SET 017: Rojar VI Moon Charting, "One Line" I

Posted on 22 May 2013 @ 3:25am by
Edited on on 23 May 2013 @ 3:35pm

2,310 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: Shuttlecraft Virginia, Rojar VI Space
Timeline: MD9 1030 Hours

ON:

A long silence descended upon the shuttlecraft as they finished their scan of the third, equally dead moon. True indolence. Liyar had his head buried in his PADD, deep in thoughts more engaging than the endless sea of nothing before them. Maenad - he did not understand. She was upset. Angry with him. It was him, but over something he could not qualify. He hadn't done anything. Nothing about their lives had changed from yesterday to today. Nothing about her thoughts that he could discern shed any light on the matter. She did not want to upset him, she thought he would prefer it if she were a Vulcan.

His conversations with Anera and Neo poked through the squishy spots in his big, giant cranium, words he couldn't get away from. Neo, concerned for Maenad's safety. Concerned in the wake of his intentions. Yet, he had no intention. Did he? Could he think it? Would it turn him to stone and create fissures all through his being? Would he crack and fall to the floor in dull pieces? Was that the only thing standing in his way. Time, not enough time, not suitable time, not suitable death and angst. Just enough angst, and the angst-gods would be satisfied. Naskisem and Neo were right. The desires he resolutely refused to consider, to entertain, they lived in the outer edges, provoked and unsettled. Stones overturned deep down at the lake's floor. The things that Neo had called alien to her.

He'd let her kiss him. Let her rest in his bed. Let her touch him. Passively, watching, observing. Not reacting, not responding. Any other would have pushed her away, informed her in clear terms of their boundaries, but he had not. He remembered his words to Naskisem. These are things mates do. Not us. As an individual who always sought to understand his own motives, Liyar could not justify this. Cognitive dissonance, an aching echo that wouldn't dissipate. He looked at the closed iron walls in his head and wondered when he had become so self-repressing. Weeks of meditation and suppression and distraction all pointed in one simple direction, one he wasn't able to ignore any longer, not since Neo had come in and shaken it out of him. But it was different now. Wasn't it?

He looked over at Maenad. T'Yron was dead. The person who married her, he was dead too. What did he know? What was left, when he stopped pretending? The wrinkled thing in his head, whatever it was. It wasn't a Liyar he recognized, standing-growing-shaping. And it had wanted to respond, connect, let go. What he didn't understand, was why it was happening like this. To forget? To substitute? To devolve into insanity? But here he was, perfectly self-aware, and it still existed. Every model of behavior he understood was telling him that it was wrong, unhealthy, immoral, illogical. Disrespectful, degrading, meaningless. But when it was happening, when he existed in those moments, it - he nearly rolled his eyes - what? Felt right? It felt like living, detaching from death and destruction and misery, lighter, weightless. He inhaled a small breath. The tips of his fingers pressed together until they turned white.

What was he supposed to do about that? Neo was right. Maenad was right. He wasn't a human being. He could not respond to her in a human way. He could not engage in some whim, some impulse. He wasn't above that, necessarily, but- Maenad trusted him. To act in that capacity would be cruel. He suppressed an urge to sigh. Even if he were a manipulative bastard, it would be simpler than this. He understood cruelty, he could not understand this. It was infuriating, he berated himself. Unjust. It had been less than four months. Not even a year and- here he was. Unable to get some Terran girl out of his head.

Why? Was it his mind, mangled and destroyed, unable to exist by itself? Not for the first time he wished, for just a brief moment, that he was a human. That he had the option, the choice, of doing whatever he wanted. He dug his nails into his palm. Athlen once told him that Rigelians had a rather simple system. If one were upset or angry, grieving or lost, exuberant, happy, or merely had the urge, they could find connections and then dissipate them at will. They could date or work it out of their system. They could test the waters with someone they found intriguing, without any consequences. It wasn't so for Vulcans. He needed to think about his future. He needed to prepare for his ascension, he needed to prepare for his Time. He didn't have the luxury of choice. His connections could not dissipate.

But what of her? They were close. It was not a delusion or a fantasy. She thought he wanted her to be a Vulcan. The words replayed in his head. Like Naskisem. Like T'Yron. He blinked a few times at the realization. She was not a Vulcan. And a Terran, he knew, shouldn't need to handle such a commitment. It wasn't their way. It was a responsibility she should never have to bear. Terrans dated and tried and tested and negotiated. They had choices, they had freedom, self-expression, self-realization, individualism, she had told him so herself, that those were the foundations of her beliefs. And yet, he realized quite certainly, watching her operate the sensor systems, that she did feel for him.

"Do you believe," he started quietly after a long, awful silence had passed - after the instruments had finished their scans, after his PADD was read and reread until the words ran together in front of his eyes - "that we are merely friends?"

As a long silence took over the cabin, Maenad used the opportunity to look at the scan's results. Her first read-through couldn't have been more thorough; the moon was a giant rock with another frozen core. It was a few degrees cooler, had a thinner atmosphere, but that was it. She sipped at her tea, then, and looked outside for several seconds. Their angle kept them from seeing the planet or the moon below; only stars filled the window and she looked at them placidly, off and on between her screens and space. Then she heard Liyar, as plain as day. Her heart fluttered uneasily. She felt her eyes widen, as though she had just seen the catalyst to a disaster she could do nothing about. Everything unfolded before her eyes, making space through the cockpit window a blurry grey. Like static. She blinked it away, then turned to look at him.

