Sorry it took me so long to post this here. I've been working on a pose box and writing chapter 3 ... neither of which are finished yet ... ... and in all the craziness I forgot to post chapter 2 here! :O

Reminder: Please Comment!
This chapter is a bit picture-intense. It's got 47 pictures. (No, that number wasn't on purpose!) It's also probably the longest text-wise so far, I think.
Warning: there's a bit of blood and violence.
I think the writing in this chapter is a lot better than the pictures, I sort of feel the pictures don't really do justice to what's going on. There's too many limitations to what you can do in the game, and with editing, I just think the pictures don't totally capture the feel of the chapter.

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She had planned the perfect wedding.


Her true love had proposed one night, and she'd accepted.


Then came the Tholians, the war.


He and his comrades were sent to fight.


One by one, they all came home. Except him.


Then, one day, the happiest day of her life, he returned.


Bruised and broken, starved and scarred, he returned to her.


She cared for him. She loved him.


He said he was not half the man he once was. He was broken, defective. She deserved better. He wished to free her of himself.


No! She loved him! She would care for him, no matter what it would take. She deserved no less than him, her true love.


He told her that they should call off the wedding. He would be nothing but a burden to her the rest of her life! He begged her to let him let her go!

No, never! She loved him. She loved him with all her heart! She couldn't let him go.


She did up her hair. She put on her dress. She stared at her reflection. The wedding was tommorrow. The perfect day, the day of her dreams, was about to arrive.


Walking down the hall.


Doors open.


His quarters. Something off, something wrong.


She smelled blood. Something wrong ... her stomach flipped. Something ... wrong ...


There was blood. Too much blood. Too much ... His eyes locked onto hers. They were glazed, empty.


A scream caught in her throat. No, she couldn't lose him! Never!


Their fingers entertwined. He was slipping away, fast. If only she could hold on ... just hold on ...


He was slipping away. And she was responsible.


As her world came crashing down around her, she began to sob. To wail. To scream.


She awoke in dim light, the cold comfort of her office surrounding her. She wiped sweat from her neck, tears from her eyes. She took deep breaths to calm her racing heart. She spun the ring around her finger, let out a sigh. She wouldn't get back to sleep for a while now. She never could after she'd had the dream.


Olivia paced through the empty Sickbay. Steve was in his office, working. She didn't want to disturb him. Didn't want him to know.


She sat down on one of the beds along the wall. She considered going out to run her usual course around Deck 7, the one she ran every morning. At this point, there wasn't much use in trying to go back to sleep. She knew it would never come. No, she decided, she wouldn't go running tonight. There'd be enough other nights for that.


She wandered between the counters in the lab.


A noise! She gasped, turning around to see what was behind her.
It was just Steve, coming out from his office. She exhaled slowly.

"Olivia," he called across the empty room, "are you okay?"

"Yeah, Steve, I - I'm fine," she mumbled back, wishing now she had chosen to run.

"Olivia?"


She walked over to him, slowly. "Hmm?"

"You had the dream again, didn't you." It wasn't so much a question as a statement. He knew her too well.

"No, uh ... it doesn't matter. I was just ... walking around."

"I heard you scream."

"Oh. Well ..."

"Olivia ..."


"Look, just ... I don't want to talk about it. Nothing's wrong."

"Olivia."

"Nothing's wrong!" She paused, searching for something, anything else to say. "Um, you, uh, remember me asking you yesterday about ..."

He cleared his throat. "Olivia, I heard you scream."


"Dr. Mackenzie, I don't care what you think you heard, but ..."

She was cut off by a sudden beeping. Steve sighed. "It's T'Lea! She's having another seizure!"


"What? That's two ... in less than eight hours!" She cracked her knuckles and headed after Steve.


He was already at the door, medkit in hand. Olivia bolted past him, down the corridor. This couldn't be good.

The door was locked, so they waited outside for an answer, hoping Kareb would be there. They hoped he was awake, hoped he knew what was going on ...


Finally, he emerged, slowly. He looked ... pained, for a Vulcan.

"Kareb?" Steve asked.

"Yes. I apologize for making you wait, but I had to make sure she would not injure herself." He stopped, searching their faces, perhaps trying to gauge if they saw his distress. "I assume that is why you came, because of the seizure."

Olivia nodded.

"I understand your concern." He paused. "However, it has been nearly forty years, that she's had these seizures, and ..."

"Wait, forty years?" Olivia inturrupted.

"Yes."


