Old Memories, New Memories

Posted on Fri Dec 17th, 2021 @ 2:32am by Lieutenant Commander Rin

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Federation Starbase 128
Timeline: 2388 (9 years ago)
935 words - 1.9 OF Standard Post Measure

No one aboard the USS Curie had seen Captain Addison show the degree of trepidation he did today as he disembarked. On one hand, this was a reunion he had never expected to have. On the other, the doctors had warned in no uncertain terms the woman he was seeing would be quite unlike what he remembered.

He had been waiting three months to be allowed access. Three months of reliving nightmares he had thought buried years ago. Three months imagining her life now, and how she’d react, and how he might react in return. Three months of his very understanding wife reassuring him visiting his legally dead wife was the right thing to do.

Her doctor escorted him to a door in the civilian section of the habitat ring. “I’ll be just outside if you need anything.”

Addison nodded mechanically. The doctor wasn’t really the one on his mind.

After a long pause, he pressed the door chime.

The door slid open to reveal a room still in its default configuration. A young woman approached to greet him, short, with a blunt haircut, dressed in unremarkable tunic and pants. The implants on her face were obvious, but not nearly as dominating as he had envisioned. Her expression was mostly blank, tinged with perhaps a bit of nervousness and curiosity, devoid of the radiant, extroverted personality he remembered.

But it was still her.

“Hello…Rin,” he said.

“Hello, Captain Addison.”

He thought he only inwardly winced at such a formal address, but her slight frown suggested she had picked up on it.

“Is there something else you wish to be called?” she asked.

“You may call me James, if you wish. Or Captain Addison is fine,” he lied. He had thought a certain barrier of formality would help, but hearing her call him that was almost physically painful.

She nodded, and for a long moment her gaze scrutinized every part of him. There was something almost childlike in her mannerisms, her body language – stiff as it was – reflecting someone trying to make sense of everything going on around her.

“Rin, am I familiar at all to you?”

She shook her head, averting her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re not. And that hurts you, and I can’t do anything about that. This was a bad idea.”

“If you would like me to leave, I will, but I would prefer to sit and talk a little.”

She looked almost confused by his response, but nevertheless directed him to the couch and offered drinks from the replicator, setting them down on the coffee table before taking a seat beside him.

The emotional pain was obvious. He instinctively reached out to give her hand a reassuring squeeze, a gesture he had done a thousand times half a lifetime ago. She looked at him oddly, again reminding him she had no recollection of him, and he pulled away.

“I’m sorry. That was forward of me.”

“It’s…ok.” She reached out and rested her hand in his.

“Yes, this is hard, but I can’t expect you to behave or feel in any particular way because of what I remember. You are alive, Rin. You are safe. That is already more than I thought possible. This is a good day for me, and I hope it is for you too.”

“That’s…not what I was expecting.”

“I loved you. And the thing about love is it’s not about yourself. It’s about the other person. If there is anything you need, and I mean anything, just ask. I want to see you well.

“Thank you.”

James took a drink of his coffee. “If I may ask, why did you agree to see me?”

“They said you’ve been asking. I thought maybe it would help you. And, I suppose, I was curious if anything would come back. Nothing else has triggered memories. I’m not sure what I want on the matter. Perhaps if I could remember what I’ve forgotten I would want to remember it more.”

She stood up and picked up a holo-pic from a desk, bringing it back to the couch. “They gave me this. She looks happy.”

James gently took the picture. It was taken during a hiking trip during their last year of Academy, both of them smiling, both of them in love. Her wavy hair had been a mess, tossed by the wind. They married three months after the picture had been taken.

And then, two years later, she had died.

“Are you happy?” James asked.

“I’m not unhappy. I‘d like to feel more than I do. When I see others experience emotion, I feel…hollow, but I can’t figure out what to do about it.” She reached out and touched his hand again. “This feels…reassuring? I’m not sure.”

She looked so incredibly fragile in that moment. James wanted to throw his arms around her and hold her until she felt safe and loved again, but he knew better, so he settled with giving her hand another squeeze.

That he hadn’t been aboard the London when it was ordered to Wolf 359 had been a fluke. And while he knew that there was absolutely nothing he could have done, it still felt a bit like he had abandoned her to a fate even worse than death.

Then again, if she hadn’t been assimilated, she wouldn’t be here now.

But he wasn’t going to give the Borg points for that.