PhaHks by GeeLady

Title: PhaHks (An X-Files/Star Trek Universe Crossover)
Author: GeeLady plus contributions by Ade'
Written: August 1999
Rating: NC-17! Language, violence, sexually explicit scenes, hmmmm,... what else? oh, yes!: slash (a wee bit), rape, adult situations).
Spoilers: Folie A Deux, The End
Distribution and thank yous: This story is free for archiving anywhere with my full permission and gratitude.
Disclaimer: The X-Files series, movie, characters, and related props: guns, ugly ties and sunflower seeds are all the property of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Product- ions and the Fox Network. I don't want any credit, fame or fortune from X-Files, I only want to write about your show and characters to entertain myself and others. Also, Star Trek and its Universe are owned by Gene Roddenberry and his heirs and Paramount and not me, I don't want any fame or fortune from any of YOUR stuff either.

Summary: MT/MSR. Mulder is abducted - for real - and returned eight years later.

*This will be a continuing series. This is my first posting! I salivate for feedback. (Slash and burn critics please remember that YOU were green once too).

~~~~~*~~~~~

"PhaHks" - Prologue.

"Impounded."

Startled, "What?" she asked.

"His vehicle wasn't at his apartment because it was impounded Friday night, Agent Scully."

It was Sunday.

"Why? What's happened, sir?"

"Sit down." F.B.I Assistant Director Walter Skinner directed her to a chair opposite his desk with a wave of his hand. "That's the question of the day."

In other words, he thought, nothing new. "It's why I'm here so early in here on a Sunday, Agent Scully." He leaned forward, slumping, as if his head had suddenly grown very heavy. It was an unusual posture for him and she noted it. "And now that you're here-"

"-Sir, what is going on? I wasn't able to reach Mulder all weekend - "

"I tried to contact you about this late Friday." Skinner interrupted. "Where were you?"

"Oh. I'm sorry, sir. I was...at my godson's until today. I, uh, I didn't have my Cell' with me, I'm..." she twitched her eyebrows, an ironic, facial shrug, "I've been leaving it at home so Mulder,...I mean, when we have no current case,...so my weekends off are weekends off."

Skinner nodded. There was no accusation in his tone, "You couldn't have known, Agent Scully. But something has happened. We don't yet know what." He handed her a thin manila folder. "The investigation began Friday night."

Pulling a lock of her red hair back behind one ear, Agent Scully read the police report contained within. There wasn't much and she was aware that Skinner, of course, knew it contents but she read aloud anyway:

She looked back to her boss. "There's nothing here indicating robbery? No blood found, no trace evidence, nothing indicating that anything of a violent nature occurred?"

"No." He shook his head. "But his car was found with the engine running. No witnesses to his prior activities," he finished paraphrasing the report for her. "No other tire tracks on the shoulder, no "suspicious activities" seen by anyone on the road that night. No calls made from his cell phone since Friday evening, and that one was to his mother in Chilmark."

"She knows he's missing?"

"Yes but she can't tell us anything. From his call to her, he was on his way there. She expected him around ten P.M., only he didn't arrive."

"And knowing his mother, she wouldn't worry right away. Um,...Mulder's been known not to keep appointments."

Skinner sniffed in agreement, having himself butted heads with the Agent in question. Mulder was the most talented, most risk-taking, most bullet-prone and altogether most frustrating agent in his department. Had he been a road sign, it would have said: "Warning! HAZARD!"

"As far as local police and the Department are able to determine, Mulder went straight from work to home and then we assume on to his mothers. If you can offer us any insight into this, Agent Scully, anywhere he might have gone, his habits outside of work, the Bureau is all ears. They have the official investigation and I myself will do everything possible but I'm leaving the un-official inquiries up to you. You'll have full access to the case."

Scully winced. Mulder had been reduced from valued partner to "the case".

Skinner was still speaking. "You know more about him than anyone."

Scully peered across the desk of her boss. What he meant was that he knew she was worried and that she had leave to do what was necessary to find him, but not necessarily the obligation to let him in on the details.

She was grateful for his between-the-lines encouragement. Walter Skinner sometimes - often - came across as a stern and uncompromising man in his glasses and starched, white shirts stretched tight over military shoulders.

But where strangers might see only a stiff disciplinarian, she saw much more. *Had* seen it, often. Firmness and by the book attitude - yes - Skinner was a master at that. But A.D. Skinner, behind his gold-rimmed glasses and pursed lips, showed genuine concern and consideration for those under his orders. He worried about his agents, he cared about them. And for that, almost to a man, he inspired loyalty. His agents respected him. More than that, they liked him.

"Yes, sir, thank-you. I'll do my best. I think I'd like to start by visiting the spot where his car was discovered."

Skinner dropped his official face for a moment and rubbed the bridge of his nose, nodding. "I am sorry Agent Scully. I'm sure something will turn up soon." He thought *Sometimes Mulder's a thorn in my ass but he's MY thorn and it's MY ass!*, but what he said was: "I hope Mulder's all right."

"Yes, sir, so do I."

*

But the spot was just a spot on a gravel road about two hundred feet off the highway. Just a road by a hill where bushes quivered in the afternoon breeze.

Later, checking out the forensic team's results on his car, she learned they had found nothing further, no clue to his whereabouts or why he'd left his car behind. Or (another idea and the more likely hypotheses, she'd decided) why "they" had taken him, leaving the car.

Disappearing without a trace was not scientific but, thus far, it applied.

Scully kept up the investigative inquiries, pursuing all angles, every possibility, anything. She even enlisted the talents of Byers, Langly and Frohike, Mulder's weird but endearing friends and publishers of The Magic Bullet, a little back-alley rag that spouted the latest C.I.A. conspiracies, U.F.O hot-spots and what-not.

Their inspirations turned up nothing.

