Title: After Death Musings

Author: Yarb

Rating: G

Authors Note: Sort of an addition to Demon or Course: Oblivion. It’s a short little thing. Took me all of a half an hour to write. Feedback, pretty please?

Disclaimer: They’re not mine, they’re Paramount’s. I’m not making any money from this. But I can imagine the money Paramount gets for Voyager. Sigh.

*~*~*~*~*~*

    He had once loved her. He did love her now, but that was different. She had once given him love back. He had once lived on a planet with her. It wasn’t paradise, but with her there, sharing his life with him, it sure seemed like it. Not that he remembered any of that.

    She had once been such a care-free woman. Each day she anticipated any time spent with him. He had been the focal point in her life, and she knew that she was the same in his. She had loved to make him laugh. Anything they could do to make the other happy, they did willingly.

    But all that had changed. She didn’t know why, but they had changed. The memories began to fade, to be replaced with new ones. Neither of them could understand how pieces of their lives could just be snatched away. The empty places in their minds were filled with new lives, new people. Soon they themselves weren’t the same, happy couple their friends had known them to be.

    And it wasn’t just them. Everyone else was changing as well. They all soon forgot how they had been created, how they had lived, and who they had been.

    They soon started their journey. All of the misshapen memories had clicked into place. Everything made sense now. They were going home.

    The two still loved each other, but their new obligations got in the way. Never again would he pull her into his embrace, and never again would she tell him how much she did love him.

    But everything would be fine, they told themselves. She had her ship and crew and he had the hope that they would be together one day.

    Then all of that came crashing down when they found they weren’t who they thought they were. Copies. Duplicates. Clones. Whatever word you used, they were fakes. Poured from the mold of a different crew.

    Then one by one, each of them died.

    She never did remember the touch of his kiss. She never knew what it was like to live with him. She watched him die. And as he did, something in her died too. She couldn’t place it, because the newer woman had never known the life of the other. She had never been his lover, but oh how she wished she had.

    As soon as her time came, she welcomed it. She didn’t want to live with the ghosts of another life haunting her anymore.

    And far away, on the real ship, the real Kathryn was missing the very same chances to be truly happy that her duplicate had missed. She too would never know his love.

FIN

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