Love and Sacrifice
Posted on 25 Apr 2021 @ 2:27pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Ethan Walker, MD, Ph.D
Edited on on 25 Apr 2021 @ 2:32pm
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Enviromental Ring, memorial
Timeline: MD03 Morning, Immediately Following In Memory
1678 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure
Calliope stubbornly came to stand again, still staring at the betting cube in her hand. Indecisively, she began to move to return it to the wall where she’d intended to leave it, but after staring at it paused and angled instead towards the vigil sitting bench. Using her hover chair for support by holding to the back of it and then stepping out into the open path, she measured out the steps. Maybe she should have taken the little distance with the hover chair. It would have been simple enough to hold it from behind as if it were a walker and pretend to be pushing it along for someone else. But she wasn’t thinking in that moment about saving face. She wasn’t thinking in terms of her physical self much at all as in that moment, her aches and pains fell away from the forefront of her mind while something much bigger seemed to impress itself. Maybe she should have called to Lance. He was within view on the opposite side of the memorial allowing her some space and absorbed in his own respects; even if she’d considered it, she just didn’t see calling out to him as proper for the situation. Instead she was absorbed more into trying to understand everything that had just struck her as some kind of wordless moment of revelation while she’d been communing at the wall.
About halfway to her destination, Calliope started to wobble and each successive step was just a little faster as she tried to get ahead of her own collapse. The last bit of distance was closed by a fall, her hands reflexively went out to catch herself on the bench and she just narrowly missed face planting on the concrete walk.
“Good to see you on your feet,” a voice declared quietly. Doctor Walker offered a slight smile to Calliope as he approached. His Starfleet variety uniform gone and replaced by his more traditional tab-collar robes which trailed the floor. “How are you feeling?”
She didn’t react right away, still recovering from the instinctual panic and bringing herself to sit. She thought about the question as she came back to her breath and got a grip. She hated that question lately. How do you feel? Even if it was markedly better than last week, she still felt like shit, physically. But there were other kinds of things to feel too. She leaned back into the bench and flattened the dress uniform over her belly. “Sad, proud, reflective...” she bit her lip as Walker sat down on the bench too and then admitted to some less admirable feelings. “Guilty, helpless, uncertain.” They weren’t all the words she was looking for but she felt… “Inadequate. Ashamed.” Maybe it was the robes that made her feel confessional. She looked down at her hand where she had closed her fist around the dice and scraped the base of her palm. “How about yourself?”
“Overwhelmed,” he admitted, looking up at the memorial wistfully, “Questioning,” he added, “No matter where I go, this is the story. Sacrifice. Death. Loss,” he sighed, rolling his rosary beads through his fingers. “But that’s all part of life, isn’t it. It wouldn’t be life without the risk of this,” he said, gesturing about. “It gives us perspective. Loss. Failure. Helplessness,” he said. “They help us grow.”
Subconsciously she mirrored his bead rolling, feeling the corners of the dice back and forth in her fingers. “Yeah.”
Ethan chuckled, “Point being. It’s normal to feel all those ways. It means you’re healing,” he clarified. “That’s a good thing. A very good thing,” he reassured her.
She thought about that for a minute and then asked, “You pray right?”
“I feel like there’s a joke there,” he smiled wryly before dangling his rosary beads a little more prominently. “But, yes. It’s almost a constant for me.”
“I went to some services when I was a kid. A friend of mine was in some sort of sect… The Universal Family Church of... something. I didn’t understand it. I was ten and just was into the idea that maybe somebody had some big answers. Was connected to the-all-of-everything. The idea felt mystical. I prayed a few times. My friend told me she had these… spiritual encounters. Visions and feelings. I kept waiting for mine until...” She shrugged.
“Some people see Jesus in their morning toast,” Ethan shrugged, “That experience is unique to everyone. Maybe you’ll have a spiritual awakening in your morning coffee? Maybe you’ll see it after you slip on the toilet and bump your head. Or maybe you never do. Maybe it’s just the every day little things that show you He’s there?” he shrugged, “We each have to find that on our own. Maybe we never have that ‘aha’ revelation. That doesn’t make your connection any less important,” he smiled, “People want to think it’s a comm signal. Clasp your hands and you’ll get an answer. It doesn’t really work like that. It’s about the connection you feel.”
