Beneath It All, Part 2
by Satinette
A troubled and heartbroken Mel, fleeing from her pain during the period after Cole leaves in "Remember When," meets up with an unexpected ally. The second part of a continuing story arc.
Serious spoilers for "What Lies Beneath" and "Remember When," plus more or less minor ones for the Pilot episode, "Cloud Nine," "Roswell," "Trust," "The Beast," "Without a Trace," "Breach," "The Miracle," "Eye of the Storm," "Dark Road Home," "A Made Guy," "Back Into the Breach," and before I'm done, likely most others.
Chapter 1
"Well, you'd better get going before the wormhole closes," Mel reminded him with false brightness, quickly turning and fleeing the War Room before she completely lost it.
"Yes ... I'd ... better," Cole haltingly agreed, his jubilation, his sense of accomplishment at having Collected all the remaining fugitives abruptly evaporating as the full reality of what he'd done sank in. He could now return to the Migar System, return to Sar-Top, return to Cirron, attempt to find those much needed answers, then somehow attempt to make his way back ...
If not ... Well, he could always just resume his life and ...
What life?
Mel would be here, 100.3 light years distant.
Never had his Human form felt so leaden as he slowly followed her out. He turned in the doorway and looked back, surveying the room for what he forlornly hoped wouldn't be the last time, committing to fond memory all the primitive appliances, machinery and equipment he'd taken and rebuilt or modified to another, more advanced technology. Even this cold, sterile, claustrophobic space his life had been centered in for most of an Earth year would always be fondly remembered.
His job here was done, mission accomplished, and he was going home.
"Home is up there."
What a horribly cruel, twisted joke that had become!
His Mel would be here ...
"Home is wherever you are."
... 100.3 light years beyond his reach.
He was well aware of the odds he was up against, how slim to none his chances were. For all his plans, hopes and good intentions, for all his resolve, he'd likely never see her again.
It may as well be a hundred million light years.
Clutching her upper arms, her head bowed beneath the crushing weight of despair, Mel stood in the hall by the apartment door trying to get a grip on herself, determined not to break, determined to hold back the threatening floodgate of tears for just a little while longer as her entire world withered and died.
She'd known from the very beginning it would one day come to this.
They both had.
It was necessary. It was inevitable.
But why did it have to be so soon?
And why did it have to be now?
What had she said to him just a few short weeks ago as they left to hide that damn Stra'da-Brac? That there were still some 150 fugitives on the loose for him to Track down and that he wouldn't be leaving anytime soon?
Something like that.
She'd believed it was so. Completely and wholeheartedly. She really had.
But now he was going. Her dearest and best friend and her only link with that alien – and hence still frightening and largely unknown part of herself – was actually leaving for good.
Mel just couldn't fully wrap her mind around it. Not after everything they'd been through together. Not with all that had been left unspoken, even unacknowledged between them. And especially not after finding out ...
She angrily shook her head, ruthlessly pushing back the engulfing morass of pain and self-pity through sheer force of will. It was just incomprehensible to her that he'd been able to capture the rest of the fugitives in one fell swoop and was now leaving her to return to his home, another world, another planet a little more that 100 light years away.
A light year. The distance traveled by a beam of light within a single Earth year ... She'd looked it up once. It was about 5.88 trillion miles. A cardinal number followed by twelve zeros. A huge, utterly irrational, totally mind-boggling figure. And Migar was one hundred point three times further than that. An upper three-digit cardinal number followed by fifteen zeros...
She had to face up to the fact that some selfish part of her had somehow come to believe that this wouldn't, couldn't actually happen, that there were just too many fugitives for it to be possible, that Cole would be with her for a very long time, perhaps even a lifetime. But now that he was done, now that he had accomplished what he had set out to do, he had to go back to where he came from.
And as much as she wanted him to stay, as much as she now needed him to stay, she would never deliberately be so self-serving as to ruin his happiness.
She was well aware of how homesick he was. Months ago it had been heartbreaking to see the melancholy smile on his face when viewing Monet's Impression Sunrise' and hear the longing in his voice when he'd told her that it reminded him of a place he knew. Much more recently, the sadness in the way he'd said, "It seems it was such a long time ago..." when thinking of when he'd first come to Earth was sobering. And it hadn't escaped her notice how often he'd climb up to the roof, especially on clear, moonless nights, simply to gaze at and talk to the arc of the heavens in his own tongue.
Sometimes he'd even spend the entire night up there.
But if only she'd known, had some sort of clue, an inkling, a forewarning that the end of his time on Earth was drawing near, then maybe ...
She felt Cole's tall, familiar, always reassuring bulk quietly come to stand beside her as he had so very many times before. And never would again.
"I have to do this," he softly apologized.
As if she didn't know.
"I know you do," she quickly affirmed, trying to sound strong and positive about it, his stalwart partner to the bitter end, failing miserably in the attempt.
Cole paused before reaching for the doorknob.
"Come with me?"
Her heart skittered, then gave a painful lurch at his shy, hesitantly offered invitation, lodging somewhere in the back of her throat. She could hardly think, hardly even breath.
"How?"
"Travel through the wormhole. You're part Cirronian. There's so much for you to learn there."
He made it sound so simple. Simple? Well, for him it was probably old hat, not that much different from a Chicago-ite taking a cab or a cross-town bus.
But for her the prospect was both wildly giddying and utterly terrifying.
And although it seemed to make perfect sense, it was completely irrational.
Even obscene.
She'd be an even more out-of-place biological freak on his distant world than she was here on Earth. While she might be the only one of her kind – whatever the hell that was! – at least here no one will be pointing at her and whispering behind her back.
