Author's note: Sharp eyed readers will have noticed that Pollywantsa and I correspond. A lot… And although we have very different styles (and very different Harlocks!) we have a tendency to riff off each other a little when it comes to the CGI'verse. This little piece came about firstly when I finished Things Which are Not, and was wondering to myself what Harlock's side of this little scene would have felt like. Then she posted up her latest chapter of The Wheel, and I had my answer…
Sehnsucht:
1. utopian conceptions of ideal development;
2. sense of incompleteness and imperfection of life;
3. conjoint time focus on the past, present, and future;
4. ambivalent (bittersweet) emotions;
5. reflection and evaluation of one's life; and
6. A homesickness tinged with longing for a homeland, or grief and sadness for the people one has lost
Tick all that apply...
Metal shod boots on the corridors of the deserted ship rang out with each step like a bell tolling… but for what, the walker had no idea. Death and doom had already claimed him after all. Sometimes he imagined it was a death knell he sounded out on his perambulations through the empty corridors. One step for every member of his crew, most of whom had died screaming as the Deathshadow Two and Three had raked Four with deadly, precise fire.
Those screams still kept him awake at night, even though now, ten years later, he often felt that they'd been the lucky ones.
Maudlin, much?
'Fuck off.' He snarled the words into the darkness.
Went about as well as expected, then?
'Can we just leave this system?' He reached the foot of the stairs to the upper bridge and stared at the pale green light that flickered somewhere in the darkness above, coming from the direction of the dark matter engine that dominated the area. Like the pipes of a massive cathedral organ it soared above their heads, and plunged into the depths of the ship; a massive wheel that would keep on turning for eternity, if he let it.
Ironic really… If you think about the imagery, it reincarnated us… but now it's what holds us prisoner...
He made his way wearily up the steps, taking them one at a time. There'd been a time when he'd bound up them, two, three at a time. 'Why did we go with the design that put the main stations so high up?' he asked as he clanged up the open ironwork.
We didn't… it sort of happened this way when we came back, remember?
He didn't. A fact that should have worried him a lot more than it did.
Clang. Justin.
Clang. Miranda.
Clang. Elena.
Clang. Katy.
Clang. Annelise.
Clang. Shizuku.
Clang. Mayu.
Clang. Khalsa.
The ship's wheel stood halfway between communications and navigation. Both stations glowed green from the dials and gauges on their consoles, but had stood empty ever since they'd come back from wherever it was they'd gone when they…
...died.
It had been a charming anachronism, before the war. Like the names of the ships, echoes of times gone by; memorials to the histories of their two families. Histories that stretched back over fifteen hundred years of warriors, pirates, rogues, rebels and…
Vagabonds and rascals?
'Accountants.' He spat the word out even as his hand grasped the balusters of the wooden wheel.
…
'She married him, Tochiro. My wife is fucking my brother. How does that even happen?'
To be fair…
'Do. Not. Go. There.'
...
In need of a change of subject, Harlock stared gloomily at the deserted bridge. 'We're going to need a crew.'
I told you that before we hit Titan. You can't keep trying to get these things into position all by yourself - you almost died placing that oscillator in the Horsehead Nebula on your own. Plus… I can handle the systems, yes, but it means dividing my attention… when the tall figure at the helm didn't take the bait, Tochiro sighed. There was a time you'd have jumped all over that one and pointed out my "ooh! Shiny" approach to life. By the way - should I be worried that the Deathshadow Zero is lurking behind the second moon?
'No. What the hell could it do to us?'
More than you think. Don't turn your nose up, you snobby bugger. I gave her a total upgrade, testing the nibelung tech out on her before we started work on these babies. She's small but feisty, and she could always fight outside her weight class. Especially with Mamoru at the helm. Speaking of which…
'I found them. But then I think he expected to be found. He wasn't surprised to see me.'
Always did keep his ear to the ground - he had quite a network out here, you know. Wouldn't surprise me if he kept it going.
