And This Is The Thanks I Get?

Posted on Nov 20, 2016 @ 3:02pm by Selyara Chen
Edited on on Nov 20, 2016 @ 3:02pm

Mission: Aftermath

"And this is the thanks I get?"

(Cont. "Vieil Armor")

* * *=(/\)=* * *


Location: Earth

Scene: The Red October

Time index: Just after fleeing the underwater base

Selyara stared at Edgerton’s corpse, feeling oddly deflated. She’d always thought she’d feel something… more… when she finally had her revenge on the man, but now that it had actually come, she didn’t feel the surge of triumph she’d thought she would. She didn’t feel safe, she didn’t feel invincible.

She felt nothing.

If anything, all she was left with was a little bit of sadness, a ship adrift in the ocean now that the game she’d been playing for the last two years had drawn to a close. Without the game there was only uncertainty of what she would do with the rest of her life, or if that choice would even be hers to make. She blinked, her lashes were crusted with dried salt crystals, making her eyes well with tears. She brushed them away and whisked the salt from her lashes, but it didn’t help.

“You didn’t kill him,” Raxl’s voice cut into her thoughts.

“No. I didn’t,” She looked up and met his eyes, trying to read him, but she was tired, and gave up.

“I thought you were going to,” Raxl said tentatively.

“I was but…” she shrugged.

“But what?”

“I realized that I had thought of a more fitting punishment,” Selyara began, but the look on his face told her that he was calling bullshit. “You’re right, that is unfair. I took your… advice.... under consideration. But I couldn’t allow him to stand trial. It only would have served to allow him to proselytize and espouse his views to the Federation, and it would have made him a rallying point for any remaining Neo-essentialist sympathizers. He had to be neutralized so that he could be shuffled away with little fuss. I did… have some inkling that someone else might end up killing him, though I confess I thought it would be one of the Marines, or Barton. So perhaps it was not as virtuous an abstention as you would like to believe.”

“You know that’s a lie,” he slumped against the seat. Selyara wished she had his conviction in her good intentions. “So what now?”

“Now if you’ve any sense of self preservation whatsoever, you’ll distance yourself from me as much as possible, and tell anyone who asks that I forced you to assist me. Perhaps even that I used my mind mojo, as you put it, to make you do it.”

She knew before she said it that he wouldn’t do it, but she hadn’t expected the deeply wounded look on his face.

“I’m not going to rake you over the fire to save my skin.”

“You’ll do it because there is a good chance that when we get where we’re going, there are going to be people waiting for me, and being associated with an escaped convict is not exactly a good career move,” Selyara squeezed the salt water out of her hair, trying to distract herself from the creeping fear that was beginning to set in. She glanced up, and saw that Raxl’s outrage had been replaced by a sad, almost pitying look. “ Besides, I’m telling you to do it. I’ve already been sentenced to life in prison without parole, what are they going to do to me, threaten to keep my corpse in a cell for another 50 years? It’s not as though anyone I love or care about will still be alive to mourn me by then anyway,” she stopped as she saw the expression of pity on his face “ What?”

“Nothing, your world just seems a little bit lonely and a bit scary, is all. It makes me kind of sad. You just helped to take down a power hungry usurper to the Federation, and you still think that they’re going to send you back to the stockade? And even if they do arrest you again, I’m not going to add outright lies to your burden of sin. If it comes to that, I’ll get my ass out of the line of fire, but I’m not going to make your situation worse while I do so,” Raxl’s voice rose, loud enough that suddenly some of the others were looking in their direction. Selyara was uncomfortable.

“I would do it if-” she began, but he cut her off.

“No, you wouldn’t. Stop saying that. It’s like you’re trying to convince yourself to be the monster you think you are. If you really were as awful as you keep telling me you are, why would you have risked life and limb to stop Edgerton? Why didn’t you throw that phaser into the core, and kill everyone inside just so you could get to Edgerton? Why didn’t you kill Edgerton? I’ll tell you why, because you aren’t an awful, self absorbed monster. I don’t know exactly what you did that landed you on the most wanted list, but it seems to me you have to have made your reparations by now. So, how long is it going to take before you forgive yourself?”

