Chapter Sixty-Eight
Black King v White Queen
General Malcolm Reed
She's trying, I'll give her that.
She starts off a bit wobbly, losing two pawns and a knight in fairly short order, but after that she settles down and starts thinking. I set a couple of traps, which she sees and avoids. She sets one for me, which I see and don't avoid. The sacrifice is worth it to see the delight with which she swoops on my hapless Queen's Rook and captures it.
I'm going soft.
After that I'm not giving her any more freebies. We play for a while and it gets very cagey. I can hear her breathing, which is a dead giveaway.
It strikes me suddenly that this is like the game I played on the other Enterprise. She's nothing like as good as Mayweather, but there's exactly the same air of tense concentration.
Once, a long time ago, I watched a friend's kitten in the back garden. It was practising hunting on the lawn, stalking a leaf that was fluttering in the wind. A little ginger thing it was, hardly the size of my hand, but in its heart that kitten was a lion out on the Serengeti Plains. Every paw-fall brought it closer to the kill. Anyone looking down at it could see it was about as much of a threat as a bag of marshmallows, but on the inside that little bloke was a regular marauder, closing on a big juicy antelope which hadn't a prayer.
I pretend to rub my mouth in case Liz looks up and catches me grinning. The similarity between her and that bloody kitten is unbearably funny. The only thing that's missing is the infinitesimally quivering little tail.
I could blow the leaf away in three moves, but I'll let it flutter a little longer.
=/\=
"Checkmate."
There are a creditable number of gaps in my ranks by the time I slip the Black Queen's Bishop lethally into the head of the diagonal opposite the paralysed White King. The King has only one possible move, and my remaining King's Rook has that covered.
The kitten's look of disappointment as the leaf finally flutters away is so comical that I rub my mouth again. It won't do anything for my image to be seen laughing, not laughing like this, as if I–
"I had you worried, admit it!" she blusters, snatching up the bishop and dropping it in my teacup, which is fortunately empty.
So she has, but not in the least in the way she thinks. I was never even slightly concerned that I was going to lose the chess game, but suddenly I'm confronted by a possibility so unthinkable that for a moment I don't even recognise it.
"Witless," I reply mechanically, staring at her.
At best I'd always thought she was mediocre in the attractiveness department. There were times – most of them solely down to me – when she looked downright ugly. Now, in a moment of stunning revelation, I find myself thinking she's beautiful.
Put her next to T'Pol or even Amanda Cole and she's not in their league. She hasn't got luscious curves and a pouting mouth, and legs that go all the way up to her armpits. I still don't see Helen of Troy sitting opposite me, pretending to sulk and glaring at me over her crossed arms like I fed her favourite banana sandwich to an ostrich.
And that doesn't make a blind bit of difference.
The pieces have to be put away in the box. If she asks for another game I'll say I'm too tired, and in the meantime I buy time by carefully putting the white pieces in first and then the black ones on top. There are a few drops of tea on my ill-used and innocent King's Bishop, which I wipe carefully on my bath-sheet because that will buy me a few precious extra seconds.
I put the box aside and look at her across the table. She's still glaring at me, but she's trying not to laugh, and she really is terrible at pretending to be a big bad tiger-cat when at heart she's not much more than a kitten.
A kitten with the heart of a lion.
"Well? We never did decide what the forfeit was. So I suppose Mister Invincible gets to decide!"
Her eyes are brimming with laughter. I think for two pins she'd empty her lemonade glass over my head, though with any luck this is not in keeping with proper patient care and I'll complain to Miguel if she does.
I cross my own arms, sit back and look calculating. Fortunately I'm much, much better at pretending than she is.
It crosses my mind that this is the first time in a very long while that I have someone at my mercy. Not that I have the faintest urge to inflict the slightest harm on her, and that in itself is a startling discovery. And it's not just gratitude, though I've had to acknowledge the size of the debt I owe this remarkable woman, if only in the privacy of my own well-barricaded heart.
Over the past weeks and months I've come to realise and finally accept that something inside me is waiting for her step at the door, that when she walks into my room it feels as though the sun has come out. This is of course ridiculous, for here on Jupiter Station the chief source of natural light is the planet itself, reflecting sunlight from the vast storm-clouds that boil perpetually across its surface. Sol itself is dwarfed by contrast during those times when it's actually visible and not eclipsed by the planet or one of its sixty-nine moons as our orbit takes us round to the dark side of the gas giant. And yet, as furiously as I attempt to deride the comparison, it evades my derision. For all that modern cosmology has established that Sol is no more than a very minor star in a dull corner of a not very remarkable galaxy, still it's the star of home.
All this is far too much for me to think about now. It will require time and solitude, which may do something to calm the sudden panicked beating of my heart.
