No Day But Today
Posted on February 27th, 2002 by Brooke Dolan and AC Zuriyev

Eight hours after the destruction of the Atlantis, things were starting to calm down aboard the USS Yeager. Temporary housing had been set up for the junior officers in the cargo bays and holodecks, while the senior officers got the empty quarters, in addition to the ones formerly belonging to deceased crewmembers.

All of the injuries had been treated, the damage from the battle with the Grissom had been repaired, and Admiral Zuriyev was now in command. Based on new information from Lieutenant Byzantium and Lieutenant JG Dr’Dak of the Socrates, he had turned the two ships around back toward the Alpha Quadrant to send the Socrates back to her own time. Hopefully, that might have some effect on the crisis at hand.

Now Admiral Zuriyev wiped his bald head with a cloth as he walked to his new quarters. He must have looked a fright; his skin was still greyed from the smoke of the battle and his uniform was torn in a few places, but he had no injuries, at least. He did, however, have a splitting headache. Grateful to finally get some rest, he entered the Zuriyev quarters.

Brooke was in the children’s room, looking after Alexis and Kenny, who had been badly shaken up by the events of the last several hours. The Atlantis, the only home they’d ever really known, was gone, and most of their possessions with it. They had each managed to salvage a few precious items, sentimental childhood keepsakes, which were of some small comfort to them. After having soothed their fears, the children had fallen into fitful sleep. Hearing the door, Brooke went to greet her weary husband.

“Alexi,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him. She had switched from Command mode to Supermom mode, and felt the need to mother her husband in some strange, semi-Oedipal fashion, probably to compensate for the loss and shock she’d experienced, and the danger her children had narrowly avoided. She had often felt somewhat torn between her duties as a Starfleet officer, and as a wife and mother. In this particular case, her first instinctive priority was to her family, but she felt equally protective of her ship and its officers. Now, Atlantis was gone, and she had a crew with no home to look after. The stress and conflict were almost too much for her to bear, and seeing her husband, dirty, bloodied, and exhausted, almost collapsed her emotional resolve.

She clung to him, partly to protect and comfort him in some small way, but also to draw strength and solace from his presence. Brooke felt almost selfish for doing so, as if she were tapping into the last reserves of his strength and energy, so she blinked back her tears of weariness and frustration and led him to the sofa, helping him to sit. She then brought a basin of water and some cloths to gently wash the soot and grime from his face, and clean the small wounds he had not noticed were there.

“You are an angel, Brooke,” he said, relishing the feel of the warm water-soaked cloth against his face. “How are Alexis and Kenny? I am sure they must be taking the loss of their home rather hard.”

Brooke managed a tired smile for her husband. Even covered with filth, he was a sight for her sore eyes. She realized as she looked at him that as desperate as their situation was at the moment, things would somehow turn out fine, and she wouldn’t trade a minute of their life together, not for anything. “They’re all right, sleeping. Scared, shocked, but fine. Don’t know if I’m doing as well, though.” She searched his eyes. “We’re in trouble, Alexi. Bad … what now?”

He gazed back with his jade eyes into her blue-green ones, those eyes that had captivated him for all of these years with her. “I do not know, Brooke. If sending the Socrates back to her own time has no effect, then we are essentially alone … and hurt. One ship is a lot more vulnerable than four.” He always told her the truth about these things, even when he might consider lying to the rest of the crew. And he would rarely, if ever, admit to his crew that he did not know what to do. It just was not acceptable command demeanor and undermined his efforts to keep an image of constant control. This was not necessary with his XO, who had a right to know everything, doubly so since she was also his wife.

“Sweetheart, don’t tell me you don’t know what to do. I know you don’t always have all the answers, but you usually have a better idea of what to do than I. That’s why I’m not an admiral.” She smiled as best as she could, trying to play it light-heartedly, but panic was fluttering in her belly. “Besides, if sending the Socrates back has no effect, we’re screwed anyway. Damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Even with more ships, we’re essentially defenseless against whatever these things are. And even though we have a much better handle on what’s going on, there are still so many things we don’t understand. I don’t think we have any choice. Would you rather die by inaction, or give it one last shot?”

Alexi sighed, a long slow exhalation that seemed to rid him of the last stresses of the day. “We will, of course, not give up. If our plan does not work, then we will try to use Byzantium’s discovery to fix this mess. If that proves unsuccessful, then we will go with our original plan to leave the galaxy. I can not see any other alternatives, unfortunately.”

Brooke echoed his sigh with one of her own. “Fine. Good. Decision made. Now that that’s settled, you can stop being the admiral for a little while, and get cleaned up. I’ll turn the shower on.” She kissed him and left the room, lost in contemplation. As her train of thought moved between all of the events and discoveries of the day, something struck her. The thought was so frightening that she immediately turned and ran back toward the living room, colliding painfully with her husband. “Alexi!” she said, breathless with anxiety.

“Ouch!” replied her somewhat stunned husband. “What is it Brooke?”

“I just thought of something, I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to us before! The timeline! If we send the Socrates back, we’re altering the timeline! What about the temporal prime directive? What if this is just the way things were supposed to happen, and too bad for us if it conflicts with our plans for existence? What if sending the Socrates back not only doesn’t fix this, but makes things worse? What if there’s nothing to be fixed? How can we possibly know that we’d be doing the right thing?” Her voice was edged with barely contained panic. The ramifications of the situation were only starting to become clear to her, and the myriad of possibilities that spun out from that one thought were dizzying.

