Born To Be

**Déjà vu and vivid dreams have always been a confusing part of Seren Lewis' life, but now that Enterprise has entered the Expanse, things begin to make sense as she finds out who she was born to be. O/C centric story. Reviews welcome. K+ rated for mild language.**

Disclaimer : Paramount owns Star Trek: Enterprise and all characters save for Seren Lewis, who is my creation.

Author's Note : "Born To Be" is set early in Season Three, and is NOT a Trip/OC story... at least that's the intention! It is also a chance for the drier portion of my weird and slightly sadistic sense of humour to run free for a while.

**Chapter One**

The console in front of me flickers and finally comes to life. A small frown passes over my face; someone should have fixed the problem with the power flow by now, but I'll be damned if it's my look out. I've got a thousand and one things to do already, not to mention the Away Mission Report for T'Pol. I make a note of the continuing problem in the appropriate file and settle back to work on the task given to me by Commander Tucker, reviewing some simulations that keep failing. Already bored with the details, Tucker's convinced the problem is in Lieutenant Reed's mathematics, so it falls to me to spot the errors. Oh, the joys of being a lowly Crewman…

Engineering's chaos as usual, and everyone is busy. Some people are working in groups, like Tucker and Hess with a bunch of crewmen, and others are working alone - like myself. I alter my screen to its usual settings, yellow text on a black screen, nice and soft on the eyes when you're staring at six billion and one digits and mathematical signs. Honest. But after a time the noise and activity of Engineering fades away and I become lost in hundreds of intricate calculations. A tune fixes itself in my head, something my roommate had been listening to last night, something I can't even place. I hum it to myself, fingers of my left hand idly tapping along to the beat as my eyes try to track down the errors, digits of my right hand altering digits on the screen.

A sound of irritation makes me realise that Tucker is talking to me - or trying to. I look up, apologise quickly and report my progress, which is slow. He nods, gives me that cheeky grin of his and walks off to check on someone else. I smile to myself. For a nutter, the guy is alright really. He sure as hell knows these engines inside and out anyway, and he's not a bad team-leader either.. But somehow, I've never been completely comfortable in his presence. His bright blue eyes, which have been known to make most of the female crew members go cuckoo whenever he looks at them, give me the freaks. My room-mate thinks I'm nuts. Personally, I think she's nuts. Mind you, when we set out on this voyage, she had the hots for Ensign Mayweather, our esteemed boomer and pilot. I suppose he is kinda cute if you go for that 'little boy lost' thing, but not me. Anyway, she moved her affections on from Mayweather to Tucker a few months ago… but then, she doesn't really seem the commitment type!

Some part of my mind wanders as another concentrates on work. An ability I was born with, honed through years of mixing homework and films. I think of my family, killed in the devastation of the Xindi attack, and the thoughts come close to bringing a tear to my eye. I wasn't the only crew member to have lost family on that cursed day - I knew that Tucker had lost his sister, and someone in Security had lost an Uncle - but I lost everyone dear to me - mother, father and my brother, nine years my junior. We'd lived in London, England, for most of my life. We moved to the US eight years and seven months ago - long enough for me to fulfill my dreams of becoming a Starfleet officer. Though the Gods only know why that was my dream, but then I've never aspired to ordinary ideals. Never. Always on the move, I could never settle to anything. Going to Warp aboard _Enterprise_ for the first time just felt so right. I sigh now, enjoying the feeling of _Enterprise_ moving smoothly at Warp Three. Another uncanny ability of mine - I can tell what speed the ship is traveling at without the need for displays. But I could never settle down, not until we moved out of space dock and away into the far reaches of space. Maybe someday I'll understand why.

I shake my head to clear my thoughts. Time for my break. I'm getting nowhere fast with these calculations, and T'Pol will be expecting that report… A mug of coffee should help me concentrate again. I get like this when I think of my family, pointless anger swathing me in a cocoon from which I cannot break. Every part of me longs to track down the Xindi weapon and vaporize it before everyone on _Enterprise_ – the closest people I have to a family now – must feel as I do. No one should know of the emotion tied with such a loss, of the sheer rage that eats at the soul because there was nothing I could do to save them, of the pointless frustration that builds up inside until it explodes in a torrent of fury triggered by some minor thing that has irritated me. Then come the tears, the black depression that leaves me hollow inside, until that void is refilled by the wrath and frustration... It is a vicious circle that many of us aboard _Enterprise_ struggle to endure.

I stand quickly – I really need to block out these thoughts if I am to get any work done before the shift ends - and I am assaulted by a wave of dizziness that sweeps over me. Must have stood up *_too_* quickly. I blink rapidly, trying to force the faintness to pass. The pain, which I had half been expecting, hits me like an old-fashioned freight train with a suddenness that never fails to astound me. My eyeballs scream with the pressure of the instantaneous migraine, my skull throbbing. I stagger along the upper-balcony, clutching blindly at the handrail, the heel of my right hand locked in my eye-socket in a vain attempt to numb the agony in my pounding head. Someone shouts my name, I can't tell who, and my mind cannot cause my body to respond. I stop moving, knowing yet unable to prevent what will happen next. Sure enough, the usual outer-body feeling occurs, I hover lazily above the drive engines, watching as first my body goes rigid, as stiff as a board, before falling forward. My consciousness screams silently as my body pitches lethally over the balustrade to the deck plating below.

Sudden peace cushions me. All should be in darkness, or pain ought to be screaming through every nerve in my body. But there is little to suggest that I have just fallen eighteen feet to the ground; I can hear nothing but the melodious hum that calls to me so quietly. The planet I see rotates calmly on its axis, so like Earth, covered in vast oceans and smaller land masses. Candy floss clouds float in the skies around the world, white and wispy… The tune becomes almost a song, a voice calling me… calling me… calling…

Deep inside my body, feeling stirs again. Intense agony shrieks through my very bones, my head pounds again so violently that I long for the voice to silence so that I may have some peace. The pain is enough to make my soul return, however reluctantly, to its shell, and I am conscious enough to notice the pairs of feet gathering about my broken body, the babble of terrified voices, someone calling for Phlox and a medical team… Nothing else registers then, and at last I may descend lazily into that black abyss that is pure, blissful nothingness beyond the threshold of which neither the voice nor the pain can reach… 


End file.
