The night had been quite long for poor Ensign Keeves. Alara was working with Johnson on the refit and the work-hours had gotten long, working on too little sleep, and too much coffee. Not only did this make Alara one wet blanket, it gave her a headache as the telepathic background noise became more pronounced than she was able to easily handle.

Uncharacteristically, when she stumbled off the shuttle onto the starbase, Keeves had another idea in her head than was her status quo. Without stopping to analyze it, or dissect it, or even wonder if it was a good idea, Alara headed to her quarters and changed into the only dress she owned, a duo-tone dress of green and blue. The dress was rather thin, and had an interesting variation of color, which started out with a green which changed to a blue about her waist and finally to a slight purplish hue at the hemline. The interesting quality about the dress is it seemed to change hue as she moved. It also had a split up one side to her lower thigh, with a circular cut neck, which hung in a few folds in a modest length down, and was sleeveless. It actually was meant to be worn with a purple shawl, but she had lost that long ago in some forgotten way.

And then to complete the contradiction of her normal character, she headed to the nearest lounge and sat in the back for a few hours, listening to a Dixie Band, and drinking something that she couldn't name, but that did have alcohol on it. The only drinks she knew the name of were the hard ones, not these, "alcohol in fancy fruit juice mixture" ones. And even to make this evening odder still, she actually enjoyed the time she spent there. Alara asked herself if she was just too tired to care. But whatever it was, it served the purpose of relaxing her before she was ready to turn in.

Alara didn't know what time it was by the time she finally left the bar, but it didn't really matter. She walked slowly back through the corridors, taking the roundabout way, and surprising herself by thinking of Daniel... Doctor Dixon. She had left him the last remaining life from her quarters, some violets in a miniature pot. She didn't even know why she had done it, a very uncomfortable realization as she was almost forced to be thinking of this.

After all the damage, that was the only thing that had survived, and so they went down to the hydroponics bay until she could have gotten the lights fixed. Yet, she had received no response from him as yet, and wondered what he was thinking, what he was doing. The woman shrugged, trying to think about something else as she moved at a slightly more rapid pace down the corridor.

She didn't see much as she continued walking down the corridors, of course, one corridor was much like another so even if she had been paying attention she wouldn't have seen much. But the reason she didn't see anything was that she was thinking, and her actions were fairly automatic. Of course, in a tired mind, she knew things grew out of proportion, so she simply attempted to shrug it all off for a second time. Her mind seemed to fight her, becoming some untamed thing wandering to work, people, responsibilities and other tasks.

Her mind, filled with that cacophony simply shut down, attempting to restore silence just as Alara found herself at the end of the corridor and entering a turbolift. "Deck fourteen, beta." Alara said, keeping the tiredness out of her voice. The older-than-modern turbolift jumped with a slight jerk, and then ascended smoothly to its destination.

Upon opening of the turbolift doors, Alara was greeted by a tall man with brown hair, graying a little. He wore science blues with a single pip to indicate his ensigndom. Some part of her mind tried to tell her who he was, as she received a departmental memo about someone. But her mind was too tired to make much sense of it. She smiled, but was too brain-dead to give a proper greeting.

"Excuse me" she heard him mumble, only then was she able to respond. "No trouble..." her soft voice uttered. She smiled and walked by. But the man's eyes followed her, something she confirmed as she turned back to give him a second look, only smiling softly. After all, she didn't wear a dress often. Alara continued on, still coming to terms with how far everything on the Starbase was from everything else. She was so used to starship life she kept expecting her destination to be around the next bend, but the corridors seemed to stretch on forever.

Finally she came to the door of her temporary quarters. Only the officer staff was together, everyone else had general crew-quarters decks below. Tapping the code into the keypad, the door opened and Alara sighed slightly as she walked through the threshold. "Lights" she called, softly as they came up slowly. Her belongings were still in boxes as she had them packed by someone else because she was working with Johnson on the Isannah.

