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T’Shael’s hand shook.
She was cold, but that wasn’t why. She had not truly been warm in months, but that still wasn’t why.
With more effort than it had taken an hour ago, she stilled it.
“T’Shael?”
With a start, T’Shael realized that Cleante had been speaking to her and she hadn’t heard a word.
“T’Shael, are you ok?” Cleante’s voice was laced with palpable concern.
More than anything else, more than her own life, T’Shael wished that she could reassure the human that she would not soon be alone.
But the unavoidable must be mastered. There was no help and no hiding any longer.
“No,” she said simply. “I am not.”
The world faded to obscurity for another moment, but with a force of will she blinked it back.
“—wrong with you?” Cleante was saying, sounding even more alarmed.
“I must ask something of you,” said T’Shael. “You will not like it.”
Tears streamed down Cleante’s face as she watched T’Shael straining at her bonds. She wished with all her heart that she had not promised to do as T’Shael asked, but how could she have guessed it would be something so terrible?
The bindings she herself had tied bit into the flesh of T’Shael’s wrists and ankles, leaving marks on top of marks as time wore on and nothing changed. T’Shael shook, moaning and muttering a constant stream of words she mostly didn’t understand, broken intermittently by what seemed to be periods of relative lucidity. Every time a fragment of awareness seemed to return, more tears trembled at Cleante’s eyes.
But behind the tears, another part of her was filling with anger—anger at the unfairness of it all, and a more specific anger at the man she had never met who was the cause of all this.
It is because of my link with Stalek, T’Shael had said, among the very few details Cleante had managed to pry from her. If the male’s need is not fulfilled, he must die. When he dies, she who is bonded with him, if her need is not fulfilled, must also die.
Cleante tried to blink the tears and rage away, tried to hold onto the Mastery of the Unavoidable as T’Shael had tried so hard to teach her.
But it wasn’t fair! her all too human self screamed. If only they hadn’t been kidnapped. If only T’Shael hadn’t been bonded. If only there say something she could do, anything, anything at all she could do, if…
...if…
If her need is not fulfilled, she must die.
A fresh wave of tears flowed down her face, but with sudden purpose towards the bonds that held T’Shael to the bed.
T’Shael moved her lips, and words escaped them, but she could not truly be said to speak.
Estuhl, estuhl, yontau, estuhl, plak yontau, the voice that was her own chanted. The shame burned as hotly as the blood in her veins at her lack of control.
It would a little more bearable, she thought as her body seized painfully against the bonds, it would be better if only Cleante were not here to witness her death.
Cleante…
If there was to have been more to the thought, it was lost in another wave of white-hot agony and a series of hazy, jumbled images that her senses insisted were real but that she knew could not be.
Stalek was there, reaching for her with a scream she couldn’t hear, but she could not reach back. Something held her back as surely as the knotted strips of torn blanket held her body.
Sometimes she was alone under the Vulcan sky, blood making green rivulets down her wrists and dripping onto the same stone where Surak had faced his end.
Sometimes she was a child again, reaching for the wasted form of her father, but never able to touch him.
And sometimes, sometimes there was Cleante, smiling at her, singing for her, speaking to her of love….Cleante, lying in the sand under her as her sheltered her from a sudden storm...Cleante, reaching for her, with no shame in touch….Cleante, struggling to free the bonds that held her to the bed.
To the…
“What are you doing?” cried the Vulcan. “No! You cannot! I will hurt you!”
Cleante set her jaw and refused to meet her eyes. “Then hurt me,” she said, pulling the cord away from T’Shael’s wrist. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, T’Shael! I can’t do this. I can’t keep my promise.”
Cleante’s face was momentarily shattered by the phantom of Stalek again, reaching, always reaching…
T’Shael pulled back with a jerk.
Cleante’s face re-formed in front of her, looking devastated.
“T’Shael please,” she was saying. “I….I know it’s not...not the way things are supposed to be, but….” Tears were streaming down her face. “And maybe it’s not even possible, I don’t know, but you’ll die! Please! Please let me….let me help you.”
Wet...her face was wet...that was wrong.
T’Shael’s mind threatened to wander again, but she could not….she had to...something
something
Cleante’s face was wet.
Her hand reached out to brush the tears away
please please T’Shael please let me please help you please
She was warm, warm but not hot, warm with something that was full to the empty warm and full and the wanting she wanted her and she was willing to touch touch her skin burned with the need to touch and Cleante
T’Shael made a sound that hurt and jerked again, this time not away.
The last remaining cord snapped.
Cleante’s face was cool under her hands, but she almost didn’t feel it through the psychic sparking of her fingertips as she dove, dove into the mind opening beneath her like flesh.
