CHAPTER 3: Conversations by Firelight
AUTHOR: MNEMOSYNE
SUMMARY: On a lush planet devoid of sentient life, the crew of the Enterprise discover an ancient alien religious artifact that takes two of the crew on a vision quest to Camelot.
The crackling fire was all Hoshi heard when she woke several hours later, curled in a ball and cuddled under the blankets like a kitten asleep in the yarn basket. She woke quickly, unsure of what had roused her. Her eyes opened, and she found herself staring into the unblocked apricot flames of the fire, which danced merrily in its hearth. It had obviously been stoked recently.
Malcolm, however, was not there.
"Malcolm?" she murmured groggily, pushing up onto one elbow and clutching the blankets tightly around herself to ward off the chill that invaded the bedroom beyond the fire's cheerful glow.
"I'm here."
Her eyes snapped to the window. It took a moment for them to adjust to the darkness after the bright flames of the fire, but she was soon able to make out his lean body reclining in the chair by the window. He didn't seem tense; quite the opposite. He looked relaxed to a fault, ready to slide out of the seat and collapse in a puddle on the floor. One side of his face was lit silvery-blue by the full moon, while the other side remained writhed in shadow, disturbed only occasionally by a lick of firelight.
"Why are you up?" she asked quietly, sliding into a sitting position and keeping the blankets wrapped warmly around her body. Malcolm must have been freezing, sitting bare-chested by the drafty window, beyond the reach of the fire's warmth. A shiver worked down her spine thinking about it. "Couldn't you sleep?"
"No."
Hoshi frowned at his tone. Quiet; accepting. Not at all what she'd come to expect from the temperamental armory officer. "Why not?" She smiled slightly, trying to coax the same from him. "Bad dreams?"
"In a way."
THIS, on the other hand, she expected. This stubborn, mysterious, secretive behavior. Malcolm had never been a man who relished telling his secrets. "What sort of way?" Hoshi asked, determined to ferret out whatever the problem was and kill it now, before it became a full blown disaster in the near future.
"Nothing, important, Hoshi. I'm fine. Go back to sleep."
The communications officer felt herself bristle. "I'm fine." "You know, you should have that tattooed somewhere prominent on your body, Malcolm," she snapped, glaring at him. "You're not fine. If you were fine, you'd be snoring away like a happy little schoolboy right now, instead of brooding in a cold room in an even more uncomfortable chair. Obviously something has you worried. I'm guessing it's not our predicament, because that's hardly a secret. Which means it has to be something to do with YOU. Yes, YOU. The implacable, indestructible tactical officer who doesn't need anyone's help at anytime, because he's tougher than your average bear. Well, wise up, buddy. We're stuck in this mess together, and whatever is affecting YOU therefore affects ME by default. So quit the shadow routine and tell me what's going on. NOW." She arched an eyebrow in true T'Pol fashion and kept her eyes glued to his face, determined not to let him wiggle his way out of this one. Perhaps she was being a little too harsh with him, but she was tired and cold and in an unusual bed surrounded by unusual sounds. She figured he could forgive her a little crankiness.
Malcolm stared back at her for a while, but Hoshi refused to give in to the pressure his eyes exerted. Amazing, really; even cloaked in shadow, his eyes were like magnets, simultaneously drawing her in and pushing her away. She'd never before realized how dangerous a quality that was. If she were a criminal faced by this man, she wouldn't know whether to give herself up for lost, or run as fast and as far as she could to escape him. His eyes caused deadly indecision. In that split second of hesitation, he could pounce. Which was what made him so good at his job, and so difficult an opponent right now. He was waiting for her to either give up and let him win, or else turn tail and run away. To succeed, she had to meet him on his own ground and not back down.
//Easier thought than done,// she thought grimly.
Finally, whether because he was still too drunk to put up a fight, or because he was too tired to care, Malcolm sighed and looked away. Hoshi felt a tiny furl of happy flame light up inside her belly at the knowledge of this minor personal victory.
But her happiness was short-lived. "I'm forgetting," Malcolm murmured, staring at the craggy windowsill.
Hoshi tilted her head to the side. "Forgetting?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "Forgetting what?"
She watched him reach out with one long fingered hand to rub his thumb against the edge of the window. "Little things," he replied quietly, absorbed by the actions of his fingers. "Big things. Things I know for certain I ought to remember, but don't." Looking away from the window, his eyes met hers again, and this time there was no repulsion in his gaze. He sucked her in immediately and held tight. "I don't know who I am anymore, Hoshi."
"You're Malcolm," she murmured in reply, speaking slowly, trying to keep a tremble out of her voice. A vivid memory of their conversation earlier that night surfaced in her mind. "Anything but that. Anything but the name of the lover you wish I was. Though I would be partial to Arthur."
Malcolm barked out a bitter laugh and looked away again. Hoshi felt a terrible pain behind her eyes as their locked gazes broke apart. "Malcolm?" he snorted derisively. "Is that who I am?"
"Yes."
