Warning: Sex
Expanded Warning to Prevent Further Misunderstanding: The sex is entirely consensual, but if the "grooming" implication was beyond the pale for you, read at your own discretion.
Author's Note: Everyone seems to be updating their stories today, so I figured I'd make absolutely extra sure as few people as possible see this update, which just goes to show that I learn absolutely nothing from all these manipulative people I always write about.
Title: The title is a reference to "Buran", which translates to "snowstorm" from Russian. Read the Wikipedia entry and weep for humanity…
Epilogue: Snowblind
The transporter beam picks him apart and slams him into the escape pod with all the subtlety of a gorn pit-fighter going berserk, scrambling his mind, displacing his very sense of self, making him grapple for a memory, something to hold to define himself against. What comes instead washes through him with same relentless cold as outer space.
The Captain's Quarters on the Shenzou are spacious luxury, nothing like the Buran and her spartan functionality. It makes sense and he is far from envious. Michael is the favourite, the daughter, while he is just the lackey, the tool, the weapon. Once or twice, he's been the willing plaything, too. It should rankle his pride, but it doesn't because Philippa has already lost in his mind and that she does not realise it yet makes it all that much sweeter. Michael is everything Philippa has never dared let herself become. And more than that, Michael is his. He's plucked her soul from the wreckage of her parents' burning home and he has shaped her mind in all the years since.
Philippa has just finished her visit, congratulating her daughter on winning a captaincy for herself. Now she commands one of the finest, most distinguished ships in the imperial fleet, a worthy trophy to be taken from a formidable captain. It doesn't change the fact that Philippa is far too late when he is the one who has taught Michael how to win that chair and how to hold on to it. Not long from tonight, some young pretender will seek to make their fortune and fame by laying hands on the emperor's daughter, whether in violence or seduction or both.
He's made her wait for him for more than ten years. Ever since the way she looked at him changed with the onset of puberty. He's noticed and let it feed his pride while keeping her at arms' length. Gleefully, he's watched from a distance as others tried and failed to satisfy her.
When he steps in close behind just inside the captain's quarters and put his hands on her shoulder, there's no wooing he still has to do. Michael makes a low sound of surprise and anticipation and leans into him.
She tilts his head for him, exposes the long line of her neck to his ghosting breath and she mewls in frustration, unable to do anything but suffer his teasing in pleasureable helplessness.
She is in her dress uniform, no metal plating to deter his finger-tips from trailing a hot line up her chest and throat, tracing a finger over her parting lips. Her tongue laps at him, but he slides his hands back down, past the hard edge of the broad belt, finds the familiar clasps on her uniform trousers and slip his hand inside.
He chuckles quietly to himself as she shudders, resettles her feet in an attempt to steady herself and give him more access. Thrilling to think she must have been this wet all the time the Emperor held her speech a mere handful of minutes ago and to realise that today wouldn't have been the first time her body had done this to her in his presence.
He places a gentle kiss on the side of her temple, as he had done when she was a child, enjoying the way the former innocence of the gesture would never return.
He purrs in her ear, "Let's watch the stars."
And pulls his fingers from out of her, steps aside to wrap his arm around her waist to guide her across the room.
A shockwave picks up the pod and hurls it into nothingness, his scattering thoughts caught between the lure of oblivion and distant, painful excitement tethering him just narrowly on this side of consciousness.
She mewls, "Ga-ah-briel…"
He pins her between himself and the window and rakes his grip down her flanks, she's so tense she's vibrating under his touch, so beautifully eager. He meets her gaze over her shoulder in the dark reflection. For a moment, he traces the bold lines of the Charon, just visible at the edge, blocking out the smattering streak-light of the milky way slashing across the view.
The pod continues to shake and tumble powerlessly, its thin layer of shields feebly trying to protect it against the destructive energy washing over it in cascading waves, debris from the destroyed starship shot at it with the ferocity of a particle accelerator. It's cold, he feels it freezing, creeping along his limbs, prickling his skin like a million needles.
Silently, vaguely, he curses Landry and her infatuation. It's served him well, devotion and loyalty coming together in the headiest of combinations. But this time, it's blinded her, tricked her into committing the ultimate transgression: second-guessing a direct order. He remembers screaming into the communicator as he ran through the Buran, already feeling the floor under his feet begin to disintegrate.
He's screaming at her, "Take him first! Take him FIRST!"
They weren't done. They were never going to be done. He'd keep, but he had to survive first. A worthy foe, at the very least, worthy to be taken apart at his leisure and more thoroughly than anything he has reserved even for Georgiou.
Michael continues to chant his name, a million deifying supplications, all the universe spread out before her, but her existence reduced to the limits of ecstasy her body can hold. He leans over her, close to her ear, bites her neck and whispers to her. No sweet nothings, no cheap innuendos, nothing so trivial for this most exquisite of creatures.