A flicker of pain at the force of her hands, but also her name, oh her name, T’Shael, T’Shael please and Cleante’s own hands fumbling at her face, trying to find the same thing but not knowing what she sought.
Not enough, never enough, not enough to quench the fire.
T’Shael dropped her hands from Cleante’s face, the link between them hardly faltering, and ripped at the ugly prisoners’ garb between them. Cleante cried out as the fabric bit into her skin.
Bare flesh opened before her, flesh that never should have been hers to touch, touch, oh the touch! She stroked at it, measuring the rise and fall of breasts with her hands, so smooth and gentle and oh, surely her worn and calloused hands would scratch and mar this smooth perfection…
Cool air met her own skin as fabric slipped away. Cleante was tossing away her still-whole clothing and struggling to remove the remnants of her own.
“Cleante…”
Her voice locked in her throat again and words left her.
“It’s ok, it’s ok,” murmured Cleante, stroking her hand down T’Shael’s bare arm. “I’m here.”
T’Shael’s hand tingled almost unbearably at the touch.
Cleante’s breasts forgotten, T’Shael reached out, two fingers extended, and dared to stroke Cleante’s hand with hers.
Cleante hesitantly copied the gesture and brushed her fingers down T’Shael’s knuckles. T’Shael shivered.
“Oh,” murmured Cleante. “Is that what that’s all about…”
T’Shael, not coherent enough to respond to something so blunt an instrument as words, only answered the touch.
Cleante’s hands were almost as worn as her own by now, after so many months of hard labor, though they lacked the ka’athyra calluses, scars in homage to the art. But they were no less beautiful for the wear, and T’Shael kissed them reverently with her fingertips, finding every line and loving them.
Something like hunger gnawed in her belly, but not in her belly, and it wasn’t hunger but fire, and it sang in her veins to a song she had never let herself hear before.
The hunger gnawed at her until she couldn’t stand it, it aches down to her very teeth and she needed to taste…
Her teeth found a spot on Cleante’s shoulder and she bit.
Cleante made a sound and jerked her hand towards the spot, but T’Shael caught her flailing wrist without a glance and held it down, leaving Cleante’s shoulder and neck free for her teeth and tongue to explore.
“T’Shael…” Cleante said, and then bit it off in a sound that might have been either distress or encouragement.
But oh, it wasn’t enough, it was never enough, nothing could ever be enough to satisfy the thing inside her that wanted…
Her grip tightened around Cleante’s wrist until the human cried out and struggled beneath her.
“T’Shael please….not so hard….”
Words were a distant memory, but her fingers sparked with the sense of pain from Cleante’s wrist and they loosened a fraction.
T’Shael’s breath escaped her in a sob. Everything hurt and Cleante hurt and nothing would ever be better.
Cleante’s free hand came up and caressed her face, sending another shower of psychic sparks across her sensitive skin.
“T’Shael. T’Shael, will you trust me?”
Trust, what was trust? But...Cleante wanted something…
Anything.
It wasn’t a word, exactly, but Cleante smiled anyway, and her eyes were a light in the dark.
“Let me then, let me.”
Cleante’s hand traced her face one more time, and took a detour from the side of her neck, before cupping T’Shael’s breast.
“I know what you need,” she whispered. “And I think you know it too, if you’d let yourself.”
T’Shael shuddered.
Cleante’s fingers trailed down her abdomen. “So let yourself.”
Everything in T’Shael clenched, waiting...waiting for something she didn’t understand as Cleante combed through soft pubic hair.
With just one finger, Cleante reached down even further, until she touched a spot that tore a sound from T’Shael’s throat.
Oh…
T’Shael jerked against Cleante’s finger, chasing that wonderful something.
And oh, there was more—Cleante found the spot again, with on finger, two, three, and traced lazy circles against it and oh it was unbearable but it was so much better.
“Is that good?” asked Cleante, but T’Shael could only tremble and jerk.
“Would this be better?” said Cleante, and one of her fingers slid between folds of skin and into T’Shael’s body.
T’Shael’s body clenched instinctively around the oh so welcome intrusion. She made a sound that was almost indistinguishable from one of pain.
Cleante withdrew the finger, but before T’Shael could mourn its loss, she replaced it with two
T’Shael twisted her hips and groaned and oh it was almost...almost….
Cleante moved her thumb to rub those glorious circles against that spot on the outside and that “almost ” came.
T’Shael’s whole body seized up and her mouth fell open in almost a scream and her breath stopped in her throat.
Something inside her released, and she slid bonelessly down on top of Cleante, panting as her lungs remembered air.