"Are you so sure? Are you so positive of that, Hoshi?"
She nodded as firmly as she could muster. "I remember the times Malcolm has saved my life," she told him. "I remember eating dinner with him. I remember laughing with him. I won't believe those memories are somehow a lie."
"Funny," he said, though there was no humor in his voice. "Those are precisely the things I DON'T remember." Fixing her with a piercing gaze, he continued. "Though I do remember other things. Things this… Malcolm wouldn't know."
Hoshi swallowed. "Like…what?"
He moved then. Swifter than a cat, lithe as a ripple of suede, until he was half-kneeling on the edge of the bed beside her, hovering like a storm cloud. "I remember you," he whispered. "But here comes the strangest of all - I remember things you've yet to do." He tilted his head, like a curious child examining a china doll, and idly touched her hair. "I remember how you will betray me."
Hoshi stopped breathing. "Malcolm-" she whispered, but he cut her off.
"No!" he snarled, twining his fingers tightly in her hair and yanking her head back. Hoshi yelped in pain. "That is not my name! I am Arthur Pendragon, king of the Britons, and you will address me as such, though you may be a whore of Babylon!"
Tears of pain and fear pricked at Hoshi's eyes, but she refused to let them fall. "You said you were forgetting," she forced out hoarsely, through a rapidly closing throat. "You didn't say you'd forgotten everything. I don't believe this is you, Malcolm. Or Arthur. I don't believe either of you are the kind of man who would treat a woman this way." She swallowed, and saw his sharp eyes follow the bobbing of her throat.
A moment later, she felt his angry fingers loosen, then fall from her hair. She gasped and rolled away from him a space, scrambling back against the headboard and staring at him. He had slumped forward over his lap, broken.
"You are right," he whispered, barely audible. "You are right, my love. I can…never apologize enough. I… I am besieged."
"Besieged by what?" Hoshi asked, not bothering to hide the shaking of her voice this time.
"Images. Sights. Memories…" The armory officer looked up, his normally clear eyes clouded with confusion. "I do not remember where I was born. Or rather, I remember precisely, but twice. I… I remember Tintagel, but it is as if the memory is at war with another, equally vivid one. I remember… I remember… oceans?"
Hoshi felt her heart break a little at the utter distress and bewilderment in his voice. He was staring at her as if she could somehow demystify the puzzle of his conflicting lives. "Malcolm, I…" She sighed with frustration and pushed herself out from under the blankets, then crawled across the brief space between them and twined her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.
"I don't know how to fix this, Malcolm," she whispered near his ear, rubbing his shoulders with firm, smooth strokes. "I don't know how to make this better. But I can tell you that you ARE Malcolm Reed, and that I haven't forgotten one moment of time we've spent together." She pressed her chin against his shoulder and closed her eyes, rocking their bodies gently from side to side.
Malcolm's arms wrapped around her middle, holding on for dear life. "Guinevere…" he whispered against her hair.
Her grip tightened. "Hoshi," she told him. "I'm Hoshi."
A shudder worked through him. "I meant that," he told her. "I meant Hoshi…." His hands skimmed over her back. "I remember you, Hoshi…"
"Do you?" It was getting decidedly harder to breathe. The air was thinning out; her lungs were fluttering with the effort of drawing a breath.
Lips touched the delicate skin behind her ear. "Yes…" Warm breath heated the cool skin of her shoulder. "I remember you."
"Who are you?"
"Malcolm Reed."
"Are you sure?"
She heard him moan faintly near her ear. Then, slowly, he drew back. "No," he whispered, gazing into her eyes, apology written all over his face.
Hoshi had to fight back a curse. "I-"
"I… I am not sure who I am, Hoshi," he murmured, cutting her off. "But… I DO remember you." He cupped her cheek. "Both of you. Vivid as rose petals on snow."
Letting her eyes drift shut, Hoshi leaned into his touch. "What do you remember?"
"I remember seeing you for the first time. How scared you were to be traveling so fast and so far." His thumb stroked over her cheekbone. "I remember telling Merlin I would marry you. I remember pineapple cake. I remember naming you queen. "
Hoshi released a slow shaky breath and opened her eyes. She was shocked to feel tears slide down her cheeks as she did so. "Malcolm…" she whispered.
He smiled. "I will be whoever you want me to be, dearest. I will be any man for you."
The lump in her throat made it impossible to swallow. "Don't," she whispered, drawing away from his hand and averting her eyes. "I… I'm confused…"
"So was I, when I first woke. But I find it is a bearable confusion, once it has been accepted."
"No," she said firmly, looking at him again. "No, you don't understand."
Malcolm frowned. "How so, dearest?"
She grabbed his hand again and held it to her cheek. "I remember those things, too," she whispered. "I remember them all."
Silence reigned for the next hour, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the steady breathing of the bed's two inhabitants. Hoshi had her cheek pillowed on Malcolm's shoulder, and he had his arm wrapped securely around her waist. It was a protective posture for the pair of them, as though each was trying to keep the other from somehow melting away like morning mist.
