As They Were Always Meant To Be
Title: As They Were Meant To Be
Author: hunters_retreat
Movie Prompt: Ender's Game
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17 for theme
Word Count or Media:2400
Summary: Jared stared at the people in front of him and tried to make sense of it all. When he thought past his own emotional reaction it made perfect, brutal sense.
Notes: Written for the spn_cinema challenge. I love Ender's Game but wanted to play with it a bit. You know I'm a sucker for boys in space :P
Jared stared at the people in front of him and tried to make sense of it all. When he thought past his own emotional reaction it made perfect, brutal sense. The system was designed to keep them from understanding; with every promotion, medal, and citation. Of course they would graduate. They would have pomp and circumstance and move on from the Battle School to active service.
No one would believe that the final exam was the actual final battle. Because no one believed they would just change the rules in the middle of the game.
But that’s why Jared had succeeded, wasn’t it? Because Jared played the rules like a harp string. And when he bent it too far, he did his best to replace it with something that worked in his favor.
It was why he could display violence to the level his brother did but not be removed from the program for his brutality.
It was why he could display kindness the way his sister did but not be removed from the program for his weakness.
Because he was driven by his logic towards a specific goal and he had learned to turn his emotions into tools.
But that wasn’t right, was it? He pushed away from the console, from the cheers of the committee that had turned him into a murderer. He pushed past the faces of his comrades whom he’d turned into accessories.
He ran from the room with the monitors that showed the full-scale destruction of an entire race of creatures; the only other race of beings humans had ever come across.
He felt his knees give out and the air become harder to breathe. The Colonel told them all to back up, to give him space but one came forward anyway. Always.
“Jared,” his stoic friend called his name. He never said much else but Jared knew him so much better than the others.
Jared, he heard the voice in his head and that, at least, was a comfort when the world turned black around him.
***
Jared woke to earthen walls, a hard, military mattress, and the same ceiling he’d been staring at since he’d been transferred to the Forward Command. He took a deep breath and assessed his body. Everything was fine. He felt a little queasy but that was to be expected, really.
He started to sit up but the room spun around him. He closed his eyes and a hand was on his back, steadying him. He kept his eyes closed because he didn’t need to open them to know who it was.
There were no words spoken and Jared just took comfort in the silence. That’s the way it was with Jensen. Jared was closer to him than any of the others and had been ever since he’d gotten lost at Battle School and Jensen had taken then time to show him around.
Jensen had been silent that day too.
He took a deep breath and felt himself steadied. When he opened his eyes, Jensen was sitting on the edge of the bed at his side.
“I had a dream,” Jared whispered the words as if they were a secret.
Jensen leaned in towards him until their foreheads were bowed together. Jared felt his breath against his lips as Jensen let out a small sigh. He felt more focused like that, as if the contact with Jensen somehow made the images of his dream more concrete.
“It isn’t the first time I’ve had it. I wish … Jensen … I wish I’d listened. I think… they were trying to tell me something.”
“Tell me.”
Jared took a deep breath and he could see the dream in his mind’s eye.
The red-brown of the dusty world swirled around him but formed a corridor towards the rocky outcropping that he recognized from outside the window in his room. He followed it, felt his body running as hard as he could. The wind tore at his skin but he continued on.
“I can feel it,” Jared said, his lips a hair’s breadth away from Jensen’s. “Something inside is calling to me. Someone.”
“Do you trust it?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “I don’t know why, but I do. It … calls to me. Not just like it’s trying to communicate, but there is a connection between us.”
“What does it want, Jared?”
In his mind, he followed the path through the man-made door. He knew it had once been another opening, a natural one, but humans had dug it out, made it taller so they could walk upright. He followed through and down the corridor. The inside of the structure was mired with pathways, a maze that humans had seen as too problematic to turn into a part of the main base. Jared knew the way.
“I never knew what it wanted. I never got that far. Something stood in the way.”
“What?”
It almost felt like Jensen was there in his mind with him, the breath against the back of his neck, his body pressed to Jared’s as they walked the cavern hallways together.
“I always woke up. I think I wasn’t ready to learn what it was trying to tell me.”
“And now?”
Jared opened his eyes and let out a deep breath as he stared into Jensen’s gaze. “I know what to do.”
He didn’t bother to put on fresh clothes but threw his boots on and ran out the door. He probably looked a mess with yesterday’s uniform still on and his hair a wild, unkempt mess, but no one tried to stop him as he ran through the halls. Footsteps pounded the floor behind him and he knew Jensen was with him.
