Greetings IV [18+]

Posted on 23 Mar 2013 @ 10:39pm by Crewman Athlen & Crewman Jaeih

4,624 words; about a 23 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: CN Athlen's Quarters
Timeline: MD4 0900 Hours

[ON]

She was no empath, but the image in his mind as she raked her nails lightly up the back of his neck elicited a low continuous vibration in her throat. The danger that lurked behind that honest, smiling face was so much more appealing than the naivete. Power in the muscle should have been balanced by power in the will and it was, but without strategy. Athlen was an elegant weapon. Innocent to the eye, but deadly. The juxtaposition was rapturous; it whetted her appetite as a spinning stone whets a thin, pale blade. His mind, his flesh, they appealed to her equally. She could have eaten him whole and licked her fingers at the end, wanting more. Flush against his back, she smoothed her hands up the front of his chest and cupped his face between her palms, pressing her cheek to his neck. Her nose wedged between his ear and skull, breathing deep. He thought she wanted to provoke him; he was right. She wanted the heat of his hidden forge to fortify her own mettle. The pain would test her. Strengthen her. Build steel around her spine and sharpen her teeth. And the release, pure pleasure, hammers pounding pale, luminous blades by moonlight. The fire, the anvil, the hammer, the blade - every one of them fulfilling their exact purpose in that one beautiful moment. Everything aligned. Ecstasy.

Another person might have met her force with force, equal and opposite reaction, but he accepted it the way an ocean accepts a stone. A fact of existence, and that made what might have been an inevitable collision of power and mayhem something more bearable. It wasn't submission or subservience. It couldn't be, that was a fact of biology, but it didn't swallow him up, or submerge him in mutilated feelings of hatred that clouded him into a blinding fury, stampeding like an enraged animal toward neverending night. Through this, there was control, and he was willing to use it. She was like water and he was the end of a wire. She wanted to wrap her fingers around the cords inside and plunge them through to the depths, listen to them spark and zap and thunder, blue and white and yellow. He accepted it, and it passed through him, and he accepted it, maddening, infuriating acceptance with a hint of daring. But the water, too, felt the raze, revealing skeletons and bones beneath muscle, essences. Erosion. Water could kill civilizations, and birth whole planets. There was no real intent, not yet. He let it self-construct, shape and form, without purpose or reason, absorbed her danger into him and let her see it in return. He wrapped his fingers around her forearm and turned her around, face to face, pulling her against him. "Show me," he exhaled against her jaw. He cast his mind's eye over hers, hovered just over the edge, fingers gripped around the fluttering sheets covering the mental window, ready to rip them back, break glass, dive in.

She did, welcoming him in; twisting her arm in his grip, her flesh pulled against his palm. Taut, not enough to tear or bruise. Her thoughts were spiraling barbed wire, not the ocean of his experience. Moment by moment by moment by moment, images ticked through her mind. Shattered glass, wind tearing through heavy laden trees, blossoms spinning off into cyclones, rocks being thrust along a river bed by the force of the water: rough to smooth to gemstones. The organic, inherent glow of freshly forged knives, sparks like fireworks in the air over the whine of a whetstone. Fires encompassing forests. Destruction was necessary. It was a part of a cycle that made things new. It was what she told herself, over and over. To do otherwise was madness. Death as creation was the only way to avoid the abyss. It had been a vague philosophy sharpened into a manta. A doctrine. Destroy to create. Destroy to create. Pull it apart and see what makes it tick. Taste the parts. Every gear. Every sinew. The parts that make a whole. She clasped his forearm, breathing his essence. Floods and hurricanes. The erosion of the river bed, rooftops sweeping downstream. Plunging into oceans. Sinking deep, deeper, deepest into rapidly darkening waters where the largest of the giants dwelt and owned and ate. Where the microscopic flora reveled in the wreckage and built flowery nests that turned the waters deep garnet. Like the blood of men. Blood, thick rivulets pouring over her fingers as she stumbled against a wall. Her nose and cheek sneering, pressed to rough pavement, she drew the long, curved blade out. Out. Out. It tugged her flesh with it, cutting wider, as it was inexorably withdrawn from the sheath of her flesh. Exquisite. Paltry. She dragged herself to her knees and thrust it into the inside of the Romulan's thigh, tore the artery. He fell - never had a chance - and she stumbled to her feet. Footsteps, she turned towards them as they came towards her and ran her tongue from the base of the blade all the way out to the tip.

