Disclaimers, ratings and warnings are in Part 1.

THE BADLANDERS

PART TWENTY NINE  [FINALE]

The symbolism of the glass and its contents was just as instantaneous. The glass gleamed, silvery sparks shooting off its smooth surface. Under normal circumstances, the scene would have been the setting for an evening with a woman or boy, with calm precision enjoying the prospect of the hunt, the thrill of the kill, the sated feeling of the aftermath. The room or the office would be bathed in a semi-gloom just as it was now  with no natural light stealing its way through open windows.

The glass was shaped like a delta, or inverted triangle, the stem spiralled downwards to rest on a base which in turn, covered the coaster.

The contents of the glass filled him with dread and meaning. He had seen this glass all his life, had loved to drink martinis from it. Now, a clear, pinkish liquid filled it. A liquid he knew all too well.

Apiaceae Conium maculatum

poison hemlock

All parts of the plant lethal, most notably the seeds. A cocktail of all parts distilled into a drink, even more lethal It can kill within minutes. Causes paralysis, allowing the body little movement while the brain functions, making the subject fully aware of how the poison breaks down the body. Added with a viral component, causes haemorrhage whereby all internal organs begin to melt while the brain remains resistant to the effect until the body collapses.

All the time you are aware that you are dying.

He killed Gretchen Janeway with poison hemlock. He coerced his wife and daughter to drink it, in order to leave his son behind.

His own son.

Thomas Eugene Paris.

"One day I will come back and haunt you. Mark my words..."

But Tom was nowhere. Had never announced his return. Yet, he sensed that Tom must have had a hand in this, same way he had a hand in his father's grand confession before the entire Alpha Quadrant. Yes, Tom had something to do with this. He was the only one who could concoct a synthetic version of a hemlock cocktail, taught by his father many, many years ago.

"One day, son, you're going to kill Kathryn Janeway, that bitch in heat, with this. It's easy to do, son. Just watch me..."

Why was it he thought so belatedly about Tom's reaction at the time when Tom said "Just like Mama died, Daddy?"

"No, son, Mama was not a bitch in heat. She was just a bitch."

Too late. Too late!

The hatred had never gone. It lay waiting like a beast in the darkness, hibernating all through his young life until now, ready to emerge in all its cruelty. This was Tom's work, as surely as he was Owen Paris, standing in front of his desk, looking at the glass of poison, seeing it reaching invitingly for him.

Once Tom had called him a coward. The drink beckoned, told him to make like a coward and use that way out of his mess. For that was what he was in now.

It is over.

Thus said Chakotay.

It is over, Owen.

Thus said Kathryn.

This is it, grandpa.

Thus chorus Ethan and Lainey.

Take it, Dad. Take it like the coward you are.

Thus said Thomas Eugene Paris.

"Owen it is in your interest to go to your office and remain there..."

Hays,  Nechayev, Gordon, Ponsonby, Krog, Ru'al, Berenski.

This is your life, Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather. Cast your eyes on the images that will be the life you witnessed, and that will be the testimony of your life.

Did you not know that a man who takes a woman to his heart shows through his daily life what those outside must see and admire?

Take your seat, for we are coming, Owen McKenzie Paris: admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

Too stunned to speak, he sat down in his chair – his home for more than twenty years.

The place of his prurience; the  place where all battles were fought, all plots were planned, lust was lurking,  all manner of devices given birth to in a brain where chaos reigned and chaos continued to hold sway.

Too stunned to speak, he could only look with eyes that bulged at the glass in front of him – the delta shaped goblet that continued in a thin, spiral stem down to a wide brim for purchase against the Federation.

The liquid appeared cool, a transparent pink, an olive perched sideways against the rim on a tiny toothpick. Strangely, a sprig from the plant garnished the liquid, remained fresh as it hovered like a small craft on the sea of sin.

Too stunned to speak, he saw in his mind's eye the day he had placed such a drink on the table for Elizabeth, ordering her to partake of his evil potion, ordering her to die.

Ordering his little daughter to die.

