Brief Candle

by Lyta


Disclaimer:  Earth: Final Conflict and its characters are copyrighted by Tribune Entertainment Company.  All rights reserved.



Note from Author:       Sequel to "Currents Turn Awry". Kleenex warning.



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Ronald Sandoval placed a single white rose on Siobhan Beckett's grave marker and another on that of Liam Kincaid. He stepped back and tried unsuccessfully to fight the tears that ran in rivers down his face. He'd failed Siobhan, and he had failed their son.

He thought back to receiving a message that someone had used an old Resistance drop box. Sandoval had thought this odd, since the box had been discovered even before the crackdown. The letter inside was addressed to him and told him where to find Liam's body. At home that evening, as he stared at a bottle of scotch from his pre-implant days, wishing he could get drunk, he had found another note in the same handwriting on his kitchen counter. He recognised the script belatedly as being Marquette's handwriting. The second letter asked him to have Liam buried properly, preferably by his mother, as she could not.

Zo'or had not cared where Liam was buried. He had lost his prize implant and was still in a foul mood. Sandoval wondered if the Synod leader would try to clone him or use his DNA for some nefarious purpose, so Sandoval had Liam cremated. It seemed right, his own family used that method of burial. Sandoval then had the rosewood box with his child's ashes buried next to Siohban.

Sandoval hoped Liam and Siobhan were in paradise together. He was not particularly certain as to his own religious beliefs, but he did believe that there was more to living than mere physical reality. He had to believe that: His mother, Dee-dee, Siobhan, Isabel, and Liam were all taken from him.

He hoped he could redeem himself enough to apologize to them in the next world.

"To-marrow, and to-marrow, and to-marrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

to the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."

-(c)From MacBeth by William Shakespeare. Act V, Scene IV.

The above passage is MacBeth's words after being informed of his wife's death even as his world crumbles around him.