The footsteps morphed, running into walking, slow and languid. The room swirled, walking on walls, landed them deep in mud and rain, forest, water pounding on metal roofs. Firebirds, abandoned by groups of small children, snapping in hand, exploding up into the sky and snuffed out again by the oppressive rain. He guided them to the ground, clawed fingers digging for roots, until the mud runs green and nails break off from effort. Why? There is no perception. There is no thought. There is only color and light and sound, and instinct. The ground holds water, tubes in the desert. Walking. Walking. It hasn't rained in twenty-one years, how fitting on that very day, the skies opened up and wept. Loneliness is more violent than anything she can come up with. No bonds. No Consciousness. It was just like it was for her, mirroring that gaping, empty hole, only there were bonds for her. There were none in this black hole in the desert, where the gates began. Athlen picked up the chain on the ground and rattled it, hearing the firebirds crack in the distance. He did not live here anymore, but he would walk through it, it was what she wanted to see, in the deepest well, in the darkest part of him, in the pit of his stomach. She'd crawled down through his lips and hung on breaths like slipstream, buffets in space, depositing them across the vast Tarila. He tugged the chain in his hands backwards. The gates loomed high above, cutting the sky on jagged arrowhead caps, creaking open, drowning out everything as it was unleashed through them. Dark. Noise. Ripping, clawing, no understanding, no feeling, just force, and physics, and gravity of neurochemicals rampaging. Interspersed with screams, spitting up blood. Through here, there was nothing that could touch him. He let them stumble through, into Life. Eyes open. Golden haze. White walls. Hands and minds, life. Shaping the gates, shaping himself. Feet on the ground, but they were truly inworld now, he could feel them falling backwards, melting into one.

She clung to him, hands mirroring his, encasing, as the ground dislodged, grew weary, escaped, fled. Breath, short. Pulse, savage. Take. Own. Mark. Seal. Pulse. Salt and sand, the grit on the tongue and in the eye. The taste of copper. Screams were keening cries were music - birth and death; all of it was howling. Fur and dirt. Deserts cracked and dry; to crave the rain was right. True. Welcome wet and damn those that previously claimed the sky. Her cheek bone pressed against him, her mouth full of fist as she bellowed. Sound pounded flesh and echoed back down her throat like a tide coming in.

Mine, the instinctive part always said, but it was easily dispelled into thousands, millions of particles. Perhaps by sheer Rigelian orneriness, silliness. My what? Billions of decisions and actions. She was atop him, then beneath, clothes pulled away with curtains. Dematerialized and reverberating outward. Yours. Ours. Lapse in thought, distant memories, he felt himself once more under her strength. Amusement bubbled up. Belonging to nothing. No one was anything, in the end. How freeing, it was. Floating along the riverbed, embraced and embracing. A story in motion. His heartbeat drummed steadily, emptying lava, hot and dark and seeking.

Your everything. Jaeih burrowed through rock, sand, soil, mud; his laughter pelted her like fresh snow. Singeing. Melting. Leaving trails across her skin. Her psyche. It soaked through, past the dermis, building infectiously. Built and built, with the breaking pressure of waves; she howled with it for the first time since Before. Tears leaked like rain and dribbled over her lips. My everything. There to claim. Every breath. Every wish. Like a marionette with her strings clipped, she collapsed. Rhythms out of sync, both strong; she didn't care. Percussion lent beauty to syncopation. Over it, peppering the otherwise silent room, damp air puffed irregularly against his shoulder. Silent cackles.

Athlen absorbed this too, waves of swirling, still snow, orphic and ethereal, trapped in glass, breaking outward again and adding only noise to the avoid while they ran. Feet pounding ground, and hands gripped in one another, they jumped off. Falling. Nothingness. Floating. Little waves of color and threads shot up around them, lone, quiet fireworks. They broke up in the atmosphere and fell down around them, melting in their skin as they lay on the ground, in the dark, calming sun. They didn't need music, every second was sound, hammer striking steel strings. He opened his eyes, and thought the ceiling hadn't quite cooperated with his physical being, since it appeared to be swirling over them, a watchful sentry. Good morning.

One lethargic hand crawled up his bared chest, fastened onto his face, and pushed it to the side. Always thinking. "Shut up," she raked the side of her teeth over the skin of his shoulder lazily, kissed, and gnawed like a puppy with a chew toy. Contented.

"So mean," Athlen smirked, obviously satisfied with that apparent judgment, and pointed up at the ceiling, but it seemed to have returned to its usual state of non-swirling vortex. His mind roamed and wandered, waves tickling the shore before pulling back into the sea, but she was a touchstone, so eventually he settled into a comfortable orbit around her. His fingers meandered through her hair, down her shoulders and back. This is Think Lite, the random images seemed to say, if not he himself.

