Nothing To Give

Posted on 20 Jun 2013 @ 2:45am by

4,347 words; about a 22 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Maenad Panne's quarters
Timeline: MD10 2230

ON:

It took many hours for Liyar to calm himself down enough to be able to hear his own thinking over the blood that roared in his ears and beat through his veins in a pounding rage. He barely had memory of the last few hours.

He was sitting against the wall inside his door, where he hadn't moved since he'd made his escape from the holodeck. His muscles ached with the effort it took to remain perfectly still, not to lash out. To try and grasp the tenets of order and control that always evaporated through his fingers like smoke. The only clear thing in the fog of his mind was Maenad. It always was, he thought ironically. He slowly, rigidly pulled himself up to his feet, looking at his hands, watching the skin stretch tautly over his knuckles and bones. The only thing in his awareness at that moment was his body, and even then, his feet scraped along the floor lifelessly. He looked like a ghost, a shell, a puppet commandeered by someone else as he stared emptily across his spartan quarters.

Where would he go? What would he do? He was so angry and out of control he didn't feel like a sentient being. He was so offended and enraged, he was spinning, flying, rootless, full up of air pockets and insanity. The only thing that registered in his mind were the words he'd spoken to Maenad earlier that morning. It seemed a lifetime away now, he remembered holding her, teaching her, joking with her, touching her. Kissing her. He closed his eyes and his fingernails dug into his palms. They were his choices. Neo had no right, none, and who did they think they were to presume that he hadn't had any intention of telling Maenad or discussing it with her, did they think he was so deranged and abusive that he would have done that?

How couldn't they realize the simple truth? Maenad would not be around for that long. She wouldn't choose to stay with him. He would run out of time and it would be done at long last. He knew that. His nose twitched as he inhaled deeply and he blinked a few times, his face doing an awkward shuffle that might've been sadness, a lurch of misery and awareness. Maybe it was anger, or merely another shifting phase of craziness as Neo would surely denounce it. He wiped the edge of his hand across his chin and the expression vanished.

Lost in a dream, Liyar vaguely realized he had left his quarters, wandering the halls of the Galileo, haunting those who came too close, who saw the whites of his eyes and recoiled in fear. Disjointedly he saw his hand reach up to hit Maenad's door, then he was inside her quarters, and he stood there like a child who had gotten separated from their mother, lost in a world of strangers, noise, color, sound, all whirling around nonsensically. He swallowed and made a fist with his hand, watching it curl and spread in front of him, and then looked up at Maenad, who was just standing there. He had said he'd come here, he didn't break his promises. He was blank and mute, and he sat down on her couch like a robot, back straight, eyes clouded. He rested his hands in his lap. He thought that he couldn't even risk moving, or else he would unleash hell, or something close to it. It craved to get out of his body, out of his fists, to pound into something and twist it and destroy it until it was smoldering metal and ash, but he just sat there, still and pale.

Maenad was standing at her kitchen sink filling a bucket of water for her plants when she heard the door open. She looked over her shoulder and saw Liyar make his way to the couch and sit down. She was wearing an old white t-shirt that was a little too big for her and wasn't wearing any pants, just a pair of underwear. "Hi Liyar," she said over the sound of the tapwater filling the bucket. She turned off the water and lifted it from the sink basin when it was full; it didn't have a handle, so she had to carry it with both hands by the brim. "I'm just watering my plants," she said, walking over to the nearest floor plant, to the left of the door.

Liyar didn't respond to her at all. The lights were on in his head but nobody was home, it seemed, as he stared out over her coffee table and watched her putter around. He could feel her, at the edge of his consciousness, a humming reassurance. He tried to hold onto it, unconsciously using her presence as the base it had become to help calm him, only this time it wasn't working. He wasn't in the room, not really. He was still back in the holodeck, he was still hunched over in his quarters, he was an astral projection, his body was meaningless while he traveled near and far, bouncing from memory to memory, rage to rage. His hands flexed and dug into his legs as he tried so very hard to ward it off. He shouldn't have come here, he realized, and he wanted to stand up and leave right away, but found himself immobile and stuck. If he moved, he could see himself knocking over the table in front of him in pure anger. Nevermind that Maenad was there, Maenad, who he tried so continuously hard not to frighten, to protect, to calm, to nurture. He was nothing like Severen. Movement would be counterproductive. He was locked in his own body, too afraid to even blink. So he merely sat and stewed in his own irascibility as she watered her plants.

After watering the one by the door and the one next to her piano, Maenad's bucket was empty and she got up from her knees and looked over at Liyar, who still hadn't said a word. She frowned, but smiled too, and walked over to the kitchen to get some more water. "Are you hungry?" she asked, wiping some water droplets on her thighs.

