A/N: I like my croutons buttered.
Halcyon Nights
"How do you predict a random occurrence?"
Asked and answered, he makes it sound so simple. That his solution is something blood borne and wild comes as no surprise. He is, after all, mildly predictable; wanting what he wants, when he wants it, and how. Stripped down to base components, there's little more to him than that, even if he called it instinct now.
So, how do you predict a random occurrence?
You know that nothing is truly random. Luck isn't so much luck as it is massaging probability through the eye of an infinitesimally small needle. Stars will still go supernova, wipe out planets. Starships will vanish and vectors change.
And left up to chance, the universe will behave exactly as it ought to.
The air in my ready room is brittle and faintly cold, the lights turned down to late-night levels. Tuvok and Chakotay are abnormally composed considering their proximity to each other, but only because where they stand is in staunch opposition to me. The danger I'm courting isn't something singular to our ship, and they both sense its potency as well as its fragility.
This could cost us – me – everything.
"Have Seven and Harry go over every inch of space between here and that wormhole," I say. "If they so much as smell a Devore ship, change course. When the time comes, assign Kashyk to station eleven-alpha. If he tries to access communications, lock him out."
Nothing. No, "Yes, ma'am," or "Aye, Captain." Just thirty cold seconds of nothing.
Finally, Chakotay's voice comes out at the low-soft range that says he suspects how conflicted I still am. "Do you trust him, Kathryn?"
On or off duty, he only ever uses my name to elicit compliance or, failing that, indulgence. A chance to see things his way. Less my way. But he doesn't have to remind me what previous experience affords us when dealing with hostile aliens. Or that, statistically speaking, Kashyk's sudden shift away from the utilitarian demands of race-wide xenophobia is about as likely as a wormhole to the Alpha quadrant opening up directly off our bow. If he were a lower ranking member of the Imperium, perhaps, but two days ago he was taking sick pleasure in all this, and no one believes that was the act.
"I have three days to decide."
Three days and two nights, technically, but mentioning it aloud may end up with me sedated and locked up in my own brig. I wouldn't put it past these two, and definitely not now, by the way Tuvok's jaw is flexing tension and Chakotay's fists are kneading the air.
"I'll be fine." I swallow, say it again. "I'll be fine. Try to get some sleep. I don't want to see either of you until morning."
Yes, they don't say, that's exactly what worries them.
"Captain?"
His conspiratorial whisper earned him the barest of smiles.
"Counterpoint."
It's in all great music… but the distinction I made about parallel melodies isn't homage to Tchaikovsky or Mahler, or even the more salient equivalents in subspace.
It's him. And it's me. What we are, and what, despite it, we are allowing ourselves to become.
There are times I wish my staff were a little less sharp, a little more willing to believe in random energy fluctuations. That's what I get for weighting the field with rebels and outlaws. Constant suspicion. Still, the real look of surprise on Kashyk's face is worth the hour of security reroutes it takes to run a site-to-site transport without causing so much as a ripple in the power flow.
"Captain?"
The sound of that word used to make me smile for entirely different reasons. Then it was the hard-won pride of accomplishment, the instant respect. Now, it's all about the lack therein.
"I reconsidered your offer."
"And had my replicator reactivated?" He's sharp. Almost too sharp.
"I can, and will, under one condition."
He pulls his chin up a few bare millimeters, waiting.
"Parley," I say. "Are you familiar?"
What I mean is: did the universal translator find a similar term in his dialect, or are the Devore so far gone they haven't the expression?
He watches me begin to clear Tuvok's security lockout and listens as I explain. "On Earth, in the days of pre-warp naval ships, warring captains would meet in still waters, share a drink or a meal and discuss life, politics." His breath catches when I toss a knowing smile over my shoulder. "Music. The understanding was, no matter what they were forced to do in battle field, there they answered each other as equals. Coffee, black."
The cup materializes on the ledge. The first swallow is electrifyingly hot. How the guest replicator is better than my own…
Kashyk waits a breath, watching with dark, intuitive eyes before joining me at the wall. "Does that also mean your second and third in command have relaxed their interest in our dialogue for the evening?"
I run my tongue against the scalded edge of my bottom lip. "No one knows I'm here, if that's what you're asking."
Kashyk's slow moving hand stays just above the burnished pips on my collar, tracing them back to where my collar exposes the sliver of skin beneath my ear while I brace myself for his impending touch.
Ninety-ninety-point-four kilograms. The average grip-strength of a Devore; nearly double a human male, less than half of a Vulcan. Yet, somehow I know, if he wastes the opportunity and snaps my neck now, Tuvok will never even get the chance. Chakotay's always been quicker to act.