The hand on his face climbed up further, until she had two fingers pressed squarely against the center of his forehead, the rest splayed over his eyes, her palm resting on his nose. Warm breath exhaled over his skin and she settled a single extending line: be. It was more than words, a road that gathered underfoot to keep the walker in place as they perambulated. She settled comfortably into that walk, aware of her body and his mind. She felt heavy, buried in sand, her limbs full of mud from hot springs. Sweat cooled between their stomachs, sending a reactive shiver through her skin. Beyond her own flesh and his, outside of this room, outside of the one foot radius around their joined bodies, everything that drove her to fury waited like predators in the dark. In a moment, she'd leash those predators, those waking memories and rampaging rages, and use them for her own ends again. In a moment. After she'd breathed the scent of sweat, tasted it, lingered without tactics for a few seconds.

Athlen let himself be led along, feet on the ground, a purely physical sensation, being and examining were twin sets in the Rigelian world, but he gave himself over to her perception, her dark passengers, whispering their names in quiet voices. Bodies took only vague shape, a half-world between mind and place, he walked with her through forest brambles, thorns, poking and scraping, heavy rockholds, gaining footing. Upward. To the blue, to the sun. Drying water, an endless cycle. They could get stuck for days, looping back and forth, riding along on the stamping hooves of monsters in the dark, an endless, swaying rhythm, connecting hands, working in tandem to cross the wasteland. And then they had disintegrated again, a small spike-point on the chart, without tactics, without art, vague and vulgar, but wasn't that art in and of itself? Couldn't it be? The very deepest, purest Expression. Athlen let the thoughts drift away into Being, let the small pulses of otherworldly rage that had been released earlier surrender themselves over without the limits of perception. Being. In both worlds. Air, breath, bed underneath. Metal walls. Quarters. He could see her. See the darkness, around them, like a dream. In a moment.

Unsafe, but sound, the moment lingered into another, then another. Honeyslow time dripping and pooling. He breathed slow and languorous against her palm, unstoppable brain spooling spidersilk. Bright mind, bright heart, dark otherworldly core hiding behind them both. He needed sharpening, but his potential was a grabashor bound by a canary's gilded cage. Immense and largely untried. As was she, in the scheme of things, true, but there were benefits to focus. Cages within cages within cages. Absently, she pet his eyelid with her thumb and lingered.

And she was the cat, he thought, with feathers poking out of her lips. Capturing, because she could, because it required something, took something. Did it give back? Cages joined to form a star. An interlinking network. He bore that too with the same acceptance as before, unafraid of perception. The otherworld could only hurt you in rust, in fear, in shame. Horrible periods of sanity. Picking locks, small shifts in sound. Metal opened. Who needs a brain, anyway. Let it out for a walk.

Stars kill. A star of cages. The geometry of destruction. As much as she had wished to hold her demons at bay, she was a slave to them as much as they were to her. Symbiotic fury; a snake eating its own tail. Endlessly. And so it would be. Endless. Escape less. Even were an answer to be found. Even if a solution were plausible. The dead would never return. The seemingly indestructible river of her childhood would never be seen by another eye. Never be swum. Never tear and whittle at its banks. Her mother would never soothe her with insightful commentary, nor inspire with her tremendous heart. Every fool who had ever said that endings were new beginnings: she wanted to eat their hearts, raw, in front of them.

Stars burned. Space melted. Stones crashed into land, crashed into sea. Buried cities, sickening thuds and crunches and screams. Racing rocks. Slowly forming lines through sand, through time. Everything changes. One moment to the next. One boundary to the next, each decision, each choice. Each reaction. The space between. Beginning was semantic. There only was. Cause and effect. A linear manifestation of time, splintering off, from one end to the other. There was truth. And choice. But there was a subtle art, to deception. Craftiness. A push-pull of circumstances, decisions, changes. Moments. Outdoing one another, an elegant dance between lines. There was no need for deception, here. The truth wasn't forbidden, not even the truth of annihilation. Pouring water, between them. One bowl into another. Simple action. Simple choice. Simple acknowledgment. It was. It is.

Change; her voice in his head hissed: steam rising from geysers, hot enough to boil flesh. None of it was simple. His perspective was skewed by oversimplicity. Trying to boil every aspect of life down to its basic elements. At our core, we are all carbon molecules, and therefore... Bullshit, she snarled against that refrain. Every flower, every face, every rock, sock, rat, tree, fish, house - all were unique. Built of particles into art. They were gone. And worse, they were gone - and no one - no one save a petty few - cared a whit. She'd heard them laughing about it - the destruction of Romulus - 'guess we've seen the last of them'. Laughter. Over the decimation of a planet, an Empire, a race. And they dared to call Romulans barbaric. They were amused. They were happy. They were bored with the whole subject.

