author's note; this is an episode tag. you know the third season episode where bridger and lucas is really arguing? they both want to save the sea but they have different thoughts about how it should be done...
BELOVED FRIEND,
written by Whipper
"You were wrong."
There were no kindness in those words. No understanding, and no forgivness. They could just as well have been spoken by a stranger. Actually; it would have felt better had a stranger spoken them. To hear it from him! This man that I had admired, loved... for there is no denying; there had been a time when I loved Nathan Bridger Hale. A time when I thought about him as a father, someone that would always care for me; no matter what happened.
It hurt beyond imagening. It destroyed something in me; something that he once had helped salvage. I don't know what it was. Perhaps my trust in people?
My parents did so much to ruin that trust; they would break their more often than they would hold them and after a while I stopped believing in them altogether. "I'll be home for your birthday, darling", "Everything is gonna be just fine, son". In a way "I love you" even lost it's power. I mean, I'm sure they love me. In their own ways. Not a cruel love, they were never unkind to me. Just a selfish, almost childish love. The kind of love a child has for a doll. Sometimes holding it hard and refusing to sleep without it by it's side. Sometimes throwing it into a corner and leaving it there, untouched and seemingly unloved, for days. Such were my parents, they never grew up enough to have children.
The Captain was probably the first one I ever allowed myself to care about. He broke down my walls of defense and I didn't mind. It scared me in the beginning but with time I started to trust him. My world became a safe place. There were dangers of course, but they were easy to identify and even though they scared me I never felt the lonely kind of fear. The one that grabs you so hard that you wake up screaming in the middle of the night.
I allowed other people to come close as well; Ben, Doctor Westphalen, Tim, Mig, Katie... even the Commander and Crocker. And not once did they let me down. I sometimes feared they had, but in the end everything always worked out for the best. "Everything's gonna be just fine, kiddo." And for once those words actually meant something to me.
I suppose I should be grateful. After all, they gave me three years. Three years filled with adventure and joy. Three years of not being alone; of not having to wonder whether or not someone would catch me if I were to fall. Years of knowing that if I ever were to run, they would come after me. Three years of wonderful life filled with love and safety.
A wonderful kind of life that was not meant for me. I was so foolish to believe in what they said.
Today I would never run knowing that they would only miss me at best. I'm so afraid to fall, knowing that I would find myself alone again. It's as if I a performer at the circus. High above their heads, walking so very carefully because there is not safety net below me. If I fall that's it.
I ask myself sometimes; when did all this change? When did things get so much out of control?
Was it when we first put our feets on Hyperion? Or when the seaQuest exploded; leaving me, Dagwood and Darwin all alone on an alien planet? Did it all happen when we returned to Earth; only to find that ten years had passed and our family and friends though of us as dead? Was it the Captain leaving us that started it all? The return of Michael Bridger?
Is that little boy the one to blame for all this? Or was it perhaps those words spoken in that voice. "You were wrong", that changed things so dramatically?
I don't know. I just want to return. To who I was before. Before everything changed.
Lucas Wolenczak,
Beloved Friend and Son
feedback; whipper_vi@yahoo.com