Another Land

Posted on 20 Jun 2013 @ 2:49am by
Edited on on 25 Jun 2013 @ 2:32pm

6,799 words; about a 34 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Maenad Panne's quarters
Timeline: MD11 2300

ON:

Liyar was hunched over the low-table beside his bed, a few PADDs spread out over the top. A single candle was lit beside them, casting an illuminated shadow from the PADDs, which reflected his gaunt features back at him. He drew a hand down his jawline and scowled. Things weren't where he wanted them to be, just because he wanted them to be there. A small current in the back of his mind pulsed gently, maybe it was Kestra's voice. Maybe it was a voice all his own. Don't despair. Not yet. But he did. He did despair. Curled over his table like an infant trying to protect himself, in the lonely light of his quarters, the only sanctuary he could create on such short notice. Empty lexorin hypos littered the ground around him, and the tho'san bracelets he'd eschewed so vehemently- well, he'd been a fool. They rested against his wrists like weights.

Oh, it was a cheap sanctuary. He'd been holed up in here for days. Ever since he'd lost control in Maenad's quarters, since he saw the flash of fear and horror in her eyes, zapping through her body. As though she truly didn't know what to expect from him. How could she trust him? How could he trust himself? Neo's words, threatening to take him to a meditation cell, comparing him to his father, there were so many voices in his mind and he couldn't shut them out. He could hardly remember what had happened. Pacing through Maenad's quarters, trying to get the words out, to trust her, but the rage and incensed hatred for Neo and his presumptions, for Naskisem and her failure to leave him alone, for everyone who thought they could control and undermine him. Even now they loomed swirling in the darkness just beyond the door of his room, as if he could create a physical distance.

The hole in his mind where his family used to live was bubbling up blood and pus and infection, it was seeping through, festering and acidic, yellowsludge in each of his nerves. He could hardly think. He thought if he could cry, he would have. Everything in his life was slowly unraveling, heavy knitted cords falling to his feet. He'd run so far and so fast from his grief and the memories and the pain, but they were catching up to him, ensnaring him in their devil's trap, wrapping thorny vines around him and sucking him deeper into oblivion. He had been a fool to think he could outrun it.

He latched onto Maenad like a lifeline. She was the only sure thing in the dark, the only positive, meaningful thing he had. And he had almost hurt her. He had promised himself he would not make her a substitute, he had promised her. And he didn't want that, not for her. He was Vulcan, programmed and wired to move quickly. A seven year gap didn't leave room for sentimentality, but even on the shuttle, he'd thought- shouldn't there have been more time? But she was there, and it was more than physical urge or grief. She deserved better than that. And she deserved better than him, insane and outraged, ill and incompetent. He wanted to give her more than that. He lifted his head and clawed his fingers in his hair, slowly drawing himself up into a sitting position, legs pulled up to his chest. His hair without a decent cut in months now curled almost to his shoulders, in thick, matted waves. His eyes had bags under them and they were bloodshot.

The mail packets had come in a few days ago. Severen's illness was getting bad enough that his ascension was looking imminent. Those, he'd ignored. Within the next year. But he couldn't do that, either. He had stayed holed up in his room since he'd thrown a glass across the room of Maenad's quarters with such quick speed that it had shattered and burst into a thousand twinkling pieces of glass before Maenad could blink. And she could only stand there, she had spoken but he couldn't recall her words- until wide-eyed, he'd backed out, unable to offer even the slightest apology, unable to speak or breathe after realizing how far gone he truly was. Neo had been right. How could he possibly expect to provide Maenad with stability.

He lifted up one of the PADDs. Eikhan monastery. Its green foliage contrasted with the sleek metal compound, the orange sands, the bright sun. It looked peaceful, and it advertised a holistic-based treatment. Sekhet had went there, and recommended the program to him. He pressed his fingertips into his skull. By the Threads, there were so many voices, he couldn't stop them anymore. He heard them now. Whispering and introducing dreams and thoughts and fantasy and images into his head, snapshot frames, freeze shots, pan in, zoom, left, right, up, down, mirror, shatter. His head wasn't his home.

