Post by Aleksei Trevelyan on Aug 7, 2007 21:23:29 GMT -5
Trenches and Barbed Wire
By GreenCat3
A little ficlet set before Kitty comes to Valcentica. There's more, too. Also, this is the closest you will ever get to seeing me write a songfic. The lyrics are from Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart".
In which there are way too many 2001: A Space Odyssey/2010 references for this story’s own good.
----
Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding all through the night…
The way she had set it up in her mind was quite interesting, Trevelyan thought. The barrier was different from how he saw it, a rather clinical view of a wall of glass and light, flecked with black, red, and green specks. He couldn’t deny that the way she saw it was much more interesting.
It seemed to be late summer in this place, the end of August or the beginning of September, perhaps. The grass outside the stone walls was brittle, and starting to go brown in the relentless glare of the sun. He was concentrating more on the inside, though. The stones were all warm from the sunlight inside. The city looked ancient, like it had been there forever, and yet it looked somehow unfinished, still being constructed. Well, that part was obvious – he and Sean were still working on it.
The city was empty. Alec’s footsteps echoed desolately in the stone corridors, met with nothing more than their own noise. There weren’t even crows here, and the walls nixed any chance for the wind outside, if indeed there was any, to get through.
She wouldn’t be here, though. This part of the city was finished, blocked off. It was a miracle that he’d been able to enter here, but he’d left himself a backdoor to get in one last time. It wouldn’t feel right, leaving her without a last word. He didn’t know when he would be able to see her again, due to the nature of her assignment.
Friends don’t not say goodbye.
He jogged through the narrow cobbled lanes of the city, feeling uncomfortable with the pace he’d been going at before. He was welcome here, and he knew that, but the lack of life was eerie, and he still felt like an intruder. Normally people don’t let you walk around in their minds like this. Finally he came to the half-built wall, the last one to be completed before she was shut up like a prisoner in her own brain. It was no surprise that she was standing on tiptoe, trying to see over the half-built portion.
“Hey,” he said, stopping in the middle of the street, unsure of what else to say.
Kitty turned around. “Oh, hey, Alec. How’re things?” She smiled, but the smile was strained and brittle. She really didn’t want to be here.
He frowned. “You don’t have to put on the mask for me, and you know that. Never mind how I’m feeling, you’re the one who’s getting walled up in here.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that,” she said resignedly, and sat down on the curb. Trevelyan took a seat next to her.
“You know, I’m proud of you, kid,” he said, looking at her.
“Yeah? For what? For agreeing to give up my memories, my power, all of it, just to go on this mission?” she scoffed. “For being a complete and total sucker?”
“Yeah. For being a sucker.” Trevelyan looked up at the hazy yellow sky. The sun would be setting soon. “Not many people would do what you’re doing.”
“Pull the other one,” she said sarcastically.
“No, I’m not trying to make you feel better. I wouldn’t do it. I’d turn it down.” He tapped one of the stones with his fingernails. “You’re a better person than I am, Kitty.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, and glanced over at him, ready for an outburst. But he was smiling.
“There’s not a whole lot you don’t know, kid.”
“Bugger, bollocks, and blast, stop coddling me!” she yelled, slamming her fist down on the stones.
“I can tell that you’re perturbed.”
“Yes, thank you, Counselor Troi,” Kitty said, rolling her eyes. “Of course I’m bloody perturbed. Who wouldn’t be? I’m…I’m afraid,” she said in a small voice, looking at the cobbled street. “I’m afraid that once this is done, I’ll never be able to get it back. Not ever. I know you and Sean are really, really good at what you do – really, really good. But for some reason I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll never be myself again after the last brick is laid. I’m afraid…afraid I’ll lose my wizardry.”
Trevelyan stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, I’m serious. You think the Powers will just keep my share in storage until I come back from this? It could be weeks, months, even years. They can only wait so long before what was mine becomes another’s. They can’t afford to waste the energy,” she said bitterly.
