Disclaimer: I don't own Voltron or its original Japanese version Golion. Both are the property of their original creators and/or importers/dubbers. I'm just borrowing them for some non-profit entertainment.
The Sindariin
Chapter Eighteen:
It had been a little over a week since Fala's final rejection of her husband's affections, a little over a week since he had in turn given up on trying to win her over and resorted to simply dosing her with a strong aphrodisiac whenever he wanted sex from her and now Fala was sick. Not mentally or emotionally (although, she was becoming that too), but actually physically sick. She had spent the past few days in a near constant state of nausea, her mornings beginning with a mad dash to her bathroom to void her stomach in the toilet bowl, her days continuing in queasy discomfort with the slightest smells threatening to once again drive her gorge up from with in her.
The only thing she could think of that could cause her current state of illness was the drug Sincline had been forcing down her throat every night. Taking it once on their wedding night had been fine and bore her no ill-effects, that second dose, the double dose he had given her the night she rejected him probably wasn't all that healthy for her, but would have been fine as a single isolated incident. But he had continued to force the stuff down her throat every night since then without fail and now the side effects were beginning to manifest.
Fala glared across the dinner table at her husband, the Emperor sat casually at the other end watching her with his golden cat-like eyes. As per usual, his face bore no expression, no indication as to what his thoughts might be, he was as expressive as a statue carved of beautiful blue marble. But she could see the slightest bit of hunger behind his golden eyes. He was already planning tonight's 'game' for them.
A slave filled his wine glass with yarbara and he sipped the blood-wine slowly as if savoring a favored vintage.
Fala reached for her own water glass and took a tentative sip. The moment her tongue detected the now familiar flavor of the aphrodisiac she spat drink back into the crystal glass and pushed it away from herself. "Please, can I not drink that tonight?"
His eyes flickered momentarily, but the emotion was there and gone to quickly for the Empress to guess what it was. Sincline studied her from across the table, his expression still unreadable, but something in his air did manage to convey some level of annoyance. "It would make things easier for yourself if you took it."
"I think…" She faltered, unsure if this could be considered 'talking back' or 'questioning Master'. She didn't want to visit his anger upon herself before his 'play time' even began. "I think it's making me sick. I haven't been feeling well for days and I think the drug is causing it."
He said nothing to this, only continued to study her from across the long table.
"You can smell me." She continued. "You can tell when I'm on my period, when I'm scared, when I'm horny… you can tell all that just from my smell. You must have noticed that I'm sick too. Please, Sincline, don't make me drink this stuff anymore."
He set his wineglass down with a silent sigh. "I will admit that your scent has changed." He rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers, resting his chin on the platform they made and gazed at her from across the table. "But I do not believe it is the fault of the aphrodisiac. It was engineered specifically for use on human females and is not likely to have any bad side effects. It's more likely a vitamin D deficiency; you've been away from the sun to long."
"No, it's the drug." She insisted.
Now that was talking back to Master. Sincline leaned back in his chair, that expression of bland indifference hardening into one of course reprimand. "I have used that same aphrodisiac on countless women before you, Fala. They never seemed to have a problem with it, not even Amue whom was never timid about voicing her every discomfort. Are you telling me that you're even weaker than the average human female?"
"Then I suppose I am!" She snarled at him. "You married the weakest human female in existence! Does that make you proud?"
He barred his teeth in a silent snarl but said nothing in reply. The slaves brought out their food and the Emperor though it an appropriate opportunity to drop their argument. Though, he promised himself that this conversation would be revisited once he had her alone in the bedroom. He would make her beg and plead to be aloud to take the aphrodisiac again!
A servant set an elegant silver platter before the Empress and lifted the intricately tooled silver lid to reveal an exquisitely prepared meal. All Fala noticed, however, was how the smell of the normally appetizing food made her stomach heave and she feared she might be sick again. She glanced up at her husband whom was already chewing a bite of his meat contentedly. She would be damned if she allowed herself to be sick in front of him!
Fala forced herself to ignore the nausea churning in her stomach and cut herself a meager piece of her own meat. Halfway between the plate and her lips she set the fork down again, however. "May I please be excused?"
"What for?"
