Bits and Pieces

Author's Note: This story is set late Season 2.

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I got a package today. An honest to goodness package, brown paper and everything. A little piece of my past caught up with me again and for the first time I was glad.

We were helping a freighter captain who got his ship shot up and he did a double-take at my name, a strange look coming into his eyes as if he recognized it. That made me worried. Personal experience has taught me painfully that having strangers recognize my name is not good. Beka looked concerned and moved in front of me, and I got ready to bolt if I needed to. Instead, the old guy just walked away.

He returned a little while later when I was working alone and gave me the package with my name written across it. My face must have registered my confusion because he sat down next to me and started talking. He said about five years ago he'd made a cargo run to Earth and he wandered out into Boston to find a bar. While there, an old woman approached him. She said she was dying, but she asked if he would help grant her one last request. Curious, he agreed. She told him her only living grandson had been forced to flee into space to escape slavery to the Nietzscheans, leaving everyone and everything behind. She'd made him a package and asked the captain to take it back to space with him. She said she knew the odds were slim, but asked him to keep it and save it. If he ever ran across her grandson out there in the stars, to please deliver it and give him her love.

For the first time in my life, words failed me. My eyes misted over and the old man tactfully left the room as I sat there holding the package in stunned silence.

And that's why I'm here now, all alone in the slipstream core, staring at a little package wrapped in dirty, brown, butcher paper. Willing my fingers to stop shaking, I pull the paper off with the care of a surgeon and open the box.

Memories fill the room.

Five pictures lie on top and I smile in spite of the wetness that fills my eyes: a family group, cousins laughing, a homemade swing, Christmas Eve, and my parent's wedding. Suddenly, I remember things I've forgotten. I remember laughing, singing, teasing, joy. I remember forts built out of holey blankets, scrap-metal trucks and homemade rag dolls. I hear the echo of children squealing as they race through tunnels of stone, blissfully unaware of the horrors of their lives. I gaze at the faces in the pictures, faces that had all but faded from my memory, and I feel no shame as the tears fall down.

Finally, I set the photos aside and reverently pull out the next two items: a broken pocket-watch and a plain silver ring. One was Dad's, the other Mom's; she must have taken them off as she gently covered their bodies for burial with a sheet, the only act of respect she could give. I close my hand around them tightly, afraid to let them go.

Minutes, hours, days later, I'm at peace with the memories and I reach into the small cardboard box for the last time. My fingers meet soft, grey wool and sharp, cold steel, and I cry as the images dance past again. Pulling the shawl out, I wrap it about my shoulders as I finger the small, toy spaceship, turning it round and round in my hands.

"Nana! Tell me another story! Please! The one with the space pirates and the three-headed monsters and the big explosions and the little guy who saves the day! Oh, please, Nana! I promise I'm not tired…"

For the first time in years, I allow myself to remember the good times. I feel the warmth of her arms as she wraps this shawl around me and with her words carries my mind away from the squalor and pain of life to the endless possibilities of dreams. I hear her speak of learning and flying and living among the stars.

"Nana, it's so cold and my head feels funny. Why is it so hard to breathe?"

I close my eyes as I remember the shawl wrapped around me again, a pitiful attempt to stave off the chill as one sickness after another ravaged through my small body, leaving it the wreck it is today.

"But Nana, where have Declan and Siobhan gone? Why can't I see them? We can't leave! How will they find their way home!"

With a sob, I remember falling to the ground, my heart breaking as I realized that my best friends and cousins were never coming back. This same grey shawl and those same wrinkled arms held me as I cried tears of agony and my childhood drained away forever.

Somehow, with the shawl's buffering wall once more wrapped around me, the memories lose their demonic quality and become simply sad, and the tears that glide down my cheeks are less bitter.

Another memory surfaces, much newer.

"Seamus, please, don't go out tonight! The slavers have been combing the streets and you know they're looking for you!"

"Nana, you know I have to go out! Brendan's too sick to do anything and all our food's gone. But I'll come back, don't worry. I always come back. Now, you keep my spaceship for me, so you know I'll come back..."

But I didn't.

A dam breaks inside my heart and I finally allow myself to remember. I went out and the slavers caught me. By the time I got away from them, there was no place on Earth where I could be safe. Bobby and Beka offered a quick ride off and I took it; no time for lengthy goodbye's.

By the time I made it back there again, it was too late.

Just as the guilt and memories are about to overwhelm me, I notice one more thing in the box. I pull the small note out and read with blurry eyes:

Seamus,

I don't know if you'll ever get this, but I had to try. I had to tell you one more time that I loved you, and I knew you would need these things.

Shay, life is hard. Life is full of sorrow, pain, and grief. But life is also filled with joy! You must never forget the good, because there's nothing left to live for if you allow the pain to consume you. I loved you, your parents loved you, your cousins loved you. Hold on to that love and let go of the guilt. Never feel bad for leaving; you did the right thing. From the moment your mother gave birth to you, I knew you were special. You were meant for greater things than fate had seen fit to deal out.

Never forget where you came from, but never lose sight of where you can go. And remember, I will always love you.

Nana

Beka finds me wrapped in the shawl several hours later, fast asleep. She takes in my tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes and her face lights up with concern. Gingerly, she sits next to me and places a hand on my arm, asking in that big-sister way of hers if I'm okay.

For the first time in my life it's not a lie when I say yes.

She touches the shawl, questions in her eyes that I understand with her having to voice them. Smiling, I pick up my treasures and show her, explaining one by one; my old family meeting my new one.

And inside me, the broken pieces of my heart are stitched a little tighter together again.

Thank you, Nana! Thank you for always being there for me, even years after you died. Thank you for teaching me how to dream and how to look to the stars. Thank you for holding me close and thank you for letting me go.