Too stunned to speak, he saw in his mind's eye the little boy, hysterical with grief, unable to give his voice to his outrage. Just wordless, open-mouthed sobbing as he watched his mother die.

Too stunned to speak, he looked up at the two men who entered his office, carrying with them equipment only he recognised. They approached him silently, and just as silently, bade he remain in his chair with the high back and broad armrests. Silently, they signalled that he place his arms on the armrests. He complied, his eyes dead on the delta with its pink liquid and spiked green olive perched at an angle. Somehow in its stark aloofness he had time to admire the beauty of the martini. And, while admiring the dangerous delta, the men braced his arms, fixing them so that even in the throes of hell's highway, he could not free himself.

Too stunned to speak, he felt the coldness of the electrodes as they were latched to his temples, his forehead, the dip behind the ears, the base of the skull, the soft whirring as the machines were activated.

Breathe not too deeply, Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

In silence the men beckoned he look at his screen – enhanced, enlarged so that al images appeared life-like.

Breathe not, Owen McKenzie Paris, as you look at the first images.

Breathe not, for you are the child of five, and your perpetrator the high school boy who violated you, who tested his own reflexes, who wanted to see if having sex with boys would suit him.

You are that little boy. Feel his pain, feel his bewilderment, feel his fear. Watch how the rapist approaches him. Scream his fear, scream.

You are the victim Gretchen Janeway. Look through her eyes at Owen Paris. See his eyes, full of lust and evil and violence. Scream her fear, protest, yes. Feel her pain, her pain, her pain! It is unbearable! Cry in your heart, Gretchen, for the child he left there.

Cry in your heart.

Through your eyes, through your heart, in your ears and your emotions you are Elizabeth Paris and you are your little girl Rowena.

See, look on your screen, Owen McKenzie Paris, and become Rowena, your little daughter. Feel her sorrow, her pain, her perplexity as her daddy closes in on her and makes her drink of the poison you prepared. Feel the liquid burning as it enters your body, feel your eyes bulging, your small mouth beginning to froth and you look at your daddy and in wordless pain you ask, "Why, Daddy?"

Through the eyes of your victims you see your crimes.

No longer are you Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

You are Thomas Eugene Paris. You feel the fear of your Daddy and you scream "Why, Daddy?"

You lie in bed, your room filled with only the light of the moon, the moon that rages with you and cries with you and spills your sorrow over the silvery lake outside every bedroom of every other little boy who comes to know your sorrow. There is no solace. Yesterday, before your very eyes, your mother drank the poison from the delta he put there for her.

Your door opens and the shadow enters, moving towards your bed. You tremble in your fear, your despair is nameless beyond any boundary you will ever know.

You do not have the strength to say, "No, Daddy…please, don't…"

Feel your father's body as it bears down on you.

Weep. Weep. Weep.

And so we give you the woman's body, for you are  Gretchen, you are Phoebe, you are Maris. Try to fight an overpowering force and feel your helpless rage as his body bears down on yours.

Weep. Weep. Weep.

You are Vulcan. You are Voyager. You are every crewman you sent to his or her death.

A hundred voices pour their grief into the numbing, nameless nebulas and distant stars and plasma turbulence. Hear the thousand voices of all those touched by the cruel vile, evil man who dishonoured his name and his Federation. Hear them forever screaming into the furthest corners of your brain.

Forever.

And so Owen McKenzie Paris's eyes were glued to the enhanced screen where he became everyone he murdered, everyone he raped, every child he threatened. His heart thudded, boiled, filled with fear, a fear that was sealed in, with no hope of escaping.

Then came the tears. They would not stop, because he was no longer Owen McKenzie Paris, admiral, husband, father, grandfather.

More images as the tears spilled down his cheeks.

Chakotay and Kathryn, arm in arm, and on each side of them their children, Ethan holding his mother's hand and Lainey holding her daddy's hand. They walked towards him, smiling, laughing together, their faces relaxed, happy in their unity. The children clung to their parents, and then they released their hands and came together, hugging  - Ethan and Lainey.