She stared at him, unsure whether she should be enraged at his presumption, or impressed by another one of his idiot savant moments, where out of nowhere he managed to hit very close to the bone. She bit back her automatic sneering comment. He deserved better, and they both knew it. She stared at him. He was looking even scruffier than usual, the carefully grooming he’d done before going dancing was long gone, his chin sporting more stubble than normal, and his hair and clothes rank and stained with seawater.

“If it were just a matter of what I did to land in the stockade, I imagine I already would have, Rax. That I didn’t do of my own accord. But everything that came after, that’s on me, and that is much harder to live with,” Selyara fell silent for a moment, letting the unfamiliar feeling of guilt wash over her. She looked back up. “Which brings me to an apology that I owe you. I’m afraid you’ve been ill used by me since we met. I have lied to you, manipulated you, used you like a pawn even when we were supposed to be working together, kept you in the dark, and kept you at arm’s length. More importantly, I failed to notice when you went above and beyond for me, I failed to thank you for it, and I failed to recognize or appreciate your gestures of friendship. For that, more than anything else, I am very sorry.”

There was a long moment of silence, before Raxl’s irrepressible sense of humor and almost allergic aversion to seriousness kicked in.

“Uh oh. I think I let you stay in that seawater too long. That sounded disturbingly like Selyara Chen being a genuine, normal person, not Selyara Chen the Shadow Master, and there can only be one explanation for that: Brain damage. Okay, two explanations. You’re about to tell me that I’m not getting paid after all, aren’t you?” He meant it as a joke, but it hit Selyara in the gut. If they did come for her, she wasn’t going to be able to make good on her promise to fix Raxl’s Riss problem. Rax seemed to sense the sudden change in her mood, because he put both hands up placatingly. “Hey now, don’t cry or anything, I was just teasing.”

“I would hardly cry because of *you*,” Selyara retorted, glad that he had returned their interaction to its normal equilibrium. “But I promise you, I will make good on our deal, or at least my end of it. If they do come for me, it might take a good deal longer because I’m sure they’ll do everything they can to keep me from interacting with the outside, but I will take care of Riss.”

The silence reasserted itself, but this time it was comfortable, amicable.

“You know… I was *really* hoping you were going to say that you’d get me that million credit bounty…” Raxl said with a grin.

“Stop being a smartass, Mister Dreyton,” Selyara found herself smiling back, in spite of everything.

* * * =(/\)= * * *

Scene: Starfleet Intelligence HQ.

Selyara was not smiling anymore.

When Starfleet Security hadn’t taken her away immediately she thought she was safe, that perhaps she’d been pardoned, and that she’d be officially notified of her pardon later. She’d been wrong on both counts, and had to endure the humiliation of being arrested in front of her father. The only small mercy was that her mother and sister hadn’t been there, as it would only have reinforced their disdain.

She’d mentally prepared herself for being imprisoned again, but she hadn’t been prepared for the fresh humiliations that had been enacted now that they knew what she was capable of. She was forced to change into a special jumpsuit designed to block her touch telepathy, equipped with special gloves that locked in place around her wrists so they couldn’t be removed. The suit pulsed with low grade electromagnetic waves that prevented her from forming a telepathic link. She’d retreated into her head as she used to do, sorting through the new information she’d pulled from Edgerton’s mind as she forced her memories of the psionic aftermath of the Paris attack into his. Most of it was nothing useful, now that his grab for power had been put on ice, though it was a horrifying look at the grotesqueries of his reign. She remained silent and impassive as they read the list of charges against her, as they reminded her of her rights, and assured her she would be assigned council if she wanted it, as they asked about her movements since her escape from Jaros, breaking her silence only to detail her arrival on Earth, and her subsequent actions to bring down Edgerton’s regime.

Her composure failed her the moment she was in the cell. The enormity of what it would mean to be back in the stockade hit her, and the thought of the rest of her life imprisoned was more than she could bear. She slammed into the forcefield, the energy field sparking as she did so, she could hear herself screaming, and raging and spitting at her captors, until she heard the hiss of tranquilizer gas filling her cell, and then she was suddenly calm.