He lifted his head, and his lips separated as though to speak, but no sound came out. Finally his eyes darted up in a quick movement and he blinked, stone coming to life, and he shook his head no.

By this point, Maenad could tell that something was bothering him. It had been a few minutes since he'd arrived and he still hadn't opened his mouth. She let the bucket fill and allowed him his silence. He came here, she thought, and he clearly had things on his mind that he wanted to share. As always, she would just have to give him time. Maenad walked over her windowsill and poured tiny splashes of water for her flowers and vines and things, then finished the rest of the bucket in the plant between the chair and couch that Liyar was sitting on. She set the bucket down on the coffee table in front of the couch and sat next to Liyar, putting a hand on his back and rubbing it affectionately. "What's wrong?" she asked him quietly. His hair was a disaster and his eyes were almost bloodshot. She tickled the back of his neck and ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his head.

The palm of his hands rubbed against his knees as she wandered about, tending to the flowers and soil. He didn't know how much time had passed. He didn't even remember leaving his own quarters, and now all he could do was watch himself like a trainwreck. He'd been thinking Neo was right too much lately to believe he was well and stable, he knew he wasn't, but even after many minutes of silence, the anger didn't dissipate any. Even after she spoke, he still couldn't make himself answer, not in any intelligible way. His shoulders dropped at her touch, though, and it inspired him to breathe, which he used to try and get out words. "My brother disapproves of us," he said. It was hardly elaborate, and his voice sounded almost unrecognizable, hoarse from shouting, something he'd hardly ever done in his life.

Maenad sighed very slowly through her nostrils. She removed her hand and held them together over her knees, staring at the ring of water that had formed at the base of the empty bucket and the glass surface of the coffee table. She didn't frown; she looked detached. Without saying anything, she stood up and headed to the kitchen, taking the bucket with her. The plants could wait. She instead got Liyar a cold glass of water and went back to him; she had never heard his throat so dry as this. She returned to his side and passed him the drink. "About what part of us does he disapprove?" she turned her head to look at him. Her fingers intertwined again as she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.

Liyar shook his head at the water, a few times, until she set it aside. "Me," he corrected himself. "He disapproves of me." His eyes lowered. "You had expected it," he muttered quietly. "Vulcan/Terran relationships are highly stigmatized on my planet. But it is not the Terrans who are stigmatized."

Maenad wasn't sure that she understood. She continued staring at the ring of water on the table, left where the bucket had been. She didn't know that they were in a relationship, or that Liyar thought they were. She knew there was something, but she didn't know what. An indeterminate period of time went by in utter silence. It could have been a few seconds or several minutes. "Did you tell him that we are in a relationship?" she asked evenly, watching him carefully.

"Neo does not listen to a single thing he is told," Liyar snapped tightly, swallowing and arching his eyebrows. He shook his head once. "He used his flight privileges to take apart the Virginia's black box."

"He what?" Maenad asked him, her posture straightening. "He can't do that." Suddenly, Maenad felt more violated than when she had realised Lirha's pheromones had impaired her judgement. "He could be thrown in the brig for that!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed. She didn't like Liyar's brother; she found him rude, judgemental, and grossly arrogant. "Why?"

"Because he is an idiot," Liyar answered, with his most supreme unhappy face. "Neo has been in the V'Ket for the last twenty years, he is trained to observe people. He spoke with you and determined there was something he needed to interfere with, because he has absolutely no conception of privacy. He sent Naskisem here to bond with me. Then he spent an hour judging my entire life, what I choose to do, and you." Liyar thought he sounded quite composed, but in reality he spoke through gritted teeth, and his hands had clenched again.

Maenad shook her head ever so slightly. "Liyar, you still haven't answered my question; did you tell Neo that we are in a relationship? Do you think that we are?" She sounded worried.

Liyar stared at her. He had answered her question. "I told Neo nothing. He listened to our flight log. I told him to mind his own business." He made a gesture and then shrugged. "I do not know, we interact with one another, we relate, therefore I assume there is a relationship of some variety. If you are asking me if I believe we are conforming to the parameters of a standard human relationship, then my answer is simply, I have no idea. Since I apparently have little knowledge about anything including how to exist, I will just let you decide, since that is what everyone wants to do," he growled under his breath and blinked toward the ceiling.

"Let me decide?" she demanded now, looking at him incredulously. "Who wants me to decide?" Maenad had no idea what he was talking about, and she was beginning to get angry. She preferred it the way things were before; she didn't understand what had changed since then, or what exactly had gone on, or what Liyar thought was happening between them. Neo had listened in on what they had done in the shuttle, he didn't approve of relationships with humans, bonding with Naskisem, Liyar looking for approval. "What is going on?"