The decision, then, had slowly started to cement in his mind. He couldn't stay here. Not like this. He couldn't keep hurting these people. He couldn't scare Maenad. He clenched his fists, enraged at himself for doing such a thing. Scaring her, when his only goal had ever and always been to protect her. The PADD in his hand cracked like oak breaking. Liyar threw it across the room and it had been thrown with such force that it stuck right into the wall. Anger bred anger bred anger. He hated himself. He hated this violence. What other solution did he have? What other course could he take? Every time he thought about the situation, he looked around his room. Broken tables, overturned lamps, dents in the walls, his fingers and hands were broken and bloody, taped together, nail-marks dug into his palms. You cast your demons out.

He stood then, sending the contents of his table to the floor, and he stumbled over them and out of his room, wincing and groaning in pain at the onslaught of minds that greeted him on his way. He pressed the comm and his voice barely sounded like him when it burst from his throat. "Neo..."

In his quarters by himself, Neo heard the strange, desperate sound of Liyar's voice coming through his computer console and he leaned over to answer it. "Neo here. Liyar, is that you?"

Liyar hesitated for a fraction of a second, rubbing his hands over his eyes, he shook his head bleakly. "I cannot stay here, can I?" he slumped into his chair, every ounce defeated.

"I think you know the answer to that, Brother." For once, Neo's voice wasn't filled with i-told-you-so. Instead there was a strange kind of sadness to it, detectable only through years of knowing.

"I had never meant-"

"I know, Liyar." Liyar could hear the shuffling of PADDs and a computer terminal beeping until, "I've arranged a transport for you. Tomorrow morning. If you're willing. To that place we discussed. Eikhan. We both know, yeah?"

"That I cannot stay," Liyar said, a cord of dejection through time and space.

"Yeah," Neo sighed. "You know, despite all this, I think you're doing the right thing. By her. For you."

"What am I going to tell her?" Liyar asked.

"The girl?"

"Maenad. Her name is Maenad."

"Tell her..." Neo shrugged across the distance, long-suffering, "you're sorting yourself out. And you'll see where you're going from there." Neo waited a few more moments and then disconnected the comm.

Was that Neo's way of accepting what he'd long suspected? Liyar couldn't know. Neo had never ever been a proponent of Terran/Vulcan relationships. Maybe, Liyar thought, Neo just didn't think that when he was better, he would want Maenad. His logic returning would somehow stamp that out. Perhaps, Neo was just placating him. Either way. Sorting himself out wasn't what he would say. No. The words rose from the back of his throat until they were fact. He would tell her the simple truth. He would be back. For her. When he could stand to be a better man, a better person. He would be back. If she even wanted him. He had no idea. If she knew what was good for her, he thought, she would never speak to him again. It was what he deserved.

Liyar rose to his feet and slowly made his way through his quarters, to his couch, and sat down across from the table, head in his hands. He sat there for what felt like hours before he picked up the abandoned commbadge at the table and tapped it. "Maenad?" his voice rang through her comm. "This-" his voice barely sounded like him, weakened and shriveled, and he hated himself for it, but he made himself speak, "-this is Liyar. I-" he halted, stared around and then continued, "-would you- come down to my quarters?" He didn't want her to see him like this, or his quarters, but he didn't think he had the strength to move. "I believe, there are some things that we must- discuss." Weakened from too much telepathic flux, Liyar brought his legs up on the couch and laid down on his side, letting the commbadge drop to the floor, slipping from his fingers. "Please."

Maenad hadn't heard from Liyar in more than twenty-four hours - the longest she had gone without seeing him since they had met. She had become visibly depressed, believing that, inexplicably, she had lost the most important person in her life. She was expecting him to come back to her to apologise or to somehow explain himself, but when he hadn't, she had given up hope. Perched over her piano beside a single flickering candle, she was playing Avro Part's Spiegel im Spiegel to the computer's violin accompaniment. Three quarters of an empty bottle of wine and a glass stood on the opposite side of the piano beside a filled ashtray with a cigarette that was burning itself out. Her commbadge stood by itself where the sheet music would go if she'd needed it, and when Liyar's message came, she stopped playing, but left her fingers in place on the keys.

