Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 27 2009, 06:38:03 UTC
Their dead are mingled and Ayel can feel the flesh at the back of his neck crawling.
Kirk is drifting on him, tightened against the pain. That can't happen, not now, with Standard staining where the rest of the design would be, should be. He had damn well better stay awake and watch every stroke of the comb.
The syringe is empty; the cylinder is empty, too. That was the last of the one marked 'somatic'--klivam witch doctors trying to get fancy--but there are others. There are more.
Nero cannot break the tale to give him the order and Kirk must be alert, must be aware.
Begging forgiveness is better than asking permission.
They're laid flat on the next crate over, ugly klivam letters on their casings. He prods them apart; none are the sleek black of the sedative. Two are marked 'coward's path': poison of one kind or another.
The last one is indecipherable except for a general medical code that amounts to 'not a corrosive; do not eat' in any decent language.
And it's green, sharp veridian. He turns it over in his hands, draws the needle, and pulls the syringe mostly full. Was this a stimulant? He can't remember, though he recalls one pouring out under his skin, years ago. Can't remember what it does. Didn't kill him. It might not kill Kirk.
There. The vein in his arm, well behind the signs; it wouldn't do to stick Kirk in grief still being made. Ayel taps bare skin twice--such pain, his teeth want to crack from being gritted so hard for so long--and slips the needle in.
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 27 2009, 12:09:52 UTC
The world was pain. A grief, a guilt he carried under his skin and now stained for the world to see. Fuck, what was wrong with him? Why had he asked for this? Because he hadn't been fast enough. He had failed. Fuck, fuck, fuck these green-blooded bastards and their stories were affecting him. Getting under his skin like the combs and remaining him of his own dead.
Vulcan brings a new kind of pain that nearly sends the world swirling down the drain as the combs dig into the meat of his broken hand. Shattered beyond saving, his mind babbled. Disfigured and crippled.
Not Captain material anymore.
But they would never get the codes. Never. He would die before they did. His failure would not lie in betraying his ship, his crew, and the Federation. He could take at least that with him, death or failure or whatever they chose to do with him.
He let out a ragged sound from deep in his throat as tiny shattered bones shifted.
Now there was more then the scars of his childhood born into his skin. The scars of another planet and its dying people, the scars from a man with too much alcohol in his system, years of bar fighting and making his way all too poor to afford a real doctor.
He had a real doctor now.
One that had saved him, helped him save Earth, had been there for the last three years and whether Bones knew it or not... salvaged something from what was left behind in James T. Kirk by giving him something important - a chance.
He saw the flicker of green from the corner of his eye, and his eyes briefly widen at the sight of an old fashion hypodermic needle. Not a hypo, a fast press and pain then gone. He got a first row seat to watch the needle actually pierce into his skin despite his choked protests ('no, stop, no..') weak and pathetic in his ears, the pressure that sent green drug into his bloodstream.
It felt as smooth as milk.
His eyes closed again. The longer he kept them on him, the longer they wouldn't go after his father. Couldn't go after his ship and his crew. Had to protect everyone else. His body was already broken and stained. What did it matter to add more scars to it?
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 28 2009, 01:52:01 UTC
“Vulcan is a beautiful world. The suns are bright and welcoming, and even from orbit it shows a bright sheen. It is a fitting homeworld, a reserved and aged origin, long lacking in the foolish years of younger planets,” Nero finished and the comb pulled free. Kirk's hand released a slow crack of flesh and the blood that trickled down his arm greyed the lines as Nero finished them, blurred the pattern from Nero's sight. They were obscured by blood-it seemed so fitting, so singular, that Nero hardly noticed the human had fallen silent.
Time slid by and Nero's vision danced across the human's back, his expression twisting hard as he listened. The light was hot and harsh, and Nero leaned, pressing his head against the tepid, clammy human skin. It flared up in spaces, across the lines, in brief stripes of normative warmth, but fell into a cool pallor, rolled like freshdead flesh in others. Nero gritted his teeth against the sensation but then he heard it-the sluggish, lazy heartbeat of the hevam.
“James,” Nero plied as he picked his head up, swinging it sharply in an attempt to dislodge the feel of human flesh. “Wake up.” His eyes narrowed and followed the lines of black, stuttering over the pale flesh of his right arm. The unmarked flesh was bright, pink and yellow, and fetid white. His crew was finished, their names wrapped around Kirk's body. What was left?
“We've shared so much of our grief,” Nero muttered as he eyed the flesh, “Why not the rest?”
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 28 2009, 02:19:05 UTC
"...rest?" Kirk burbled out, but it was difficult. Waking was difficult, even with the pain. His eyes searched for Nero's face, just a glimpse at the corner, and shuddered when everything smeared like trailing fingertips through wet paint.
