"Curse me for a fool."
Ajeya was glad Diartr was behind her on the other side of her ship's cabin. His bitterness was difficult enough for her to bear. The fact he had said these exact words years ago, when he had discovered what she had done on Hellguard and ended their marriage, was worse.
"She's yours. Isn't she, Ajeya?"
She whirled on him. "Don't talk about her like that! You make her sound like something she's not." Her wounded leg throbbed and her head suffered under the loss of blood. The pressure bandage worked, but she needed to seal the wound with the medical kit Diartr had smuggled into her.
He crossed the distance between them and grabbed her arms. "She's yours, Ajeya! You can't deny that!"
"She's my mistake, that's the only thing she is! One I asked you to help me erase."
"I almost did before I realized what I was about to do." His voice grew harder. "You weren't planning to kill her child."
It wasn't a question.
She couldn't stop the grin from spreading when those black eyes and so serious little face came back to mind, so defiant in refusing to show fear. Ajeya remembered the first time she stood up to someone; she had picked too big a target as well.
"Diartr, do you know what a le-matya is?" The word teased at her memory, but wouldn't come forward.
"No. What does that have to do with this?"
"Nothing. And yes, the child is safe."
"Good to know you won't kill your own granddaughter."
She started to deny that relationship, but he cut her off. "That leaves her mother. Prove to me Saavik has wronged you, and I will gladly kill her."
She said nothing, suddenly tired of the argument before it really began. She removed the bandages from her leg and hip, and started to seal the deep, jagged tear Saavik cut across them.
"Here, give that to me," Diartr said. He took the medical kit gently from her hands. "You're making a mess of yourself."
Now she couldn't speak for a different reason. He sat her down on her bunk, and his dark head bent over her. He cut away the blood soaked uniform, clearing the entire area around the long wound. She inhaled sharply when his fingers probed it.
He looked up. "Did I hurt you?"
"No."
The wound hurt, but that wasn't the reason for her reaction. It was feeling his touch again. She had dimmed the lights in the sleeping area, mostly as a relief after the brightness the Arongotu insisted on down below, and partly so she couldn't clearly see Diartr's harsh expression. Now, though, the soothing light wrapped them in intimacy. She became very aware they sat on her bed.
She caught some of the flash from his white teeth as he said, "You know, you wouldn't have so many scars if you learned how to do this right. Lean back more."
The pain numbed as he sealed the injury, then tingled with the new, healing skin. Her hand reached out to slide into his thick hair when he spoke again. The smile was gone, and the skin drew tight over his wide cheekbones down to the chin.
"Don't think I didn't notice you didn't answer me earlier. When I asked you what this Saavik has done."
A very different ache weighed her down. Saavik was still alive, and once again she came between Ajeya and her mate.
She cost me you, Diartr. Isn't that enough?
Maybe that was why she sounded so tired as she answered him. "You saw for yourself she wants me dead. Since when can't I get rid of a threat?"
"She's claiming her right for what you've done to her. You would do the same, Ajeya. How long have you known she's yours?"
She snatched the medical kit from his hands and leapt up from the bed. The newly healed wound twinged, but she ignored it as she threw off the remnants of her uniform and began healing the smaller injuries.
Diartr stood and crossed his arms over his chest. "You want me to kill a Starfleet captain and do it in a way so that ship doesn't bear down on us, then I want to know everything. I can't see her finding out about you first. It's easier that you found out about her, but how? I read her record. Impressive, and now that I know the truth, I can see you in it. But it doesn't tell me how you knew. Was it the name?"
"What does it matter how I figured it out! I told you she's a threat!"
"You told me a lot of things."
She knew what was coming next. She jerked on a black robe and pulled too hard on the belt. It didn't help get rid of what was building inside. She felt him move until he stood next to her, his mouth thin and tight, and like any time he ranted at her, his voice came out low and biting.
"You told me she was ours. You came to me, you slept with me so that I would believe the baby was ours. I used to put my hand on your stomach so that I could feel her kicking, and said she was just like Rakkas, another little girl anxious to get out. My mother joked that Ehiil lazily let you carry him until the healers made him come out, just like all boys, and we laughed. Do you remember that?"
"Diartr, if I had told you the truth--"
"Then you came back from another assignment and the baby was gone. You told me she died in childbirth, and I mourned for her! You held me while I tore myself apart over losing her! Why did I believe you this whole time that she had died when everything else you said was a lie!"
"What difference would it have made? You couldn't do anything if you had known she was alive."
"You're wrong. I could have brought her home."
Ajeya felt the blood actually drain from her face. "Are you insane? Bring her home? You act like she's the same as Ehiil and Rakkas. She's not! She wasn't a child, you can't think of her like that! She's a project that went wrong!"
"Listen to yourself! Ajeya, you gave birth to her. Even if she isn't mine, she's yours."
"No, she's not. She belonged to the scientists, she's just another lab animal in their experiments. Like I was only another piece of equipment."