He didn’t stop until he reached the outer seals. He slammed the button to open the door and ran blindly into the raging winds. He was half way to the rocky outcropping that had haunted his visions before his eyes started to see black. He fell to his knees and struggled to get upright, but there wasn’t enough oxygen in his system to keep going.
Tears filled his eyes as he tried to struggle on anyway. A hand gripped his shoulder and a mask was pressed to his face. The sweet touch of oxygen filled his lungs and he was able to breathe again.
He looked up and Jensen was holding a mask to his face, the oxygen tank in his hands. He’d been smart enough to put his own on after Jared had run.
Jensen hooked the straps behind Jared’s back, then held his hand out to help Jared to his feet. He got up and started to run again, the urgency he’d felt before surging again as his breath had returned. He needed to get to the outcropping. He needed to see it with his own eyes and not just in his mind.
Jared stopped as soon as he got to the rocky doorway. He slowed and moved through the entrance at a more respectful pace. He didn’t need the oxygen mask inside, so he took it off and left it by the entry and looked back to see Jensen to do the same.
“It wasn’t trying to tell me something, Jensen,” he said in understanding. “It wanted me to come here. It wanted to show me something.”
Jensen just nodded as Jared walked them further into the labyrinth. He didn’t know how long they walked, but eventually he came to the place he had seen before. The place where an alien queen had sat on her throne, calling to Jared.
“No,” he said softly when it was empty. “She should be here. She was … she said she’d be here.”
He was desperate to find her, to have this one chance to apologize, to try to do something. She wouldn’t have been calling all this time just for his death; though he would give it to her if she asked.
In one final move of the game, he had annihilated her entire species. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness.
“Who is she?”
“There was … a queen,” Jared whispered. “Left behind when all the others died before. She wanted to return home but it was impossible.”
“She told you this?”
“No. I just … I can feel it, Jensen. We trapped her here without even knowing so she hid. I can’t be too late.” He grabbed Jensen by the arms and begged, “Jensen, tell me I can’t be too late!”
“And what would you do if she were here?”
Jared closed his eyes and felt Jensen pull him closer. He buried his head in Jensen’s neck and let out a shaky breath. “Anything. How could I deny her anything, knowing what I took from her?”
“They say the aliens are evil.”
“They didn’t give them a chance to prove otherwise.”
“You would?”
Jared let out a bitter laugh. “The irony of it all is that I would have. If I had known it was real, I would have tried to speak with them.”
“I believe you would have, Jared.”
Jensen stepped back and Jared let him. Jensen cupped his face with his hand and pulled their lips together in a chaste kiss.
Jared gasped into it, but as Jensen deepened the kiss, he felt something connect between them as well. He saw flashes of his life interspersed with the thoughts and feelings of an alien creature. He tried to pull away, but Jensen’s arms bound him.
He saw himself as a new cadet, moments after they took out his monitor and he believed he was a washout.
He saw himself moved to Battle School, only to be hated by his classmates and ostracized by the older cadets who saw him as a threat.
He saw himself rise anyways, his determination and manipulations always a step ahead of the others.
He saw alien colonies thriving, until humans had destroyed them, one by one.
He saw his first victory in the games overlapped with the first colony’s destruction.
He saw every battle thereafter for the horror it was.
He watched the annihilation and the destruction and the cheers and congratulations and he wanted to be sick.
He watched Jensen dying in the rocky outcropping, beat to death by another cadet and left to die where no one would find him.
He watched himself fighting against every obstacle, including his own misgivings at the treatment they were all given.
He watched an alien find Jensen, understand that the life was gone, but its own was in danger. He watched an alien take the form of the dead cadet; scared and haunted by the boy’s memories, but brave enough to try to hide among the humans to keep from being detected.
He watched himself and Jensen, strangers becoming friends, becoming something stronger.
He watched Jensen struggle with orders and give in to the terrors because he had played the part of the boy so well that he was one of their best.
He watched Jensen struggle because he was part of Jared’s team and Jared, above them all, would find a way to save them. He knew.
Jared fell to his knees and sobbed, because he had asked Jensen to fire on his own home and Jensen had followed him. Because he believed.
“No,” Jensen whispered softly from above him. “Because, I loved.”
“You knew.”
