Title: just wrap your arms around me
By: Xmarksthespot
Disclaimer: I don't own YJ— wouldn't have killed Tula if I did.
Notes: Takes place at the start of the season to 2x10 'Before the Dawn' ; Inspired, but won't necessarily spoil, today's episode, 2x13, 'The Fix'
It was strange, Kaldur once told himself, how the thought of an individual could put a person's mind at ease.
Perhaps it was homesickness. He had been in the surface world for quite some time. But he knew he didn't long for home. He didn't long for his King and Queen like he should have, nor did he long for a reunion with his best friend, Garth.
He longed for her.
She brought peace to him, balanced out the serene coolness that he expressed to his team members, with the utter confusion and loneliness he felt thrashing through his mind on a constant basis whenever he so much as breathes in air.
It almost became a hazard to him—to the team—whenever she appeared in his thoughts. Her voice spoke of his name regularly, brought back distant memories that he longed to reoccur over and over again, even as he tread through dark waters, just a few feet from the enemy baseline.
Kaldur, Kaldur, Kaldur.
Miss Martian's abilities would allow others to hear his mind, but where the team heard his instructions, he heard her voice, muted to the others, but loud and clear to him—so close, as if she was with him all the time. It was as if the echoes of her soft voice embraced him; each word: tracing his arms, following the dark lines of his tattoos, each smile: caressing his cheek with placidity, and each giggle: a touch to his chest.
He longed for that moment, for her to be by his side, immersed in either air or water—Kaldur did not care. He would watch after his teammates, and think of her and only her.
And that peacefulness, the warmth that trickled through his veins at the thought of her, that invisible touch—all had disappeared and sank to the bottom of the ocean when he discovered of hers and Garth's relationship. Kaldur's only source of tranquility and comfort was given to his best friend, and all he could do was accept defeat and play the calm and collected person he was supposed to be.
Though, he supposed, it was not the same without her voice inside his head, the voice that his mind tossed to the bottom of the ocean along with all remnant feelings he should no longer feel. But unlike the others, he could swim to the deepest of the waters and bring her voice back.
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
His team came first though, and he could not be bothered by his heartbrokenness. Despite Roy's insistence that there were, how the Earth-dwellers would say, other fish in the sea, Kaldur knew otherwise, and as her voice—the one that he swam to retrieve, bringing with him all the way to the shores and into his head, just months after his last visit to Atlantis—reminded him: he has been to the ends of the sea and back before; there was no other like her.
It wasn't fair to his best friend though, and so he suppressed his thoughts as much as she, in his head, would allow him to. But after years of living on the surface world, trying to push away the face that appeared in his mind so very often, she showed up, with the bright smile on her face that warmed his healing heart, and with the idea of joining the team that yanked onto his thoughts repeatedly as she introduced herself to his friends.
He could no longer risk thinking of her whenever the mind-link was established, could no longer be deep in thought with her in view's way. The same person who had been the epitome of his thoughts was now sitting a few seats from him, ignorant of his ever present feelings that should have been washed away years ago.
Months passed, and there were instances when he could have seen her gestures as something more, too noticeable to have been mistaken, too cruel to his oblivious friend in Atlantis to think about: lingering touches, soft spoken words, confusion that would not have been present in his dreams, but were very well in the air between them.
Kaldur had observed the relationships that had come and go between his friends, and he had found them to be far easier to understand, than to understand his own problems. He wanted to question her, to ask if there could and would be something more if it had not been for Garth's presence or was the voice in his thoughts manipulating with his vision again?
He could not ask her though—not anymore.
Come back to me, Kaldur.
When he placed his hand upon Garth's shoulder at her ceremony, he had wanted to retreat it because it was that hand that she held onto before her untimely demise. He had repeatedly called out her name in his thoughts, as their King and Queen spoke kind words of her life, wishing—wanting—her to wrap her arms around him just as she did whenever he thought of her, and whisper words of comfort he could only imagine, but never hear, into his ears.
It had taken several weeks—months—before her voice brought peace to him again. It had taken months—years—before the thought of her hand grasping around his no longer hurt him like it did the last time he saw her.
Nightwing had been difficult to convince regarding their new mission, but despite the image of the beautiful redhead hovering just behind his young friend, Kaldur had persuaded him that it was not because of her that he was accepting to partake in such a dangerous project—it was not her voice that lured him to the potential suicide mission. Rather, it was the thought of her hands touching his, as he shook Nightwing's hand in agreement, the thought of her voice relaxing his nerves, which gave him the confidence to go through with it.
I'll be here, waiting for you.
Her voice had never changed over the years, never faltered despite her disappearance from the world, never causing pain, and only bringing love that he wanted her to feel for him as he did for her. It would not have mattered, nevertheless, how she was like in his thoughts, so long as she was there for him.
Just like when she was there at every given moment, guiding him through the hardships of earning his biological father's trust, like when he felt her lay down next to him in the cold rooms of the ocean submarines, whispering soothing songs, washing away all the fears that the ocean waters could not. And she was there, as he felt her arms wrap around him, though they should have not, when he blew up the mountain that contained the pedestal in her memory.
I'll always be your—
And even now as he stood still, frozen by the presence of the Martian's mind invading his, ripping and trashing through every one of his memories, Kaldur thought of the one person who was always on his mind.
—Tula.
.
.
.
fin.
A/N: Please review :)