She was startled by a hand on her shoulder. “Whoever told you that you were a waste of energy,” Trevelyan said, “was talking a great big load of crap. Have you been listening to what It’s been saying? You know you shouldn’t.” He looked her right in the eyes. “They will keep it until you come back,” he said in a measured tone. “You’re too good a wizard to give up on, even if you have to be grounded for a while.”
“Guess so,” she sniffled.
“And don’t worry. Your memories are safe. I won’t let you forget forever. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you did.”
“Yeah,” she said, still a little choked up. “I think the worst thing about it, though, is…you guys. I’ll be missing you guys, and I won’t even remember you, but there’s still going to be a hole in my heart that’ll ache all the time. And I won’t even know why it aches, it just will. It’s like…like I’m a computer, and you’re carefully backing up all my files before you wipe the hard drive and install a new operating system on me with new programs and new files and, and, and I don’t know if my old stuff will be compatible with the new stuff. I don’t want to lose the new stuff, either. What if I make lots of friends and I can’t remember any of them? That’d be horrible…and it’d be even worse to forget all my old friends.” Kitty’s face was turned away from him. “This is why I always feel bad about fixing my computer,” she said quietly. “I always wonder, what’s the computer thinking?”
“You can always ask it,” Trevelyan said.
“Yeah. But…I don’t know. I kind of don’t want to know. If I do, I’ll just be too sad to reformat the drive. It’s not right, making a whole new personality to fill the shell. It’s invasive.”
“Listen…you know if it was up to me, I wouldn’t do this,” he said, guilt suddenly rushing through him.
“I know. I know. But I agreed to it. And you’re doing it anyway.” She turned back to face him, and he could see the tears spilling down her face. “You’re a better person than I am, Alec. Because even if you would turn this assignment down, you’re doing this for me. You’re taking care of me, even though it hurts you to cloister me in here.”
“It makes me a better agent,” he said pointedly, feeling miserable. “Not a better person.”
“But you are.”
“The hell I am.”
“You’re braver than me, anyway. I’m too chicken to ask what the computer’s thinking. You waltzed right in to ask it yourself,” she said, trying to stop the tears. She stared across the street. “It’ll be just like dying, won’t it. I won’t remember a thing.”
“Don’t think of it like that,” Trevelyan said. “Just…just think of it as…as being reborn. Like the phoenix, rising from the ashes.”
“Yeah. Just like you, then. A phoenix, going out in a blaze of glory, then quietly rising again…”
“And you will remember. I’ll keep your memories for you. I won’t ever let them disappear.”
“I know you won’t,” she said, and turned and hugged him abruptly. He just sat there, patting her on the back slightly as she wept out her fears into his shoulder. She did this for a good five minutes, grabbing onto his shirt and crying like there was no tomorrow – which, for her, there wasn’t. As far as she knew, she would be gone in the morning, forever, replaced with someone who was like her, but not her.
“Alec?” she asked once she’d stopped crying. “Will I dream?”
“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “You’ll have to find out…”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so,” she said, standing up. She tried to keep in her sniffling, but it was apparent that she was still scared. Kitty looked at the sky, which was beginning to turn orange. “Night’s coming. Then it’ll be complete. When I wake up, I’ll be someone else. But it won’t be me, not really…”
“It’ll still be you, even if there’s nothing left of you but your sense of humor,” Trevelyan said, walking to the gap in the wall.
“Maybe.”
“So…I guess this is it, yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll see each other again, don’t worry. Maybe even sooner than you think,” he said, trying a smile. “Take care of yourself, kid.”
Kitty tried a smile back at him. It was still shaky, but she seemed more reassured now. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine…the question is, will you?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, and clambered out of the gap to the other side of the wall. “Dai stihó.”
“Dai stihó,” she said, and lifted the final brick. “All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.” She put the brick in place, sealing the wall up for good. It shimmered green and black and red and gold and teal, then dimmed.
It’ll take a little for the barrier to set. I should bid goodbye to her in physicality. Trevelyan glanced around the empty, lifeless fields as the sun slid even lower on the horizon. Time to go.
“How is she?” he asked Sean when he was back in the real world, in what looked like a hospital.
“Nearly catatonic. This can’t be any fun for her,” his colleague said.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Trevelyan said sadly.