They waved at him. All of them. Kathryn, Chakotay, Lainey and Ethan. Away into the new sunrise or new sunsets – whatever the destination, there was always the sun that warmed them with their healing rays.

Yes, they walked away from him, waving.

Only Ethan and Lainey cried together "Bye-bye, Owen Paris!"

Too stunned to speak, he tried to reach for the delta glass. Restrained against his chair, the glass on its coaster of the Federation seemed to move just out of his reach.

Next he saw his son Thomas, waving to him. Thomas smiled, his face free of the sin of his father. He joined Kathryn, Chakotay and the children, moving further and further into the distant sun.

He tried to call Thomas back, but Thomas moved away, waved without looking behind him.

And then came all those spectres from his life.

Elizabeth and Rowena, spirits who taunted him with the joy in their new havens, where only joy resided and where he could never, never, never touch them again.

Gretchen Janeway, innocent, dead, spirit.

The one hundred and forty spectres floating from the debris of Voyager, towards him, then maddeningly, away from him where they too, joined the others into the distant golden sun.

Yet, through it all, he knew fear. Cold, unabridged fear that ate from his loins, into every sinew, every nerve, every bone, every hair on his body – it quivered.

For now he could no longer banish those images because they were not only images from his crimes, but they were him.

He tried to scream and couldn't. He tried to tell them the pain is too much, but he couldn't. He tried to show them that the guilt and remorse is eating away at his insides.

As if they could divine those thoughts, they removed the restraints from his hands. Yet, as he reached for the delta poison, it moved away from his greedy hands.

Not for him the easy way out. Not for him the way to redemption. Not for him, pardon.

The men helped him to stand up. Drunk from the pain, they removed the electrodes one by one. He couldn't speak, for his tongue had grown thick. He looked at the poison with longing, tried to reach for it again, but his body had been paralysed by the procedure of integrating into his memories the trauma of every man, woman and child he raped, pained, purged, injured, killed.

The door opened and two more figures appeared. They wore white coats and carried instruments with them. He tried to cry out, tried to move away from hands that removed his uniform, the rank insignia, his shodding, his undergarments. He tried to move away, but could not.

The first stab of pain shot through his traumatised brain as the knife cut sharply into flesh, excised from his body such evil as had started when he was a fifteen year old boy. He tried to scream, but no sound came from him.

He knew only nameless fear as blood trickled away from his body, then the expunged area cauterised. He stared with dumb, numb, unbelieving eyes down, saw nothing that was once the pride of a man.

The white clad figures dressed him again. Uniform, rank insignia. They brushed his hair into smoothness, created again the smart, upstanding citizen of the Federation.

Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, now imbued with the holocaust of his victims.

Admiral Owen McKenzie Paris, once a husband, father, grandfather.

His tongue remained a thickened blob in his mouth. They cared not how he would eat, or drink, or pass water.

They led him away, a security anklet sealing his incarceration in a glass booth.

Let it be known that Admiral Paris committed these dreadful crimes. Switch on the panel and the list of his iniquities appear on the walls of glass surrounding him. On the plazas of Earth's great cities where all who would view the deranged man in the booth would witness his fear.

For let it be known that the integration of his victims' terror would activate once in every five hours for a full hour. Let it be known that the man in the glass booth who wails in pain, screams and pleads for desperate release, experiences in those hours his fear in the precise way as if he were those he maimed, murdered, raped.

He cannot speak, so they will not know that he pleads for release from the terror in his head. They will think him deranged. Curious individuals will mark the time and arrive just when he begins to scream when he sees whom they cannot see…

His son, cowering in fear.

His grandchildren, paralysed with terror.

His wife in the throes of death, breathing her last.

Gretchen Janeway in the throes of death, breathing her last.

Phoebe Janeway, raped.

Maris Locarno, raped.

Captain Chakotay, honoured and decorated  warrior, the aggressive purging of his memories.

The screams of the crew of Voyager, in the final throes of death.

They will see how he tries to drink the delta poison which will always, always remain tantalisingly outside his reach.

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THE END

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J/C FANFIC