Xev landed the moth on the bridge and climbed out. "Welcome home, Kai," she said brightly, hopping out.
Stan looked in the back as Kai pulled himself out. "What about her?" he asked, geturing to Vlad.
"Leave her," said Kai. "I believe we should allow her to leave if she so desires it. She is of no threat to us anymore,"
Stan shrugged and headed after the ex-assassin, who was looking hesitantly around the bridge.
"Well?" said Xev, standing next to him. "What's wrong?"
"It looks the same," said Kai. "How was this possible?"
"Long story, dead man," said Stan, heading down the passageway to the galley. "I dunno about you two, but when you're ready, let's eat and get outta here before Vlad the Imapaler wakes up,"
"Speaking of looking the same," said Xev, brushing a strand of hair off his face. "You look the same as you did when we last saw you. Why?"
"I do not know," said Kai.
"So...are you really alive?" she asked hopefully. "All of you?"
"Yes, I believe so," Kai said hesitantly.
"Great!" said Xev, trying her best to remain platonically friendly.
Kai on the other hand, knew what she was getting at. "The cell was damaged Xev," he said. "I do not know how long this will last,"
"Oh," she said dejectedly. "In that case, come on, let's go into the galley. Vlad probably wants to be alone anyway,"
Kai nodded, and headed in the direction Stan went, but Xev caught him. Taken by surprise, he found himself stiffly placing his arms around her waist as she hugged him. She smiled, feeling that there was nothing mechanical pressing into her "What?" he asked.
"Wow...you really are alive," she said.
It was entirely inadvertant to him that he was actually enjoying this, but now that all the adrenaline had gone, he was feeling all the weaknesses of fatigue for the first time in a long time. "Xev...I do not think I will be eating with you and Stan, I just wish to sleep if it's all right,"
Xev smiled. Even though the Lexx had been his home for at least four years (not counting all the time all three of them had spent in cryosleep), he still acted as if he wasn't welcome. "Of course!" she said, touching his hand affectionately. "This is your home too, you know. There's an empty room next to mine, unless you'd like to stay with me,"
"No, I'll be fine on my own, thank you," said Kai. "It isn't that I do not appreciate it, it, but I suspect that it is not a good idea,"
Xev looked a little disappointed, but she quickly brightened again as he tried to explain that he wasn't quite used to everything yet. "That's okay," she said. "You're probably right,"
He thought a while and noticed he was still covered in his own blood from reopened wounds and the blood of the mutanted insect people. He walked off in search of the shower, pulling away from a dissapointed Xev, and then stopped. "Xev?" he asked quietly.
Xev looked back, as if she were expecting a question. "I believe I have forgotten where the showers are," he said.
She smiled, and grabbed his hand. "Well I haven't!" she said brightly. "I should have guessed you'd want to wash all the insect slime off,"
She dragged him in the opposite direction, and didn't understand why this irritated him. He wasn't sure if he should tell her that he was capable of following her on his own, but at this point, it didn't seem to matter much. Something felt as if it were pulling at him in his mind, and it felt like the darkest place he'd ever been.
Xev stopped at the showers, and looked to him expectantly. "Do you...want me to stay?" she asked.
"No...thank-you," said Kai. "I will...call you if I need you,"
At this point, it was still beyond him as to why she wanted so badly to stay with him. Then the idea hit him as he tried to remember how to work the mechanism that supplied the water. "Of course," he thought. "Habits do die hard,"
He waited until Xev left and adjusted the water in the shower room to tolerable levels. It wasn't so much that the hospital left a filthy feeling on one's being (even though it did), or that he was covered in blood, it was just that something was harassing him, and he knew he had to hide it from Xev.
He undressed and stood under the water, and let it run down his face, and over the cuts from all the glass and insect bites, wondering why it was so hard to breathe correctly as the water ran over his face in sheets. It wasn't so painful as it had been when he'd first awakened, but it was a different sort of pain. He felt as if he didn't want to be. The eternal cold feeling in his body was still there, and he couldn't help think that he may have come back wrong. Why was he feeling so regretful at being resurrected? Didn't he want to live?
"No," his mind concluded. "I don't belong here,"
He looked down at the cuts from the glass, and saw that a particularly large one over his left shoulder blade had reopened, probably from Vlad's struggling to get away, and blood was now trickling down the drain along with the water. Pain was a new feeling too, and his body was hating him at the moment. A sudden wave of newly-found hatred hit him, mixed with the regret of not being decarbonized anymore, along with disgustion for his body's weakness. As he punched at the wall with his fist, and a yelp of "Ouch!" from the Lexx, he could see that Prince had been right.
