6 Days Later
The outside noise was distracting, the intrusion of others conversations was maddening. It was a distraction from his thoughts. His eyes closed as he forced the world around him to recede, concentrating on his options.
He had just received the intelligence that Jadzia had probably been detained as an 'alien infiltrator' and confined to a work rotation.
His eyes fluttered open and his gaze sifted along the ground till it came across a scrap of dingy rag. It had been a purple color at one time, now it was grey with dust and blackened along the edges, it was out of place on the otherwise immaculate street. A breeze riffled through his hair and lightly flipped the scrap along the ground.
The chattering receded as the people drifted away as if carried by the playful wind.
Joissa was inside his home, waiting for his return, he needed to go in.
Julian's face was lined and forehead furrowed, he turned to go inside the house.
His host smiled in welcome.
"I suppose you will be leaving me now you have located you friend?"
Julian hesitated, for a moment then nodded.
"I thank you for your hospitality; your help has been invaluable in helping me, though I will intrude on your hospitality for one more day if I may…?"
"Of course, of course, think nothing of it! I have no family, your company has been most welcome, friend."
"If I may," Julian's voice sounded more uncertain than the doctor had ever heard, he looked at Julian curiously.
"Could I stay here today while you work? I know it is a lot to ask and that you do not really know me that well…."
"Why yes, of course, friend, I am most happy for you to stay here, but, forgive me for asking, friend, but are you alright? You seem," his host searched for words, "distracted."
"Oh yes, I am quite well thank you, and, if I may intrude on you further, could you give me a stack of paper and a writing implement?"
"Of course."
In a minute he had returned with a sizable stack of paper and a graphite stick and placed it beside his house guest.
"If that is sufficient I will leave for the hospital now."
Julian nodded without making eye contact, gripping the right side of his lip with his teeth, perhaps it was a trick of light, but he looked stricken as he gazed at the paper as if he expected it to attack.
His host looked up at Julian again in curiosity, but politeness not allow him to further comment on the repressed manner and distant look of his new friend was displaying.
Even after hearing the door click Julian did not move, for over half an hour he stood immobile, the light shifting around him as the two suns light filtered in through the window.
Then with a shuddering gasp his face grimaced like a man in pain. He took a second to place his hand on the back of a nearby chair and took deep breaths, gasping breaths, like a man fighting to live. His eyes darting and pained. Then, his figure straightened resolutely up and his face smoothed out into a calm mask, his eyes were sharp and hard. He stepped to the chair, pulled it to the table and bent over the stack of papers.
That was how Joissa found him hours later when he came in from the dark, papers covered with text stacked neatly on one side and a nearly empty stack of crisp white paper.
He refused all the entreaties to join for dinner; the only sound was the scribbling on paper and the two men breathing.
Then, Julian looked up, his gaze outside to where it seemed a shadow had slowly crept.
He turned and gathered his papers, and approached his host. Only for a second did it seem like two shadows glided forward as if straining to hear the conversation, one second, then, nothing, it could only have been a trick of the night.
There was only one more notable thing in that location, there was a sharp, repressed exclamation of astonishment, from inside the building, then, two more shadows melted into the cold night.
The main thing she was aware of was a consuming blankness, an ever increasing blackness that spread a little more every day.
It almost ironic that a person who suffered so much in the light would fear the spreading blackness inside, but she did. Jadzia feared it more than the lash of the multi-tailed whips, the brutality of the guards.
She could feel it decreasing her, draining her, it seemed it was that which slowed her steps, not the lack of nutrition. Her arms were fragile sticks now, her legs knobby and putrid from infection. Her lips were brown and cracking. Swallowing had become unbearably painful now, she rejected her allotment of soup the past two days and had seen it being fought over by other prisoners, she did not mind, the spreading darkness was stealing her capacity to care, just as it had taken her hunger and thirst. As much as they had tormented her, almost to the point she felt she was being driven mad by it, it was a sign she was alive.
Now Jadzia used the darkness as an internal meter as to how much life she had left, the darkness was her symbiont dying, she knew, lives blotting away from the being inside her, or maybe the degradation of communication pathways, it did not matter, for one would only survive mere minutes after the other had died.
On this day, Jadzia did not rise when the whistle sounded; her eyes stared straight ahead out of her gaunt face. Whenever she blinked it felt like sandpaper rubbing her corneas, the fine dust clouded her vision and filtered in her lungs where it burned, but she was unable to cough. The sun rose and heated the sand. Jadzia dreamed of herself on Trill laughing with her parents at a celebration. On DS9 having breakfast with Kira, cheering in victory at beating Quark in a game of Tongo, in the Commanders quarters chatting with Jake as a meal was prepared over heated burners, of the brown face and intense gaze of a fellow figure in blue with a boyish smile and bright happy eyes.
When she woke again she was disoriented, she was no longer covered in sand, the sun was not beating down on her, she was in the shade of something, she tried to raise her head but it fell back limply, she only had enough time to realize she was not imprisoned in the yard anymore. It came to her then, factual and with no emotion, she had been removed out here to die. She closed her eyes. It surprised her then when she woke later, she was supposed to be dead by now, this dying business was taking far too long. She was done. She slept again. Next time she woke she tried to open her eyes, they would not, this worried her, or maybe it did not worry her, she was not sure. But it could only mean her corneas were damaged from the abrasion of the dust. Experimentally she attempted to move a hand, there was the slightest response. Not dead then. Why was this taking so long? The stars began to shine in the sky as the night brought chilly temperatures.
The light was pale, but it illuminated the body, or bodies. For it was indeed the place where the dead and nearly dead were disposed of. It reeked of death.