It was the following day after the USS Grus had docked; both Lyanna and Dinari had made their way to the small island of Jersey. The first leg of the journey had been with Petty Officer Derek Lightwood and Crewman George Tyson, who were heading home to visit family; for the rest of the way, it had just been the two of them.

Lyanna had elected to drive the vehicle they’d hired from a rental place in St. Helier, rather than just sit there for almost half an hour; watching the steering wheel twitch and turn, as some onboard autonomous system did all the work.

Dinari for his part was simply looked out of the passenger-side car window, enjoying the beautiful view; whistling softly and just tunelessly enough to be irritating; which was exactly the Chief Engineers plan.  He tried not to smile, sensing the plan was working; smiling and whistling at the same time, wasn’t something he could manage.

“Oh, what is it!” The Orion woman barked crossly.

“She doth speaketh!” Dinari replied with amusement.

“Of cause I can speak!”Lyanna growled. “What are you on about?”

“You have not said one single word in over two hours.” Dinari turned to look at her. “And not a fat lot for the three hours before that.”

She slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt halt; and let her head slowly sink down until it rested on the upper curve of the wheel.  “What if he can’t come back?”

“Look, I get it.” Dinari placed a hand on her shoulder. “He’s my friend to.”

Lyanna lifted her head slowly. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

“It’s ok; we’ve all got a little stressed out lately.” He put on his best disarming smile.  “We’ve just got to convince Jason that he needs to fight.”

“When did you turn into the sensible one?” She enquired sincerely.

“What’s this when business?” Dinari replied. “I have always been sensible.”

“Say’s the guy who spent 20 minutes trying to seduce the EHN.” Lyanna sniggered.

“In my defense; it was before they informed me I was there to do some of the initial reprogramming.”

“It was like watching Newton’s cradle, when she walked!”

The two friends started laughing uncontrollably, tears running down their faces, as they recalled the ridicules situation.  Any attempt to say anything else about the matter either sounded gibberish, between the laughter or the sentence was left unfinished.

The Orion finally wiped her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve laughed like that in ages.”

“I think we all need to remember what it’s like to be happy.” Her Namibian companion added.

Lyanna nodded, before starting the car up again.  North Lodge was only a couple more minutes up the road; as they passed through the main gates, she noticed the two sides didn’t exactly match. Someone had done a reasonably good job; but the metal work of the left gate was more angular than the right one.  A flower bed along the left side of the driveway; looked like someone had driven through it.  The soil was churned up by thick treaded tires, and there were gaps where plants and flowers probably should have been.

Monic as the Romulan woman running the place called herself; was standing by the front door to the main building, as the two of them got out of the car. “Welcome to North Lodge, you must be the two friends of Mr. Devron I’m expecting.”

“I think you need to find a better gardener,” Dinari pointed at the damage.

“It was just a little disagreement with some visitors we had recently.” The disagreement she was referring to, had in fact involved an Armoured Personnel Carrier and a small assault team, tasked with killing the man they’d come to visit.  That attempt had failed and cost the lives of three out of the eight attackers; the lodge was far from the quiet care home it appeared.

More evidence of altercation could be seen inside; the majority of the reception area had been either repaired or replaced, but some signs still remained.  The two Starfleet officers looked at each other, puzzled.  Walking down the corridor, they past a door, on the other side of which could be heard some repair work going on.

Out the back, in a small patio area; two young men, each sat in a wheel chair, facing each other over a table and an ongoing game of chess.  They looked remarkably alike, and that’s because they were brothers; born a month apart.  Same father, different mothers, and that was only the start of this complex web that surrounded them.  Only one of them had been born with the name Jason Devron and he had been completely unaware of his brothers’ existence until the car crash.  He didn’t remember the crash itself, just the sound of his mother yelling about cheating, lying and another family.  Those were the last words he’d ever hear her say; what they meant would take a few more years to become apparent.

The crash has left him paralysed and no amount of therapy or surgery had even changed that fact; but that didn’t mean his life was over, far from it.  The doctors had told him he wouldn’t live much past his eighteenth birthday; so when his bothers life became in danger from terrorists using him to destroy federation property and kill several of its officers; he did the most selfless act he could, and gave him his name.

Of cause doctors can be wrong from time to time; which was why, five years later, there were still two Jason Devron’s.

The original and older of the two spotted their arrival first, and beckoned Lyanna and Dinari over.  “Have you come to tell my younger brother to get up off his lazy backside and stop mopping like a sad puppy?”

“I am not mopping.” The brother they were more familiar with replied. “You of all people should understand that sometimes things don’t work!”

“You can see what I’m working with here.” The elder brother waved his arms. “Even Monic is stuck for motivational ideas.”

Jason still found it hard to explain how he felt.  In a parallel universe he’d met a better version of himself, one unencumbered by the errors of a reckless anger driven youth and he’d watched that version of himself killed by an entity from this universe, they’d failed to destroy twice.  A combination of virus and machine, created by the Vezda; had it gained access to the interdimensional rift, there was no telling how far it could have spread.

He was onboard the alternate USS Grus, when its warp core detonated, triggered by an Auto Destructed, ordered.  Under any other circumstances, that should have killed him; but the universe had other ideas, and flung him back 29 years.  There along with the man who’d become his grandfather in later life; they’d prevented a Changeling, also apparently from the future, from changing what to him was history. Khan Noonien Singh had managed over two century’s in cryogenic sleep; yet had fared far better than Jason had, just getting back to the present.

May be in the long run; waking up was where he’d gone wrong in this situation.  That message still hung fresh in his memory.

Dear Jason, there is no easy way to say this, so I’ll come straight to the point.  I’m seeing someone else.