[Round 3] Captain Toni Turner "Beyond Understanding"

[+ Saveron]

((USS Ronin - Sickbay))

::Toni moved toward the Sickbay door at a dead run. She kept telling herself that fate was a masochist trying to screw with her emotions, and that it could not have played the same crushing joke on her twice. But if Talon was right, then there would be no denying the fickleness of life in Starfleet, nor the pain it had caused with no justification.::

::Talon met her at the door and ushered her to the room where the Kerelian lay unconscious, his body so exhausted that it rendered him that way to heal as it released him from the pain he had endured while in captivity. His features were masked by the dimness of the light, but Toni didn't need light to recognize every contour of his face. She had traced each one, committing them to memory, and although the man was pale and thin, and his eyes sunken severely, she knew him; had married him; carried his son; mourned his death, yet he was alive and there was no doubt that he was the same man she had loved so passionately.::

::Unable to conceive reality all at one time, Toni's eyes flashed toward Talon's questioningly, but her friend had no answers for her silent plea for understanding. She did not envy Toni. Rather, Talon dreaded a time that she may well stand in her friend's shoes, confused, alone, and begging to understand how life could be so cruel. She squeezed Toni's hand in comfort, then left her to face what she knew Toni had to endure solely.::

:: With the warmth of Rhul's kiss so recently and firmly still on her lips, Toni felt utterly defeated. Still trying to grasp at denial, she moved closer, lifting the man's hand, and slipped off the gold band around his finger, hoping that it belonged to someone else. Holding it closer to the light, the inscription shouted its words to her, "I carry your heart with me." She didn't have to look inside of her wedding band to know the complimentary substance - "I carry it in my heart."

::Reciting what she could remember of the poem that had so much meaning to them. . . "I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart). I am never without it (anywhere I go you go), and whatever is done by only me is your doing. I fear no fate (for you are my fate). I want no world (for you are my world) . . . " She stopped, unable to withhold her tears any longer. She slipped the ring back onto his finger as if it had never left it, then dutyfully stood sentinal over his broken body and spirit.::

TBC

Captain Toni Turner

Commanding Officer

USS Ronin NCC-34523