"Nothing," Liyar gestured and then stood, rubbing his head with one hand. "And I do not think anything is happening. Believe me, I am well-aware of the reality here," Liyar said bitterly. He took a deep breath and then spit it out. "Neo thinks that I want to bond with you. That I want you to be my mate. He thinks that because on some level it is probably true. I am probably insane enough. But I am no fool, I know what the differences are. Terrans and Vulcans, we do not do this the same. There is no dating on Vulcan, Maenad. There is no relationship or things that two individuals have. There is no casual sex. There is no experimenting, there is no seeing if. There is bonding. That is it. I chose you. Knowing that it would be different, that I could not quantify it, that whatever this is is bound in fragility. Nevertheless, our interactions make me happy. I do not know what to classify it as and I have no expectation, or delusion, about where this will end, but Neo- all he sees, when he looks at me, is a monster. And-" he was pacing, and flung a hand out then, the words pouring out of him without conscious direction, like a faucet that at first dripped small waterdrops and then began to overflow. "He thinks that I have not given you a choice in the matter, when the truth is, that is all this has ever been!" he his voice raised and cracked again, echoing off of her walls. "He is grating, obnoxious, prying, invasive and grossly inappropriate and I have no idea how we come from the same family," Liyar said lowly, picking up the glass of water on the table at his next go 'round and gesturing with it, taking a drink and then a deep breath as if to reign in his emotions.

Maenad ignored everything he said about Neo. She didn't care about Neo. She cared about Liyar. And if she had heard him correctly, he had said that somewhere in his mind he had chosen to bond with her. She had never thought of becoming Liyar's mate. The idea swirled in her head; she just liked him. She had never thought that far ahead. Was he wanting her to now? No, she didn't think so. "Liyar, sit down," she told him. "Did you say that you've chosen me?" she asked him. Her heart was going a million miles a minute. "To be your bondmate, you want me?"

Liyar didn't listen, he shook his head, "No, that is not what I said, I-" he broke off, still pacing. "I said, I chose to be here. With you. In whatever way it would turn out. There are so many things about Vulcan relationships that you could not conceive of, how could I ask that of you? I suspected that sooner or later you would come to understand what it means to be with a Vulcan, at least enough to recognize that you should choose otherwise. I chose it anyway, knowing this. Now, what does it matter," he said, hopelessly. Whatever time he thought he might have had, that was gone. It was all gone. Thanks to Neo and his ridiculous meddling, thanks to Liyar's own inability to control himself for five seconds.

Maenad stood now too. "You did say it, Liyar. You did!" She didn't know why she was getting upset. She was confused, caught off-guard, stuck in the middle of a family feud, and the best friend she had ever had was off his head. She didn't know what was going on or why, and she didn't know how she had managed to be at the centre of it all. "You said that on Vulcan there is no dating, no sex for fun, and no figuring things out with each other. You said that there is only bonding, and that you chose me," her voice was shrill now too. She didn't like being shrill with him. He was hurt and she was probably hurting him more; but, after being dragged into this, what else was she supposed to do? She was hurt now, too, but she didn't know why. "Why did you choose me if it would cause you all this trouble?" she yelled at him. "Look at me," she said sternly.

"I said that I chose to try doing things differently!" Liyar replied, his voice unsteady. "You are right, there is no conception of these things on Vulcan, so of course I thought about it! That does not mean anything when it comes down to it because in the end it would have always been your choice. Maenad, I have no choice. I have to bond within the next seven years or my life is over. That is my reality, but it is not yours. It was never yours. I always wanted you to have that choice, to feel like this was something normal, something relatable. Well," he blinked several times, trying to calm himself down. He met her eyes briefly like a flittering bird and then looked away. It didn't work, and he breathed uneasily. "You do not want a relationship, and Neo is right anyway. What kind of a bondmate could I be? I know this is done differently for Terrans. I tried my hardest to go with it, but I know he will only seek you out and-" he made a snarling noise low in his throat. "It is better you hear it from me."

