Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 24 2009, 17:52:13 UTC
Nero savored that sound, the sheer redness of it, the way it warped around the lines, slid around them like wind through branches, air through vents. It wasn't what he wanted, but Kirk gave it to him freely. What he was given was almost as beautiful as what he could take. His hand stilled, the needles hovering just a hair's span from Kirk's cheek. Nero leaned in close. Kirk could not see his smile and neither could he. He could hear it though, just like the soft whispering black that wrapped up Kirk's cheek.
“They are a story, James,” Nero explained. His words were slow, leaden, and laced with the same flavor as the truths he'd related. “The only story that matters.” He pulled back and started marking in silence as he considered Eihva. He recalled the feel of her flesh, the cold creep of her blood across his shins. The green of it, blaring in the dark and the white, glistening and cracking like ice on metal. The cold crawl of her skin....and the feel of her arm around his neck. The gentle amber light of midmorning became the humid
( ... )
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 25 2009, 04:41:00 UTC
Nero circled, moving against a line of black and red around Kirk, staying out of the human's shadow and his foot snapped out, knocking sharp against the human's back. As the man clattered down, Nero slipped his boot across Kirk's neck, smooth and snug as a ladder rung, and leaned against him.
"Ayel," Nero snapped, "Hmnhe thlhem raivusi, thlhem daegi. Cutaes!" The command was broken, disjointed beneath the heavy light and the sudden movement, and it seethed out of his lungs like shards of glass.
Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 25 2009, 07:57:37 UTC
Nero gave the word and Ayel was across the floor, after the cable he'd spooled there. He'd thought they would need more. Humans were slippery things and these two were perhaps understandably hell-bent on escape. Kirk in particular was like a hnoiyika in a trap and half-rabid, striking without warning. Could turn on them at any moment. Kept proving he needed to be tied down.
From the elbows, this time. Ayel had had quite enough of messing about with hands and fingers. He planted his foot solidly on Kirk's upper arm to keep him there, uncoiled facedown. Ayel slipped the cable into the grate, pulling it up on the other side and cinching down hard, overhanded, twisting the knots until the skin beneath went white enough for his liking.
He pressed his knee hard against the hinge of Kirk's leg and fastened his thigh flat the same way, ignoring the small, sharp noises Kirk made, bitten down howls of protest.
It didn't matter. He wasn't getting away again.
(Hnoiyika - a vicious predator, weasel-like but wolf-sized, with a nasty temper.)
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 25 2009, 11:44:30 UTC
He couldn't breathe, and his ribs cracked further with the sudden connection with the fucking floor. His hand screamed in pain and he echoed it somehow. Oh fuck, fuck, he had to keep from blacking out. Had to. His mind wanted to so the pain would stop. His teeth showed and he closed his eyes. His fingers clenched on grating on the floor. He tilted his head and forced his eyes open, glaring at nothing at all.
The grating was painful accommodation. It dug cruelly into limbs that had regained feeling, still twitching in aching tiny motions. The wire bit into his skin and made it seethe, boil, then die all over again.
Bones, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wish I had told you.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 26 2009, 09:18:40 UTC
"No, James," Nero called kindly, his voice swinging like a pendulum as he stepped across the human's torso. "You can't sleep yet."
He waited as the Narada gradually swallowed the echoes of Kirk's struggle, the vehemence of George's cries, and his eyes drifted over the pale, bruised line of the human's back. When all was silence again, calm and deathly under the colored lights, Nero leaned in.
"Ayel," he started low, "ketaen." The room was still and he craned his head to meet his First Officer's eyes. The Romulan was staring at him as though he'd become confused in the last few seconds. Had he? He didn't think so. No...no he could see it in the shifting light, feel it in his ribs.
"Just enough to keep him here," Nero added and his eyes drifted back along Kirk's legs and the span of his side before his head turned to match. Behind him, Ayel shuffled, and Nero rocked back onto his heels, crouched over Kirk. His hand slipped out and ran across the hevam's back, over the mottled pattern of white, heaving pink, and slow darkened reds
( ... )
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 26 2009, 12:06:53 UTC
Kirk's eyes closed again as the pain started again, this time trailing around his back, curling its fingers around his spine and squeezing. It was terrifying, how little he could fight. His arms and legs were not responding - or they were, but could move so frighteningly little as the wire bit into flesh. He wondered if he would have scars there, too, criss-crossing his arms and legs and hands and feet in erratic patterns. If they did scar, they would tell their own story.
Nero was telling him more of the story. The story of his dead crew that had followed him into this battle, that had agreed to ignore logic and take their revenge. He didn't want to hear the story, wanted the lines and swirls and pools of ink to mean nothing except torture. Didn't want them mean peopleNero wanted him to wear those tattoos so the grief would never stop. They would tear apart his skin for the rest of his life. He would carry on that grief
( ... )
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 26 2009, 17:07:11 UTC
Mnhei'sahe.
