Lilly/Taylor - Hurdles

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalise it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself up to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself up to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the councillor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realise. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captian?"

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it al now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

She smiled and shook her head playfully, slowly unzipping his duty jacket to signal to him what she wanted. It hadn't started off that way, but Lillian at least wanted his jacket off so that she could put her hands closer to his body. It didn't have to end in anything carnal, she just wanted to be with him...though she couldn't deny that she was always rather in want of him. He was Taylor. He just did those kinds of things to her and she enjoyed that.

"Though we should probably..." Lillian admitted with a small laugh. "Then again remember the shuttle?"

She wiggled her eyebrows a little bit remembering that time when she was still CMO and Taylor was MCO and they had decided to take advantage of a bio bed en route to a distress call. It hadn't been professional, but she and Taylor went through a whole phase and finding alone time on duty and she'd even made a bad first impression on his sister walking into Taylor's office unzipping her duty jacket.

"Actually come to think of it, we didn't know it yet, but I was pregnant then." Lillian said happily.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

She smiled and shook her head playfully, slowly unzipping his duty jacket to signal to him what she wanted. It hadn't started off that way, but Lillian at least wanted his jacket off so that she could put her hands closer to his body. It didn't have to end in anything carnal, she just wanted to be with him...though she couldn't deny that she was always rather in want of him. He was Taylor. He just did those kinds of things to her and she enjoyed that.

"Though we should probably..." Lillian admitted with a small laugh. "Then again remember the shuttle?"

She wiggled her eyebrows a little bit remembering that time when she was still CMO and Taylor was MCO and they had decided to take advantage of a bio bed en route to a distress call. It hadn't been professional, but she and Taylor went through a whole phase and finding alone time on duty and she'd even made a bad first impression on his sister walking into Taylor's office unzipping her duty jacket.

"Actually come to think of it, we didn't know it yet, but I was pregnant then." Lillian said happily.

"I do, best shuttle ride ever." said Taylor with his usual warm grin. When his duty jacket had been unzipped he shrugged it off to reveal his forest green shirt to Lillian. While she moved her hands along his chest Taylor purred happily, wiggling his eyebrows as he went in for the killing kiss. "And look at you now, I can't wait to see our baby for the first time." he replied with a small crooning sound from his mouth.

Taylor stood up while moving Lillian to the console. It had been the same spot they had made love the first day Taylor had come aboard. It seemed to be getting more attention than it was used to when in a hanger. Taylor's fingers loosened Lillian's duty trousers so he could pull them down slightly to set the pace of the event. "Hi...." purred Taylor with a warm glow in his eyes, kissing Lillian's nose.

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

She smiled and shook her head playfully, slowly unzipping his duty jacket to signal to him what she wanted. It hadn't started off that way, but Lillian at least wanted his jacket off so that she could put her hands closer to his body. It didn't have to end in anything carnal, she just wanted to be with him...though she couldn't deny that she was always rather in want of him. He was Taylor. He just did those kinds of things to her and she enjoyed that.

"Though we should probably..." Lillian admitted with a small laugh. "Then again remember the shuttle?"

She wiggled her eyebrows a little bit remembering that time when she was still CMO and Taylor was MCO and they had decided to take advantage of a bio bed en route to a distress call. It hadn't been professional, but she and Taylor went through a whole phase and finding alone time on duty and she'd even made a bad first impression on his sister walking into Taylor's office unzipping her duty jacket.

"Actually come to think of it, we didn't know it yet, but I was pregnant then." Lillian said happily.

"I do, best shuttle ride ever." said Taylor with his usual warm grin. When his duty jacket had been unzipped he shrugged it off to reveal his forest green shirt to Lillian. While she moved her hands along his chest Taylor purred happily, wiggling his eyebrows as he went in for the killing kiss. "And look at you now, I can't wait to see our baby for the first time." he replied with a small crooning sound from his mouth.

Taylor stood up while moving Lillian to the console. It had been the same spot they had made love the first day Taylor had come aboard. It seemed to be getting more attention than it was used to when in a hanger. Taylor's fingers loosened Lillian's duty trousers so he could pull them down slightly to set the pace of the event. "Hi...." purred Taylor with a warm glow in his eyes, kissing Lillian's nose.

