Raynor's Girl, Pt. 2

Shakuras. Two years later…

It was a short time after her meeting with the Matriarch and Zeratul – three days before they left for Braxis – that Kerrigan heard an old friend of hers was on Shakuras.

Most of the Protoss refused to talk to her – she'd spent the greater proportion of her time brooding on her own in the small, comfortless room the Protoss had grudgingly provided her. She'd only heard the news when, out of sheer boredom, she had eavesdropped on two conversing Protoss – using her telepathic abilities to listen in on them was difficult to do un-noticed, but she was so bored by that point that she was willing to try anything to alleviate the dullness.

She'd known that Raynor had chosen to remain behind on Aiur to shut down the Warp Gate and stop the renegade Zerg from coming through. She'd fully expected him to do so – he was always so selfless, despite his cavalier façade – but, in truth, she had been a little disappointed that she wouldn't be able to meet him again just yet. She had also known that Raynor had sent a few of his most grievously-wounded soldiers through the portal to Shakuras for treatment, knowing that they would die if they remained in the warzone Aiur had become.

What she hadn't known was that the Commander, former Magistrate of Mar Sara, had chosen to accompany them.

Fate, it seemed, was not without a sense of humour.

She'd activated her cloaking device as she picked her way through the triage centre the Protoss and Terran medics and doctors had set up for the human casualties. Most of them were still comatose, but a few were on their way to recovery, and there would probably have been a scene if one of them had spotted her. At the moment, she was only interested in her old acquaintance.

The Commander had set himself up in a one of a series of ramshackle hovels the Terrans had hastily constructed with one of their few operational SCVs, on a low cliffside plateau overlooking the tent city which made up the triage centre. When she reached it, she uncloaked herself and knocked on the door – more out of deference to custom than anything else, since the door wasn't locked, and she could easily have torn it off its hinges if it had been – then waited a few seconds, listening to the sounds of the Commander moving toward the door.

In the moment before the Commander opened the door, she wondered to herself why she'd chosen to come. However, she didn't have the chance to pursue that line of thought, for a second later she found herself face-to-face with an old friend.

When the Commander opened the door, he stared at her for several long seconds, looking as though he'd seen a ghost. She noticed the pun almost immediately, but didn't smile.

The Commander looked much the worse for wear since she'd last seen him. Gone was the clean-cut, clean-shaven man she'd known in that long-ago time in the Sons of Korhal. His eyes were bleary, as though with a lack of sleep, and he hadn't shaved in several days. His hair and uniform were dishevelled, and he'd obviously been drinking before she showed up. She could smell the whiskey on his breath even from where she was standing.

"I needed a stiff drink," she said, by way of explanation.

The Commander stared at her for several more seconds, and she thought for a moment he'd slam the door in her face. In truth, she wouldn't have been surprised if he had – showing up as she was with nothing more than a glib one-liner to explain herself, she hasn't expected anything but a cold reception. But after a few seconds, he nodded and gestured vaguely for her to come in. Perhaps, she mused, he was too tired, drunk, or both to really question what had just happened.

"I see you've already started without me," she observed as she sat down in the most comfortable-looking chair.

"You aren't the only one who needed a drink," he replied wearily, filling up a glass with whiskey and passing it to her.

Both of them frowned at a sudden feeling of déjà vu.

They sipped their drinks in silence for several seconds. The feeling of déjà vu became more intense.

"I haven't had this in a long time," she eventually mused to break the silence, tapping the whiskey glass with one long claw. He nodded. Another silence. She was starting to wonder if coming here had been a good idea.

"Why are you really here?" he finally asked.

"I told you, I…"

"Come on, Sarah," he snapped. "Even if that were true – which I doubt – you could have just stolen a bottle from one of the medics. From anyone…else."

She sighed and emptied her glass, then picked up the bottle and refilled it. The Commander made no move to restrain her.

"I haven't had anyone to talk to in days." This was true. "I guess I wanted some company." This was also true – at least in part. Although she'd been content for the first few days to gloat over how easily she was leading the Protoss on, that had eventually begun to wear thin.

The truth of the matter was that she was bored. And the Commander had been as close to a friend as anyone she'd ever known – aside from Jim, but that was different.

Or was it so different? She remembered the night of the Commander's last party. Remembered what had happened, then. She'd been ashamed of how she'd acted, and she'd mostly succeeded in burying that memory until now. Part of her, she also had to admit, had been strangely aroused, but she'd simply chalked that up to libido at the time.