Nero pulled his hands back, away from the spirals moving up the lines of Kirk's back, whorling black grief, and his eyes narrowed on the human. He was compelled by every fiber of his being to grant Kirk's request, but it turned his stomach, brought his teeth together hard and ground them with a glassy pull.
Lhaerrh twisted up the human's spine, Man'dukar was beside him, as was their wont in life. Nero's hand swept the blood from them, bore them clear to the light. He scowled and bent to bring himself close to Kirk. He folded, near in half, and his throat twisted as he did, holding in his air and his voice.
Re: Shifting colors.loyalty_everSeptember 27 2009, 02:06:36 UTC
He'd tapped the air from the needle--tricky going, with such a small amount, exactly a sixteenth, half of an eighth-dose.
Kirk had to stay awake. This would keep him that way, lessen the pressure on his ribs and ease his breathing, keep him listening.
Ayel had folded himself down near Kirk's shoulder, angling for a spot of white amid the jagged curl of Bhaon's name on his throat. Ayel's way of touching without touching, tracking with the needle and the sign around it. But he never got that far.
Kirk opened his eyes, pressed words across his tongue, and every one of them was like a needle of its own, tapping sharp on Ayel's skin.
His own dead.
The syringe knew its work, hissed and clicked and smoothed the edges from Kirk's suffering almost by itself.
Ayel pushed the thing aside and did not stand.
He waited opposite his captain, keeping their honor by keeping silent.
There were new dead in the room. He had to listen for their names.
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 27 2009, 04:17:15 UTC
Kirk swallowed, wanting to swallow his own words. Wanted them to burn going down because they would hurt less then when they had fallen from his lips. Who. Who.
Thousands and thousands of people had died. An entire class of cadets and then some. His friends, his friends with benefits, past fucks, enemies, teachers, everyone. Six ships. Almost seven thousand people.
Six billion Vulcans. Spock... Spock... his mother, broken...
"Farragut. Truman. Walcott. Antares. Hood. Centaurus." Each word rolled off his lips and felt sour and painful, dragged out kicking and screaming. Six ships. Seven thousand people.
Re: Shifting colors.mirror_brightlySeptember 27 2009, 04:48:01 UTC
The words fell heavy, rolled through the air like smoke, and Nero remained silent. His breath caught against the backs of his teeth as Kirk's words swirled about. He knew the first from books and captures of old Alpha history. He could see the cut of the hevam letters that formed their names, reflected in green and amber off his main screen. The last, he knew it well.
His grip tightened around the metal of the comb and the bone thin pipe squeeled and cried as he did. It bent, but did not snap, and Nero let his eyes slide shut. The world was silent, was still, and his stomach rolled as the patterns stretched, invisible, between his lids. He would have to intertwine Lhaerrh and Man'dukar with...these names. His breath slithered out and his eyes parted.
"Mnhei'sahe," Nero answered flatly and his eyes followed his traitor arm as it dipped the comb. His mothers, his sister, and Eihva clawed deep as the comb came free. His jaw clenched and he moved it, hovering over the hevam skin
( ... )
Re: Shifting colors.kirktasticSeptember 27 2009, 05:06:17 UTC
The squeal of metal sounds like a death keen to his ears. It seems to echo forever in the large room. A cargo bay, maybe. The pain starts all over again, now at his request.
But now the markings have meaning. The story they are telling is one he actually knows, can connect to, can remember and carry on in his heart. The guilt bubbles up as the hours pass, and one by one, he learns about those fateful few minutes before the Enterprise had dropped out of warp and into a battlefield of shattered metal corpses
( ... )
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
( ... )
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.
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
( ... )
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
( ... )
“They are a story, James,” Nero explained. His words were slow, leaden, and laced with the same flavor as the truths he'd related. “The only story that matters.” He pulled back and started marking in silence as he considered Eihva. He recalled the feel of her flesh, the cold creep of her blood across his shins. The green of it, blaring in the dark and the white, glistening and cracking like ice on metal. The cold crawl of her skin....and the feel of her arm around his neck. The gentle amber light of midmorning became the humid ( ... )
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"Ayel," Nero snapped, "Hmnhe thlhem raivusi, thlhem daegi. Cutaes!" The command was broken, disjointed beneath the heavy light and the sudden movement, and it seethed out of his lungs like shards of glass.
Reply
From the elbows, this time. Ayel had had quite enough of messing about with hands and fingers. He planted his foot solidly on Kirk's upper arm to keep him there, uncoiled facedown. Ayel slipped the cable into the grate, pulling it up on the other side and cinching down hard, overhanded, twisting the knots until the skin beneath went white enough for his liking.