"...hell... do you mean?" He couldn't hear his own voice slurring, thick as syrup. He had to close his eyes again as the world spun green and tilting. His fingertips on his right hand curled into the grating of the floor, clinging to it as tightly as he could because it was the only stable feeling.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 28 2009, 03:43:02 UTC
"Have you ever seen a subspace alternating wave?" Nero asked, his expression kind as he twisted between Kirk and the light. His eyes narrowed slightly and he pulled back, yellow spilling over his shoulder as he did so. “No...no of course you haven't.” Nero let out a low hiss and the fingers of his right hand gripped the grating beside Kirk's head, leaned his weight above the human. “We could barely handle them, could barely work...” his voice dipped and his smile arched across his face. “Consider this an education.”
His left hand lifted and he cast aside the bent comb. His fingers drifted across the handles that extended, twisted at odd angles and slow curves, from the jar of pigment. His fingers ticked through them, the gentle sound of glass and metal swirled between them, until he came to a comb near the other side of the jar. He pulled it out with careful consideration-the tines were long, curved. It was made up of a piece of the Narada, a titanium chip from a deck panel...one of the original ones. Yes, this was it. The light was still as he moved to Kirk's shoulder.
“Oren is from Ra'tleihfi,” Nero began. The name felt hollow, lifeless. It was not so strange from the stories he'd told before, he still feared the ghost of Oren haunting him. The press of the blunt tines against human skin was strange, square, and the pattern it drew from his flesh was different. Traditional in its perversity. “When he is young, he is simple. He is not a warrior, he has no malice, but he is not weak.”
Nero drew a long breath, it coiled through his nose and spread across his limbs. It smelled of salt, sand, and the dry burn of inodium rods. The light against his back was pink, at least, until it wasn't. He hardly noticed as it trimmed away, as the symbols on Kirk's arm became the cliffs above the sea, where the water whorled and the wind was strongest.
“He goes to Mnaeha with his father and meets a star,” his voice was even, considerate as he dug the comb into Kirk's arm. “Her name is Mandana. He tries to be a warrior to impress her, but he has no malice. He meets a keen man there, who is bright and shining and lacks hate, he is Ael. They are together when he is married to a star, and Oren is... happy.”
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 28 2009, 03:59:27 UTC
Something was different. The tone of Nero's voice had changed, something deep and warm and as thick as caramel, but the words were getting harder to understand. Each tone was heard but the meaning was slipping away. It would take several minutes of listening to realize that Ayel must have pumped him full of sedatives again.
Fuck, fuck. Couldn't escape like this, couldn't think like this.
The world was dissolving again.
Oren. Star. Stars. Space. The concepts floated in his head, became strange things like the spray of the ocean and the wind against his face, heat against his skin and flesh pressed to his. He saw someone in his mind, a young man with bright eyes and a brighter smile and dark hair falling in his eyes and the knowledge of friend. Ael.
Oren and Ael were friends. Best friends, everything friends. Like him and Bones.
Bones...
Bones.
The ocean started to fall from his eyes and stain the grating below his face.
Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 28 2009, 06:26:46 UTC
Vulcan. Every Rihanh child knows this story. It is how they learn to speak.
In the time of war, in the time when all sand ran green, Surak's greatest student broke away from him. Remember the name S'Task! Him you owe your homeworld.
A hundred ships departed. Sixteen ships survived the journey. Survived sabotage and predation--the piracy of outsiders, betrayal in the name of peace--and touched down in a new place on a new, green world. We are not of them. We cannot and must not do as they do. Our lives are different.
Our world is gone.
We are the same.
Nero opens the tale bare on its foundations, ties it to things James knows--the things they have done--and seals it into his skin.
The death of a world all over again.
There is a long quiet after. An unwinding of silence, empty, endless time, with a funeral taste. Kirk doesn't move at all, until Ayel is certain he must be dead, but after a while Nero leans down and breathes a new name on Kirk's skin, a sound that jerks him awake and pulls them both to awareness.
Oren.
Ayel closes his eyes and opens his mouth, closes his mouth and opens his eyes and says nothing.
There is nothing he can say. Nothing he can do about the spreading darkness on the grates under James' cheek, smooth and wet. There is only one end to this path.
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 28 2009, 11:39:28 UTC
Their story was being passed on. It was to another without green, green blood and the heat of a desert planet still burning in their blood from the distant past, but it was passing on. A way of hearing it that no Terran or Vulcan child would be taught in schools or from their parents' lips. Burned into his mind in imagery more vivid then watching a vidscreen as the drugs overloaded his sensory inputs, burned into his skin.
Kirk lost track of the rest of existence. Nero had his captive audience, unable to concentrate his thoughts on anything else. Ayel would not have been able to touch him like this if the gift was blazing bright in his hands, not because of the pain anymore (Kirk's body knew how to handle that), but the axis-tilting careening thoughts blaring through Kirk's head like someone was shouting through a megaphone.
