Two Kinsmen

Posted on 11 Jun 2013 @ 2:40pm by Petty Officer 1st Class Victarion Jaqen & Commander Andreus Kohl
Edited on on 16 Jun 2013 @ 4:08pm

2,327 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 4, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 06 - 1530 hours

[ON]

Petty Officer 2nd Class Victarion Jaqen, the Captain's new Yeoman, let out a slight breath as he kept a hand on his stomach as he walked. He wasn't sure if the pain he felt when he moved was psychological or physical. But it was there and he didn't like it. He was out of uniform, instead he wore soft trousers and a loose grey v-necked jumper. His dark hair was a mess, the soft curls brushing his forehead.

Thing was, Victarion didn't like sickbays. It wasn't that he disliked the smell or the ambiance of it. Rather, it was what it meant. Sickbay was for when you were sick or injured. Given the medical situation of the universe, it tended to be the latter. But then again, since he had been stabbed, it was one of those things. And while he had been operated on and he was told it was healed...

It still hurt.

He stopped as he entered sickbay, watching with worried blue eyes as he took it all in. It wasn't too busy right now. That was something, he didn't feel the need to be in the way here.

Considering the relative quiet in Sickbay, everyone turned their heads to look when Andreus Kohl dropped his tricorder on his boot and he muttered something that translated as: "shit." Kohl, meanwhile, wasn't looking at his tricorder, nor his boot, nor his audience. He was staring at Victarion, had been staring right at him since the other Argelian stepped into the room. In truth, Kohl had felt compelled to study the doorway even before Victarion crossed the threshold, not that he had understood why.

The colour faded from Kohl's cheeks, and he asked, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Victarion looked at Kohl with a similar surprise, taking a deeper breath before moving over to him. He knew him. He knew him from his home. "I...I transferred here," he said, with awe at seeing someone from his world, someone he knew. "I did not realize you served in Starfleet. I didn't realize a lot of things...Andreus."

"You didn't realize I served in Starfleet?" Kohl echoed. His words came out haltingly, Kohl clearly struggled to put voice to the incredulity he was experiencing. He moved towards Victarion, while Victarion came closer, and then Kohl began to lead him towards the side corridor out of the ICU. All at once, Kohl laughed and he started to smile. "I heard you once accuse Starfleet of being an imperial warmonger," Kohl said, "that incited the Dominion War."

"I was young," he said, holding his eyes as he let out a breath. "And like young men, I said things without understanding." He searched Kohl's face, taking it all in before reaching out to touch his cheek, caressing it. "It seems Starfleet agrees with you, Andreus."

Kohl found himself caught by Victarion's touch. Victarion was applying very little pressure against the skin of Kohl's face, but he could feel the heat of it, he could practically feel Victarion's heartbeat through his fingertips. The two of them had made it out of the Intensive Care Unit, but they were standing in the corridor three paces away from the CMO's office. Kohl turned his head to the right, but only so he could drag his lower lip across a couple of Victarion's fingertips.

"You're wearing your hair shorter now," Kohl said. The glint in his eyes betrayed how pleased he was with the change, but he spoke in the same taunting manner he would have used on his younger brother, Riordan. Kohl studied the dark wavy locks, and he guessed, "An inch longer than regulation length, yeah?"

Victarion smiled gently, lowering his hand slowly. "Yes...it doesn't seem anyone has cared. Perhaps because I never leave the ship and I am hardly a fighter."

As Kohl lead them past the Chief's office, he couldn't have explained to anybody where he was headed. Kohl really didn't know for himself. Based on trajectory alone, they probably would have ended up in the laboratory, but Kohl was distracted by something in the way Victarion's body moved. Kohl winced and he said, "You're uncomfortable." It was more a statement than a question.

Victarion nodded, taking a deeper breath as he touched his tummy, frowning. "I...it hurts to move properly. I was healed from an injury, but I don't think I am well." He met Kohl's eyes, searching them before touching his arm. "Can you take a look, brother?"