Trouble had always hung around Mulder like a bad odor, yet, even their forays into danger she began to miss. A good, frustrating, convoluted case had with few exceptions brought out the best in both of them. A few adrenaline pumping almost-being-killed's thrown in? Even better.

Death, faced together, they conquered.

Disaster had been their best friend and their worst enemy.

But now the enemy was unknown. Days added up into weeks and then months.

Two enemies: the UNSUBS

And time.

As one of her colleagues assigned to "the Mulder case" had elaborated, "Time's a killer," then, callously disregarding that she was within earshot, "the longer Spooky's missing, the more likely it is he's dead."

*

Before long, Summer had left.

Fall came and went.

Then winter with its inevitable drizzle drifted in, depressing her in its insistence on smearing everything in grey. She loathed its proclamation because it matched her spirits.

*

When another new Spring arrived the fresh growth mocked her because she could not share the beauty of it with him. Could not, while on a case with him, stop the car and enjoy a few moments smelling the breeze beside the road as they stretched their cramped legs.

They could no longer park at a roadside gas-station restaurant, sip bitter coffee and watch each other eat. She especially missed seeing him struggle with the white powdered sugar that coated his chin after he wolfed down two or three donuts.

Could no longer fall asleep in a seedy motor-Inn, knowing he was just a door away. Couldn't look forward to breakfast and his morning highs, his mouth moving too fast for her to follow as he summed up what he'd been thinking about all night over their current case.

Couldn't watch him spill coffee on his tie.

The good stuff.

*

Summer came around again but to her it was ugly and infuriating. She didn't think anything should be colorful or pretty or alive because it was like a betrayal. The world didn't miss him and it should have.

She missed him.

Missed almost everything about him.

Had never told him.

They had each, rarely, ever broached the subject of their mutual respect and, even less so, their trusted partnership. Their valued friendship, jointly cherished, had not once been spoken of openly. They had sort of taken each other matter-of-factly. He was her partner and she was his. They fought for each other, protected each other, cared about each other. Nothing had needed to be said.

Certainly not the unspoken, stronger feelings because that was an un-chartered deeply running current. At least in her.

It had remained, in the end, untouched.

He had given her signals, more than once. She had chosen not to respond. So as not to, she had thought, endanger the working bond they shared, the professional chemistry that had made them a superb team. Not responded to his small sometimes two-meanings touches with any of her own however much she'd wanted to.

In fact, sometimes she'd played cool and amused. Always he had laughed it all off as part of their little clown act.

It even sounded like they belonged in a troupe. "Scully N' Mulder".

Jokes.

Sometimes his eyes, though, would be thoughtful afterward. Unsteady. Puzzled. Worried.

Hurt.

Scully thought, not for the first time since he'd vanished, that Regret was a living, stabbing bitch and she was sticking it to Dana Scully but good.

She remained with the X-Files with regular forays into pathology at Quantico.

Eventually, most of her week was spent there. But she made sure that at least one full day and several evenings were taken up with the X-Files. Not that there was much to do there. Fewer and fewer cases of the paranormal flavor came across her desk.

A few she solved. None about abductions.

Mostly missing persons where the circumstances seemed unusual. She requested 302's and usually got them. Traveled a little but not like before. Kept expenses to a minimum and generally pursued her cases as she saw fit.

Nobody bitched.

Certainly the tiny basement office was no expenditure to the Bureau since she was already on the Quantico payroll.

Spooky's old domain wasn't exactly up for grabs.

Days became routine.

She kept the X-Files department active but she suspected Skinner allowed it out of indulgence to her and her value as a versatile agent and not because he believed, as she did, that Mulder would be returning.

After the fire, the place had been redecorated. Whatever had been salvageable had been rescued and re-filed, re-stacked, repainted.

New desk.

New department head.

*

It was lunch hour and she seated herself at her usual spot. A table by the window at a quaint little bagel nosher (not where she and Mulder used to go), within walking distance to work. It was where she occasionally met her mother on weekends unless she was away on a case which was happening less and less.

*

The waiter (the place employed waiters in cute little bow ties and shiny shoes) brought coffee.

Scully's thanked him absentmindedly, her thoughts on a case just weeks prior to Mulder's disappearance.

*

<*"Scully, you're my one in five billion."*>

Mulder had said that to her. Lying in a psyche ward, strapped down, at the mercy of an unknown, unseen killer. Some monster that had terrified him. Frightened him enough that he began to pursue it. Believed it enough that he had risked chasing that belief as far as right into the A.D.'s office, screaming out his accusations of "It" hiding in the light and infecting the innocent.

No one else had believed him.

Certainly not the Assistant Director, bruised from having to have pinned Mulder to his desk. Certainly not the EMT's who were summoned to come and strap Mulder down on their roll-away, plastic sheets gurney.

Certainly not his partner, Scully thought. But it, Mulder, the whole thing, had sounded so totally OUT THERE. His claims, the ravings of a genius mind finally spiraling down into madness. SHE hadn't believed him. Not for a minute.

*Not this!* she had thought and, later, was forced to ask herself: why not?

All those other cases with Mulder threading together some bizarre theory of human sized sucker worms, moth-men, vampires, pituitary gland sucking voo-doo spirits...Scully had a quite a list tucked away in her brain. Some of the strange she'd seen with her own eyes and had no better theories to account for them. No way to validate their existance yet no evidence to invalidate Mulder's conclusions.

But a zombie-making, mind-controlling monster-man right out of Stephen Kings closet of BOO's?

But along "It" had come.

A monster, (disguised as a man of course), working for - of all things - a vinyl siding company. A monster that "hid in the light", chomping on its employees necks, turning them into zombie slaves and mastering them through mental telepathy.

*Whoa-whoaWHOA! Mulder???*, had been her first thought.

In the face of his Mulder-normal voice and paper-thin circumstantial evidence, he had scared the shit out of her.

So, *Holy shit! is he kidding or is he (my god) losing it?*, had been her second thought.