“I was cut off for a very long time,” he said as he dropped to his knees beside Jared. “I was too far away, too weak. We are not meant to be solitary creatures. We are unable to survive alone. I thought I would die here, but you found me. I grew stronger with your friendship. I became aware of my own kind again and of what was happening.”
“You fired the shot. How could you, knowing?”
“Because there was no stopping it, Jared. Look at the lengths your human soldiers have gone to, in order to destroy us. There was no stopping them until we were destroyed.”
“You should have fought,” he sobbed. He wanted to yell, to rail at Jensen until he understood the depths of his self-hatred but he didn’t have the strength anymore.
“And I will,” Jensen said.
Jared looked up, wide eyed and was surprised at the determination in the other man’s eyes. In the alien’s eyes.
“Jared, we will.”
“How?”
“I am the queen.”
“What?”
“To you human’s, it is as simple as male or female but it is not always true. I am the queen, but I am as you see me now. Among the hidden tunnels, there is another cave. A small, deeply covered cavern where my last nest rests with my children. They are not many, but I am not alone. I will leave this place and take them with me. I will travel the stars and find someplace safe where we may live, in peace. A place where we do not fear the humans. But that, maybe, one would remain to help us navigate the worlds around us.”
“Jensen?”
“Help me, Jared. Help me find a new home. Stay with me. Give me strength and comfort and help me rebuild what they made us destroy.”
“How can you ask that of me?”
“How can I not?”
Jared looked at Jensen but it wasn’t hatred and fear he saw in the other’s eyes. If he had to give it a name, he would call it hope. Or love.
“Now, we are truly at your mercy, Jared. Will you be the monster they want you to be? Or will you be the man I dreamed you could be? Will you help us escape this place and find a way to a new home?”
Jared cupped Jensen’s cheek and let out a deep breath. It would be an impossible journey, an impossible task. The universe was too big for random finds and it would be too dangerous to turn to any of the fleet’s bases for help.
But Jared was not a murderer. He was not a butcherer.
“Jensen,” he said as he brought their foreheads together. “I don’t know if we can do this, but I will give you my last breath. I will search ceaselessly and I will not stop until I have found you a new home, or until my death. My life, and my death; they are now both yours.”
Jensen smiled at Jared and it was full of pain and hope and love. “As are mine. As they were always meant to be.”
Author: hunters_retreat
Movie Prompt: Ender's Game
Pairing: Jared/Jensen
Rating: NC-17 for theme
Word Count or Media:2400
Summary: Jared stared at the people in front of him and tried to make sense of it all. When he thought past his own emotional reaction it made perfect, brutal sense.
Notes: Written for the spn_cinema challenge. I love Ender's Game but wanted to play with it a bit. You know I'm a sucker for boys in space :P
Jared stared at the people in front of him and tried to make sense of it all. When he thought past his own emotional reaction it made perfect, brutal sense. The system was designed to keep them from understanding; with every promotion, medal, and citation. Of course they would graduate. They would have pomp and circumstance and move on from the Battle School to active service.
No one would believe that the final exam was the actual final battle. Because no one believed they would just change the rules in the middle of the game.
But that’s why Jared had succeeded, wasn’t it? Because Jared played the rules like a harp string. And when he bent it too far, he did his best to replace it with something that worked in his favor.
It was why he could display violence to the level his brother did but not be removed from the program for his brutality.
It was why he could display kindness the way his sister did but not be removed from the program for his weakness.
Because he was driven by his logic towards a specific goal and he had learned to turn his emotions into tools.
But that wasn’t right, was it? He pushed away from the console, from the cheers of the committee that had turned him into a murderer. He pushed past the faces of his comrades whom he’d turned into accessories.
He ran from the room with the monitors that showed the full-scale destruction of an entire race of creatures; the only other race of beings humans had ever come across.
He felt his knees give out and the air become harder to breathe. The Colonel told them all to back up, to give him space but one came forward anyway. Always.
“Jared,” his stoic friend called his name. He never said much else but Jared knew him so much better than the others.
Jared, he heard the voice in his head and that, at least, was a comfort when the world turned black around him.
***
Jared woke to earthen walls, a hard, military mattress, and the same ceiling he’d been staring at since he’d been transferred to the Forward Command. He took a deep breath and assessed his body. Everything was fine. He felt a little queasy but that was to be expected, really.
He started to sit up but the room spun around him. He closed his eyes and a hand was on his back, steadying him. He kept his eyes closed because he didn’t need to open them to know who it was.