'Huh.' He grasped the wheel with both hands. 'Set the course for Metabloody, Tochiro. Mimay - I need the dark matter en…' Belatedly he realised something was missing from the bridge. Turning, he saw the dark matter control orb behind the skull-bedecked monstrosity of the captain's chair was idling away without its pale green chatelaine in attendance. 'Where is she?'
Your quarters. She likes the hot tub…
'And I'd like to be out of here. Which I can't do without her at the controls. Put the shields on full and full power to the secondary engines. At least we can get out of the system hopefully without drawing any attention.'
You're worried about leading the fleet to Mamoru? I thought you didn't give a shit? And from the way you're gripping that baluster and grinding your teeth he sent you away with a flea in your ear…
'Fuck off.' Harlock let go of the wood, his fingers reluctant to release their deathgrip. He had to resist the temptation to rub his jaw where Mamoru's punch had landed. For some reason, it still ached.
Awww… you still care, under all that bullshit, don't you? Face it. You can't stay mad at him forever…
'I don't have to, do I?' Harlock said softly as he clanged across the deck. 'By the time we've placed all one hundred devices, they'll both be long dead. Who cares what they think?'
Didn't like your plan then?
'Our plan.'
…
'They have kids. Two girls.'
Pretty? Mamoru and Miranda did make very pretty little girls...
'So did you and Liesl.' Harlock stopped at the top of the stairs, and stared down into the abyss that they led into. The part of him that knew he could banish the darkness by turning on the lights warred for a moment with the part that wanted to leap, and just keep on falling.
It's only about fifteen feet. You'd only break a leg or something. It heals fast.
'It still hurts…'
You got that right.
He probably just meant the injury, but Harlock flinched anyway.
Clang. Annelise.
Clang. Mayu.
Clang. Shizuku
It had been Tochiro's idea of a joke - albeit one almost as expensive as shipping up his father's desk from Shloss Griefenstein. How the hell he'd gotten it past the bean-counters in Logistics was a mystery, but he'd always suspected Mamoru had been in on it. Otherwise his older brother would have blown a gasket over the unnecessary expense. But for all his ability to squeeze a credit until it squeaked and begged for mercy, Mamoru had his own share of the family flair for both the dramatic and the ridiculous. But whatever the truth of it, the captain's room also had a stupidly oversized four poster, and a gloriously over the top bathroom, with a state of the art jet shower with massage settings, and in the middle of the opulent suite with its (faux) gold-plated head, a jacuzzi bath big enough to hold two people with ease, three if they liked being intimate.
It currently held just one occupant. Harlock leaned lazily against the architraving and watched as his fellow inmate of their very personal hell shifted slightly to allow one of the more powerful jets to pummel a spot just to the left of her spine, sighing in pleasure as she stretched languidly, rather like a cat basking in a sunbeam. Her long pale hair floated on the surface of the water, a silken cloud that didn't quite cover her naked body as she stood up and turned to face him.
'You're back early.'
'It didn't take long.' He couldn't help but stare appreciatively as she stepped out of the tub and into the drying field, letting the warm air fluff her fine hair out. Totally unembarrassed she made no attempt to cover up, and not for the first time he had to wonder at the symmetry of a universe that could produce - millions of years apart - lifeforms so similar in their characteristics. Her breasts were small, apparently nippleless, but perfectly formed. Her body was completely hairless, apart from the soft, silky glory of her sea-green hair, so her sex was not covered by a discreet tangle of curls. Her waist was so tiny he could encircle it with his hands, and her body was gracile and delicate, the rib cage perhaps slightly higher than the human norm, her skull perhaps a little longer behind a delicate face with a tiny mouth dominated by her large round eyes, with the cat-like third eyelid.
Alien. Yet still familiar. And beautiful. But then he'd never met one of her race who wasn't. Even the males made him feel graceless, rough and uncouth.
'You're staring.'
'You're not dressing.'
She strolled daintily towards him, and stood facing him. One delicate, long-fingered hand reached out and ran a finger down his cheek, tracing the line of the jagged scar he'd had for twenty years. 'She made you cry.'
He shook his head, vehemently denying it, but although he could fool himself, it was rare that he could fool this woman from a totally different species. 'Put some clothes on,' he ordered her gruffly. 'I need you on the bridge.'
