Bridge Across Forever
Terri was amazing in this one. Just read. You'll know what I mean.--Maer
“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.”—Bridge Across Forever
The mess hall was nearly deserted. Nika's eyes skimmed over the large room full of tables noting several people catching a morning snack but it was the table holding the redhead and the brunette that caught her roving gaze. Rina. Nika swallowed, struggling not to turn tail and run. Rina deserved better than that, but Nika was so overwhelmed by her own grief that she felt entirely incapable of helping Rina or Kiera with theirs. And Kiera had already left with her father. They'd shared a desperate hug of farewell but no words -- neither of them had been able to speak.
Too late now. Nika squared her shoulders as Shyla's dark eyes pinned her from the table where she was apparently encouraging Rina to eat something. It's what Nika should have been doing. And it was time to don the mantle once more and get her ass back on the job. She and Rina were all that was left. Beggar'd already told her his intentions.
Making her way through the line, picking up some coffee and a cinnamon roll she wouldn't eat but whose presence would at least keep Shyla from bitching at her, Nika walked toward the table where the two women sat. Shyla moved to stand as she arrived and Nika found herself feeling Shyla's equal for the first time. "Shyla," she greeted softly.
The redhead smiled just a little, acknowledgement and concern mixed in her expression. "Nika," she replied. "I'm gonna leave you two to talk. Make her eat." The instruction was given with a knowing look at Rina -- Shyla has her number. If Rina isn't going to eat, Shyla will make her. She's the captain, she knows all. "If you need me, I'm just a comm call away." She hugged Nika briefly, hard, then made good her escape with a squeeze of Rina's shoulder.
---
Joshua's Death +3 days
The docs released me from medbay once they were assured I wouldn't kill myself and could be left to my own recognizance. I'd been assigned guest quarters for the duration. Exeter had been found but was still en route and truth to tell, had she been docked to Decatur I would not have been able to go aboard her. Our girl was too full of Joshua. Every inch of her would resonate with him. He was simply too exuberant to leave no mark. So I thanked the necessary parties for the accommodations and shut myself in. As quarters went, they were smaller than what I'd become accustomed to, but larger than a coffin. That suited me fine. Smaller was better. It wouldn't remind me of the space I'd need to fit Joshua in there with me.
Not that he wasn't present. He was. His dying words were damned prophetic: I'm always with you. Don't worry about that. Just ... take care of yourself. You know, I'll be there. To keep you out of trouble. My God, cuz you have this tendency ... You made my life brighter. For being in it. Okay?
The flip side of the coin meant my life was darker because he was no longer in it. Were it not for our child growing within me, I might have simply let the despair take me. A few days without food or water and I would be done. The pain would be gone. Mission accomplished.
But suicide was never my way.
No. Suicide is too quick. Too easy. Too weak. You're Russian. You believe in drinking down your suffering to the last bitter drop. That whole what-doesn't-kill-you shit. Stupid bitch.
So I got my sleep, only to suffer nightmares and longing. I ate and bathed following a regular schedule, which I failed to do more often than not. I explored Decatur to stave off despair, but found no joy or interest in the ship surrounding me. In short, I went through the motions and attempted some semblance of normal. But it was all on the outside. Inside I was a gaping hole that not even our baby could fill, though that would happen in due course. I was only two and half months along but I knew exactly when I conceived: Joshua's birthday, on the ziplines suspended between Heaven and Earth. Fitting, actually, for any child he and I would create.
In my darker moments, when the nightmares refused to let me sleep and my grief refused to ebb, I wondered if Joshua knew I carried his child when he promised he'd always be with me. Did he sense the life growing inside me before his Reader abilities died? If so, why didn't he tell me? If he didn't know, it made the fact that he would never know agonizing to bear. Would he have dissuaded Arden from setting loose the cure in the atmo system if he knew he'd die with his child on the way? Or would it only have hardened his resolve to give his baby a fighting chance against the plague?
Thus my thoughts ran, circular and merciless, when the door chimed and Shyla announced I needed to eat. I rose from my bunk without a fight, knowing she was right. I was dutifully pushing a meal around on my plate when Nika joined us. I looked up when I felt Shyla shift beside me and I thought Nika looked little better than I did.
Make her eat, Shyla said, meaning me. I swept Nika with a critical eye. That goes for you too, I thought, meaning Nika.
"Coffee's not bad here," I said. "Not that I can convince anyone to let me have any." I made a show of looking right and left. "Help a girl out, Cap'n?"
Somehow, despite my own private hell, I managed to find it in me to crack a joke. Joshua would approve, whispered my heart, even as it tore anew.
---
Nika held Shyla's hug and whispered to her in that brief moment, "Thank you." For taking care of Rina. For coming. For being family. It seemed few words to cover so many reasons to be thankful but they were all the more heartfelt for being so few.
