Work Text:
You should not be doing this.
But what, in balance, is one more broken rule?
You’ve already broken them all. Broken, you think, - eyes sliding away from the screen to study the inch of amber in the bottom of your tumbler – isn’t the right word.
Rent apart. Torn. Disregarded. Obliterated.
These are better words. These fit better.
You used to care so much about rules. Following protocol. You have, you would admit to yourself in better moments, used those rules to run away from things that make you afraid. Better moments, these days, are few and far between.
And anyway, it turns out that you will grow to find rules inconvenient, a trifle, unimportant, if she (you) is anything to go by. You smile a little to yourself, but it is tight, and slide your eyes back to your monitor.
You press your finger to the small dot on the screen that carries your code in duplicate, the only discernible difference the prefix Adm as opposed to Cap. You press so hard that your finger yellows at the nail beds, the colour fleeing.
If you were to die, unrecognisable in death, it is how they would identify you.
The code that now mingles with his, is almost indiscernible. Prefix XO. Numbers mixed, tracker one on top of the other; a jumble of numbers and figures, of arms and legs. And you know what it means. Because it can only mean one thing, and you are not sure how you should feel about it. Apart from that it feels like a wild betrayal, a devastating violation.
You want to hate her; you do – on many other levels – hate her.
But this is something less and also something more. It is so confusing that you are in a cramp of indecision, stuck in this chair and sore with the stillness, watching their motionless indicators through a privilege of your ship’s system that you should not be abusing.
You are repulsed by her. By her age and her hardness.
You are at the beginning of her, and she is your end.
You want to be the end of her.
The whiskey isn’t helping, but it doesn’t stop you lifting it to your lips and taking another numbing gulp of it.
And you fall asleep like that, in the lonely, well worn and imperfect chair of your desk, the monitor blinking as you blink into painful slumber.
0
The next day she strides into your Readyroom. Liquid and languorous and commanding all at once.
Hair: perfect. Uniform: perfect.
You know it in yourself, have felt it before. The lingering ache of satisfaction in your muscles, the power of a good fuck and an even better sleep.
It’s been years but you still remember it. The taste of skin, the taste of satisfaction. The dry warmth of the sleep afterwards.
Jealousy rattles your teeth, tightens your lips, as you look at your own smile.
Smug. A secret.
She’s ready to die. You wonder if she has lived?
“Ready?” she asks.
Your own voice is jarring to you when it comes out of her, rasped with age but not unrecognisable, something you will own in future. The sound of what’s to come.
It is unsettling to your ears.
You look up at her from your desk.
Perhaps your questions – all of the ones you tried to bury – show on your face. Maybe, just maybe, she has asked herself them before or prepared herself for them. Whatever it is that gives you away, she sees it and is prepared for them. You are not.
You should know her; she wears your skin, and your uniform. She speaks with your voice. She is you in a warped mirror, distorted and flecked and tarnished with age and with other poisons.
“You can ask, and I will be honest,” she swallows, adjusts the hem of her Admiral’s jacket. “But not until the last moment.”
0
The shuttle is quiet, the shared notion of what you are about to do settling like a sea between you; sloshing, pulling in and out on the shore of your conscience. She is staring down the barrel of her own death and she doesn’t seem remotely phased by it. If anything she looks relieved. It is horrible to you that you can relate to it, that the contentedness that settles the lines of her shoulders, softens her jaw, is already living and growing within you.
On the viewscreen before you, the cube grows larger. Ominous.
Beside you, she finally speaks.
“Ask what you need to,” she sits back, curls her fingers around the last coffee she will ever have.
You wonder about her life, about her timeline. And you hope never to know it. You know what you want to ask but you don’t know how to frame it to sound less infantile, less curious.
“Why did you come back?”
She takes a sip of coffee and you focus your eyes back on the instruments because you know the move; the delay that a sip provides, time to author your answer.
“What do you think? You know me.”
Your temper flares inside you, and you want to scream at her that every possible answer is repulsive to you. That when you think of it, it can only be because you are selfish. And that is your worst shared trait, selfishness. Self-preservation.
“I don’t know you.”
She smirks, a puff of laughter escaping her, “You want to believe that.”
There is silence for a moment before she speaks.
“You can sleep tonight. It isn’t about my selfishness, though I know why you think that.”
“Then why sleep with him?” It rushes out of you, furious and untamed, desperate.
She swallows, “Because I lost him. Because I let him go, and when I finally-” her words seem to choke her, maybe because they are inadequate in their honesty, boring and unsurprising to you both. “It was too late.”
“He’s dead, in your...life?” you ask, clarifying what you already know.
She turns to you, looks straight at you, “I am the only one left.”
You don’t trust her at all – you know her so well that you can’t – but at this moment her pain is so open, so pure and glittering, so profound that you have no choice but to believe her.
“I loved him so much,” she speaks and her voice is low, slow with the pain she is wearing. “We made terrible choices. Don’t let that happen to yourself, do not let it happen to him because it will kill him.”
You have no idea what to say to her because her pain cuts into your bones, scores itself into you.
“You have a chance not to-”
“He’s already gone.”
The words are bitten as they escape you, painful and resentful.
“No, no he isn’t,” she says, and this time her voice is stronger and more confident. “I promise you.”
You have no idea what to say, and it’s almost laughable that it all comes down to this, that you would do this for him, that both of you would.
Because you know he would do anything for you.
“I loved him until his last breath, and her.”
It comes as a dagger, settling between your ribs to steal your breath.
“It’s breaking my heart,” you say, and you realise it’s the first truth you’ve told her.
The Cube is before you now, an angular monstrosity of twisted metals and harsh green light. There is a sharp jerk which pulls you both to the edges of your seat as the tractor takes hold.
“Are you sure about this?”
You don’t really know why you ask her, because you absolutely know the level of determination of which she is capable. For all of it.
“I have nothing to live for,” she says. The words ring with the silence and the truth of it. “But you do.”