She licked her lips, nervously, and nodded slowly. Talking about friendship, about levels of closeness, about whether they were just friends or best friends - it all felt so juvenile. "You're probably the best friend, Liyar, that I have ever had," she told him squarely, honestly. Her voice was quiet, but sincere. It was the only answer she could give him.

He shook his head, but it was more like a twitch, shaking off an enigmatic thought. He elaborated, "Do you believe that we behave the way that friends do?"

It was a trying day for her. Liyar was acting strangely, and she didn't want to start shouting at him again. Maenad studied him over the brim of her teacup as she took a slow sip, then looked for a place to set it down. "If I didn't, then you wouldn't be my best friend, would you?"

"The finer definitions of friendship elude me. But it has occurred to me, that our interactions are considerably more intimate." His words were enunciated distinctly, weighted in knowing.

Out of what she thought was nowhere, Maenad realised that Liyar had figured it out for himself. She was impressed and saddened at the same time, which left looking forlorn and resigned. She was more intimate with him. She was more intimate with him than most opposite sex friendships. She had crossed boundaries with him. She had taken advantage of him, but never on purpose. Maenad sucked in her lips and bit down on them. Then closed her eyes and tucked her chin into her neck, so that the she faced him with her crown. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. She raised her head only enough to look up at him with her eyes. "It is my fault, Liyar. I..." she said, then shrugged. "I have been unfair to you. You just," she played with her fingers as she gradually raised her chin, "make me feel, I don't know. I can talk to you. You understand me. You like me, and I just, well, for me it is rare. I shouldn't have stepped out of bounds." She smirked just barely and added another answer to the question he'd asked earlier, "That's what's been bothering me most."

Liyar was starting to get the picture. And what could be done? Every rational, sane synapse in his brain was sparking in overload. Get out, get away, regroup. He wasn't weak, and he wasn't at the mercy of his instincts. He had to shield her from this. Shield her from the strange, twisted insanity in his head. Far away as health. It was too soon. Too soon, how could it be so soon? What right did he have? None. He was supposed to die, the thoughts came before he could stop them, throwing him over the cliff. He had meant to die. He hadn't wanted to live, hadn't felt capable of it, truly, he was biding time until- he was supposed to face the Honorable Death. He wasn't- what did that even mean? A sucking vortex of guilt and shame gnawed at him and he closed his eyes and swallowed against it. Monstrous, Neo had called it. It didn't matter. He had no right to impose on Maenad. He had to ignore it. It was a fluke. An anomaly, a product of Veren's, an empathetic reaction, a mindless physical urge. His eyes squeezed and then opened. It had to be that, even though his mind was calmly and consistently refuting it with the most simple, basic facts: he enjoyed her company. Over anyone else's. He had not reacted to Kestra this way. He could name and identify specific things about Maenad that existed nowhere else. It didn't matter.

It had to be ignor- his body did not get the memo in the slightest, and one of his hands moved of its own accord, following pure impulse. The edge of his finger traced under her jaw, and lifted her chin fully. Neither did his voice, when it came, intent and focused. "Make you feel what?"

Maenad was starting to feel lighter than air, almost like she were floating. Was it a dream? She was so afraid, but something in his touch made her feel reassured. His eyes said he knew and didn't mind, but Maenad couldn't let herself think that. He would have declared it in his usual unrestrained way, wouldn't he have? Her breathing quickened to match her racing pulse, her heart felt like war drums inside her chest. She closed her eyes for a moment while she continued to fumble with her fingers, but there was no hiding and there was no going back. She slowly brought her right hand to where his finger met beneath her chin and wrapped it in her palm, then brought it down near her legs before letting go. "I like you," she told him. "A lot." Maenad raised her eyes to his. She looked sad, like she had sympathy for him. "I'm sorry, I can't help it. I shouldn't, but I do," she sighed through her nose.

Maybe he was insane. Maybe there was no hope. What future was he trying to protect? Maybe he had no future. Did it matter? He was realizing very severely that grief and affection could go together rather well. It lived in him, he carried it with him. I carry your heart. / I carry it in my heart. It was as if he'd somehow pledged to trudge along the blistering desert of despair for the rest of eternity, until the sun sheared away his skin and he turned to dust and ash. Without ever realizing it, he'd been resigned to a life of emptiness. Trees collapse and break in the storm, but they do not stop and cry as their beloved roots are torn asunder. They merely grow on. And now- he looked at Maenad, scrutinizing her every expression, the change in her eyes, her lips, her face. "What does that mean?" he asked, because he had to be sure he understood, he often didn't understand. How could he know what course of action to take? He could not rely on telepathy. Just because a Terran felt and thought something did not mean they wanted to act on it or consider it the truth.

"Forget it, Liyar," she said icily. "Just forget it." Maenad pushed herself back into her chair, resigned to his semantics. Sometimes his naivety was endearing; right now, however, it was not. "Set a course of the next moon, will you?" she grumbled.

TO BE CONTINUED...

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer, SSC
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

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