Didn't believe him. At first, didn't even consider it.

Her partner of five years, labeled as a delusional schizophrenic, had been held down, sedated, and transported away in a quiet ambulance while half of his peers had watched, shaking their heads and whispering among themselves "See? I told you so.", "I knew he was NUTS, but geez....", "Didja hear? Ol' "Spooky" just did a swan dive off the deep end.".

Days prior to his undignified exit from Skinner's office, Mulder had come to her, his partner, for assistance, for her medical expertise. His request, said calmly, rationally, even nicely. <"If this is, as you say, all in my mind, I would really appreciate you helping me prove that.">

Spoken quietly or not, it had been a plea.

And what had she said or done?

Nothing.

Well, not NOTHING...

She had dismissed his claims as the work of an overworked mind, one that had fallen under the empathic spell and insistence of a lunatic.

The other nothing she had done was to adamantly refuse to help him prove or even disprove the claims of his own eyes by performing a simple autopsy, even when, two days previous, he had in their shared office, so calmly, begged her to help him.

Begged her.

<"If this is all in my mind,...">

Later staring down at him in a psyche ward, seeing firsthand his desperation, she had mouthed some patronizing garbage, expressing her hope that he'd "come out of it".

Helpless to help himself, laying there, restrained and drugged, he'd pleaded for her help again. After five years together, she had stood there with her arms crossed, knee-deep in his humiliation...

...and then had said NO!

"I'm ashamed." Scully said to the room, empty of her partner but still full of his life. She'd driven all the way to work on a Saturday. And this room had him written all over it.

But there was no absolution here.

But, of course, he had forgiven her immediately. Hadn't even mentioned it.

At least she could take some comfort in that she had come through for him in the end.

Just short of too late.

Even that day when she'd refused him, his eyes had not accused.

She missed those eyes, whether wide-eyed at a light in the sky or still and sleeping. Eyes that could be so terribly sad and then, in seconds, playful.

She missed it all.

His chewed up pencils still littered the office. If she used her imagination, she could picture him sitting at his desk, reading, chewing his lip with his gleaming white, slightly crooked incisors inside that long angle of jaw.

Nature was frivolous.

She knew of male agents, some with whom she occasionally consulted, who spent hours in the gym, on the track and in front of the mirror trying vainly to achieve what her partner had been given by genetics.

Ironically, Mulder had on occasion used his various charms to woo a difficult witness of the female persuasion when it suited his ends.

Or use those same good looks and charm to piss them royally off if THAT suited his purpose; if it meant getting at the truth.

And he was good at it.

Nothing like a sexy, handsome man staring down at you and speaking to you in a tone of voice that said you were beneath him. Like you were nothing special.

Like your tits were too small and your hole too lose.

Like, under any other circumstances, he wouldn't have given you the time of day never mind a roll in the dark. It almost never failed to make the woman hiss and bare her claws.

And sometimes such tactics brought out the truth.

Mulder was a psychologist, after all. Anger often made people say exactly what was on their mind.

But it depended on the witness and what he needed from them.

If you were a victim, he was gentleness itself. Sometimes he didn't want anything except to ease their hurt.

Scully's thoughts left the psychological for the physical.

She realized that now and then he must have given in to his bodies biological urges and had company overnight in his infrequently slept-in bed or spent a night away from home in someone else's. When, where, how often or with who she had not known nor had she wanted to, private speculations aside. (Bar pick-ups perhaps?) But to her knowledge Mulder had never resorted to prowling for a streetwalker in order to satisfy whatever were his sexual aches. It hadn't fit the Mulder she knew.

He simply would NOT HAVE DONE.

Mulder, with his "Yes Ma'am"'s, and "No Ma'am"'s, his "Yes, please"'s and "thank-you"'s, and his, in that unaffected, natural grace, standing whenever a lady, young or old, entered a room all bespoke breeding and manners not customarily found among the fruit of his generation. Mulder had picked up some of his male graces during his Oxford days, but Scully knew that was not the whole story. And good manners could certainly not have been beaten into him, no matter how hard his father had tried.

Part of his tenderness must have come from endurance. Abused kids often grow up to be abusers themselves. Not so in Mulder's case. Quite the opposite. She'd known him as a gentle spirit though Scully suspected that underneath had existed a steel core, forged under fists and angry words, which had finally emerged with a determination to be anything BUT hard and impenetrable. NOT like father, like son.

No. Mulder was a born gentleman. And a humanitarian. People always came first. Innocents were cleared, victims comforted, THEN justice met out upon the evil-doers.

All that and good looks too despite a nose rather too large, teeth a little bit over bitten, chin a wee bit receding, hair the slightest bit unruly, forehead a touch too high. Somehow out of that cauldron of slight imperfections, nature had cooked up a face that stopped women in their tracks in order to take a second and then a *third* look.

Then, just to top it off, it had dolled him six feet-one inch of lithely molded, tight masculinity that just made women gooey.

Drop-dead gorgeous had sprung from mish-mash.

He'd known of his affect on women and even of the jealousy his looks had incited among his male peers. She knew he had been well aware of it, in fact. But the thing was, he just hadn't cared. He'd been far too mind-focused and driven by his perpetual work to have taken any of it seriously. Of what he had not been aware, she mused, were the hungry looks from certain male associates who'd stared after him, their eyes resting upon his back a trifle too long to have accounted for mere "Spooky" curiosity. Wistful visual touches that spoke their disappointment in the common knowledge of Mulder's heterosexual preferences.

No, Mulder would never have had to resort to a prostitute. There had been plenty of available sex-partners at the Bureau all too happy to have accommodated him. Women, at least, who'd had no reservations about making their interests crystal clear. But beyond a tolerant wink, Mulder had never shown the slightest inclination to accept.

Scully disciplined her thoughts. They kept drifting into past tenses.

Despite his video collection of unspeakables, Mulder was old-fashioned.