Maenad stared for a moment at the piano in front of her, after he had closed the comm. The sound of his voice, even its desperation, pleased her, though she refused to smile. In fact, her expression was dire concern. Maenad got up from her bench and told the computer to stop playing as she went into her bedroom to dress. She threw on her uniform's tunic and the skirt she had lazily tossed aside after her shift had ended. She returned to her piano, inhaled the cigarette and downed the rest of the wine in her glass. She blew out the candle and hurried down the hall to Liyar's quarters. She didn't sound the chime, choosing instead to see herself in.

The sight of his quarters almost made her storm out, but she remained, seeing him sprawled on his couch. She maneuvered her way over his smashed belongings without a word, and sat herself by his feet. She slouched, and she held her hands together over the space between her knees. She looked out over the smashed items and broken things on his walls, but made no movements other than with her eyes. She did not turn to look at him.

Liyar's eyes were glassy, overmedicated, but the voices inside his mind still whirled and made him too dizzy to think about sitting up. This was it, he thought. This was his lowest point. And Maenad saw it all. It was humiliating, but he didn't have the strength to be humiliated. He didn't even know how he had the strength to continue living, but that was macabre and he wasn't trying to gain pity. Of course, it was pretty hard not to pity him, given his pathetic sprawl over the couch and the littered hypospray canisters and the abandoned PADDs and the blood and the obvious lack of showering or hygiene. It was clear he hadn't even been to his shift. She must have sat there for about ten minutes while he tried to gather his thoughts. He very slowly and carefully reached for her, transmitting a sense of deep, incomprehensible sorrow. Sorrow for frightening her, sorrow for hurting her, sorrow for leaving- but this was tinged with the same fear he'd held. He hadn't left her, not that way. He'd well and truly been afraid of himself. He had wanted to protect her and keep her safe, and he strove for that, and he had failed. Maybe she did not even trust him anymore, which he acknowledged would be appropriate. But the sorrow never left. Sorrow for her, for how his actions had affected her. It was rare for a Vulcan, but it was there. "That is what the word sorry means in my language. I do not know how else to say it." Liyar's voice was small and cracked, it hardly sounded like it belonged to him, and it was accent roughened, perhaps he was too tired to bother masking it and being clear.

The touch had clarified his regret, but Maenad remained statuesque. It was surreal how motionless she was, how much disappointment radiated from her body - all by doing absolutely nothing. Finally, after a long time, Maenad turned to look at him. Her hands remained clasped in the air over her knees. "I don't know what's gotten into you, Liyar," she said quietly. "I don't know what happened yesterday." She looked at the debris around his room. "This," she gestured with her hands, "is not the Liyar that I know. This is not the Liyar that I love. Was it something I said? I thought we were..." she trailed off, shaking her head. "I honestly don't know what I thought. But you are special to me, and I never meant to cause you harm." She put her hand on his foot and gave it a little squeeze. "I'm sorry," she told him. "I never should have kissed you in the holodeck. You would not have fallen for me, otherwise, and you would not be in this position now." Slowly, she put her hands back in her lap. "I should have gotten someone else to lead the away mission. Vulcans do not pursue humans, humans pursue Vulcans. I didn't think, Liyar, and now... well..." she once again made reference to the battered quarters around them. "Now look what's happened."

He frowned and shook his head. "I lost control. I did the one thing I swore I would not do. There is no," he gestured with one hand over the couch, "excuse. I felt provoked. Threatened. I am not a well person," he said, trying for what it was worth to have that mean something to her. "I do not even know if I am a good person. I try to be, I want to be, but that does not make it so." He was being honest, even if it physically pained him. "Veren is, part of it, maybe. My mind is broken, maybe. I do not know if you know the Liyar that you think you love. That is what Neo tried to tell me. That I am lying to you, that I am hiding my true nature from you. Vulcans, we claim to be peaceful, we claim to be serene, but there is something savage in us. It lives under the surface. I have never been good at containing it." He looked as sorrowful as he felt. "And it was not your fault. Vulcans are not prone to hesitation." It was almost wry, a shadow of his former self. "I wanted you. In my mind, it would have happened. But I knew that when you learned this truth about me, that I could not hide indefinitely, that you would leave. I am a Vulcan, Maenad. I am selfish. I wanted to spend what little time I could with you. Because I feel for you. Because my entire life is an empty, dark, hole and you have been the only bright thing. I do not want you to think I am, looking for pity, or- I know there is no excuse." He rubbed his eyes and met hers for the first time. "Maenad, what if I had harmed you? I promised myself, I promised that it would not happen," he sounded childlike and helpless. "I cannot account for what will happen. I do not even remember losing my temper. I am- ill," he finally said, finally believing what had been drilled into his head by Neo and Naskisem since they'd arrived, and he sounded broken for it.

