<USS Avalon> "Facing Feelings - Part 3"

Facing Feelings - Part 3
by Lieutenants Patrick McEntire and Sussanna Jameson
 
The entrancing opening notes of Mi Mancherai trilled out from the exceptional 
speaker system in the CMO's quarters.  Crossing her legs at the anckles, Anna 
sank into the soft, squidgey sofa and perused an article on new methods for 
treating Bendii syndrome.  The sweet, spicy aroma of cinnamon tea wafted from 
the coffee table.  She sighed as she settled deeper, relaxing in the company of 
her journal.
 
"I hope you made enough tea for two," Mac said, letting himself in, figuring he 
had, after all, been invited. "It smells good." Smiling, he sat down on the 
sofa next to her and reached for one of her journals. "So...what're we reading 
tonight?"
 
Her jaw dropped.  "How...  You are the resourceful one, aren't you?"  Respect 
flashed through her eyes as she offered the page she'd been reading to him.  
"Bendii syndrome, it affects elderly vulcans, leading to loss of control over 
their emotions.  They become overwhelmed by them and finally die of it.  It has 
terrible stigma attached to it within vulcan society, as you can imagine."  Her 
eyes never left his face as she described the symptoms.  "But you don't really 
want to know about that, right?"
 
Scooting closer to her, Mac accepted the article, positioning it so they both 
could look at it and ignoring her last question entirely. "My friend T'Pell's 
grandfather had it just before he passed away. I remember how ashamed her 
family seemed to be. Struck me as odd, to be honest. I always assumed shame was 
an emotion."
 
"It's a common misconception that even the most highly trained vulcans are 
completely immune to showing emotion.  In fact..."  She lost the ability to 
form thoughts in the sheer absurdity of the situation.  "In fact... er... they 
do, even though it might be only very slightly."  Shaking herself, Anna decided 
to pretend this was just another academic situation.  She pointed out a graph 
of the relative speeds of deterioration in vulcans of varying levels of 
training.  "Bendii is considered to be the worst thing that can happen to a 
vulcan.  There have been cases when it has hit a relatively young person and 
they were subsequently disowned by their family."
 
Mac nodded, reading the article quickly. "T'Pell said something like that to 
me. It didn't make any more sense to me then than it does now."
 
"Mac, why are you here?"  Placing her hand over the article, she pushed it 
down.  "I'm serious, this stuff is dry even to most doctors, so why are you 
here, reading this, with me?"
 
Mac looked at her seriously, as though she'd just asked the mother of all 
stupid questions. "Because I want to be....duh. Why not? Is there a particular 
reason I shouldn't be?"
 
"Because I'm dull and so is all this."  Anna just looked at him, trying to 
figure him out, deciding if he was taking the piss or not.
 
"Bullshit" he answered simply. Putting an arm around her, he pulled her closer 
and repositioned the journal across both their laps. "Now, do you want to read 
this or not? I'm good either way."
 
"Not particularly, though I don't know what else we can do."  Tea, he'd said 
something about tea.  Dashing to her feet, she replicated another cup of the 
herbal she'd been drinking.  Setting it in front of him, she smiled.  "Hope you 
like it."
 
Mac gamely took a drink, then had to try hard not to spit it back out. Somehow 
he doubted she'd appreciate the gesture, and she meant too much to him to risk 
hurting her feelings. Choking it down, he admitted. "It could use a little shot 
of ...something..." Seeing the look on her face, he amended quickly. "Probably 
just needs sugar. I'm sure it'd be fine, then. I'm kind of fond of things that 
are kinda sweet." He grinned as he added."Like you..."
 
Blushing, Anna offered up the pot of honey she'd used to sweeten her own tea.  
"Thank you," she mumbled.  How can this man make me so tongue-tied?  I'm a 
fully grown, well-educated Starfleet Officer and this is daft.  "But I'm 
caustic, not sweet."  She sipped her drink and glanced at him out of the corner 
of her eye.  "Not like you, anyway."
 
"Bullshit," he laughed again, accepting the honey gratefully and added it into 
the mixture. He sipped it tentatively, then nodded. That was better. "So, what 
do you do for fun? Besides these exciting journals, that is..."
 
Anna chuckled, wracking her brain for the things that would make her 
interesting.  You're joking, aren't you?  "I read, mostly vampire stuff.  I 
play the violin," she said as she pointed to the music stand with a case placed 
beside it.  "I, er, go walkabout.  You know, hiking in the outback.  When I'm 
home, I go for real but here I have to make do with the holodeck.  My program 
isn't all that great but it works for me.  Would you like to see it some time?" 
 Blushing again furiously, Anna silently begged the ground to swallow her whole.
 
"Sure, let's go." Mac said, standing and stretching.  Smiling, he added, "I 
could use a walkabout."
 
***
 
The holodeck doors swooshed open and they were blasted with the dry heat of 
Australia's outback.  Uluru watched them from the far horizon, it's deep orange 
bulk dominating the whole countryside.  Pointing at the cliff-face, Anna 
grinned at Mac.
 
"We're heading there.  If we get there, we can climb but most of the time I 
come for the walk."
 
Mac's grin widened. "Whoa, look at that." he said, his voice full of awe at the 
sheer beauty of the view. "Let's go. We can walk it, climb it, then picnic at 
the top. You think?"
 
"Absolutely!"  Setting a fast pace, Anna set off toward her favourite place in 
the Galaxy.  "You know, back on Earth, you're not allowed to climb Uluru any 
more?  This is the only place you can do it, in a holosuite."  A tiny shred of 
regret wound through her belly.  "They did it centuries ago to preserve it for 
the Aboriginal people.  I wish I'd been alive when you could though, I'd give 
anything to feel the earth of the real rock beneath my feet."  She glanced over 
at him.  "To smell the air up there just once, you know?"
 