* * *=(/\)=* * *

Location: LUNA

Scene: Kane’s hotel room

Michael Turlogh Kane was, by nature, a man of action. With the fight over, and the political upheaval, all he could do was wait until someone in a position of power decided it was time to give him something to do. It was like coming down off of an adrenaline high, and having nowhere to channel the energy; he felt jittery, restless, as though he was searching for something to do.

Something other than paperwork, that was.

With nearly 900 crewmembers needing reassignment, debriefings, reviews, and taped testimony for posterity, he was certain that as soon as things settled down long enough for someone to come looking for him, it would be to dump a never-ending parade of paperwork into his lap.

It was unproductive to seek to do something when there was nothing *to* be done, and so he settled down half-heartedly in front of a Vulcan meditation lamp to still his mind. He’d done it a thousand times those years he’d lived on Vulcan, and normally picturing that blue, turbulent ocean and willing it to calm until it became still and smooth as a mirror came easily to him, but today, try as he might, the waters remained distorted, as though a thousand invisible pebbles were being thrown into it.

It was therefore, almost a relief when his door chimed, and he was able to abandon his meditation.

“Enter,” Kane said, standing up as he threw on a robe. The door hissed open, and an unfamiliar man walked through the door. He was a tidy looking older Chinese man, half a head shorter than Kane, with short cropped hair that was more salt than pepper, and a tidy goatee that framed a mouth with deep laugh lines, and dark twinkling eyes that seemed out of place in an old face. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored outfit with an asian flare, that somehow managed to look casual and comfortable, despite the fact that it should have been a fussy outfit with its crisp lines and hand detailing. Kane knew he had never met the man before, but he had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of familiarity. Kane’s mind was still enough after his attempts at meditation that he didn’t let his surprise or consternation show. Instead he gave a courteous smile, and extended his hand. “What can I do for you, Mister….?”

“Chen, Erik Chen. Erik will do,” the man said, shaking Kane’s hand firmly with hands that were beginning to gnarl with age. Kane instantly recognized the name, and it explained why the man seemed so familiar: He was Selyara’s father. Kane had never seen him in person, but over the years that he’d known Selyara, he’d seen pictures of him plenty of times, decorating her office and quarters, proudly displayed in a way that made her idolization of the man obvious, even if she never voiced it out loud. The man hesitated for a moment, and then got right down to his point when it became clear that Kane was not going to exchange further pleasantries. “I’ve come to talk to you about my daughter, Selyara.”

“Oh?” Kane raised an eyebrow, wondering momentarily why Erik was asking him, rather than Selyara, before coming to the conclusion that she had likely told her father a half story that spared him the worst details of what had happened since she escaped the Stockade, and that her father knew it, and wanted the full story. “Listen, Erik, Selyara will talk to you when she’s ready, and I don’t think she’d appreciate us talking about her.”

“You don’t know, do you.” Erik Chen sat down on one of the plush chairs scattered through the room, a distraught expression on his face. Kane pulled up a chair across from Selyara’s father and leaned forward to rest a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder until he’d composed himself enough to continue. “They’ve taken her away, Mr. Kane. She was at my house, when they showed up for her, armed to the teeth, and they took her away.”

“Who is they, Starfleet Security? And please, call me Michael.” Kane stood and walked over to the replicator and ordered a cup of tea, hazarding a guess that Selyara’s favorite would also be her father’s. Seeing her father in person was illuminating, but also a little odd. Many of Selyara’s habits that were still indelibly ingrained in his mind; the way she drank tea, saucer on her lap, both hands cradling the teacup as she talked, the little frown that creased her brow when she was thinking, or upset. Now, sitting across from her father, Kane saw the same familiar gestures and movements for what they were, carefully rehearsed, loving imitations of the man a young Selyara had idolized. Even her way of speaking had echoes of her father in it, similar intonations, similar phrasing.

“No. Well, I thought they were at first. Only later, when I went later to Starfleet Security to talk to her, they told me she wasn’t there, that she was being held at Starfleet Intelligence. I went there to talk to her, and they told me that no one was allowed to see her. The best I could get out of them was a from a nice young lady, who told me that even if I could see her, she was sedated,” Erik sipped his tea, one hand hovering under the bottom of the cup to catch any wayward drops of liquid.

