JL | Capt Rochelle Ivanova, Capt Landon Neyes | "The Sounds of Silence, pt II"

Posted on Wed Oct 29th, 2014 @ 8:33am by Commander Tristan Neyes PhD. & Admiral Rochelle Ivanova

3,365 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: All Hallows’

=/\= Romulan Starship =/\=

Broken. The solvent tears had run down his face all night, and his throat was raw from screaming into the nothingness. Every sound he made was swallowed up into the room, and gone in an instant; only his heart beat throbbed in his mind.

Like a battering ram, the intense pulse of his heart pounded on the refuge of his mind. The once powerful and brutally secure fortress of his carefully trained thoughts, was down to the last barrier. In solitude he sat, with the final vestiges of his sanity, tucked away inside the only holdout room he had left. With his back against the doors, and with every sound slamming against his final will to survive.

The showers had stopped, no longer needed by his tormentor. The tiny room stank of his wet filth, and his naked body curled up into the chair which he'd been prison to for three months. No light crept in, nothing anywhere to tell where he was or what would become of him. It had been nearly a week since anyone had opened the door out into the corridor, and his smaller meals were slid beneath a panel in the wall.

Sometimes he'd wake up to realize he'd been screaming in his sleep, desperate for some measure of stimulation.

"You're crying again."

The voice came into focus slowly as if spoken through water, shimmering, hollow. It was feminine in nature, soft and rang like church bells on a cold winter Sunday morning. There was a richness there, a strength, a purity and perhaps even a shred of dignified concern as it circulated through the room and laced its way through the broken man's mind.

"Why?"

There, sitting only a few feet to Landon's right, was a vision. The apparition of a nearly transparent woman who's hair licked like flame against an unseen and unfelt wind. She was ethereal, beautiful in spite of the bruises and smears of blood and dirt that raked across her face and the tattered remnants of what looked like pajamas. The same delicate lines of flannel, silk and lace that had laid in his bed the night before his abduction... Their abduction... Her death.

A quaking shudder rolled through Landon's body, and he forced himself to open his eyes to the darkness. Normally there was no difference between closed or open eyes here, because there was no light to provide any. Images would flicker and dance around in the black, taunting him with things he wanted to... or didn't want to see. She was different through, and his face snapped away in reaction to the light.

"You're not here." He whispered. "The pictures."

"Because I'm not here?" Asked the vision, her head tilting ever so slightly. The movement caused her hair to move, the flame-lit ends of it crackling ever so slightly in protest as she did. "Because of pictures? Or are you simply referring to the pictures as reason for your tears?" She reached for them, the discarded pictures smudged with prints and warped by liquid. The images were surreal, the same embodiment of the apparition laying in what looked like snow and blood, her hair tangled and vibrant as it fanned out against her resting place like some sort of feral halo. They hissed as they fell back through the air and clattered wetly to the floor beneath, her fingers no longer interested in holding them. "Which is it?" She asked, the intense icy blue of her eyes swimming over his body.

Neyes recoiled, he tried to focus on her and what she was saying, but nothing was at the right volume. He didn't know how to listen anymore, and every effort to narrow the noise down to just her left him more frustrated. Wall after wall of his inner sanctum were ruined and crumbling, leaving his chaotic thoughts exposed to the horror of his capture. He could feel himself slipping.

"I'm sorry I tried. I tried to find you." Each word was skittish and jolted with the breakdown of his composure. He bit down on his lower lip, shame and agony roiling into one. Landon felt like a child on display, being shown off to a crowd who judged and rejected him. Even though no one was in the room, he felt some presence staring at him, laughing at him for his failure as a Captain... as a man. Nobody was there to see him floundering; only the faintly ghost image of the woman he'd tried to save seemed to be there at all. The Romulans had stolen Rochelle, and everyone else. They'd stolen his crew from him, just like they'd stolen him from his life. They must have... she'd have come for him by now.

He quickly shook his head again, another thought surfacing, "You shouldn't be here. I don't want you to see this, or me. You have to leave."