Consumed by his work.

And, despite persistent gossip to the contrary, too much of a professional to romantically entangled himself with a workmate. Too risky in his view. Such liaisons could interfere with his time sucking workload and his personal quests, the sole focus of his life.

Each partner with no entanglements. Each busy with work.

With each other.

But one warm evening, on their last case together before his disappearance, all her set assumptions regarding her deep water partner had been dashed to little pieces.

Before the vision of his hand been held in the tenderness of another's, she had stood stunned. For a second only but long enough to have tipped her from her foundations.

Her mental Mulder files had lay scattered at her feet all because of one moment and a name from the past:

Diana Fowley.

What had she been to him? And what was he becoming to her now?

Mulder, who wore his heart out in the open for all to see, who had shown tolerance even to those who had hurt him, who so endearingly wanted things to be right in the world, had suddenly been captured by an old love out to rekindle his old flame, which fire was not burning for Scully.

In a split second, the length of time it had taken her to keep walking down that cool hallway and not disturb them, Scully had felt like she was losing the part of her life that suddenly was too precious to lose. The part she'd had, up to that point, taken for granted.

Except for those atrocious ties.

*

Margaret Scully was worried.

"Dana, I want you to talk someone."

It was Sunday.

Bagel Bistro Brunch day. It was their interpretation of "New England".

Dana Scully played with her half-eaten peach crepe. Kippers were gross.

"Mom, don't."

Margaret leaned across the table, forcing her only daughter to look at her. "I know how things were. I'm not blind. I wasn't to Fox and certainly not to you. This isn't healthy. What if-"

"There are no what-if's yet. We don't know anything."

"I know. Dana, I know."

Dana sighed heavily at her mother's worried expression. "Mom, why couldn't things have been simpler than this?"

Why couldn't she be out in the world and feeling all of it? Instead of inside this transparent bubble that went everywhere she did. It kept out the freshness of life.

If she tried...if she stretched out her arm, her finger-tips almost brushed the inner edge of it. Almost. Not quite.

Like being with her mother. Just so far. No farther.

"What did you mean, Mom?"

"About...?"

"About being not blind to him?"

"You're so smart, Dana, but somehow it escaped you. It was there on his face every time I saw him look at you, and in his voice. I knew the day you disappeared."

"Mom, Mulder cared about so much. He fought for everyone who was close to him. It only makes sense he would fight for me and-"

"Dana," she took her hand, "he was *insane* with grief." She slipped a cardboard business card across the table to her daughter. "I want you to promise me you'll go."

Dana understood the unspoken message. Margaret didn't want her daughter going that same road.

She took the card and read the name. Another therapist. She had half a dozen others just like it in her purse. Concerned colleagues, sincere friends, all trying to help.

She didn't want help. She wanted to keep her own counsel and if that meant crying every night in the shower and eye drops afterward, well then, leave her the fuck alone.

But this was her mother, who had cared for and respected her partner. Who cared for her.

"Okay. But I won't promise to continue."

At least the shrink was one not connected to the Bureau.

What the hell.

He record would be remain spic' and span.

*

"I see by your file that during your time assisting Agent Mulder in the X-Files Division, you've been through a great deal. The loss of family members, your life threatened on more than one occasion...."

"Yes."

"And now Agent Mulder has disappeared."

"Yes." Scully shifted as her private therapist adjusted her bifocals.

"Do you think Dana?...is it possible that you're feeling anger towards your partner?"

"Anger? No, why would I be?"

"From things you said to me on your first visit. Because he's gone. Whatever the circumstances, he's effectively exited from your life. Very suddenly. It can be like a death, Dana. Sometimes, it can be harder, the not knowing."

"I understand what you're saying, but I'm not feeling anger towards him. Not at all."

"Tell me what you are feeling. What brought you to me today?"

"I'm feeling...um, I think it's f-fear."

"Why?"

"I don't mean fright but,.. I don't blame Mulder. I don't blame him at all, whatever's happened to him, it wasn't his choice, I know that for a fact." She avoided a direct answer.

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I know him, Doctor Bryant. We worked together for five years. He has occasionally gone off without a word, but not for this long and...and never like this. There was no message from him on my computer."

"Is that what he usually did when he knew he would be away for an unusual time?"

She nodded. "Or when he was embarking on something a bit dangerous and wanted to protect me, which he sometimes did."

"I see."

Scully thought that she did not see. Not really.

"Describe this fear. What do you mean by that? What kind of fear?"

Scully swallowed and took a breath, steeling herself.

"Mulder helped me through...things. We supported each other. I've made my own choices and have lived with the consequences of those choices, but...I - he, now, I don't - ." she wavered, halted.

"It sounds like you had an especially close partnership. From what you've described, am I correct in saying you were more like family than workmates?"

"Yes. I feel like I've lost another member of my family and the fear is...that I won't be able to handle it. I feel," she tried to find the right word, "unstable, somehow and not just because he's missing. I'm a strong person, doctor, but, I suppose I just learned to rely on him." She looked at her folded hands. "More than anyone."

"Now you feel...?"

"I don't know. I am angry that, after a year of intensive investigation, we still know nothing."

"How would you describe your relationship with Agent Mulder, other than in the work environment?"

The doctor listened to the half answer.

"Friends. Mulder - whenever my ship was sinking, he was my life-boat, helping me to...back to shore so, for me, the missing is easier than the knowing."

Liar.

"Are you sure about that?"

No! It was harder. God - how hard it was! to wait and know nothing. So this is what it's like.

Twenty-five years. That's how long Mulder (before he became among the missing yet hoped for himself) had waited for Samantha; how long he'd kept the candle for her burning in his heart; the lantern to his road.

The hope.

Hope was being a prisoner. It was chains to the past and one tiny window to the future. It was everything in ones world reduced to Someday.