“I’m sure it’s just a formality, many of my crew with tangential connections to Edgerton have been detained as well, but I’ve been assured that it’s merely for appearances-” Kane said kindly, hoping to allay Erik’s fears.

“Maybe for your crew, Michael. But for her? She may have helped you bring down Edgerton, but we both know that in her case it’s more cause for condemnation than commendation. I’m scared that they’ll use it as proof that she’s even more dangerous than before. That combined with the fact that she stole information from you and is a demonstrated flight risk- I really don’t see this going any other way than her ending up back in the stockade, possibly in solitary confinement so she can’t create a web of influence like she did the first time, and it’s not like for me and you, a life sentence for her is not another fifty, sixty years, it’s another hundred, another hundred and fifty. She doesn’t deserve that, especially since she shouldn’t have been sentenced to life in the first place.” Erik smashed the teacup down onto the saucer with an angry motion. “She was manipulated into it by another telepath, but they wouldn’t even hear her out when they tried to tell them-”

“Calm down, Erik. We won’t be any use to her if we can’t look at the situation objectively. Do you want me to inquire into her case, or see if I can pull strings so you can see her?” Kane kept his voice soothing, trying to pull the other man back from his the edge of his emotional outburst. Erik looked back at Kane angrily or a moment, and Kane could see the moment Erik’s rational mind realized that the fury it felt was being misdirected.

“No. I want you to be her advocate.” Erik’s voice was still angry, his rational mind not able to fully defeat his emotions. “I can tell you trust them to deal fairly with her, but I unfortunately cannot, and she doesn’t.”

“I’m not sure how much sway I have, Erik. Even if I try, if they’ve already decided what they are going to do, I’m just one Starfleet captain, they have no reason to listen to me, it will probably make no difference.”

“It will make a difference to her. She loved you a great deal, Michael. Still does, I think, as much as she’s able to, anyway. That’s why she left the Discovery. She was scared that if she stayed she’d be willing to sacrifice hundreds of the crew just to save you, and she didn’t want that on either of your consciences. When she was sent to Jaros I think she always hoped that you’d be her white knight and save her, the way she saved you on Byss, and when you didn’t, it helped to fuel her bitterness -” Kane opened his mouth to protest, but Erik raised a hand, “I’m not blaming you, I see it for what it was, an unfair, irrational expectation. But that is why I say it will make all the difference to her now.”

“I think I understand. I’ll talk to them. I know a few people who may pack enough clout to get her a pardon,” Kane stood and began to move towards his console. Maybe Martine would be able to help. Or Sardak might see reason. Erik caught Kane’s hand and pulled him back down to sit. The older man was no longer as emotional as he had been, but his face had a gravity to it, and his brown eyes were serious.

“No,” Erik shook his head sharply, “Michael, I’m under no illusions. My daughter *has* become a dangerous woman, I don’t need to tell you that. She needs to be somewhere where people can make sure she doesn’t overstep her bounds. She’s a loaded weapon, but if you point her in the right direction she could be-” his hands waved in the air uselessly as he tried to come up with the right thought.

“A useful tool?” Kane supplied, though the sentiment seemed cold, even to him, and he winced, hoping that Erik wouldn’t take offense.

“Just so,” on the contrary, her father seemed satisfied with that response. “Get them to give her some sort of purpose, some work that suits her unique talents. Don’t let them put her away somewhere where she only has to look out for herself. It’s the only way I’ll ever see the daughter I remember again.” Erik Chen stood up, setting the teacup on the arm of the chair he had occupied, and held out his hand. “Thank you, Michael, it was very nice to meet you finally. I hope this will not be the last time. Maybe someday when you have the time you’ll come and have dinner with me and my family.”

Kane went in for a polite handshake, but apparently Erik was a hugger, because he found himself engulfed in a heartfelt embrace, just long enough and firm enough to be sincere, but not so long as to be uncomfortable.