There were no words spoken and Jared just took comfort in the silence. That’s the way it was with Jensen. Jared was closer to him than any of the others and had been ever since he’d gotten lost at Battle School and Jensen had taken then time to show him around.
Jensen had been silent that day too.
He took a deep breath and felt himself steadied. When he opened his eyes, Jensen was sitting on the edge of the bed at his side.
“I had a dream,” Jared whispered the words as if they were a secret.
Jensen leaned in towards him until their foreheads were bowed together. Jared felt his breath against his lips as Jensen let out a small sigh. He felt more focused like that, as if the contact with Jensen somehow made the images of his dream more concrete.
“It isn’t the first time I’ve had it. I wish … Jensen … I wish I’d listened. I think… they were trying to tell me something.”
“Tell me.”
Jared took a deep breath and he could see the dream in his mind’s eye.
The red-brown of the dusty world swirled around him but formed a corridor towards the rocky outcropping that he recognized from outside the window in his room. He followed it, felt his body running as hard as he could. The wind tore at his skin but he continued on.
“I can feel it,” Jared said, his lips a hair’s breadth away from Jensen’s. “Something inside is calling to me. Someone.”
“Do you trust it?”
“Yes,” he whispered. “I don’t know why, but I do. It … calls to me. Not just like it’s trying to communicate, but there is a connection between us.”
“What does it want, Jared?”
In his mind, he followed the path through the man-made door. He knew it had once been another opening, a natural one, but humans had dug it out, made it taller so they could walk upright. He followed through and down the corridor. The inside of the structure was mired with pathways, a maze that humans had seen as too problematic to turn into a part of the main base. Jared knew the way.
“I never knew what it wanted. I never got that far. Something stood in the way.”
“What?”
It almost felt like Jensen was there in his mind with him, the breath against the back of his neck, his body pressed to Jared’s as they walked the cavern hallways together.
“I always woke up. I think I wasn’t ready to learn what it was trying to tell me.”
“And now?”
Jared opened his eyes and let out a deep breath as he stared into Jensen’s gaze. “I know what to do.”
He didn’t bother to put on fresh clothes but threw his boots on and ran out the door. He probably looked a mess with yesterday’s uniform still on and his hair a wild, unkempt mess, but no one tried to stop him as he ran through the halls. Footsteps pounded the floor behind him and he knew Jensen was with him.
He didn’t stop until he reached the outer seals. He slammed the button to open the door and ran blindly into the raging winds. He was half way to the rocky outcropping that had haunted his visions before his eyes started to see black. He fell to his knees and struggled to get upright, but there wasn’t enough oxygen in his system to keep going.
Tears filled his eyes as he tried to struggle on anyway. A hand gripped his shoulder and a mask was pressed to his face. The sweet touch of oxygen filled his lungs and he was able to breathe again.
He looked up and Jensen was holding a mask to his face, the oxygen tank in his hands. He’d been smart enough to put his own on after Jared had run.
Jensen hooked the straps behind Jared’s back, then held his hand out to help Jared to his feet. He got up and started to run again, the urgency he’d felt before surging again as his breath had returned. He needed to get to the outcropping. He needed to see it with his own eyes and not just in his mind.
Jared stopped as soon as he got to the rocky doorway. He slowed and moved through the entrance at a more respectful pace. He didn’t need the oxygen mask inside, so he took it off and left it by the entry and looked back to see Jensen to do the same.
“It wasn’t trying to tell me something, Jensen,” he said in understanding. “It wanted me to come here. It wanted to show me something.”
Jensen just nodded as Jared walked them further into the labyrinth. He didn’t know how long they walked, but eventually he came to the place he had seen before. The place where an alien queen had sat on her throne, calling to Jared.
“No,” he said softly when it was empty. “She should be here. She was … she said she’d be here.”
He was desperate to find her, to have this one chance to apologize, to try to do something. She wouldn’t have been calling all this time just for his death; though he would give it to her if she asked.
In one final move of the game, he had annihilated her entire species. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness.
“Who is she?”
“There was … a queen,” Jared whispered. “Left behind when all the others died before. She wanted to return home but it was impossible.”
“She told you this?”
“No. I just … I can feel it, Jensen. We trapped her here without even knowing so she hid. I can’t be too late.” He grabbed Jensen by the arms and begged, “Jensen, tell me I can’t be too late!”
“And what would you do if she were here?”