Maenad turned away from him and stared at the broken table for a moment. She did not find Liyar to be ill. Not once did she ever think he was. He had told her many times that he was unlike other Vulcans, that he lacked the emotional controls that most of them had, that he could not control his telepathic abilities, that he had been skeptical of Surak's teachings and its rigidity. She did not know what Neo or Naskisem had said to him. She did not know why, she did not know why they cared. Because he wanted to be with her did not make him insane. That he now believed them made her more upset than before; they had broken him. Liyar had told her once that he never thought he was a bad Vulcan. He had always valued his own choices, and he had always lived by them. He was now recanting that; he was now convinced that he was not who his brother and some jealous Vulcan woman said he was, when neither of them really knew who he was at all. It had been four decades since Neo had last spent time with him. Naskisem had only known Liyar by name before she came to the Galileo. What did they know, how could they know. Liyar's madness now was not the result of his instability, she thought, but the result of discrimination and ignorance. He was torn between who he, in his heart, knew he was, and the person his society wanted him to be. The rage was building in Maenad's chest, and she pressed her lips together, her nostrils began to flare as she took deeper breaths. It wasn't right for them. It wasn't fair to Liyar. She wanted to scream, she wanted to find Neo, wherever he was, and strangle him. She could, too, she thought. She could hit him. And she could hit Naskisem too. It was rare that Maenad ever resorted to such animal instincts, but Liyar was all that she had right now, and they had convinced him that he had to be mad to want her. She had never been more insulted.

"Liyar," she said forcefully, meeting his eyes, "you are not ill. You are just different." She looked down at him and she saw someone alien. Someone torn apart and broken down by lies and false pretenses. What had they done? How did they do this to him? "Do you hear me? You are perfectly fine the way you are, and I love you for it."

"No," Liyar said, trying to pull himself up into a sitting position. His muscles pulled and stretched with the effort from the previous day's immobility. He hesitantly reached out to touch her as if he were afraid he might break her. But his hand settled over the bones of her shoulder and the world didn't end. He tried to transmit calm, peace, but his own was so tenuous, it was just a hazy fog. Hearing her say those words while his own volatile emotions raged beneath the surface only served to increase his panic. She couldn't love him, she didn't even know him. Beyond all of the confidence and ego, though, was a person who truly did not like himself. And he hated that it was showing, he did not want to be that way, it was pathetic. "I am mentally ill. That is the truth. I have been on antipsychotic medication since I was in my early twenties. I have been in and out of hospitals my entire life. For the most part, I managed it," he conceded with a shrug. "I had- there was stability. My father is mentally ill, and so is my uncle. Do you know what happened to his wife? He killed her. He snapped her neck." His hand twisted abruptly as if he'd memorized the movement himself. "He loved T'Rii, whatever it is in our world that passes for love. I am sure that he possessed it for her, but it was not about hate, Maenad. It was about judgment. I do not think I am even capable of love. Whatever it is that I feel, it is not what you know as love. I always thought I was different. I would not end up like Sharivok. I would not repeat that cycle. He allowed himself to operate under the delusion that he was just different, that he could be emotional, that he was supposed to be, that it was right. He lost himself. And he destroyed his family. I cannot guarantee your safety, Maenad, do you understand?" His eyebrows drew together, his face shifting quickly before he tried to reign it in. "If I hurt you-" he broke off and regulated his breathing. "I need to be able to make that guarantee. I need to be certain of it." He looked at her, then, and even though she wasn't telepathic, the drop in his words, his posture, the events leading up to now, could give her some inclination as to what he was planning.