His lips moved, but no sound came out.
I promised.
Would not stop fighting. Would never stop fighting. Just had to hold on long enough. Just long enough.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 28 2009, 23:13:05 UTC
The pattern was winding and wide, and somehow Nero had made it halfway down Kirk's forearm before he realized it. It formed itself under his touch, pouring out memories of landscapes and the smells of all things orange. His fingers traced the marks, the winding, stale marks of happiness, and pulled streaks of blood away with careful consideration.
“Hobus,” the name was reverent, hung with a mantle of insurmountability. “Is an erhie-d'recendt, a star so large that it pulls everything into its orbit... planets, stars, and the laylines of subspace bow beneath its grip.”
The mark was small, but dark, and it spread in rings across Ael and Oren at Kirk's elbow. Nero watched it for too long as he eulogized, his comb briefly still-there was much more to engrave and too little space...always too little space.
“To know it is to be Rihann. It is our guiding star, the brightest in the skies...to see it is to know you have come home.” Nero moved and dipped the comb as he prepared to begin again, moving down Kirk's shoulder to mark the helix of his life. “Oren is a miner. He is the best at what he does. He earns honor, slow and trickling, with his work for the Empire, and tries to make his star happy.
“Hobus is too large, when Oren sees it. The iron in its belly is too much, too dense, and it ruptures space.” The marks were slow, spotty, and swirling, and Nero couldn't see them as he made them, couldn't see Kirk anymore as he worked. “But Hobus is Rihann, and it is stronger then space. It bleeds across subspace, and lashes out in its pain.
“The alternating wave laps like ripples across the planets of Hobus and they shatter, colored glass and crystal, spiraling off into clouds of sorrow...they do not listen, when Oren tells them...and he is unhappy.”
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 29 2009, 00:00:27 UTC
Kirk can see every moment of it. Nero's words paint a picture in his mind, describing a place he has never seen. He could have started to speak in Romulan and Kirk probably would have seen the same imagery. The pain of it is now distant, even when the combs bite into bone. The pain is insignificant compared to what it had been when his hand had been broken, his fingers, or the tattoos into it.
"Who?" Whispered very quietly, voice slurring. Who did Oren tell?
The further the drug gets into his system, poisoning his blood green, getting behind his eyes. The world was turning green.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 29 2009, 00:48:21 UTC
“Everyone.” The word bled out, an answer trickled alongside the marks on Kirk's skin. “No one believes...no one but Spock.
“Spock believes Oren.” The comb lifts and no marks follow. No marks for the living alongside the dead. “Tells him that he can stop Hobus. Oren's shikaen do not believe Spock, do not trust him. Spock has sworn on the life of Oren's star, on the life of his unborn son, and Oren swears on the lives of their families, on his own.
“Decalithium is rare, and they waste precious time to gather it. They betray their homes, their honor, and give it to thaessu hands on Vulcan.” The light is shining in his eyes. It glinted off the dampness of the grates, and Nero squinted against it, blinking and turning to face the unmarred floor beside Kirk's head. The human's hair is matted with blood and the denaturing dust from the crates. It smells like the compactor on the Narada and Nero backs away just slightly, unconsciously wary of the combining fumes.
“They do not give Oren the red matter, the Vulcan's do not trust that he will save his world...the Federation thinks he will end Vulcan, attack Earth, and they send him on his way.” With a long, silent pause, Nero craned his head into the Klingon emergency arc-lights and stared at Kirk's forearm. The skin was still bare and he began marking the next symbols even before their story fell from his lips. “They force him to return home and Spock tells him, swears to him, that it will be alright.
“Oren watches,” the words sighed through his teeth and his brow furrowed as the calm arcs of Romulus curled Kirk's wrist. “He watches as the arm of Hobus slides through space. It strikes Eisn, alternates above and below reality. It spares Oren... the Narada, and the lights come back on. The ion surge is strong enough to tear apart reality, but the lights come back on.
“It hits chi'Rihan, chi'Havran and the planets roll, struck deathly still by the shock, pushed from their eternal turning like falling leaves.” His voice was softer as the words came, smaller, and a fine tremor clipped through his fingers as he pressed the comb into Kirk's skin. “Rihanna do not come back on.”
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 29 2009, 01:22:03 UTC
All at once, even through the drugs, he knew. Memories that are not his but are. He has experienced them, many times over, flickering past his consciousness. But these in particular he had experienced first hand, so to speak, in the mind meld.
Oren is Nero.
It clicked into place with a heavy thud, making Kirk's body jerk like Nero had placed a tazer against his skin. He sucked in a breath, trying to breath out words, "He meant it, meant it, tried to convince them, why would he give his help and take it away, he meant his promise!"