He showed her Intent. Simple. Infinity. Ceaseless. Ageless. Not the same as boredom or meaninglessness. Infinite meaning. But without understanding. How could anyone understand the magnitude of loss? It was impossible. His heart was cracked, like stone containing a vessel, green and glowing. He hadn't known anyone in Krifal, either, and it still hurt. And it was pain.

Jaeih coiled around him, tighter tighter, until his heart pounded increasingly against her own. Life. And still she remained still in the face of that disrespect. She did as she'd been taught, as she'd been told, tucking every particle of these hateful creatures away into a corner for further consideration at a later date. Some, she let go as she was supposed to, according to her mother's lessons - cool hand at her neck, cool river breeze over her face. Others, she hoarded, building a dark, furious wall. Oh, the Federation. Their gentility and honor was so legendary. They will be a good influence for you, Jaeih - her aunt studied her across a breakfast table - you'll have purpose - action - elsewhere - away from all of this until you are ready to return to us. Action. The halfling's lips curled into a wry, dark smile; her body still sore. Hand still resting on Athlen's face, she poured them into the oceans again.

Athlen showed her his own family. Go to the Federation. Help them understand us. But the Federation recoiled in fear. Maenad gasped and backed away. Liyar narrowed eyes. The Rage inside, it scared them. Even the Vulcans scared them. You don't need to hide. If you're angry. Be angry. Hate and love were not opposites, spun from the same cloth. Reverted and inverted. He drew a circle that shut me out - Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in, poetry, mellifluous and resonant, but lacking conviction. We all had circles. Prisons of rage and anger. Open them up. Line in the salt, demons thrashing, screaming, breaking. Skin melting, eyes bulging, oozing black, dripping, slime and grease. Heaving along the floor, gnarled fingertips scratching the wall. Lines in salt. Let them out.

His thoughts were noise. Talk. Curses gentled by taught 'perspective'. Hers were dripping green, pale, jaded, and aching with the rhythm of drumsticks against the backs of her eyes. Circles - last. Prisons - slow. Open - shock. They could melt all they liked, suffering every terrible torture - she'd never be sated. She had rage enough that, were her anger capable of taking a physical form, it would become a black hole large enough to swallow five planets whole in one gulp and hunger still. Snow witches in the mountains, grinning into the faces of storms, calling for more - more - more! Daring them on. Moon. Tide. Hell.

She rolled away from him, breaking the connection, throwing her legs off the side of the bed. Her spine dripped slick sweat. Her back heaved with unsteady breaths. Hers. Theirs. Mine. Her hair stuck to her cheeks; her head bowed. "Feels like storms," she whispered. "Feels like thunder. I fade like a ghost, run like a traitor. Sometimes we burn. Sometimes we bleed." She pushed to her feet, facing away from him, bare and heedless. She needed to stand. Needed to root herself, even if her roots pinged against the metal of the ship. Shallow tendrils.

Athlen sat up slowly, unhurriedly. "Not a traitor. You're right, though. Not many people in the Federation care. They pretend to be noble, but a planet is gone. They can't understand it and don't try."

And why should they? Only a planet. One not under their dominion. One that stood on its own, strong and proud, without the crutch of others. Jaeih sneered internally, but her mask was crawling across her features once more. Stillness overtaking motion, step by step. She smoothed her bangs over the shallow ridges of her forehead. She could barely feel them at all, even with the pressure of her fingers. "Caring is overrated," she murmured. "Action is what matters and their actions are lacking." She turned to look at him over her shoulder, "Except for Lieutenant Liyar. He acts, without self-interest." Useful. A welcome change. "But he is not truly Federation. Is he." She sank to her knees at the side of the bed, watching him steadily.

Athlen was silent while he thought. "I honestly do not know. Vulcan is part of the Federation," he answered, "But... Liyar told me that Vulcan doesn't even operate with Federation policies. Like, when the Dominion hit, Vulcan had reserves that the Federation didn't know about. And then there's Miran. They don't even operate with Vulcan policies. Liyar's been acting clan leader since 2386, in that time he's drafted over 20 new," he blinked, "Um. Like a law. Or a bill, or something. And all of them have been toward separating Miran from the High Council, making Miran independent of Vulcan economy. Then when Hobus happened, he dropped off completely. Some other guy, Neo, stepped in. Then Liyar came back and it was just, change, one after the other. Citizenship policies, settlement policies, funding policies, aid, he's still going." Athlen regarded her calmly. "I think, if you want an ally, he's a good shot. I can't tell you why he cares, or - why he's interested, I guess," Athlen smiled. Vulcans would never openly care about anything. "I don't know."

