A/N --- Ahem…. Is this thing on??? Ok, disclaimer time. I don't own Enterprise or any of its characters. I made no money on this story. Thank you for not suing. :o)
Some minor spoilers for various episodes from various seasons scattered throughout the whole story.
Special thanks to Rinne for her kind support while I wrote this! RL has been keeping me away, but I'm back!
The Price of Fear
An elaborately cloaked woman approached the small hut. She seemed dark in the gathering twilight as the gloom of a persistently trickling rain covered her in its haziness. A small bundle rested in her arms. It might have been an armload of laundry for the care she seemed to give it, but it was shaped like a swaddling cloth. And, still as it was, there was a child beneath the billowy layers. She hurried to the door and began to knock loudly and shout.
"Let me in! We must hurry!"
After a long pause punctuated by the pounding of her fist on the door, a crack of light pierced the falling darkness. A woman peered out, her brow quickly creasing the youthful face into a dismayed expression.
"Anda," she breathed. "Is it time already?"
The cloaked woman nodded once. "Don't just stand there," she said sharply, "open the door."
The woman's pale green face flushed several shades darker and she stepped aside allowing Anda to push past her into the house. She stood framed in the lighted doorway for a few seconds, her eyes cast to the ground. Then she closed the door with a push of her hand and a petulant twirl of her petticoat.
She hurried to follow the flurry of cloaks down the hall into a dimly candlelit room at the end, but stopped when a man exited in front of her. His hands came gently down on her shoulders.
"Abella," he spoke softly, "please."
"I am not ready to say goodbye yet." Tears streamed down her face, but otherwise it was like stone.
"It is time," he kept his tone hushed and paused briefly mid-sentence to allow her to regain her composure, "…time to let her go. Do you want this kind of life for her?"
She buried her face in her hands. "We should never have let it get this far," she said between shaky breaths. "She is our daughter…"
"And she has done her duty," he said almost reverently, "as will the next." He paused as if searching for something to say to comfort her. "We will name the new one Iana too."
She tipped her head up to him with tearstained eyes. A look of horror crossed her face. "No. That is her name."
"A part of her will be the same," he said, voice never rising above a whisper. "We will care for her as we cared for the ones before."
"But she was not like the others," Abella protested. "She was our daughter."
Even now she didn't realize she was speaking in the past tense. She had accepted the circumstances even if she didn't agree with them. Her husband nodded and smiled gently. Then murmurs from the candlelit room drew them to the doorway.
Anda pulled the hood from her face and approached the white four-poster bed in the center of the room. Candlelight moved across the walls and cast shadows that danced with toys scattered around the room. There, in the masses of blankets, she could just make out the shape of a body.
"Iana, sweetie," she crooned as she unwrapped her bundle, "I have a visitor for you."
The form in the bed stirred, breath becoming raspy in its agitation. Anda let the swaddling cloth slip to the floor and moved the child in her hands closer to the bed. The soft lighting could not hide the baby's appearance. It was listless and pale with half-lidded eyes. There were no cries or kicks. No movements at all except the slow and feeble ones that passed for breathing.
"She needs your help Iana," Anda continued. "She will not live without you."
The form on the bed seemed to pause for a moment, then spindly hands raised ever so slightly towards the baby. Anda hastily set the child in Iana's arms, then backed away.
Abella stood in the doorway with her husband. She could not bear to look, but found herself riveted to the scene before her. Tears were streaming again, her body wracked with silent sobs. Her husband moved to hold her but she pushed him away.
The baby seemed balanced atop the form on the bed. For a long moment nothing happened. Then a glow began to emanate from within the blanket's folds . It apparently came from within Iana. The glow steadily increased and Abella could see her daughter's face. The pigtails in her hair were in stark contrast to its paleness and the wrinkles on her glowing face. The stuffed animals surrounding her seemed incongruous.
And then the miracle started, as it always did. She could see the sallow color of the baby becoming less gray and it started moving. The previously tenuous hold Iana had on the child became rock steady. When the glow reached its height, the baby was giggling gleefully, none of the sickly grayness remained.
Abella's eyes were fastened to her daughter as the wrinkle-worn face creased even more -- then turned to gray and began to melt away. Iana's pale blue eyes closed and the baby fell down towards the bed as the body beneath it slowly disintegrated. The glow still covered the blankets and the ashes that had been Iana seemed to scuttle over the child. Then the room darkened again.
Anda moved haltingly toward the bed. She lifted a candle from the nightstand and held it near the blankets. The baby smiled up at her and began to coo. There was no sign of Iana left but the depression in the covers of her deathbed. Anda breathed a sigh of relief and collected the baby in her arms. She walked slowly toward the couple waiting in the doorway and stopped just long enough to place the child in Abella's arms. Afterwards she left the house without a word. Abella stared down at the little face and managed a small comforting smile for the baby's sake.
Nobody noticed when, later that night, Abella left too. Her husband awoke the next morning to an empty bed -- and an empty house. Years would pass before anybody would see them again.