'What's the rush?' She made no attempt to move. He swallowed the hard lump in his throat.
'You're still naked.'
'I meant about the bridge? Tochiro's moving us away from the planet. There are no patrols this far out. We checked before we even entered the system.' She essayed a tiny, secretive smile. 'You've seen me naked before. Why should I clothe myself to cover what you've already seen?'
'Modesty?'
She shrugged, the slight movement making her little round breasts jiggle slightly. 'A human conceit.'
The man who prided himself on never backing down from a fight, found himself retreating with as much dignity as he could muster, away from the slender, dainty little alien and fumbled on his bed for a shirt that he'd tossed there earlier that day. 'Put this on at least. As a courtesy.'
She didn't even bother to try and catch it and it simply slid to the floor, covering her tiny little toes. 'I don't usually make you this uncomfortable, and over the past decade, how often have I seen you naked? You never worried about my sensibilities.
'They're like your understanding of personal space. Non-existent,' he snapped.
She sighed. 'Harlock. I don't think I'm the one who has you tied in a knot.' She walked past him, over to where the crystal tantalus sat on the table next to the chaise longue she so loved to drape herself over of an evening, poured a glass of a deep, ruby red wine, and walked back to hand it to him. 'Drink.'
He downed it in one long swallow. 'It never lasts, you know,' he reminded her.
'What does?' From a human, this would have sounded self-pitying. In her soft, bell-like voice it was delivered in a matter of fact manner which made it clear the speaker was simply stating a universally acknowledged law of nature. Which coming from a race who measured their lifespans in millennia if not longer, was almost laughable, and he told her so. She shrugged, that minimal lifting and dropping of her shoulders she'd learned from him. 'Don't you think that's why we learned that lesson so well?' she replied. She fetched him another drink, this time bringing the bottle back with her. It took a great deal of self-control not to simply snatch the dusty bottle out of her hands and pour the contents straight down his throat.
Hell. Wouldn't be the first time. Nor the first time an argument with Maya had left him frustrated and reaching for the solace of the wine or whiskey bottle. Or brandy. He wasn't that particular. He'd often enjoyed provoking her - once the crockery started flying, the make-up sex tended to be spectacular…
Inside the confines of his black leather pants, his cock twitched, straining at the restricting fabric. Pouring the third glass for himself he wondered if hauling out the offended article and relieving some of that frustration in front of his dainty, oh-so-deceptively innocent looking little nibelung would finally shock her lofty open-mindedness.
Even his rebellious nature recoiled from that image. Descend into displaying that level of self-loathing, and there'd be no way back from the hell he'd created for himself.
But he'd forgotten that the dark matter had forged a link between them. Or he had, trying so desperately to save them from the abyss. 'Humans are violent, animalistic and savage under our thin veneer of civilisation,' he told her roughly. 'If you're going to get this close to me, some of that filth will rub off if you're not careful. I am…' he punctuated the sentence with one final swallow of a thirty-year old Burgundy lifted over a decade ago from the estate's extensive wine cellar, 'the worst of them, after all. Or so they tell me.' He stared at the label of the bottle he held in his left hand. 'Maybe I got the better deal…' he murmured. 'Tochiro and I must have cleared out most of the best vintages… All he gets is a broken-down battleship and a treacherous whore.'
'I put up with a lot of your anger, because it is not generally directed at me,' Mimay said softly. She reached up and touched his hair, her fingers untangling a knot in the dark curl that covered his ear. She pulled her fingers away, a small shard of pottery clutched in them. 'Nor, for all your posturing, is it directed at Mamoru and Maya. You're not hurt and angry because they comforted each other in their grief and pain.'
'No?'
She touched his cheek again, her fingers coming away wet with the single tear that had forced its way out of his remaining eye. 'No. You lash out because you think you have no-one to comfort you.' She left him then, her narrow hips swaying with a tantalising grace as she walked towards the door.
'Where are you going?'
'The bridge. As you requested.'
'You're naked.'
