Chapter Text
Well, we busted out of class, had to get away from those fools;
We learned more from a three minute record, baby,
Than we ever learned in school.
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound,
I can feel my heart begin to pound,
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes
And follow your dreams down...
Well, we made a promise
We swore we'd always remember:
No retreat, baby, no surrender;
Like soldiers in the winter's night with a vow to defend:
No retreat, baby, no surrender.
-Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender
For one minute, I pretend.
I pretend a lot of things. I pretend this never happened. I pretend that it did, but it turned out differently. I pretend that I'm a decent human being. I pretend I'm not scared out of my mind.
I pretend that I can make some kind of difference.
Just-- I need you to understand, it didn't start like this. In fact, it started with a one-off meeting in an alley to pass on information, a couple years ago now. That's what I do -- I trade in information. Doesn't matter what kind, as long as I make a profit on it. I do whatever it takes to get info for trade. Business people use me a lot. So does the rebellion. I can move around a lot easier than most rebels can, just because I'm a loyal Empire citizen on the surface, and no one really looks twice at me.
So, it started with an exchange of information in an alley. I didn't really notice anything about him then worth a second look, except a certain-- not aura, but presence that suggested he'd be capable of doing real damage to someone if he wanted to. Except, he had to be crazy. Because the 'information' he gave me? Was a toothpick. The fucker gave me a toothpick and a note to take to the rebellion. Seriously.
But hey, whatever, he paid me. If he wanted to waste good Empire credits on sending toothpicks to people, that was fine.
So, it went on like that. Two meetings, three. And the only thing I really noticed then was that he kinda creeped me out. Never smiled, never even raised an eyebrow. Just looked at me like I wasn't even human. Maybe that's why I stopped thinking of him as human, but I'll get into that later.
Fourth meeting, right? Toothpick, credits, and a pair of muggers decided it was a good night to roll someone. It was only after it that I pieced together what happened, though.
I was only starting to get scared by the time it was over.
No shit. He had the blade in the heart of the guy on the left, then pulled it out with his other hand and brought it back-armed around to put it right through the eye-socket of the other one. Just like that. That fast.
"Holy shit!" I kept saying that, over and over, and I'm on my ass because I tripped over my own feet scrambling backwards. There were two dead guys in the alley, and I barely even knew they were there before they were dead.
But-- he didn't even blink. Didn't smirk. Didn't do anything except flick the dagger free of blood. Later I figured out that it was a frictionless blade, his own work, but right then I'm just staring and gasping, though I finally quit going, 'holy shit.'
He barely gave me a glance, then he turned around and walked away.
After a few minutes, I got myself together to go the other way. But boy, did it stick with me. I kept going over it, again and again, in my head. Slowed it down in my mind, as well as I could, just to really grasp what it was I saw. I think that was where I started really eying him. Not like-- not like you do someone you want, but like you do something you want.
God, I'm a fuckup.
The alleys were always low-lit. And he always wore black. The only time he didn't was once when he must have been running late, and then he looked almost normal in a Starfleet uniform, except for that cold look. But other than that, he was always in black, and always far enough away from me that he was more like a shadow than anything else. But that shadow just kept following me, even after he was gone again.
I don't know exactly when I decided that I'd do just about anything to get within that three feet of space that was the difference between life and death. I just did. I really wanted to get that close to him, this crazy, shadowy fucker. Maybe because no one could? I don't know. Or maybe I do.
A few more meetings, and I took a chance.
"Price?" he asked. He never raised his voice, never spoke more than absolutely necessary, always just kept a tone to match his expression; cool and even.
I swallowed, but I managed to sound confident. "One minute."
He narrowed his eyes at me, briefly. Not in anger, though. It was just a look that demanded an answer.
"One minute where you stay your blade," I said, and I was proud of myself for sounding as sure and flippant as I did. Inside, I was shaking like a leaf. The fact he just gave me a short nod made it worse.
I flattered myself with the idea that I could somehow faze this guy. That there was some space, between the cold business-like certainty and the deadly swiftness, that I could reach.
The first thing I really noticed was that he was shorter than I thought. You'd think that I woulda had a good idea of his height by now, but I didn't. But I was kinda shocked that he was probably a good three or four inches shorter than I am. Enough that he had to tip his head up a little to keep his eyes on mine.
My heart was pounding out of my chest, but he was just as cool and expressionless as ever, even with me right there practically in his face. Up close, he was all black and white; in the low light of an alley there was no color, just contrast, and he was really pretty good-looking. Like the kind of guy who could turn someone's head, if only he'd learned how to smile.