And it was so cold.

That was the hardest of all, the most painful, keeping the hope warm and the heart from turning into a tiny, painful block of ice.

She'd always thought that, though he'd been brave to have continued waiting and hoping, he'd also been unwise. Better to put it behind oneself and move on, she'd always silently believed.

Presumptuousness. Now she understood all too well what it was like to have a treasure - a loved human being - taken from ones life; vanish without words or warning.

Samantha had been missing for twenty-five years and he had still believed.

Things like these, she realized, cannot be left behind. They are precious cargo, carried forward, willingly, desperately, under bowed shoulders and aching back. Though they become heavier, they are kept close, perpetually embraced while hurting like fucking hell.

Melissa, her own murdered sister, had been dead for three years. But at least she could go and place flowers at Melissa's grave and weed around the head- stone. Scully had had an ending. She'd had anger and acceptance. Grief then closure. All those things in which she'd been able to indulge, those movements that enable the survivor to live on and find equilibrium again. A struggle, yes. But mostly good memories now.

Mulder had been less fortunate. His sister, at the time of his own disappearance, had still been just a hope for him. A twenty-five year old ache. He'd been much stronger than she had given him credit for. So very, very strong to have carried the pain all that time. Despite all the promises she'd made to herself in that regard, she felt unequal to the burden.

Scully came back to the doctor's office and realized she hadn't answered. Put her hand to her mouth, spoke through it. "I don't know if I can stand to lose him too,..." Her fingers trembled. Very softly, "...especially him."

The grand-mother-turned-doctor nodded her white head. Said kindly, "It's been over a year. Have you considered the possibility that he might be - "

"- Dead?" I can't believe that. Not yet. I still have hope, of a form."

"I wonder: have you gone on with other aspects of your life?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. I have the work."

"The X-Files?"

"Yes."

"But what about your personal life?"

Had things turned out differently, she might have enjoyed that. But a woman named Diana Fowley had suddenly, without warning, been shot like an arrow back into her partner's life, passing through her like she wasn't even there, metaphorically ripping her heart to pieces.

After the first day, after the first shock of learning about their previous relationship and after seeing them working in tangent sans any sign of renewed spark, her worry had almost faded right away. Almost.

But it had bothered her to find out that Mulder had a past; one other than College days Phoebe Green. She felt stupid that she had thought that way. *Of course he has a past, she'd mused, you've been with him only five years. Prior to that the man had lived most of his life without knowledge of your existence.*

Then another shock.

The sight of Agent Diana Fowley holding Mulder's hand in both of hers so tenderly, so much as if she had a right to do that, as if he somehow still belonged there, had left her in a kind of limbo. The "I'm angry, scared and hurt and I don't know why" kind of paralysis.

But she'd quite quickly figured out why. Quite thoroughly why. And that had been another kind of shock.

Somewhere along the line, unconsciously maybe and un-acknowledged, where before had lived in her respect, friendship, admiration, caring and professionalism, now dwelled contentment, comfortable possession, emotional intimacy, desire.

Tender feelings.

Love.

Deep inside her.

The sudden surfacing of those intense feelings had left her confused.

Until that day, she'd been cuddled inside the complacency of what they had, forgetting that he was a separate being who had a past and future and both might not include her. The stark sight of Mulder with someone else, someone who just could, eventually, replace her in his life center, which is where she'd always assumed she sat, had left her mute. In mental shock. Not only from seeing his one hand buried inside Diana Flowley's two, but by her own overwhelming emotions.

None of this she could articulate to the soft spoken doctor across from her. Because she still had never spoken of it openly. And she wanted it to be him who heard it first. Only it was too late. Maybe.

"It's become the same." she finally offered.

"How so?"

"When I first joined his Division, I came because it was my assignment and I stayed out of duty. I was still somewhat "green" in the Bureau and I stayed because I was determined to do the job I was given and to do it to the best of my ability. Soon, I stayed because I found the work fascinating," She smiled at memories too impossible to share with the psychologist sitting opposite her, "albeit a little out-of-the-ordinary. We worked well together and the work became ours."

Scully paused.

The doctor could see the hesitation. "Everything you say here is strictly confidential, it stays in this room."

Scully nodded, hesitated, then decided and continued. "Then I stayed because of him."

"But now? *Now* - why do you stay?"

Scully was glad the doctor had blipped over that last bit of confession. "If I didn't, it would be like giving up on him. I can't do that. I won't."

"You're keeping the X-Files alive for the day he comes back, is that it?"

"I suppose so. It sounds irrational, but I've exhausted every lead, there's been no word - it's all I can think of to do now. I owe him that."

"It's not irrational." The doc scribbled on the notepad on her lap. "The official investigation is closed, is that right?"

"Yes, but I've continued unofficially since then."

"Were you and your partner intimate?"

So the doc hadn't blipped over it. From her first session with Doctor Bryant, Scully had learned that the doc liked to spring tough questions when she wasn't looking, to catch her off guard and get at the truth. Scully's heart beat loudly. She was sure Bryant could hear it.

"No."

"Were - *are* - your feelings for him still strictly professional?"

"He's my partner."

Where Scully had said "partner", the doctor had heard something else, something that spoke of desperate hope and terrible regret.

"If Agent Mulder had not gone missing, do you think it would have become something more than that?"

Scully looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. "No. Um - I don't know, I can only speak for myself,...I, I can't answer that."

"That's all right. I was wondering because of the depth of your mourning." She held up a hand at her patient's start. "*Even* if he is merely missing, you are displaying textbook mourning processes and its intensity indicates to me that you were *extremely* close to each other. A depth of feeling that you haven't spoken of, at least to me. So close, Dana, that it has left you in a very vulnerable state. My concern is how you are coping and will cope should Agent Mulder not return or should the worst occur and it's discovered that he has died."

Scully paled at the suggestion. "He's not dead." Saying it to re-enforce her own belief. To make it real.

