CHAPTER 14: I'll Whisper With My Final Breath
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
RATING: R, for violence and some language
CATEGORY: Angst, Drama, Romance, Action, Deathfic
CODES: R/S (heavy on the R) with touches of everyone
APPROXIMATELY THREE YEARS EARLIER
He spent too much time with guns. It was beginning to affect his mind.
The gym was empty, except for Malcolm Reed, some barely tested equipment, and two new phase pistols, still heavily smelling of gun oil and grease. They didn't work on the lever and pump action of projectile weapons, but Malcolm was a man who believed strongly in caring for a weapon in the old fashioned way. The personal touch made them last.
Guns, he had decided long ago, were perfection in a small package. Guns were not the cold blooded, senseless killers so many people believed them to be. If they had one fault, it was excessive hedonism, outdone only by the self-indulgence practiced by those who wielded them. The selfish, high-living urge to mete out life and death sentences was a force as potent as alcohol, and more addictive than heroine.
Which was why he'd become an Armory officer. Not for a free rein to strike out senselessly, but to learn the temperance necessary to become a learned man of weapons, in all their shapes and sizes, colors and smells. For a long time, his family history had consisted of men and their guns, and the women who loved them. As a child, his father's first gift to him had been a water gun and a set of HoloSoldiers. His mother had looked on with a beaming smile. His sister had been jealous.
The gun, he decided, was perfect because it didn't feel. If it was used to kill, it didn't know what it had done. If it was used to light a fire, it didn't revel in the heat it had created. It did it's job, and that was the end of it. If left alone in a box on a shelf, it would be good as new if called upon to do its duty at some later date.
Sometimes, he wished he had been born a gun. Guns didn't need to worry about choices - they did as they were told. Guns didn't have to choose a uniform and wear it proudly. Guns didn't have overbearing fathers and nagging mothers. Guns weren't afraid of things like riptide and undertow. And it would have been very nice, he thought, to have been put in a box high on a shelf, left to his own devices, without a care in the world or the stars above it. Very nice indeed.
The upkeep of a gun was very simple; just a matter of keeping it free of outside pollutants so that all its gears and internal mechanics functioned smoothly. But what if the gun owner were to feed the pistol pollutants? he pondered quietly. What then? It was self-defeating to clog a weapon.
But what if the weapon was already known to be defective? Would it really matter then?
Perhaps he had been born a gun, he mused. Not a new and shining phase pistol, like he held now, but an antique blunderbuss with a faulty flashpan that cracked in a crisis. Broken from the beginning, ousted at the outset; a whole slew of alliterative phrases, all coming down to one conclusion.
He was flawed merchandise, and as such, expendable.
His parents had been furious when he joined Starfleet; father especially. But the fury had been expected. It was the utter lack of opposition after the initial rage that had been the most telling. His calling was the Royal Navy. It had been written on the roles eons before he was born, that Malcolm Reed would take to the sea as soon as he was of age. His parents should have fought tooth and nail to keep him out of the Academy. But they didn't. Which meant one of two things: either they knew it was fruitless, or they didn't really care. Malcolm was inclined to believe the latter.
He stared at the phase pistol, and thought about being selfish. Hedonistic, like the gun itself.
All sales are final. Faulty merchandise is unreturnable.
He wondered if his mother had ever seen his birth certificate as a binding sales receipt, and cursed it.
The gun smelled like gun oil and grease, but it wasn't an unpleasant smell. He could take this pistol apart and rebuild it in no time, better than before; that was what he had been trained to do. It was a shame, he thought idly, that no one could do the same for him.
It might be nice to be selfish for once. To mete out a little life and death on his own terms. Return a little faulty merchandise.
Silently, he flicked the setting from Stun to Kill.
"Lieutenant?"
Looking up quickly, Malcolm found himself staring into the eyes of Ensign Hoshi Sato, the ship's communications officer. "Ensign," he said, trying to recover himself a bit. "May I help you?"
"We have a training session, Lieutenant," she said uncomfortably. "Remember? You told me to meet you here?"
He almost winced as he remembered. "Of course, Ensign." He surreptitiously flicked the phase pistol back to Stun. "I apologize. I was considering some possible upgrades to the phase pistol design. I'm afraid I got a bit distracted."
She smiled a little. "I know how that goes," she assured him. "I get that way with the UT."
Malcolm nodded, and managed a small smile. "Okay then. Let's get started. If you'd care to pick up that weapon there?"
He watched as the slender young woman lifted the other phase pistol, and resisted the urge to shake his head and cluck his tongue at the improper grip she used. She was just learning, after all - he couldn't fault her for form. Yet.
"I'm warning you," she told him, "I wasn't good at the Academy, and I certainly haven't gotten any better. My aim is far from perfect."
//I know,// he thought, watching her quietly for an indulgent moment. "Nobody's perfect, Ensign," he told her softly. "But we'll get you close."
She smiled at him, and he felt something in his stomach light up like a candle flame. He looked at her improper grip again, and decided she was beautiful.