A/N: I never thought I'd get back into this fandom since it's not the most lively but lately I've gotten a friend who will scream at me about this wonderful movie. When I figured they'd scream at me about this fandom's least popular ship well it was a slippery slope. Here's dedicated to them!
A man like Korso, who's done the type of things he's done, has to have a certain level of apathy. Apathy towards others, towards his actions, towards the mistakes he's made (oh are those plentiful and the list keeps getting longer), it makes it all easier to handle. He can't forget, he tries to, sometimes, but he can't. So pretending not to care about anything until he nearly believes in his own bullshit himself is the next best thing. Or maybe pretending ranks behind getting drunk off his ass, because things can get easier still, if you're not sober enough to process that your life is just a constant battle of figuring out how to live between a rock and a hard place.
The day the part of him that was bothered when he had to wear apathy like a shield died was the day he watched Earth blow to bits. He'd been a soldier than, anything evil or wicked he'd done was while fighting for the sake of "peace" and survival, for him and his species. He was doing what he had to. He was placing the needs of the many over the need to keep his own soul intact. He hardly stopped to think, didn't allow himself to sit up and dwell in the blood on his hands or the twisting guilt that might come when he woke in the night, hands fisted in his sheets so tightly that his knuckles were white as he tried not to think of battlefields, he'd seen too many battlefields. He was fighting for something back then, he needed to be strong, to not care was the only way he could allow himself to do what he did. One of Humanity's finest, captain Korso, that's what he became, slowly losing all that he was along the way.
But the day it all fell apart he was watching ships blow up, hit by flying debris from the planet he'd fought for tooth and nail. And the apathy that he put on to be able to be the perfect soldier crumbled, he crumbled. What had he allowed himself to do while he fought a war that there was no hope in winning? No hope at all, humanity was finished, over. And now he was stuck with who he really was, all he'd really done, and he was only going to get that much worse. Space wasn't for the weak hearted, it was for the survivors, and if nothing else, Korso had always been a survivor. He didn't intend to stop now. Except this time he was surviving for no one else, nothing else. There was no cause, no great mission, just living out the rest of his days drifting through space in a ship, by himself.
Then the Drej found him, as if they hadn't ruined everything enough, ruined him enough. He was doing little else but whatever was needed to keep going, his brutal and basic human need to live winning out against the suffocating urge to drink every last bottle of liquor he had (human made or otherwise) until he just stopped breathing. They wanted help finding the Titan? Humanity's last hope that died when it's creator hid it as far away from Drej reach as possible, in doing so keeping it from the very people the scientist had sought to save with his new age Noah's ark? Fine, they could be his guests to follow him around through the void of space till the day he died. They'd never find it because he never would (he'd already tried).
But the fools are quite serious, he can tell by the gun to his head (Striking a deal with him? Hah, the Drej only know pain and threats. Fine with Korso, he knew the languages of both just as well. He'll be dead anyway the dust settles though, so he'll play along for now, extending his miserable existence for as long as possible).
For his new pointless purpose in life he has to hire a crew to help him man his ship. The first to come is Preed, his second-in-command, a snake in the grass the Drej had sent to work with him on his mission, nothing but a spy to watch his every move. The two never turn their backs on each other for long; the only trust between them given is trusting in the fact that they'd kill each other if it would be beneficial in any possible way.
Next comes Gune, the ship's astro-navigator, small and unassuming, easily distracted, but he does his job so Korso could care less about anything else. He only knows about the mission on its face value level, they're going to find the Titan. Not find it so it can be destroyed by the Drej. Whatever story makes him more eager to help is what Korso sticks to.
Then comes the weapon specialist, Stith, she's fierce and aggressive. Just the kind of muscle they'll need as they go about playing the game the Drej are happy to waste resources on. She has a friend, who's also interested in signing up aboard his ship, they arrive to the port where they're docked the day before they set off.
The friend is a Human, something Stith failed to mention, a Human girl, nineteen, straight from the drifter colonies, she wants to sign on as his pilot and he appreciates her moxie, he does. But what he's doing and the hell he'll be going to isn't for a kid. But her bright eyed gaze, optimistic, unfaltering and brimming with confidence is the only thing that implies youth that doesn't know they might be in over their head.
She walks with the resolve of a soldier, someone who's seen war. He gives her the chance she's desperate for, she flies like a soldier to (better than most of the shitty ones he knew, anyway, the united military of earth got desperate in the last few years of the war). And there it is the group of people he has to take alongside him on the ride the Drej forced him onto again, being someone's puppet. He was sick of taking orders.
He hasn't been around another Human for more than a few fleeting moments in a few years. They're practically an endangered species now. And most stick to the drifter colonies, there's strength in numbers, even if the colonies are always the target of vicious Drej attacks. But where else would they go to escape them, anyway? Humans are the scum of the universe, drifting in rusting, beaten up metal is the best they can do.