"Here's why I'm concerned Dana. What will you do if he, indeed, never returns? It is something you might have to face. Have you even considered the possibility?" Her patients answer would determine if the Agent Scully would require short or long term therapy.

Licking her lips, "I plan to..." Scully looked out the window. Yellow afternoon sun stopped at the pane and refused to warm her or obey the doctors desire to color her spirit with anything other than greyness. Inside her, cold black and white remained.

"...for now I plan to keep faith."

Doctor Bryant nodded to herself. Long-term.

*

One year became two, three, then four, speeding by faster and faster.

And before Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully MD., could count them off:

Eight years.

She had tried to be practical about it but then realized that was just another kind of weakness. What did her partners disappearance have to do with practical? For that matter, what did Mulder?

She tried to grieve and couldn't. He was not dead, she told herself. But her resolve was weakening whether she would ever discover what happened or where he was.

If she would ever see him again.

But she did keep her faith those first years that something would materialize to show her the way to a discovery and, finally, to bringing him home.

Something that would rewind time so his absence and her heart-sickening failure would all reverse, traveling backwards and backwards until it all the years of no Mulder ceased to be. Until she could laugh at his stupid jokes again in while he propped his big feet up on the desk.

She kept the faith but no dark, handsome partner appeared in answer to her call to God. No new information jumped out at her from her e-mail, no anonymous phone calls woke her from slumber with a mysterious tip to lead her to him. No one had stumbled upon any remains or bones that proved to be his. As terrible an end as that would be, at least she could feel like she'd done something other than fail him. At least she - they - could lay him to rest, cry for a last time and get on with the guilty business of living.

No trace.

Faith, being the assured expectations of things hoped for though unseen, was a fragile thing.

Both Mulder children were gone now, disappearing twenty- nine years apart. The sudden tearing away of them had left aching, frayed holes in the lives of some.

"Presumed dead" began to be uttered during the seventh year of his absence, each time cutting another wedge out of her heart. But, once spoken, it had accelerated the weakening of her faith, fading it throughout that eighth year until it, too, disappeared. Quietly. Until it died.

That year, though faith was forsaken, she hoped that maybe brother and sister had been rejoined, somehow, somewhere in life.

Or in death.

She hoped they were happy.

*

"PhaHks" - Part I.

*

He dreamed of light. Just for a second.

He dreamed it, but not as a blind man would dream. Not as something that could only be, through the mind-sight of perpetual black, imagined.

No, with his open seeing eyes, he saw it. This light had form, controlled motion and heat.

And it had given him pain and then.

Fear.

But first the dream had allowed him one quick lung full of mountain air.

Later when he awoke that crisp, pine-scented coolness that had filled him was all he thought about.

Just getting it back.

*

When he awoke, he dreamed other things.

Stink.

He smelled it but was afraid to open his eyes because the last time he did, he was still in the dream but the dream had changed. It was a nightmare now and he couldn't move. And he couldn't rid his nostrils of the terrible stench that assaulted them with every breath. Now and then he gagged from it and bits of drying puke dotted his naked abdomen. Sweat and feces, pungent damp fur, rotting teeth. Smells upon smells, a thick quilt of reek that draped over him no matter where he turned his face.

*

When he awoke, he could smell his own urine and body odor. He'd peed himself more than once since the dream had ended and the nightmare begun. Soon, because he'd been holding back for hours, he would again be adding his own bowel excretions to the slickness under his legs and buttocks and the purifying stench would grow worse.

Still he did not open his eyes. But his teeth chattered and gooseflesh covered him. And the pain in his empty belly and the sticky dryness of his throat kept reminding him that he was real.

And that maybe, even though he'd kept his eyes shut because he must be dreaming, this was too.

*

"Commander Veexow."

The Junior Navigator swivelled in his seat and straightened, holding himself at strict attention.

The female Commander, seated in the center of the her enormous ship's bridge, indicated for him to speak with a single nod, not looking at him.

"We have the wayward vessel, Commander. Three light years ahead, directly on our course." he reported

"Excellent. We shall have to teach these "traders"

"- the word was laced with bemused contempt - "a little lesson in the decorum and proper respect befitting their liberators. Bring us along side them and prepare an armed infiltration unit. I want to see what sort of cargo they're trying to smuggle this time."

The Junior Navigator turned back to his instruments. "Yes, M'Lady."

He knew he was awake because, when he turned his head, he was certain he felt wall against his cheek. Perfectly smooth and cold. But he wanted to know so he opened his eyes to see and started to pant in terror when everything remained as dark as it had been behind closed lids. He clenched his teeth and squeezed fists to his temples, hoping to force himself elsewhere through pain and pressure. A whine of terror escaped his lips and was answered with a sharp blow to his face.

He knew he was awake because it had hurt and he could taste his own blood. Then he felt something else between two of his bottom teeth, managing to unclench a fist in order to pull it out.

A long, coarse hair.

He retched again, covering himself in his own foul-smelling bile.

He knew he was awake when he tucked his freezing, cramped legs under him, leaning slowly forward and down until his forehead rested on the floor, slimy with all manner of fluids. The muscles throughout his body screamed to stretch. But he wanted to burrow into himself and so bury what was happening, whatever that was. A tiny, shivering ball was as far as he wanted to venture into this reality-cum-nightmare.

*

"Take this creature and execute him!" The Commander released her hold on the throat of the ugly little alien, ignoring his protests and pleas for mercy as he was dragged away between the bulk of two of her guards.

The Commander waved an arm to three other guards waiting nearby. "Deliver them all to the nearest penal colony and let them figure out what to do with them, except for that one."

The tallest guard followed her pointing finger to the white, hair-less creature huddled at the far end of the Trader ship's cargo hold.

Seeing his puzzled frown, she dared him to speak.

He didn't.

