Hello my lovely readers!
IMPORTANT INFORMATION!
This will serve as the last "preview" chapter that I will post in "The Trek of the Stars". As of now there should be a new story posted entitled "She Falls Into Darkness" where I will have all of the preview chapters posted as well. Chapters 10-13 are now chapters 1-3 of She Falls Into Darkness. Go ahead and make your way over there to start following the progress on the new story because I will no longer be posting new chapters in Trek of the Stars. Sooooo...yeah that's it for now. Oh and big fat thank you to my beta datfluteplaya1714. Love you girl!
Ok I'll stop talking now...and read my note at the end...please
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek.
Fire. That's all she could see.
"God damnit Jim go!" a voice echoed-her voice-against the walls of the cave.
More fire. Ash, rocks, metal...all falling. Chocking, coughing, blood. So much blood she could hardly breathe. "Time to go..." she whispered. Then the silver of the phaser flashed and she felt the burn in her head. It hurt. Her entire heard burned from the inside out.
Crystal blue eyes rimmed with tears watched her...wanted her. She could remember his name...James...she said goodbye and pulled the trigger.
Lara shot her eyes open. She was lying on the same table from before and thought she could hear a voice echoing somewhere from the other side of the room. Attempting to move she found her limbs stiff and awkward. She sat up, with great difficulty and tried to swing her legs over the edge of the bed and nearly fell over in the process.
That's when she felt the same hands from before take her shoulders, "You're awake then."
Looking up she saw his face clearly for the first time. He was very handsome with pale skin and eyes so bright...so clear. "Wha...Who?"
He wrapped a strong arm around her waist and helped her stand, "Harrison, John Harrison."
Lara moved her eyes around the room quickly. She was in a lab of some sorts, makeshift, home-made. The memory of the man-John-putting her back to sleep before flashed in her head and she remembered how quickly she had trusted him. Is that right? She thought watching his face as she clumsily pushed him away and stood up on her own.
John turned to a small bed-side table and pulled out from the drawer a set of clothes. Handing them to her he instructed she put them on. Lara set the clothes on the bed and was nearly shocked when he walked out of the room, closing the door behind himself.
She looked down at the pile of clothes. A pair of black shorts and a black t-shirt. As Lara began to pull on the shorts and shirt she had more flashes of her dream. More like a nightmare, she thought adjusting the cotton shirt over her arms.
Lara thought about her dream. The fire and sounds were all so real. That man...his blue eyes. Then the memory of a blast of a phaser to her head hit her so hard she fell over. Knocking the bed on its side and causing a loud crash to echo against the metal floors.
She held her head in her hands as it pounded and she could feel the fires reaching out for her. "Lara?" John's voice carried across the room to her.
Without thinking she bolted for the nearest, unblocked exit which for her was the large floor-to-ceiling windows. Bursting through the glass she felt for the briefest of moments a sense of weightlessness. Then she was falling.
It felt like she was falling for ages until she saw the large metal garbage transport hovering just below her. Lara felt her instincts take over then. She aimed for the transport, straightening out her body, gaining speed the more she fell.
Just as she was about to hit the transport Lara tumbled and closed her eyes, letting her body take over. To her utter surprise she landed on her feet, knees bent and fists planted firmly into the metal of the transport. What? She thought looking around at where she had landed.
The transport was moving at an incredibly fast pace, causing the wind to kick up severely. Her hair flew all around her face as she straightened up and turned her eyes to the sky. Falling from that distance...should be dead. Lara looked down at her hands and knees. There was hardly a mark on any of them.
She heard a solid thump behind her and turned around to find John had landed on the same transport. As he stood and loomed over her she realized how much she had wanted to stay with him when she first woke up. But who was the man with the blue eyes?
"Lara please, I'm just trying to help you." He called to her as calmly as he could over the noise.
Shaking her head at him she moved to the edge of the transport and looked down. "Too much pain," she whispered more to herself. Turning back to face him she pointed to her head, "Fire and ash dance in the memory. They don't make sense. They bring pain."