His hand continues its northern sweep, up my throat, past my ear, to the longest, thickest section of my hair he can find. A smile, a real one, passes over his lips. "This color…"
It startles me. I've not considered the genetic proliferation of red hair among Devore women. It may be the first time he's seen it at all, or he's just picked it out as an extremely personal gesture to make. If anyone were going to barge in on us, they would now.
He toys with it somewhere in my periphery while I remain absolutely still. His shadow collapses over me when he bends to smell it. "What is that fragrance?"
"Roses."
He retracts… his hand, his person. His smile. "Yes. Roses. They were in your ready room during our first inspection."
There he is.
Just when I thought he'd left all shred of himself behind, The Inspector offers me a slight cant of acknowledgement, and then shifts his attention to the matter at hand.
"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with what else your database has to offer."
Simple enough. I settle my cup in for reclamation, and then punch up my second best guess at what will appeal to his palate.
He takes the glass without prompting, raises it to his lips, but hesitates when I warn him, "Be careful."
What might have been a hearty gulp is shortened to a soft sip. "What is it?"
"Bourbon." I tap the rim of my glass against his with a soft clink. "Cheers."
He takes a second, longer pull off his glass and mimics the gesture. "Cheers."
"It's what we call synthehol. It's the only thing close to actual alcohol our systems will produce."
"Why?"
Good question. "Long-term space travel is stressful. Some humans are prone to over indulgence, and the effects of synthehol can be counteracted with a shot of inaprovaline."
"On my world, all of this would be illegal."
"You're telling me Devore soldiers don't drink?"
He chuckles. "No. Of course not. But if they're caught, they're executed." He nurses the glass, testing the sensation on his tongue. "But your crew is allowed to do this… recreationally?"
Well, I've certainly considered shooting Neelix after a few glasses of Klingon blood wine, but… "Yes. They're also allowed to pursue their own interests and hobbies. My Ops officer, Mr. Kim, is quite accomplished at the clarinet. Computer, play Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A, first movement."
The music fills the quiet spaces of the room with liveliness, but it's the mathematics that turn The Inspector's face toward the ceiling and let him relax into his seat. I hate to admit it, but this is exactly what I imagined the moment to be.
He follows the sound through the refrain then centers his attention on me. "Beautiful."
Something twitches in my gut. It's the second time in a few hours he's leveled the same compliment.
"I'm curious though," he continues, "is it really as complex a thing as it claims to be?"
"I'm sure Mr. Kim could convince you."
"Is that what you enjoy in your off time, Captain?"
A half-swallowed mouthful of bourbon almost makes a return trip into my glass. Is he asking what I think he's asking? Even if he isn't, I should probably get this out of the way now. "It wouldn't be appropriate for me to have a relationship with a member of my crew."
He flashes a coy smile, happy to let me think I've just spoken out of point. "Nor I. But I wonder how your crew feels about that. Long-term space travel can be stressful."
He can feed my words back to me as much as he wants. "It's not open for their analysis, Inspector. It's a fact."
"But your crew is alone, possibly for the rest of their lives. You, Captain, are alone."
If he bothered to read anything, it was my personal logs. I'd be stupid not to know that. It's how cleanly he maneuvers me into that particular corner, then refuses to retreat that makes me regretful I've come here at all.
"I don't say it to be cruel," he insists.
"Yes, you do." Snapped out without much provocation, he spends a measure's rest nursing his drink and reveling in the fact that he just hit pay dirt on a raw nerve. Eventually, he tries for something with a little more tact.
"Kathryn…" He misplaces the emphasis so my name comes out breathless and odd, but still extremely intimate. Whatever he thought to say drops out, replaced with a more probing question. "Do names have meaning in your culture?"
A nod. That's all he gets until he asks.
"And… what does it mean, your name?"
"Pure."
Delighted. He's damned delighted he thought to ask it, even more so that it yielded such results. "Incredible. Your father must have had grand visions for his eldest child."
It's assumptive, but not incorrect. "I'm sure he would have supported me in any field I chose."
Let him figure that one out. I toss back the watery ends of my drink and rise to retrieve another.
"You're angry," he says.
At myself, mostly. How close I've let this devil come to things and people he would never otherwise be allowed, but also how much I still hold at a distance, all the while telling myself I'd give anything to ensure my crew's safety.
Anything but...
Choices. It all comes down to choices. And I'm running out of them. This was my idea, after all. So, sit down, Kathryn. Sit. Back. Down.
I do, eventually. Cautiously.
But, the point is, I do.
When he mentions he'll miss the coffee, I stop myself from pointing out the semi-transparent version our replicators produce is a far cry from the genuine article; that real black coffee is so rich it cleanses the palate of every bitter, ill-conceived cup that preceded it… and tell him to relax instead.