'Does it matter? The ship's empty,' she replied, just the tiniest rebuke in her soft voice. The doors hissed shut behind her, leaving him alone in the baroque splendour of his cabin.
It should have been a dark and stormy night, but that would have been both too convenient and a cliche too far. It was June, one of those bright, sunny days with only a few powder puffs in the blue sky, and the white walls of the castle gleaming as the sun hit them on the rock it stood on, towering over the eight-hundred year old forest that filled the valley below.
He was standing on the road that wound up the hillside to the castle gates. Well… not standing. Sitting astride his latest conquest; between his long thighs the stallion's muscles flexed slightly as he shifted his weight on the black horse's bare back. The horse was ready for a long run, and whilst Maya would lay into him about taking risks going without both saddle and bridle, he was on his own land, the horse was well trained, and he was an exceptional horseman.
However, it was, he thought, probably a good idea if he didn't take the fence into the manege bareback and bridleless again… at least not if his wife was watching. For some reason him piloting fighters in the vacuum of space, or riding high powered motorcycles worried her a lot less that taking a perfectly reasonable five foot fence on seventeen hands of well trained horseflesh…
It didn't happen like this…
The horse whinnied and pawed the ground, ears twitching backwards and forwards, trying to catch a sound his rider couldn't hear. 'What is it, boy?' He patted the dark neck, and his gloved hand came away covered in sweaty foam. Overhead, the sky was darkening, and the rider frowned. The forecast for the day should have been for bright sunshine all day…
It didn't happen like this...
He had his hand on Mimay's shoulder, speaking to her urgently, begging. But he couldn't hear the words coming out of his mouth…
No.
'Come on!' he squeezed his calves with the lightest of movements, and the stallion responded, leaping forwards eagerly. Maybe they could outrun the storm, but the sky was getting darker by the second as they raced up the hill, his fingers curled around the black's long mane. He leaned forward, laughing in sheer pleasure at the power underneath him. Arcadia was probably the best horse they'd ever bred. Good solid stock with speed, stamina and looks was at a premium on the frontier worlds. They'd make a small fortune with his sperm, or frozen embryos…
In what universe? There's a war on…
Thunder and lightning split the sky, and it was now almost as black as night…
So why could he see so clearly, as though it were still daylight.
Only red. Why was everything red?
Red on black…
NO.
The earth heaved underneath them, and the horse reared. Caught off guard, he fell off backwards, landing awkwardly, and watched as the horse, knocked off its own feet momentarily, scrambled back up and galloped for the safety of the stables without him.
Pain. Painpainpain. He put his hand over his right eye, then stared at the palm of his glove, soaked with blood.
Screams, from the castle gate. Miranda, her fair hair streaming out behind her, followed by his nieces, their darker hair whipped around their faces by the wind that wanted to seemingly carry him on its fiery wings to the gates. Annelise was close behind them, trying to pull Mayu along with one hand, holding baby Shizuku in the other arm.
Heat? Why was the wind hot?
The ground heaved and buckled again. Yet over the scream of a violated Earth, he could hear women's voices, screaming his name, begging for help.
He stared at the group running towards him, as fire and darkness cashed in the sky above them. He couldn't move, could only watch, helpless, through the red haze of blood and fire, as the skin was stripped from muscle, muscle from bone, as the dark matter flayed them alive. They were still screaming as their bones collapsed, swallowed by the abyss that had been their homeland.
Their skulls rolled down the hill, coming to a stop at his feet, blank sockets staring at him, lipless mouths forever open in endless screams…
He woke, fighting the tangle of sheets as though fighting for his life, his throat raw from screaming, the sheets and pillow soaked in a cold flop for breath, he sat up, swinging his long legs around until he could sit with his head between his knees, waiting for the shaking to stop.
Harlock?
'It's nothing. A nightmare. I'll be fine.'
You forget… we're bound, you and I, my friend. Don't try and bullshit me.
