Unafraid (Present)

Posted on 03 Jan 2015 @ 1:36am by Petty Officer 3rd Class Ellsworth Hudson

3,709 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 07 - Sojourn
Location: Starbase 84, Promenade
Timeline: MD 43: 2000 hrs

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Something on the promenade felt wrong. There was some familiar sense of dread, but he was far from a savant with his empathic abilities so he largely ignored it. He couldn't pinpoint it, and he felt things like that all the time with so many scattered emotions in such a large group of people. It was hardly worth a second thought. But it became impossible to ignore it when he heard a voice speak from behind him:

"Well, well. Little Ellsworth Hudson, I'd recognize that form anywhere. Must be my lucky day."

The words stopped him in his tracks. He couldn't breathe. It was one of his biggest fears made manifest: his past catching up with him. A feeling of suffocation had set upon him instantaneously, like the voice he'd heard was a hand at his throat squeezing and squeezing until there was no room left for air to move. It roused a memory of actual suffocation, a face mercilessly pressed into a pillow. He wanted his feet to move, but they were so firmly anchored to the floor that he might as well have been trying to break a magnetic seal. Adrenaline flooded into his veins and his heart squeezed, blasting the hormone throughout his body and kicking his fight-or-flight response into high gear.

His initial instinct was to kick and scream. Every bit of the hard, scrappy young boy from the streets of Medara came back: the fighter, the rebellious youth, the survivor. In that moment he was no longer Ellsworth Hudson but Alax Elren again, the name his parents had given him. He was the angry red-faced boy who would scream and fight and struggle against everyone and everything. Alax wanted to lash out, all teeth and claws, but... No. He was different now. He was Ellsworth, not Alax. He was a different person, a different man. So he turned and faced what was behind him.

The other man loomed over him just as he remembered, seeming as impossibly tall as a Nausicaan. In truth he was only nine inches taller than Ellsworth, but something about his presence made him tower like a monster out of fiction. Gleaming white teeth appeared like a crack in the man's tanned face, making him look like the predator Ellsworth knew him to be. A hearty, derisive laugh followed, boiling up out of him with sickening confidence as he shifted his eyes from the rank insignia on Ellsworth's collar to Ellsworth himself.

"Petty Officer Third Class, is it?" Peals of laughter spat in Ellsworth's face like insults. "You've got to be kidding. Now I know where you disappeared to. What'd you have to do to get the recruiter to take you, give him a couple of freebies and he misfiled some paperwork?"

Ellsworth knew better than to respond - it would only encourage him - but he couldn't help himself. "I joined just like everyone else, Commodore Pennington."

"Ah-ah," Pennington replied, turning his head to expose his neck and a shiny set of pips. "Rear Admiral Pennington now, petty officer. And I don't think I like your insubordinate tone. Come with me."

Ellsworth felt panic rising in him again. He couldn't be alone with the man, but a group of officers stood not too far to his left, observing the curious exchange in the middle of the promenade. Pennington saw them, too, and flashed Ellsworth a dangerous smile. A rear admiral standing before a petty officer... There were few greater reflections of the disparity of power, influence and authority; Ellsworth knew it and Pennington knew it, and that gave him all the leverage he needed. He felt a strong, firm hand on his arm, and his whole resistance just collapsed. The young Betazoid spared one last glance at the officers, hoping they'd remember him after some security officer found him beaten and bloody in a corridor, then allowed himself to be pulled into step next to Rear Admiral Ainsley Pennington.

The pair strolled toward the end of the promenade, which was populated by far fewer people, as the Rear Admiral's words rolled confidently but lazily off his tongue. The arrogance about the man stoked a raging fire inside of Ellsworth. How could Pennington still think he was in control of anything after all this time? No. Ellsworth was a different person now. He wouldn't be controlled. And yet, his back was bowed and slouched, submissive, as he trudged along next to the older man from his past. What he'd mistook for a fire was little more than an ember, a sad and pathetic light surrounded by a crushing weight of darkness.

