Legal: Star Trek belongs to other people. This story was inspired by Blood Ties by Djinn. If you haven't read it yet, read it. Now. That's an order.

Two Angels in the Dark of Night

by DebbieB

I want to help her. I watch, I weep, I pray.

It would be so easy to reach out, to comfort, to guide. But Shayla is right. It is not our time to intervene. Had it been so, I never would have allowed it to reach this point.

But we are not to interfere. So we watch, never tiring, never resting, contemplating this woman-child who bears the anger of three lives and the peace of none. We bless her soul, for it bears the weight of forgetfulness, that deepest and most heavy of all labors.

She has forgotten her bliss. She has forgotten her immortality. She sits alone, in a darkened cell, an amnesiac unaware of her own disease.

I would weep tears of blood to bring her back to me.

For I watch with the full memory of my own emptiness, my own painful void which led her, directly, indirectly, lovingly, to this desolation. I feel the pain of abandonment, of hatred towards self and others, and I feel it in the context of knowing. That understanding of the greater matrix of life and feeling only makes the void more pitiable.

I've watched now as she grew, too quickly, too quickly, from child to woman. Watched as she bore the gazes of a soul who could never understand, but was drawn to her nonetheless. I've watched as she avenged her loneliness in the name of mine.

I forgive her for that. It is difficult for the living to understand true motivation. There is no vengeance for the dead, only for the living. But it helped to attribute the fire to me, so I allowed it.

I sing to her in sleep. It is the only time I feel safe reaching to her. She would be disappointed, in her true and knowing state, that I was so weak. She chose this road, this terrible life of pain and loss. She chose to bear that weight. Shayla knows. She understands more than I do. She comes to me in the night, as I watch over my precious child, that soul who bravely took on hatred and betrayal and loss. She comforts me, who cannot bear to watch.

And in time, the light comes. The day breaks. And my Rise goes on.

FIN