Later Days {Star Trek Enterprise Fan Fiction}

Seven Women, Part 4

Takara Sato Masterson Tucker

I gotta explain this one. I know how insane it sounds.

See, the Lafa System is psionically charged. It has to do with all of the callidium, it's found in the rocks and the soil and the food, and even in the people. You can't read minds or levitate or anything like that, but what you can do is almost as cool. I bet you already know this, Kevin, but I'll tell you anyway. You can contact the other side of the pond, a kind of mirror universe.

A lot of people have counterparts there, a lot of Calafans do. But none of us kids do. Dad is actually from there. It's complicated, how the Calafans got him here, but they did. I don't have a counterpart there, and Takara doesn't have one here, either.

She's beautiful and graceful, not like me. She's the Empress Hoshi Sato's daughter, with Chip Masterson, a guy who worked with our Mom and is kinda goofy here. Hard to believe an empress would choose him as one of her baby daddies. I say one, as there were five baby daddies and six kids – Takara has a twin brother, Takeo.

The psionic contact is only in dreams. I first saw Takara when I was a toddler; so was she. Her father, and her father's honey, who became his wife – Lucy Stone – they somehow got the twins out and escaped the empress. Because she's a tyrant, Empress Hoshi is. So Chip and Lucy, with the kids, went into exile, on Lafa II. They're there with some other escapees. Everybody keeps it on the QT. That universe's Calafans go along with it because they hate the empress. But that family is still barely a step or two up from being homeless.

When she was little, Takara had no shoes and they lived in a cave, as poachers. A fine life for an heir to the throne, eh? But that was how things were. Chip and Lucy had a son together, Kenneth. Some of the other people, the Tuckers, they had a son and a daughter. Barely this side of incest – certainly not great for the human gene pool – Ken ended up with Betsy Tucker. And Takara ended up with Charlie Tucker IV. They had a son together, who ended up – now, this really is incest, at least I think it is – but Chuck Tucker V ended up with Ken and Betsy's daughter, Denise Masterson. Their kid, Charles Tucker VI, is currently in line for the throne of the Terran Empire. Wacky, huh?

But back to Takara, Takara. Nothing killed me like when I knew she was marrying Charlie. Not even when she had Chuck. I never loved anyone, ever. Takara comes the closest, I think, Kevin. But she was there, and I am and was here, and I could never have her, not really. Dreams are nice, but it was never in person and never seemed to feel really real.