"Look at the Empire," he whispers to her, the rhythm of his breathing in beat with each thrust of his hips, burying himself deep inside her. "I'll take it all. For myself. For you."
Her body begins to spasm helplessly under his onslaught.
A siren shrills sharply and light cuts through his closed eyelids, ripping him away from the memory before he can let himself fall into it and the harsh truth of her loss can cut him to shreds. The escape pod boots its interface, now that the worst of the storm has passed over them.
The computer voice says, "Escape pod functioning normally. Pod occupant suffers elevated heart-rate and erratic breathing pattern, consistent with the onset of a panic attack. Recommend…"
"Fuck you."
"Command unknown, please rephrase."
He groans in annoyance, chasing the memory in the vain and useless hope that it would take him away from this place. He remembers Michael's quarters on the Shenzou and tries to recall the myriad tiny details, summoned from memory in near-perfection.
The way the captain's Quarters smell faintly of electricity and polished metal, a heady mix of vulcan and orionian herbs from her bath. He recalls the low humming of the spaceship around them, the minor difference between her ship and his. It feels heavier against him, slower and bulkier than his Buran. Not able to stand up in combat against him, but solid for a front-line fight. Already he has ideas for what to do with it, where to put her and aim her weapons.
Michael moans his name and he really hopes Philippa has her spies on the ship and that she will learn of this and understand that she has nothing he cannot take. He wants her to be afraid.
Michael's body is slowly overheating as she loses what little control she still has, he feels it in the way her legs shake and threaten to give out so he has to hold her tighter, fuck her harder into the glass and fuck her moans into screams.
The transporter beam picks him apart slower than normal, working through the interference caused by the exploding ship, the released energy throwing off the calculations and threatening to tear him apart. It's not painful, having anticipated something far worse than the soft, all-encompassing wash of the transporter. His last clear thought, before he's ripped apart in exactly the way he has not wanted, is one of sheer denial, as if it would be enough to just dig his heels in and hold himself together until it was all over.
Instead, of course, the transporter whisks him away anyway and drops him into a small glass enclosure, standing on his shaky feet, feeling a wave of nausea rush up his throat as a result of the rough transport. It leaves him disoriented, grappling for that last shred of willpower. He'd expected death, welcomed it, even, but if it was not to be, he'd find hat strength and pick himself up.
All he manages, though, in that first moment, is to drop his head against the cool glass and alleviate some of the weight from his damaged leg. He catches a glimpse of his surroundings. It's a large room, dimly lit as the terrans prefer it, filled with neat rows of glass cubicles like the one he's in. At a guess, it is some kind of brig and he is the only occupant.
He's given no more time for either observation or speculation as sudden pain shoots through him. It's not his legs, not the burns and cuts and bruises he's sustained. It's not even the inner anguish he hasn't even had time to fully realise yet. It's like… nothing he's ever felt before. It's just pain, pure and unmitigated by any context of injury or bodily damage. It drowns out all thoughts and concerns, wiping his mind clean and empty. Within an instance, he has no name and personality left, reduced to nothing but a receptacle for absolute, pure agony.
It wrenches a pathetic animal howl from his throat and it never peters out, just goes on and on and on…
All sense of time and its passage is already lost, but when the room falls into blackness and the pain stops mounting, leaving behind just a dull, shuddering ache of his overwhelmed nerve ends, Lorca's mind scrambles together the awareness that it hadn't been long. Barely a handful of seconds and despite himself, he puts the pieces together to see if they fit.
Distantly, red alert sirens begin to howl, no different than on his Buran and a moment later, this ship begins to screech and shake, all her pieces threatening to be ripped apart. The first blast of the Buran's destruction hitting her without her shields up. The light flicker back on, but go out almost instantly again, as energy distribution struggles to reroute the power to where it is needed to keep the hull integrity intact.
A second shockwave rocks the ship, this one slightly weaker, followed by the low, dull hail of debris being picked off by newly powered shields.
Lorca lets out a breath he hasn't realised he was holding. It means his Buran is gone, her crew burned and dead, their remains adrift in space soon lost into the infinity of it. And he's still here. Wherever here even is.
Red alert is switched off while the ship still rocks faintly in the aftermath.
He leans his shoulder into the wall and finally allows himself a moment of weakness as he slides down to sit on the metal grill of the floor. He's got quite enough of losing. His entire life, it seems is just a sequence of failure. Fast-tracked to a command, only to fail on Tarsus VI and fail again in hunting down the mass murderer and deliver even the shadow of justice.