In the meantime, I have to come up with a forfeit, and the sudden rush of wild confusion that fills me isn't helping. Once again my utter inability to comprehend the female gender defeats me; physically I could draw a map of this woman's body, but what goes on in her mind is the deepest of mysteries. Her gaze on me engenders a few ideas as to what she may be hoping I'll suggest, but between doubt of my conclusions and fear of what a correct guess could lead to, I find myself completely tongue-tied.
Nevertheless, it's not good for my terrifying image to sit here gaping like a haddock on a fishmonger's slab. I have to come up with something...
...but what?
Desperation furnishes me with inspiration. I make my eyes go narrow. "For suffering ignominious defeat to vastly superior forces, I decree that you … must take a risk."
Now she's the one gaping. "What risk?"
Pleased with my own villainy as well as my deft escape, I shrug. "That's for you to decide.
"As long as it's not a very dangerous risk," I add hastily, with a sudden vision of her borrowing an EV suit and going for a stroll on the outer hull to wave in at me through the viewing port. As confident as I am in my ability to dodge a blast from a phase pistol when I'm up and about, in my present circumstances I have legitimate doubts of my ability to evade a justifiably angry Commodore Tucker demanding an accounting of why Liz Cutler was last seen entering Jupiter's atmosphere like a very small EV-suited comet.
She doesn't swear very often, which makes her epithet now mildly surprising, though I've been called worse.
"I lose, and you want me to save you the bother of thinking up a forfeit?" she scolds.
"M-hm." I nod complacently. "I'm not supposed to be stressed."
Her reply suggests that she would disregard this aspect of my health regimen if she had anything suitable to insert where the sun doesn't shine. Fortunately she doesn't seem to have a speculum to hand, though I suspect that the thought of rubber gloves is not far from her mind.
She sits back and thinks, one leg crossed over the other and the sandal dropping half off her rhythmically jouncing foot. Her gaze wanders the room, though I don't think she sees anything in it, and then returns to me.
And narrows.
In a way I find singularly unnerving.
I think about reminding her again that I'm not supposed to be stressed. I'm the patient here, and she's supposed to be safeguarding my welfare, not worrying me.
After a moment she stands up, and from being a play-hunting kitten she's suddenly acquired the fluidity of a stalking leopard. Holding my gaze, with a shove of her hip she pushes aside the table with the board and box on it, and stands directly in front of me.
I'm leaning back in my chair. I can't help it – this posture is confrontational in the extreme, and brings back a riot of memories that war inside me. In ordinary circumstances, the next thing to follow would be a blow to the head, and for all that I trust this woman more than I've ever trusted anyone in my life before (the realisation is in itself a revelation), instinct has me gripping the arms of the chair, bracing myself for the attack to come.
Instead of which, she bends forward and kisses me.
Over the course of our interactions, I've grown comfortable with lick-kisses. More than comfortable, if I'm honest; I've come to hope for them in a way that occasionally makes me despise my lack of moral fibre. But any distaste I feel for my own weakness is far outweighed by the pleasure I get from this act of intimacy, and so as soon as I pick up the tiny indications that suggest she may be testing my receptiveness, I act accordingly.
This, however, is not a lick-kiss.
Her hands rest along my jaw, and her lips against mine are softly insistent. Dazed, I allow myself to respond, my senses screaming.
I'm not unfamiliar with kisses, of course. Though Alpha and I were wolf-lovers and treated each other accordingly, Em was never conditioned – at least, not in the way we were. Over the many times she and I shared a bed, our mouths meeting was just one of the preliminary tools of arousal.
But this ... this is different. For the first time, a kiss speaks to me of tenderness.
Weakness...
But I can't accuse Liz of weakness. She endured everything I could do to her and survived it, and is still strong. Strong enough to forgive the monster I am, strong enough to take the risk that I thrust into her hands.
Is this weakness, or is it a power greater than my own?
She straightens up. The loss of her lips makes the room feel cold, and I control myself from making an instinctive grab; I have done more than my share of forcing. Over the last few weeks the determination has crystallised in me that however thankless I may be in the general way for my rehabilitation here, the days of me taking what I want by force are over, at least as far as Liz Cutler is concerned.
There is a tiny frown between her brows when she meets my eyes again. She's not sure if she's overstepped the mark, whether I'll be shocked or repulsed, but the lion-courage doesn't spare her from looking for my reaction.
As experienced as I am at controlling my expression, I'm not even sure what it is right now. There are so many emotions roiling away inside me, so many thoughts and feelings that I'll need time to process.
"I hope that didn't offend you," she says quietly.
Well. 'Offend', no, certainly not. 'Confuse', yes, and she can probably tell that from my face. But it's added new fuel to the suspicion I hardly dare name even to myself that this supposedly very average young woman has become something extraordinary to me.