"That - that's ... What happened?" She stepped closer to him, he turned and stared at the light on the floor.

"Thirty-seven years ago ...

Thirty-seven years ago, T'Lea and Kareb were attending a conference on interplanetary trade, held at a hotel on the planet Xitene. They had two seven year old daughters staying at home with family, while they brought their newborn son along with them. It was only the first day of the conference and they had just broken for lunch, when they heard screams. Something had gone horribly wrong.


A local but powerful xenophopic group had established a base for themselves in the hotel, and, having waited for a break, kidnapped as many people as they could from the conference. They separated their hostages by race: all their own were still held against their will, but treated fairly, and all others were, well, not treated so fairly.


T'Lea and Kareb were placed in a room with a young Andorian kid, who was quiet, kept to himself most of the time. That evening, he barely picked at his dinner, some meat dish which neither T'Lea nor Kareb touched. Kareb wrapped their son tightly and was putting him to sleep, when the Andorian made his move.


Every stretch of hall was watched over by two guards, one at each end. Their room was near the middle, slightly closer to one side than the other. Kareb hadn't really seen what happened, all he knew was that the Andorian tried to escape, the guard from the near end of the hall ran after him, raised his weapon to shoot, and was dropped unconscious to the floor by a neck pinch from T'Lea.


The guard from the other end of the hall, a big muscular guy with a short temper and a solid metal club, came running. Finding his comrade lying on the floor, dead for all he knew, he attacked. Kareb watched from behind the open door, forced to choose between saving his wife and protecting his child, as the guard struck her on the head.


With the first hit, she stumbled back, falling against the wall for support. He struck again, this time she fell to her knees. Through their bond, Kareb could feel her pain, could feel her starting to slip into unconsciousness. Then, another hit, this one crushing the back of her skull, smashing her face into the floor. There was no more pain. The guard, satisfied that she didn't respond to a hard kick in the stomach, dragged her into the room. Kareb stepped back, arms raised in a gesture that he hoped would convey he was unarmed, but anger threatened to overtake him. The guard advanced, now holding a syringe of clear liquid, backing Kareb into a corner. There was only one way to escape: the balcony, a route that meant sure death for him, his wife, and his son, if it was not sure already. If he chose to fight, he knew other guards would only come and finish them off, he knew he would be unable to fight them all.


He only hoped whatever the vial contained would not be lethal.


Two days later, he awoke to find a young Xitene girl rocking his wailing infant. She told him how she had been sent the night before to shut up the starving baby, how she'd been encouraged to just toss him over the balcony's rails, how she found T'Lea face down on the floor, conscious but unable to move, struggling to breathe through her own vomit. She told him how she'd tried to lift her up, but couldn't, and turned her on her side. She told him about the violent convulsions early that morning, and how, when she finally woke up, she was able to move again.


T'Lea was asleep on the bed. Kareb fought hard to keep back the tears. Blood oozed from her ears, her nose, and the large gash on her forehead. It had filled in her orbits, giving her dark bruises beneath her eyes. He gently caressed her face, but she did not respond.

"For the first week, she couldn't speak. She couldn't see, that last strike damaged her occipital lobe. She still remembers nothing of the first two weeks after she was attacked. At that point, she still didn't have many seizures." He took a slow, deep breath, then continued. "She got meningitis, just when we thought she was beginning to recover. Then, the seizures increased, she began having five, seven a day ... Finally, after about three months, she was starting to do better, she was slowly getting her sight back, she was able to get up and walk around, to take care of our son. But she was still having seizures. I told her, when we got home, I was sure there was something they could do for her. Six months after the injury, we were still there. We were not able to escape until it had been two years. Everyone else who tried before then was shot on sight." He paused again, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "When we returned to Vulcan and were able to seek medical help, we learned that there was nothing anyone could do for her. Had we had access to care even six months after the injury, they would have been able to help. But due to the regrowth of healthy neurons into the damaged areas over time ..."

"I saw that," Olivia said suddenly. "It's inoperable, at least by any conventional means."

"Right. Now, the only thing that can help her is drug therapy. With anticonvulsants, instead of 3-5 seizures every day, she only has about four a week."

"Only?"


Kareb suddenly looked back at the closed door behind him. "She's regained consciousness. I must go."

"Thank you," Steve said, "We appreciate you taking the time to tell us all this."


Awkwardly, Olivia offered, "I'm a neurologist ... If, uh, if she wouldn't mind, I'd like to talk to her."


Kareb simply turned and went back into his room.

.