A/N: Here it is, the end of Backlash! Thanks as always to the involvement of Kretolus and DrZevil, who have been a great help through all of my stories, and who have loaned their characters to make for some truly awesome stories. Hope you all enjoy!
Lydana and Léonie ran towards the transporter room, but as they turned towards it, the Admiral halted her daughter.
"Get back to the Interceptor, you fly to the Shadow and infiltrate through her shuttlebay," she said hurriedly. "I've already put the access codes into the system, just make sure that bitch doesn't escape!"
"But mama, I can help!" Léonie argued, as Lydana resumed her run.
"I need you to do this, it's an important job!" Lydana shouted back, before disappearing around another corner.
"Mama! Mama!"
Léonie's protests fell on an empty corridor, and she resigned herself to running towards the shuttlebay.
"You've been telling me that since I was five," she complained to no-one in particular.
Lydana finally found the transporter room, and a moment later she was standing in a darkened corridor onboard the Shadow. She pulled her borrowed phaser and held it before her, sweeping the corridor as she advanced, but it didn't take her long to find some of her crew.
"Lise," she hissed, and instantly five phaser rifles swung her way, wrist-mounted flashlights deliberately pointing at her face. Understanding their caution, Lydana placed the phaser on the deck, her other hand raised in surrender.
"Hold it," Elisa told her squad, walking forward to where Lydana stood. Placing the barrel of her rifle against Lydana's temple, she pulled down the collar of her jacket and examined Lydana's neck.
A moment later, she lowered her weapon and hugged her old friend, then gestured for her team to stand down.
"It's her, no doubt about it," Elisa said happily, and Lydana looked at her.
"How did you know?"
Elisa pointed to a small scar on Lydana's throat.
"Your twin might know how you got that, but she wouldn't have the scar itself," she explained matter-of-factly. "Checking for that is the easiest way to identify you for someone who knows you well."
Lydana kicked her phaser back up to her hand, then looked at Elisa and her team.
"Okay, so what's new?"
"Well as you may have guessed, your Mirror self ducked into a Jefferies tube then found a way to kill the lights," Elisa told her. "Finding her is going to be a bitch."
"She'll be heading for the shuttlebay," Lydana answered. "She knows she's surrounded, outnumbered and outgunned. Instead of fighting she's made it easier to slip by unnoticed."
"Is that meant to help us?"
Lydana looked at Elisa as if the taller redhead had suddenly forgotten her entire academy training.
"We know where she's going," she said pointedly. "And luckily, I have someone already heading there."
"Who?"
"...a friend," Lydana said, making her way to the other side of the assembled team. "I need two volunteers for a quick detour."
"Me," Elisa said instantly, moving to her friend's side.
"Me too, ma'am," said a familiar voice, making his own way to her side.
"Ryan!"
Lydana hugged her favourite helmsman, then began to work out the direction to her quarters. "Alright, let's get going. The rest of you, if you see me and I'm not...you know what, just shoot to stun, I'll get over a headache. Being dead, not so much."
She chuckled to herself, then led Elisa and Ryan on their detour, as the rest of the team continued on their way.
"So why are we here again?"
Lydana clicked her tongue while fiddling with the door mechanism, trying patiently to open it.
"If I'm going to fight...well, myself, I want an edge," she said, not looking at Elisa while she worked. "Which means I want my disruptor and bat'leth. And I want this fucking door to open!"
Ryan gently rested a hand on her shoulder, and she stood up with a grunt of annoyance. As soon as she moved away, Ryan shot the door mechanism, and it wheezed open before seizing up completely.
Lydana looked at Ryan and grinned.
"Good man," she said cheerfully, then ducked inside, emerging a moment later with her bat'leth slung over her back and checking the settings on her disruptor.
"Huh...Klingon weapons don't have a stun setting," she said, looking at her companions. "I mean it makes sense, I just never thought about it before, you know?"
"And you've had that thing how long?"
"...Anyway, what's the quickest way to the shuttlebay from here?"
"This way," Ryan announced, gesturing down the corridor with his rifle. "We should move quickly if we're to stop your evil twin."
"Sounds good to me. Lead on, Ryan."
The young pilot advanced, the lamps from his rifle and wrist light piercing the gloom ahead of them.