Sliding into a seat across from Rina, Nika quirked a brow. "No coffee?" she asked, puzzled. She slid her own cup across to Rina. "Sure, you can have mine. I know what you're like without coffee –it ain't pretty." She, too, struggled but made the attempt. Leaning her elbows on the table and pretty much ignoring the rest of her tray, Nika looked intently into Rina's face. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "There is no excuse for leaving you alone like I have." It was all she could offer.
---
"Don't be," I said, no louder than she. "I wouldn't have been good company." I took up the coffee and had the brew to my lips before I realized she didn't know. Had she, I doubted she would have handed it over. Should I tell her? Would it add to her pain? Or would it lessen it? God help me, I was too afraid to tell her outright. I took a grateful sip and resolutely slid the mug back to her, deciding to take an oblique approach. "Thank you. The docs wouldn't say the same, but they don't have to know."
---
She was too weary to really catch the clue bat the first time around, but that one is rather painfully obvious. "Why?" Nika asks, concern now crossing her face. "Are you on a medication they don't want you to have coffee with or something?" She retrieves her mug and takes a swallow, but her eyes never leave Rina's face. Though well hidden, there is a kind of panic in her gaze.
---
"Or something," I said, catching that look of concern that zipped across her face. "You know how I am after nine hours without coffee. Let's see how I am after nine months."
---
In her exhaustion it took Nika long moments to get past the terror that locked her throat and hazed her mind to comprehend what was being said. And then she sucked in a breath, her deep blue eyes going wide. "Oh.... Oh, Rina... really?" The wonder, the hope in her face could not be hidden. "Really?" she asked again.
---
Lessens, I judged, relieved that the news had not dealt her any damage. Aloud I merely said, "Really."
My voice was light, my tone unworried. All a lie. I was scared to death. For my baby. For my sanity. Of the impossibly uncertain future in front of me. And wrapping it all was the bone-deep sorrow that Joshua would never see his baby born, would never hold his child in his arms, would never see the first smile, hear the first word, or receive that first hug. The hope in Nika's eyes was wonderful to see and made me glad for her sake ... but it was excruciating to know that Joshua would never share it.
---
She'd thought she was done crying. Thought she had no more tears in her. She was wrong. A flood of tears hazed Nika's field of view, and she brought her hand up to cover her mouth. It took her a long moment to get it under control as she watched Rina, and then she laughed through those tears. "How very like his Awesomeness, to leave something behind just to make sure we couldn't go hide in a gorram hole," she finally said, shaking her head. "Hun Dan."
---
I watched Nika watching me and when she made her comment about Joshua, it stirred the black ocean inside me and set off fresh waves of grief. But what could I do? I could no more demand everyone to forget Joshua merely to save me the pain of the reminder than I could forget him. The consequences of my crying jag on Amenoukihashi's bridge still lingered and I knew any laugh I attempted would sound hideous ... and not a little mad. So I shut my lips on it and gave her a tight smile instead.
"Apparently his awesomeness knows no bounds," I said in the quiet that followed. And he's free of them now.
---
Nika reached across to put her hand on Rina's arm. "You have to let yourself smile, Rina," she said gently. "I know you're all Russian and hurting and that usually means dark and tragic.... but take it from me. Even in grief, you are allowed to remember the joy. He'd rather that you did... and you know it." She squeezed carefully and took a deep breath. "I want to take him home. To bury him. To bury both of them near my parents."
---
Oh, God .... It was too close to the thoughts that plagued me as I'd lain in the dark desperately wishing for the oblivion of sleep. Keeping myself under tight control, too proud to let the depth of what I felt show, I said quietly through my teeth, "Please, not here. Walk with me."
And I pushed up from the table before waiting for her reply. If I was going to lose it, I wanted to do it behind closed doors where no one could see. The mess hall wasn't filled with people but having served on a Naval vessel, I knew it only sufficed a single witness to start the gossip going. I set off for my quarters and trusted Nika would follow.
---
Standing, Nika followed her out into the hall and down the corridor to the quarters Rina had been assigned. They weren't far from Nika's own. She was silent for most of the walk, lending simply her presence to her friend. Her steps faltered at one intersection when her gaze met that of Brian Connelly coming the other way, perhaps heading for the mess hall they'd just left. Seeing him brought the guilt roaring to life in her gut again -- they'd come out here to find a cure. This man's illness had been what had initially driven her willingness to fly off the ecliptic into the uncharted Black. And that choice had killed two men, her lover and her brother. She turned pale and felt the air whoosh out of her in the instant she laid eyes on him, and she saw him register the reaction before she could hide it. Her deep blue eyes filled with tears and she muttered something incoherent that might have been 'excuse us!', rushing Rina right on past the man.