"Enough."

The blink of an eye and the fire extinguished only to reignite beside and around Landon's quivering form. Her arms looped about his shoulders as she cradled him to her, the evanescent locks of floating hair hanging about them both as she shushed and cooed to him. "The fact you tried makes you a bigger man than most, you know this." Her lips were at his temple, soft as satin despite their chapped appearance. "You put the life of one person in front of your own, you cared enough even though the past said not to. You've grown, Landon Neyes."

Pushing away from him, the little figment of his shattered psyche sat coy, sliding her battered palms down his arms. "Do you remember the cupcake?" she asked, her head tilting in an almost dog-like fashion, the blue of her eyes radiating beyond the horrific bruises that covered them both. "The one you had to put away to deal with refit reports. The one right after the Romulans ate crow the last time you went face to face with them?" He'd only managed to take a single bite before a certain redhead had walked in on his shameless love affair with the confection. It was memory lane, the jogging of the deepest recesses of the Landon host's thoughts and recollections. She was there, manifested, to exploit it as he perched on the brink of insanity.

Clarity at the memory, if even for a fraction of a second, seemed to lift his spirits, "You came in and told me we were banged up pretty bad. I recycled it." His eyes drifted off again, his words slanted against the void of despair staring him down.

"We never did try those mud-slides."

She had walked in on him, partaking in a secret sweet. Rochelle didn't know, but she'd been at the top of his list of off-limits indulgences. Above sugar and holodecks, she had been what he knew he should never have, but which he wanted so badly. The elder part of him shamed himself for any lack of self-control, but the moment she'd come through his doorway... he'd all but forgotten the cupcake. Their exchanges had been the highlight of his days; the conversations during meetings, or anytime she'd smiled and tucked up a lock of hair. Everything she did made him melt away a little more inside.

The burning behind his eyes gave way to more tears, "And now you're gone."

"Kind of." She replied, the nodding of her head giving away to the roar of flames reacting to the oxygen flooding into them. The Phoenix, his Phoenix, rested her fingers under his scruffy chin and pressed to tip it upwards, towards her. The grin he received was a strange one, daring and filled with the mischief. The injured fingers of the apparition's free hand chased away the tears that raked down his cheeks, catching them before they could disappear into the unruly growth of matted hair that clung to his jaw. "You deny yourself the sugary sweetness life could possess, deny yourself the life you should have. For what? The nobility of being a Captain?" Each word hung as its very own question mark, jingled in front of him as the ghost's lamp-like eyes burned against his face. "Or is it fear? Fear that you'll be rejected? That every little smile and every little stolen look is just a figment of your imagination?" She blinked, pouting and tilting her head back in the opposite direction.

"If you're honest, we'll get those mud-slides, even if they are made of awful."

He closed his eyes. "If I'm honest I've gone insane," he countered coolly. "That you're the first... thing I want to see."

Yet even looking upon her bought him moments of welcome relief from the pounding of his heart. For what it was worth, he could almost feel her hand touched against his face. A sensation of warmth and love traveled with her image, even if it was imagined. There would always be some part of him that knew better than to believe she was there, but he would always have another part willing to buy it.

"I can't be any more afraid than I was when I thought I'd lost you for real-" his words broke as the hope to see her again came and went once again, taking with it a little piece of his sanity each time. His hand reached up to her, every moment a lifetime of waiting for his fingers to finally touch.

" ...At least now I don't know for sure. I can imagine you safe and warm, then maybe it's true." It had been his dying wish. Knowing he would likely meet his end at the edge of a knife, under the brutal care of his Romulan captives, Landon had silently held onto the small flicker of hope Ivanova had somehow managed to get away. Her endless resourcefulness enough to keep the ship safe.

The figment's eyes closed as he reached for it, the light of her shining brighter as the truth of the matter came to a head and everything cascaded into perfect perspective. "Hope is a four letter word, Landon." the words swirled from her lips as his hesitant fingers neared closer and closer, "but you can never let it die. You know better."

Something changed the moment he touched the fire goddess his mind had resurrected, that his mind had conjured as a last ditch effort to ease the fraying edges of his insanity. The ship itself shuttered as the fire burned out of control, the brightness of her eyes shielded completely by bruised lids. At first even the figment remained perfectly still, allowing the broken man's fingers to leave ribbons of light along the skin of her cheek, jaw and neck. Even as the last spark of his soul threatened to extinguish, the tenderness he possessed was, in a word, beautiful. Beauty allowed to shine in a world so dark and frightfully ugly.

The bulkheads around them shuddered again, this time the ghost flickered and threatened to disappear. "You know what's coming." Again it thundered and shuddered, the sudden scream of klaxons blared as emergency lighting came on and flooded his private cesspool with shadows and light. The air blasted cold around them and the sounds of battle waging through the beams tore through the silencing capacity of the room, rendering it worthless.

His imagination, for that's truly what she was, stroked the sweat and blood stained contours of his cheek. "You know what you have to do." the water-like quality of the voice sang again, the light of the vision's eyes coming to ignite once again as they opened and desperately searched for his. "You know."

So entranced was Neyes, he didn't see the sudden onset of catastrophic destruction. The walls split around him, tearing like wet paper in a hurricane, and fire bursting from the broken walls. He could feel heat rising, flaring between collapsed panels and shattered beams. Still he stared into the apparition, her eyes burning into his with all the fire of an exploding star. A swirling white light spun galaxies in her gaze, and for a moment he was mesmerized. He hardly noticed the broken vessel crumbling around him, or the Romulan crews scrambling to escape in terror. With a resistant grunt, and in a sudden violent motion, he was thrown forward into the wall of the tiny room. His chair swept from under him and his body flung through the mangled door of his cell, jarring him out of the vision.

His blurred sight threatened to fail him as the rush of sound overwhelmed his senses. Like a breaking flood, his eardrums welled the noises he could barely understand. Something was wrong, the obvious reality that the ship he'd been captured on was breaking apart rapidly became clear. Now wide-eyed his almost feral reaction for survival kicked in instantly, and he scanned his surroundings. Down the corridor lay a group of dead guards, killed by an explosion. He sprinted to them, bracing himself against a wall as the ship bucked and heaved with another massive, grinding blast somewhere nearby. Grabbing one of their hand disruptors, his fingers tightly winding around the hilt, Landon spun around and hunted for the confinement office. He had to find a way off the ship, or at least somewhere to hopefully avoid being vaporized.

Once inside the office, he promptly grabbed his daggers out of an unsealed locker with his uniform and away-team gear. Everything except his commbadge, which had been taken by whatever replicant had replaced him. A nearby console blared warnings and alarms, and a quick look told him primary systems had already failed.

"Now, where do we keep the escape pods, shuttles...," he asked openly.

His little apparition, his figment, his mirage had laughed brilliantly when he'd been thrown forward and finally found within him a sense of resolve and need. He'd found the will to live, to change the stars. Of course the laughter had come from stardust and cinders, her entire ethereal body shattering as he thundered through her, causing her to explode upon impact.

It didn't stop her.

"It's a D'deridex, Landon. You know where they keep everything." She chortled, nothing more than a disembodied voice clinging close to his ear, tickling along his sweat and dirt encrusted lobes. "Make a left. Long hallways, long tubes. Need to follow those." It was harder for her to stay now, to keep in touch and ride along as he steadily regained his composure and sanity. He was healing as he ran simply because of that four letter word she'd mentioned before. He wouldn't need the apparition for much longer, but still he clung to the memory and the power she represented.

"I think you overestimate my knowledge of Romulans," Neyes groaned, pulling himself off the deckplates. A little pool of blood under his lip.

The game was afoot as the settings changed and footfall after footfall brought them hurtling down the halls, Landon and his figment, they were presented with the Romulan officers that just about choked and froze seeing the frightful sight of the naked man with his wild, hateful eyes and quivering muscles. Panic was quick to light their hazel eyes as they knew they'd failed to contain him and had stumbled into a secret that they couldn't keep. They spoke fast, thickly accented, something about being ill-equipped, about having a moron for a Captain that would challenge a phoenix, something about how they were all going to die. Their weapons dropped as they continued to eye the Trill. "What do you do? Do you spare them? Escape? Find out the truth about what has happened.." the voice trailed off, "Or do you seek vengeance?"

"You're right," he coughed, walking up to them slowly. The figment of Rochelle may have said the right thing, but none of the choices were what he wanted. Neyes could sense the searing hatred burning away behind his heart, hatred of the Romulans for their twisted sense of self-righteous entitlement. Hatred for the man who'd stolen him from his crew, and from Rochelle. Hatred of the color green and all the things it indicated. Defiance coursed with his every step as he dared them to attack, to move to stop him from passing. Each footfall pressed him forward, stabbing at his unfailing resolve. He was going to get off the ship, or die trying.

The Romulans tilted their heads, trying to figure out just what the Hell he was saying and who he was saying it to. They quickly stepped aside as he came forward. Living was more important than dying to protect some stupid meaningless secret experiment of Tr'Bak's that Lareth had failed to keep contained. It was her head, not theirs.

"Good." The water voice rose again as he began to move forward. It was all but whispered and the light began to dim on his shoulder while the ship bucked and rolled. Support beams groaned and the lights flickered as progress was continuously made forward. "Hurry. You don't have much ti---"

The D'deridex suddenly rolled sharp to starboard and the lights fought valiantly to stay on until, with an audible pop, the power cut in between hit after hit after hit of incoming fire sending the ship, and it's contents, careening against the port side bulkhead.

Neyes felt the gravity on the deck shift as it lilted to one side, then heaved over. He lunged forward, grabbing a broken conduit to avoid being thrown and buried in the heaping mass of debris that rolled down the corridor. As tight as his weakened hands could hold, Landon was essentially hanging on by a thread. With his injuries still untreated, the churning in his gut was the least of his discomfort. The man had broken fingers, ribs, open wounds, bruises and cuts. Each movement seared across his body in tumultuous agony, and he was forced to bear the brunt of the pain all at once. Baring his teeth, involuntary tears welling up as his breathing became labored, struggling to hold on. The blood on his hands loosening his grip.

Just when he thought he couldn't hang on any longer, the ship lurched to the opposite direction, throwing Landon to the deck with a crippling thud.

And then?

Nothing. Nothing until one soft light, not unlike stars and the glow of fire, illuminated the darkened hall like a beacon.

"Landon..." The apparition snapped to focus, but the perspective was all wrong. She was peering down at him, draped across his trunk as she held his face in her hands. The heaving of his chest caused the ghost to rise and fall with his every breath and she smiled. "Landon..." She called to him, her voice but a warm breeze against his ear and soft as a lover's pillow spoken purr, "Don't make the same mistakes this time. Second... Chances... They don't come often." Each world only echoed the deepest recesses of his mind, burning through the memories of desire, of pain, of unfulfilled hope. "Don't let go this time."

Neyes' fading vision listlessly wandered to meet the eyes of his hallucination, "Don't go," his breathing lightened and his eyes closed as he felt his consciousness slipping, "...please."

The incoming fire stopped for moments that hung like apprehensive hours. Hung, waiting, wanting, needing for release. The it happened. The sound couldn't be explained, couldn't be replicated. The sound came with the light of fire and explosion as it ripped up the hall in what seemed like slow motion. The apparition lifted her head towards it, slowly pushing from his chest to her feet with a smile that was sadistic and cruel. She was quickly engulfed, her arms spreading wide as she faded into the explosion. Landon would be lucky, the fire rolled high, sparing the Trill as panels fell and blocked him in his own cocoon of metal and wires.

Darkness...

The cold uncertain hold of space was all that remained as his apparition once again left him to silence.

---

Captain Landon Neyes
Former Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR, NCC-78213-E

Apparition of Rochelle Ivanova
Figment of the Imagination
apb October

 

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