For All The Right Reasons Pt. VIII

[Veloras Itana 0]

For All The Right Reasons

Pt. VIII

"Pagh'tem'far"

 

As he had promised, Shakaar Edon sent back help to those left behind after the Kendra Valley Massacre. Armed members of Shakaar's cell including the woman they'd first encountered on the pass the day they'd arrived returned with provisions and prepared the dwindling and nearly starved group for travel. The wounded along with their caregivers which by now included Veloras Ranik and his daughter Itana were secreted away from the frozen caverns of the Kohlar mountains. It was a long and dangerous trip down from the mid-peaks on foot with the Cardassians only a few steps behind. The woman maintained throughout the trip that the Prophets were with them and that they would make it out of the wilderness alive. By some miracle, most of them did.

 

Many of the survivors were moved to one of the more remote encampments held by the Higa Mentar, a resistance cell that contained many of Bajor's remaining scientific and medical community. It was there that Ranik and Itana learned of the repercussions for the Kendra Valley incident. Repercussions that would weave a web of deceit and betrayal that would be felt not only by Ranik and Itana but across the whole of Bajor for decades to come.

 

By the request of an anonymous member of the Vedek assembly, Ranik and Itana were moved to the Dakeen Monastery. From there they would be shuttled to Terok Nor and, eventually, smuggled back off the station, bound for the protection of the elders at the relocation camp on Jerrado. For now though, they were being given respite in the gardens of the monastery, some time to recover and finally the chance to mourn.

 

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Curled in a ball, lying on her side, Itana watched the track her tears made along the stones. It ran along the wet rocks, eventually mingling with the slow running waters of the stream at the center of the arboretum. Their pity was torture. They held her hand and tried to console her but, their words were so thin and empty that they didn't even disturb the air as they were spoken. Meaningless. It was all meaningless now. She was suffocating in the condolences and pained, compassionate glances of every person she encountered. They couldn't understand and she didn't even care to try and make them. How could they understand the numbing silence that roared through her since the first time she'd heard someone say it aloud. Itara was dead.

 

Everything that had made her life complete and whole was gone. Itara was gone. It still felt as if she'd been cut in half. Every time she closed her eyes she was forced to watch the other half of herself die in horrible pain and then burn away to bone over and over again. Pagh'tem'far the monks called it. Visions of things to come, given by the Prophets to only a few. The lucky and the chosen. Lucky. She didn't want to be lucky. She wanted her sister.

 

But, her dreams had proved to be all too accurate and all anyone seemed to want to do now was explain how. What did it matter? No explanations and no amount of compassion could return her sister to her. She was dead. Tortured and burned by the Cardassians as the Prophets watched, as they forced her to watch. She hated them. She wished with all the pain that coursed through every cell in her body that somehow it could be made to stop. Why wouldn't they just leave her alone. Why couldn't she have been left to die with the rest of her family?

 

She wanted her mother. She wanted to hear the baby laugh. She wanted Itara. She wanted to die. Life without them, was empty. Hollow and dead like the rotted wood that clings to the insides of a fallen tree. Why couldn't anyone see that all she wanted to do was make it stop.

 

"I come here often." A soft soothing voice came from behind her but, she didn't look up. She didn't even flinch. She didn't care. "Somehow nature's song provides comfort where there seems to be none." The woman continued, coming to sit beside Itana and gently stroke her hair.

 

"Leave me alone." Itana muttered without looking up. "My father is inside, he needs your pity. I don't." Her bitterness cut the air like razors and her rage was so strong it seemed to resonate in the trees.

 

The woman smiled and continued caressing the side of her face lightly with the back of her hand. "You're not alone in your pain child. I lost someone in the valley that day as well. My son was one of the forty-three people who gave their lives to give our people hope." Itara finally looked up, blushing furiously as the woman continued, gently pulling her into her lap. "I do not pity you. I grieve with you. I mourn for all the lights extinguished that day."

 

Itana didn't recognize the woman. She wore the robes of a Vedek and, her voice had a serenity that shone through even though it was full of pain and grief. She did understand. "I'm sorry. I...I..." Itana sobbed heavily into the woman's arms, trembling under the weight of her grief and her guilt. "I miss her so much."

 

"She is still with you child. She always will be." She lifted Itana's face and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. "I am told she came to you. She helped you see what others don't."

 

Itana was crying too hard to find words. She nodded her head slowly, trying to stifle the sobs but succeeding only in making herself choke. "She...." She began but found it too hard to continue. The woman reached up and gently took her ear between thumb and forefinger. Normally Itana found that very irritating but, when this woman did it she felt nothing but relief.

 

"The ones we love never truly leave us. They leave a small part of themselves behind in the eyes of those who love them so they can continue to watch over us from the Celestial Temple." She smiled warmly with only the hint of tears in her own eyes. "You have been given a rare gift my child. Such was the love that you had for your sister and, she for you that she was able to come to you and say her goodbyes. Mourn her loss and the loss of all those who died so that we might be free but, don't mistake her gift for a curse. It does her memory an injustice and does you nothing but harm."

 

The woman didn't say anything else. She sat there with Itana till well after sunset, rocking her gently in her lap and humming ancient Bajoran songs softly accompanied by the sounds of the arboretum in perfect harmony. It was the first time since they had left home nearly three months earlier that Itana felt safe and warm. She would still see Itara's death in her dreams for a very long time but, for that moment at least, she had someone that shared her pain and understood it without pity.

 

You used to captivate me

by your resonating light

but now I'm bound by the life you left behind

your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams

your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

~Evanescence