"I supposed you liked me better in uniform."
"I haven't decided whether I like you at all."
But I want to. Under the glow of retreating stars, I want to believe in the purity of atonement. That what is human can exist, regardless of species, but what is right has always been comprehensible and clear.
I wonder about the boy he mentions, the one who grew up watching the stars; is he's still in there, somewhere? Hemmed up under all of this violence and deception, starved for the wonder the universe still holds. Could he conceivably find a place on my ship? With my crew?
With me?
An hour passes, then another. The time isn't so much about working ourselves up to the threshold as it is to assure one another we'll cross it when we get there. Beyond that, there are other roles waiting to be filled, ones that will require us to lose the blissfully unbound attitudes we've taken up through the course of the evening.
He wets his lips and leans forward on his knees. "So, you slept on the ground, in a rainstorm, because you were… upset?"
He only pieces and repopulates the stories I've given him this way because it infuriates him to think I've ever been so driven by emotion.
"Says the man who broke his cousin's collar bone because he spoke above his age."
Before adulthood, it is the only way Devore children understand their place in society, as he's previously explained.
"That was different."
I'm sure it was. I shrug. "And I was an intensely competitive child."
"You still are," he says, although he means it as a compliment. "Intense."
"And competitive," I add.
A flicker of something… sad… passes over his expression, there and gone in the time it takes him to pour another drink.
"What?" I press.
It lasts half as long this time, a pinch of tension at the corner of his eye, but it's there. "There are no women like you on my world."
Another compliment? I can't rightly decide. "None?"
"No. None." He lifts his eyes from the bottom of his glass. "Devore women are much simpler creatures. They may be powerful or beautiful, but not both. It seems a shame…"
He trails off, swilling the glass of amber liquid against the palm of his hand. For a brief second, it's like watching a bird of prey lose altitude in a down draft. Motion stalled out, wings beating wildly at survival as it careens toward the earth, lost in the stunned silence that accompanies watching something so deadly and formidable brought to heel by an invisible shift in air current.
It's the first time all night I know…
We're going to be okay.
"The Prime Directive."
Even side-long, his gaze is meticulous, challenging. Formulated questions arrive with soupcon of dubious humor as he suggests the shaded lines between us aren't as dark as I'd like them to be.
"Starfleet's cardinal protocol."
"It seems you violated it when you rescued these telepaths."
"Let's just say I like to follow my instincts..."
It comes out a little more breathless than I intend, more libidinous than I've been in a while, but he's backed me into a corner, literally.
The more figurative truth is: The Alpha Quadrant, Starfleet. Earth. Sometimes I forget they exist. Distance, time, and current alien threats aside, I can't allow myself to consider what life might look like again. I did that once. Right around the time that Arturis tried to shuttle us to our assimilated deaths.
I know what is waiting for me, even if Kashyk's not sure of the same.
The following day passes in slow minutes punctuated with bursts of activity. Long-range scans spot two warships well outside the boundaries of routine patrol, and the course correction adds almost a half-day between us and Tehara. The risk of power output in subspace is worth it. I make the call and increase speed to warp six, and then stew in the tension on the bridge until not even the adrenaline will keep my eyes open.
I manage to steal a few hours of unbroken sleep in my ready room, only to be woken by a rather perturbed looking Vulcan.
"Should I request the Doctor?" he asks as I struggle to blink myself back to full alertness.
"No, Tuvok. I just didn't get much sleep last night."
Though, I should probably consult him before the day is out, the mere mention of it makes my head hurt. There are a disproportionate number of people on this ship who need to be informed before I have sex. It makes me question my predecessors, and constituents. Weren't Kirk and Picard cutting a swath through the galaxy with more than just their ships, seemingly without all the quotidian drama of cross-species analysis and protein-enzyme boosters?
"My team informed me this morning that you disengaged the security override on Inspector Kashyk's replicator." It took him all morning and half the afternoon to ask me about this? "Can I assume you returned to his quarters last night?"
Better yet, does he expect me to lie about it? "I did."
"Captain. The risk you place yourself under—"
"Is not going to be any less if I sit back and wait for his war ships to attack us." I stand to meet him toe to toe then regret it when the crank of tired muscles shoots needles up my spine.
"In the mean time, make sure the Brenari are familiar with the shuttle controls. If this goes south, you, Vorik and Jarot are going to take them through the wormhole, without us."
Tuvok opens his mouth again, no doubt to launch into more commentary about my impulsivity, patent disregard for my own life, or human compunction to violate the laws I've sworn to uphold. My hand stops him before he can.
