"I don't think he's-"
A'luet silenced K'iera with a hand.
"Yeah, he is."
The elder's house was quiet save for the wall monitor humming low, the rest of the home was dark.
"A'luet."
He paused.
K'iera hadn't moved from the door.
"Maybe we should leave him alone."
"That's what he wants." A'luet replied. "I'm not giving it to him."
He retreated into the gloom giving K'iera no choice but to follow him.
Moving room to room, each empty, A'luet paused and then turned a corner.
A figure was on the back deck.
"Could have sworn Kainde taught you to be stealthier than that."
"I wasn't trying."
P'sy didn't act as if he heard his student as he stared far off into the distance, large mountains way off.
Awkward silence.
A'luet didn't bother asking if he could sit. "So, that's quite to turn of events… Kelly's mate."
P'sy didn't reply.
"What did T'sey-s say?"
Something passed in the elder's face.
"They're not leaving any time soon."
"Is that all that he said?"
Silently, P'sy cursed, for what felt like the millionth time, A'luet's heightened empathic senses. Had the kid been anyone else, P'sy would have told them to fuck off. The words were on the tip of his tongue but he clenched his mandibles instead. Mentor and student was a special relationship, neither party ever resorted to disrespect of the other, no matter the situation.
"T'sey-s thinks there's something… brewing, between me and the female."
"I'm pretty sure there's something brewing between Dallas and Kelly, that the two are vehemently trying to ignore." A'luet said. "Hiding behind snippy comments and ridiculously high sexual tension."
"Well, you're the only one to agree with me."
"Why would he even think that?" K'iera asked.
P'sy looked away.
"I made a mistake once."
"What?"
"A mistake." P'sy said louder. "Do I need to yell it?"
The elder growled lowly.
"Sorry, I'm just not…in the mood."
"When was this mistake?" A'luet asked after a moment.
"A long time ago."
...
The past
Year: 1623
The water was cool but not enough to stop the searing heat blasting P'sy nerve endings on the left side of his face.
A simple adult initiation, that's all this trip was supposed to be.
Instead, the vessel was gone, shot back into space with the simple code he punched into his gauntlet and G'ogal was dead…. Killed by…
P'sy resisted rubbing his eye, having lost complete sight in it. Kainde amedha blood burned like hell, but not like this. Humans were more affected by the blood than yautja. He had powered through more than his fair share of bloody situations and yet this almost incapacitated him.
Stomps behind him.
Careless and piqued with a bit of sheer arrogance.
"There you are."
Shit.
P'sy slowly straightened, vertebrae cracking, his hand closed around his combi-stick in the water.
"Found you." The voice continued.
"I wasn't hiding."
A scoff.
P'sy turned stiffly.
A muscular yautja stood behind him, stronger build compared to P'sy's more willowy frame. For a brief moment, P'sy wondered who their mother fucked to produce such an enormous offspring.
The yautja sighed as if the scene in front of him was the biggest inconvenience of his life.
"Now, why did you have to go and nuke that temple?"
P'sy shrugged. "Figured we're even. You killed my partner."
"Please." The Yautja hissed. "That was an expensive operation you just fucked up and being unfortunately related to me, isn't going to save your sorry hide."
"Ain't that the truth." P'sy grumbled. He stood, fingers tightening around his spear. "The being unfortunately related to you part, I mean."
"You're not going to win, you shitbag." The yautja sneered. "Unlike you, I'm an elite."
"Give me a hundred years."
"Oh trust me," the yautja grinned humorless. "You're not going to make it to see midnight."
For such a big yautja he was fast, but P'sy was smaller and more agile. The combi-stick missed him.
Bad bloods always had a second plan.
A sharp sandal smashed into P'sy ribs, throwing him back. The younger predator wished he could get up but between the lack of air and the excruciating pain flaring down his back and across his ribs he couldn't move.
"There, now you're in your rightful place…brother."
P'sy's world was going black, he managed to grin.
"What's so funny?"
"You, Tlotl." P'sy coughed wetly. "Your rightful place is in the depths of fucking hell. You'll like it, I hear its warm."
A sharp slice of cold rare metal jammed just below P'sy's collarbone. The predator was unable to hold back a roar of pain. He grabbed out at the bad blood.
"Missed, you piece of shit!"
Twin wrist blade punched through skin and muscle.
Now it was the bad blood's turn to yell.
P'sy retracted the blades and swung out, extending them again, the metal skating against a biomask.
"No, I didn't."
Every action did have a reaction.
P'sy missed the fist smash into his face.
Death had finally claimed him.
About time.
….
Dragging.
Twigs and rocks scraped along his legs and butt.
Such hard tugs.
Breathing.
Shallow.
Why was it taking so fucking long to die? It'd be his luck.
Mother fucker.
Eyes cracked. One a vibrant burnt orange, the other clouded. A shaggy warmth covered his body, neck to feet.
P'sy shivered.
It was just that, a shaggy warmth it did nothing for his freezing limbs.
I'm in shock.
Nearby, a figure sat in the shadows.
He didn't care who it was. Death wasn't coming quick enough it seemed and it was beginning to irritate him. He should have known. He'd never die, shit pissed him off too much. T'sey-s always said spite would keep him alive and when it was time to die, he'd still be alive, all because of that pauk-de spite.
He didn't have long to stew.
Sleep came again.
…
Fingers left a trail of lukewarmth on his abdomen.
P'sy shot upright, scaring a small woman back into the corner of a tiny hut. Too much was going on at once.