She moaned into his mouth and then smiled gently, her eyes a little watery a moment when he mentioned being excited about the baby. She was too, and when he moved her to the console to loosen her duty trousers, she shook her head ever so gently but let him do it. Lillian smiled at the kiss to her nose and she nuzzled his with hers, glad he was close to her and wanting it to stay that way for as long as they could drag this out, even though he needed to get ready to go down to the planet.

"Hi," she responded with a coo as she worked on his trousers too. "I want to do it in the chair..."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

She smiled and shook her head playfully, slowly unzipping his duty jacket to signal to him what she wanted. It hadn't started off that way, but Lillian at least wanted his jacket off so that she could put her hands closer to his body. It didn't have to end in anything carnal, she just wanted to be with him...though she couldn't deny that she was always rather in want of him. He was Taylor. He just did those kinds of things to her and she enjoyed that.

"Though we should probably..." Lillian admitted with a small laugh. "Then again remember the shuttle?"

She wiggled her eyebrows a little bit remembering that time when she was still CMO and Taylor was MCO and they had decided to take advantage of a bio bed en route to a distress call. It hadn't been professional, but she and Taylor went through a whole phase and finding alone time on duty and she'd even made a bad first impression on his sister walking into Taylor's office unzipping her duty jacket.

"Actually come to think of it, we didn't know it yet, but I was pregnant then." Lillian said happily.

"I do, best shuttle ride ever." said Taylor with his usual warm grin. When his duty jacket had been unzipped he shrugged it off to reveal his forest green shirt to Lillian. While she moved her hands along his chest Taylor purred happily, wiggling his eyebrows as he went in for the killing kiss. "And look at you now, I can't wait to see our baby for the first time." he replied with a small crooning sound from his mouth.

Taylor stood up while moving Lillian to the console. It had been the same spot they had made love the first day Taylor had come aboard. It seemed to be getting more attention than it was used to when in a hanger. Taylor's fingers loosened Lillian's duty trousers so he could pull them down slightly to set the pace of the event. "Hi...." purred Taylor with a warm glow in his eyes, kissing Lillian's nose.

She moaned into his mouth and then smiled gently, her eyes a little watery a moment when he mentioned being excited about the baby. She was too, and when he moved her to the console to loosen her duty trousers, she shook her head ever so gently but let him do it. Lillian smiled at the kiss to her nose and she nuzzled his with hers, glad he was close to her and wanting it to stay that way for as long as they could drag this out, even though he needed to get ready to go down to the planet.

"Hi," she responded with a coo as she worked on his trousers too. "I want to do it in the chair..."

"The chair?" asked Taylor with pair of raised eyebrows. He let his own trousers drop to his ankles since his combat boots took too long to take off for his trousers to be removed. Lillian's boots however were zipped so Taylor got to his knees and undone her boots, pulling them off along with her trousers. Leaving her duty jacket and shirt on Taylor grasped her hand and stroked it with his thumb. "Are you sure? It might not be the best position for the little one and yourself..."

Taylor cared about Lillian's well being but she did request it. Nodding Taylor kissed Lillian's lips and pulled her over to the chair. Taylor sat down and kissed Lillian's stomach as he sat down. "I promise I'll come back from this mission, alright? I'm coming back in my armour without even a scratch on it. I'm coming back to you. Every mission you send me on."

||USS Fenris
||Shuttlebay I, Redemption's Caress
||TBD


Lillian was resting in her Ready Room, taking a deep breath as she looked over everything, about ready for everyone to get down on the planet and do their little side quest. Elena had requested it when scans had picked up plants she wanted to play with and Lillian understood that--she understood the Scientific and Medical need to do this and so she had complied. Besides, there were also beings down there that seemed to be animals of some sort and they had no idea if they were hostile or not. Lillian wanted to give the marines something to do, and she wanted Marissa to be able to take her crewmen down to the planet.