An hour later, almost to the minute, Malcolm broke the silence.
"I do not understand this, Hoshi," he said softly, staring at the bed's canopy. "This vision we both remember… What does it hope to prove? How does destroying who we were fulfill its purpose?"
"It was not designed for humans," Hoshi murmured in reply, barely aware of the new dignity of her speech. "It was designed for a race long dead and far removed from us. How it interacts with species outside its province is entirely in the hands of God."
"But what does it MEAN?" Arthur's calm diplomacy was interrupted for a moment by Malcolm's tell-tale impatience. "How are we to see this vision through to the end if we cannot see it from the outside and read its meaning? When we have become so completely involved in it that we BECOME what it has deigned us to be."
Hoshi sighed. These were questions she had been debating throughout their hour of silence. It kept her mind occupied, away from the frantic scouring of memories, some duplicated, others vanished. What had been her nicknames as a child? What day had she been born?
She felt him sigh. "I should never have crossed that threshold," he murmured, his hand stroking her back. "Then this would never have happened."
Hoshi pushed herself up, off his shoulder, and stared down into his eyes. "If you say that one more time, Malcolm Pendragon, I will beat you bruised and bloody. This is not, nor has it ever been, your fault."
She could tell from his eyes he didn't believe her. "The blame must rest somewhere, and my shoulders are strong."
"Your shoulders already bear far more than they should." She kissed his arm, before realizing that Hoshi would not do such a thing, though Guinevere would. "You carry the world and the moon about your neck, my Lord, as though you somehow were responsible for all the problems beneath their dominion."
"I am king."
"You are NOT." She paused. "Not entirely. And if you were, you would still not be responsible for the poor planting of crops by a farmer in Normandy. You are NOT God."
Malcolm closed his eyes, but said nothing.
Confound the man. He was not helping her make sense of this nonsensical vision, and she couldn't decipher it on her own. "Do you wish to get out of here?" she asked tersely.
"Yes."
"Then do not waste your energies on futile flagellation." She touched his cheek and he opened his eyes. She smiled. "Who are you?"
He frowned. "You know I do not know."
"But you do. This vision has told you. What does it say when you hear it in your head?"
Malcolm's frown deepened. "It does not… SPEAK to me. I does nothing but plague me with too many memories and too few answers."
Hoshi's frustration began to skyrocket. "This is not helping!" she snapped. "Do not tell me how this vision makes you FEEL. Tell ME what this vision is telling YOU." Grasping at straws, she asked, "What do you remember?"
"Of what?"
"Of anything! What are you remembering now, this moment, as we lie here?"
"Our wedding night."
That took her aback. "You are?"
He smiled fondly and nodded. "Yes."
Fighting back a blush, she asked, "What do you remember?"
His hand began to move on her back again, rubbing slowly up and down. "I remember how shy we both were," he murmured. "We were still children then, hardly aware of our own bodies, let alone each other's."
He tugged her closer and pressed his nose into her hair. "I remember how sweet you smelled. Like honey. You told me you'd bathed in honey and milk, and it lingered around you like a flower's perfume. I remember kissing your arm…" Lost in memory, he repeated the action, grazing his lips against Hoshi's upper arm.
She shivered, but didn't push him away. "What else?" she whispered.
"You do not remember?" he teased, nipping wickedly at the side of her neck.
Hoshi blushed. "Of course I do," she protested weakly. "I… What do you remember… AFTER that?"
Malcolm sighed and rested back against the pillows, staring into her eyes. "Nothing."
Untrue. "It does not suit you to lie," she told him softly. "It does not suit your countenance."
"The truth is less flattering."
"Nonetheless, I would hear it." She stroked his hair back behind his ear. "What do you remember?"
He sighed again and turned his head away to gaze at the fire. "Waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
Silence.
"Malcolm…"
"Arthur."
"Do not quibble with me!" She could throttle him. It was like pulling teeth from an unwilling victim. "What were you in wait for?"
When he looked back to her eyes, Hoshi felt as though a bucket of icy water had been dumped over her body.
"An heir," he whispered.
Oh.
"Oh…" she echoed her silent thoughts.
He exhaled and closed his eyes in unison. "Waiting," he went on. "For so many years now. The whispers. The glances. The questions." He held her tightly. "Hoshi… Guinevere… I could not give you up, though Merlin swore you would be my ruin. But this failure consumes me. It is the earth and moon I wear about my neck. It is the world upon my shoulders. It is my ultimate fault." She could hear the emotion building in his throat.
"What man am I," he whispered hoarsely, "that I cannot even give children to the woman I love more than my life, my kingdom, and my crown?" He shook his head, looking away. "What man am I, then, to rule this kingdom? Who could call me king?"
Hoshi didn't speak. Instead, she cupped his face between her pale hands and tilted his eyes back up to look at her. "You are not the only one waiting, my Lord," she whispered. "You are not the only one who suffers. And I believe I know this vision, now. I believe I knew it all along."
TBC…