Fuck it! She was about to vomit all over the table, she didn't care if he was angry or offended, she would not be sick in front of him! Without answering her husband's question, Fala rose from the dinning table and B-lined for the door that opened out onto the corridor. If she could just make it down the hall to her chambers and her own bathroom before-
She placed a hand on the wall to steady herself as the other arm coiled around her upset stomach and her gorge erupted out of her. She stood there heaving for a moment longer, trying to calm her roiling innards and reclaim some semblance of composure. Her shoes had been spattered by the vomit, as had the hem of her dress. She couldn't go back to Sincline like this.
Someone came up behind her and gathered her hair back behind her shoulders. She didn't turn to see who it was, knowing that it could really only be one person. The kind gesture confused her slightly, but then again, he was prone to performing random and inconsistent acts of compassion towards her.
Her mouth tasted foul and she wanted nothing more than to have a glass of water (clean water) and just lie down for a while. The question was: would Sincline allow her to? Straitening, she turned to look at him and to her great surprise beheld an expression of the utmost concern and anxiety.
"This isn't normal." He said.
"I told you that- Sincline, what are you doing!"
Her husband had lifted her up into his arms, soiled skirts and all, and carried her down the hall, past her chambers and his own to the lift leading to the castle's lower levels. He ignored her questions of where he was taking her and what he was planning. She accused him of taking her to be thrown in with the rest of the slaves that were to old or weak to be useful as anything besides meat to keep the beastmen fed. This he ignored as well. Sincline did not put her down until they were safely inside the castle's medical wing and then he still kept one arm wrapped possessively around her waist.
A Galran man that Fala recognized as the doctor that had accompanied the human trauma surgeon whom was her personal physician when Sincline had torn up her back early on in their sexual relationship. He had been reading when she and the Emperor entered, his datapad resting on his knee, his feet up on a counter (that could not have been sanitary!), reclining back in a wheeled desk-chair. The moment he saw the Imperial couple, however, he leapt from his comfortable position and offered apologetic bows to each.
"Fetch the woman." Sincline commanded in his native language. Over the past week Fala's Galran had improved greatly (though she was still no where near proficient) and could now understand simple statements, questions and commands.
The Galran doctor bowed again and disappeared through a door opposite the one they had just entered. He returned quickly with the Earthling trauma surgeon in tow. The moment the woman noticed the Emperor her eyes dropped and she offered a deep bow of submission, like all slaves on Galra she knew her place. Then with slightly less submission but just as much respect she turned to the Empress and offered Fala an equal bow all her own.
"How may I be of service?"
"The Empress is unwell." Sincline answered before Fala had a chance to. "I believe it to be a vitamin deficiency of some kind and would-"
"No, it's that stupid drug you keep giving me!" The Empress overrode him, not pleased with being spoken for nor having her husband attempting to bias her doctor toward the explanation he preferred.
He glared down at her but offered no reprimand. His face was contorted in mingled annoyance and concern as the two emotions battled within him. He turned back to the human doctor and fixed the woman with an icy glare that promised pain and possible death if she did not do as she was commanded. "Fix her."
And with that, the Emperor stormed from the infirmary.
The Galran doctor, not one to trust a lowly human slave to being able to properly attend the Emperor's wife nor trusting to leave the two human females alone together reclaimed the seat he had been lounging in prior to the royal couple's arrival. He pulled his datapad back toward him and resumed the appearance of reading, however his eyes did not move across the screen, his attention focused on the Altean-born Empress and his pathetic human 'pupil'.
"What seems to be the trouble?" She asked.
"Everything!" Fala moaned. "I've been taken from my home, forced into an unwanted marriage, raped, drugged, belittled and-"
"My apologies, Your Majesty, I meant to ask what are your symptoms." She was not trying to be insensitive to Fala's emotional trauma; it just wasn't her area of expertise. She was a medical doctor not a therapist of psychiatrist. Her specialty was cutting, not talking (rather fitting for one that lived within the Galra Empire).
"Oh, right." The Empress' cheeks colored in mild embarrassment. Of course the doctor had been referring specifically to her physical troubles. "I've been feeling sick for the past few days. I'm almost always nauseous like I'm about to puke." She shifted her skirts slightly, suddenly very conscious that their hem was still spattered, as were her shoes. "Usually when I do throw-up I can manage to get to a toilet in time so there's no fuss. This time… I kinda puked in front of Sincline."