He yelled after her as she stalked away, "Don't act so innocent. You raped that Vulcan. It wasn't some clean and sterile experiment, you raped him and you act like it was nothing!"
Her ravaged expression and hoarse voice stopped him in his steps. "Don't tell me what it was like. He was in my head, Diartr, did you ever think about that? You can't know what that fever does to them, and what it's like inside your mind."
"He had a wife. They weren't married yet, but they probably would have been soon. They had a mental link to each other. He kept trying to block what was happening from it, but the... mating drive they forced on him made him unable to stop the link from working, anymore than he could stop himself from being in my head. Her face was in his mind the whole time, and he kept thinking how it would be different with her, how it was her right to be with him, and not mine. He saw your face in my mind too, and some part of him thought he wronged you."
He asked me what wife would do this to her true mate. I made myself laugh at him and said why did he need to know? He looked insane and said, It satisfies my curiosity.
The same words Saavik would use years later.
"He -- He never hated before, he didn't even know what the word really meant, until me. He hated me. That was in his head too."
"Ajeya..."
"I can still feel him sometimes, and because of it, in some way, I know him better than you. Don't you think I know what -- what a mockery that makes of us? And what a travesty it was, after you being with me when Rakkas and Ehiil were born, to have him next to me when -- when..."
He waited, then said it for her. "When Saavik was born."
She swallowed. So did he.
He spoke softly. "I don't remember us considering Saavik when we talked about names."
"I didn't name her," Ajeya mumbled. "The scientists did. I didn't want to know."
"Did you see her?" he asked.
"I tried not to, but they brought her to him and I saw her then. They took her away right after that."
"So you didn't hold her and give her the gift of her name, and neither did he. What sort of birth is that?"
"Damn it, Diartr! Why won't you see that we didn't want this, not you or him, not me!"
He slid a lock of her hair through his fingers, watched it under the light, before he carefully laid it next to her cheek. "Then why did you do it?"
She tried to lean into that hand, but it was already gone. "You know why."
"Power."
"No! To save my House from a Praetor stripping it of everything it was. My mother is dead! My father is a servant for the vermin that infest his House after it was stolen from him! How could I see that happening and not do something to stop it?"
"And you think Hrollaef would want his House if he knew what did you to save it?"
"If the Hellguard project had worked, no one would be complaining about any of this!"
He seized her chin in a tight grip, eyes all at once burning. "Wrong."
She grabbed his wrist and saw the bruises Saavik had left on her hand. "Diartr! Tell me you didn't want better for Rakkas and Ehiil when they started out in the Fleet. You were the one who killed their patrons once we were in a position to get them someone better!"
He let go, and she dropped her hand. "I did. Those people deserved the deaths I gave them. You still haven't told me why Saavik deserves the death you want for her."
If I touched him again, would he pull away? He stood so close, she could feel his heat.
"She's a threat to me. Besides the vendetta she's claiming, she's a weapon in the wrong hands. If the wrong people find out about her, they'll use her to destroy everything we've rebuilt. You might be safe, but what happens to me or the children then? Do we fall on our Honor Blades?"
He stayed quiet a long moment while he thought over the real truth in what she had said. When he answered, he looked like he already mourned for her and their children. "I'm sorry, Ajeya, but if we end up redeeming ourselves through Final Honor -- and you know I would take it with you -- it will be because of what you did, not any fault of this Saavik. I will not kill her for a crime you committed."
There it was. The answer she always knew he would give, as if seeing her House destroyed and having him sever their marriage wasn't enough punishment for Hellguard.
But he must know, he has not convinced me anymore than I can convince him.
He started for the door.
"Kiyhu."
He turned at her use of his most private name. The waves in his dark hair, the strong lines to him, the ease with which he moved... he still made her heart hammer.
"Don't go."
He gave a sad, small laugh. "Only you would ask that after all this."
She looked away. She didn't want to see his bitterness come back. "You're probably right."
"Then why?"
Because I'm hurting and I'm tired, and I can't stand to watch you walk out on me again.
He was suddenly around her, standing next to her side as his arms folded across her chest and waist, and he buried his face in her neck.
"a'Eshni," he whispered, using her secret name. His warm breath stroked her skin. "You are the great love of my life. I became passionate about things because you're that way. It made me want to be the same."
Her eyes squeezed shut.
"I left," His breath now was near a cry, and so was hers. "because I didn't know the Ajeya who was capable of doing what you did on Hellguard. I couldn't recognize you, and I couldn't be married to that. I was afraid of that part of you coming back again, and she has. She was down on that planet asking me to kill her daughter."
She bit back the words that Saavik wasn't hers. Something else was more important: him.
"But she's not here now, Kiyhu."
He only burrowed further into her, the way he always had when he was troubled and they were together.
"Stay with me," she said.
"It won't change anything."
"No, it won't." She drew closer into the shelter of his body. "But stay."