'I said it's nothing. Go back to counting circuits, or whatever you do to pass the time…'
He stood up shakily and made his way to the bathroom. In the back of his head, Tochiro carried on chuntering away about just what the hell do you think I do all day? Who do you think keeps the life support on, the navigation at lightspeed or IN-SKIP… monitors the comms…
He tuned it out. He'd become rather adept at that over the last ten years. A matter of survival for what was left of his sanity. Humans after all were not telepathic, and hadn't evolved the mental barriers to cope with the continuous chatter.
One reason he drank so damned much. For however brief a time, his thoughts were his own.
One reason…
'Shut up, Tochiro.' He stared in the mirror at his reflection. His one remaining eye was bloodshot, the eye red and slightly swollen. 'Allergies…' he muttered under his breath, trying to ignore the little bullshit coughed into his head by a ghost. His hair was tangled, but he made no effort to try and comb his fingers through it. Short of shaving it all off, it would just keep falling into his eyes anyway, and he rather preferred that. It covered the blank space where his right eye had once been, the sunken socket covered by a flap of skin and a mass of white keloid scars, vanishing into his hairline. 'Not so pretty now, are you?' he muttered at the man in the mirror. 'But still... '
Still… He was only two years older than his wife, and she… she was if not old, noticeably older. The hard years on the run had taken their toll, as had four children. She looked her age. Would get older. Would get old. Whilst he…
...he looked the same age he'd been when he went into the maelstrom. A shade over thirty, but looking about five years younger even then. Not even the scar on his face and his missing eye made him look any older.
He put his fist through the mirror, and held his hand there until the wisps of dark matter began to close the wounds they oozed out of. The mirror also healed as he turned away, the ship repairing anything that it saw as a part of itself. By the time he'd walked into the shower and was standing under the powerful jets, it was completely unblemished.
The same, he thought, could not be said of himself. He leaned against the wall with his palms flat against it, letting the water beat down on his back. Scars covered his forearms, long healed relics of old wars.
Youthful high jinks more like. You got most of those…
'Tochiro…' He growled out the name. Mercifully, the little man finally shut up.
He felt, rather than heard, the shower door open and shut behind him. 'You're lucky,' he told Mimay, 'that I know damned well there's only the two of us on this ship.'
'I am not now, nor have I ever been, afraid of you.'
That darker part of him, that had been prowling around his head all day on a short leash, finally broke free of his iron control. 'Well perhaps you should be.' He turned - always fast on his feet for a man so tall, and pinned her against the wall between his arms, his body pressed up against hers, allowing her no room to move - or to jab a crafty knee into his suddenly, unexpectedly insistent erection. He could feel her heart fluttering against his chest, and she trembled.
Ashamed of himself, he stood back, freeing her. She was so tiny… so delicate. A little caged bird in his hands he could have snuffed out with one hand around her long, slender neck. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you…'
'Yes, you did.' She made no attempt to move. She stared up at him with her enormous round eyes, the third eyelid occasionally flickering over their alien depths. Like the ocean, her eyes: cool clear water on the surface, over the dark abyss of her ancient soul. He did sometimes wonder how old she was.
'You're trembling,' he pointed out, in a softer voice.
'Not from fear.' She moved so fast he didn't see it coming, and then he was the one pinned against the wall, her slim, long fingered hands holding his wrists in a vice like grip, and try as he might, he couldn't break their hold on him, or move her smaller frame. Her strength was phenomenal.
And to add insult to injury, his treacherous bloody cock was still taking a very obvious interest in affairs. He was blushing by the time she released his wrists, but surprisingly feeling very little inclination to move, even though the shower - having reached its maximum timed duration - was trickling to a stop, and he was feeling the slight chill of the cooling water dripping from his skin. 'I told you, I never had anything to fear from you.'
'So I see. One more little secret the nibelung kept from us?'
'Humans were already afraid… but if you saw us as delicate and fragile, your instincts were to protect, not to destroy.'
'It's the large eyes,' he said softly, trying to think of a way out of the awkward situation he found himself in. 'Gets us every time. Hence kittens. And small children. You should move… this is… awkward.' He placed a hand on her cheek. 'You're still trembling.'