They eventually made it into the shuttlebay, and Lydana silently motioned for them to spread out, drawing her disruptor as she did so. She slowly made her way around the shuttles, spotting the Bajoran Interceptor at the far end, all while trying to spot Leonie.
She whipped around as someone snuck up behind her, relaxing as soon as she saw Elisa raise a hand in apology.
"I think I've spotted her," she whispered to Lydana, "over by that weird ship over there. Sorry, but I think she's taken your friend hostage."
Lydana swore as violently as she dared, then forced herself to remain calm.
"Come on, we've got to-"
"Oh, Lydana!" someone called in a sing-song tone, someone with her own voice but without the same warmth. "Yes, my dear twin, I know you're here. I would suggest you not come any closer, or else I will blow out this lovely young lady's brains!"
"I'm sorry mama!" Léonie shouted out, before Lydana's twin slapped her down.
Elisa looked at her friend in confusion.
"Did she just call you-"
"Long story. Can we focus please?"
"Now listen," her counterpart continued, "just so you know, if you do anything with the lights, I shoot her first. You try and sneak around and surround me, I'll shoot her. In fact, you do anything I don't like, her face gets a new hole. So what say you listen to my suggestion?"
"I'm listening," Lydana called back, resting her head against the side of the runabout she was sheltering next to.
"Wonderful!" the mirror admiral said cheerfully. "Now then, I want you to come out here where I can see you, lay down any weapons you might be carrying, and we can talk like adults."
"She's lying," Elisa hissed, readying herself to move. "Just let me-"
"No," Lydana answered, resting a hand on Elisa's rifle. "I can't risk you hitting my daughter." Lydana thought for a moment, while Elisa glared at her in confusion.
"I'm getting impatient, dear!" Lydana's double called out, and Lydana herself swore.
"Alright, I'm coming out!" Before moving, she turned to her friend, pitching her voice low again. "Cover me, weapon on stun. Don't argue."
She moved out of her hiding place, a weapon in each hand.
She saw her double clearly - standing on the nose of the Interceptor, an arm around Léonie's waist and a phaser aimed at her head.
Lydana stopped at her double's order, slowly tossing her weapons out of reach.
"Excellent!" Mirror Lydana said, chuckling to herself. "And now...to remove you, once and for all."
She shifted her aim, from Léonie to Lydana...and then it happened.
"Never-"
Leonie's elbow slammed into the Imperial's stomach, driving the air out of her.
"-Threaten-"
The tall Temporal agent spun around, driving her knee into the imposter's face.
"-My mama!"
Léonie dragged Mirror Lydana upright by her hair, her fist powering into her opponent's face and knocking her from the ship's nose.
As the invader struggled to her feet, Lydana charged in with a scream of fury and kicked the other woman back to the floor.
The impostor rolled into a crouch, snatching up Lydana's bat'leth in a double-handed grip and swinging it in an overhead strike, but Lydana ducked under the blow and drove her fist into her counterpart's stomach. She wrenched the bat'leth away, delivering a heavy kick to her opponent's face, and the bat'leth point at her throat stopped the woman from rising again.
"I won't yield," Mirror Lydana said, eyeing the blade. "I would rather die than go back there."
"Like it or not, it's where you belong," Lydana told her twin, "and it's where you're going back to."
"It's easy for you...after all, you have it all, don't you? All the success and glory you could ever want. But what is there for me?" The twin shook her head. "You don't know anything about the pain and suffering you'd be sending me back to."
Lydana raised her eyebrow.
"Is that so?" Her tone was ice cold and emotionless. "You have my memories. Take a look through them. See just how perfect my life has been."
Lydana's mirror self did so, looking back over Lydana's most recent life: The loss of a captain straight out of the academy; the loss of crew and ship, shortly after; the loss of her wife, the first woman she had ever loved.
She had no idea that Lydana had suffered so much - not that she regretted her actions, of course. She still felt she was entitled to her double's successes, but now that feeling was tempered with something that might charitably have been called sympathy.
"I never kn-"
A fierce punch smashed across her face, knocking her head back against the deck.
