Copyright ©1999, Tracey Harnack. All rights reserved.  No part of this story may be re-posted in part or in full without written permission from me. It's characters are used without permission, no infringement is intended.
Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict is copyright 1998, Tribune Entertainment
Co.
Rating: PG.
Title:
A Simple Man

Author: Tracy Harnack

 

 

 

A Simple Man

 

                Renee saw the huddled figure sitting miserably on the stone bench at the edge of the lonely graveyard. It was drizzling just enough to make it really, really depressing. It was cold, wet, dreary, and Renee briefly wondered what she was doing there.

                Sighing, she tugged her designer raincoat more tightly around her and made her way carefully over to the bench. “Liam?” she called as she reached him.

                He only grunted in response.

                Renee forced a smile. She sat down on the bench, wincing as she felt the coldness and rainwater from the stone soak through her pants into her skin. “Augur told me I might find you here,” she said.

                Liam’s haunted green eyes glared at her. “What do you want, Palmer?”

                “Nothing,” she said.

                “Oh, come on! Just tell me who wants, needs, me to do something now, and then get away from me.” He turned back to the two graves he was studying.

                Renee was silent for a moment. She had come to chew him out for saving Zo’or’s life, but something about his attitude warned her against it. “Liam, I don’t want anything from you,” she said quietly. “I was just worried about you. You seemed a little upset lately, and then you just disappeared…” She trailed off. The silence became almost oppressive.

                Renee glanced at the two markers before her. “Who are they?” she asked, unable to make out the names because of the wetness.

                Liam pointed. “That’s my mother.” The grave was meticulously well kept, even though she was a year dead, and there was a fresh sprig of jasmine on the headstone. “She…she loved me,” he said simply.

                Renee nodded. “I’m sure she did,” she told him, not sure of what to say.

                Liam’s eyes riveted her with a stare of pure grief. “No. You don’t understand. She loved me more than anything else in the universe. She would have moved heaven and earth to care for me. But…in the end, she was helpless. Do you know how humiliating it was for her? To have me to see her when she couldn’t even know who I was? You can’t understand, I can see it. You will never know the love my mother and I shared, how strong it was. And it was only a fraction of what it could have been. No one else can understand it.”

                Renee felt her face redden in embarrassment. Part of her wanted to yell at him, to say that he wasn’t the only one who had lost some they loved, that his mother wasn’t the only one who would have moved heaven and earth for her child, and that his mother wasn’t the only mother who had been helpless…in the end.

                But something in her knew he was telling the truth. She could practically see the unbreakable bond between them. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, tucking her blond hair behind her ear. “Who is the other one?”

                “Lili,” he responded after a second. “They wouldn’t let me take her body, and she didn’t have any real family…but I brought a plot here for her anyway. She deserved it…I wanted a memorial to her. Did you know Lili?” he asked.

                Renee shook her head. “Not really. I met her once or twice, though. She seemed like a very…strong person.”

                “She was my best friend,” Liam said. “She…she practically raised me. She promised my mother the day I was born that she would take care of me, no matter what happened. And she kept her word, even though they were never friends.”

                Renee was still unsettled by the thought of how young Liam was. Yes, some times she could see it in his eyes, in the way he responded to certain things, but it was hard thinking of him as still a child. Liam  continued.

                “We told each other everything. She taught me how to be human, how to trust, and how to lead. She taught me how to fight, and she comforted me when I lost friends and family. She kept me sane. She kept me alive. I…I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”

                Renee could see it now. He was lost. Oh, he’d keep doing what he was doing, saving lives, leading people, trying to keep things in hand. But it was tearing him apart. He was brave and strong and smart and a natural leader…but he was too young to be able to handle it.

                The stress and pressure would kill him, little by little. He needed people like Siobhan, Lili, Augur and Da’an. But now, two were dead, and the other two couldn’t be trusted. But he kept going…because he couldn’t do anything else. He’d never give in…but he’d never be right or whole.

                Renee wanted to reach out to him, but she knew he wouldn’t accept it. Not now, not from her. Finally she said, “You’re a very complex man, Liam Kincaid.”

                He blinked. “Don’t use my last name. Liam…is the only thing that’s really mine.”

                She nodded, though she didn’t understand. “You are still a complicated man. I’m not sure I have you figured out. You fight in the Resistance, yet you save Zo’or. You’re ready to kill Da’an, yet to you’re still devoted to him like he’s your mentor or parent. You’re in a business that requires you to kill, but you can’t take death.”

                Liam shook his head, not looking at her. “No, Renee,” he said intensely. “No, I’m not. I’m a very simple man. I have no ulterior motives, no agenda, no secret plans, no hidden force driving my actions. I’m not complicated at all.

                “I only want a few things. I want love, Renee. I want a family and a wife and children. I want to never have to kill anyone, ever again, and I don’t want to lose anyone either. I want peace. I don’t even care if Humans and Taelons join together, as long as we can stop fighting each other and just live. I want my life to be me own, a life that I can understand, where I’m not expected to accomplish things I don’t even know about.

                “But by some happenstance, destiny or accident, makes no difference, I can’t have that right now. So I do the only things a man like me can do. I try to save as many lives as I can, try to stop the fighting, try to make peace. I try to make some sense out of what I’m being asked, and I try to help as many people as I can. And I try to end this conflict as soon as possible.”

                He turned to look at Renee, his face unreadable. “So you see, Renee, I am just a simple man in complex world. You will never understand me, Renee. I do not belong to your world. I might have been forced into it, but I don’t belong here, and we both know it.

                “I don’t understand how you can be the way you are, and you can’t comprehend what kind of a person I am.”

                With that, Liam, got to his feet and walked away without a backward glance, leaving Renee sitting stunned in the rain, thinking over what he had said.