She knew that Kai wouldn't be very pleased with her spying on him, or that Stan would never let her live it down if he were to catch her, but Xev's love slave programming wasn't always well-behaved, and now she was cursing herself for doing so. However, she was very pleased to see that the only part of his body that was deformed by anything mechanical was his brace arm. Seeing gashes all over his body on the other hand did little to comfort her, especially the large opening in his shoulder that had started bleeding again.
He hadn't said anything to either her or Stan, since he was, after all, Kai, and no matter how many times he could say "The dead do not feel pain", it was very obvious that he did. He winced a little as the water seeped into the wounds, and lightly ran his finger across one cut on his arm. She shook herself. She should be used to seeing this now. It wasn't as if he'd just close back up anymore, and he would get hurt just like she would if he had to defend himself. Now Xev knew better; every planet they landed on, a fight always broke out.
He wrung his hair out, and turned to hear Xev's boots echoing on the floor of the passage. Quickly, before she could see, he ripped the remaining piece of his right sleeve off, and stuffed it down the back of his shirt, to hide the bleeding, knowing that Xev would make a bigger deal out of it. "Hey," she said. "Come on, I'll show you where your room is. If I don't you'll get lost,"
He barely had time to pull his shirt down, before she grabbed his arm and yanked him down the passageway after her. He accepted her reason for this, even though he could easily find it himself, since this new Lexx was identical to the old Lexx. She allowed no room for protest of course, and Kai was in the most honest sense, too tired to care. "Here," she said. "It's not much, but I'll bet it's better than a cryopod,"
Kai looked around the dark room, and nodded. "Thank-you," he said.
She seemed to understand this time, and left him to himself.
Exhausted, he flopped down on the bed, and chuckled. It was interesting to feel exhausted again and yet at the same time, rather inconvenienced. This would have never happened before. The dead do not tire was something he kept telling himself, but His Shadow's programming wasn't enough to convince his now human body.
He stared up at the ceiling, realizing how much his new room reminded him of the cryochamber. It was much darker than Xev's or Stan's, with darker fleshy walls, and even the bed was a shade of black or blue; he couldn't tell. He was lying in the middle of the small chamber, and like the walls on the bridge, there were bulbous growths on the walls, but there were breaks, where the cloth-like fleshy barriers separated him from Xev's and Stan's quarters.
In an attempt to keep himself awake, he drew up his right arm from his side, and looked over the inside of it, seeing the grafted brace still intact. It was interesting how the machine copied the weapon perfectly, but as for every other mechanical implant that he'd become accustomed to, was gone. He guessed it had something to do with being rebuilt only from a cell from that arm, which had somehow survived the explosion. No matter how hard he could try, he'd never really stop being a product of His Shadow, he supposed. Not with that weapon, at least.
About an hour later, Kai's eyes popped open, and he sat up with a start. It was odd to find himself gasping for air, and be looking wildly around the room. "The dead do not dream," he mumbled, trying to regulate his breathing again.
Of course, he knew he wasn't dead anymore, and now he was very much a human again. The nightmares were very real. He took a deep breath, lay back against the pillow, and stared up at the ceiling. "The dead do not experience fear," he mumbled.
A shadow appeared in the doorway of the room, and he picked his head up to see what it was. It was Stan. It was beyond Kai as to why Stan kept his hat on, even while he was asleep, and at this moment, the hat was clutched in his fist. "Kai, you okay man?" he asked, half-asleep.
Xev appeared next to Stan, pulling her lizard-skin top on straight. "I heard you scream," she said.
Kai nodded. "Yes. Go back to sleep," he said.
Stan nodded, and stumbled back to bed without much question. Xev on the other hand crossed the room and sat down next to him. She looked down at him, and stroked his hair. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked sweetly. "I could stay with you, if you'd like,"
Kai fixed his eyes on her, and shook his head. "I am fine, Xev," he said. "You do not have to stay. The dead do not find need for company,"
She smiled, and leaned over him, her hair falling around his head. "I don't think you mean that," she said silkily.
He looked up dispassionately. "I do not say things I do not mean, Xev," he said.
He could see a slight frown marring on Xev's face, as she sat up. "You know, for someone who's been brought back to life after six-thousand years, you don't seem that much different. You're the same as you always were,"
"I can only be what I am, Xev," said Kai, sitting up and propping himself up on his hands.
"And that would be?" she asked bitterly.
