what would you have me do (Blake's Seven, Cally/Avon, PG)
Title: what would you have me do
Author/Artist: incandescens
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: May 10 - Blake’s 7; Cally/Avon; Loss; She turned to him after Auron was destroyed.
Word count: 645
Who else could Cally have gone to? Vila would have slipped through her fingers, unwilling to give himself away to ease her sorrow. He knows her well enough to understand that she needs someone to hold onto, he has been her friend for this long, and he still is her friend, but he will not let her drag him down into the howling emptiness with her.
She wouldn’t want to. It’s just one of those things that would happen. Like the destruction of a world.
Dayna and Tarrant are still comparative strangers to her, people who she shares a ship with rather than true friends. She would risk her life for them, of course: they are her comrades. She likes Dayna. She finds Tarrant amusing. But she will not bare herself to them.
That leaves Avon. She is interested in Avon. She once told him that she was “interested in his work”, and whatever else might have been going on then, it was true enough. He is also a friend, like Vila, and like Jenna and Blake before them.
But she would not, could not, love them. One does not love animals.
There is no comparison between true human beings (the Auronar, like herself, as outsiders call them) and animals. Animals have feelings, so one tries not to hurt those feelings. Animals should be free, so one fights for their freedom. Animals have souls, she is quite sure of that, and she respects that, as far as she is able.
True human beings can touch your mind, as you touch theirs. They are present. They make you whole. They react properly when you interact with them, with each of you sensing the other’s feelings and understanding what to say, if you have hurt them, if you have pleased them, what should happen next. The bridge between you is complete.
With animals, the best that you can do is learn how to interpret their responses. You can like them. But it would be a sign of insanity to love them - like loving a computer, or a spaceship, or a pet rock. Cally isn’t insane yet.
She doesn’t love Avon either. But she does like him, and he is tolerable to her, and she believes that they understand each other, and that she will not hurt him. He will not try to understand her or care for her in the way that Vila would; he will give her exactly as much as he chooses to give, and that will keep him safe.
Cally does wonder if he speculates, behind the closed shutters of his mind, what two telepaths might say to each other during the act of love, and why she is so very quiet. But he doesn’t ask. In the place of another human being’s projection of mingled curiosity and courtesy, there is only silence, and there will only ever be silence, and she had better get used to that, because her sister is dead and her world is dead, and the remnants of her race may survive, but they will want nothing more to do with her.
It would be comforting to go insane and to love animals.
She knows the taste of his mouth and his skin. She knows his fingers and his hands and his breath. She lies awake beside him in the dark, both of them awake, neither of them willing to be the first one to sleep, and it is as if she was alone in the bed.
She should hate Servalan and the Federation for what they did, but it would also be insane to hate animals.
Maybe she is going insane.
She listens in the darkness, eyes closed, as if she could force Avon to speak to her in the way that a human being does, and the hours ache on by until the end of their sleeping cycle.
Author/Artist: incandescens
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Prompt: May 10 - Blake’s 7; Cally/Avon; Loss; She turned to him after Auron was destroyed.
Word count: 645
Who else could Cally have gone to? Vila would have slipped through her fingers, unwilling to give himself away to ease her sorrow. He knows her well enough to understand that she needs someone to hold onto, he has been her friend for this long, and he still is her friend, but he will not let her drag him down into the howling emptiness with her.
She wouldn’t want to. It’s just one of those things that would happen. Like the destruction of a world.
Dayna and Tarrant are still comparative strangers to her, people who she shares a ship with rather than true friends. She would risk her life for them, of course: they are her comrades. She likes Dayna. She finds Tarrant amusing. But she will not bare herself to them.
That leaves Avon. She is interested in Avon. She once told him that she was “interested in his work”, and whatever else might have been going on then, it was true enough. He is also a friend, like Vila, and like Jenna and Blake before them.
But she would not, could not, love them. One does not love animals.
There is no comparison between true human beings (the Auronar, like herself, as outsiders call them) and animals. Animals have feelings, so one tries not to hurt those feelings. Animals should be free, so one fights for their freedom. Animals have souls, she is quite sure of that, and she respects that, as far as she is able.
True human beings can touch your mind, as you touch theirs. They are present. They make you whole. They react properly when you interact with them, with each of you sensing the other’s feelings and understanding what to say, if you have hurt them, if you have pleased them, what should happen next. The bridge between you is complete.
With animals, the best that you can do is learn how to interpret their responses. You can like them. But it would be a sign of insanity to love them - like loving a computer, or a spaceship, or a pet rock. Cally isn’t insane yet.
She doesn’t love Avon either. But she does like him, and he is tolerable to her, and she believes that they understand each other, and that she will not hurt him. He will not try to understand her or care for her in the way that Vila would; he will give her exactly as much as he chooses to give, and that will keep him safe.
Cally does wonder if he speculates, behind the closed shutters of his mind, what two telepaths might say to each other during the act of love, and why she is so very quiet. But he doesn’t ask. In the place of another human being’s projection of mingled curiosity and courtesy, there is only silence, and there will only ever be silence, and she had better get used to that, because her sister is dead and her world is dead, and the remnants of her race may survive, but they will want nothing more to do with her.
It would be comforting to go insane and to love animals.
She knows the taste of his mouth and his skin. She knows his fingers and his hands and his breath. She lies awake beside him in the dark, both of them awake, neither of them willing to be the first one to sleep, and it is as if she was alone in the bed.
She should hate Servalan and the Federation for what they did, but it would also be insane to hate animals.
Maybe she is going insane.
She listens in the darkness, eyes closed, as if she could force Avon to speak to her in the way that a human being does, and the hours ache on by until the end of their sleeping cycle.