Maenad listened, but she did not like what she heard. She didn't believe him. She couldn't. But Liyar was no liar. He had always told her the truth. The hospitals; she remembered going with him on Vega. She did not ask for too many details then, and he was reluctant to give them. She felt her eyes stinging with tears. It couldn't be true. It just couldn't be. Maenad shook her head in disbelief, and she began to cry. Embarrassed, she hid her face in her palms, her arms propped on her knees. She had always felt safe with Liyar. He had promised he would never hurt her, and he never had. On the mountaintop by the cliff, he held her. On the beach, she remembered how he had protected her from strangers. When the intruders came on the ship, his first and only concern was her. He always made her eat, even when she wasn't hungry, and it was his idea to give her self-defence training. The times he had come over to her quarters and she'd fallen asleep, she always awoke under a blanket or in her bed. On all the away missions, Liyar had stayed by her side. He would never hurt her. She knew it. They both did. Neo had poisoned his mind, had made him believe himself to be a monster. "No, Liyar," was all she could sob. None of it made any sense. "I don't understand," she complained.

Liyar shifted forward and tilted her head up. His own eyes were downcast, but his face was still. He wiped away her tears and his head dropped a bit. "I hurt my brother. I almost hurt Zaren. I frightened you. I lost my temper. I cannot even put two thoughts together, Maenad, without hundreds of voices clogging the surface of my mind. I am not in control of myself," he said softly. "I have seen what happens to Vulcans who have Veren, who are arrogant enough to believe that they are capable of withstanding it by themselves. I want to be here," Liyar said, swallowing roughly. "I want to be with you. That is not my problem, Maenad. I do not care what my brother thinks about it. But I cannot pretend like I am in control of myself. You have said it before, if I do that again, you are gone, as it should be. I do not want to scare you. I do not want to end up like my uncle. I cannot remember myself day to day. I live in a haze, and I cannot account for my own actions. If I ever did anything to hurt you, it would end me. I need to be able to trust myself around you," he finished quietly.

Maenad was shaking her head again. The sobbing had calmed, but she was still crying. "What are you saying, Liyar?" she sniffled, "That you're not going to talk to me anymore?"

Liyar shook his head. "No. That will never happen. Unless you desire it. But I cannot get the help that I need here on the Galileo." He held her eyes, ducking his head as he spoke. "My brother has already made it very clear to me that he will find some way to force me back home. The truth is, Maenad, he is right. I need to go home. For a little while. I need to get better, so that I can be the person that you deserve to have in your life. If I keep running from this, it will catch up, and it will be merciless."

Maenad collapsed her head again, hiding herself in the hands supported by her knees. What would she do? How could she function? Liyar was the only person that gave her calm. She liked Kohl, too, and Lilou, but they weren't Liyar. They were friends; Liyar was so much more than that. "No," she whined, wiping at her eyes. It was a nightmare come true. "No, I don't want you to go," she said. "Liyar, you don't have to go anywhere. Just stay here with me. I can help you; whatever you need."

He leaned forward until his head was nearly between his knees, and he grasped his jaw in his bloodied fingers. "I want to," he breathed barely above a whisper. "I can feel it here." He tapped his side. "I want to stay. It would make the pain go away. For now," he nodded. "But then I would lose myself. Maybe I would not ever hurt you. But maybe I would not even know it was you. It happened once. Only my own deranged insanity prevented me from doing Raifi Zaren serious harm. I cannot take that chance. I wish that you could understand. I could not forgive myself if I did. I would never recover. It takes only a moment," he snapped his fingers. "Only a moment, a second of anger, of rage, of feeling, a second of movement, and everything could end. And I would never, ever recover. Not barring what I would do to you, what I could do."

She couldn't stop herself. It was all coming to an end. Just as quickly as it had started, it was over. "Liyar, please," she begged him. "I don't want you to leave. I need you here. You're all I've got. You're the first person I think about when I wake up and the last before I go to sleep. I always look forward to seeing you. I miss you when we're apart. You help me cope with stress, and you make me laugh when I need to. Without you here, I won't... I won't have joy in my life." She wiped her eyes again. "Please, Liyar, if you've ever meant not to harm me, don't leave me here. Please. Don't go. We can get through this together." Maenad's eyes were red and dripping. Her green irises looked more grey than coloured, and she was beginning to look raccoonish.