"I can take away that pain. I can make the memories go away." He stated the fact like he had rehearsed the line before, simple and calculated.
Lara paused and considered her words carefully before saying them, "I...don't want the pain...anymore. The memories...make my head hurt...his eyes scare me," she wrapped her arms around her body, trembling and feeling alone.
Again John edged closer to her reaching out a hand for her, "I can make that pain disappear. I'll help you..."
Lara turned back and looked over the edge of the transport. So many little things underneath the moving machine. All she would need to do was step off the edge, take the plunge and end the pain forever.
"Lara stop," John called to her, "You are all I have."
That made her stop. She looked back at him with wide, confused eyes. "All you have? You have...no one?"
John sighed, defeated, "All of my family are dead," he stepped closer and extended both hands to her, "Except you."
Lara walked to him, taking each step with care. When she was within his reach, he pulled her to his chest and let out a sigh of relief. Lara just stood in his arms, stiff and trembling. "It hurts me...John. The memories hurt."
"I can make them stop hurting. I can take away the pain."
"The man John says Lara should do this. Record herself and talk to no one. He says it helps her brain heal…not be sick anymore…take away the pain," Lara tapped her fingers against the edge of the desk and looked around her nervously, "Sometimes she feels like the ceiling might fall. Sometimes when a light is turned on, her head burns and she remembers the flames...how they tried to eat her. But Lara wouldn't let them."
She sucked in her bottom lip and chewed the inside of her cheek, tapping the unfamiliar rhythms against the desk, "Lara stopped the flames from taking her life. She remembers that. The man John makes her sit and he counts down from five while she sleeps but really, she's awake. Lara only pretends it works so the man John doesn't get angry with her. Lara...killed...herself. Used the phaser and pulled the trigger. What was so important that she died for? She...I…ah..."
Lara held her head as the memories fought and pounded, "His name what was his name! Eyes so blue they look like sky and hair so soft it could make me cry," she banged her fists against the desk as she fought back the tears,
"James T. Kirk! Kirk! Kirk! Kirk!" she slammed her fists against the desk each time she cried out his name, "Lara remembers on her own! Lara remembers on her own! That is what she died for. The one who isn't here, with eyes like the sky and hair so soft it could make her cry."
She stopped and checked her surroundings. When she was sure she was alone she leaned in towards the camera and whispered, "The man John Harrison is a liar. Lara knows his name isn't John Harrison so who could he be? A spy yes, a spy from a different world. Ancient and forgotten, long past but never gone," she straightened up and looked around the room,
"John! John! Lara needs you! Come to where you first met and Lara will tell you good news!"
Looking back at the camera she grinned maniacally, "John wants her. But she isn't ready up here," she pointed to her head with the smile still plastered onto her face, "When Lara is back to normal, when she can push away the crazy and the man John can take away the pain...then she will want him. I can tell. Shhh...it's our secret."
LINE BREAK
John stopped the recording. Leaning back he realized just how close Lara had been to falling completely over the edge. In fact it seemed that she had. Talking in third person, speaking in rhymes, he couldn't believe she had come so far. That recording was made nearly two months ago. John looked at the screen; Lara's eyes were wild and bloodshot. He didn't want her to see what she had been like. Quickly trashing the video, he made sure to erase it completely from the computer before leaning back in his chair.
The phaser blast to her head had caused much more damage than he thought. So much so that she required direct injections of his serum into her brain. He had to put her under for those operations...definitely not his favorite. However the short term memory loss was expected.
It was true what she said in the recording. He did want Lara, but not just for purely physical reasons. He wanted so much more. He wanted her to be his family, his life, and even his...love.
John held his head and squeezed. He hated himself for thinking like this. Wanting-no-needing love when he knew how weak it made people. Love clouded the mind and replaced logic with irrational and emotional thoughts. But how could he deny her? Deny himself even? Marcus had woken him up and destroyed his only family, killed his entire crew. Now that he was free and alone...why not take the initiative and find himself a small amount of happiness?
