She

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Adrian stood at a window in the mess hall, long after everyone had gone to bed, staring at the stars. He was thinking about a girl. A girl long dead.

 

Her name had been Lola. Not a very Irish name but she wasn't a very Irish girl, well not in the traditional sense. She was one of the first people he had met when he was a young English boy sent to that boarding school hellhole. She was wild, untamed, she was Lola. He had met her and always wanted her. For three years he watched as she danced around the boys in his group, sometimes literally, but she never picked one. She could never be tamed. One night, he had sneaked off the grounds to the local pub quite illegaly, it was there his destiny changed. That night, she chose him. The details are not important but she became his first love, his first anything. They were together for a long time but it was not meant to be. It may have been a new era but Ireland was still not the same as the rest of the world. People still smoked, even though it had been officially eliminated (it had taken Adrian a while to give it up) people still drank heavily, even though it was not encouraged and the thing that crossed the line and changed Adrian's life was that some young people did drugs, Lola was one of those people. He had attempted to talk her out of it so many times but she never listened. One day she overdosed.

 

Adrian was heartbroken. Everywhere he went, he saw her. When he finished with school he lied to his parents and said his reason for going to Starfleet was to see the world. His real reason was to get out of this one. To find a place where things were honourable, where things where ordered, somewhere where the very essence of what was good and true in humanity would be held high and its faults left behind. Starfleet was his destiny. He joined up and found his real home. He strived to perfection. He still drank from time to time, he still had fun with his friends and he still loved. But Lola would forever be a reminder to how foolish humans still were. She was lovely but she was foolish, but without her he wouldn't be wearing this uniform, standing on this ship, being a part of a crew that could change the galaxy. He toasted his glass of scotch to the stars.

 

"Thank you", he said.

 

He finished off his glass and went back to his quarters to dream of "the undiscovered country" as his teacher 'Mr. O'Leary' had often quoted from Shakespeare, the future.