At least here she looked just like everyone else on the planet and none were any the wiser.
At least here she could hide in plain sight.
Part Cirronian indeed. Leave it to Cole to put it so ... delicately.
She wasn't even just a freak of nature, an accident. She was part of a planned breeding program of bloodlines, just like those of a well-bred French Poodle or a Persian cat or a Thoroughbred race horse or a prize Leghorn chicken at some 4-H Club were. That wasn't anything like saying that someone was part Jewish or part Italian or part Chinese or part American Indian. HA! Those things amounted to nothing when compared to this! Even the disgusting World War II Nazi attempt at breeding a pure' line of their supposed Master Aryan Race' paled to insignificance by comparison. She'd been deliberately bred, created to be part alien. As in not wholly of this Earth. As in not fully Human. As in not fully anything.
Hysterics, disgust, fear, horror and repulsion were the order of the day if one's salad tomatoes, for piety sake, had been gene-spliced with those of an arctic-dwelling fish so they wouldn't freeze into mushy pulp. She shuddered to think of the reaction of the world at large if they ever found the truth out about her!
"There will be a huge mobilization. They will hunt us down."
There'd be no place in this world she'd ever be safe!
All these years, the image in her mirror had lied to her. Her grandmother had lied to her. Her father had lied to her. Or, to be charitable about it, simply hadn't told her. She wasn't a woman, a female Homo sapiens, a Human. And she certainly wasn't a female Cirronian – whatever the term for that may be!
She couldn't even call herself a crossbreed, a mix, a mutt, a mongrel, a cur.
She was a cross-species hybrid, a combination of two completely different lifeforms from two completely different worlds, not really one or the other, a creature, an unnatural made-to-order thing ...
And if that wasn't bad enough, she was well aware of exactly what a bloodline' is. She'd grown up in this City knowing boys who raised established bloodlines of pigeon breeds on the rooftops of their apartment buildings, just as their fathers and grandfathers before them had for generations. Aerial performing breeds like Birmingham Rollers, West of England Tumblers, American Baldheads, Flying Tipplers and Racing Homers; ornamental exhibition breeds such as Archangels, Fantails, English and German Modenas, Oriental Frills and Bokhara Trumpeters; breeds which provided tasty squabs for the table like Utility Kings, French Mondains, Runts and Carneau.
In order to strengthen a trait or ability, it was a well-proven practice in animal husbandry to work through the bloodlines, meaning line-breeding, back-crossing and inbreeding the stock, the pairing together of close relations – up to and including the breeding together of sister and brother, mother and son, father and daughter, grandparents and grandchildren. Such was perfectly okay and done all the time in the breeding pigeons, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs...
But people?
She knew next to nothing about her own family. Her paternal grandfather had died more than two decades before she was even born. Her paternal grandmother had died a little less than a year and a half ago. Neither of her grandparents had any living family at all. Or so she had always been told. Her father was supposedly an only child and had died not two months after her grandmother, killed at sea in a boating accident along with her stepmother and her half-sister. Her mother had died shortly after her fourth birthday, a barely remembered tiny wraith of a woman left in a persistent, near-vegetable twilight state from the severe complications she'd suffered giving her only child life. And as far as she knew, her mother didn't have any family, either. At least, none that she'd ever met or been told about.
Could it be because they were all related? That they were the family? Had her grandfather actually been her grandmother's brother, uncle or nephew? Or even her father? Or grandfather? Had her mother been her father's aunt or cousin? Or sister? Was her bloodline bred that close?
In people, such a thing is called incest.
The very idea nauseated her.
How could she ever have the nerve to face them, to stand up to this supposedly enlightened, highly evolved order of beings who'd taken it upon themselves to dabble at godhood and play with the Human gene pool for their own purposes? She'd be no more than a monster confronting its creator, its own Dr. Frankenstein.
And what's to say that the villagers wouldn't then decide to fire up their torches and go storming after the monster?
"I'm tempted, Cole..." she stammered. "Really ... Really ... But I think ... But I think a part of me has to stay here."
Cole nodded as though he'd known she would say that. He probably had, she thought. He was empathic with her that way. Always had been. Could he sense the rest? And if he could, did he realize that she didn't hold him in any way responsible for what his people had done?
"I understand."
"Maybe ... I can come and visit you sometime..." she lamely offered. It sounded so absurd, even to her. Yeah, right! What does he think you're going to do, Porter? Hitchhike aboard the tail of a comet? Maybe hijack the Space Shuttle?
"That would be nice," he mused. "If I can find a way to reopen the wormhole."
"This is no time for small talk."
"It's not like it's a flight to Newark," she lightly joked. Or tried to.
"No, it's not," he agreed.
"Home is wherever you are."
Torn, he hesitated. He was fast running out of time. Even in hyperspeed, he was going to be hard-pressed to make it. But he couldn't just leave. He couldn't. Not like this. Not with her fear and confusion, her pain and her budding self-loathing, corroding at him like acid. His own words mocked him, his emotions mocked him, his entire empty shell of a life mocked him. If he didn't dare offer her false hope by telling her all he was attempting to accomplish, didn't dare mention that he'd try his damnest to make it back to her no matter the cost, then he had to at least let her know how he felt. At least tell her that.
"Mel..."
"Don't..." she choked, her vision blurring in rising twin pools of hot liquid. "Don't say good-bye ... Please?" She'd barely been able to whisper the words without sobbing.
Cole swallowed. Hard. There was so much he had to say, so much he wanted to say, even more that he so desperately needed to say. But he was incapable of formulating any words at all.
She closed her brimming eyes as he reached an unsteady hand over and gently caressed her throat a final time.
Then, in the next moment, he was gone.