His voice cracked on the last word, caught completely in the moment trying to scramble out the words running lose in his brain before he lost them again. Images conflict - Nero's story and Spock's memories.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 29 2009, 01:59:28 UTC
“Tried?” Nero asked low and even, his face twisted as his eyes came open. He repeated himself, low and hard as they focused on the human before him. Nero's voice dropped alongside the comb as the marks completed themselves, his hands fisting in Kirk's wiry, matted hair to twist the human's head parallel with his shoulder. “He did not promise to try.”
“That wave he tried to convince them to allow him to attempt to stop,” Nero seethed, every other word flooded with his hate. “It overloaded every living organism on my homeworld, let them dangle lifeless and still.
“I watched it while Spock tried, while he talked.” Nero's hand shifted in Kirk's hair and he dropped the human's head, suddenly disgusted by the feel of it. “The wave shattered the stability of Eisn, broke it apart in tongues of fire and radiation. I watched while it burned our world apart, as it ripped the oceans from the land and melted everything I ever knew into ash.”
Nero rose as he spoke, his eyes narrowed on Kirk. “Watched as my star....my....Mandana....” The breath left his body as the word fell free from him. He gaped in silence and his expression slacked-the memory was too fresh, now. “Thlhom Mandana, thlhom faelirh....
“They burned,” Nero stated softly into the light and, for the briefest of moments, he was Oren again. His hate faded into his sorrow, and he forgot Spock, Kirk, everything. His eyes closed and the colors of the world were gone, there was only silence, and in it...in it there was his Mandana. Her eyes didn't see him, he could feel her against his back, not moving, not breathing, just...there. A weight draped across him with terrible certainty.
“Nohhua...” His hands came to his eyes-covered in Kirk's blood and the cold spread of ink. Nero ground his face into his palms, clawed at the marks on his skull. He could feel her there, the stretch of her across his back, her still breath against his neck, her blank eyes looking past him. More than life he wanted her to leave, but more than anything he wanted her to stay. “Nrai caernui arham,” he muttered, short and quiet against the heels of his hands, “Kaevra arham, aelhih, arham.”
The weight was too much and Nero stumbled back, the world was all silence as his back hit metal and his weight sagged across it. The bright scrape of steel on grates drove Mandana away, and the world was a whorl of color as he opened his eyes. It was green and red and black, fuchsia and yellow, but nowhere was it orange.
Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 30 2009, 03:40:55 UTC
This was not good. It was another of his captain's--elsewhere moments. He had seen it gathering, the tension coiling tight under Nero's skin.
Ayel bit his own tongue. He should have taken over the tale, should have started out Ael is born in Ramnau, to the son of a son of miners, and this hard, hot life is all he knows, until... But he is not yet dead, if never again Ael, and this halted his tongue, stayed his hand.
The Standard clattered out of Nero's mouth as if bitten free, hard and brittle. "Cut him loose. How doesn't matter. Get him out of my sight."
"Hrrau joaie." Ayel felt ice creeping under his skin as he stood, bending close against Kirk. It was better to have his feet under him for this.
They had to have those codes. That meant Kirk had to live. And he was brave--almost stupidly brave. A little like Bhaon's youngest.
He was also the enemy.
"It's time to go, James." Ayel hardly realized he even spoke. He didn't know the sound of his own voice.
He freed Kirk's arms with the practiced leverage of offset snips. Such useful things. Weighted for a klivam hand, they slit metal like it was paper and parted cable like water. Four smooth clicks and it was done. Another four and Kirk's feet were free.
Now. What to do with him? Hefting him by the armpits was a negative--it would shove his ribs against his lungs, maybe burst them on bone, and they needed him alive. Marring the hand-sign, after everything Kirk had endured for it, would be worse than murder.
A moment more, and Ayel shrugged back inside his coatsleeves, pulling them over his fingers.
"You should have told me," he said.
And he reached down to grab Kirk by the ankles.
(Hrrau joaie - at once. [Sketchy grammar is sketchy; proceed with caution].)
Re: Shifting colors.kirk_georgeSeptember 30 2009, 04:03:28 UTC
George finally was able to focus long enough to wriggle his arm free, pushing up against the restraints. Something snapped, and he was able to breathe freely, move freely. Without thinking he scooped the gun Nero was wearing up, and turned to fire at Ayel, who was the biggest threat right now. Had to protect Jim. Jim had the actual information, was his son. Needed to protect him.
Pain shot through him as he swung off the table, barely able to breathe, to see straight but he had to run, had to stay free, couldn't get home but maybe...maybe he could get home to come to him.If Muhammad can't go to the mountain, gotta bring the mountain to Muhammad. His thoughts were getting more and more disjointed. Hope Bones could fix this, had to keep going while he could think, had to get news out. Had to keep moving.
