A Battle for the Soul of a Wounded Heart Pt. 1

Posted on Tue Dec 5th, 2023 @ 9:48pm by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Lieutenant Inara Senn

Mission: Hard Earned Peace
Location: Holodeck 1

Inara entered the holodeck and removed the access panel for the holodeck. She inserted a isochip that had a very personal program and replaced the panel. "Computer Activate Holoprogram Inara-Alpha-One."

The Holoprogram was replaced with a beachside house on Pacifica... with a stone grave near the beach and a young woman on it.

Josephine Carlyle
2385 - 2311

It was a secret memorial Inara took with her, she never dared create another memorial. She didn't want her former crew to know about it.

"One time I promised I would make all of them pay Josie. Pay for what they did, but it doesn't hurt as much anymore. It's been almost ten or so years. It just doesn't hurt as much." Inara Mentioned. "I know I promised justice or vengeance. What they did to us was beyond the pale." Inara mentioned. "Please tell me I'm forgiven." Inara mentioned. "They made me do such horrific things to you. I can't even avenge you, and now I'm under siege. I can't feed my anger, hatred, and now I'm afraid. I'm so afraid..." Inara mentioned. "I am a woman of science... these things are just non-corporeal entities, trying to toy with us because they have nothing better to do with an eternity of existence. What is better, Josie? To live forever in an increasingly menial existence? Or to live a great and full life filled with the adventure of a lifetime?" Inara noted. "What is more fulfilling. A god's monotony? Or a mortal's finite journey. I tell you. It's not only hatred of mortality that drives Hela, but also envy. We understand less and less about the universe the faster we explore. Perhaps science is incapable of telling us all the truths of existence, or maybe I am slowly becoming a theologian?" Inara paced. She used to give these essays in front of Josephine and let her pick apart them and criticize her assumptions.

A bright blinding light began to spring forth and in the center of it a pillar of fire sprung forth and then suddenly, as the fire and light faded, a gentle looking redhead woman stood before Inara. "Greetings troubled soul. You seem to need comfort. I considered not coming to your aid, you seem not to care for my kind. My name is Brigid and I only wish to offer you respite from all your tortured soul has had to endure."

"Oh I've seen the best and the worst of myself these last few days." Inara noted. "Maybe the best and the worst of whatever your entities are. You meant to tell me you don't have a vague agenda?" Inara noted. "This is a special place to me. It's Pacifica, back in my time. We rented this beachside bungalow for a week. I got to know Josephine, and for a week. We explored the greatest lengths of our minds." Inara noted. "I often gave interesting essays to her. both questioned and reinforced ideas. The short months I spent with her were like a heaven."

"Yes, a lovely world. Much of it reminds me of my favorite place, the place I call home, Eire. I don't hold any animus towards you, and I understand your feelings towards us. Morrigan can be a handful, but worse is Hela. The one's the humans refer to as the Norse gods, they have several with shall we say, unique personalities. Some are quite benign, benevolent even, others like Hela are troublesome to say the least. I am sorry you have had to suffer at any of our hands. I was decided long ago that we would not make ourselves part of mortals' lives until you were more advanced. While many of your races have advanced considerably over the last millennia, you are still far too young to grasp certain realities." Brigid slowly approached Inara, "As I have said, I am here to assist you, to give you peace, nothing more."

"I was once a very different woman once upon a time. Not even Betazoid even. I became that to leave my past behind Brigid. The truth is, I am from a race that will be discovered in the next decade. They are a very enlightened people. They love education and art. They embrace all knowledge and wisdom with dedication. They are known as the Alindari." Inara noted. "And the girl I was, she was so awestruck by the Federation. She joined their Starfleet Academy." She mentioned. "She... I graduated, of course. I was so proud and naive. The adventure of a lifetime." Inara mentioned. "Then I met Josephine. She was incredible. Embraced books with a passion." Inara mentioned. "Every time I learned something new about her, it was like falling in love with her all over again. She was one of these remarkable people, that would make someone swear to avenge her."

Brigid offered a simple smile. She attempted to placate Inara with some basic truths, "I know dear. I have been to your world. I have been to every world. Some I have remained on for centuries, trying to nurture knowledge, wisdom, family. Some worlds take to it better than others."

"We didn't know we'd be enslaved." Inara noted. "And I can't be Arrianna anymore. People can die inside, while the body lives on and tries to cope with memories, their broken hearts and their shattered dreams. Yeah, Josephine lived, yeah, my crew cared about her. Enough to separate us and claim I was the problem. And when I looked at Josephine, she called me 'Commander an Vantar, not Arri.' Like it was never there. Like the woman I knew died." Inara mentioned. "That was when the last part of Arrianna died, and I took over. Secretive, pragmatic, and isolated." Inara mentioned. "As long as you don't open yourself up to people, you can bear anything... feel less pain. Or so I thought. Then Hela came around and tore open these wounds, these pains. She hates mortals, but she does not know, or perhaps she does too well, that one event can lead to many." Inara mentioned. "And when she said the word 'slave, servant.' I had to deny her... I had to deny her my anger and myself. No one will ever enslave me again. That was one promise, I made to her." She began to weep. "I had to deny her. I had to fight her in the only way I knew how."