There had, in any case, always been a mutual attraction between them. She'd thought the Commander was cute, even handsome, in his way – though he had nothing on Jim's rugged features – and she was enough of a telepath to realize that he'd had a crush on her, if only a subconscious one. But whatever had existed between them had been nothing like her and Jim. Nothing like that. The two of them had gotten drunker than they should have, and they'd…well, for lack of a better term, they'd made out. But they had been sober enough to stop themselves before they went further. It should have been simple.

Two years later, as the Queen of Blades sat in the Commander's hovel on Shakuras and sipped a tumbler of whiskey, she concluded that it wasn't simple at all.

"The Queen of the Zerg wants company?" said the Commander. She could tell he meant it to be bitingly sarcastic, but his heart wasn't in it and he ended up sounding tired and resigned rather than malicious. She decided to ignore the intent and focus on the result.

"In her way, yes," she replied. The Commander stared at her for another few seconds, then slugged back the rest of his whiskey and refilled it.

Half an hour later, they still hadn't said much more to one another, but the Commander had become quite drunk. Kerrigan, for her part, was finding that the alcohol was having little effect on her – she still felt alert and sober. Perhaps, she thought with a sigh, her Zerg physiology did have its disadvantages after all: her body was metabolizing the alcohol so efficiently that she didn't even feel a buzz, even though she'd already polished off half the bottle singlehandedly.

"So, why come here?" she asked, more to break the silence than out of any genuine curiosity. "Why leave Jim on Aiur?"

"Because I'm sick. No," he said, noticing her expression, "Not like that. I'm sick of fighting, Sarah. I took that assignment as Magistrate on Mar Sara two years ago because I wanted to help people. I ended up in Arcturus' rebellion, all because I tried. And since then, it's been one battle after another. I'm sick of being a Commander, Sarah. I'm tired of my only legacy being death."

Evidently, he'd reached the "confession" stage of drunkenness. She decided to press the point further. "Even though you're so good at it?" she asked with as good an approximation of innocent curiosity as she could muster.

"Especially because I'm so good at it," he replied emphatically. "I've taught Jim a lot. He'll be fine. Hell, in a few more years, people will probably remember those victories as his, not mine. And I'm okay with that."

There was a momentary silence.

"Where will you go?" she asked idly.

"Umoja, probably. Maybe there I can find a line of work where I can save lives instead of ending them. I'll leave the killing to you and your swarm."

She pointedly ignored the attempted dig, and after a few seconds, he sighed and finished the rest of his drink before putting the empty tumbler down.

"I think I've had enough," he said. She raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

He smiled wryly. "The last time I had this much to drink when we were alone together…"

He let that thought trail, but she deliberately caught his eyes and smiled.

"I remember."

Even before unravelling her Ghost conditioning on the Amerigo, her telepathic powers would have allowed her to read the Commander's emotions quite easily – nowadays, she could read his thoughts almost as easily as her own. And even if she hadn't been a telepath, she knew from experience how drunk he was. She could easily seduce him, if she chose.

She was bored. And she was lonely – in a way she hadn't known she was until the Commander had made her think of Jim. So she leaned forward, grabbed him by the collar of his uniform, and brought her lips to his. His lips parted easily for her tongue, as she'd known they would.

But he had a little more restraint than she'd given him credit for. With a struggle, he broke away.

"All your motives are corrupt, Sarah," he managed. "Even this."

This was entirely true. She didn't want the Commander in any sense but the purely physical – didn't, in point of fact, want the Commander at all. However, she was horny, and didn't feel like a debate at the moment. She scanned his mind to find the right psychological lever to pull to get her way.

"Do you care?" she said after a moment, punctuating the point by sliding her right hand into his pants to fondle his penis, and using her left hand to move his right down to her breast. "Don't pretend you were never a little jealous, 'Commander'. Seeing Jim and I together. I know you were always attracted to me. Don't tell me you never wondered what it would have been like, me and you. Don't tell me you never fantasized about what would have happened if we hadn't stopped that night…"

She could probably have phrased that more eloquently, but it nevertheless achieved the desired effect on the Commander's alcohol-fogged brain. He fell silent, and she pressed the advantage home by bringing her lips to his again. This time, there was no resistance.

After a few moments, she pushed him down to the floor. The Commander had a small, uncomfortable-looking cot in the corner, but she'd taken one look and decided she'd prefer the floor. In any case, it had been years since she'd last slept in a bed – or slept at all, in point of fact.