Unfortunately, Lillian suddenly felt like something was wrong. Sometimes she thought that her feelings were a bit out of whack, but at this point she knew that she was right on. She had felt these kinds of feelings before when she had been convinced that Taylor couldn't be gone and she knew to run with her gut. So, Lillian sat there a moment and focused, feeling a lot of negative feelings that she was pretty sure were coming from Taylor. He was her Imzadi and she knew that something was wrong just because she knew. Getting up, she left her Ready Room and the Bridge even though she knew that she should probably focus.

Everything looked in order for the mission and Taylor was her priority.

She figured that he would be on his ship, so she followed her senses to Shuttlebay I, getting onto Taylor's ship and heading to the Bridge of it. Lillian just wanted to make sure that he was alright and she could tell that he was distraught. She also knew that she could read his mind but she didn't want to...she wanted to know that she and Taylor could talk about these kinds of things with her. They were going to get married and raise kids and she really wanted to know that they could get through the hard things together as a team.

"Credit for your thoughts?" She asked him calmly.

Taylor sat in the chair with his back to the door of the bridge. Right now he was just pretending to check plasma flow to the engines but it had been a hasty attempt to feign that nothing was wrong. Then the fact that Lillian had managed to track him down either meant that someone had seen his display in the mess and then seen him enter the shuttle bay and reporting it to her or more likely she was following her senses.

He decided to go with the former and keep his back to her. If she was feeling anything it was guilt, shame and general self-loathing. It was a poisonous cocktail of emotions and he wondered how Lillian was taking just feeling that. "I'm a marine, we don't have thoughts. Need to have a brain to have thoughts." Said Taylor in his usual self-deprecating way. His shoulders sagged in the chair but he still wouldn't turn around. He didn't want her to see what he was thinking in his eyes. Or his real one anyway. Even though Taylor knew Lillian could sense what he was thinking he was funny that way.

"Do you remember on Seven, when that thing with Sarah was happening and we couldn't be together? I said I wasn't good enough for you and you told me all the things you loved about me. I feel like that, but worse." Explained the marine with a small huffing sigh. "I've done a lot of bad things when I was in PRISM, now I've been given a second chance. I'm grateful for it. For you…for the baby. I'm just finding it hard to believe I deserve this chance. Or you. Especially after what I've done."

"Well you must have a brain because you're thinking," Lillian said gently, trying to put herself in check with all of the emotions in the room that she was feeling.

The mention of Sarah made her frown a moment and she took in his words, rubbing her temples as she had on the bridge before, shaking her head a bit and wondering what in the world to do. Taylor was feeling all of these emotions she didn't want him to feel and she honestly wished that she knew what to say to make it better. The two months they had been apart he wasn't the only one to do terrible things and why he was suddenly feeling so bad she didn't know--unless he had been feeling this bad and he'd just been hiding it so he wouldn't worry her. What was it that he had done that was making him feel like he didn't deserve this? This was 'third time's the charm'...

"Those reasons are all still true, you know...all of them." Lillian told him honestly, shrugging a little bit. "Even apart I love you and while I have no idea what is going on, I am certain you're being too hard on yourself. There's nothing you could have possibly done to change my opinion of you. I'm still here. I'm always going to be here."

Taylor smiled a little bit when Lillian said that she loved him but it wavered on the 'too hard on yourself'. He figured he wasn't being hard enough. "I'm trying Lilly, honest. I'm looking forward to us having a baby, to seeing Sareth again and see where life takes us all. I really am but it's just well..."

He faltered as he tried to drag up the courage to tell Lillian one of his more shady dealings with PRISM. That was what was eating him. Just knowing that there were six Bajorans somewhere in a mass grave with families not knowing how they died and here he was trying to build a family for himself. Taylor felt like some thief. No, he felt like a murderer. Taking lives had never been hard for Taylor because he had been able to rationalize it as them or the people close to him. Not this time though. Not this time....