'We crave contact… did you know that? To be alone… to miss the touch of a warm body… I do not know if there is a word in any of the human languages,' she replied, staring up into his eye. 'My people… we are very tactile. Close. We are not used to being alone…'
'I'm a pretty poor substitute for one of your kind,' he said hoarsely. Right about now he needed a drink. Something only a couple of steps removed from paint stripper preferably. The dark matter made sure he wouldn't lose motor or higher brain function permanently, but a couple of hours of complete mental incapacity and impotence would do.
'You are, as ever, too hard on yourself.' She moved into the circle of his arms and he couldn't help but put them around her, and hold her close. He could, through their bond, feel the ache, the loneliness that drove her to approach him.
Or maybe it was his own he felt.
'I may be the very last of my kind,' she said softly, her breath soft against his chest. 'Those few of us surviving were already bereft, longing for a home we could never return to, for people we would never see again. It tears us apart, to be so alone. It tears me apart to feel your pain, but feel that you would never yield enough to let anyone in.'
'Sehnsucht,' he whispered. 'We call it sehnsucht. The unbearable nostalgia for one's home, one's past… the constant search for an ideal you can never truly attain, and the pain… the pain of knowing those you love are lost to you forever. Mimay…' he pushed her away slightly to look down into her eyes, but didn't let go of her. 'Why come to me now?'
'Because today you acknowledged, for the first time, what you've known in your heart since we began. That you cannot go back. There is no return to the life you had. Like Niflheim, Earth abides, but is gone. Now, we truly only have each other.'
'It's hardly fair,' he murmured, 'for you to be the rebound girl…' He laughed sadly at her blank expression. 'Oh… never mind.' He placed a hand on her face and she leaned into it, like a cat wanting a headrub. 'Silly, sweet, dangerous, duplicitous little nibelung…' he murmured. 'Maybe I should be the one who needs to be wary…' He gave her a push out of the cubicle, but instead of the warmth of the drying field, she headed for the hot tub, entering it with a lithe grace and a little squeal of delight as she lowered herself up to her neck in the water. Ignoring the water which slashed onto the wetroom floor to cover his large feet, he leaned on the edge and stared at her. 'What is it you love so much about this, anyway? Are you part selkie?'
She smiled sadly at him. 'The warm water is like… being held. I like the feeling of being surrounded, the pressure. It's… comforting.'
'You'll wrinkle up like a prune if you stay in there too long.'
Fuyakate, Tochiro added helpfully. We had a word for it in Japan. Comes of being a culture that has so many hot springs…
'Have you nothing better to do than snoop on my private time?' Harlock asked him.
Not really, no. The only visitor I had all day was my bird, and he's sitting up in the wiring pulling feathers out because someone shut him out of his quarters and wouldn't cuddle him… He giggled. Seems both alien birds are in need of a bit of tender loving, Harlock.
Maya's words came back to him, the words that had cut like a knife at the time, but now… "He was there when I needed someone. His gentleness, his compassion were what saved me, and I owed him for that"
He held out a hand to the alien beauty who'd been beside him ever since it had all started to go so very wrong… and who, apart from Tochiro, was probably the only person who believed in him enough to help him put things to rights. 'Come here, little prune. I still say I'm a poor substitute for company, but if you can put up with my nightmares…'
She wriggled over, happily squirming into his arms, although stopping to strip off the sweaty sheets put a crimp in any proceedings for a good half hour. By the time he was lying in his bed again with Mimay's neat little bottom under his hand, the idea of having a few crewmembers around was starting to grow on him… even if to have someone to clean the place up a little. And do the laundry…
Told you. So where do we start recruiting?
'The frontier worlds, probably. I'd prefer ex-fleet to the dregs that float around from berth to berth. I may be an outlaw but I still have some standards. And stop spying on me.'
Fussy bugger… And why would I stop? Can't get my rocks off any other way now, can I? Though get you, never knew you could be so open-minded, especially after you got so testy with Yngwie…
'That was because it was Yngwie. And I was married.'
Yeah… about that. You really shouldn't put precious metals in the head, you know. Plays havoc with the reclamation system.
'Tochiro?'
Mmm?
'Fuck off'