"You never knew?!" Lydana snapped. "Of course you didn't! You were too busy trying to usurp my life, everything that I had worked so hard to achieve!" She reached down and dragged her twin back to her feet, using the momentum to slam her face first into the Interceptor's hull. "Everything I have now, every success I earned, I worked for to honour her, the woman who gave my life meaning! And you thought you could take it all away!" She drove her knee into her counterpart's stomach, pulling her upright by her hair to punch her again. Before she could recover, Lydana dealt her double one final, rage-fuelled punch, and she finally fell to the floor unconscious.
"Someone take this piece of shit to the brig," she spat, bending down to retrieve her rank pips and commbadge. "And get some fucking lights back on."
She was suddenly enveloped in a huge, rib-crushing hug, and she returned as best she could.
"I'm so happy you're safe, mama!" Leonie squealed, finally setting Lydana down
"I'm glad you are too, sweetie," Lydana told her future daughter. "You are alright, I take it? No cuts, bruises, anything like that?"
Leonie waved the idea away, smirking at the much shorter admiral.
"No, I'm okay, honestly," she said softly. "I'm just...I'm sorry I wasn't much help, you know?"
Lydana took Leonie's hand and held it reassuringly.
"Leonie, you knocked that little bitch down - literally - and kept your cool. You did just fine."
There was a moment of awkward silence between them, both knowing what needed to be said but afraid to give it voice.
"I'll miss you, kiddo," Lydana managed at last, and Leonie shook her head.
"No," Leonie started, her voice sad, "you probably won't. We'll need to wipe your memory, to protect the timeline...and our family."
She tapped a command into a wrist-mounted device, and suddenly the two of them disappeared in a blue haze.
They rematerialized in a room that Lydana found familiar. The grey, sleek paneling and cyan lighting brought with it memories of a rather unpleasant time - She would recognise the bridge of timeship Eternal anywhere.
Movement caught Lydana's eye, and she noticed a familiar, albeit changed, face. One that replaced some of its youthfulness with aged experience, a grey streak breaking up the sea of raven-black hair.
Anaïs' eyes were focused on Léonie when she rose from her command chair, a look of relief on her face quickly replaced by surprise as her eyes ventured over to Lydana. She froze in her tracks, before adopting a neutral expression.
"Everyone, leave us." She said, her eyes focusing back on Léonie.
"Aye, Admiral," was all some of the other officers said, before quickly filing out of the bridge, as tense silence hung in the air.
"Anaïs," Lydana said, suddenly incredibly self-conscious about how she must look after her fight. "You, uh...you look good," the diminutive admiral managed at last.
Anaïs' expression relaxed, as she turned her gaze to Lydana.
"So do you. Certainly younger than I've last seen you." She chuckled, a smile briefly forming on her lips - one that did not hide her serious tone as she spoke again. "I am wondering why you're here though." The last statement seemed directed more to Léonie than to the Bajoran, but Lydana stepped in for her daughter.
"Ah, I can answer that - you can blame every Starfleet officer's worst nightmare, Q, for Léonie being here. Although, it was nice to learn I have a daughter in the future."
"Q, of co…" Anais began, but froze as her eyes widened in realization. Once again she locked her eyes on Léonie. "You told her?!" She asked incredulously.
"Sorry mama, but I-" Léonie clapped her hand over her mouth as she realised what she just said, and panic began to set in. "I-I'm sorry, but I...I just...I didn't...oh, fuck!"
The young officer ran off the bridge, and Lydana slowly turned to face Anaïs - who was currently burying her face in her palm, exasperation clear in her body language.
"So...you...are my second wife?" she asked, before her face creased in a broad grin. "I sure have a habit of marrying up, don't I?"
Anaïs stared at her dispassionately.
"You certainly seem to think so in our timeline," she said, fighting the ghost of a smile, "but surely you understand why this means we have to wipe your memory of these events - it's too dangerous for you to remember any of it."
"The Temporal Prime Directive, right?" Lydana answered sadly, and Anaïs nodded, typing some commands into a nearby terminal.
"I'm going to drop you back in your timeline, and when you get there neither you nor anyone else will remember Leonie being related to you. I wish there was another way, but-"
"No you don't," Lydana said with a smile. "You're a professional, like me. You do what has to be done."
"True enough. Well then...until next time, Lydana."
"Until next time."
Lydana smiled at Anaïs as the temporal agent engaged the teleporter, and Lydana once again vanished in a blue haze.