At first he had planned to use Lara against Starfleet. Manipulate her into his own personal weapon and aim her at the hearts of her former crew. Who better to bring them down then a former friend who was thought dead but is now working for the enemy?
John stood then and walked out of his lab. Moving out and down the hall he passed by Lara's room. Before he knew what he was doing, he had his hand on her door knob and slowly pushed it open. Peeking in he saw Lara's form stretched out on the bed. Limbs tangled in the white sheets, mouth slightly parted, hair across her neck and sticking out in every direction. John walked to the side of the bed and reached down to move her hair away from her neck. As his fingers touched her skin she closed her mouth and turned over onto her side, stretching her arms above her head. John gingerly ran a finger across her jaw and found himself relived that she was finally getting a night of peaceful sleep.
Lara had been suffering from nightmares of her death, massive migraines and even had difficulty speaking in clear sentences. It had taken John weeks to get her used to a routine. Every morning she would wake up and he would have her go through tests and training. Mind games, puzzles, physical training...anything to help her mind get back on track. He had tried the hypnosis a few times but found that her now genetically enhanced mind was in fact too enhanced for it. She would pretend to sleep but luckily she always spoke the truth.
Lara now had the rare nightmare, but they were small and would hardly cause her to yell out in her sleep. She had also gained back her memory and what she had told him did not surprise John. Apparently she was in love with her Captain. James Tiberius Kirk had been her life-long friend and both had joined Starfleet wanting to escape their lives and move on to bigger and better things.
She had become friends with a doctor, Leonard McCoy and had a bit of a fling with him but that hadn't branched off anywhere. According to Lara, she had chosen the Captain and eventually...died for him. The unnamed facility they had investigated was an ancient remnant of Section 31. John's "super soldier" formula had been lost and it looked like this facility had been tasked with trying to recreate it. Obviously they had failed.
He backed out of her room, quietly shutting the door and leaning against it when he heard the latch click in place. Stupid, and utterly ridiculous, he thought gently knocking his head on the door. He couldn't love her, he cannot love her...no weaknesses.
That's when he heard her voice behind the door. "N...no...no more pain," John opened the door again and watched as she began to thrash against the bed, "Time...time to...to go."
He thought she was done but then she started screaming. Yelling out and fighting against some unknown force. John thought she would get past the small fit but when she started to violently scratch at her arms he intervened. He sat at the edge of the bed and grabbed her wrists. She fought him and kicked her legs, screaming out her fears.
"Lara," he said calmly as to not scare her even more, "Wake up darling. Lara wake up."
She struggled more but finally her eyes shot open. "Wh...J-John? John there was fire," Lara trembled, "The fire was coming for me."
"That was only a dream," he reached over and switched on her bedside table. Turning back to her he nearly fell over as she threw her arms around his neck. John sat there stiffly and unsure of what to do.
Lara sobbed into his shoulder, "I don't want to have nightmares anymore John. I don't want to be scared of the fire anymore."
John put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her away. He looked at her swollen, red eyes and held her chin in his hand. His voice trembled and he fought back tears, "I promise you Lara, I will make them go away. I will help you."
Her mouth spluttered and another wave of tears fell. "Don't leave me," Lara whimpered and leaned into his chest, broken and in pieces.
He moved to sit against the headboard of her large bed; keeping her head on his chest he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Go to sleep now," John said running a hand through her silken hair, "I'll be here when you wake up. You're not alone."
Well that's it for now. Don't forget to head on over to "She Falls Into Darkness" and follow the progress over there. ALSO you should probably know that I and my beta have come up with a pretty bangin selection of songs that sum up the story. I will post the link to the spotify playlist on my profile page AND you should also know that each song represents one (or two) of the three main characters of the new story (Lara, John Harrison, Jim Kirk). I won't say which is which because I'm afraid that will reveal my plans for the story so...I'll leave it up to you to interpret the songs as you hear them. Thank you so much for reading and the reviews/follows/favorites always bring a smile to my face.
Kthanksbye!