He ran through the ship. It wasn't just a Warbird somehow. It was different, weird. He kept getting turned around turned sideways. Made his neck creep, made him think he was going nuts. Kept moving and he found the bridge.
Searched the bridge...controls too complicated to pilot home. Had to call home. ET Phone home. Had to get the Enterprise. Had to...needed them. Needed home.
He finally managed to decipher the console, focusing his whole attention on it.
He spoke fast, coming up with a code as he set it to contact the Enterprise. "Enterprise, this is Kelvin. Requesting assistance docking for Medical Shuttle 37 and the command shuttle. No ability to come in unassisted. Authorization as follows." He sent the console codes for the Kelvin. Next step would be to set it to repeat. Hopefully they'd figure it out. Or trace the call or...
Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 30 2009, 15:00:03 UTC
There was a hard whine and a sharp, loud sizzling crackle. He snapped around to follow it and his shoulder exploded in light and pain. The bolt struck with such force that he spun, twisted off-kilter and slammed back against the crates.
Ayel screamed. Rage, outrage, and agony burned everything green. Overcharged! Hope it fries him. He stepped forward, clutching the wound with his good arm, but his knees refused to hold. He let go, spread his hand to keep from landing on his face, and hot liquid slithered out between his fingers, stained the grates.
It was dark, and seeping slow. Missed the arteries. He would live.
He tried to move the arm. Hot nails marched down the bone, driven in by steel jackboots as his fingers twitched, clenched, spasmed, and fell uselessly still. Nerve damage.
"After him." It was a hard, hateful cough--his? Yes. Ayel was talking to himself outside his head, again. That wasn't good, he knew it wasn't. He pushed with his right arm, scrabbling to get vertical, and landed hard on his backside instead. Not going anywhere for a while. He leaned back, light-headed, following the hot yellow lights above him as they moved and buzzed, tilting at him in a weirdly personal way. It would be better if he could lay down, smoother...
No! He snarled curses under his breath, seething and raw. He wasn't going to bleed out on the floor like a slaughtered hlai.
But he couldn't stand. He knew what he must do, and again, again, he could not do it. Because of another Kirk. Lieutenant George Samuel Kirk. That was his whole name, elegant, powerful. A long and noble design, even in Standard.
It should fit just fine if they carved it on James' thigh.
(Hlai - large, flightless bird farmed for its meat.)
Kirk is drifting on him, tightened against the pain. That can't happen, not now, with Standard staining where the rest of the design would be, should be. He had damn well better stay awake and watch every stroke of the comb.
The syringe is empty; the cylinder is empty, too. That was the last of the one marked 'somatic'--klivam witch doctors trying to get fancy--but there are others. There are more.
Nero cannot break the tale to give him the order and Kirk must be alert, must be aware.
Begging forgiveness is better than asking permission.
They're laid flat on the next crate over, ugly klivam letters on their casings. He prods them apart; none are the sleek black of the sedative. Two are marked 'coward's path': poison of one kind or another.
The last one is indecipherable except for a general medical code that amounts to 'not a corrosive; do not eat' in any decent language.
And it's green, sharp veridian. He turns it over in his hands, draws the needle, and pulls the syringe mostly full. Was this a stimulant? He can't remember, though he recalls one pouring out under his skin, years ago. Can't remember what it does. Didn't kill him. It might not kill Kirk.
There. The vein in his arm, well behind the signs; it wouldn't do to stick Kirk in grief still being made. Ayel taps bare skin twice--such pain, his teeth want to crack from being gritted so hard for so long--and slips the needle in.
Kirk could do with a little green in his veins.
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Vulcan brings a new kind of pain that nearly sends the world swirling down the drain as the combs dig into the meat of his broken hand. Shattered beyond saving, his mind babbled. Disfigured and crippled.
Not Captain material anymore.
But they would never get the codes. Never. He would die before they did. His failure would not lie in betraying his ship, his crew, and the Federation. He could take at least that with him, death or failure or whatever they chose to do with him.
He let out a ragged sound from deep in his throat as tiny shattered bones shifted.
Now there was more then the scars of his childhood born into his skin. The scars of another planet and its dying people, the scars from a man with too much alcohol in his system, years of bar fighting and making his way all too poor to afford a real doctor.
He had a real doctor now.
One that had saved him, helped him save Earth, had been there for the last three years and whether Bones knew it or not... salvaged something from what was left behind in James T. Kirk by giving him something important - a chance.
He saw the flicker of green from the corner of his eye, and his eyes briefly widen at the sight of an old fashion hypodermic needle. Not a hypo, a fast press and pain then gone. He got a first row seat to watch the needle actually pierce into his skin despite his choked protests ('no, stop, no..') weak and pathetic in his ears, the pressure that sent green drug into his bloodstream.
It felt as smooth as milk.