Her cheek landed between Cleante’s breasts, and she just lay there for a moment, aware of nothing but the human’s heartbeat.
A hand tangled in her hair, and the other traced her brow.
“T’Shael? Are you….feeling better?”
T’Shael lifted her head and stared, trying to make sense of the words, but the strange feeling was growing again, and oh she wanted more.
She moaned and rubbed her body against Cleante’s, pressing against Cleante’s thigh, trying to recapture that glorious sensation. Her hands found Cleante’s wrists again and she clung to them as though for dear life.
Cleante shifted slightly, and oh, there is was! T’Shael’s hands clenched until nails bit into soft human flesh, and ground down harder and harder, trying to follow that sweet flame that was finally answering the call of her blood.
How many times she followed that call, how many times her fingers and teeth bit into Cleante’s flesh, how long the fire burned in her veins, she could not have said. Perhaps she finally fell asleep, or perhaps her remaining awareness finally left her, but she found herself blinking her way back to something like self-control.
T’Shael sat up—had she been lying down?—and stared at her hand.
It did not tremble.
For the first time in a week, it did not tremble.
T’Shael inhaled and struggled to piece together fragments of memory.
How...how had she…
Cleante!
In a sudden panic, T’Shael looked around.
No, no….
Cleante lay on the floor nearby, naked. T’Shael moved to her knees and crawled over to her.
Cleante’s skin was marked with bites in the shape of T’Shael’s teeth and bruises in the shape of her hands. What she had done was all too clear.
T’Shael sank back on her knees. “Cleante….” she started brokenly, though she did not know how she intended to go on.
Cleante stirred and rolled towards her. “T’Shael….?”
Blinking, Cleante sat up slowly. She raised a hand to brush the tangled curls away from her face, exposing the ring of finger-shaped bruises encircling her wrist.
“T’Shael?” she repeated hesitantly. “Are you...feeling yourself again?”
Oh Cleante… T’Shael took a shuddering breath. “I can ask no forgiveness for what I have done.”
“Oh, T’Shael…” Cleante reaches out a hand, but stopped before touching her. “Of course you can’t ask me to forgive you. There’s nothing to forgive.”
Something heavy in T’Shael became the smallest fraction lighter.
“I hurt you,” she said, raising her own hand as though to trace the bruises on Cleante’s wrists before pulling it back again.
Cleante touched a particularly prominent bite mark on her neck and a faintly pinkish tinge passed over her cheeks and settled in the tips of her ears. “Not really,” she said, “and besides….I told you to. Remember?”
“I remember very little,” said T’Shael faintly, but that piece of memory did indeed slip into focus for her.
“Oh,” said Cleante. “Well. Then in that case, whatever you’re imagining is much worse than you could actually have ever done to me.”
“I did not say I remembered nothing.”
“I’m fine ,” said Cleante, moving to sit on her knees, but she winced when she moved. “I just...are you ok now?”
T’Shael was silent for a moment. “I wish you had not untied me,” she said softly, but truthfully.
Tears clouded Cleante’s eyes. “I’m...I’m sorry,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have...when you couldn’t even...I mean…” She took a steadying breath. “I just...couldn’t...couldn’t let you die. Even if that means you never forgive me.”
Whatever T’Shael had expected, it wasn’t that. “How could I—” she started, but Cleante interrupted her.
“Besides, you didn’t answer me! Are you going to be ok now? Are you because if you’re not...if you’re if this thing is still trying to kill you…” A tear escaped her eye and her hands shook, but her voice held steady. “...then I want you to do whatever more it takes to keep you alive. Please. If you won’t do it for you, do it for me.”
She held out her hands, waiting for T’Shael to retake her wrists.
The tableau held for a moment before T’Shael found her voice.
“I...will live,” she said. “The fever has passed.”
Cleante let her hands fall into her lap. “Good,” she said, suddenly quiet. “Then you can forgive me or not...but just know that there is nothing here I could ever hold against you.”
T’Shael shook her head slightly. “I do not understand.”
“You don’t have to,” said Cleante. “But I’m glad you’re alive. And if I can bring myself to hope...I hope this doesn’t have to break what we have.”
T’Shael opened her mouth to repeat that she still did not understand, but closed it without saying anything.
“You asked me once if I could tell you about love,” said Cleante. “I didn’t think I had an answer. But maybe...maybe now I do.”
T’Shael closed her eyes. There was a song playing her veins like the strings of a ka’athyra, but she didn’t know the words. She had thought it was only the fever making her feel such things.
“Then….” T’Shael paused and dared meet Cleante’s eyes. “Then if I may ask it once again...will you speak to me of love?”