"Have my doctor clean him up. Put something warm on him first." Was her last order as she strode away. "Yes, M'Lady" she heard as she marched down the corridor.

She didn't have to tell them what to do with the rest of the Trader ship's crew nor with the ship itself. The captured smugglers would also be left at the penal colony and a skeleton crew of her own kind put on the vessel who would deliver it to her home world. She needn't concern herself with such details for she had a well trained and loyal crew including a wide variety of personal staff there solely to provide for her every need.

She knew she was taking some risk, keeping this one being behind, but he would surely have died if left any longer with the other hapless creatures. And, she felt some excitement at the thought for he was a rare find. No, not a rare find, an impossible one. Although she'd been against the Extermination Judgment, she realized the necessity - even the logic - of it.

Her people had once before underestimated this species and had almost become subservient to them because of it. And her people would have died in such a position. No, the Extermination Judgment had been the perfect answer.

The Commander transported herself directly to the bridge of her own ship and spent some time taking care of ship's business and communiques with the Home world as well as making some special arraignments regarding her personal quarters. Then, duties completed for the time being, she exited and made her way through extensive corridors and companionways to the other end of the ship.

That her large and lavish quarters were on the opposite end of her vessel was by design. The bridge was most often the preferred target in a battle and if by chance the ship was taken by surprise with her off the bridge, then she would have a better chance to survive and battle again. Commanders of her caliber and experience were highly valued. Besides, she relished the privacy.

Now that she'd made the decision about her find, questions would have to be answered. Where did he come from?

She smiled. Perhaps she'd made a miscalculation. After all she'd only been able to make a quick visual inspection, perhaps this wasn't the genuine thing.

She pressed a crystal stud on her thick, jewel encrusted bracelet and spoke into it for a moment. She didn't wait for a response from her physician. He would do as she asked immediately and bring her his results when he was done. "And", speaking aloud to herself, her mouth twisted in annoyed fondness, "he'll wish to give me all the usual cautions and warnings but, in the end, keep his mouth shut."

She was fond of her doctor. He was intelligent, insightful and could read her with a glance. Yet he was also fiercely devoted to her. He'd never contradicted her among the crew nor displayed the slightest ambition other than remaining her physician, of which privileged position his attitude bordered on obsession. He was exactly what she required in a personal therapist. In no other duties among the crew could one get as close to the ship's commander. So, to none other than the physician was the commander of a ship more vulnerable. How simple it would be to eliminate a dissatisfactory leader than to have her doctor slip her something lethal. But she didn't have to worry. She was rich, powerful and generous to all who proved loyal.

She frowned as she ordered and was delivered some soothing tea mixture, her favorite. It reminded her of home.

She had been born, of rich parents, near the shores of Rehmu Plain, not a true plain but an inland ocean so-called because of its eerie stillness that spoke of its extreme depths, shortage of inlets and outlets and that it was surrounded by mountain vistas the awesome beauty of which would suck the breath away of any planetary traveler.

She shook her head. She could be so sentimental. Six more tours of duty and she could retire at the reasonable age of one hundred, nine years old. Middle age for her species.

She lay back on her many cushioned divan and stretched out, but she was not relaxed as her mind turned back again to her most recent problem. Really, what possessed me? she thought. What am I to do with him?

At the sounding of her door, she knew who it was and sat up quickly. "Enter Rhengar."

Her physician entered, carrying a small device she recognized as his portable medical unit.

"Dear M'Lady."

She smiled at him, about the only crew member she ever did, at his handsome youth and at his usage of "Dear".

He is fond of me, (she thought), and I must be of him or I would never allow it!

He was about to speak further when she held up one bejewelled finger. "Wait." She stood next to him.

"He's pure, isn't he?"

His nodded his head once. "Yes, M'Lady, no physical indications what-so-ever of intermix."

"I knew it." Suddenly she was highly excited but managed to control her emotions and kept her features smooth. She turned from the doctor and paced before him.

He cleared his throat.

"Speak," she said.

"I have him sedated, M'Lady. What do you wish me to do with him?"

"Clothe him. Then bring him here." What was she doing? she wondered. As yet, she was uncertain.

Rhengar raised one eyebrow but left to carry out her instructions.

Though he wouldn't have said so, she knew he didn't agree with the idea but she didn't care about decorum, she wanted to see this creature up close. How many of her generation had? Few. Probably none.

She was excited. It wasn't often she indulged herself but this was too great a find to just toss aside. Thank gods she had inspected that fifthly cargo hold herself. Most commanders would have left it to underlings to do so, such tasks being delegated to the lowest classes. But she had never been one to follow stuffy tradition, or even orders from the High Command if they didn't completely suit her. She had enough power and influence to do almost as she pleased.

*

But then, though battle ready at all times, her ship was, strictly speaking, not a war ship. It was one used for patrolling, inspecting, surveying, generally keeping things in order in their now vast realm of the galaxy. It was the kind of ship she'd wanted: clean, well-staffed, luxurious.

Might as well have as many amenities as home if one was to spend years away from it.

Her mind quickened at the thought of her new found curiosity. What did she really know of these creatures? Only what she'd read and learned through old texts, gossip and propaganda.

*

She couldn't wait to see him up close. She was certain that none of her generation, other than Council appointed scientists who kept cloned whole and partial specimens for research purposes, had ever seen a whole pure-strain human. Much less a living example!

Her door chime sounded once and the door opened.

Rhengar pushed the creature ahead of him and through the entryway of M'Lady. He waited for instructions, somewhat anxiously. She caught his expression. "Don't worry Rhengar, I could kill this creature with a single blow if the need should arise. You may leave."

He bowed and left.

She turned to take her first close look.

And was disappointed.

The creature seemed catatonic as he stood there, swaying ever so slightly, not looking at her, not speaking, not moving, not doing anything but staring at the floor. Rhengar had had the foresight to dress him, not in rags, but in something befitting one who was to meet his liberator, lose fitting but clean white shirt and leggings. There were no fasteners or strings on any of the material.