“The pleasure was mine. I’ll let you know what’s happening with Selyara as soon as I know more,” Kane walked with Erik to the door, which hissed open to reveal a tall, skinny Betazoid man lounging in the corridor against the wall opposite Kane’s room, obviously waiting for something or some one. He straightened up as the door opened, nodding politely at Erik Chen, but his eyes fixed on Kane. Erik Chen’s eyes flicked from the waiting man to Kane, but seemed to decide that there was no obvious threat, and nodded politely at the Betazoid, gesturing to let him know that his business with Kane was concluded. The Betazoid, for his part, nodded politely Erik, and waited for him to leave before speaking.

“Hello, Captain. I’ve got a message for you.”

* * *=(/\)=* * *

Scene: Starfleet Security Brig.

Kassandra’s mood was somewhere between ‘aggrieved’ and ‘enraged’ as she was frogmarched down the row of brigs at Starfleet HQ. She wasn’t going to lie- there’d been plenty of times she’d probably deserved to be in the brig, and she would have accepted it, but this was decidedly not one of them, and for this reason, she felt quite wounded. Even more annoying was the insistence of her security detail that they treat her as though she were going to resist her arrest, rather than that she was grudgingly walking herself to jail because she was being told to, even though it was patently unfair. It did give her a modicum of satisfaction that they’d sent three people to arrest her. Evidently *someone* out there thought highly of her hand-to-hand prowess.

She amused herself by scrutinizing her captors with her sensor nets to determine how she would have taken them out if she had decided to resist arrest, after all there would be precious little to entertain herself with once she was in the cell. The force field and walls would block her sensor nets, essentially leaving her with all the stimulation a 6x10 cell could provide. T

he tall Vulcan would have been the hardest opponent, he was far stronger than the two women with him, though both of the women were faster than him, judging by the ratio of slow and fast twitch muscles her sensor nets were picking up. One of the women had recently given birth- her tendons and ligaments were still loose and elastic from the residual hormones. Kassandra decided she would have been the first target, because she’d be easy to disable, her limbs dislocating more easily due to the flexibility of of the connective tissue. Then, it clearly would have been the Vulcan male, since he could do Kassandra the most damage, and he probably knew how to do that damn Vulcan nerve-pinch. So, she’d have to take him out by-

“We’re here, Captain,” the Vulcan security officer gave her a little shove into the cell, almost as though he knew she’d been thinking about ways to disable him.

“About fuckin’ time. Couldn’t ya have just beamed me in instead a’ humiliatin’ me by walkin’ me through a buildin’ fulla people whose asses I jus’ saved? It’s a damn shame, you know. I’m a goddamn hero,” the forcefield sprung up cutting off her view of the officers. Kassandra pounded the field with one hand punctuating her parting shot, more for good form, than out of any real rage. “Y’all are gonna feel like assholes when they let me out, and give me a commendation, you know.”

She flung herself onto the cot, and allowed herself to relax. Alone time was alone time, she supposed, whether it was on a beach or in a cell. Although in the grand scheme of detention facilities, this one was exceptionally boring. Smooth walls, all corners rounded, everything was exactly the same shade of grey, from the carpet to the walls, to the linens on the bed. *Exactly* the same shade of grey. She knew it because her sensors informed her of the fact, unable to be tricked by light and shadow into believing that there was some sort of subtle variation in the drab color. Kassandra sighed. Perhaps she could convince them to give her reading materials, otherwise this was liable to get really old, really quickly.

“As borin’ as watchin’ quintotriticale grow in the winter,” Kassandra mused out loud, pulling out an applicable folksy phrase. She knew people looked down their noses at her when she used her arcane idioms, but try as she might she just couldn’t give them up. They were just so much more lively and evocative than the humdrum phrases they used. Besides, she could talk just as proper as they when she tried. In her younger days she’d assiduously tried to obliterate her accent, hating every traitorous word that fell from her lips and informed everyone that she was a colony bumpkin. Now that she was old, wiser, and frankly didn’t give two figs what people thought of her, she wore her accent proudly, like a badge of honor. People would always find a way to look down on you anyway, so why bother trying to change so they wouldn’t.

There was a soft rustling from across the way. Kassandra couldn’t ‘see’ the person, but from the sound of it they were sitting up in the bed, and also, they were crying, if the quiet, wet sniffles were anything to go by.