As Fala spoke the doctor opened a drawer and removed a stethoscope, specula and a variety of other common medical tools. She placed a sterile disposable cap over the specula and examined the inside of the Empress' ears, she felt around her neck checking if her lymph nodes were swollen or inflamed (they were not), her blood pressure was checked, a thermometer was placed in her mouth and she was asked to kindly remove her dress just enough for the doctor to check her heartbeat and breathing.
"Is this really necessary?" Fala asked while reaching her hand behind her to unlace the bodice of her gown. "Everything else feels fine, it's just my stomach."
The doctor helped her remove the dress and loosen the corset she wore underneath it. "I'm just being thorough." She said. "If there is something seriously wrong with you and I don't catch it I might as well just shoot myself up with all these wonderful drugs I have on hand and save that husband of yours the trouble of killing me." She said this with a smile as if it were an amusing joke. Fala did not find it so.
"He's so cruel and despicable. I hate him!"
"Ya know, I hear there's a club you can join for that." Now that was a joke and the Empress allowed herself a small smile. It was comforting to be reminded that she was not alone in her loathing of the vile half-breed Emperor. "Alright, its blood-test time and then you get to pee in a cup! Won't that be fun?"
Fala grimaced. The doctor took her left arm in her hands and began swabbing the inside of her elbow with anti-septic.
"You have the oddest bed-side manner of any doctor I've ever met." The Empress commented.
The woman shrugged. "I'm a wise-cracking surgeon with a dark sense of humor." A needle was inserted into Fala's arm and she had to look away as the chamber began to fill with blood. "I used to be allot nicer before Earth was taken. I guess I lost a bit of empathy in the slave pins."
"I'm sorry." The Empress muttered, and she truly was. The boys had all been slaves of the Galra Empire before crashing on Altea. They did not like to talk about it but she would see the scars from their time in bondage. Not just the scars on their bodies, most notable of which were the brands on their forearms, but the emotional and psychological scars too. She wondered sometimes if that was why Kogane sometimes seemed withdrawn… like he had lost a bit of his empathy…
The needle was withdrawn from Fala's arm and carefully labeled. The woman turned from her patient to the Galran doctor whom still sat in his chiar, silently pretending he wasn't watching them. She barked something at him in Galran and he glared at her.
"Oy, Robbie, wanna make yourself useful and get started on testing this for me?" She held up the Empress' blood sample.
"I do not take orders from you, slave." He growled back. "And I'll thank you to stop mangling my name!"
Fala's doctor ignored his second remark instead replying, "Okay. I just thought His Eminence would like to know what's wrong with his wife-ardan-person sooner rather than latter. But if you wanna keep him waiting, I suppose that's fine."
Galran skin-tones do not change, their scales remain the same color and shade no matter what, however, if they could have changed color the Galran doctor would have turned a bright beet-red at the human's words. He grabbed the blood sample from her hand and stormed from the room.
"Thanks, you're a doll!" She called after him in mock sweetness.
The doctor helped Fala right her gown before handing her a plastic cup and pointing her toward a cramped restroom that was little more than a closet with plumbing. "Alright, Your Majesty, time to pee in the cup. I'll be right outside if you need anything."
Fala nodded and closed the door behind her. When she was done she handed the now full cup to her doctor. "How long will the tests take?"
"Not very." The woman answered. "Galran medical science is way ahead of what I was used to back on Earth!"
"May I wait here?" The Empress asked none to keen on the idea of going back to Sincline so soon.
"Sure." The doctor shrugged.
"I never did catch your name before."
"Naisha." She said. "I've got to run this over to the lab, but I'll be right back."
Doctor Naisha vanished through the same door that the Galran doctor had. As promised she was not gone long and quickly returned, looking harassed yet still smiling. "Its so fun poking at him knowing he can't do anything about it because I'm under the Emperor's protection."
"Is that why you call him 'Robbie'?" The Empress asked.
"That, and its just easier." Naisha shrugged. "His real name's Robline, or something like that. 'Robbie' is just so much easier and it drives him crazy."
