What would you think if I sang out of tune

Posted on 02 Feb 2016 @ 12:09am by Lieutenant JG Drusilla McCarthy

964 words; about a 5 minute read

Sat in the middle of the double bed, Dru looked at the PADD in her hands, every so often her finger would swipe the screen as she scrolled through the images contained within.

In the background, music played low; the lyrics vibrating through the room as the counselor half listened, immersed in the memories which were resurrected by the pictures she was looking through.

Loving can hurt
Loving can hurt sometimes
But it's the only thing that I know
When it gets hard
You know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive

We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
Times forever frozen still

Dru felt her eyes begin to tear as memories of young sweethearts and best friend flickered across the screen. Innocent childhood memories that seemed so long ago.

The rolling green hills of home where her parents had raised herself and her brother Brendan. Their childhood had been one where they had never wanted for anything...least of all the loving embrace of the people who loved them the most.

Even now, a shadow of a smile passed the woman's lips as she remember the fights and tussles if someone said anything bad to her or even just looked at her wrong...Brendan had been so over protective and although it had been suffocating growing up...now an adult who had love lost and gained, Drusilla realised that was just how her brother had been. He was the oldest...the man...he was her protector to keep her safe from what the universe had in store for her.

Even her parents standing back and allowing Brendan to do what he had...it had all been about giving their children the freedom to make their own choices and build their own building blocks in life. I wasn't because they didn't care...it was because they did.

We keep this love in this photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Our hearts were never broken
Times forever frozen still

Over the years they had tried to reach out...to try and build the bridges which Drusilla had tried to burn on her departure. A young eighteen year old, so unaware of the world outside and the future it held in store for her....Still so young and immature, thinking that the world was her oyster to do good and to live. A young woman who felt he needed nobody in her life...that she could do it all on her own.

In the twelve years since...she'd made that life for herself. The opportunity to voyage into deep space, years spent locked in a tin can with hundreds of crew members who relied on her and her colleagues to be able to keep their sanity. A once in a life time opportunity to study the effects that deep space exploration had on a person both mentally and physically. A cadet fresh out of the academy couldn't have asked for any better.

She'd had her lovers...even now a smile passed her lips as a picture of the old team came up on the PADD. It was inevitable when locked on a ship with so many others but she enjoyed it...she enjoyed the companionship just having a lover allowed. A resting period before love would eventually come along.

Had she known that very first time they had met that this would happen....The first time they had run into eachother in that corridor...his mind fixed on his intended destination of the mess and the food it held her own mind swamped with the headaches that came with a new position and the accompanying paperwork.

In the back of their minds had they know that years later they would stand here...so deeply in love.

The counsellor's hand stilled on the PADD which she still held; a image of herself and Markum in happier times frozen still on the display. Love...was she really in love with him? Had she a right to love him...a woman who was to become a mother to a child never wanted but at the same time she couldn't give up?

Only two years separated when they had last said goodbye but yet here they were again...drawn together by a force which seemed to have fun tearing them apart before throwing them back together. It was almost a game...dangle them infront of each other before waiting for an opportune moment to end it all once again.

Throw their lives into a never ending cascade of unhappiness and regrets before throwing them back together...where was the justice in that?

Was that why love existed? Because no matter the distance all you needed to do was pray and hope and wish for an end...and end in the arms of the one person you can never get away from?

Was life's lesson that no matter what was thrown at you, at the end of it all it would be worth while because the one person you could always rely on would always be there?

As her fingertips moved, they gently caressed the image of the two people, their smiles the only evidence the viewer needed to know that the captured moment was one of happiness. Markum with his arm slung over her shoulders as they smiled for the camera with a teddy bear placed between them both.

Had they even been on the fringes of love then? Or had that been the start of what would bring them both to where they were now?

The next unwritten chapter of both of their lives....

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