The why was not important now. What mattered was alliances and understanding the pawns on the board and where they were likely to move. Why they did so, she could learn along the way, slowly and calculatingly. "And you?"

The Rigelian looked at her, his expression earnest, open. "I'm trying to help Raifi Zaren and Liyar form a team to research some of the reasons for why the MS1 colony is failing, why Miran's settlement is devolving, and we're looking into sources of aid as well. I don't have much help in that area, Rigel V is still dealing with Krifal." He sighed.

Words. Plans. Treat any group of people like cattle and they become cattle. It was simple. "Your connection to the Federation," she elucidated. "Explain it to me."

The Rigelian frowned. Hm. He leaned back against the frame behind him. "The area of Rigel V I'm from isn't very keen on the Federation. I'm an olive branch. To try and find a way we can both be happy." He doubted with some assurance of certainty that would be accomplished to anyone's real satisfaction. Even he had his own misgivings about the Federation, enough so that he could empathize in some small way. "I anticipate I'll still be doing that in twenty years," he joked with a mild shrug. "Did you want to be here?" he asked quietly, tilting his head, "or is this your family's doing?"

"It was best that I leave Vulcan," she answered him rather obliquely. "For the time being." She folded her arms on the side of the bed and rested her chin on her wrists, watching him unabashedly. "Are you the only olive branch, or are there others?"

Athlen smiled to himself. Vulcan. Not exactly the most freeing environment. Athlen watched her in return irelessly. "There've been a few others, but there's not many Rigelians in Starfleet in general. The rest of them come from the North. For right now, I'm the only representative from the Southern Hemisphere, yes."

"Are your aims diplomatic?" she inquired. "Or conciliatory?"

He arched an eyebrow. "If they were conciliatory, I wouldn't be here."

"No?" Jaeih wondered. The only full Romulans she'd seen in Starfleet uniforms since the disaster had been in service to the Federation as a means of appeasing them. Giving the Federation a sense of dominion over a beast they could not otherwise control. "Why, then, are you the only representative of the south?"

"I imagine because they're rather afraid of joining up, for the same reasons you've just," he tapped his skull knowingly. "Since my planet began integrating with the Federation there have only been about seven Rigelian Starfleet officers to date, all from the North. Three of those officers ended up leaving because they weren't comfortable with the structure. One of them was discharged forcibly. The Southern Hemisphere is even more reluctant, especially because conceding to the Federation would mean revoking a lot of our customs and laws, or establishing independent sovereignty. My clan comprises most of the major Southern factions, so Councilor Vro decided to pick me. My goal is to look for ways that Southern Rigelians can be comfortable living in the Federation without giving up their heritage or values. My best guess is that they don't want to put too many of us here, they want to keep it local."

Jaeih inclined her head. It was possible. She didn't know enough of Rigelian politics to posit any other potential reason. "She seems to worry about you," she said instead.

Athlen blinked. "Who does?"

"Marivael."

"I suppose," Athlen said with a wry smile. "She doesn't trust Starfleet much."

"She has no reason to," Jaeih asserted.

Athlen was curious about her in turn, that was obvious in his mind. Did she trust Starfleet? Did she have an ulterior motive for joining? Did she believe in peace? What was her connection to Liyar? Who was Faevren? Why was she on Vulcan at all? They were shallow things, like pindrops that fell and disappeared, but he refrained from prying, settling for answering her questions instead. "No, I wouldn't expect she does," Athlen agreed with a small nod. "In the future, that might change. It depends on how our people find we can work together. It's tricky. The Feds compromise so many laws, so many economic statutes, even if we didn't just look at basic ideological differences. We're very different types of people."

"It is a flawed system - this United Federation of Planets..." she shook her head, stretching one hand out to hover an inch above his knee. To know. To not know. "T'an dera," she murmured, though it was unclear whether she said it in reference to Athlen, to the UFP, to something else, or all of the above; her lips curved in her own menacing incarnation of a smile. Then, link by link, her expression grew bored and distant. "You have been very accommodating and your assistance has been noted."

Athlen sat up and stood along with her, giving her a mild bow and straightening up with his hands behind his back. "Anytime," he said sincerely.

"Now." She looked around the room. "Where is my uniform."

Athlen lifted up his finger and held out her top, grinning.

[OFF]

Crewman Athlen
Sociologist, SSC
USS Galileo

Crewman Jaeih
Diplomatic Officer, DDT/SDD
USS Galileo

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