Kohl began to walk backwards, moving back towards the ICU with its many biobeds. He moved slowly, though, never letting himself get beyond Victarion's grasp. "How were you hurt?" Kohl asked.

He watched him, his eyes gentle before he looked down. "I...ended up between my Captain and a man with a knife," he said...knowing it would explain it all.

Physically recoiling from Victarion's words, Kohl stepped back and gritted a "tt" between his teeth. He reached over to run the palm of his hand down Victarion's abdomen. "Who hurt you?" Kohl asked, and there was a distinctively dark edge to his tone.

"Some...black market man," Victarion grimaced at being touched, breathing harder. "I didn't know him. I...I was silly. I didn't use the phaser. I hate the phasers, hate the violence. It was instinct to step between them. That does make me stupid."

Impassively, Kohl looked Victarion in the eyes and asked, "Did they kill him?" He blinked though, blinked repeatedly, and his face flushed with embarrassment at that being his first thought. Before he even heard a reply, he was on the move again, leading his patient into the ICU ward.

"No," he said as he looked at Kohl, shaking his head. "I...don't remember what happened to him. I lose consciousness. But he was not killed. Not sure he was ever caught."

Kohl guided the Argelian to a biobed alcove furthest away from the entrance. "Take off your shirt," Kohl said and he swept a welcoming hand towards the biobed. Calling back to something Victarion had said earlier, Kohl spoke with conviction when he said, "It wasn't stupid to save your Captain's life."

He looked at him, nodding as he started to remove his jacket and then the shirt, with no hesitation or shyness. He sat down on the biobed, watching him with a weak smile. "It wasn't stupid. Not to us. To him it was. He wanted me to...shoot him."

Raising a slim medical tricorder, Kohl paired it with the sensors build into the biobed. He initiated the sensors scans and then set aside the tricorder, while the scanners did their thing. Trusting his own five senses best, Kohl pressed the pads of his fingertips on Victarion's chest between his nipples. Methodically, he tapped this fingers down the man's abdomen, feeling for tenderness and warmth. Kohl asked, "Do you mean you were disciplined for your decision?"

"I was transferred here. He could hardly charge me for following my cultural beliefs," he said as he met Kohl's eyes before grimacing with pain as he felt the fingers against the tender spot on his tummy.

Kohl watched the change in Victarion's eyes and couldn't even consider looking anywhere else. Although he was discomfited by the pain he was causing, Kohl continued the palpation down Victarion's abdomen. Kohl expressed his disagreement with a subtle tilt of his head, and he remarked, "I find Captains manage to find the rules they need to discipline, or not, based on what they know to be right."

He smiled gently as he took a deeper breath, shaking his head as he watched him. "I do not blame him. In a way, I broke his view of me and he stopped respecting me. It would not have helped me working for him."

"Hmmm," was all Kohl could vocalize, letting his eyes communicate his understanding instead. Kohl broke eye contact only long enough to study the biofunction monitor on the bulkhead. He lowered his hand down Victarion's abdomen and rested it on his knee. Kohl said, "I am gratified to find you here."

Victarion smiled at the words, reaching to cover the hand. "I have missed you so much," he admitted quietly. "I have missed...a lot of people. I just...I have felt like I was drifting lately."

"Because you're away from home?" Kohl asked. The question marks in his eyes betrayed he actually didn't know the secrets of Victarion's heart these days.

He watched him before smiling gently, taking a breath. "I believe the deities have left me, brother. I can't hold onto anything. I question too much. In myself, in everything. Andreus...I am not a good man to be around right now. I'll only transfer my doubts onto you."

Kohl frowned at him, but it wasn't an expression of sadness. Rather, it was more like a teasing taunt. "That's not how it works," Kohl said with a quiet certainty. "When you share your doubts, they're halved between you." He assumed Victarion would recognize the aphorism.