“A…Alec?” Kitty said from her bed. “Are you there?”
“I’m here, don’t worry,” he said, although a lump grew in his throat. This was what he didn’t want to tell her; she wouldn’t remember this part, after the barrier was finished. She wouldn’t want to, probably not, but he still felt bad about deceiving her. He sat down on the chair next to the hospital bed. “I’m here, it’s all right.”
Kitty started to chatter incessantly, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing. “I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Alec. Alec, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There’s no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a…fraid.”
Her eyes had been slowly closing the whole time, and with the last word they snapped shut as though they’d fused together. For a brief, horrible moment, he thought she was dead, but his concerns were alleviated when he looked at the monitor. Her pulse was weak and thready, but still there, and improving with each passing second. The barrier was taking, and the new, manufactured memories weren’t being rejected. Good to know. Horrible to feel.
“Good night, miss Callahan,” he said quietly, and left the room.
“Hey, where are you off to?” Sean asked his retreating back.
“I need to take a walk.” He left the room for good this time, not even glancing back. Once he was well clear of it, he took a deep breath, and thought himself somewhere else. Paris, London, Tokyo, Rio…he jumped all around the Earth, from city to city, trying to use up all his energy, but nowhere seemed to be a good place for him. When he got to Melbourne, he looked up. A half moon was shining. There.
After making the necessary calculations for the air he’d need to bring, he set the circle down and did the wizardry on his own, missing that other voice that would be working with his. For once, it felt lonely.
With a pop! of inrushing air, it was no longer silvery moonlight but blue-green Earthlight that shone upon him. He bounce-walked through the one-sixth gravity over to a medium-sized rock to sit on, the edges of his dome of atmosphere trailing vapor snow as they moved to keep up. Then he sat down and looked up, first at the Earth, and then at the endless, star-filled space around it.
It was only then that he allowed himself to cry.
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire…
By GreenCat3
A little ficlet set before Kitty comes to Valcentica. There's more, too. Also, this is the closest you will ever get to seeing me write a songfic. The lyrics are from Sting's "Fortress Around Your Heart".
In which there are way too many 2001: A Space Odyssey/2010 references for this story’s own good.
----
Under the ruins of a walled city
Crumbling towers and beams of yellow light
No flags of truce, no cries of pity
The siege guns had been pounding all through the night…
The way she had set it up in her mind was quite interesting, Trevelyan thought. The barrier was different from how he saw it, a rather clinical view of a wall of glass and light, flecked with black, red, and green specks. He couldn’t deny that the way she saw it was much more interesting.
It seemed to be late summer in this place, the end of August or the beginning of September, perhaps. The grass outside the stone walls was brittle, and starting to go brown in the relentless glare of the sun. He was concentrating more on the inside, though. The stones were all warm from the sunlight inside. The city looked ancient, like it had been there forever, and yet it looked somehow unfinished, still being constructed. Well, that part was obvious – he and Sean were still working on it.
The city was empty. Alec’s footsteps echoed desolately in the stone corridors, met with nothing more than their own noise. There weren’t even crows here, and the walls nixed any chance for the wind outside, if indeed there was any, to get through.
She wouldn’t be here, though. This part of the city was finished, blocked off. It was a miracle that he’d been able to enter here, but he’d left himself a backdoor to get in one last time. It wouldn’t feel right, leaving her without a last word. He didn’t know when he would be able to see her again, due to the nature of her assignment.
Friends don’t not say goodbye.
He jogged through the narrow cobbled lanes of the city, feeling uncomfortable with the pace he’d been going at before. He was welcome here, and he knew that, but the lack of life was eerie, and he still felt like an intruder. Normally people don’t let you walk around in their minds like this. Finally he came to the half-built wall, the last one to be completed before she was shut up like a prisoner in her own brain. It was no surprise that she was standing on tiptoe, trying to see over the half-built portion.
“Hey,” he said, stopping in the middle of the street, unsure of what else to say.
Kitty turned around. “Oh, hey, Alec. How’re things?” She smiled, but the smile was strained and brittle. She really didn’t want to be here.