If I don't answer, I can guess she'll think the worst.
I lick my lips, which are suddenly dry with nerves. "I don't think it was quite risky enough."
For a moment she simply studies me. Then she takes a step forward, straddling me, and sits down on my knees. Her chest is now directly opposite my face.
This is bad enough, but next second she takes hold of the zip tag of her tracksuit top, pulls it down and jerks the two halves apart. Underneath, she's wearing nothing but a bra that wouldn't stop me for half a second.
I've performed this movement so often it's second nature to me. Even before she's finished moving, my hands are gripping her wrists and thrusting them behind her, twisting them so I can imprison them one-handed, leaving the other free for mischief.
She jerks once, but doesn't struggle. She simply sits there, breathing fast, as if she's just suddenly realized what a horrible risk she's taken; and if this isn't about as dangerous as risks get, I personally can't think of many worse, from a woman's point of view. Especially knowing, as she undoubtedly does, what would normally follow once she's pinned in my grasp.
I sit unmoving, looking at the lovely, lace-covered curves straight in front of me, while my free right hand resting against my thigh clenches into a fist and unclenches again, several times. Then abruptly, I grab hold of the two halves of the top and pull them together. One-handed, I can't manage the zip, but I make sure she's decently covered.
My left hand relaxes slowly and I feel her wrists slip free. I wait for her to spring up, slap my face and walk out.
She doesn't.
My head droops forward until my forehead is resting against her breastbone. "I'm sorry," I say softly. "I'm just ... confused."
'Confused' is nowhere near adequate for the raging conflict inside me. For a split second I was aroused, as anyone with a sexual attraction to the female form would be, and then I heard the whispered words 'Perdóname, querido' and the lust was instantly mixed with a horror that effectively killed my desire. But this is hardly something I can confess to a young woman who has exposed herself to rape or ridicule, though at a guess the action indicates consent to some degree of sexual contact and she must be interpreting my actions as rejection.
I don't want her to feel that. I'm quite sure that she did what she did as a gesture of the deepest trust, and considering what I've done to her in the past it makes me dizzy to imagine the bravery it must have taken to present me with the temptation to revert to type. And underlying pretty well everything else is the nauseating thought that this isn't love – why the hell would she love me! – but a classic demonstration of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological response to the trauma I inflicted on her aboard Enterprise.
But whether that's true or not, she's offered herself – shown her trust, her belief that the monster I was is not only capable of change, but has actually begun to do it. The thought of her hurt at my rejection of her gift forces my unwilling tongue stumbling onwards. "It's not you ... nothing to do with you. It's ... her."
I could, with the same justification, say It's him. Between them they tore me asunder. In the dark hours of the night I've wondered whether I'll ever recover, ever be able to touch another body or be touched by one without thinking of either of them, without hate and lust and fear and grief.
But maybe it's Em's betrayal that cut deepest. She and I went back the furthest, meeting up shortly after I'd been assigned after my conditioning. I'm not sure you'd describe us as friends, it's never a term I'd have even considered applying to anyone in our line of work, but we ... I suppose you'd say we had an understanding. And even now I wish I could have said goodbye, wish I...
A shattering sob breaks out of my throat. "She hurt me, Liz!"
And then I'm weeping into Liz Cutler's breasts, spilling out all the pain and grief of what I've endured, while she strokes my hair and rocks me, cuddling my head and saying that everything will be OK now, that I'm safe, that things will get better.
I'm not sure she's telling the truth, but I'm too heartsick to refuse the comfort. A part of me drinks in the words like a man dying of thirst drinks clear cold water, and when at last I lie down exhausted and feel her pulling the blankets over me I have the oddest feeling that for all that the wound inside me is still raw and bleeding, a grain of poison has been drawn out of it.
She turns the lighting down, but she doesn't leave. She draws up a chair to the side of the bed and just sits there, holding my hand.
I'm so worn out that I know sleep will come quickly tonight, unlike sometimes when memories stalk me. The gentle touch of her fingers on mine seems to ward off the past, and yet again I marvel that she can forgive me enough to even bear to touch the hands that inflicted so much suffering on her.
Why does she care? How can she forgive what I did? In what universe could I possibly expect any woman to believe in a man who's done what I have?
Stockholm Syndrome, sneers the self-loathing voice in my mind, the voice that Ginny has told me to beware of, the voice that will try to destroy every hope of progress I have, every attempt to build myself into a man who doesn't have to survive by creating a desert and calling it peace.
The questions are simply too enormous. I haven't the energy to confront them, let alone try to work out an answer. And the last thing I feel before I slide off into sleep is a dim, jealous pang at the thought that she wouldn't feel the slightest unease in parking herself on the lap of a certain Commodore Tucker.
If you've enjoyed reading this, please consider leaving a review.