'Now, to find a nightgown.' Keeves thought to herself while she lifted one of the boxes, laying it aside. Then she opened the next container down and was puzzled to see a single piece of paper laying on top. Her brow furrowed slightly and she lifted it from the container. It must have gotten mixed into her things somehow, because she didn't own any paper, and didn't remember having anything like this stationery laying around.

She unfolded the piece of paper to see the words "I'm sorry," written in a loose and somewhat shaky scrawl. This puzzled her more. There was a slight wrinkling of the paper in a few places and upon closer examination Alara realized it was where tears had fallen onto the paper and dried, she only guessed they were tears because of the saltiness of the stained areas.

Alara lowered herself into a seat and puzzled about this. 'I'm sorry? What does anyone have to be sorry for? And with tears?' she thought, examining the paper for a second time, holding it gently between her fingers. 'Is the writing male, of female?' she looked at it closer. To her untrained eye, she'd guess male... Alara brought the paper up to her nose and sniffed. There was a distinct smell of alcohol about it, and not the stuff she had been drinking with all its rutie-tootie-fruit flavors, no, this was booze, the real stuff.

'Daniel, it has to be...' she thought, but could find no real evidence to back up her thought. Suddenly, she was worried. Worry, that's something she only rarely had felt, and usually when she was told to watch her sister, and she had been paying too much attention to something else. But this worry gnawed at her, and it was rather overwhelming. She didn't know why he'd have any reason to say he was sorry. Maybe it was an "I'm sorry, but no." kind of sorry... but Alara wasn't sure.

The woman took a deep breath into her fit but tired body and realized she wouldn't be satisfied, nor would be able to get any decent rest until she knew. So she did the only decent thing a Betazoid woman could do, she got up and headed for the door, the letter tucked in hand---setting out to find the writer of this mysterious note.

Alara wove her way through the myriad of biobeds and patience, most of which seemed to be bizarre accident cases. Life on a Starbase was so much different than life on a Starship. At least aboard ship you had some hope of seeing familiar faces, but with ships coming out and in every day, transfers, cadets, admirals, aligned ships, and everything else one could imagine, it was really a zoo, and like all zoos, had its share of monkey cages.

As the Betazoid woman looked around, she thought that this definitely was the monkey cage. Some of the accidents were quite strange and improbable in their nature. But that wasn't why she was here, as she continually found herself telling nurse after nurse, and even a few MOs here and there who seemed to have nothing to do but gawk at the patients as they came in.

But Alara worked her way past all of them and headed down another hallway, one that should have ended somewhere, but just kept on going. She paused at a few, looking at the door. The computer said he was here, she just had to find the right door. Alara couldn't help but think that the Starbase was just way too complicated. Then she found an office with the lights on, she smiled slightly and knocked on the doorframe, though the door was already open.

From Alara's appraisal, Dixon appeared... rather flustered. He had the look that could be akin to the look Alara's sister always had when she had been caught with her hand in the replicator, with some unhealthy snack just having materialized. The young doctor fixed his collar as he sat down, tucking in and zipping up his tunic as it appeared he had adopted a rather laze-faire dress style in the last few minutes. Part of Alara was glad to see him, the other part was plainly worried.

"Ah, Alara, it's... it's..." he stammered, then searched her face "Is something wrong?"

She gestured with her free hand towards the doorway. "May I come in?"

He simply nodded. The woman made her way to a seat on the opposite side of the desk and sat down, making no more noise than that of a cat. She sniffed the air slightly, and frowned. "It smells of alcohol in here."

"Are you accusing me of drinking while on duty?" he snapped, defensively. Alara looked away, almost as if she had been struck. But her movement was not in submission, just in acknowledgement.

"I wasn't accusing of anything, simply making an observation." She replied, sitting up again in her normal extremely formal, extremely upright, manner.

"Don't you worry about me and what I do on my post. Is there anything else I can help you with?" he replied, still somewhat formal, but his voice was softer.

Carefully she removed the piece of paper from beneath her arm, where she had heretofore had it hidden. Gently and with much care, she unfolded it and turned it around, showing it to Daniel. "I found this in my belongings from the Isannah... I wasn't sure who left it for me." Her eyes slowly rose to meet his. "Is this your writing, Daniel?" she said, calling him by his first name.