"One of the missions I done was PRISM was to arrest a Bajoran freighter crew and recover a scout runabout sensor box. Thing was destroyed, crew killed but the sensor box was intact so they had obviously recovered it by way of salvage. We get them to land, I beam down with a team, arrested them and got the box. When I called in I said it hadn't been tampered with. The next order I got was....no witnesses. I argued my point that they hadn't seen any records on the sensor box but the commanding officer...so I got them lined up against the bulkhead, switched my phaser carbine to auto and....left them in a hole on some barren L-Class. After that a career with PRISM didn't seem all that great."

With a hurt tone Taylor wasn't sure what to say but he turned around and look at Lillian squarely in the face. "So that's the man you want to marry, Lilly. I'm a murderer. I should have done something, anything but obeyed that order. Are you sure you want to marry me now? After finding out that's what I've been doing until now? Just leaving a trail of bodies?"

Lillian opened her mouth to say something and then closed it, chewing on her bottom lip and trying not to waiver. She knew that Taylor knew what the lip biting meant by now and she couldn't show him how at a loss she was right then for words--not in his time of need. Taylor had no idea what she had done and while what he had done struck a painful nerve in her heart, she wondered what he would ever say to her if he knew what she had done for Marshall. Killing six people like that was terrible, she knew that it was and her heart went out to their families, but she'd killed hundreds of people helping Marshall...hundreds. How could she ever judge Taylor?

She didn't want to anyway.

For a moment Lillian even wanted to come clean to him, but she didn't have the words to say and she found her voice faltering a moment. "I...yeah. I can't sugar coat that for you and you don't want me to--that's horrible. You know what, though? You tried to stop it but you followed orders. You always follow orders, Tay. You know what you did after that? I mean it took its toll and you got out because you knew it was wrong. If you didn't have remorse that would make you a terrible person. The things that I've...I...I still want to marry you."

At the moment this was about Taylor and Lillian couldn't find it in her to tell him about what she had done. How could she pull the focus from him when he was so clearly hurting? All she wanted to do was pull him close and assure him that she was still by his side. The world was cruel and sometimes people did things that they couldn't take back and this was one of them. It was serious, yes, but Lillian still trusted Taylor around Sareth and around their baby they would have. He was remorseful and he knew right from wrong, sometimes he just lost his way...and Lillian wanted to be his guiding light back home.

Again another small smiled occurred on Taylor's lips. All it took was for Lillian to know about what he considered his most ruthless act and had accepted his remorse for it. He didn't know if she did that out of blind loyalty or genuine understanding. Taylor kissed Lillian's baby bump, caressed it and then lay his head against it in a sign of affection. "I'm just worried if I'm a good man for all of you. You know how much being a good man means to me. I want Sareth and this new baby to be proud of their father just as I want you to be proud of your husband. Not because I leap and bound into danger but because I'm a good father and husband. A good man."

Taylor smiled and kissed the bump and looked up at Lillian. His main fear of being something he hated wasn't dispelled but at least Lillian accepted him for him. That was all he could really ask for. Any issues he had with himself would have to be dealt with by himself. There was no getting around that. "Heard there's an away mission. My track record isn't exactly great with these, sure you want me down there?"

"Carrying this around has to be eating away at you, baby...I'm so sorry." Lillian told him with a sad look on her face. "You've been through so much that I don't feel like I know about, and I just want to take your pain away. Tell me how I do that."

She wanted him to know that she was always there even though she knew he couldn't always want to come to her with issues. Besides, this was a two way street and if he told her about his past then she had to tell him about hers. Lillian was just afraid that he wouldn't ever be able to look at her the same way again. She hadn't even told Marlo for fear of what Marlo would say and do.

"I am proud of you, and our children will be proud of you too," she told her as she stroked his hair. "As for the Away Mission, trust me, Marlo will keep an eye on you. She finally gives you her blessing to marry me and you just disappear. She's not going to let you out of her sight again, I promise you."

"Just be with me Lilly, take me for the man I am....that's all I can ask and all I can wish for." replied Taylor with his small smile. "I'm not looking for wealth, power or fame. I just want us as a family. Now we have our chance. My chance." It was no secret between them that when it came to duty Taylor would always take it over family. It was just him and even though Lillian loved him for it Taylor knew it made her upset. However Taylor would never leave or if he was going to die, have the courtesy of staying dead.