He's been given the chance of a captaincy only to fail within the rigged simulation of the Kobayashi Maru. It doesn't matter that he knows it was never a winnable contest, or that he's supposed to learn a valuable lesson from it. Part of him never stopped chafing at the suspicion that a better man would've found a solution. And despite all that, Starfleet had given him the Buran. Only for him to fail yet again.
He was responsible for his crew, he was supposed to steer them safely through the perils and bring them home in one piece. Instead, the best he could've done was burn them to cinders in one great conflagration which, it turns out, might end up meaning nothing at all.
From outside, he hears a computer voice call out. Black alert. His perception shifts and wavers, he has no words to describe it and is too tired to try. After that, the ship goes still and quiet, just the normal engine sound.
The lights come back on and he glances up, around the room for the moment it takes the punishing system to boot back up.
He takes a breath and waits, determined. He's got nothing left, so he might as well hold out this time.
It doesn't work and the pain soars through him again. He screams until his throat bleeds and his voice cuts out and his world tilts into miserable oblivion.
He's planned to leave her after he has taken his pleasure, her fucked-out limbs too heavy to reach and hold him, her mind a buzzing haze of bliss. Somehow, instead, he finds his head resting on her chest and listening to her heartbeat and breathing slowly returning to normal, letting it feed his ego with how long it takes her, but in the end, he finds that too stale to keep his interest. Her bed is huge, cool silky-smooth and soft against his skin where he's not curled flush to her. The truth is, he likes it there, so close to her, just being with her, no agenda and no strings to distract his thoughts.
She's wrapped an arm around his shoulder, fingertips tracing patterns on his naked form. It takes him a while until he realises she's agitated and tense, something on her mind that she shouldn't even be able to focus on, though she's his special one for a reason.
He nuzzled his face towards her breast, but before he can even do anything there, she moves, shifts her grip and slips out from under him, comes up just enough so she can cup his face with both hands. Her grip is hard, fire in her eyes, close enough to burn him.
"Did you mean that?" she asks.
He arches an eyebrow at her and she says, "What you said. That you'd take the Empire."
He smirks, feels the resistance of her hold on him.
"You doubt me?"
Her fingers dig into his cheeks, pressure on the bones of his jaw. "That's just… it's just fucking, I like it, but it's just talk."
He's started pushing against her, leaning in, gaze fixating on her lips as she speaks, but at her dismissal, his gaze snaps back up to search her face.
"Such trickery is beneath me," he jokes with a leer. Idly contemplating which of the million different ways to satisfy them both he'll explore with her next. The humour and heat sends the trace of a smile over her face, but she blinks it away, unwilling to be so easily swayed.
Her fingers keep digging into the sides of his face. He doesn't know what's bothering her. If any other lover behaved like this, he'd simply kick them out, even if they were in their bedroom. He's come too far and done too much to bother with such foolishness. But her intensity both compels and mesmerises him, the strength in her grip and darkness and fire in her eyes. Delicious enough to let himself fall into it and lap it all up, enjoying her at his leisure.
"I need to know if you meant it," she insists and he realises it matters to her.
"Of course I meant it," he says. Raises a hand to paint a sardonic cross over his chest in affirmation. "Time and space itself."
Instead of soothing her his words made her suck in her breath sharply and shifted her body closer to him.
"For me," she pleads. "It's got to be for me. Not mother. Her time is over. Say you are with me, not her."
Words or treason, those are, it sends a thrill down his spine like ice-water, almost making him moan at the fantasy of the sensation. Giddy at the thought of the blow this will be to Philippa.
He can do nothing but laugh at Michael's absurd sentiment of him choosing Philippa over Michael or over himself.
"She's on borrowed time," he assures her. "Nothing is ever for her."
He'll take it all for himself, but Michael… his precious little girl who's grown into such a beautiful, vicious woman, she will always have a place with him. The universe wouldn't dare try to come between them, he'll tear it all down if he must, just for her.
He stills in her hands once again, her expression earnest as she searches his face for any sign of deception. Surprised and delighted when she realises there is none for her to find, laid bare as he is for her. For some reason, he doesn't mind to let her read him like this. Her face brightens and she nips forward, places a kiss on his mouth, quick and close-lipped and too chaste, the way the child she once was would have.
End of Blindfold King
Author's Note: I probably should be sorry for the unannounced Lorca switerchoo, but… it came with the territory.
As for prime Lorca… The ending in the previous chapter was never meant to be my twist! That was just meant to segue into Drastic Measures, but now you've made me feel guilty so I gave him a little share of the epilogue all his own. I'm sure he's finding the experience positively thrilling…
Now, I've implied a few times that I might write more, but I really want to stress that I said MIGHT. At this point, I cannot actually make any promises and I want you guys to know that.
At any rate, I hope you enjoyed this story at least a little bit!