It was an extreme gesture for her, especially with him being on duty. She would always have called him by his rank, last name, or any other form of appropriate address. But there was a concern quite marked in her eyes that allowed her to step down from protocol. Her black eyes were asking, but showing no judgment. They held a patience that marked her personality, but also they were searching... searching for the truth.

Looking up at her, Dixon wanted nothing more in the world than to hold her hand. The sad reality of it was that he knew her long before she realized it. His indescribable activities as a young medic had intertwined him with her brothers, a long time ago. The full extent could never be revealed to Alara, for fear she would be harmed if she knew too much. Dixon had been watching her for some time, and always knew who she was, though he had to play it otherwise.

And her eyes just kept searching his, holding back another kind of searching she was fully capable of. She sat there, black-eyed, serious, hard, but still innocent of so much. She was a soldier, a warrior, even one with skills more than just soldier or warrior. But the bigger picture Alara was always ignorant of, and didn't even realize it. Dixon placed both hands on his desk and turned his head downward, staring at the floor.

"Alara, I... I... you don't understand." He said, his voice wavering. She just looked at him, her eyes searching his, knowing that beyond her vision was something, something that was hurting him. Just as he began to feel his inner walls collapsing, bursting at the seams, ready to spill forth everything in himself, everything he could not possibly say... a stern look came over his face. He looked up to Alara and his eyes spoke a different meaning than his voice.

"Alara, I didn't write the note, I have nothing to be sorry for, for you to insinuate that I should be sorry for something is ridiculous." His voice came, rather coldly. His eyes continued to stare at hers, trying to remain stern and drive her away. But in his heart, he didn't want to hurt her, but he couldn't let her know the truth, that would lead to an even greater hurt.

Her face had remained passive, not giving anything away. She had slipped back to marine mode, the hide-all-emotions-inside mode... for a moment she just kept looking at him, she knew his last words were a lie, though his eyes betrayed nothing. She was a telepath, and some things, like lies, she always checked for... it wasn't even a choice anymore. Her father had said that the first time she turned her mind off like that, it would probably be her last and it was a damn stupid thing to do, and a damn stupid way to die---being caught unaware.

Alara stood, turning away and taking one step towards the door. She felt something in him, a strong emotion that was shoved away faster than she could identify. The dark-eyed woman frowned, her brow furrowing, and her face turned away from him. She rested her chin on the palm of her hand, having her other hand folded across her waist.

Then, she dropped her hands to her sides and turned around. "You know what?" she began, her voice charged, but light. "All through my life, people have always been trying to protect me from secrets. My family had many of them that I wasn't supposed to know about, and I still don't know about most of them. My father had one he couldn't hide, however, that I found out about at a young age... it was his alcoholism..."

"I know nothing about your father, except his reputation as a warrior. I'm not your father, and Alara, we've already finished this conversation as far as I'm concerned." He said, keeping his voice neutral. Alara heard him, but pretended she didn't, and continued.

"I suppose hitting the booze isn't that uncommon if you're a marine, but he took it overtime... and when he came home, at first... he did stop, somehow my mother was able to be the comfort that the booze normally filled. But after time, he'd come home, drunk... and he was already a harsh disciplinarian sober, he was ten times that, drunk." She touched her jawline. "One day he hit me and I had a four inch cut here... I don't even really remember what it was about... I think I had forgotten to put away something."

Dixon's face took on a compassionate expression. "Alara I'm sorry you had to endure those years of treatment like that. I however am not placing my hands on anyone and it's really none of your business." He said, again trying to stop.

Alara looked at him for a moment. "I think you made it my business... but please, listen to me." She said, returning to her story. "I was eight years old... It took his daughter lying in his arms, bleeding, and his wife threatening to leave him for the sake of his children, to make him take this seriously... to ask for help."

The man shifted in his chair, clearly becoming irritated. "HELP! You are clearly telling me I need help! Alara, I suggest you leave, I finished medical school and the academy without any HELP from you!"