---
I felt Nika's sudden grip on my arm but only distantly. I found my door more by instinct than by sight and I got it open and got us in there. I snapped on the lights and saw my quarters with the curious sensation of never having seen it before.
A single narrow bunk lined one wall, its blankets rumpled and its sheets stale with the sweat of too many nightmares. The walls and desk were bare of any personal touches. The locker door stood ajar, emphasizing the air of lonely squalor. It was a stark contrast to the quarters I'd shared with Joshua aboard Exeter, with the bright rug and comforter I'd picked with care for their color and mood, the lived-in touches that exuded contentment and domesticity that only a couple could produce.
It was a cell, an outward reflection of my inner landscape, and I was ashamed to let Nika see it. But it was all I had and I needed my privacy from prying eyes more than I needed the sop to my pride.
"I know it's not much." I pulled the lone chair out from the desk and sat on my bunk. "Please, have a seat."
Empty formality, like my emptiness inside, but it perversely gave me the means to keep myself together. I would, I strongly suspected, gain intimate insight on the utility of conventions I'd once thought superficial. And perhaps the superficiality was deliberately designed—God knows, the distance they provided helped.
---
The blonde was no more aware of the Spartan room than Rina was, really. She lowered herself shakily into the chair and put her elbow on the desk, her hand covering her forehead as she struggled to contain her own sobs. Nika really was in no better shape than Rina or Kiera, though at times she thought she'd found a cautious balance.
Sucking in a ragged breath, she looked up at Rina and fought to keep her voice even though it broke on the last word. "Do not retreat into that shell on me," she half ordered, half begged. "Everyone else is gone, Rina. Please, don't leave me here by myself."
---
Don't go. Stay with me. I'd begged Joshua as he bled on the deck, bled and died and left me. I'd held his hands, too frightened to lift him lest I make his injury worse, and the only comfort I could offer him was my presence … and my implicit promise not to retreat to the woman I'd once been. But it was tempting. God, it was tempting. To distance myself from everyone so it didn't hurt so much when I lost them … No, I'd changed too much to seek that prison again and the woman who first set hammer to those walls needed the solace I could give her. I rose from my bunk and wrapped my arms around her, despite the angle, and held her tight. Much as Shyla had done for me on the Ark, I did for Nika now. I held her and rocked her and stroked her hair, whispered nonsense to let her know I was there. And through it all, I managed to somehow keep myself together … because I found it virtually impossible to resist the call to be strong for the sake of another. It was the flip side of my loathing for personal weakness.
It's just one of the things I love about you, love …, whispered Joshua, his voice clear as a bell in my head. Just be kind to yourself and accept the same when offered.
I'm trying, Joshua, I whispered back. "I'm trying."
---
Nika wrapped her arms around the smaller woman and held on tightly. "Me too," she whispered, not realizing that Rina wasn't talking to her just at that moment. It was an answer she could live with, though. "I want to hide in a hole. I want to break everything I put my hands on. I want to scream and never, ever, ever stop." The admission comes at cost, though, because she has to stifle another sob. "I am so gorram sorry, Rina. And I'm so mad at them both and it just makes me feel guiltier."
---
"Shhhhh," I said, holding her though the angle had long since set my back on fire. "I know. I screamed too." I left it at that. If Shyla told her what had happened on the Ark, Nika already knew the details. If Shyla hadn't, there was no point in piling my grief on top of hers. I gently pulled Nika off the chair and sat her down on my bunk. I joined her there and my back silently wept in gratitude.
"I ...," I husked, cleared my throat, and tried again. "I don't have words for any of this. Too raw. Too primal. Too much. But if you need a place to scream or cry, it can be here. I doubt these walls would be shocked by any sound you might make. They'd have heard it already."
---
She lets herself be drawn to the bunk and wraps herself around Rina just as much as Rina is wrapped around her. Nika simply nods to the raw and primal information. She hugs tightly and admits in a choked voice, "I didn't want to come to you and add mine to yours. As awful as it is for me, I can't imagine what you're feeling." She swallows hard. "I can't separate the hurt from the guilt at even being there right now." Her expression crumples. "I wanted to go because I couldn't bear to lose Brian when we might be able to help him. All the others too, but... he was my driving motivation. And it took me until Arden was dying in my hands to tell him I loved him, Rina. I can't bear to look at the rest of my family right now. So many things all tangled up in rage." She needs to say it out loud. She spent too long in the depths of soul-crushing despair and if she can't put some of it out there, it will kill her.