When she said of how proud she was and how proud the kids would be he stood up and embraced his fiancée with a warm glow from his eyes. Of course the issue at hand wasn't sorted but it had been mended for now. "Trust me, not walking away. I know it'll be hard for you to send me into the fray. Hell...it's hard putting on that armour now. I don't want to leave you worrying. But if it's just a simple Away mission then it'll be alright..."

"If you need help, I suggest talking to a counselor if you can't talk to me," Lillian suggested with a gentle shrug. "They're both good and I don't want you to let this get to you more than it should. I'm not saying forget it, I'm just saying that you're not the terrible person you make yourself out to be. You're a hero. You're not all puppies and rainbows all the time, you have to make tough decisions--welcome to life."

Things between them weren't perfect and their past wasn't perfect, but the two of them were trying and that was all that they could ask for right then. Besides, when it came down to it, Taylor was a marine and Lillian was a doctor. They were so very different, but in ways they were very much the same and they fit together. They could make this work.

"This is our family, Tay...it's always going to be us." Lillian told him as he held her, keeping him close to her and kissing him gently. "I want you as is--all your quirks and all your flaws. I'd like to think by now that I know you, and I'm always behind you whatever you choose."

"Already spoke to the counselor at her invitation." Admitted Taylor with a shrug. Apart from his typical stigma against medical help unless it was forced upon him by Lillian he liked to idea of her being able to sort his problems at heart rather than let some stranger walk him through it all. That way she could always know that she could help Taylor. He knew how good it was to know you can truly help someone in a way that they'd never realize. Taylor hoped that Lillian knew that he could also be the rock that she was for him.

Resting his forehead against hers Taylor just sighed softly. He was a soft hearted guy and Lillian made his melt. Others had to fight a running battle just to tell him why he was down if he looked a bit pissed of. "Well, I choose us. Us and this family. Your orders, my captain?"

Lillian smiled a little bit. "Two counselor sessions already, huh? At this rate you'll have a weekly setup with them."

She didn't know if it was the time for teasing, but she honestly wanted to just a little bit. Lillian liked it when the mood was light and happy and though she felt guilty and a bit stressed, she knew that right now she and Taylor needed to relax. They had to have their wits about them and they needed to make sure that they were giving 100% to their jobs...even though they needed to also find time to have a life. Things were going to get hard for them when the baby came and Marlo was in charge but for now they had each other.

"I believe," Lillian said with a soft smile, kissing him softly, "that we both need to relax."

Lillian slipped her fingers into Taylor's hair and started stroking, keeping her body close to his. She wanted the two of them to try and take deep breaths and relax right now so that they were in their right frame of minds. They would have time to talk about all of this again, but right then they had an Away Mission to do and all of this stress was bad for them. What was even worse was that Lillian was feeling guilty about not telling him about any of the Marshall things, so she kissed him deeply, wanting Taylor to know it was still them.

"I can do relaxed...." cooed Taylor who loved the feeling of Lillian's fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp. A little shiver ran through him in pleasure as he smiled at Lillian. She could make anything better, even his darkest fears which seemed to be eating at him at the moment. Lillian had heard it all now and still accepted Taylor as her man which made the marine almost want to cry a little. Not a fool on storm of tears but must enough to show emotion. Right now all that happened was he beamed and kissed Lillian's nose in a sign of affection.

"So you want me to gear up for the mission now?"

"Not right now..." Lillian said shaking her head, kissing him gently.

She made sure he was sitting in the chair and straddled his lap, kissing him gently. Lillian nipped at his lips and stroked his arms, kissing him deeply as she sat on his lap. More than ever, Lillian wanted Taylor to feel loved and relaxed, hoping that he felt like he was loved and accepted. The two of them could make it through this and right now she wanted him to understand how much he meant to her.

"Not right now..."

With a nod Taylor just let Lillian push him gently into the pilot's seat without a sound or show of reluctance. When she straddled him Taylor just returned the kiss with a hint of passion just to get her fired up. Who knew what mood she was in but Taylor just wanted Lillian to know that he was responding to her actions with eager acceptance. His hand stroked Lillian's leg through her duty trousers as he pulled back to coo softly at her. It seemed Lillian was rather good at curing pains of the heart but Taylor already knew that.