His eyes closed again. The longer he kept them on him, the longer they wouldn't go after his father. Couldn't go after his ship and his crew. Had to protect everyone else. His body was already broken and stained. What did it matter to add more scars to it?
His eyes closed.
And he dreamed.
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Time slid by and Nero's vision danced across the human's back, his expression twisting hard as he listened. The light was hot and harsh, and Nero leaned, pressing his head against the tepid, clammy human skin. It flared up in spaces, across the lines, in brief stripes of normative warmth, but fell into a cool pallor, rolled like freshdead flesh in others. Nero gritted his teeth against the sensation but then he heard it-the sluggish, lazy heartbeat of the hevam.
“James,” Nero plied as he picked his head up, swinging it sharply in an attempt to dislodge the feel of human flesh. “Wake up.” His eyes narrowed and followed the lines of black, stuttering over the pale flesh of his right arm. The unmarked flesh was bright, pink and yellow, and fetid white. His crew was finished, their names wrapped around Kirk's body. What was left?
“We've shared so much of our grief,” Nero muttered as he eyed the flesh, “Why not the rest?”
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"...hell... do you mean?" He couldn't hear his own voice slurring, thick as syrup. He had to close his eyes again as the world spun green and tilting. His fingertips on his right hand curled into the grating of the floor, clinging to it as tightly as he could because it was the only stable feeling.
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His left hand lifted and he cast aside the bent comb. His fingers drifted across the handles that extended, twisted at odd angles and slow curves, from the jar of pigment. His fingers ticked through them, the gentle sound of glass and metal swirled between them, until he came to a comb near the other side of the jar. He pulled it out with careful consideration-the tines were long, curved. It was made up of a piece of the Narada, a titanium chip from a deck panel...one of the original ones. Yes, this was it. The light was still as he moved to Kirk's shoulder.
“Oren is from Ra'tleihfi,” Nero began. The name felt hollow, lifeless. It was not so strange from the stories he'd told before, he still feared the ghost of Oren haunting him. The press of the blunt tines against human skin was strange, square, and the pattern it drew from his flesh was different. Traditional in its perversity. “When he is young, he is simple. He is not a warrior, he has no malice, but he is not weak.”
Nero drew a long breath, it coiled through his nose and spread across his limbs. It smelled of salt, sand, and the dry burn of inodium rods. The light against his back was pink, at least, until it wasn't. He hardly noticed as it trimmed away, as the symbols on Kirk's arm became the cliffs above the sea, where the water whorled and the wind was strongest.
“He goes to Mnaeha with his father and meets a star,” his voice was even, considerate as he dug the comb into Kirk's arm. “Her name is Mandana. He tries to be a warrior to impress her, but he has no malice. He meets a keen man there, who is bright and shining and lacks hate, he is Ael. They are together when he is married to a star, and Oren is... happy.”
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Fuck, fuck. Couldn't escape like this, couldn't think like this.
The world was dissolving again.
Oren. Star. Stars. Space. The concepts floated in his head, became strange things like the spray of the ocean and the wind against his face, heat against his skin and flesh pressed to his. He saw someone in his mind, a young man with bright eyes and a brighter smile and dark hair falling in his eyes and the knowledge of friend. Ael.
Oren and Ael were friends. Best friends, everything friends. Like him and Bones.
Bones...
Bones.
The ocean started to fall from his eyes and stain the grating below his face.
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In the time of war, in the time when all sand ran green, Surak's greatest student broke away from him. Remember the name S'Task! Him you owe your homeworld.
A hundred ships departed. Sixteen ships survived the journey. Survived sabotage and predation--the piracy of outsiders, betrayal in the name of peace--and touched down in a new place on a new, green world. We are not of them. We cannot and must not do as they do. Our lives are different.
Our world is gone.
We are the same.
Nero opens the tale bare on its foundations, ties it to things James knows--the things they have done--and seals it into his skin.
The death of a world all over again.
There is a long quiet after. An unwinding of silence, empty, endless time, with a funeral taste. Kirk doesn't move at all, until Ayel is certain he must be dead, but after a while Nero leans down and breathes a new name on Kirk's skin, a sound that jerks him awake and pulls them both to awareness.
Oren.
Ayel closes his eyes and opens his mouth, closes his mouth and opens his eyes and says nothing.
There is nothing he can say. Nothing he can do about the spreading darkness on the grates under James' cheek, smooth and wet. There is only one end to this path.
James' friends are still alive.
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Kirk lost track of the rest of existence. Nero had his captive audience, unable to concentrate his thoughts on anything else. Ayel would not have been able to touch him like this if the gift was blazing bright in his hands, not because of the pain anymore (Kirk's body knew how to handle that), but the axis-tilting careening thoughts blaring through Kirk's head like someone was shouting through a megaphone.
