the artificial moolight reflected from the water. She was dressed in a pale, gausey blouse and tight-fitting pants, and her feet were bare. As she cocked her head to look at him, overlarge metallic-flecked eyes absorbing him from beneath the cascade of dark hair tucked behind tiny ears, she looked to all the world like an elf or a fairy from another realm. After everything that had happened today, everything he'd seen in Nabon and Keyotay and Jonah and Owen, he could almost believe she was exactly that. "I think I'm doing all right," Iona said slowly, as if evaluating herself at that moment. "I was just thinking. There's a lot to think about." "Keegan Dacey, Lanni, and Nobon have been working steadily on Owen..." Adam began, searching for words of comfort. "And they'll be able to bring him back if anyone can," Iona finished for him. "They will bring him back. I really believe that." She cocked her head again, looking him over, He could have sworn it was amusement that glittered in her eyes. "You don't have to stand over there," she pointed out. "Why don't you come sit down?" She gestured to the bench that sat beside the final pool of the waterfall below her. Adam smiled wryly. "Actually, I've been sitting all evening going over Sickbay reports and post-mission report for Stae-faan. I'd rather stand, if you don't mind." But he did drift closer, leaning against the cliffside after a moment of indecision. "Would you like me to call the sun up? I left the simulation at nighttime because I liked the darkness." Adam shook his head. "No, it's fine. Leave it be." "I'm glad you came," Iona said softly. "It's nice to not always have to think alone." Adam sighed. "At least you seem to know a place to start," he said ruefully. "I've been lining everything up in my mind," she explained. "So much has happened and I want to know if the net is good or bad. Jonah has Keyotay now. He isn't alone anymore. That's a positive. The crystal warrior is destroyed. Another positive. Maybe Owen will know why that creature wanted to destroy us... when he comes back. Nobon 'died', but now he has Keyotay's body, which Key doesn't need anymore. That's a net of zero." "If you don't count our new FCO's reaction," Adam added. "She didn't take it well. Apparently, she and Keyotay were close." "Oh, I didn't know," there was wistful regret in her voice, but nothing more. It was as if there were no extra emotion to spare for a new officer no one knew yet. Adam could sympathize. "A new negative. Everything ripples. But Jonah so desperately *needed* that companionship. The two of them now have a purpose in life when neither had one before. I just can't see that as anything but beautiful. And Owen.... Owen's memories are locked in technology rather than biology. He's coming back. I have to believe it. But Thomas...." She trailed off, looking intently at Adam. "What happened to Thomas? You had something to do with it, didn't you?" "I don't know," Adam answered a little too quickly. Then he paused and continued. "I don't know how much of myself is mine anymore." "The Guardian took him, and it used you to do it." Adam didn't say anything at first, but the anguish in the depths of his aqua eyes said paragraphs. "I don't know how it was done, but I think it did somehow. The Guardian only told me that it was to mend some rift in the timeline. I don't know where Thomas is." "We have to make the Guardian tell us," Iona said firmly. "And we have to go find him." "I don't know if I can do that," Adam said softly. "I don't know if I can oppose it. There's so much I don't understand. If only Father could have helped me understand what it all meant before I took on the mantle...." "Would you have refused if you knew?" Iona prompted. "I don't know. Damn it, there's so much I don't know!" He buried his fingers in short green grass of the cliffside. "Such a short time ago, I had everything mapped out. I was Adam Crown, head of Starfleet Medical, CMO of the OBERON. I knew my responsibilities. I knew the boundaries of my entire world. I had a happy marriage...." He trailed off in surprise. Where had that come from? He hadn't even been thinking about her... had he? "She wasn't right for you. Nothing you could have done could make her right for you." "If she wasn't right, then how will I ever know what *wrong* feels like?" Adam retorted bitterly. "We were... Imzadi... one mind. I knew deep in my soul that she was all I would ever need. If I could feel than and be wrong, how can I ever be right?" "People change," she said simply. "I changed, she changed, but we were supposed to change *together*. I pledged my life to her, and that *meant* something to me. I gave her a part of myself that... that you never get back. Ever. It's just a void there, day after day, a reminder that I'm alone." He realized there were tears in his eyes. He reached a frustrated hand to dash them away, but tiny fingers caught his. He looked up into metallic-flecked eyes that echoed sympathetic pain. "You're never alone," Iona said. Then she laughed softly to herself. "That's horribly trite. I'm sorry. But it's true." "You know," she said reflectively, "after that day in the arboretum of SSE1, when I saw you change.... I *knew* that I could never really know you again. You'd become something terrifying and unfathomable. But you know what I've realized? It's the same Adam inside. Underneath all the mantles and all the power that you wear, you're Human inside, and that's nothing to be afraid of. In fact, you're a beautiful Human to know." His breath caught as she trailed her fingers down his face. There was a subtle electricity... but, more than that, a comfort he couldn't describe in the touch. "And you've changed too," he mused. "More than I'd realized. You're stronger." Iona's free hand rested on her heart, then her temple. "Descartes is here," she said. "I can feel him with me in everything I do. It's not a romantic way to say I remember him fondly, I mean he's *here*. And I don't want to analyze it. I don't want to know if I've built a fantasy around missing him or if we were in empathic contact for so long that some part of his mind imprinted on mine... or maybe he's a spirit like Nabon, my guardian spirit." She chuckled. "I just know that he's there to advise me in whatever I do, and I can *see* people in a way I'd never seen before. I think it's because I never looked." He smiled ironically. "I guess so. I came here to talk about you, and all we've done is talk about me." Iona smiled tenderly. "That's what I intended all the time," she admitted. "I think you had more to talk about than I did." They fell silent in the simulated night of the arboretum. There seemed to be nothing more to say. She lay down in the grass by his head and held his large hand in her tiny one, and for just one lingering moment the world was at peace. And when she opened her mind, the symphony seemed to flow between them in comforting melodies from the place where Stae-faan was. Respectfully Submitted, Susan Rati LtCmdr Iona Zionviev Mission Specialist, USS OBERON NCC-0111 NRPG: Don't shoot me, Matt! Adam's been so strong, I felt he needed a vulnerable moment, and I needed to show the next stage of Iona's growing up. Hope this is an acceptable intro to Adam and Iona's closer relationship in the future ;). Kurt: Messed a little with Iona's perspective of the battle and her relationship with Stae-faan. Hope you didn't mind. All: Yeah, I know, it didn't forward anything. Give me a break ;>. DragonLady Susan Rati | echo@indy.net | http://www.indy.net/~echo Visit DragonLands: http://www.indy.net/~dlands Don't knock on Death's door; ring the doorbell and run away.