---
"I'm not angry. I don't have room for the anger." I'd spent my rage on scrubbing the Arkship's deck. Once gone, my despair had moved in and made itself at home. In the three days since his death, the fire of my resistance had burned low, slowly smothering under the wet weight of my grief. I had a few embers left and I guarded them jealously, instinctively knowing that if I spent them out on futile battles, I would have nothing to fight off the blackness inside. It would take me then. I would lose. Damned if I would let it win. I promised Joshua I would live, on a night now impossibly distant, as we'd walked through a forest of dreamers. "I'm too ... sad to feel anything else."
---
The blonde looks up at Rina, understanding what she's saying. There's a sad kind of acceptance to her expression. "So strange that we're suddenly on opposite sides of that fence," she murmurs.
---
"I guess I was my turn." I managed a wan smile. What else could I say? "Please don't borrow guilt over it."
---
"I don't know what to do. I want to help you... and the only way I can think to do it, Rina, is to take him home. He's my little brother. I want to take them both home to bury them near my folks." Nika swallows. "Unless there's somewhere you want him.... I want him home." Her jaw clenches. "Where even if you're not there constantly, I can take care of them and you can come visit."
---
"Home," I said, the word foreign on my tongue. I had lived in many places over the years. A mountain monastery. An airfield barracks. A garage off the docks. On ships of various crews and class. I'd lived at and left them all. It shouldn't have mattered where my head lay after so much shifting about, but this time, it mattered with an intensity I couldn't fathom except by its absence. Decatur was only a waystation and Exeter had been rendered uninhabitable by my loss. I tried to imagine a home without Joshua in it, tried and failed as the ocean inside surged and threatened to swamp me again. "I don't have a home, so there is nowhere I want him, except with me."
---
"Then come home with me," Nika whispers. "You're all I have left, Rina. You and the baby. The guys are gone. Beggar's got plans. Kiera... left with her father. Come back with me and stay. It can be for always. Or it can be until you figure out you want something else. But we'll have Nala and Larry and ... each other." They are all that remains of the crew that has become an extended family.
---
Then come home with me.
Five simple words. A thousand meanings deep. They required an impossibly huge leap of faith.
The ocean inside roared and from its depths something rose unbidden, a stray memory of a candle burning in a dim room, its flame flashing off the spectacles of a chance-met stranger. He'd paid for my dinner. I'd returned the favor with conversation. Together we'd shared some wisdom hard won.
A wise friend once said to me that I should never doubt that we are the right people in the right place at the right time, I'd said that night. And that the Universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, God would never give us more than we can endure, that life is not a caravan of despair. That it doesn’t matter if we’d broken our vows a thousand times over or that we’d failed to reach our goals, because He would still welcome us home.
And he replied:
You said earlier that you and God didn't really talk. That doesn't mean that the conversation isn't going on regardless. And while you may not be like me, listening for the Lord's instructions, that doesn't mean He isn't listening. A life spent on the move is a lonely one. Those times when you don't have anyone else to talk to, He can be company and comfort. I was told once that God never abandons us, we abandon Him. Just something to keep in mind.
The memory sank back below the surface and I knew what I must do.
"I'm not a priest. I don't have the words for it. But I'll be your company and your comfort, Nika Earhart. I don't know if I'll be any good at it, but I know this: Joshua wouldn't want either of us to be alone." I eased back and took her hands for a squeeze. Her fingers were frail, like the rest of her, as if her sorrow had sucked the marrow out of her. Perhaps in a way it had. Another memory surfaced and this time I shared it.
"Joshua and I had talked about settling dirtside and building a home and raising our children in it. If I can't have him, I can still have the rest. All I need is a place to stand. I'd like it to be where he lies, so I can at least feel as if he's standing with me.
---
"I don't need a priest," Nika said quietly. "I need you. You are as much my sister as Joshua is my brother, Rina." She squeezed her friend's hand. "I... told Arden on the Ark... that if we got out of this, I wanted to go home." She looked down. "I don't want to make any decisions on it right now, but... the last time we were back to the ranch, I felt.... whole." When she looked up, her deep blue eyes were bleak and fathomless. "I need Nala. I need home. And I need to bury our family where I know they'll be cared for." She forced a small smile. "And it's not as if there's not plenty of land between the two spreads."
It was perhaps a touch manipulative... Nika admitted it within the privacy of her own mind. What she'd said was no less than the truth. She did need all of those things. But Rina did too. Rina needed Nala almost more than Nika herself did right now, she just didn't know it yet.
---
"If that's what you need, then we'll do it." I could feel the tide shift inside, retreating a fraction of an inch. The land it left behind wasn't much, but it was enough. I could stand free of the wet. What about tomorrow? whispered my heart. What if it comes back?
I'll build a boat and ride it, I said. Aloud, I whispered, "Just say when."
Go back to: Season Seven, May 2523 - Feb 2524
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