She managed to struggle out of the remains of the Ghost uniform she still wore by force of habit, and used her claws to slice the Commander out of his clothes. Before he had any chances to complain about his shredded uniform or to come up with another excuse for them to stop, she guided him inside her and began to rotate her hips in time with her heartbeat. Then there was only pleasure and moaning and moving flesh.

She'd forgotten how good this felt. The Commander was too drunk to give a spectacular performance – in fact, it was nothing short of a miracle that his cock worked at all at this point – but she didn't care. And she liked the stubble. If she closed her eyes and ran her hands across it, she could pretend it was someone else under her, making love to her rather than having a torrid little fuck in this ramshackle hovel on Shakuras. She could pretend she was with Jim again, that he was running his hands through her hair, staring up into her eyes in adoration as he had done so many times in days gone by…

She shivered and clutched the Commander close for a moment. In the back of her mind, a far-back part she was trying her best to smother, she knew full well what she was doing, and that she'd feel pathetic for doing it, but for now, she didn't care. Part of her also knew she was using the Commander in a particularly callous way – taking advantage of him, she would have called it in a past life – but she was long past caring about that at all.

She leaned back from her position atop him, arcing her spine and sticking out her chest as she extended her bladed wings to their full span. She looked down to find the Commander staring up at her with an expression of mixed fear and arousal on his face. She grinned, leaned down, closed her eyes, and kissed Jim again.

Several long minutes oozed by un-noticed, silent except for panting and the occasional soft moan, and the sound of her pulse in her ears. Somehow, what she noticed most was the smell. She could smell the Commander's sweat – she leaned down to lick a bead from his forehead. She could smell her own sex; a mixture of human musk and of Zerg creep that had ceased to be alien a long time ago. She could smell – and taste – the whiskey still on his breath.

It was the Commander who first broke the silence. "Sarah," he whispered, half to himself, as she switched positions and pulled him on top of her. She noticed that there were tears running down his face. "Oh, Sarah…"

"Yessss…" she hissed, cutting him off. "Yes." She reached up, put her fingers on his temples, and used her telepathic powers to fire as many of the pleasure receptors in his brain as she could – an erotic trick she'd discovered one day with Jim, and could perform far more easily and effectively now. The Commander gasped and shuddered, then clutched her tightly and thrust himself into her as deep as he could. After a moment, she felt him come, and moaned for the sheer gratification of having made him do it.

He held himself over her for another long moment before falling to the side, exhausted. She smiled and snuggled up close to him.

"Jim…" she breathed before she could stop herself.

She realized the mistake she'd just made almost immediately as she felt him suddenly go rigid beside her. A long second passed.

Then he burst out laughing.

"What?!" she demanded, suppressing her humiliation by substituting rage. "What's so damn funny?"

But the Commander didn't reply. He just continued laughing, curled up and almost choking with fits of helpless laughter.

She seriously considered killing him right then. The Commander had seen her, the Queen of Blades, her, in a moment of weakness and vulnerability she denied to herself and allowed nobody else to see. He would, she realized, always have power over her, now, as long as he lived – the power of knowing the fact that for all her strength, for all her ruthless might, she still wanted something as simple and pathetic as affection.

And she could not abide that.

But she also knew that if she killed him, all her hard work in establishing this alliance of convenience with the Protoss would go straight out the airlock. So she had to content herself with struggling back into the remains of her uniform and attempting to make something resembling a dignified exit, pursued constantly by the Commander's laughter. As she got up to look for her clothes, she felt something warm trickle down her leg, and shuddered with disgust.

By the time she'd gotten her clothes back on and was about to leave, the Commander's laughter had subsided to a chuckle. She spared a glance backward to see him still lying there, naked, on the floor. Their eyes met, and she paused midway out the door.

"Goodbye," he said simply.

She stared blankly at him.

"What?" he said. "Were you expecting something profound?"

She snarled at him and stormed out, leaving him alone in the hovel.

The Commander laughed again and stared at the ceiling. He lay there for a few moments, then got up, walked over to his pack, and retrieved a battered old photo. There the five of them were. Himself, Jim, Arcturus, Duke, and Sarah. Holding up glasses of champagne and smiling into the camera. A frozen moment of a happier time.

Staring into the photo, he noticed Jim's arm around Sarah's shoulder, and sighed.

"I suppose," he mused aloud, "that I was too."