I deluded myself that I could faze him a bit. Later, I'd figured out that the only reason why I got my one minute then was because he had already measured me and decided that I wasn't a threat. And, really, I wasn't. I just wished I was.
I was having a hard time not breathing too fast, but I thought I was doing a really good job of it. Still took me about a half of that one minute to put a hand on him, though; I traced my fingers down from his temple to his jaw line. He didn't react. Didn't look surprised, upset or anything, just watched me coolly. Didn't pull away, didn't even look like he cared in the least.
I sure did, though, because holy shit, I was this close to this-- this crazy, shadowy bastard. I think I probably would have kissed him then just to see if I could get away with it, but I didn't get the chance -- right as I tucked my fingers under his chin, right before I was about to lean in, I felt the point of his dagger against my ribcage. Not digging in or anything, it was just there, but the message was clear.
Minute's up.
I don't doubt he gave me the whole minute. Just like I don't doubt that he would have used that dagger. But I backed off, and once I was out of his three feet, he turned around and walked away without looking back.
I didn't get over it the rest of the night.
Emboldened by that first minute, that's what I asked for from then on. I was losing money on him, but hey, I was still getting what I wanted. Or-- I thought I was at first. I finally did kiss him, but it didn't bother him any more than anything else did -- he didn't fight it, didn't pull away, sure didn't return it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to kiss someone who doesn't give you anything back?
I raised the stakes after awhile. I was getting kinda frustrated. I wanted a reaction. I wanted-- I don't know. I wanted something.
So, I told him I wanted one night.
He gave it to me. Didn't even blink. I mean, no sex -- I doubt he woulda cared about that, even, he viewed his body as he did his mind and his dagger; weapons, useful tools, no sentimentality. But the line that couldn’t be crossed was that I couldn't compromise him being able to defend himself in any way, and there's just no way to get laid without being compromised. So, no sex. And after awhile, I got-- bored, I guess you could say. I went over every last millimeter of him, and I still couldn't get a reaction out of him. And he wasn't dangerous to me, inside of the time I took.
I left him alone more after that. Still took his time, but I used him for other things. Mostly as a bodyguard. He was really an effective bodyguard -- standing behind me, black clad contrasts, silence and eerie intensity while I did my thing. I could gamble, I could get high, I could get drunk, and I knew that if he was there, I'd be perfectly fine. The only time I got in his space then was sometimes to throw an arm around his shoulders for a moment and bite his jaw, usually in some dive, just to show everyone else, "Hey, look what I got." Not hard. Just to show off and make a point.
But-- he was never mine.
He still isn't.
Right now, I don't want him to be. I just want him to keep breathing.
He was too good a bodyguard. One look from him was usually enough to scare people off who might have caused me trouble if I was alone. But I got careless; I cheated some guys in a game of cards and they spat hate at me across the table, but they didn't dare make a move on me. Not with my shadow there. And weeks passed by, I forgot about it, and that was when everything went to shit.
Four of them. There were four of them. They came through the door of the club we were in; it was pretty quiet there, but even then, it was almost instant chaos. I ended up under a table. I have no fucking idea how I got there, down in the peanut shells and stale beer.
He had to have been in knife fights before, where he couldn't use the element of surprise, but this was the first time I'd seen one. Just from the knees down, though. The four guys who'd been planning on taking me out must have known they'd have to contend with him, and they were growling, threatening, snarling. He never made a sound. Watching from under a table (what does that say about me?) I could only half make it out, but one by one, those guys fell.
The last one he nailed didn't die instantly, though, and that surprised me. I crawled out from my hiding spot, and that last guy, who had to outweigh my shadow by fifty or more pounds, was drowning on his own blood but wasn't dead.
And my shadow was fucked up. Nothing too obvious, but he had his feet apart to try to keep a steady stance, and he was breathing through his mouth, something I'd never seen from him. He didn't look scared, just dazed, and I said, "Hey, what's wrong?"
I don't think he really heard me; he didn't even pick his head up from where it was hanging a bit, and after a moment he tried to put a hand on a table to steady himself, but he ended up hitting the floor on his shoulder instead.
I wasn't really scared then, except for the rush after being almost jumped by four guys wanting to pay me back for cheating them, and it's hard to be scared for someone who's really more machine than person; more shadow than human. The fact that he was in black made it hard for me to see what had happened, but I checked him over anyway and the only thing I found was a scratch, not even as bad as a paper cut, on his left palm. Didn't take a genius to guess that those guys had been packing poisoned blades. More than a scratch, and my shadow'd be dead as a doornail.
As of now, he was just fucked up pretty bad. Not quite there. His hands were chilly, and there was a really glazed look to his eyes, which was even creepier than the sharp, cold light usually there.
If this gives you an idea just how much of a piece of shit I can be, I thought about leaving him there. He's not attached to me, aside from my usefulness; I'm not attached to him (liar), aside from the fact that he's a good bodyguard and easy on the eyes. I thought about leaving him there.
But I didn't. Though, the first thing I did was take his dagger off of him; I can't believe he actually took the time to put it back in its-- you know, I'm not sure what you'd call it. It's not like a sheath. More like a holster, really light-weight, really clever, strapped to his inner right forearm. Muscle-controlled. I wondered how many times he cut his own hands practicing to get to the point where he could have his dagger in hand in a heartbeat. But I took it off him; he tried to pull his arm back, but he wasn't in any shape to put up a real fight. I figured that if I was gonna drag or carry him anywhere, I didn't want to risk getting stabbed.
He didn't really put up much of a fight when I got him across my shoulders, either. Brief struggle, but then he was still, and I guess maybe he blacked out. He was solid, too. Like, real dense, compact weight. Not too heavy for me, but enough that I knew my shoulders were gonna be screaming at me later for this.
The only person left in the bar was the tender, and he looked freaked out. The guy who hadn't been dead was finally dead, laying there with blood leaking out of his mouth. I didn't bother paying my tab. I didn't see myself coming back to this place.
The good thing about living my kinda lifestyle is that you learn where you can drag an unconscious assassin and not have people ask you questions. I sprung for a cheap motel room. Dropped my shadow on the bed. He wasn't really out cold, but close -- kinda somewhere just under the surface, and I guess he must've been hurting too, but if there was one thing I'd figured out about him it was that he could ignore sensation like no man I'd ever seen before. I guess he'd managed to train himself to the point where even dazed and messed up and poisoned, he still gave away nothing.
Now, I really wish-- maybe I really wish--
I don't know.
I wish that I never got a look past that coldness. How can I wish that and still--
How do I even live with this?
It was easier then. I figured I'd go call some buddies and see if they knew of anything I could do. If I were a real mean prick, I woulda dropped my shadow in front of a hospital, and they woulda figured out who he was and called Starfleet, and then he woulda been in the hands of some really fucked-up people. By comparison, I was definitely the safer bet.
Of course, I wasted some time. I actually chatted with these guys on the comm. Only found out from some of the smarter ones that there wasn't much I could do; he'd either outlast the poison, or it'd outlast him. I was probably gone about twenty or thirty minutes.
The problem with wanting something, is that when you get it, you have to live with it. I thought I wanted a reaction. To unsettle my favorite, cold-blooded obsession. It's only now that I realize that I wanted to see how a living being, someone with a beating heart, could become little more than a weapon who never smiled, never frowned, never felt. Who could kill someone without blinking.
Why the fuck did I ever want that?
Because in the end, he killed me.
The first blow was the raging. I had never, ever seen anything, any flicker of anything from him, so stepping back into that room and finding all fury and snarling and desperation-- I was shocked. I froze. The door slid closed behind me, and I wasn't even sure I was breathing. And he was attacking the wall with the kind of violence that was the polar opposite of his usual icy approach to everything. I don't even remember what he was snarling.
If it had been one of my drug buddies, hallucinating, I woulda found it funny. But it wasn't.
I thought that was bad. It was. But it got worse. Because the snarling and desperation turned to begging and desperation and it felt like a knife right into my chest. And he was still clawing at that wall, long bloody trails, bright red even on the kinda dark tannish wall-paper, and sometimes he would seem to get another wind and snarl again, but he was more pleading, and I--
It was around there that I realized I wasn't seeing him, but an echo of who he used to be. And like a ghost, he was replaying the last terrible moments of his life.
I've never heard anyone sound so plaintive. The inflectionless voice I barely knew was sharper than any dagger when it had that note of grief and terror and pleading in it and you could literally hear his heart breaking, or how it broke then.
I thought that was the worst. But it wasn't.
It was when he finally slid down in the corner, with only one name being repeated, still drawing ruined fingertips down the wall that I nearly choked to death and I was on my own knees, and I don't even know how or why but maybe it was because I was seeing something and I knew-- I knew what had happened, at least enough of it to know why, and over and over, he just kept crying, "Jenna," and it hurt, until he finally quit.