A fire.
Smoke.
An ooman.
Female.
Blinding sun streaming through a crack in the hut flap.
The woman was staring at him, wide eyed.
"Where the fuck am I?" P'sy rasped.
The air was cool on his face, hs biomask off and laying nearby, as was his combi-stick and other equipment.
His senses rapidly returning, he studied his captor.
P'sy paused.
He wasn't bound, his arms and legs free. And his captor.
He looked up.
Her black hair was long, only a slitted skirt around her hips, the rest of her painted. Dark eyes watched him as much as he her. She was small and thin. She was no captor.
With a groan, P'sy reached out for his biomask, fitting it into place.
Everything hurt but he ignored it as he typed haphazardly on his gauntlet she hadn't managed to remove.
He hoped he had the right sequence.
"Where am I?"
The gauntlet and translator did the rest thankfully.
The woman was only a bit surprised.
"Safe."
The last thing P'sy wanted to do was move, but a down alien was a dead alien, especially on Earth.
"You need rest."
P'sy ignored her, stumbling to his feet. A rushing wave of nausea threatened to spew out his mouth.
She was undeterred.
"You are injured. You need rest."
His body decided her words were better than what his brain was relaying to his limbs. He lost the strength to stand.
She wasn't afraid of him, as she came forward to pull the furs over him again.
He wanted to tell her to screw off, if only he had more air.
Fuck this.
…
Days blended.
He woke finally. His body having healed itself not completely without the help of Atzi.
P'sy was fiercely independent but even he knew when it was time to ask for help or at the very least, shut up and accept it.
Before he knew it a week had passed.
Atzi kept her distance at first. She referred to him by the common mistaken title all of her species gave the yautja.
A god.
He only took that three times before he set the record straight. He lived beyond the stars but he was no god.
She accepted that explanation, saying she remembered the floating mountain rocks lift into the sky and disappear when she was a girl. He let her call the ships floating mountains. It was easier than sitting around correcting her on every little thing she said regarding what she did know about him and the yautja.
Within a week, he was almost healed and walking around, adding more distance every day away from her hut.
She lived alone, strange for someone of her culture but P'sy wasn't complaining, it made his coming and going much easier.
"What happened to the other?" He asked.
"There was only you."
P'sy didn't trust Tlotl. The yautja didn't decide to not kill him out of the kindness of his heart.
Every day he stayed in Atzi's company was more dangerous, for her.
He had to take care of the bad blood. He wouldn't be blindsided this time. Of course, he silently stated that resolve to himself before he realized Tlotl hadn't left him completely without a shitty situation.
His gauntlet had been fucked with and not just any sort of fucking. The navigation had a virus injected into it. With the ship he came in gone with four teenagers onboard, he was stranded on Earth.
He had faith the kids could accurately tell the elders what happened and no doubt T'sey-s would come for him. But it was the time waiting that was killing him. Therefore, he spent his days dreaming up ways of killing Tlotl when the chance came, each plan more violent and deliciously painful than the last.
Still, he wasn't totally ignorant of his predicament.
Things always happened for a reason. For that he was certain.
He had been run ragged, long hours with G'ogal and the new Initiates. He barely slept. He did eat when Noni made him.
Maybe this situation was the gods telling him to slow down.
How ironic, P'sy thought. Since human time is so much quicker than yautja.
Slow down and make a friend…. Isn't that what T'sey-s said one time?
Fuck that was his response. He didn't need friends, not in the sense T'sey-s was speaking of.
Still-
Perhaps he wasn't as hardened emotionally as he thought he was.
Atzi, a mere Aztec woman, had become a decent companion. She was quiet, resourceful and kinder than he believed she should be towards a non-human.
She was lonely. Her mate died prematurely, forcing her to play the part of hunter and gatherer.
When he was incapacitated, she'd return with prey caught in snares. After he healed, he accompanied her on hunts, the obsolete bow and arrow actually more of a comfort to him than he thought it'd be.
It was simple. No high-tech weaponry.
Within a month, he found her bedding with him. It had rained heavy, unseasonably cool. And she was cold. He didn't stop her though he should have.
He had a duty to put a big exclamation point on the boundaries and he didn't. That was his first mistake. Or was it his second? He lost count.
He should have left her hut the day he woke up and was mobile.
T'sey-s was going to kill him.
…..
The sun was setting.
They were returning to the hut when light danced ahead, through the brush.
P'sy yanked Atzi back.
"What's wrong?"
"Fucking Europeans."
Soldiers in metal armor were poking around the hut, speaking to each other. And that wasn't all.
A hulking form appeared. Too tall to have been human and that agender tone, communicating with the conquistadors, made P'sy want to shatter the speaker's spine.
Tlotl.
"We can't stay here."
P'sy didn't wait for her to respond as he pulled her away.
They stayed in the trees that night. P'sy was grateful he had decided to bring his gear, something telling him not to leave his weapons in the hut like he usually did.
Intuition was always a plus.
"Who is he?"
Atzi leaned against him, cradled perfectly to avoid her pitching out of the tree.
"A sibling."
"And you fight?"
P'sy nodded. "He's without morals."
"Bad."
P'sy jerked his head once. "He's the reason why you found me like you did."
Atzi shifted, a finger tracing the scar on his chest from the bad blood's combi-stick.
"Will you kill him?"
Atzi turned so she could see his face. He watched her quietly. He supposed he knew her enough by then, as to what would upset her or not.
"Yes."
Atzi studied him for a moment.
Then-
"Good."