He frowned. “You don’t have to put on the mask for me, and you know that. Never mind how I’m feeling, you’re the one who’s getting walled up in here.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that,” she said resignedly, and sat down on the curb. Trevelyan took a seat next to her.
“You know, I’m proud of you, kid,” he said, looking at her.
“Yeah? For what? For agreeing to give up my memories, my power, all of it, just to go on this mission?” she scoffed. “For being a complete and total sucker?”
“Yeah. For being a sucker.” Trevelyan looked up at the hazy yellow sky. The sun would be setting soon. “Not many people would do what you’re doing.”
“Pull the other one,” she said sarcastically.
“No, I’m not trying to make you feel better. I wouldn’t do it. I’d turn it down.” He tapped one of the stones with his fingernails. “You’re a better person than I am, Kitty.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She regretted the words as soon as they came out of her mouth, and glanced over at him, ready for an outburst. But he was smiling.
“There’s not a whole lot you don’t know, kid.”
“Bugger, bollocks, and blast, stop coddling me!” she yelled, slamming her fist down on the stones.
“I can tell that you’re perturbed.”
“Yes, thank you, Counselor Troi,” Kitty said, rolling her eyes. “Of course I’m bloody perturbed. Who wouldn’t be? I’m…I’m afraid,” she said in a small voice, looking at the cobbled street. “I’m afraid that once this is done, I’ll never be able to get it back. Not ever. I know you and Sean are really, really good at what you do – really, really good. But for some reason I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll never be myself again after the last brick is laid. I’m afraid…afraid I’ll lose my wizardry.”
Trevelyan stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, I’m serious. You think the Powers will just keep my share in storage until I come back from this? It could be weeks, months, even years. They can only wait so long before what was mine becomes another’s. They can’t afford to waste the energy,” she said bitterly.
She was startled by a hand on her shoulder. “Whoever told you that you were a waste of energy,” Trevelyan said, “was talking a great big load of crap. Have you been listening to what It’s been saying? You know you shouldn’t.” He looked her right in the eyes. “They will keep it until you come back,” he said in a measured tone. “You’re too good a wizard to give up on, even if you have to be grounded for a while.”
“Guess so,” she sniffled.
“And don’t worry. Your memories are safe. I won’t let you forget forever. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you did.”
“Yeah,” she said, still a little choked up. “I think the worst thing about it, though, is…you guys. I’ll be missing you guys, and I won’t even remember you, but there’s still going to be a hole in my heart that’ll ache all the time. And I won’t even know why it aches, it just will. It’s like…like I’m a computer, and you’re carefully backing up all my files before you wipe the hard drive and install a new operating system on me with new programs and new files and, and, and I don’t know if my old stuff will be compatible with the new stuff. I don’t want to lose the new stuff, either. What if I make lots of friends and I can’t remember any of them? That’d be horrible…and it’d be even worse to forget all my old friends.” Kitty’s face was turned away from him. “This is why I always feel bad about fixing my computer,” she said quietly. “I always wonder, what’s the computer thinking?”
“You can always ask it,” Trevelyan said.
“Yeah. But…I don’t know. I kind of don’t want to know. If I do, I’ll just be too sad to reformat the drive. It’s not right, making a whole new personality to fill the shell. It’s invasive.”
“Listen…you know if it was up to me, I wouldn’t do this,” he said, guilt suddenly rushing through him.
“I know. I know. But I agreed to it. And you’re doing it anyway.” She turned back to face him, and he could see the tears spilling down her face. “You’re a better person than I am, Alec. Because even if you would turn this assignment down, you’re doing this for me. You’re taking care of me, even though it hurts you to cloister me in here.”
“It makes me a better agent,” he said pointedly, feeling miserable. “Not a better person.”
“But you are.”
“The hell I am.”
“You’re braver than me, anyway. I’m too chicken to ask what the computer’s thinking. You waltzed right in to ask it yourself,” she said, trying to stop the tears. She stared across the street. “It’ll be just like dying, won’t it. I won’t remember a thing.”