Mac nodded, still grinning. He almost told her how he got arrested once for 
trying that exact thing, but decided better of it. Probably not really 
encouraging on a first date to find out your partner has a record. Besides, he 
was having way too much fun being given the guided tour, and seeing it through 
her eyes.
 
"According to the Aborigines, each event that happens, everything we do, leaves 
its mark on the world around us.  The landscape is the ultimate example of 
this, where the acts of the creator beings left their stamp in the form of the 
physical world.  They call this stamp or mark the Dreaming of a place.  It's 
the echo of what went before."  The ground beneath their feet was quickly eaten 
up by their energetic hike.  Anna smiled shyly.  "I'm not sure if I believe all 
of it, I used to but..." But nevermind!  She closed her thoughts to that and 
continued to explain the culture of the native people of Australia.
 
"But what?" Mac risked interrupting, curious to hear the completion of that 
thought. "I'm sorry, but you said you used to believe it but...but what? What 
changed your mind?"
 
"My mother died."  She wanted to leave it at that, almost did but to hell with 
it, he may as well know what kind of a nutty mare he's friends with.  "She 
loved the Aboriginal culture, emerced herself in it.  Our local tribe even 
adopted her.  When I was very young she would take me out to the rock and we'd 
walk around it.  I can remember my mum telling me all the dreamtime stories, 
pointing out all the dreamtracks around the rock's faces.  And then we were 
involved in an accident."  Anna shook herself, her pace slowing and finally 
stopping completely.
 
"It was bad, I actually don't remember the event itself.  All I remember is the 
endless days in a medical facility, waiting to be told if my mum would live or 
not.  She did, but she was paralised from the waist down.  Funny, all this 
wonderous technology and we still couldn't make her legs work properly."  
Pausing, Anna curled her legs under her and sat down on the dusty earth.  
"During my third year at the Academy my Dad calls me.  He says she's tried to 
kill herself.  I rushed home and when I get there, he told me what she'd done."
 
Shivering inspite of the heat, Anna stared at the ground two feet in front of 
her.  "According to him, her medical condition had worsened and he'd kept her 
house bound.  No more trips to Uluru for her.  The Chief of her tribe came, 
told her dreamtime stories, tried to make her remember the earth.  But slowly 
her heart died.  One day, my father came home to find her collapsed from an 
overdose."
 
Mac listened attentively. He understood better than he could explain, having 
dealt with Sean, Seth and Shelby, and the problems they all shared. When at 
last she reached the end of her tale, he reached out and took her hand. "I'm 
sorry, sweetie. How'd you handle all of that?"
 
"I died," she whispered.  "All her faith, her unswerving dedication to the 
Dreaming, none of it saved her.  The Ancient Ones didn't swoop down and make 
her better.  They left her to die.  My father got to her in time, he got the 
drugs out of her system.  But she'd given up.  I was given compassionate leave 
from the Academy to go home and nurse her.  My father," she spat, "refused to 
deal with her.  She was catatonic.  Within three months she died.  She never 
regained consciousness."  Darkness crept through her eyes as she squeased Mac's 
hand.  "Dead is dead, the world didn't even notice her passing, how could she 
have left her stamp on the Dreaming?"
 
"But don't you see," Mac stopped her, looking at her earnestly. "She did. You 
still remember what she taught you, whether you accept it now or not. You 
remember her. She exists in you. And now, here, you're sharing a part of her 
with me. That's not gone. That's magic." He shook his head. "And none of that 
really changes any of that for you, does it? You can't hug a memory..." he 
wrapped his arms around her and held her gently a moment, then looked down. 
"What say you share the rest of what she showed you with me? I really would 
like to see it."
 
"Yeah."  Anna reached for his hand tentatively, curling her fingers through 
his.  They covered the rest of the distance quickly.  Before Mac started 
climbing the rock, Anna held him back.  "We walk the circumference first, that 
way I can show you the dreamtracks, tell you the stories."
 
They walked a little further and Anna suddenly stopped.  Pointing up at a 
series of deep, symmetrical grooves in the surface of the rock, Anna started to 
tell Mac a dreamtime story.  "In the creation period, Tatji, the small Red 
Lizard, who lived on the mulgi flats, came to Uluru. When he threw his kali, 
which is like this curved throwing stick, it became embedded in the surface. 
Using his hands, he tried to scoop it out and in his efforts to retrieve it, he 
left that series of bowl-shaped hollows."
 
Mac nodded, letting her take the lead and listening attentively to all she had 
to say.

 
A little of her earlier sadness returned.  "He died.  A kali is a hunting 
weapon, without it he couldn't eat.  It was stuck so deep that no matter how 
much he scraped, he still couldn't reach it.  There's a cave here that holds 
the remains of his body.  I can remember seeing the form in the rocks when I 
was little, now they just look like rubble to me."  She knew she was spoiling 
the magic, knew she needed to be more cheerful; but she'd never shared this 
place with anyone and he was managing to bring memories out of her that she 
normally kept so well hidden.
 
"Sometimes the magic is easier to see when we're young, before life pushes us 
away from it." Giving her hand a gentle squeeze, he assured her, "It'll come 
back in it's own time. Then you can show me that cave." 
 
"You're a very sweet man, Mac."  Anna smiled shyly again, stepping a little 
closer to him.  Biting her lip, she drank in the details of his face much like 
she did with her beloved Uluru.  "Very sweet indeed."
 
"Shh," he teased with a wink. "Don't tell anyone."  Grinning, he leaned down 
and kissed her gently on the lips, then added. "It's a secret."

Other related posts: