You took the fall for us pt II; JDL Capt Neyes Cmdr Ivanova - PLOT

Posted on Sun Jul 20th, 2014 @ 6:17am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova
Edited on on Wed Jan 4th, 2017 @ 6:29am

1,881 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: In the Dark

Rochelle stared up at him, this supreme life force that had seen, done and felt so much. Her eyes, not unlike the sea caught in a savage winter storm, searched his for signs of the man he held within only to find nothing.

Nothing until he stooped to lift her, pressing her body to his and forcing het to wrap her shaking legs around his hips. "Thank you." She breathed into his neck, holding onto him and the weapon Almar had modified for dear life.

Almar.

She knew in her heart she'd likely never see the Cardassian man again, that they'd never get to finish the bond that they, beyond all doubts and against all odds, had started. For that she truly lamented as she fired at the collective breaking through the tree line across the field behind them.

For now, however, she allowed herself to be content with the fact the ancient Neyes in all his infinite wisdom and cold hard logic, had chosen to grant part one of what may very well have been the dying wishes of a pointless being.

Pointless. She pondered that word as hypothermia and blood loss began to fog her thoughts. Had her hateful, war filled existence truly been pointless? We're her twenty six years of time that inconsequential? For a human woman she'd conquered so much. Races. Ships. Wars... but not her own heart.

The wind howled in coercion with the Noturan miners, screaming their hatred, their threats and their promises and all the battered redhead did was pick them off one by one while the phaser in her hand began to overheat, singing the palms of her hands and still she kept firing until it would fire no more and her injured leg began to refuse to stay coiled around the Trill's rocking hips.

"Lan... Neyes..." She mewed, suffering the fog. "Why..." she choked, watching several more miners fall back, their buddies climbing over them. "Why did you come?"

Neyes did not answer immediately, the signature calculations running through his brain before he graced her with a response. What emerged was a slightly less brusque tone than she had expected. "He asked me to."

The words were soft, warm and a little hesitant. As much as they could be as they dashed through the shallow snow of the fields. Neyes had known Landon to dabble in relationships before, and it was something many symbionts knew to be a waste of precious time. The bond between Landon and Neyes was a sacred one for the man, but a near holy experience for the symbiont. It wasn't something so uncouth as jealousy. They held each other in a grip of life or death, mingled into a separate being. Separately, they were not as strong as they were together, melded into a single consciousness. For the span of one lifetime, Landon was Neyes was Landon.

"Knowledge, it runs like a river for Neyes, for a single lifeform, First. It was a mistake to call me, however. I do not believe he needs to fear what he can for you. Motivation. Will die for you... For any of you Vindicators he would fight. He will die for only you though. Different. A choice he would make for all of us."

"Asked you?" She coughed, struggling to adjust her grip on him. The phaser was nearly lost in the process, an act that nearly made her heart stop right then and there in her aching chest.

Her lips pressed close to his collarbone, trying, in vain, to warm the air that burnt through her bloodied nose and tore fiercely at her lungs. Listening to him in between his jagged breaths, hot tears threatened to spill down her sullied cheeks. He would die for her... Die . "But..." Rochelle's voice sounded small as it reached for his ears, "I want..." cough. "Need him to live."

It seemed so maudlin to her, for her, begging for the life of a man to the symbiont that would control and be part of him long after she was dead and buried -- unless they died then and there together on that Godforsaken pile of snow. Her mind screamed at her to fight, to stop waiting for the inevitable, to leave him, to use his life as a shield so that she may survive even through the mortal injury that was slowly draining her.

Her heart said no, defying her warrior logic, no.

Neyes remained silent, carrying her cradled form that for some reason brought a spine-chilling anger bubbling to the surface. Instinctively, his grasp of her tightened as he felt her drifting. Neyes could feel his Landon aspects surge and turn at each sight of her injuries, the feeling of her weakness. When he had seen her before, a pride in strength and fire had come to mind. Somewhere in his mind, Neyes knew his host found this woman not only precious to him, but to the crew of their starship as well. She embodied the shield of determination and selflessness he wished he could aspire to be. She was an incredible woman.

He would not let her die here.

The though carried in his mind for a moment, his footfalls crunching in the background. The cries of battle behind them faded for a moment as he found himself thinking only of her needs and safety. Each remembrance of her qualities buckled another brick in the wall which he held in place to maintain his concentration.

