Be Careful What You Ask For

Posted on Thu Apr 4th, 2013 @ 6:22pm by Suresh & Commander Sakkath

Mission: Breaking New Ground
Location: The Brig

* * * The Brig * * *

Following Li’s departure, Suresh was wound tight to the point of shattering. She’d been so close and yet he’d been unable to have the one thing he desired most. He knew he was in deep trouble and he accepted that but he couldn’t be so far away that he couldn’t even see her. He didn’t stop to wonder if perhaps Tog’s worry was right and that he’d lost his grip on reality. That stony-hearted little man had no idea what it was like and it had nothing to do with his species. Suresh was convinced it was because he was a lawyer.

Li.

Why had they come home? If they had stayed...but then Admiral Wegener had seen to that very well, hadn’t he? Suresh knew he should have killed the man when he had the chance. But for Li’s sake he’d tried to play nice and it had gotten him....here. No one seemed to understand what he was going through, or care. Even Li seemed so far distant now. But of course, that was because she was back under the influence of that infernal Vulcan who could never appreciate her passions as Suresh did. It was all his fault, of course. Sakkath should have been removed also. That was the mistake that was at the root of all his troubles.

“What the hell do you see in him Li?” he growled.

“Many things,” a woman’s monotone voice replied. Her raven hair curled easily around her shoulders, her eyes ebon pools that seemed to probe into the very depths of this prisoner’s soul. But for upswept eyebrows and pointed ears that just barely pierced the wavy sea of her hair, she was the spitting image of Li Hawke. A pair of forehead ridges might have made her the product of a union between Suresh and the object of his desire, but they were absent. “His passions are not as dead as you might believe.”

Hearing a voice in the cell, Suresh yelped in surprise and whirled around. He took in her appearance and sudden fear surged through him. “Who are you?” That she looked so much like Li was impossible to miss. But the ears? His recall of Li’s warning about visions came slowly. Visions of people from the past of the future, she’d said. He had a sudden suspicion, though this woman could have been the result of either him or Sakkath. “Tell me!”

“My name is T’Lucia,” she answered evenly. “For my grandfather and for the Vulcan blood that moves through my veins. I trust that confirms your suspicions, Suresh.”

Vulcan. Not his. And she was obviously reading him. “Sakkath’s,” he muttered. “Not mine. Why are you here?” He knew she didn’t exist yet but there had to be some reason he was having this particular vision and, despite the strangeness of it, he felt as if he were under her spell, couldn’t look away from her. The urge to cry out for help as Li had warned him to do died away. The passing thought that a Vulcan/Betazoid hybrid could be very dangerous indeed was there and gone in an instant.

“I am here because I know what my mother meant to you. What she did for you,” she added, letting the unspoken thought linger as she lifted her right hand and took a single step towards him.

Suresh stepped back as she moved towards him. “What do you mean, what she did? Your mother, if you really are who you say you are, never gave in, never crossed that line. Which you should know. She was too bound to your father.” His voice dripped with disgust as he referenced Sakkath.

“Come now, Suresh, you know precisely what she did. The effect that she had on you. The ability to touch you, impart a euphoria beyond anything else you have ever known.” She lowered her hand and regarded him contemplatively.

“Of course, her proximity to you was largely a ruse. She daren’t risk revealing her Betazoid heritage as Isha. It was my father that required physical contact to impart his mental talents. An interesting thing, that.

“You see, as their child, I am capable of quite a bit more than either. Would you find it agreeable to feel that again?”

Suresh back up again but the wall of his cell stopped him, leaving him trapped between it and the approaching woman who utterly enthralled him. “What do you want from me?” His voice was now a rough whisper. “Why are you here?”

“I am here, Suresh,” she was very purposefully making use of his name, just as she very purposefully strode forward, “because you have hounded the steps of my mother for far too long. I have seen the fear in her. I have seen the concern in my father. But they are Starfleet officers. Their careers are paramount, and while my mother has taken a life before it has always been in the field. Here, you are beyond their reach and beyond their morality. But you are not beyond mine. It is... only logical.”

“No! Li has no need to fear me. I would do anything for her! If you know her, then surely you know that.” It occurred to Suresh now that perhaps ‘do anything’ wasn’t the best choice of words, given he was now imprisoned partly for jumping out of her closet and kidnapping her. “Besides, if I am left in prison, there is nothing I can do. They have no need of concern.” His fear of this woman was growing as she moved closer. He recognized the steely logic he’d witnessed in Sakkath as well as the determination to do whatever was necessary from Li. The combination was terrifying.

“I suppose I will know when I touch your mind,” T’Lucia concluded. “But in that instant, you will also cease to be, and the threat will be ended regardless. Goodbye, Suresh. May your passing bring peace to my parents.”

She allowed her eyes to drift close, but did not reach for him. “My mind to your mind,” she began. The Vulcan technique was enhanced by our Betazoid heritage, allowing her to reach across the scant centimeters separating the two of them.

“NO!” His scream echoed off the metal walls of the cell and the area surrounding them, amplified many times over. “You cannot kill me! Guards!” In his blind panic, he reached out, taking hold of T’Lucia’s shoulders and in that instant, he felt her in his thoughts, as Li had once done and euphoria swept over him. Was this perhaps the last thing a dying man would feel? “Li,” he whispered.

T'Lucia tensed at the mention of her mother, though only for an instant before her Vulcan composure regained control.

"I don't mean to kill your body, Suresh. You can go on existing, but your thoughts of my mother and father will be no more. Your sense of self will be forever altered. You will never speak that name of her's with such longing ever again."

T'Lucia made to place her hand on Suresh's face and speed the process of being rid of the man who had dogged her family's thoughts when the doors to the brig parted. Suresh's outburst had summoned Security, and in that instant she was gone.

“What’s going on Suresh?” the officer asked.

“She’s here! She is going to kill me! Don’t you see --” And in that instant he realized that the woman was gone. He was alone in his cell.

“See what exactly?” The officer crossed his arms. “No one is here and no one can get in that cell with you. Now if you don’t need anything, I’ll get back to the watch station.”

Suresh reached up to touch his face where her hand had been, then closed his eyes. He wasn’t imagining it, the high that Li had been able to produce in him was very much there. He hadn’t imagined but then...she was gone. Li’s daughter.

“No, nothing. Thanks. It was a nightmare is all.”

The officer nodded and departed, leaving Suresh alone once more. Suddenly he knew that nowhere he could go would be far enough. He sank down to the bunk, then shifted over to his side and curled into a tight ball and closed his eyes.

*******************
Suresh
Nowhere to Run To Baby

T'Lucia
An image of what could have been...