PART THIRTEEN [CLOSED]
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As a new guideline: for the time being, I'd like to put a damper on the re-requesting going on. Please only re-request something if it has been more than a month since you asked for it and it still hasn't been filled. I'd like to remind everyone that old parts still have many ( Read more... )
As a unit organized to apply and regulate the process of interrogation, the Klingon specialists on Rura Penthe are deeply divided by their distinctive styles; almost like people, stamped with eccentricities and personal quirks. Each has his own set of gleaming instruments, which he handles with a vaguely aristocratic confidence, and each works within his own artistic preferences and of course his own assumptions about life and determination and pain. They all react differently to the sight of blood.
These are the first things Nero learns about his keepers and, after learning them, there is very little left to maintain his interest in the situation. Some of them want to hurt him and some of them want to save him, possess him, wrap him up in the truth, as they say; but in the end, they all go about it with the same techniques, so what does he care about the precise shape and texture of their intentions?
It seems that few of them have ever dealt directly with Romulans before. They are captivated. They want him to snarl and move like liquid away from their hands and maybe suck cock in the hope that it will win him some affection; but he does not do any of those things and all the specialists are infatuated with him because of that, because his behavior is erratic but his mind is resolute. They squabble over the right to administer his sessions, they keep him separate from the brutish masses so that he will not be damaged haphazardly.
For the first few weeks he spends most of his time in sour icy sweats and foul cuts of fur that hang heavy with the stink of people who are long dead, frozen and fed to drooling meat eaters. In spattered cells and days of crystal darknesses and crawling lights, in the soaring black amphitheatre, in blue halls laced with chemical deposits and precious metals and all the pain his body can hold; in chains, in silence, alone.
He stays alive for fear of dying and dreams of stars that fall inward and reach outward and he hates and he hates until, half-lucid at best, he is dragged and thrown and Ayel or an elaborate vision of Ayel begins whispering in his ear and he remembers suddenly why he should bother with survival.
It’s funny. The idea of a promise. The immaterial weight of time, the fragility of his bones; like sunburned ice, like long smiles buried deep in his muscles. Imprisonment and the living dead. Funny.
Nero lies on the floor where the Klingons dropped him. He feels a dozen blessedly warm hands press his body, hold it together. He laughs.
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Memory comes when memory is called. Still obedient. He looks around at faces and knows them. He sees relief written under the lament calligraphy inked into their skin. Most of the crew is missing; he wants to know their whereabouts but doesn’t want to hear that they have died or disappeared, so those who are with him in the present must be enough. When they come up to touch his arms respectfully, he touches them back, looks each of them in the eye. So much fear looks back at him. But he is proud. Beneath the terror, they are still courageous. He knows this, he is sure, and it exhausts him to see them suffer the indignity of captive waiting, their vengeance held between their teeth like a crimson note waiting to become a warsong.
“He’s tired,” Ayel says crossly, and Nero is suddenly aware that Ayel is holding onto him, holding him up. “Move away.”
A bit of space opens up around them and there is activity, somewhere, too far away, he doesn’t care, but then Ayel is coaxing him to his feet and they walk a few paces to a heap of dry, soft skins, as clean as they come in such a squalid place. And Nero lies down there because it’s what everyone wants, because he is tired, he is, and solace is in his head like thunder. He lies down, and down, and down. Golden mist and a low drone swallow his surroundings and Ayel strokes his torn ear, wipes the blood away. High overhead, Nero hears himself sigh.
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