It was just enough to keep him distracted for split second. During their escape, Neyes had been directly monitoring their direction in relation to the thrown weapons and arrows of the Essurient Noturans. His mind wandered just long enough to fault their defenses. A sharp tightening of his muscles signaled an urgent warning. A single arrow had managed to penetrate his maneuvers, and it came raining down with lightening speed. Tired from the escape, his reflexes could not save them both, and he spun to absorb the shot while sparing Rochelle further injury. Her body flung from his arms, landing relatively gently in the soft snow banks.

Neyes took the arrow to the shoulder, an almost non-Human or Trill cry of pain bellowed from his somewhere in his chest as he skipped like a stone against the ice and snow. His own footfalls moving too quickly to stop himself, he rolled several meters, breaking the arrow off in the process. A trail of blood created a starkly contrasted sanguine trail in the snow behind him.

Silence. Snow. The gasp of breath that punctuated it was ghastly. Rochelle was torn away by inertia as Neyes discarded her tiny body for her own safety. She saw him, felt him... heard him. Like the heavily falling flakes above, she twisted and turned gently before landing in a snow drift. Her nightmare continued, unyielding, with the sight of him brown and crimson against the stark white of the landscape that threatened to swallow him, them, whole. "Landon!" She yelled, pushing herself up and scrambling towards him.

Life... it was slowly losing it's grip on her, not unlike her hands had done on the phaser that had sailed away from her midflight. She could feel her heart struggling in her chest, skipping beats as she forced herself to her feet. Had she looked down, she'd have seen the horrid piece of metal in her leg had caught and pushed down and sideways, exposing a greater fleshy hole that pulsed grotesquely.

"Please..." The cold, tired little creature begged as she came to her knees beside him, her shaking hands pressing to his chest. No less than fifteen feet away snow and ice roared in vicious undulating spirals over the face of a cliff overlooking the Vindicator camp.

The growling snarls of the Essurient closed in on them. Now that their prey was stationary, they seemed more interested in making a slow approach toward the two. Landon's breath caught in his throat as he regained consciousness, and his eyes snapped open. Firstly, he saw the image of Rochelle crying over him, next he felt the white-hot sear of pain in his shoulder. A panicked expression ripped across his face, his brow pressed upward as he recognized the woman he'd hoped to find.

"Rochelle! What. What's going on?!" Landon struggled to keep his mind clear, taking in all the information at once. "Oh, Gods. It worked. Are you alright?! You're hurt. Where are we?"


Rochelle's eyes closed for a minute, blocking the sick wooziness that threatened to over take her. The two of them sitting prone, the oncoming assault of cannibalistic hunters, the knowledge that she... They... were as good as dead... It was all becoming too much for her to bear. "Don't look." She whispered, the falling snow filtering through the sky to land upon her lashes, "if we can't see it, it's not really there." Cold, she was so cold as she forced her eyes open to gaze upon him. Landon. She recognized the changes at once - the softness compared to the savage rock-like harshness that had been there before. He was there, Neyes had once again plunged under the waves of the Trill Captain's psyche. "We're trapped, but it's ok. It's all ok." She lied through her teeth, beginning to shiver uncontrollably, her fingers reaching to just barely graze the strength of his jaw.

Landon felt hot, his pulse racing through his body, pounding in his throat. He could tell Rochelle was pale, dizzy, and bleeding. The wind bit at his injured shoulder, drawing his attention to the melting snow running down inside his jacket. He could hear yelling, and cruel sounds nipping into the air around them. Someone was following them. He sat up, cringing at the pain, and looked around them. To the left, right, and behind them, a mob of feral humanoids waved their crudely forged weapons in the air threateningly. They had formed something of a circle around them, holding Landon and Rochelle against a drop off on the landscape ahead of them. He recognized the cliff as he peered out over it, shuffling himself towards the ledge. It was a 200 meter drop to the Vindicator's camp nestled at the base of the open canyon below. With the stark realization of what had happened, how trapped they were, the hairs on the back of his neck became needles.

"I have to get you out of here." Landon whispered to Rochelle, moving back to her and sitting her up in his arms. "We have to get out of here." Worry crept into his voice as he looked at her ailing condition. Trying to warm her up, he took off his jacket and wrapped her up inside it, rubbing his hands quickly along her arms. The storm, as if sensing the futility of the moment, bellowed its caustic warning. It screamed over the edge of that cliff, threatening to wrap its horrendous claws tight around their necks. Each wafting flake became a bitter reminder that freedom was simply not meant to be, that they were caught in the ultimate trap. Death lay in wait, hungry and unashamed, all around them.

---

to be continued...

Captain Landon Neyes
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR

Commander Rochelle Ivanova
Executive Officer
USS VINDICATOR

 

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