Fala was about to comment that taunting a Galran never a wise idea and warn her that while she may have the Emperor's protection she could still be killed in the heat of anger. The Galran people were physically superior to humans (loath as Fala was to admit it) and something that might be simple smack to them could run the possibility of breaking a human's neck. She did not voice any of this, however. She assumed that as a slave the doctor would have already learned that and didn't need to be reminded of the fact. Instead the Empress said, "'Naisha' is a bit of an odd name."
The doctor just shrugged. "Not odd, just ethnic. I'm black-American, or at least I was back when America still existed, and we have a habit of giving our kids exotic sounding names like that, 'Naisha', 'Shantelle', 'De'jannett'… But I supposed to a person who comes from a planet that's 97% white and has only one unifying culture it would sound a bit strange."
Fala suddenly felt as if she'd just been called 'un-worldly' and wasn't sure if she was insulted by it or not. Instead, however, she commented, "Earth must have been such a diverse place before Galra attacked it."
"It was." Naisha agreed, her mood suddenly turning downcast. "I miss it."
"I miss Altea." Fala muttered.
The two women sat in silence for a time, sharing each other's homesickness and melancholy while wallowing in their own. Misery loved company, as the saying went, and they found each other to be very adequate company.
Their silence remained unbroken until Doctor Robline returned with the blood-test results. He picked up the datapad he had been reading from previously and ejected his disk to insert the test results. This he passed to Naisha.
"Thanks, Robbie." She smiled.
He glared.
Naisha perused the document before looking back up at her Galran colleague. "Have you confirmed this with the results from the urine test?"
"The results are being processed now." He replied, annoyance dripping from his voice. He had graduated from one of the finest medical academies in the Empire and did not take kindly to being treated as a lowly lab-tech by what he viewed as an inferior human slave.
"What?" Fala blinked at them. Her Galran was getting rather good but she still didn't understand what they were talking about. "What's going on? Am I dying?"
"Well, yes. But only because you're alive." Naisha replied, once again showing off that morbid sense of humor of hers. "But no, Your Majesty, you're not in any immediate danger of dying."
The Empress crossed her arms over her chest in displeasure, the idea of dying so far from home was not to her liking, but the idea of dying and being free of Sincline was very appealing. "Well, then?"
The woman fidgeted a moment. "I'm not really sure if I should offer you my congratulations or condolences." She confessed.
"His Eminence certainly doesn't waste any time." Robline snorted.
Naisha turned on him. "Out you. This is girl talk." She attempted to push the Galran man away and back towards the lab door. It was like pushing a brick wall and he did not budge an inch until the woman gave up. Only then did he offer a contemptuous smile and walk out.
The doctor then focused all her attention on her patient. "What this is telling me, Your Majesty," she passed the datapad to the Empress so that Fala could read the results for herself, "is that you are most likely pregnant."
"What! How!"
Sincline had said he was sterile. She couldn't be pregnant. The tests were wrong. Either that or he lied to her. He lied to her! That was it! That must be it! Fala didn't know why she was so surprised; he had always been a lying bastard.
"Well, you see Your Majesty, when a man and a woman-"
"I know how!" The Empress snarled. "I just… I mean… he lied to me! The bastard lied to me!"
The doctor didn't quite know what she was talking about but her displeasure was expected and understandable.
"What am I gonna do now…?" Tears began to well up in her big blue eyes and she burst into sobs. "What am I gonna do…?"
Naisha didn't know what to say. She had lost a great deal of her bedside manner during her bondage as a slave and wasn't sure how to offer comfort anymore. She gave Fala a soft pat on the shoulder and hoped the small gesture would help.
"Get rid of it." The Empress growled, raising her head. The woman respectfully removed her hand thinking that was what she was referring to. "You're a doctor, right. You can get rid of it! Kill it! Make it gone! I don't want it!"
"Your Majesty, are you asking me to perform an abortion?"
"Yes. Can you do it? You can do it, right!" Her eyes, still shining with tears, looked suddenly bright and hopeful. "Sincline doesn't have to know. It'll be our little secret, you and me."
"And Robbie." Naisha added. "He saw the results of the blood-test too and is double checking with your urine sample right now. And I can promise you that he will tell Sincline. What do you think His Eminence would do when he learns that you were pregnant with his child, his heir, but aborted the fetus?"
Fala suddenly sobered. "What am I gonna do?"