“They arrested you too? What for?” The quiet voice was vaguely familiar, but Kassandra couldn’t quite place it.

“Fer bein’ a member of a proscribed group, was how they put it I believe. Meanin’ for havin’ at one time, been associated with the Neo-essentialists. Though that were so long ago, an’ I woulda thought I more n’ made up for it with two years a actively fightin’ them. You in fer the same thing?” Kassandra kicked her boots off and massaged her shoulder. It was still sore. It hadn’t been bad, but the doctors hadn’t wanted to heal it all the way, since she was already resistant to dermal regeneration, so it would take some time while her body’s natural mechanisms finished the work. There was a long silence, and then the quiet voice responded.

“You know exactly why I’m here. You saw them arrest me! That was unkind.” There was a little bit of anger in the voice now, lending a slight spark to the dull bleakness.

“Ah. You’d be Lynette then. Sorry, can’t see you. Damn sensor nets won’t penetrate the forcefield. You’re just a disembodied voice to me right now. Still got the moggie, I mean, the cat with you? Ugly guy that was dressed like twinsies with me, was worrying about whether you’d have someone to take care of it when you were taken in. Took a liking to the moggie, but then there’s never been a lost soul he’s met that that man ain’t had a compulsion to take care a’. Myself includin’. Promised him I’d ask after him.”

“Oh. He’s here. He’s fine.” The little spark of life that had filled Lynette’s voice a moment ago was gone again. The words lacked any sort of feeling, and from the congested, snotty sound of the young woman’s voice, she was crying again. Kassandra closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, but the snuffling, muffled sobs quickly began to grate on her nerves.

It wasn’t that she was unsympathetic, exactly. It was more than she just didn’t know what to *do* with crying people. Crying was the least productive way to deal with problems, and usually served people the least. In Kassandra’s opinion, being angry was much more useful, and was usually what was really needed. At least when you were angry, things got done. Kassandra was acutely aware most other people did not much appreciate her way of thinking, which was their loss, and it was a safe bet that Lynette would probably fall into that category.

“I was in with the Neo-essentialists near on two years ago. Unwitting dupe like yerself, only I gotta admit I took part in quite a bit more than you did. I was down on my luck, which ain’t nothin’ new to me, really, but I was at a pretty low spot self respect-wise. Edgerton that bastard hisself came to me with a story about how he’d seen my dishonorable discharge papers from Starfleet, an’ how he thought I’d been wronged, and ‘would I let him make amends by puttin’ me in charge of a special ops Marine unit?’ Shoulda smelled a rat from then, but I didn’t. So I unwittingly covered up an old Neo-Essentialist plot, and staged a mutiny,” Kassandra glowered at the ceiling remembering, “Only thing is, then they started killin’ the regular crew. Edgerton thought I’d make a good little storm-trooper, and take his word it was fer the greater good.”

“So you decided to stop them?” Lynette’s voice had the semi-patronizing tone that the young use when talking to the ‘old.’ Kassandra knew it was asked more out of a desire for distraction from her own pain than actual interest, but Kassandra also knew the value of taking a long winding road to make a point.

“Yeah. He didn’t know that I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be involved in takin’ innocent lives again, and I decided that inaction would make me as culpable as action. So I ended up killin’ ta save the regular crew,” Kassandra circled round her point, going in for the kill. “Anyway, the reason I’m tellin’ you this is because sometimes in order to do the right thing an’ save lives, people end up dyin’. If you become an officer, someday, chances are you’re gonna send someone to do something which you know is gonna result in their death. It’s a hard truth, harder still when it’s someone you care about, but you ain’t responsible for that young man’s death. Edgerton is. An’ harder still is the truth that there was nothin’ you could have done. If Edgerton hadn’t killed him, he would likely have died anyway like everyone else on that base did when we left.”


* * *=(/\)=* * *


NRPG: Phew. That's a long one for me!


Alix Fowler as:


Selyara Chen

The reason scenes fail a reverse Bechadel test


and


Kassandra Thytos

Giver of truly terrible motivational speeches