When Did Forever Die?
by: Denise Underwood
c. 2001
Part Seven
After that, it had been almost like he couldn’t help himself. He wanted
her, deal or no deal with his old friend. And once he’d had her, he’d
wanted to stay. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that he was
using her, in part, to try and forget Alexa. Triona deserved so much more
than that. When he’d left her, he’d known he was breaking her heart. But
when he came back, it was for her and her alone. She wasn’t an escape or a
replacement.
He had begrudged the relationship she had with Lucien in those early
years. Why hadn’t he met her before she’d been ensorcelled by the ancient
Roman vampire? It had taken her almost being killed at the hands of another
vampire, Hakeem, for Methos to realize what a fool he’d been; that she had
held both he and LaCroix in her heart, not slighting either.
But when they fought, that old insecurity would whisper and hiss its
poison. Triona didn’t need him like he needed her, or so the voice
whispered, and he hated it. It kept him from being the first one to bend
the one to compromise. When she’d taken up with Picard, Methos had felt
like his universe had been upended.
The ferocity of his emotions had taken him totally by surprise. He had long
ago accepted that LaCroix would always be a part of what they were. But
Picard was a betrayal; the brave and honourable starship captain was not in
the rules. The tweaks of jealousy that he had felt at his wife’s minor
flirtation with Picard had turned into full blown fury in the aftermath of
the alien probe incident that had tied Triona, LaCroix, and the Captain
together in a way that Methos couldn’t compete with. And when Methos had
found out that Triona had met Picard the night of First Contact, four
centuries ago, and had never told him, it was more than he could accept.
It had suddenly become so clear, and Methos had felt the fool. All the
lies, the omissions, the trips to Starfleet that were explained away as
Imladrin business, the times he would catch her, her face drawn with worry;
all of it because of Picard.
Methos winced a little at realizing a part of him wanted Triona to hurt.
To feel just a little of what he had felt this last year. She was right
though; they needed to deal with the past before they’d have any chance of
a future.
“Look at me, Triona,” he said gently but with a hint of command. Wiping
her face with a corner of the blanket, she did as he asked, pressing her
fist against her mouth.
Sliding off the chair arm, he nudged her over, sitting next to her. He
wanted to be close, to feel her against him. As he wrapped one arm around
her shoulders, he asked, “Tell me why. Tell me why you never told me about
Picard, tell me why you lied.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she didn’t dispute his use of ‘lie’. “Lots of
reasons,” she whispered. “Some I don’t really even remember.”
“I think you remember,” Methos chided.
Shooting him a look, she said, “Maybe I do, somewhere, but it wouldn’t
make a lot of sense now all these years later.”
“Try.” Methos could feel a tickle of resentment from her at his
insistence, but he didn’t care. Now he’d started, he wanted to know why
this had all happened.
She tried to get up, but Methos tightened his hold. This was going to be
done on his terms and he wanted her here, next to him. Relenting with
ill-concealed irritation, Triona stayed where she was. “At first, I didn’t
realize what had happened. You weren’t even there, none of you were, it was
just Megan and me. I was on an emotional roller coaster. I’d just seen an
alien race Vulcans and a ship from another planet. I was hanging back,
out of the crowd, just soaking it all in. I turned around and bumped into
this man. It was like… like someone walking on my grave. He looked at me
with these blue eyes that seemed to know me somehow. Then Zefram came
rushing up and he was acting very strangely even for him.” She laughed,
remembering the eccentric and half-crazy father of the warp drive
“Picard was the man,” Methos commented on the obvious.
Nodding, she continued her story. “Something about the whole thing nagged
at me. I thought I knew everyone at the camp, but no matter who I asked, or
where I looked, I could find no trace of the man I bumped into that night.
And Zefram was very resistant in actually talking about his flight, which I
found to be totally out of character.”
“Zefram Cochran quiet about anything is quite a concept.” Methos wasn’t
sure why he kept making these random comments. Maybe somehow he felt like
it kept her explanation more normal, less emotionally charged. He felt her
tense a bit before resuming her story and wondered what was coming next.
“So, to find out what was going on, I *encouraged* Zefram to tell me
everything.” Guiltily, she glanced up at Methos. “And he did. To say I was
stunned was an understatement. A starship captain from four centuries in
the future. We were going to make it! After all the horror, all the death,
all the destruction, we were going to make it off Earth.”