It was when he quit even that, a bloodied, broken ghost, that I think I died. On my knees, across the room, trying to breathe.
How could I live with that?
I don't know how long it all went on. How long he was at that wall. How long we sat in silence; blood and tears on his side, shock and pain and fear and everything on my side. I don't know how I even moved after that. He didn't. Stayed in that corner, wedged between the wall he'd torn his hands to pieces on and an end table. Didn't hear me, didn't see me; still just a ghost of someone else, someone who died there in a place no human being should ever be in. Torn to death, not with a knife or any other weapon, but with the fact he loved someone once.
It wouldn't have been so hard, maybe, if I had spent the last couple of years getting to know someone who had expressions and inflections, but I hadn't -- for two years, he had just been a shadow. Now, I knew why he was.
I was shaking, but not in any good ways. Tried to drag him out of the corner, but he wouldn't budge. I tried to move the end table, but it was bolted to the floor, probably so some shithead like me wouldn't steal it. His hands were cool before, but now he was burning hot, and I think that as strong as he was, he'd move only when he wasn't breathing anymore.
I tried to get myself together, but I was fucked up too, though in entirely different ways. Finally I got an idea and pulled out my own drug kit. Most of my stuff, uppers and downers, were all street creations, but Blue's based off of real medicine, even in street version, so I snagged that vial, and then I remembered that the kind of dose it takes to get me stoned would kill him outright, and even a small dose might, but there wasn't much choice, so I knocked it down by three quarters.
For a moment, I wondered if I shouldn't just give him a quick end right then. I know that probably sounds bad, but after seeing what happened-- where's the mercy in all of this?
But I didn't. Loaded the hypospray and put it right into his neck, and it was instantaneous that he went deadweight, so fast that I thought I mighta killed him anyway. Like a puppet when all the strings snap at the same time. But he was still breathing; faint and a bit fast, but breathing, and I didn't know what to do first, he was frying alive and bleeding all over the place, still bleeding from where he'd literally friction-burned the skin off his finger tips clawing the wall, nails torn, and he was so lifelessly still.
I scrambled and got a direction; tore up the top bed sheet, cheap thing, and bound up his hands as well as I could, and then I dragged him into the bathroom and dumped him into the shower, clothes and all, and turned it on kinda lukewarm. Tried to keep his hands out of the spray, and tried to make sure that he didn't end up drowning after all this, and I was still reeling.
My Dad's friend came back when Dad died, and told me how, and told me he'd been almost cut in half by a malfunctioning airlock door, and they couldn't get to him in time, and he'd screamed, or so it was said, for my mother and me and my sister until he died there, and this is the first time in years I remember this, watching my shadow's blood and tears wash down the drain.
I wasn't a good kid, even before Dad died, I palled around with the same kinda people I do now, and maybe Dad's friend thought he'd scare me straight, but I ran the other way. I was fifteen and I ran away, got into a gang, then drugs, then this--
This--
I ended up battling for the shadow all night. I didn't want him to quit breathing without someone around who knew his name, or who cared about him more, who could maybe find the name he'd been repeating on that wall. It was constant; get him cooled off, and he'd be okay for awhile, but then deteriorate again, and it was constant and in between those moments I thought about shit I hadn't thought of in years, and I thought about him and what I'd seen, and I wondered what the fuck was so wrong with this world that we ended up like this.
If he killed me with his heartbreak, though, maybe he brought me back to something else; still out of his head, in one of the really bad moments, he'd said to someone, "I'll be all right," and I thought it must be the girl, but what really hit me wasn't that he sounded scared, but that he was trying to sound brave. And that under both the fear and bravery was a warmth that I think I would do anything to give back to him.
He's sort of on the other side of it all now, just about at dawn. Sleeping across from me, just sleeping, though I know he doesn't want to be because he'd managed to drag himself back to this world, this now, long enough to look at me (brown eyes, his only real color) and he was himself again -- expressionless, if still dazed, but himself. And he fought to stay awake until he just couldn't and drifted back off.
So, for one minute, I pretend.
I pretend that he's sleeping here because he trusts me to watch over him. I pretend that it matters, if not to him then to my Mom, when I brush at his hair like she used to do to me when I was sick. I pretend that I'm a better person than I am. I pretend I'm not terrified.
I pretend a lot of things.
Most of all, that I can give him back his life.