"Hela does not hate mortals. On the contrary, she adores them. She uses them to her own benefit, but she is no different than most of the others in that regard" Brigid explained. "As for slavery, enslavement, it is a common matter for most mortals. Most of you don't realize that it is more than something you do to one another, it is something you do to yourselves, it is a state of mind. For as advanced as you have become, you still are prone to falling victim to certain basic conditions. You must overcome this, or you will always be open to being controlled by others."

"Millennia ago, my ancient ancestors fought each other. Divided into clans ruled by warlords, they warred against each other endlessly. That was until the daughter of the strongest warlord was betrayed by her brother for power. She suffered in a desert for eight days until she was not the same person anymore, when the desert clan pitied her and took her in. She became a new person. Then she married the Desert Chieftain and led her people against the warlords. She took no vassals, but offered the fruits of agriculture and chemistry if they would simply cease warring. The warlord campaign ended with silence as the warlords were abandoned." Inara noted. "This woman became our first empress, united the clans, and gave the first essays on representative government. Where the rights of the people for life, liberty, and justice was ensured. But I turned myself into a tool of Revenge. Out of love. She would have hated that. But, love makes you do strange things. "If Tirielle saw me now, she would say I am a disgrace."

"You are a slave to your history, a slave to love. You seek to unshackle yourself, to be free of the chains that bind you, but are you certain that is what you truly want? As mortals you attempt to use the past to guide you in the present and the future, failing to realize that the past is just as present in every moment as is the present and future. Everything connects, you have a simple understanding of this with your knowledge of quantum entanglement. Few things in all the universe are capable of the joys and horrors that love provides" Brigid replied.

"You have an interesting perspective of time. All the calculations I made to ensure I would arrive one year before everything happened in a certain time and space..." Inara began, "I ended up being deposited in Starfleet HQ right before the war began. Well, there is one thing I am grateful for, I no longer have to look at Captain Penelope Lane and her treacherous crew ever again. 'She needed time to recover indeed.' They gave her back to that hideous slaver." Inara noted. "'The good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one.' That is the dumbest pile of philosophical rubbish since Kantism." Inara mentioned. "Starfleet became desperate in my time and violated its own principles. In this time, they were having problems trying to find officers, so they offered me a deal; leniency, if I would fight the Dominion War, and conceal everything." Inara mentioned. "Same old fleet." Inara mentioned. "Killing Cardassians and Jem'Hadar, fighting in some trench. It felt like a way to forget who I was. I embraced Inara Senn completely. Even my genetics were changed so I could be a Betazoid. Killing, it felt so good. I had a scapegoat to project Kyle Cragen and Micheal Bishop on, and I was good at it." Inara mentioned. "All I had to do was kill the Vorta in the field, then shoot the case that held the white. Then all I had to do was hold out, wait for them to go insane with withdrawal and then kill each other. I am a cruel person, Brigid, and I made myself this way. Josie loved Arrianna, she'd hate me and what I became... out of love. Should I give love and friendship another chance? I've failed so many times in love, all I wanted to begin with was a Starfleet career. And somehow start a family. I'm scared of dying alone."

Brigid shook her head softly in dismay. "Certainly not a fan of the Vulcans and their embrace of pure logic, or at least their attempt of it." She waved her hand and allowed the holodeck setting to begin to change, as flowers and other plants began to grow around the gravestone and alter the view of the area they were at. "Your mistake was assuming you could manipulate time. Mortals have dreamed of being able to do that on countless worlds. Even when they are able to make the calculations correctly to go back to the time they wish, they find that making the changes they wished doesn't give them the desired outcome. Time is not without its moods. Mortals consider time as simply a variable in an equation, something to be understood, manipulated to your whims, but time is sentient, and it does not care to be meddled with, not by amateurs such as yourself, nor even by its equals such as myself. It inflicts heavy tolls when you make such attempts."

"Love... as much joy as pain." Inara noted. "And my pain, caused me to harm time itself. I wanted her back so bad... I didn't see what I was doing. I really am Captain Ahab." Inara noted.

"Humanity developed a saying that was true if not easy to accept. It is better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all. You simply lost your way, though your solution was perhaps a bit more radical than what most would have done." She approached Inara, "Have you decided if you will let go of your strife and pain?"

Inara walked up to the grave. "Oh, my Josie..." she noted, "you were my everything, but I can't live like this. I have been miserable... for so many years. I can't fall to the foes around me. Turn my bonds to my anger and rage into chains. If you are somewhere, you would want me to move on. Find another and be happy. I see this now, but you will live on inside me. I will find that which makes me happy, and I will treasure it. And if time itself is listening, forgive me. Slavery causes more people to suffer than just the victim. In my case, time itself suffered." Inara mentioned. She shed tears as years of anger and hatred left her.

"I sense in you a kindred spirit, Inara Senn. You may not believe in souls, but yours is being freed, and your love can now rest and be free of her torment. I assure you; I will speak with my father. You will not continue to be ravaged by time" Brigid said as she placed a hand gently upon Inara's shoulder.