“So you didn’t tell me what happened because you knew I’d be angry. You
used your abilities to compel Zefram to tell you what you wanted to know.”
Methos kept the disappointment out of his voice with some effort. That all
this had resulted from her doing something that she knew was wrong.
“Yeah.” She nodded, refusing to look at him. “I knew how angry you got
when I whammied unsuspecting mortals, so I didn’t tell you. I always told
myself I’d tell eventually, but as with most lies, it’s harder the longer
you wait. After a while, I just stopped thinking about it. I didn’t think
it through, that when we finally were in Picard’s time, that it might get
complicated.” Triona sighed. “I certainly never expected to know him
personally, or that the Enterprise would have to rescue our ship, or that
some damn alien probe would tie us together in ways I couldn’t comprehend.”
“But you were keeping track of him long before you first met.” It wasn’t a
question. Methos had had a long time to think about Triona’s association
with Picard and had realized just how long she must have been keeping an
eye on him.
Chewing her bottom lip nervously, she pressed herself farther into the
chair. “I was giving a lecture at Starfleet Academy on the relationship
between the Federation and Terran settled, non-Federation worlds to senior
cadets. Or, I should say, ‘Claire Pierson’, my aunt, was. After the
lecture, Spock had come to take me to dinner and we stopped to chat to
Admiral Sulu. Hikaru was trying to convince me to stay on at the Academy
for a while longer to teach a class on the philosophical and moral
implications of energy weapons on warfare. He’d just read my paper on the
subject and wanted me to expand on it.”
“It was a brilliant paper,” Methos said softly. “I’m not surprised that he
wanted you to teach on the subject.”
Triona’s eyes warmed at the compliment. Smiling up at him, she went on,
“Hikaru pointed out a group of lower classmen making their way across the
esplanade and told me it was kids like that that needed learn what I had to
teach. That they thought technology was an answer in itself, making them
invulnerable. They didn’t consider the ramifications of that power at all.”
She shifted a little, remembering. “It was then that I recognized one of
those cadets much younger of course but it was him.”
“Is that why you decided against teaching the class?”
“Mmm-hmm. I finally was realizing how complicated it could get. I had no
real idea if we would ever meet, and if we did when it would be. I got a
headache thinking through the temporal ramifications of being even a small
part of his life.”
“So you came home.” Now it was beginning to fall into place. At the time,
Triona had been all for more one on one contact between the Federation and
Imladris, and had even managed to convince Lucien. Methos had been
surprised when Triona had returned after a relatively brief sojourn on
Earth and had stayed in the Imladrin system for some years after. He’d
chalked it up to homesickness and not liking the public life.
“Claire Pierson left public life, and resigned as head of the Imladrin
fleet to write books on military history, and a few decades later, her
niece, Triona MacAlpine, became defense minister.”
“I miss good old Claire,” Methos said, grinning. “She had such lovely red
hair.”
“I miss good old Adam sometimes too,” she replied, accepting the change of
mood gratefully.
“But I like having Twigs around just fine,” he whispered in her ear,
smirking. He knew how much she hated his pet name for her.
Back during the war, food had been scarce. Triona had looked like not much
more than bones held together with a fragile layer of skin. One day, during
a conversation where one of the family had called her by her nickname,
Trie, Methos had commented she was more like a twig than a tree. Seeing how
much it irritated her, he, of course, had started calling her ‘Twigs’ at
every opportunity.
“Glad to hear it…*Benji*.” She glared at him.
Of course, his joy at twitting her with ‘Twigs’ had only lasted until he’d
taken on the Benjamin Adams persona once more. It hadn’t taken Triona long
to light upon an equally irritating nickname for her husband.
“I’ve actually grown quite fond of ‘Benji’,” he told her with as much
sincerity as possible.
“Liar!” she accused, smacking his arm. This time when she moved to get up,
Methos didn’t stop her. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she sat on the
edge of the coffee table across from him. “So, are you going to tell me
what you were thinking about in there?” She waved her hand at the bedroom.
Licking his lips, he dropped his eyes, not sure if he wanted to confess.
Even though he knew that he’d started this and should at least have the
nerve to finish. To tell her about that little voice of doubt was much
harder than and more frightening then he’d initially thought.
“Methos?” Triona slipped off the table to kneel in front of him, her hands
resting softly on his knees. “Please tell me.”
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