"They transferred me from the Sirius sector block," Pennington was saying, but Ellsworth wasn't listening. He didn't care how the man secured his promotion, and Pennington probably didn't really care if he knew or not. It was just small talk, pretense. He'd never had enough empathy to see anything from Ellsworth's point of view; the slight young man was little more than a tool, a means to an end, vacant and hollow and unthinking. He was usable and disposable, hardly worth the time of someone with so much self- and real importance as Ainsley Pennington. As those thoughts came unbidden through his mind, they added a certain weight to his steps that dragged at him and pulled him into the past. Eventually, he thought he could actually smell the salty air of the sea-side Risan resort where Pennington always managed to find him.

When Ellsworth came out of his daze, he realized they'd wandered off the promenade. He didn't even know where they were - some lonely, disused corridor that seemed like it had actually gathered dust. Pennington was at a control panel, probably using some maintenance protocols to deactivate security surveillance. He never liked being watched. He didn't want anyone to know his secret, how he took things from other people.

They hadn't all been like Pennington, but he was among the worst of the worst. Some of them - his clients - they were sweet. They all obviously wanted the same thing from an escort and each had their own tastes, but at the end of the evening some of them liked to talk about home. Some of them liked to be held. Some of them just wanted to lay under the stars with someone next to them. Those, he'd never minded. Sure, he was using his body as an instrument in a way that many Terrans and others didn't necessarily agree with but in his own way he felt like he was being of service. If you brought a little comfort to a homesick trader or a frustrated crewman, what harm was there in that? You had a little fun, made a living and neither of them had to be alone.

But sometimes you had a hand at your throat. Sometimes you couldn't breathe through the pillow and you felt like you were choking and you were completely at the mercy of another person for reasons you didn't understand, still didn't fully understand. At best you woke up sore; at worst you had to drag yourself to a clinic in shame and anonymity and try to explain away injuries that had few possible explanations. The doctor would frown, scowl, throw you a disapproving look, not necessarily because of your chosen line of work but for the same reasons as everyone else who looked down on you. How could you be so weak? How could you be so stupid? How could you allow yourself to be put in a position with someone like that, especially in this day and age? How did a Betazoid not sense the danger? You were asking for it, the way you looked and dressed, the places you went and the people you associated with. You only had yourself to blame for what happened to you.

"Do you want me to tell?" Pennington asked, turning around from the control panel. Ellsworth felt like he'd lost all sense of time so he wasn't even sure how long it had taken the man to cross the corridor and pin him against the bulkhead. It had seemed almost instantaneous. Even if he'd summoned the mental and emotional willpower to fight back, he was physically outclassed in every way. And so he didn't resist. He just stayed wide-eyed and tense and unmoving as always, hoping this time it would be over soon. "Do you want everyone to know how filthy and disgusting you are? I bet your captain would be surprised to find out, wouldn't he? Petty officer third class... What a joke. What ship are you on, huh? Tell me. Tell me!"

"The Galileo," Ellsworth heard himself blurt out.

Pennington laughed. "Holliday... My God, of all the uptight self-righteous pricks in the fleet. What do you think he'd say if he found out about you, who you really are? A whore on his ship. Scandalous. Distasteful."

"No, I don't do that anymore. I'm...a quartermaster," Ellsworth said, defiantly, as if it was enough to wave Pennington off. But it earned him nothing more than the back of the rear admiral's hand.

"I think we both know what you really are," Pennington said gruffly.

The tone of his voice was making Ellsworth sick. It had that same guttural sound that had always been the prelude to pain and discomfort and helplessness. He felt a sudden rough violating hand on his body, and it made him wince. But the wince only drew a growl of displeasure out of Pennington so Ellsworth's eyes instinctively opened again, hoping to do anything to make it less painful to endure.

"Please, stop, it's not right. I-I'm not like that anymore, th-that's not my job," he pleaded, trying his hardest not to cry. His eyes were growing wet and he could feel them about to spill over, but he couldn't cry. He mustn't cry. Crying only encouraged a man like Pennington, who perceived it as some twisted signal of final submission.

"Oh, really?" Pennington said quietly. His hot breath fell on Ellsworth's neck, smelling like something so sickeningly sweet that it was actually sour. He felt teeth against his skin, hard enough that it would probably break in places. The rough hand continued grabbing at him and rubbing without a trace of tenderness until it finally got what it wanted. It was nothing more than the mechanical biological response to signals sent to a brain too stupid to differentiate between physical stimulation and actual desire, but it didn't matter because the result was the same. And it was only an encouragement for Pennington. "What's that then? I thought you said you weren't like that anymore? I thought you didn't want it..."