He reached forward and placed his hand over her arm, allowing his mind and the feelings she inspired in him to rise to the surface and snap along like electricity. It was white and ethereal and strange, glowing and warmth, and incomprehensibly large, a qualia undefined by size, it merely existed like a force in nature. "I have no plans to give that up, Maenad. I have nothing in my life right now except for that. You. But it is not your responsibility to handle me. I must handle myself. For the first time in months I feel like I want to live, but I do not know how. I do not even know how to want to live. I do not have the skills. I cannot learn to control my abilities here, Maenad. I cannot function. I cannot get treatment here. I cannot risk destroying this," he squeezed her wrist and the strangewhite feelings pulsed again, "because I foolishly believed I could handle it- Maenad- I have proven that I cannot. You once called me too stubborn to ask for help. But I cannot do that now. I have to put my feelings and pride aside. I know the man at the program. He says that he can help me, and I believe he can. He helped my brother once. To control his telepathic abilities, to curb his violence. I need to check this, Maenad. I know that it is the right choice. If I do not get help-" he rubbed his hands over his knees. "I have seen it happen. I have seen it. I have no plans to cease being your friend, Maenad. I will have mail privileges. I will be able to communicate, and I will be back. Me. As person I know. A person I can trust."

At least Maenad had stopped streaming tears down her cheeks, and she wiped her eyes on her wrists. She was no calmer. There was no coming back, she thought. Liyar would be replaced. He would go to another assignment. He had no say. Surely he knew that. She laughed, but it was far from pleasant. "Liyar," she said very slowly, not looking at him. She stared out across the room. She didn't need to tell him how upset she was with him, with Neo, with Naskisem - with everything. "If you leave, I will be..." her voice went weak again, but she held herself together. "We will not be together again. This is my new life; aboard this ship. We will be apart," she sniffed, and looked at him. "I don't want to lose you."

"That will never happen," Liyar told her, entirely certain. "You forget that I do not work for Starfleet. My assignment aboard the Galileo was entirely voluntary. I am taking a medical leave from the V'Shar. They have guaranteed a suspension of post. I would not leave if I were not absolutely sure of finding you again. That is, after all, why I must do this." Over the course of her visit, he had pulled himself together enough to sound reasoned and assured, he could theoretically be in the same branch of mentality as the Liyar she recognized, and even though he felt her sadness multiplied exponentially, he knew that this was what he needed to do. He could not take the chance. Not with his telepathic abilities, not with Veren. "Look at me, please. I will find you again. You know that I do not tell lies. I promise you that."

Maenad still couldn't smile at him. She just couldn't. "How long?" she asked.

"The program is for six months," Liyar answered. He knew he had to do whatever it took to be able to return to her. He looked around his quarters and it just reminded him again why he needed to. He didn't want to. He'd never wanted to do treatment, and he didn't want to leave, not now, but he realized he'd never had a real reason to go until now. A real goal to look toward. His abilities had always been relatively sane, until they stopped, and he was left like this, immobile and almost catatonic. He was lucky he didn't have Neo or Raifi Zaren's blood on his hands. His eyes went to her again. He knew she didn't want him to go, but that was a short term benefit. What about long term? What if he lost control again? She herself had made it clear what would happen and he knew he could not make the promise of stability, he just knew. For her, he thought, he would do anything to protect her. She had become that important to him, and now, that included protection from himself.

Six months. Six months. Maenad closed her eyes again and continued to shake her head. She wiped her eyes again. Still, she did not fully understand, and Maenad still believed that Neo and Naskisem had a hand in making him hate himself. It wasn't right. She sniffed again, and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Treatment for Vulcans meant an almost total erasure of any personality. If Liyar left to be treated he would come back a completely different person. She would only recognise his body; his mind would be somebody else. "I don't want to lose you, Liyar." She tapped her temple with two fingers. "If you leave, you will come back like the rest of them. You'll be different." He would see logic; he would find a cold Vulcan to replace her. He would probably stay on Vulcan. Perhaps he would rejoin the V'Shar, and stay with them this time. It made no sense to be with an emotional human, especially one like her. She would only cause him instability and irritation. It would be a constant struggle for the new Liyar. And casual sex, too. Of course the thought crossed her mind, and she felt no shame for it. She would need him regularly, but, as he said, that was not the Vulcan way. His intimacy thus far, then, had all been illness. Vulcans never kissed or hugged, she knew. She had lived a year on Vulcan, and spent probably another in travel alone. It had all been a lie, she began to realise, and, again, she began to sulk.