He pressed his knee hard against the hinge of Kirk's leg and fastened his thigh flat the same way, ignoring the small, sharp noises Kirk made, bitten down howls of protest.
It didn't matter. He wasn't getting away again.
(Hnoiyika - a vicious predator, weasel-like but wolf-sized, with a nasty temper.)
Reply
The grating was painful accommodation. It dug cruelly into limbs that had regained feeling, still twitching in aching tiny motions. The wire bit into his skin and made it seethe, boil, then die all over again.
Bones, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wish I had told you.
Reply
He waited as the Narada gradually swallowed the echoes of Kirk's struggle, the vehemence of George's cries, and his eyes drifted over the pale, bruised line of the human's back. When all was silence again, calm and deathly under the colored lights, Nero leaned in.
"Ayel," he started low, "ketaen." The room was still and he craned his head to meet his First Officer's eyes. The Romulan was staring at him as though he'd become confused in the last few seconds. Had he? He didn't think so. No...no he could see it in the shifting light, feel it in his ribs.
"Just enough to keep him here," Nero added and his eyes drifted back along Kirk's legs and the span of his side before his head turned to match. Behind him, Ayel shuffled, and Nero rocked back onto his heels, crouched over Kirk. His hand slipped out and ran across the hevam's back, over the mottled pattern of white, heaving pink, and slow darkened reds ( ... )
Reply
Nero was telling him more of the story. The story of his dead crew that had followed him into this battle, that had agreed to ignore logic and take their revenge. He didn't want to hear the story, wanted the lines and swirls and pools of ink to mean nothing except torture. Didn't want them mean peopleNero wanted him to wear those tattoos so the grief would never stop. They would tear apart his skin for the rest of his life. He would carry on that grief ( ... )
Reply
Nero pulled his hands back, away from the spirals moving up the lines of Kirk's back, whorling black grief, and his eyes narrowed on the human. He was compelled by every fiber of his being to grant Kirk's request, but it turned his stomach, brought his teeth together hard and ground them with a glassy pull.
Lhaerrh twisted up the human's spine, Man'dukar was beside him, as was their wont in life. Nero's hand swept the blood from them, bore them clear to the light. He scowled and bent to bring himself close to Kirk. He folded, near in half, and his throat twisted as he did, holding in his air and his voice.
"Who?" Nero prompted, low and sickened.
Reply
Kirk had to stay awake. This would keep him that way, lessen the pressure on his ribs and ease his breathing, keep him listening.
Ayel had folded himself down near Kirk's shoulder, angling for a spot of white amid the jagged curl of Bhaon's name on his throat. Ayel's way of touching without touching, tracking with the needle and the sign around it. But he never got that far.
Kirk opened his eyes, pressed words across his tongue, and every one of them was like a needle of its own, tapping sharp on Ayel's skin.
His own dead.
The syringe knew its work, hissed and clicked and smoothed the edges from Kirk's suffering almost by itself.
Ayel pushed the thing aside and did not stand.
He waited opposite his captain, keeping their honor by keeping silent.
There were new dead in the room. He had to listen for their names.
Reply
Thousands and thousands of people had died. An entire class of cadets and then some. His friends, his friends with benefits, past fucks, enemies, teachers, everyone. Six ships. Almost seven thousand people.
Six billion Vulcans. Spock... Spock... his mother, broken...
"Farragut. Truman. Walcott. Antares. Hood. Centaurus." Each word rolled off his lips and felt sour and painful, dragged out kicking and screaming. Six ships. Seven thousand people.
"Vulcan."
Reply
His grip tightened around the metal of the comb and the bone thin pipe squeeled and cried as he did. It bent, but did not snap, and Nero let his eyes slide shut. The world was silent, was still, and his stomach rolled as the patterns stretched, invisible, between his lids. He would have to intertwine Lhaerrh and Man'dukar with...these names. His breath slithered out and his eyes parted.
"Mnhei'sahe," Nero answered flatly and his eyes followed his traitor arm as it dipped the comb. His mothers, his sister, and Eihva clawed deep as the comb came free. His jaw clenched and he moved it, hovering over the hevam skin ( ... )
Reply
But now the markings have meaning. The story they are telling is one he actually knows, can connect to, can remember and carry on in his heart. The guilt bubbles up as the hours pass, and one by one, he learns about those fateful few minutes before the Enterprise had dropped out of warp and into a battlefield of shattered metal corpses ( ... )
Reply
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 ( ... )
Reply
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 ( ... )
Reply
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 ( ... )
Reply
"...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.
Reply
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 ( ... )
Reply
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