"If we survive this, you can tell me all about it," I promise. "Just… don't argue with me today, okay?"
The truth is I've been saving my strength. There's a very limited amount of it these days, and if Chakotay or Tuvok, or god forbid the both of them, seriously wanted to end this I wouldn't be able to muster the wherewithal. As it stands, I don't have to. Make it through the day without any more sympathetic, side-long looks or tersely logical, "Yes, Captains."
I swear I'll make it up to them. Barely put up a fight the next time I want to join a nebula survey or lead an away mission. Hell, I might even take a day off. Learn to knit. Surf. Sleep.
Oh, god. Sleep.
Cold, real water blasts me back to full awareness, but leaves me quaking for the duration it takes to reseat my uniform and paint color into the wan hollows of my cheeks.
Dinner. We've agreed upon dinner, though what else I agreed to in those brief, soft-spoken seconds when B'Elanna stepped just beyond ear shot.
"I was thinking we could try something else tonight," he'd said.
"Oh?"
"You've been so accommodating of my needs. I'd like to return the favor."
Yeah. He probably wasn't talking about the food.
"You're risking a lot, too. Why?"
There's no cresting tension when he tells me I'm his deliverance, only a quaver of – what? Fear?
Excitement?
Unrepentant pride?
The computer chirps. "Analysis complete."
Not even remotely.
It smells faintly familiar, like the dishes my mother used to attempt after Bolian cuisine night at the neighborhood picnics. She's a wonderful cook, within reason, but my father, sister, and I also choked down more than our fair share of experimental failures.
The majority is deeply charred meat of some kind, peppered vegetables, and cool, raw combinations of dairy-based, gelatinous salads. The closest Terran flavors I can name is Greek, which seems apropos to the tenor of our Halcyon nights.
The accompanying beverage I can't stomach as it tastes like a combination of French merlot and three-day old coffee. Kashyk assures me it is better in other parts of the sector, and then playfully admits some things simply don't translate.
"It took some getting used to," he says, nodding toward the replicator. "Your technology is almost predictive."
Neural gel-packs and bio-synaptic relays; the fact that he uses the word "predictive" suggests he understands a lot more than he's letting on. When I don't answer he continues. "The Devore don't concern themselves with comfort the way your people do. We provide only the basics needs to our citizens."
"Talk about austere living."
"Since the war began…"
"War?"
"With the Brenari." It rolls off his tongue with a sickening amount of factual calm. I don't point out that one can hardly call extermination a war. "Since the war began, we have turned our attention to protecting our borders, so while you may not find much music or art within our cities, you will discover us most excellent at control."
May not. Will discover. As if he believes I may see it, yet.
"How long have you been fighting?" I ask.
"A few hundred years."
"And, in that time, how many Brenari have you sent to relocation camps?"
It's a bold question for what it hints at, then again, it all comes down to choices and I've only left him with two. Either he can bank left and channel the remorse he claims to feel, or…
"Too many to count."
Lies. All of them. So many, I, too, have lost count. He reads my exasperated sigh for what it is, but then again, I'm no longer attempting to hide how I feel about any of this. If he betrays us tomorrow, none of this will end exactly as he envisions it.
"Something I've said?"
Everything he's said.
He settles the glass at the top of his plate, leans back, and clasps his hands at his waist. "I don't presume my life will be any easier after tonight. I'll be leaving here with my ship and what I hope will be a few memories worth keeping, that is, unless you've decided I'm no longer an asset to your cause."
Bastard.
"I'm sorry. I didn't sleep well," I admit, and then add, "You kept me up late last night."
He pushes back his chair, extends his hand for mine, and then guides me to my feet. He uses the moment to repeat yesterday's gesture, only this time he tucks the hair behind my ear and exposes the pulse point of my throat.
"Who was keeping who up?"
His hand skims the top of my chest, working beneath the opening of my outer jacket until the clasps give way to a more insistent inspection. It all happens with a grace I know he couldn't have planned, furthering my suspicion that we could be so good together.
I arch to meet him at the same time I pull his face toward mine. My lips land against the intended target, but after that… nothing.
I pull back. "Do Devore not kiss?"
He looks apologetic when he admits, "no."
When I start to move on, he calls me back. "Wait. Do it again."
I repeat the motion, slower this time, letting him feel the pressure that calls the heat to my mouth almost instantly. He must feel something in all of it because he closes my hair inside his fist, and swallows my surprised gasp when his tongue breaks past my lips.
The rest is biology, the instinct formed at the heart of our genetic make-up. He lifts and drops me on the bed, pins me against the coverlet.
"You should know, I have no intention of letting you go."
If he means here and now, I'm fine with that. But if he means tomorrow…
"We'll see."
fini