<USS Avalon> Reinforcements

Reinforcements

by Susanna Jameson, Josh Garrity and Ming Kabuki (with appearances by Patrick 
McEntire and Li Vilya)

 

Mac looked up and sighed in relief as Ming entered engineering, responding to 
Vilya's call. "Man, am I glad to see you." 


Ming, casually dressed in a blue sweater and neutral slacks, offered Mac a grim 
smile. "You know I'm always here to help, Mac. Now, what do you want me to do?" 


Mac looked from him to Vilya. What did he want him to do? "Fix things?" he 
answered lamely. "Did V tell you what was going on?"


"She did," Ming replied, squeezing her hand lightly. "I don't know that I can 
'fix things' but I can sure try to get them to where he can try to fix it 
himself. Where is he?" 


Mac looked more than a little relieved at not having to retell it again. "He's 
at home. Anna's there with him right now. Assuming he hasn't bolted." 


"Show me where to go then. I may have been traipsing all over on walks but I 
don't think I was quite paying attention," Ming admitted with a slight shrug. 


Mac carefully directed him to their shared quarters. "He's not much good about 
talking to people, Ming. You might have to just...I dunno...work with whatever 
he gives you. You know what I mean?" 


Ming pressed the chime and waited. He had no idea what to expect other than 
what Mac and Vilya had told him. Grief could be an a harsh thing.


Anna glanced up from the PADD she was perusing and called for the visitor to 
enter. As the door slid open, she thought she recognized the man but wasn't 
completely sure. "What can I do for you?" 


Ming offered Anna a slight smile. "It's Ming Kabuki. I know--I'm not in the 
Grim Reaper outfit as you called it. Mac asked me to come talk to Joshua." 


Josh barely glanced at Ming as he walked in as he went to put away the sketch 
book again.


"He's cleaning, if you can get him to sit still for five minutes or even five 
seconds then be my guest," Anna said. Truth be told he'd been on a sort of 
cleaning frenzy since Mac. It wasn't just that he wouldn't slow down or stop. 
It was that it seemed he almost couldn't. And it wasn't just the cleaning 
itself, either. It was the meticulousness of it. Everything had to be precisely 
done, precisely spaced, precisely right. The obsessiveness of his actions just 
seemed to build and grow, and it was honestly beginning to worry her.

As he reached to put the wide pad into the desk again, something struck him, 
though he couldn't place it. The pictures were wrong now. Removing it again, he 
opened it to the back of the book and took it to the reclamation unit. One by 
one he began tearing the actual drawings from the back, wadding them up and 
stuffing them into the unit. 


Jumping up, Anna grabbed a hold of the pictures and pulled them back out. "Hey 
there sport, don't do that." 


Ming stepped toward the center of the room, placing himself in Josh's path. 
"Joshua, if you have a minute I'd like to talk to you. I can see you're busy 
but it's important."


Josh looked blankly at Anna a moment before turning his gaze to Ming. 


Ming held up both hands in as non-threatening gesture as possible. "Joshua, 
please sit down. I want to talk to you. I want to tell you how very sorry I am 
about your brother but you have to know that I don't believe that what made him 
Zachary is really gone." 

Josh nodded slightly, responding, his voice barely audible. "It's not." 


"No, it's not," Ming said with a simple conviction. "The physical him, the part 
we can touch, may no longer be with us but what made him unique...special...is 
still here," Ming said, reaching to not quite touch Josh's head and then his 
chest, "here, too. I know it."


Josh nodded as he stuffed the sketch pad into Anna's hands and grabbed a dust 
rag. He could still feel him. The echo that told him he was there. He wasn't 
gone. He couldn't be. 


"Pictures...music...even places and food...they will all remind us of physical 
memories but the spirit is what keeps those memories alive. Sometimes, if you 
sit still and just be...you can hear the spirit talk to you. The spirit talks 
even without speech.? 


Pulling the scraps out of the recycler, Anna sat down at the table and began 
carefully flattening out each drawing and placing them in the back of the book. 
Even though she understood why he wanted to destroy them now, she also knew 
that he would be sorry for it later. 


Josh shook his head sharply. Sit still and just be. No. Not an option. Not 
right now. It was wrong. All of it. All of it was wrong. It could be put right, 
though. It had to be. 


Ming walked over and picked up one of the pictures, smiling slightly. "You two 
look alike. If you are as close to your brother as I am to mine, I can tell you 
what my brothers would say if I were in the same spot as you. Your life has 
extended beyond you. I doubt sincerely that your brother would what the 
precious spark that made you his brother to cease just because what made him 
physical has..." 


Josh looked at him, his expression was of one at a complete loss. What was he 
talking about? Beyond them? He'd seen enough death to know there was nothing 
beyond that, save the disposal of the bodies. What was he talking about?


Ming saw the look of skepticism on Josh's face. He nodded toward Anna and said, 
"Mac...Anna...my wife...they are all part of you. Our lives in this plain are 
so interconnected. In the next plain, I know it is more so. Else, she wouldn't 
have called me Grim Reaper once." 


Josh looked at Anna quizzically. Grim Reaper? 


"I can't help you, preacher. Please don't ask me to. Gone is gone, there is 
nothing else." Anna knew she wasn't helping but she couldn't lie, even to help 
a friend. 

"Joshua, do think that because you haven't seen a thing that it means it 
doesn't exist?" 


Josh had heard enough. No more talk of dead and gone. "I need a shower," he 
said quietly, turning from them both and heading out of the room. 


Ming shook his head slowly. It wasn't hopeless. He had listened, maybe not 
understood, but he had listened. "Anna, I'm going back to talk to Mac. Let me 
know if he settles down some?" 


                
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