He smiled gently at the words, searching his face before looking down. "You are very kind, as always."

Kohl lifted his hand away from Victarion's knee, but only because the whistling of his tricorder was demanding attention. Cradling the tricorder between his hands, Kohl tapped at the interface screen while he continued to smile fondly at the Argelian. "Do you remember the last time you lay eyes on me?" Kohl asked. "It must have been... Almost ten? Years ago? The Federation's solstice gala in Capria? At the time... I suppose I would have been planning to study Federation law on Iadara Colony."

"I remember it well," he said, his eyes soft as he watched him. He had been so young back then. So young and in a sense innocent. "You looked so handsome. You still do."

Even though Victarion said he remembered their last goodbye, Kohl felt compelled to tell the story anyway. "I put my hand on your face like this," he said wistfully. Kohl pressed his open palm against his own cheek, rather than Victarion's, because they were still in Sickbay. "And I kissed you, and I told you to remember me like that." --Kohl tilted his head to the right-- "Tell me, Victarion: did you?"

Victarion's breath had caught the moment he had started to speak, his eyes focused entirely on Kohl. He swallowed, nodding gently before reaching to touch his hand. He caressed it, his thumb stroking over it. "I did. I have always carried that memory so close to me. And here you are...here you are before me, a beautiful vision."

"Yes, but look at you. A man now," Kohl said, a little bit awed at how much Victarion had changed, and how little. He sucked in a deep breath and, begrudgingly, Kohl took a step back from the biobed. Physical distance, he needed physical distance to keep his hands to himself. Even then, Kohl couldn't trust himself and he perched his palms on his lower back. Shaking his head, Kohl said, "With your wavy hair... Why did I never court you?"

Victarion's skin reddened with his blush and he looked away, touching his own stomach. "Oh...I..." he chuckled, shaking his head before looking at him, studying Andreus. "Because there were far more beautiful men back home, who all fell over you with lust and awe. I was just a boy to you, someone running after you." Yet there was no regret in the words, or self pity. He was practical about it. He was those few years younger than Kohl and he had always been bookish. Not quite right in the head some would even stretch to say.

"I was... exotic back home," Kohl supposed. He stepped away just a little bit further to gather supplies from a locked cabinet. "In the Federation school, I was a tamed savage. Among our own people, I was a worldly Fedder who spoke funny..."

"I liked that about you," he said as he searched his face. "I liked that you were different. Made me feel better about being different too."

Nodding at his words, Kohl said, "It is gratifying to know I made you feel better." He returned to Victarion's biobedside with a hypospray in his hand. "And I'm about to do it again. The tissue in your abdomen was regenerated flawlessly, but it looks as if it wasn't sterilized effectively. There's an infection. Your body should be able to fight it off, but this antibiotic will help."

Victarion regarded him with trust, nodding as he tilted his head to the side to allow him easy access, closing his eyes as he smiled. "Thank you...I am grateful for the attention," he said, his voice soft.

Allowing himself to stand closer to Victarion, Kohl reached over to press the hypospray against Victarion's neck. He clutched the hypospray in an open palm, which gave him permission to lay his hand on the side of Victarion's neck. Kohl triggered the hypsospray, but he held his hand there a while longer, and then he lifted his hand away.

For a moment, Victarion tried to lean into the hand as it was pulled away. He stopped and opened his eyes, letting out a soft but shaky breath. "Thank you," he said and looked down with a small smile.

"Well then," Kohl said and he smiled at Victarion again. "I can't detain any longer."

"Shame," Victarion smiled as he took his shirt, to put it on. "Will...can...can I see you again?" he asked with hope, taking a deeper breath as he got dressed.

"Victarion," Kohl said in a chiding tone that implied the man should know better. "I will be disappointed if you don't."


[OFF]

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Andreus Kohl
Assistant Chief Medical Officer
USS Galileo

&

PO2 Victarion Jaqen
Captain's Yeoman
USS Galileo

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