"I'm sorry to say, I don't really think you have much of an option in this matter." The doctor confessed. "If you want my advice, I suggest you tell him, it will mean more to hear it from you rather than one of us. Explain your feelings and ask him for his consent to abort it. If he really does care about you as he claims to maybe he'll do it."
"He doesn't care about me." The Empress growled, one hand going to her throat as if running her hands over a phantom collar. "I'm just another one of his little whores."
Once again Naisha didn't know what to say to offer comfort.
Robline returned with the results of the second test. He handed the datadisk to Naisha. "Second test confirms." He glanced at the Empress with her tear-streaked face, a sneer forming on his face. "You should be honored, Your Majesty. The single most powerful man in the galaxy has chosen you as the vessel to continue blood-line of Eliindaal."
This did nothing to improve Fala's outlook on the matter. She did not want to contribute to the continuation of a family line of murderers, marauders, rapists and invaders. She had been more than happy to hear Sincline claim to be sterile, that his despicable bloodline would end with him. But he had lied to her and now she had his vile demon-spawn growing inside her like a parasite. The Empress burst back into tears.
"Ugh." Robline had no patience for humans and their pathetic feelings. Usually he would punish a human for such a display, slaves had no business feeling sorry for themselves, it was their duty to serve the Galran people and the Empire. But this woman was not a slave, she was the Emperor's wife and ardan and Empress of the Galra Empire. To reprimand her would be treason. So, he left. He was not her doctor and was not required to stay and as the slave Naisha had said, this was 'girl talk'.
"You have to tell him." The woman pressed. "It will mean more to hear it from you. Do you want me to go with you?"
Fala did not want to talk to him at all. She wanted to be back home of Altea, to wake up and find out that this was all some long terrible nightmare. But she couldn't. This was real and she had to deal with it. It would be nice to have Naisha there for moral support but she also didn't want to risk there being any other possible victims in the room when she spoke with him. She had a tendency to drive him into rages and while he had never caused her any permanent harm in the heat of his anger she was sure he would have no such inhibitions about hurting or even killing the Earthling doctor.
"No." The Empress shook her head. "I… I'll tell him on my own. I'm a big girl."
"Alright then." Naisha passed the second datadisk to her. "Her are the test results incase he wants to see them."
Fala took the disk and stood. She was reluctant to leave. This was all a huge shock and still wasn't convinced it was true. He had said he was sterile and she had believed him. She couldn't be pregnant. But then again, he was a world-class liar. He had been lying to her when he told her that and so of course she was pregnant. Neither of them had taken any sort of contraceptive precautions. They were like idiot teenagers. No, she was like an idiot teenager. He had known full well what he was doing. He had lied to her in order to make sure she kept sleeping with him. The evil conniving self-serving vile bastard!
These thoughts continued as she made her way back up to the royal residential suits.
If he had been lying to her then he must have had reason to lie. Except that he was probably so used to lying by this point in his life that he didn't know how to tell the truth. A child of hers would be the rightful heir to the Altean throne as well as the Galran one; perhaps he had hoped that a child of theirs would end the conflict over her planet. The resistance there would have to acknowledge the Empire as their ruling body. It would solidify the Empire's control over the planet and significantly weaken support for the Leo Alliance.
It also meant that Golion would become the rightful property of the Galra Empire…
Or perhaps he had thought that carrying his child would make her come around to him. That maybe she would soften up to him if she were pregnant with his unwanted and vile offspring. It was just another dastardly method of manipulation. What a despicable man!
These were the thoughts running through her mind when the lift opened out onto the royal residential floor.
Sincline was attempting to read in his study, the door unlocked and open waiting for his wife to return. He highly doubted that her current state of illness had been caused by his afrodesiac, as he had said before: it was tailor made for use on female humans of Fala's same general height, weight and age. None of the women in this Collection ever seemed to develop an illness from taking it. It couldn't have been the aphrodisiac.
But at the same time, he knew his own excuse of a vitamin deficiency was pretty flimsy as well. First of all, nausea was not a symptom of vitamin deficiency, he was never trained in medicine but even he knew that. He supposed it could be the food. Fala just wasn't used to Galran cuisine (although, he had made the castle chief adjust his recipes for her omnivorous human diet). But if it were the food then this would have occurred much earlier on, her first week or so on the planet, not now, over a month later. So it must be something else.