"How do you know what I want?" Maenad snapped back at him. "I never said that I didn't want a relationship with you," the weight of her words hung for a moment as the implications sunk into both of them. "We said in the shuttle that we would learn, remember? That we are different but we didn't care. Seven years, Liyar, is a long time. Why must you fret about this right now? I like you, Liyar. I might even love you." She pointed at her chest, her voice was now shaking. "At least I know that I can. I would choose you right now, if I had to. If I were forced to never see anybody else ever again but you, I would, in some ways, be relieved. You are special to me in ways that nobody else has ever been. Why can't we just keep our friendship how it is now, and see what happens. I know that it will turn into love, if it hasn't already, Liyar. I know that it will!" she wiped her eyes. "I am human. It takes time for these things to grow. And we are growing! You have nothing to worry about, Liyar, I promise you." Her eyes pleaded with him, but for some reason he wouldn't look at her. "Ignore Neo, ignore Naskisem. Just focus on yourself and what you want to do, and I will be here."

"I know all of this," Liyar said, trying to get a handle on himself. "I know- and I want to." It was in some ways gratifying to know that Maenad was on the same page as him. He took in air in gulps, but he was facing away from Maenad, so she couldn't see how truly tenuous his control was. "I want-" he started haltingly, then stopped, then started again. "-I always wanted to see. What would happen. That is all," he shrugged, "it would have been enough. Even if it meant impermanence. You are right. Seven years is far away. But not to Neo." Liyar feared Neo would just try to scare Maenad away from him. Maybe, Liyar thought, he should. Maybe she should be scared away. "I do not know if he will leave it alone. You do not deserve to be in the middle of this. He thinks-" Liyar's grip on the glass tightened unconsciously. He didn't realize it then, but he had been hurt by what Neo said. As Vulcan as he was, his immunity to emotion didn't extend very far. What could he do? His relationships were threatened, his life, he almost thought. But he couldn't tell Maenad that. She could barely comprehend the idea of bonding, let alone the fact that she was one of the few things that Liyar relied on just to stay sane every day. "He thinks that I would harm you. He wants me to leave the ship. The things he has said- I-" Liyar's fingers tightened against the glass and he very suddenly hurled it against the opposite wall, making a strange, alien sound in his lower vocal chords. It lasted only a moment. "Vyez'seanne taj!" he swore vehemently.

Maenad flinched, and she cowered by raising one of her arms in front of her. The glass of water had exploded into thousands of tiny shards all over the opposite side of her living room, near her bedroom door. There was a splattered, dripping smear of water where it had impacted the wall, and the carpet below the hole it had left was soaked. She looked from the wall and back to Liyar, and it was then that she knew there was a lot more going on than she knew. She had never been afraid of Liyar before, and she decided that that had been the first and last time he would ever frighten her. "If you ever do anything like that again," she said evenly, "we will no longer be friends." Her eyes burned into his, now that he finally looked at her for longer than fraction of a second. "I don't care what your problems are, but that kind of behaviour, I will never put up with, Liyar." If Maenad had ever been serious with him, it was at that moment.

Liyar was wide-eyed. Her words went straight over his head, he couldn't hear or think or even breathe. The situation slowly sank in moment by moment. He looked down at his hands, small cuts embedded in the skin from where the glass had been crushed in his palm prior to being thrown. He couldn't even remember throwing it. He'd lost control. In a split second he realized he had the power to drastically alter the scape of Maenad's life, forever. Familial memory clogged and bubbled up in the drain of his mind. That was how it had started- he realized, and facing her, the play of emotions on his face couldn't be hidden. Shock, horror, and genuine fear. He stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, until he forced his mind to catch up, dragging his limbs. It was so thick in the air he thought he was breathing it in, he would choke and die. He needed a drink, he couldn't breathe. That was how it had started with Sharivok. Until he had destroyed the thing he held most dear. Neo was wrong. He wasn't like Severen at all. He stumbled backwards and twitched. "I need to go," he blurted, his words quick and almost unintelligibly accented. "I need to go. That should not have happened. No," he spoke over her and nodded as if agreeing with himself. "No, he was right, I need to go now. I need to go now." He repeated that until he got to the door, then pawed at the control panel and slipped out, almost jogging down the hall away from her.

Maenad remained behind, staring at the doors, then to where Liyar had stood just seconds ago. Her eyes were wide. She didn't understand. Her head sunk, and her chin quivered. Then, all at once, she started to cry. Not just wet tears, but sobbing. She went into her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed, grabbing one of her pillows. She clenched it tightly into her chest as she cried out loud, periodically hiding her face in it. She didn't know why any of this was happening. Liyar, she thought, was her best friend, the person she wanted to be her lover, the only person who understood her, who protected her. The hole in the wall and broken glass, his flight from her quarters. She wanted to be lightyears from here. She wanted to go home. But, she couldn't. She was in the Rojar system, in a role she hated, serving corporate interests rather than scientific pursuits. But, just like that, Liyar had left her and all that might have been. Now, she was truly, and utterly, alone.

OFF:

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

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

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