“The temporal prime directive be damned! How can things get any worse?” He walked around the sofa once to try to calm himself. “If there is even the remotest chance that sending the Socrates back can stop those billions of people from dying, then that is what we shall do. Besides… how often are you fully certain before you do anything that it is the right thing to do?”

“No!” she almost yelled at him, but remembered her children asleep in the next room. “You don’t understand! The point isn’t the temporal prime directive! If I knew for certain it would prevent all of this, save all the billions and billions of people who’ve died, I’d fly the Socrates back myself! It isn’t that we might save the universe, it’s that we might destroy it! I mean, our universe! Changing thirty years of history? A lot can happen in those thirty years. Even if it means that everything that’s happened doesn’t happen … it means that … well, that everything that’s happened doesn’t happen! Who knows how far-reaching the change to the timeline could be? Who knows how different our lives will be? What if there’s a huge interplanetary war? What if Earth was destroyed ten years ago by the Borg? What if … oh my God …” she stopped, the blood draining from her face. She clutched at his arm, feeling weak and faint.

“What?” Alexi held her, supporting her as she trembled. “Brooke, what is it?” His face was creased by lines of concern.

“What if,” she whispered, “what if something happened to one of us? In a battle, an accident? What if one of us is horribly injured? What if our children only have one parent left? My God, what if you’re dead? What if I’m dead? Or what if we never even married? What if Alexis and Kenny were never born?” She was on the verge of hysteria, but was trying desperately to rein in her panic.

“Duscha, shh,” he said soothingly. “Brooke, Brooke, stop this. You are getting hysterical. None of that is going to happen. It would create a paradox. If anything happens at all, it will be only for the best.”

“You don’t know that! You can’t know that! Paradoxes are permitted, temporal mechanics allows for seemingly impossible conflicting events in timelines! The intersection of parallel dimensions demands –”

“Brooke! Stop! Quiet!” his voice was almost harsh as he held her firmly. “You are spouting gibberish! You are a doctor, not a temporal physicist. And a Starfleet commander, and my executive officer, and my wife. And you will be all of those things even after the Socrates goes back to where it belongs. Things will be different, yes, but the important things will remain the same.”

Brooke tried to slow her breathing and calm herself. “I just … the thought, of not being with you, of not even knowing you … or of having lost you … or the children … never holding our babies … I can’t … I can’t even imagine, it’s so awful. I’ve never been so frightened. To have been with you my whole life, and had our children, and loved you all more than anything … I’d rather die right now, I’d rather be killed by those horrible things than to not have shared my life with you.”

“I feel the same way, Duscha. The very thought of this bliss that has been our marriage not ever happening pains me so deeply that I can not express it in words.” Alexi paused, gathering his thoughts and trying to figure out the best way to put her at ease. “Of course we will be together after the Socrates goes back. A love such as ours is meant to be, and you know that as well as I do.” Unfortunately, Alexi did not believe his own words, even as he spoke them. He knew that the possibility of the two of them never meeting, much less falling in love and starting a family, was very real. But he knew that to voice his fears would shatter his wife’s fragile emotional stability at the moment. So he was determined to comfort her and convince her that everything would be all right, everything would turn out fine. That there was a higher power in the universe, and certain things were just meant to be. His words had their intended effect, and for a long moment, she was silent, allowing herself to be held and reassured.

But Alexi knew that despite the possibilities, this was something that had to be done. He could not allow them to be so selfish as to put their own concerns above those of the billions of lives in the Alpha quadrant. “Regardless, you know what we must do, even if the chance of preventing this from happening is remote. It is all we have left.” He trailed his fingers down her cheek, feeling the familiar contours of her face. “I love you, Brooke. Not even time itself will stop that.”

Something in her wanted so desperately to believe his assurances that everything would be fine, that she unconsciously decided that there was simply no alternative. It would work out for the best, it simply had to. They loved each other so much, that surely their love was meant to be. She had to believe that, even if the events of the past thirty years were drastically altered, they would still be together, and still have their precious daughter and son. Her mind and heart, her very soul, could not conceive of any other existence, so there simply could be none. There was no alternate dimension, no parallel timeline as far as she was concerned. Every life that she could possibly live would, by necessity, include Alexi Zuriyev. He was her life. Secure in the knowledge that they would be together, even if nothing else was the same, she wrapped her arms around him and clung tightly to him, as if her life depended on it.

Brooke looked up at him, her head tilted slightly to the side, in that way that he knew meant she was about to ask him something. “You remember how you asked me how often I’m certain that what I’m doing is the right thing to do?” He nodded, silent. She smiled. “I have been certain of at least one thing, every day of my life, since I met you … I’ve always been certain of you.” Alexi replied with a tight embrace, both physically and mentally. Brooke warmed to the touch of his mind and his body.

After a long moment, they quietly entered the children’s room, and listened to the slow, steady sounds of their breathing. Comforted by the familiarity, Brooke relaxed in his arms, allowing herself to smile again, safe in the knowledge that regardless of all else, she would always have her family. Alexi held her close, feeling her heart beat through his body, keeping time with the quiet sounds of their sleeping children, his own pulse resonating with the hushed rhythms of everything he held dear in this life. As he fully realized the impact of what might soon come to pass, he fought back tears, unnoticed by his wife. He savored the moment, as if it were the last one they would ever share as a family.