His mind then jumped to food poisoning, which made him consider just poisoning in general. A possible assassination attempt? But no, that would have been much more sudden and manifested much quicker. It would not have slowly built over time as this illness had.
A virus then? The stomach flu, perhaps? Yes, that was probably it! Although, the flu virus which in common in humans and very easily transmitted was almost completely wiped from the face of planet Galra. No new human slave it allowed to touch a foot off their slave-ship without being properly immunized. Nothing breaks a slave-based economy quicker than having your slave-population drop dead from a virus. Not to mention that disease would be catastrophic if it ever mutated and jumped species! So it wasn't likely the stomach flue.
Except that Fala hadn't been a slave when she was brought to Galra, she was his father's hostage…
But she was still human. Daibazaal would have taken the same precautions with her before allowing her to set foot on his home world… right?
The Emperor suddenly wondered if, in addition to having an ill wife, he might also suddenly have to deal with an outbreak among his slave-population.
This fear, however, was pushed aside to be replaced with this original worry the moment he heard his wife's delicate footfall in the doorway.
Her eyes were red and puffy when she entered, as if she's been crying; she clutched a datapad to her breasts and clenched a second datadisc in her hand. Her shoulders trembled with barely contained emotion when she looked at him and he instantly feared the worst. The Emperor tossed his book down on the desk and rushed to her side.
"Fala, what-"
His query was cut short when she smacked him across the face and smacked him hard. She had never struck him that hard before. As fragile as humans were she must have hurt her own hand more than she had hurt him and he decided not to reprimand her for it this one time.
"You lied to me!" She screeched, tears once again welling from her eyes. "You evil son of a bitch! You lied! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! You said you were sterile! You said I couldn't get pregnant from you! But you lied! You bastard, you lied!"
Sincline stood frozen. "Pregnant?"
Fala sank to her knees, sobbing.
'Pregnant…' That had not even entered his mind as a possibility. He was a half-breed and as a general rule of biology half-breeds were sterile. He couldn't have fathered a child on her.
"Get up." Her husband ordered. She didn't move. "Get up!" He said a second time reaching down to grab her wrist. He pulled his sobbing wife to her feet. "You're not pregnant."
She didn't say anything in response, just flung the datapad and disc at him. The devices hit him in the chest and clattered to the floor. The Emperor picked the pad up with his free hand and scanned the information displayed on the screen. He suddenly felt his ire rise at the information and his focus then shifted back to his wife.
"You treacherous little slut." He growled, releasing her wrist and backing up a step. He didn't like hurting her as a general rule but at the moment he felt like her could kill her. Her husband made sure he was well beyond striking range when he asked, "Who is he?"
"What?" She blinked up at him in confusion.
"Who is he?" Sincline demanded. "The father of your child. Its not me, I'm sterile. You know I am. Did you honestly think you could convince me it was mine? Who's your secret lover?"
He watched an expression of pained confusion dance across her face and he marveled at what a wonderful actress she was. Of course, she had been concealing an illicit affair from him for an unknown time, so of course she must be a skilled player.
"Wha… but there's no one." The Empress whimpered. "I haven't slept with anyone but you. Ever. You know that! When would I even have had time to have an affair? You told me you were sterile, but you lied to me. You lied to me!"
"I am sterile!" He snarled back. "Don't try and lie to my face so obviously. A child is undeniable proof that you've been seeing another man behind my back. Now tell me who he is!"
"There is no one else!" She insisted. "Its yours! You lied to me!"
The two glared at each other.
"You're a lying bitch, Fala." He growled from low in the back of his throat. It was a feral guttural sound and made the Empress think more of a wild beast rather than a villainous despot. He closed the distance between them again and picked her up, throwing her over his should like a sack of rice. "I'm going to prove your little bastard belongs to someone else. And then you're going to tell me who he is so I can kill him."
He carried her back to the same infirmary she had just left and threw her down unceremoniously on an examining table.
"I demand a paternity test!" He roared not bothering to wait for the human doctor to offer him her submission.
"At once, Your Eminence." She bowed and then shot the Empress a look that silently asked, 'What did you say?'
…