His lips moved, but no sound came out.
I promised.
Would not stop fighting. Would never stop fighting. Just had to hold on long enough. Just long enough.
Until Bones held him again.
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“Hobus,” the name was reverent, hung with a mantle of insurmountability. “Is an erhie-d'recendt, a star so large that it pulls everything into its orbit... planets, stars, and the laylines of subspace bow beneath its grip.”
The mark was small, but dark, and it spread in rings across Ael and Oren at Kirk's elbow. Nero watched it for too long as he eulogized, his comb briefly still-there was much more to engrave and too little space...always too little space.
“To know it is to be Rihann. It is our guiding star, the brightest in the skies...to see it is to know you have come home.” Nero moved and dipped the comb as he prepared to begin again, moving down Kirk's shoulder to mark the helix of his life. “Oren is a miner. He is the best at what he does. He earns honor, slow and trickling, with his work for the Empire, and tries to make his star happy.
“Hobus is too large, when Oren sees it. The iron in its belly is too much, too dense, and it ruptures space.” The marks were slow, spotty, and swirling, and Nero couldn't see them as he made them, couldn't see Kirk anymore as he worked. “But Hobus is Rihann, and it is stronger then space. It bleeds across subspace, and lashes out in its pain.
“The alternating wave laps like ripples across the planets of Hobus and they shatter, colored glass and crystal, spiraling off into clouds of sorrow...they do not listen, when Oren tells them...and he is unhappy.”
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"Who?" Whispered very quietly, voice slurring. Who did Oren tell?
The further the drug gets into his system, poisoning his blood green, getting behind his eyes. The world was turning green.
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“Spock believes Oren.” The comb lifts and no marks follow. No marks for the living alongside the dead. “Tells him that he can stop Hobus. Oren's shikaen do not believe Spock, do not trust him. Spock has sworn on the life of Oren's star, on the life of his unborn son, and Oren swears on the lives of their families, on his own.
“Decalithium is rare, and they waste precious time to gather it. They betray their homes, their honor, and give it to thaessu hands on Vulcan.” The light is shining in his eyes. It glinted off the dampness of the grates, and Nero squinted against it, blinking and turning to face the unmarred floor beside Kirk's head. The human's hair is matted with blood and the denaturing dust from the crates. It smells like the compactor on the Narada and Nero backs away just slightly, unconsciously wary of the combining fumes.
“They do not give Oren the red matter, the Vulcan's do not trust that he will save his world...the Federation thinks he will end Vulcan, attack Earth, and they send him on his way.” With a long, silent pause, Nero craned his head into the Klingon emergency arc-lights and stared at Kirk's forearm. The skin was still bare and he began marking the next symbols even before their story fell from his lips. “They force him to return home and Spock tells him, swears to him, that it will be alright.
“Oren watches,” the words sighed through his teeth and his brow furrowed as the calm arcs of Romulus curled Kirk's wrist. “He watches as the arm of Hobus slides through space. It strikes Eisn, alternates above and below reality. It spares Oren... the Narada, and the lights come back on. The ion surge is strong enough to tear apart reality, but the lights come back on.
“It hits chi'Rihan, chi'Havran and the planets roll, struck deathly still by the shock, pushed from their eternal turning like falling leaves.” His voice was softer as the words came, smaller, and a fine tremor clipped through his fingers as he pressed the comb into Kirk's skin. “Rihanna do not come back on.”
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Oren is Nero.
It clicked into place with a heavy thud, making Kirk's body jerk like Nero had placed a tazer against his skin. He sucked in a breath, trying to breath out words, "He meant it, meant it, tried to convince them, why would he give his help and take it away, he meant his promise!"
His voice cracked on the last word, caught completely in the moment trying to scramble out the words running lose in his brain before he lost them again. Images conflict - Nero's story and Spock's memories.
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“That wave he tried to convince them to allow him to attempt to stop,” Nero seethed, every other word flooded with his hate. “It overloaded every living organism on my homeworld, let them dangle lifeless and still.
“I watched it while Spock tried, while he talked.” Nero's hand shifted in Kirk's hair and he dropped the human's head, suddenly disgusted by the feel of it. “The wave shattered the stability of Eisn, broke it apart in tongues of fire and radiation. I watched while it burned our world apart, as it ripped the oceans from the land and melted everything I ever knew into ash.”
Nero rose as he spoke, his eyes narrowed on Kirk. “Watched as my star....my....Mandana....” The breath left his body as the word fell free from him. He gaped in silence and his expression slacked-the memory was too fresh, now. “Thlhom Mandana, thlhom faelirh....
“They burned,” Nero stated softly into the light and, for the briefest of moments, he was Oren again. His hate faded into his sorrow, and he forgot Spock, Kirk, everything. His eyes closed and the colors of the world were gone, there was only silence, and in it...in it there was his Mandana. Her eyes didn't see him, he could feel her against his back, not moving, not breathing, just...there. A weight draped across him with terrible certainty.