“If you think you feel something revelatory…” She looked back at John’s returned memento, holding out the die in her finger tips. “What’s the difference between that and chance?”
“Would knowing the difference make the revelation any more or less valuable?”
“Yeah, I mean, otherwise what's the difference between delusions and gods? Between superstition and faith? Between seeing Christ in your toast because you want to or because an angel got into your toaster? How do I know I’m not making it up and there’s nobody hearing anything but me in my own head wishing for answers I’m telling myself?” Calliope sighed with frustration and checked herself when she felt maybe she was just being belligerent. “Sorry, Walker.” She leaned her wearied shoulders back against the bench. “I just… I get garden-variety intuitions kind of regularly. But this one just now seemed different somehow. I haven’t been praying. Just imagining someone was listening. Not ‘God’, just... someone that wasn’t judging me. That I couldn’t upset. Someone to talk to. And I knew it wasn’t real. But… I felt like he just answered me. And that sounds silly. Like a childhood imaginary friend. Right?”
“Do you imagine that you love your husband, or do you know?” Ethan asked, “Can you see the love? Can you touch it? Feel it with your fingers? How do you know it’s love and not a delusion? How do you really know?” he shrugged, smiling. “Maybe you are imagining your conversation. Maybe you’re not. What matters isn’t the yes, it was real, or no it was not. What matters is what you take from it. How it makes you feel.”
She wasn’t sure she liked that answer any better. As much as she always felt things deeply, it just seemed like some kind of cosmic cop out. Plenty of misguided and even dangerous people she’d dealt with had gotten there by chasing a feeling. She’d gotten in her own mess by wanting the comforting feeling of being in control of her monster. She looked down the length of the memorial, watching Lance contemplate an inscription. “Love? Maybe it’s untouchable. But sometimes… It’s more palpable than anything else.” She could agree about that at least. “But it’s not just a feeling. It’s far more. It’s sharing experience. It’s knowing deeply. It makes sacrifices, no matter what I feel, or what he feels. All of that is real. And it’s something much bigger than a feeling…” She trailed off, and Walker remained quiet, sensing she was processing out loud. “Sacrifice. I guess that’s the impression I was struck with. That feeling of un-repayable sacrifice. That sounds empty in a sense— ‘un-repayable’. Almost as if there’s no sense in trying to repay it. Why try? But I think I got called out. Called up. That the point isn’t to repay it, or even to justify them through some kind of vengeance. It’s living up to their sacrifice and picking up where they left off. Taking up the burden they laid down in death.” She exhaled with a sense of relief because when she got it all into words the revelation didn’t feel as foolish as she thought at all. It just felt true.
Ethan smiled, "Someone sacrificed for me a very long time ago, for all of us. Sometimes it takes a long time to come to the understanding that 'repayment' of that sacrifice is simply living the life He sacrificed himself to give us," he offered quietly, "It applies to any sacrifice."
She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. I owe living that life to John and everyone who died defending the station. For everything he gave up for me I owe it to Lance to make the best of what I've got..." She smirked and shook her head, adding sardonically, "And I owe Corvus a punch in the eye. You know. Metaphorically."
Ethan chuckled lightly, "It sounds to me like you're on the right path, Calliope," he nodded. "That's something to be proud of. From where you were to where you are now. I know the road's been hard, and there's still a lot to go. But..." he said, smiling a little more broadly. "You're on the path now. You take that debt, and you pay it forward being the person and the Starfleet officer we all know you can be."
"Thanks, Walker. For not being imaginary. I think it makes a difference."
"Anytime," he nodded gratefully. "You know where to find me," he smiled, looking past her now at the man approaching. "I'll leave you two alone. Please don't be a stranger, Calliope. I mean it." With that said, Ethan got up slowly, offering a friendly smile to Lance and then walked away.