Liyar's lips turned down sympathetically, and he shook his head, this time reaching out to lift her face so that she would look at him. He shifted toward her and wrapped one of his arms around her back loosely. "That is never going to happen. That is the reason why I want to do this now. Because now, it is my choice. Voluntary treatment means that I can voluntarily choose to leave. You must trust me," he said quietly above her ear, his voice infused with a sense of sincerity that normally didn't show. "If these people attempted to take you from my mind, I would not permit it. That is why I am going. So that I can learn what I need to know to be with you." He moved away for a minute to look at her again. "And you are quite wrong. Vulcans do indeed engage in most of those practices. But we do not do so unless we hold a very deep attachment to the individual in question. That type of attachment is not something easily erased, Maenad." He leaned back against the couch and drew her closer to him. "I would beg of you to trust me if I thought that it would help. I do not ever want to cause you pain. But I know that if I ignore this, that it will inevitably happen, and it will happen in a way that I could not repair. I will lose control again. I cannot allow that, Maenad. Not with you."

"What if they don't reassign you to the Galileo?" she asked. "Then what will you do?"

"I am not resigning," Liyar said. "Medical leave for a six month period would not warrant my position being given to another. But if that does happen, then I will find my way here in another capacity. I will find you. Of that you can be assured."

She rested her head now against his shoulder, using the bone to wipe the corner of her eye. Maenad felt calmer now, but she was still upset. She was still angry, confused, and furious with his brother. A stress headache was beginning to form at the front of her skull. Maybe Kohl had something for that, and, she thought, at least she still had him to talk to. As soon as Liyar left, she would tell Neo just how she felt about him. She didn't care what impressions she left on him, only that he knew. "I'm going to miss you," she said softly, hoping that this was just a bad dream that would disappear any second now.

Liyar pressed two of his fingers gently against her temple, using a mild energy to soothe away the ache he could feel there. "I will miss you, Maenad," he didn't have any trouble admitting that. "I will ensure to communicate with you as often as I am permitted."

Maenad just sat there with him, staring down at her knees. Her headache was gone, though nothing anyone could say her do would make her feel any better. She didn't know what she was going to do with herself anymore. She had nothing to look forward to. Their mission gave her no satisfaction. She felt cast aside, alone, and defeated. She sniffed once and adjusted her head on his shoulder, trying to get more comfortable. Why did these things always happen to her? Why couldn't she just be normal? All of her childhood friends were happy by this stage in life, and she had always thought she was smarter and better off than them, but was she? How many marriages had she been to? She didn't want to think about it. She just sat there, not moving, not speaking, and hardly breathing.

"My shuttle arrives tomorrow morning," Liyar said quietly, running his hand through her hair.

Her heart sunk even more than it already had. She blinked once, very slowly, as she verified to herself what he had said. She had cried enough for now, she thought. There was nothing she could do or say to change his mind, so she wasn't even going to try. It would take a long time for her to get past this, and she had no one to help her through it. She had weathered things before, but nothing like this. Out here, she was alone and without purpose. Teaching distracted her from realities; she loved teaching. Here, where she was serving evil corporate greed, her work was completely unfulfilling. Immersing herself in work here just made her feel even worse.

"Maenad, I will be back," he said into her hair. "You are not alone. Not anymore. I know it feels that way now, but six months is not forever. I am not going to abandon you. I know that you can hear me," he urged. "I am not speaking empty words. I- need to do this. For my own good, and for the good of those around me. I know that somewhere, you can understand this. That I am not choosing to just leave for no reason. But I would encourage you not to stay here to await my return, not if you cannot reconcile this mission. I will return to you wherever you may be."

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer, SSC
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

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