It's a strange experience, to say the least. The girl is strange herself; full of something he hasn't had in a long time, hope. He doesn't know how she keeps it up, having lived on a colony, not the most cheerful place to grow up. And the way she spits the word Drej, vowing she'll help Humanity back from the brink of extinction while vowing the same fate on those who'd put her species in the position in the first place is all he needs to know, to understand that she's suffered much in her short years. All of Humanity has. But her moral strength never once slips, he can't imagine a time in her life when it ever had.
She brings a certain upbeat lightness to the Valkyrie it used to lack in spades. It's refreshing. The world he lives in is short on oxygen and she's a breath of fresh air, sweet and pure, at least compared to him. But anyone could look damn near saintly compared to him.
The months of serving alongside her reveal many parts of who she is to him aside from a new (welcome) change of pace in his life. She collects anything she can find related to Humans, has a tiny hoard in her private quarters. It's a quirk he at first finds baffling, Humans are nothing to get excited over, they're nothing in the grand scheme of anything, in fact. And their past is best left forgotten, better to look forward to the short, bleak future that remains for them then to look into their past that had gotten them to this point. But she loves Humanity, and is unabashed in the fact. Not in a close eyed way where she refuses to see the flaws about her people, but in the way you love anything that isn't perfect. It's almost admirable how much she cares, foolish, but admirable. The harshness of reality will knock the trait from her eventually, he knows.
(She turns twenty on his ship, she doesn't mention her birthday, he knows from her file, but her face lights up when he hands her a CD he's had full of rock music that he hasn't touched in years. It had been doing nothing more than collecting dust with him but he knows she paid a ridiculous amount of money to acquire a CD player recently and one of them might as well put the thing to use. She hugs him before disappearing down the hall, holding her new little piece of history like a lifeline. She leaves behind a thank you drifting between them through the empty space and a warm, almost uncomfortable feeling in his chest as he watches her go. )
They had an actual lead. Shockingly, a real true lead to where the Titan may be. Watching Akima boil over with energy and optimism over the fact is exhausting. Maybe because he knows that if this tip were to lead to the actual Titan unlike all the others he had chased alone or with this crew, Humanity's last hope would only be blown to smithereens like their planet had been. She was old enough when it happened to remember the despair of that terrible moment when their species lost it all. He doesn't want her to have to feel it again, only magnified by the feeling of betrayal he knows would come when it's revealed who he's working for, eventually. All things have to come to light though. But he wishes that it won't come to light anytime soon. He doesn't want to see that spirit wiped away yet (not ever).
For once in a long time he's feeling guilty, his walls are breaking down. Maybe that's what makes him push her out of the way when the trade for their money and the Andorian's information on the Titan's possible location goes bad. Preed has a big mouth and he wants to break every bone in it when it gets a weapon pointed at Akima. She's a fighter, she can handle herself, and he knows that fact like he knows the back of his hand. But she's too busy breaking a nose to notice one more sound of a plasma ray firing, as gunshot is all around her. When she turns all she sees is Korso hitting the floor, wound in his side bleeding through his black shirt, making it go a shade darker. Her face is the last thing he sees before his vision goes black.
(He wakes up to her tending to him back on the ship, scowling as she knits back together torn flesh. She wants to say a lot, ask a lot, about why he'd done it for her. But she doesn't. Her eyes speak volumes though. She is easy to read. The emotion that comes across the loudest, though she speaks calm and clinically as she recounts what happened after he'd lost consciousness, is worry. Worry for him. Worry she'd have to lose yet another person, relief that she hadn't. Would she be so relieved if she knew who he really was? )
She drifts around the ship like a storm cloud, more subdued than usual after that catastrophe of an event. Maybe she believes that they'll be able to save Humanity a little less now. The logical part of him says good, that's good for her, because it's true. Nothing anyone can do will save Humanity now. But another part of him watches the way she acts and hates it. She's a fighter, she shouldn't be giving up, it's not like her. But it's understandable, for that never ending passion of her's to slowly die off. It happened to even the best of them (he'd never been the best of them).
He catches her on the bridge and stands at her side, staring at the stars in silence. She doesn't speak a word but it's written all over her face, as usual, that little bit of doubt. And its better she doubt than be a dreamer, dreamers end up dead. But he cares that she's second guessing it all. To see her waver in her faith, even if woefully misplaced, is unnerving.
He grasps her shoulder with a firm but gentle hand and when she turns to look at him, vulnerable and wide eyed, needing reassurance in all she believes in he doesn't say a word. But his eyes are half as soft as his touch and the look is worth a dozen inspiring speeches, her answering smile tells him that much.
(He wishes for his apathy back, it will make how this has to play out so much easier in the end.)