Ellsworth said nothing because it didn't matter what he said. Unbidden, tears finally broke the dam and flowed down his cheek. He made the mistake of sobbing once, unable to fully control himself in the depths of such helplessness, and the applied strength of the hand just intensified. It was ripping at his uniform pants, tearing at its seams like some unstoppable and all-devouring beast. He could hear threads popping in the quiet stillness of the corridor, each snap in the cloth a physical mirror of the internal breakdown of what little remained of his own resistance.

"You're alone," Pennington sneered, feeling Ellsworth's body instinctively and weakly resist him. He pressed the slighter man against the bulkhead harder, grabbed and pulled at his body more insistently, demonstrating all the power and control that brought him that heady rush. "No one cares about you, and no one's going to help you. Not someone like you. Besides, you want it. I know you do, you always did. It's all you're good for."

Ellsworth sobbed again and felt his mind start to slip. There was nothing that could be done except wait. You just placed your mind in standby mode, disengaged, and waited until you could come to life again. But... What had he said? 'You're alone.' Was he still alone? 'No one cares about you.' Didn't he have friends now? Was he still Alax Elren, the 16 year old stowaway landing on Risa for the first time, a broken and hurt thing? Or was he Ellsworth Hudson, Petty Officer Third Class, a Starfleet quartermaster with duty and integrity and clarity of purpose?

Hadn't he, for however brief a time, had a real and meaningful emotional connection with K'os? He had even loved him, called him his imzadi, and despite how things evolved between them, he knew K'os had loved him, too, in his own odd way. And Oren was his friend. They delighted in the feeling of their hands intertwined and the closeness of their bodies, but it was the physical expression of a genuine and unorthodox friendship between two wholly different species. And what about his roommate, Melinda? Didn't he make her laugh? Didn't they watch holovids and play with each other's hair and eat fatty snacks together in the too-late hours of the night? As tawdry as his relationship with Grayson had been, it was at least mutual. It was founded on some shared desire for one another, carried out on equal ground between two people that - on some level - cared about one another. Even Pieter Van Zyl, a man who cared about burned up plants and regulations, cared about someone like Ellsworth, too.

He was not alone.

"No, you're wrong," Ellsworth said and pushed at the other man's hand.

He tried to pull himself away, made little progress, but persisted nonetheless. Pennington scowled and responded the only way he knew how. The pain Ellsworth felt between his legs made him clench his teeth, but it didn't affect his newfound resolve. His body was still fighting back against the other man, despite the differences in their size and strength and Pennington's obvious willingness to hurt Ellsworth - seriously - to get what he wanted. But he would tear out Pennington's eyes before he ever submitted again.

His assailant tightened his grip on one of the most sensitive parts of Ellsworth's body and pain flared from a thousand nerves, but it paled in comparison to the sort of torment he'd endured before, both physical and otherwise. Sheathed in resolve and determination and anger and hatred, the pain now seemed like a minor thing. Pennington could pull and claw and squeeze and push and shove as much as he liked, but this time he wasn't going to win. Suddenly, Ellsworth had turned the tables, and he was in his mind.

I'm not alone. People care about me. I'm not afraid of you.

Pennington's hand shot back and he took a half-step away from Ellsworth, shocked by the voice in his head. It was a presence, a violation, he was wholly unprepared for. But the effect was short lived and he recovered the half-step easily. Whatever humanity might have been left in the man's eyes was gone, replaced by the cold need to take the frail little Betazoid and break him with power and control.

Ellsworth focused all the hate he could, all the boiling rage from every rape and indignity he'd suffered at the hands of Pennington and men like him, and pushed against the rear admiral with his mind. It brought Pennington up short, and Ellsworth saw him wince. With a sick fascination, he pushed again. Pennington staggered once, to the left, and started to bring his hand up toward his temple. Ellsworth took a step forward this time, teeth set in grim determination, and pushed more. Again. Once more. Again and again and again. He had little idea what he was doing and even less control over it, but it was hurting Pennington and that's all that matter. It was the Revenge of Ellsworth Hudson, the Vengeance of Alax Elren.