"No...not right now..." he agreed.

She smiled and shook her head playfully, slowly unzipping his duty jacket to signal to him what she wanted. It hadn't started off that way, but Lillian at least wanted his jacket off so that she could put her hands closer to his body. It didn't have to end in anything carnal, she just wanted to be with him...though she couldn't deny that she was always rather in want of him. He was Taylor. He just did those kinds of things to her and she enjoyed that.

"Though we should probably..." Lillian admitted with a small laugh. "Then again remember the shuttle?"

She wiggled her eyebrows a little bit remembering that time when she was still CMO and Taylor was MCO and they had decided to take advantage of a bio bed en route to a distress call. It hadn't been professional, but she and Taylor went through a whole phase and finding alone time on duty and she'd even made a bad first impression on his sister walking into Taylor's office unzipping her duty jacket.

"Actually come to think of it, we didn't know it yet, but I was pregnant then." Lillian said happily.

"I do, best shuttle ride ever." said Taylor with his usual warm grin. When his duty jacket had been unzipped he shrugged it off to reveal his forest green shirt to Lillian. While she moved her hands along his chest Taylor purred happily, wiggling his eyebrows as he went in for the killing kiss. "And look at you now, I can't wait to see our baby for the first time." he replied with a small crooning sound from his mouth.

Taylor stood up while moving Lillian to the console. It had been the same spot they had made love the first day Taylor had come aboard. It seemed to be getting more attention than it was used to when in a hanger. Taylor's fingers loosened Lillian's duty trousers so he could pull them down slightly to set the pace of the event. "Hi...." purred Taylor with a warm glow in his eyes, kissing Lillian's nose.

She moaned into his mouth and then smiled gently, her eyes a little watery a moment when he mentioned being excited about the baby. She was too, and when he moved her to the console to loosen her duty trousers, she shook her head ever so gently but let him do it. Lillian smiled at the kiss to her nose and she nuzzled his with hers, glad he was close to her and wanting it to stay that way for as long as they could drag this out, even though he needed to get ready to go down to the planet.

"Hi," she responded with a coo as she worked on his trousers too. "I want to do it in the chair..."

"The chair?" asked Taylor with pair of raised eyebrows. He let his own trousers drop to his ankles since his combat boots took too long to take off for his trousers to be removed. Lillian's boots however were zipped so Taylor got to his knees and undone her boots, pulling them off along with her trousers. Leaving her duty jacket and shirt on Taylor grasped her hand and stroked it with his thumb. "Are you sure? It might not be the best position for the little one and yourself..."

Taylor cared about Lillian's well being but she did request it. Nodding Taylor kissed Lillian's lips and pulled her over to the chair. Taylor sat down and kissed Lillian's stomach as he sat down. "I promise I'll come back from this mission, alright? I'm coming back in my armour without even a scratch on it. I'm coming back to you. Every mission you send me on."

"I'm sure, my love," Lillian assured him, kissing him gently as she climbed onto his lap, sigh contently at the skin contact. "Pretty soon I'll be too big for this and I want to savor it."

She cupped his face and stroked his cheek, nodding at him and kissing him as she shifted against him, knowing that he was being as sincere as he could be. They didn't have control over the missions that happened, but Taylor was promising that he was going to come back to her if it was within his power to do so and she honestly believed him. He would be the boomerang he'd always told her that he would be and they'd get through everything together just as planned.

"I know you will," she assured him, kissing him deeply. "Besides, we're just getting plants. Now...shut-up and let me make everything better."


(Good place to end it?)

Yes! Another piece of fluff for us!

Soon we'll have angst and action! Yay!

Yeah! Will she think the worst when he gets captured? Think he's flown the coop?

She'll freak out a little, but Marlo will be gone too, so maybe not jump to the worst conclusion, but pretty bad ones.

Awww, gonna be fun!

Yes it will and it should all be underway on Tuesday.