She turned to him, her eyes staring into his. "I'm telling you about what I know, any way you take this is your own business. And if you'd be so polite to listen until I'm finished, I will be ready to converse with you then." She said, for some reason having this odd sense of power behind her words. Then, as suddenly as her forcefulness appeared, it melted away. "My father is a proud man, Daniel." She shook her head slightly "He doesn't ask for help easily."

"This is ridiculous!" the doctor exclaimed. "Yes, it is, but so is life." Alara quipped, returning his exclamation point for point.

"It took a long time before he could actually control himself adequately... they now call him just-a-water-Keeves because he won't drink with the rest of them." She smiled slightly. "They called him other things too, but I wouldn't repeat those..."

That was all Dixon could take, he was clearly upset and replied with a slightly restrained anger. "Alara what in the hell does any of your father's problems have to do with me?"

Alara leaned forward, pressing both of her hands onto the top of the desk, looking right into Dixon's eyes. Her black eyes seemed to crackle with an unseen energy, not one in anger, but compassion and concern, but dead seriousness. "Because I don't believe that you didn't write this note... because I see in you a pain, that I don't know what it's from and I think you're crying out for help the only way you can."

"If I was crying out, it wouldn't be to you at this point." Dixon said with coldness. Alara hid the hurt she felt at that comment, excusing what he said, knowing he was in pain for saying it. Only compassion shown in her eyes.

"Daniel." She said, her voice slightly softer, but still as firm as before. "I'm not telling you to do anything. I'm only telling you that this, whatever it is, needs to be handled. I'm not a counselor, and quite frankly, I stink at anything that takes interpersonal communication or that requires tact." She paused a moment "But I do know that unless you do something, this is going to consume you, and then destroy you."

Her words seemed to have taken the wind out of his sails. "Alara I..." he said, seeming more at ease.

"It will first destroy your friends, your means of support, by driving them away to keep them away from your secrets... Then it will be your family, and you'll turn to more vices to make up for it. After that it will be your job, as your ability to work becomes less and you break more rules to stay functional, and finally, when all of that is gone... it'll kill you, having destroyed your life..." she said, looking at him. "And that is the better case scenario, you could end up killing people---in your line of work."

Dixon found himself looking to the floor.

Slowly Alara came beside his chair and knelt down, reaching up and taking his hand gently. "Daniel... please find someone to talk to... I'm here if you want to talk to me. If you can't, for some reason, please find someone who has had similar experiences, something... I don't want to see this pressure, whatever it is, destroy you... the pressure on my father nearly destroyed him, and his family... Beat it, it can be done..."

"Alara, I can't ask for..." he said, trailing off.

She whispered. "I know it's hard... and no, I don't know how hard... I've only watched from the outside, which is almost a harder position because you can only speak, you can't do anything to make it better. Please, Daniel, try...." She spoke, gently.

The wall again began to crumble, and he forced it back angrily. His voice became annoyed again, speaking of inner irritation. "Alara, I don't have a problem, if you would excuse me I would like to continue my work."

She looked down at the floor and nodded slightly, rising in one slow but graceful movement. Then she looked at him again. "Daniel... just remember that I care about you, and care about what happens to you. Officer to officer, I am trustworthy. Alright?" she said, softly, tilting her head slightly with her half-question.

"For the last and final time Alara, leave me alone!" he said, angrily.

Alara nodded slightly, more for his benefit than for hers. She turned quietly and left the office, in her trademarked efficient stride.

As Alara left Dixon reached into his desk and uncorked his bottle. Starring at the label he unlocked another drawer and pulled out a picture of him with Alara's brothers. As he took a swig of the bourbon, tears began to fill his eyes and quietly slide down his cheeks.

She continued down the hallway, but as was her way, she couldn't help reaching back to touch his mind, feel what he was feeling. Alara grasped for a wall as a wave of pain and sadness washed over her, along with the most bottomless feeling of being alone. The black-eyed woman drew a slightly ragged breath, rebuilding her mental barriers. But there was nothing more she could do.

Loaded: 04.26.2004