Destruction
the stylus
Originally posted 13 November 1999
Summary: After Counterpoint Kashyk reflects on what he won and what he lost.
Disclaimer: Paramount's. All of it.
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i.
Have you ever created something just for the pleasure of destroying it?
It wasn't supposed to go this way. I think I meant this to be the real thing.
Her eyes in the muted light of the mess hall. The jut of her chin. Her slender, square shoulders and wiry arms. Beautiful, and dangerous. So unlike our women who will not meet my eyes. So strong, so determined. Rapier-sharp, stone-hard, and beautiful.
I could have been gentled in that darkness, become something other than myself. More-or less.
Have you ever created something just for the pleasure of destroying it?
ii.
I was going to return alone and surrender in a way that was not defeat. I didn't-couldn't. It is not in me. She knew, perhaps better than I myself did.
I came with Prax: in uniform, the way she liked me.
The taste of her blood in my mouth. The ragged edges of her cries. Moving into her unwilling form like a knife.
In the end, she won. Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps she simply outmaneuvered me. It does not matter.
The destruction is all I have left. And the print of her nails in my flesh.
Fin