“Nohhua...” His hands came to his eyes-covered in Kirk's blood and the cold spread of ink. Nero ground his face into his palms, clawed at the marks on his skull. He could feel her there, the stretch of her across his back, her still breath against his neck, her blank eyes looking past him. More than life he wanted her to leave, but more than anything he wanted her to stay. “Nrai caernui arham,” he muttered, short and quiet against the heels of his hands, “Kaevra arham, aelhih, arham.”
The weight was too much and Nero stumbled back, the world was all silence as his back hit metal and his weight sagged across it. The bright scrape of steel on grates drove Mandana away, and the world was a whorl of color as he opened his eyes. It was green and red and black, fuchsia and yellow, but nowhere was it orange.
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Ayel bit his own tongue. He should have taken over the tale, should have started out Ael is born in Ramnau, to the son of a son of miners, and this hard, hot life is all he knows, until... But he is not yet dead, if never again Ael, and this halted his tongue, stayed his hand.
The Standard clattered out of Nero's mouth as if bitten free, hard and brittle. "Cut him loose. How doesn't matter. Get him out of my sight."
"Hrrau joaie." Ayel felt ice creeping under his skin as he stood, bending close against Kirk. It was better to have his feet under him for this.
They had to have those codes. That meant Kirk had to live. And he was brave--almost stupidly brave. A little like Bhaon's youngest.
He was also the enemy.
"It's time to go, James." Ayel hardly realized he even spoke. He didn't know the sound of his own voice.
He freed Kirk's arms with the practiced leverage of offset snips. Such useful things. Weighted for a klivam hand, they slit metal like it was paper and parted cable like water. Four smooth clicks and it was done. Another four and Kirk's feet were free.
Now. What to do with him? Hefting him by the armpits was a negative--it would shove his ribs against his lungs, maybe burst them on bone, and they needed him alive. Marring the hand-sign, after everything Kirk had endured for it, would be worse than murder.
A moment more, and Ayel shrugged back inside his coatsleeves, pulling them over his fingers.
"You should have told me," he said.
And he reached down to grab Kirk by the ankles.
(Hrrau joaie - at once. [Sketchy grammar is sketchy; proceed with caution].)
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Pain shot through him as he swung off the table, barely able to breathe, to see straight but he had to run, had to stay free, couldn't get home but maybe...maybe he could get home to come to him.If Muhammad can't go to the mountain, gotta bring the mountain to Muhammad. His thoughts were getting more and more disjointed. Hope Bones could fix this, had to keep going while he could think, had to get news out. Had to keep moving.
He ran through the ship. It wasn't just a Warbird somehow. It was different, weird. He kept getting turned around turned sideways. Made his neck creep, made him think he was going nuts. Kept moving and he found the bridge.
Searched the bridge...controls too complicated to pilot home. Had to call home. ET Phone home. Had to get the Enterprise. Had to...needed them. Needed home.
He finally managed to decipher the console, focusing his whole attention on it.
He spoke fast, coming up with a code as he set it to contact the Enterprise. "Enterprise, this is Kelvin. Requesting assistance docking for Medical Shuttle 37 and the command shuttle. No ability to come in unassisted. Authorization as follows." He sent the console codes for the Kelvin. Next step would be to set it to repeat. Hopefully they'd figure it out. Or trace the call or...
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Ayel screamed. Rage, outrage, and agony burned everything green. Overcharged! Hope it fries him. He stepped forward, clutching the wound with his good arm, but his knees refused to hold. He let go, spread his hand to keep from landing on his face, and hot liquid slithered out between his fingers, stained the grates.
It was dark, and seeping slow. Missed the arteries. He would live.
He tried to move the arm. Hot nails marched down the bone, driven in by steel jackboots as his fingers twitched, clenched, spasmed, and fell uselessly still. Nerve damage.
"After him." It was a hard, hateful cough--his? Yes. Ayel was talking to himself outside his head, again. That wasn't good, he knew it wasn't. He pushed with his right arm, scrabbling to get vertical, and landed hard on his backside instead. Not going anywhere for a while. He leaned back, light-headed, following the hot yellow lights above him as they moved and buzzed, tilting at him in a weirdly personal way. It would be better if he could lay down, smoother...
No! He snarled curses under his breath, seething and raw. He wasn't going to bleed out on the floor like a slaughtered hlai.
But he couldn't stand. He knew what he must do, and again, again, he could not do it. Because of another Kirk. Lieutenant George Samuel Kirk. That was his whole name, elegant, powerful. A long and noble design, even in Standard.
It should fit just fine if they carved it on James' thigh.
(Hlai - large, flightless bird farmed for its meat.)
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