I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you. I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you, I'm not afraid of you!

It coursed through Pennington's mind over and over, repeatedly, unceasingly. It was the voice of an accuser, an empowered victim's mantra. It was the voice of judge, jury and executioner. It was even-tempered, then sad, then filled with hate, then flat and emotionless. But above all it was endless and relentless, and it was bringing Pennington to his knees.

"You're...assaulting a...flag offic...."

Inside, Ellsworth felt Alax demand more. It wasn't enough to satisfy that old part of him for Pennington to just be back against the opposing wall of the corridor, hands to his head and suffering from nauseating waves of pain. It wasn't enough that one trickle of blood was making its way out of his right ear. No, he wanted more. He wanted a safer galaxy. He wanted the victim to rise against the oppressor. He wanted white hot justice to sear through Pennington's mind, driving him mad just before it killed him. He wanted death and wanton destruction. He wanted vengeance. He wanted to deprive Pennington of his feelings of power and dominance, to seize them as his own and bend them to his own purpose. He wanted murder, bloody and cruel.

But Alax didn't really exist anymore. Ellsworth Hudson was Alax Elren, and Alax Elren was Ellsworth Hudson. One worked to tame the wildness of the other and though sometimes they raged with one another like a battle inside of him, Alax was becoming more and more of a distant memory. He wasn't alone in an alleyway of Rixx, run off from yet another foster family and fighting for survival. He wasn't huddled in his room on Risa, hoping the next one would be gentler. He wasn't even on the Galileo, full of self-doubt. He was a new man, and he was unafraid.

"You can't... You...."

Ellsworth's lip curled at the sound of Pennington's voice. The man was calling out from down on his knees, but some part of Ellsworth still felt like he should be laid out on the floor, dead, in a body bag. His existence should come to its final end in an empty torpedo casing jettisoned into space, nothing more than a footnote in the annals of Federation history, an empty and pathetic life snuffed out by a brain aneurism or whatever it was that a wild and uncontrollable Betazoid was capable of doing to a human being.

But he stopped, because he was a new man. He stopped pushing and quieted his mind, quieting Pennington's along with it.

"I'm not afraid of you," Ellsworth said out loud, standing over Pennington.

And then he turned and was gone.

Back on the promenade, Ellsworth was a shaky mess. He'd left Pennington alone in the corridor, slumped back against the bulkhead with a dazed and vacant look in his eyes. He'd walked away slowly and confidently until he was just out of sight, but then he'd ran. All the hate and fire had gone out of him, leaving an empty and hollow pit in its place, and it had made him feel sick to his stomach. Just before reaching the promenade he'd doubled over in a dry heave but managed to recover some degree of control over himself before stepping back into society, though his hands were still shaking and his mind was racing through all the possible consequences of his hasty actions. Had Pennington been permanently damaged? Would he face a court martial? Dishonorable discharge? Imprisonment? Another disgraceful humiliation in a long line of failures?

Or...

Would Pennington recover? Ellsworth wondered if he would feel any shame, regret or remorse, but then decided it didn't matter. He wasn't likely to ever bother Ellsworth again. He wanted to say that's all that mattered, but was it? What about the others? Surely there were others. Pennington might even carry on, forcing himself on whoever struck his fancy whether they were a willing participant or not. That was the way they worked, wasn't it? Until someone stopped them? But those were thoughts for another day. For now, it was enough to have saved himself.

The group of officers was still standing where they were before as Ellsworth retraced his steps. A few of them noticed him and one spared a glance down the promenade, looked for the rear admiral, then raised an eyebrow at Ellsworth as he came nearer. The young Betazoid didn't meet his eyes but simply raised his chin. He knew he looked disheveled with messy hair, bite marks on his neck, and a partially torn uniform that wouldn't properly fit over his hips anymore. He could feel the officer's emotions as he made his assumptions: curiosity, disapproval, disgust. Under other circumstances, Ellsworth might have felt ashamed under the officer's gaze and worried about the consequences of his actions. The officer might grow curious enough to find Pennington, and then what? But as he continued on past the group, he realized he felt no shame, no concern, no worry. No, not today. Because today he was a new man, and he was unafraid.

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PO3 Ellsworth Hudson
Quartermaster
USS Galileo
[ PNPC - Mott ]

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