"I do not know," said Kai. "That is one thing I must figure out on my own. It has nothing to do with you,"
Xev sighed, knowing that he was telling the truth. That was one thing she could always depend on with Kai; the fact that there was never any deception with him. He always told it as it was, no matter how dark or dangerous something may be. Sure, he never gave any more information than he had to, but that was only because of how you asked a question. Now he was looking back at her with questioning eyes, and she couldn't help smiling at him. She knew she couldn't be angry with him, since it wasn't his fault that he was so cold all the time, after all, he'd been dead for so long, it wasn't unlikely that he'd forgotten how to function like a living person. "I'm sorry, Kai," she said softly. "I'll let you get back to sleep,"
She stood up and kissed him on the forehead. "I know I shouldn't be so forward, but if you have any more bad dreams, don't feel bad about waking me up, okay?"
"I will keep that in mind, Xev," said Kai.
After she left, sleep still evaded him, and his sheets were soaked with blood from his shoulder. He sighed, and got up, ripping a little more off his sleeve in small strips, and put his hair back up in the traditional Brunen-G style, an action that confused him, yet he did anyway. He wandered around the new Lexx for a while, finding the cryochamber with ease, and thankfully, a protein regenerator.
He started the machine easilly, and hooked himself into it, relaxing a little as the machine healed the deep wound. He stepped up to the middle pod, where he used to reside, and ran his fingers down the frosty glass. "Guess I won't be sleeping here anymore," he thought.
Ever since he woke up in that regeneration tube, he felt old and tired. Every part of his body felt so heavy, and he couldn't explain the guilt he was feeling for all the murder he'd committed in the past. It was as if he was in constant rewind, and trying to move forward as his memories drew him back. The cold permeating through him he knew was not from the pods at all, but it had been inside him since he'd been revitalized. His body was alive, but from the very beginning, he felt completely soulless.
Footsteps brought him out of his thoughts. "Still seems like home?" the voice asked playfully.
Kai forced a smile. "Spent a lot of time down here," he said. "It's a habit,"
Xev looked at the cryopod. "I know.... before we landed and found you, I used to come down here a lot," she said.
Kai looked at her questioningly. "Why for?" he asked.
"...Guess I was hoping to find you sleeping as usual," said Xev. "You being destroyed didn't really register with me, I guess,"
Kai leaned against the cryopod and looked down. "I was not completely destroyed, otherwise I would not be here now,"
"You sound so sad," she said, coming around the pod. "Are you okay? You did sleep way past morning,"
'"I suppose time has no meaning when you've forgotten how many hours are in a day," said Kai.
She put her hand on his arm gently, looking up at him with worry in her eyes. He hated to cause her distress, and now that he recognized it, it hurt even more. "Hm?
"You sure you're all right?"
"Yes...just many things I need to adjust to," said Kai, trying to stop thinking so much for once. "I take it that Stan and 790 have found a planet. You go back up to the bridge. I will catch up,"
"Oh, okay Kai," she said, the disappointment obvious to him. "I'll see you in a few minutes,"
He found himsefl climbing into a moth once again, as Stan told him that Vlad was missing, even though the moth they'd left her in was still there. She was probably off in some part of the ship that they didn't reside in, and Kai dismissed it, saying that she would turn up when she wanted to.
Xev was so excited about a green planet; she exited the moth before its legs even touched the ground. She immediately ran up to a patch of flowers and looked over them, smelled them, and picked one. She put it over her ear as Stan and Kai climbed out of the moth. "Oh yeah!" said Stan. "This looks promising. No carrots, no Prince, and no other things that wanna eat us!"
Xev smiled at Stan, and then looked to Kai. "So, what do you think, Kai?"
"I...do not think," said Kai, out of habit. "This place seems...suitable to your needs. So far, anyway,"
"Our needs," she corrected.
Stan pushed between them and continued ahead. "Whatever," he said. "Let's go check this place out,"
Xev and Kai looked at Stan, then looked at each other, and decided to continue after him. Things really had changed while he was gone, Kai thought. It wasn't normal for Stan to explore a place before Xev without fear of it. "That is not wise, Stan," said Kai. "You may find-"
Before he could get the words out, a net sprung up underneath Stan, pulling him up into a tree. The security guard whined and squirmed, as several blonde people in pastel colored robes came out of the woods, carrying spears. Kai wasted no time in firing off his brace at the net first, to send Stan falling back toward the ground, and then aimed it at one of the attackers' spears. He grabbed it with the end of the weapon, and yanked it out of the man's grip. The planets' inhabitants looked at them, gawked for a moment, and ran off through the trees again.
Kai dropped the spear, and knelt down where Xev was checking over Stan. "Are you all right?" he asked systematically.
"No," said Stan. "That's it, I'm going back to the Lexx!"