Jared closed his eyes and felt Jensen pull him closer. He buried his head in Jensen’s neck and let out a shaky breath. “Anything. How could I deny her anything, knowing what I took from her?”
“They say the aliens are evil.”
“They didn’t give them a chance to prove otherwise.”
“You would?”
Jared let out a bitter laugh. “The irony of it all is that I would have. If I had known it was real, I would have tried to speak with them.”
“I believe you would have, Jared.”
Jensen stepped back and Jared let him. Jensen cupped his face with his hand and pulled their lips together in a chaste kiss.
Jared gasped into it, but as Jensen deepened the kiss, he felt something connect between them as well. He saw flashes of his life interspersed with the thoughts and feelings of an alien creature. He tried to pull away, but Jensen’s arms bound him.
He saw himself as a new cadet, moments after they took out his monitor and he believed he was a washout.
He saw himself moved to Battle School, only to be hated by his classmates and ostracized by the older cadets who saw him as a threat.
He saw himself rise anyways, his determination and manipulations always a step ahead of the others.
He saw alien colonies thriving, until humans had destroyed them, one by one.
He saw his first victory in the games overlapped with the first colony’s destruction.
He saw every battle thereafter for the horror it was.
He watched the annihilation and the destruction and the cheers and congratulations and he wanted to be sick.
He watched Jensen dying in the rocky outcropping, beat to death by another cadet and left to die where no one would find him.
He watched himself fighting against every obstacle, including his own misgivings at the treatment they were all given.
He watched an alien find Jensen, understand that the life was gone, but its own was in danger. He watched an alien take the form of the dead cadet; scared and haunted by the boy’s memories, but brave enough to try to hide among the humans to keep from being detected.
He watched himself and Jensen, strangers becoming friends, becoming something stronger.
He watched Jensen struggle with orders and give in to the terrors because he had played the part of the boy so well that he was one of their best.
He watched Jensen struggle because he was part of Jared’s team and Jared, above them all, would find a way to save them. He knew.
Jared fell to his knees and sobbed, because he had asked Jensen to fire on his own home and Jensen had followed him. Because he believed.
“No,” Jensen whispered softly from above him. “Because, I loved.”
“You knew.”
“I was cut off for a very long time,” he said as he dropped to his knees beside Jared. “I was too far away, too weak. We are not meant to be solitary creatures. We are unable to survive alone. I thought I would die here, but you found me. I grew stronger with your friendship. I became aware of my own kind again and of what was happening.”
“You fired the shot. How could you, knowing?”
“Because there was no stopping it, Jared. Look at the lengths your human soldiers have gone to, in order to destroy us. There was no stopping them until we were destroyed.”
“You should have fought,” he sobbed. He wanted to yell, to rail at Jensen until he understood the depths of his self-hatred but he didn’t have the strength anymore.
“And I will,” Jensen said.
Jared looked up, wide eyed and was surprised at the determination in the other man’s eyes. In the alien’s eyes.
“Jared, we will.”
“How?”
“I am the queen.”
“What?”
“To you human’s, it is as simple as male or female but it is not always true. I am the queen, but I am as you see me now. Among the hidden tunnels, there is another cave. A small, deeply covered cavern where my last nest rests with my children. They are not many, but I am not alone. I will leave this place and take them with me. I will travel the stars and find someplace safe where we may live, in peace. A place where we do not fear the humans. But that, maybe, one would remain to help us navigate the worlds around us.”
“Jensen?”
“Help me, Jared. Help me find a new home. Stay with me. Give me strength and comfort and help me rebuild what they made us destroy.”
“How can you ask that of me?”
“How can I not?”
Jared looked at Jensen but it wasn’t hatred and fear he saw in the other’s eyes. If he had to give it a name, he would call it hope. Or love.
“Now, we are truly at your mercy, Jared. Will you be the monster they want you to be? Or will you be the man I dreamed you could be? Will you help us escape this place and find a way to a new home?”
Jared cupped Jensen’s cheek and let out a deep breath. It would be an impossible journey, an impossible task. The universe was too big for random finds and it would be too dangerous to turn to any of the fleet’s bases for help.
But Jared was not a murderer. He was not a butcherer.
“Jensen,” he said as he brought their foreheads together. “I don’t know if we can do this, but I will give you my last breath. I will search ceaselessly and I will not stop until I have found you a new home, or until my death. My life, and my death; they are now both yours.”
Jensen smiled at Jared and it was full of pain and hope and love. “As are mine. As they were always meant to be.”