“Don’t think of it like that,” Trevelyan said. “Just…just think of it as…as being reborn. Like the phoenix, rising from the ashes.”
“Yeah. Just like you, then. A phoenix, going out in a blaze of glory, then quietly rising again…”
“And you will remember. I’ll keep your memories for you. I won’t ever let them disappear.”
“I know you won’t,” she said, and turned and hugged him abruptly. He just sat there, patting her on the back slightly as she wept out her fears into his shoulder. She did this for a good five minutes, grabbing onto his shirt and crying like there was no tomorrow – which, for her, there wasn’t. As far as she knew, she would be gone in the morning, forever, replaced with someone who was like her, but not her.
“Alec?” she asked once she’d stopped crying. “Will I dream?”
“I don’t know,” he said uneasily. “You’ll have to find out…”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess so,” she said, standing up. She tried to keep in her sniffling, but it was apparent that she was still scared. Kitty looked at the sky, which was beginning to turn orange. “Night’s coming. Then it’ll be complete. When I wake up, I’ll be someone else. But it won’t be me, not really…”
“It’ll still be you, even if there’s nothing left of you but your sense of humor,” Trevelyan said, walking to the gap in the wall.
“Maybe.”
“So…I guess this is it, yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll see each other again, don’t worry. Maybe even sooner than you think,” he said, trying a smile. “Take care of yourself, kid.”
Kitty tried a smile back at him. It was still shaky, but she seemed more reassured now. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine…the question is, will you?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, and clambered out of the gap to the other side of the wall. “Dai stihó.”
“Dai stihó,” she said, and lifted the final brick. “All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.” She put the brick in place, sealing the wall up for good. It shimmered green and black and red and gold and teal, then dimmed.
It’ll take a little for the barrier to set. I should bid goodbye to her in physicality. Trevelyan glanced around the empty, lifeless fields as the sun slid even lower on the horizon. Time to go.
“How is she?” he asked Sean when he was back in the real world, in what looked like a hospital.
“Nearly catatonic. This can’t be any fun for her,” his colleague said.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Trevelyan said sadly.
“A…Alec?” Kitty said from her bed. “Are you there?”
“I’m here, don’t worry,” he said, although a lump grew in his throat. This was what he didn’t want to tell her; she wouldn’t remember this part, after the barrier was finished. She wouldn’t want to, probably not, but he still felt bad about deceiving her. He sat down on the chair next to the hospital bed. “I’m here, it’s all right.”
Kitty started to chatter incessantly, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing. “I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Alec. Alec, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There’s no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a…fraid.”
Her eyes had been slowly closing the whole time, and with the last word they snapped shut as though they’d fused together. For a brief, horrible moment, he thought she was dead, but his concerns were alleviated when he looked at the monitor. Her pulse was weak and thready, but still there, and improving with each passing second. The barrier was taking, and the new, manufactured memories weren’t being rejected. Good to know. Horrible to feel.
“Good night, miss Callahan,” he said quietly, and left the room.
“Hey, where are you off to?” Sean asked his retreating back.
“I need to take a walk.” He left the room for good this time, not even glancing back. Once he was well clear of it, he took a deep breath, and thought himself somewhere else. Paris, London, Tokyo, Rio…he jumped all around the Earth, from city to city, trying to use up all his energy, but nowhere seemed to be a good place for him. When he got to Melbourne, he looked up. A half moon was shining. There.
After making the necessary calculations for the air he’d need to bring, he set the circle down and did the wizardry on his own, missing that other voice that would be working with his. For once, it felt lonely.
With a pop! of inrushing air, it was no longer silvery moonlight but blue-green Earthlight that shone upon him. He bounce-walked through the one-sixth gravity over to a medium-sized rock to sit on, the edges of his dome of atmosphere trailing vapor snow as they moved to keep up. Then he sat down and looked up, first at the Earth, and then at the endless, star-filled space around it.
It was only then that he allowed himself to cry.
It took a day to build the city
We walked through its streets in the afternoon
As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognized the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid
And if I built this fortress around your heart
Encircled you in trenches and barbed wire
Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire…
