Reunion

Posted on Tue Aug 27th, 2024 @ 9:00am by Captain Shran dh'Klar & Lieutenant Inara Senn & Jasmine Armstrong

Mission: The Andromeda Strain
Location: Lt. Inara Senn's Quarters

Inara entered with Josie and looked at her. "I never thought I'd see you again."

"I could say the same..." Josie noted. "You look angry."

"I've been angry, for quite some time... With myself. Punishing myself. I don't know everything. The Damn gods of Valhalla and Ireland saw fit to tear a hole in my mind." She noted. "But I do know you... I saw your face every night. And then they told me if I ever researched time again, they would delete both me and you. But I had to... Seeing what those upstart invaders did, I had to."

"Inara... You need to smile again." Josie noted. "Do I have to tickle you?

"No..."

"I am going to tickle you today, if you keep on moping around. You vanished Inara. I didn't know where you were."

"And I do not even remember the reason why I violated time, nor do I want to remember. Only that I have incredible nightmares of some kind of life before, and I wake up, curled up in pain and sweat on the floor."

Josie suddenly hugged her. "It's alright Inara. This crew seems nice. Let me guess, you were so hesitant to get to know them?" She shook her head. "I need to find out what you've done here. You've been without me for too long, and from the looks of it, you've been grumpy old Inara."

"You see through her" a voice said from near the window. A woman appeared; her image well known to Inara. "You see past her little deceits, her defenses that she so ardently clings to, as if life itself depended upon it. Some of what she says is true, some of it is false. The important things though, they are all true. What she did was for you, her great desire for vengeance, her desire to bend the universe to her view of justice. Her actions abused time, she dared to challenge fate, and for her abuses she was punished. Through a matter of fate, she was cast into my view, and I have watched over her. She dared to challenge fate once more, but this time in the right way, and you now stand here with her as a reward, after a fashion."

Josie responded. "Life is intoxicating for Inara. She's not a simple woman, and I was the first to crack open the shell she was content with. Love, I can see the suffering written in your face, but you don't have to suffer any more."

"Hela doesn't scare me, Danu. Dying alone does." Inara noted.

Danu offered a gentle smile to Josie before looking to Inara, "It is my sincere hope that you do not instigate further with Hela. She has the power to make your fears come to life. I cannot protect you from her forever or all of the time. Should she appear and try to bait you, I hope you are wise enough to see through it and not engage."

"I am sick of her. I am truly sick of her. She's the only thing I want to think about now, Josie and our life together. Whatever I was, It is no longer linked to her." Inara noted. "And listening to her would be like a symposium at the Daystrom Institute. So many blathering fools."

Josie chuckled. "I see you still don't like talk."

"Real science is out there. Not debated over hors d'oeuvres that would make an Asgardian or another god sick because I can assure everyone here and listening, the calamari is always frozen." She smirked. "But I can say this about our invaders, it took a maximum amount of unmitigated hubris for those upstarts to try to tear down the walls of reality. It might even be worth it to go to their universe and, kinda sorta, send them back to the Iron Age. Because they'll do this again, as they've already managed to experiment with being up-starts."

Josie started tickling Inara.

"Hey..." She chuckled. "Get out of there."

"You're being too serious Inara, time to have fun."

Danu listened to Inara and Josie before chiming in a response, "You should take your companions advice Inara. You are too serious. Life, especially for species at your level of development, is fleeting. Best to enjoy it as much as possible."

"Don't get too comfortable with your superiority, Danu." Inara noted. "We're primitive yes, but we're learning fast." She turned to Josie. "Let's go see a movie." She noted. "A romance."

Danu smiled. "Another couple millennia and you may be right."