Nothing the creature could use as a weapon.

She approached slowly, but kept her distance.

The creature's eyes widened slightly at her approach and his respirations quickened. She could see the pupils of his eyes dilate in terror. Well, she asked herself, what did you expect? That he would get down on his knees and bestow his eternal thanks and devotion?

As she approached the creature shut his eyes which annoyed her, she'd wanted to see them up close. But he's afraid of you, she thought, he wants to block you out.

"You should be a-fraid," she said, speaking - a bit stiltedly - the now little used common tongue of his to all intents and purposes extinct species. He didn't respond but he opened his eyes and looked straight at her, at her eyes, something she never allowed but from her own doctor.

She drew in a breath at his insolence but then reminded herself that he probably knew nothing of her or her rules, or anything else for that matter.

She stepped closer and though his gaze never wavered, she could see he was still terrified.

"You should be afraid." she repeated. "I am Romulan High Commander Veexow but, unless you give me a reason to do so, I will not harm you." I certainly didn't go to all this trouble just to kill you myself, she mused.

His eyes - what was it? - yes! She saw it.

Distrust!

Absolute naked distrust mixed in with that ever present terror. She put a hand to his face and he flinched at her touch, actually backed up a step. His respirations increased until he was almost gasping for air. Alarmed at his reaction, she stepped closer. He seemed more terrified than reasonable.

Surely he finds my quarters preferable to where he was, she thought. She could not understand his thick fright that emanate from him in vibrations she could almost feel on the surface of her skin. She could smell his fear over and above his other not unpleasant scent as she stepped close to him and as he backed away. This series of small movements continued until his back was against a wall, one which hung with the woven mural of the shores of her families land.

Now she was inches from him and he stopped breathing for a few seconds, which startled her a little. Then he started again and she relaxed. For some reason, she wanted to understand his eyes, not just the color, which she couldn't place but what they were saying because for the present at least he either wouldn't or couldn't speak.

Perhaps he can't? she wondered. Perhaps he is brain damaged. Perhaps mute by birth?

But she peered at his other-worldly colored irises with her own black ones and knew there was intelligence behind them.

She smelled him again. Her doctor had had him thoroughly scrubbed but not perfumed. She smiled inwardly at that. Rhengar knew exactly what she wanted, always. What a treasure he was! If their classes had been the same, she would have taken him as mate in a single heartbeat. But - she sighed and moved away from the uncooperative human.

"So, you won't speak, is that it?" she turned to look back at him, his scent lingered on her, still filled her nostrils. It had an alien taste.

But she kept her back to him, showed him that he was inferior and property through indirect address. She was pleased to hear him continue to gasp in fear as he listened to her speak. She heard his unshod feet shuffle as he moved slowly along the wall behind her. She was not alarmed by it, there was nowhere for him to go.

"Well, if I was in your position, I would certainly have questions."

No response.

"Shall I ask them for you?" she asked after a pause.

"Shall I voice your question?" she asked again, and turned to watch him. He walked sideways, around and behind her desk but always facing her, watching her.

He moved well, she decided, approving the easy grace of his step. He was tall, as tall as she but not thickly muscled, rather delicate in fact. The texts had stated that such was the norm for his species and though this male's form was long and well proportioned, he was over thin.

Too thin for health. His ordeal on the Ferengi ship no doubt the cause for his gaunt appearance. He needed fattening up and she would have to arrange for some appropriately nutritious meals for him if she ever wanted to see him as he ought to look.

She weighed matters in her mind as she followed his movements and those matters were serious. There were risks in what she was doing. How was she too keep him? At least long enough to learn something of him and his kind, their most infamous enemy and greatest conquest? How keep him hidden and safe while she did so?

Only too soon, she knew the rumors would fly. No matter how loyal her crew and staff, there would be talk and the news of him would reach the ears of those who would not merely frown but seek his extermination as a risk to the Romulan State.

She was excited by this incredible find and puzzled by it too.

Where had the Ferengi's found him?

She must arrange for the imprisoned Ferengi crew to be interrogated on that point.

They had been delivering this human to someone. A pure-strain that was to have become someone's property, a human that had no business being alive.

The last known specimen had been put down in a Romulan Laboratory more than fifty years ago, yet this one was relatively young. She estimated no more than thirty earth years.

She remembered learning of their short life spans from what little knowledge remained of their species, creatures she had always been curious about, and if her estimate on this ones age was accurate, it meant he had already lived an entire third of his life!

By comparison some Romulans had reached the three hundred mark.

*Yet at one time the humans thrived while we nearly became an afterthought.*

She contemplated her people and how they had won their greatest power. Pondered the implications of what they had done to achieve it. There were always unforseen consequences, sometimes millennia away, but consequences that would eventually be played out.

What will be price for what we have done?

But for the present she ignored the thought of it. Uncharacteristic of her, she knew, but non-the-less.

*I want to learn about the extinct humans. I want to learn of this human.* She smiled at herself. *I always get what I want.*

"I believe my first question would be," she continued, "

"Where am I?"."

His strange orbs glanced at her but he said nothing.

"I know you can understand me. I see it in your eyes. What is that color - your eyes? What do you call it?"

He stopped, rested against the bulkhead, leaning forward with his hands on this thighs, slumping, as if his short walk around the room had sapped all strength from him. As though he were ill.

She rose and approached him. Not too close. "Is it your breathing?"

He shut his eyes and breathed slowly in and out. It seemed to be great effort for him, that one involuntary physical action.

"I cannot help you if you will not speak."

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as a spasm traveled over his body from bottom to top.

She quickly retrieved the medicine the doctor had left and set the instrument to deliver a small dose. But when she approached, he deftly avoided her touch by moving to other side of the room, all but stumbling to remain at a distance.

It made her angry and unsure. Flustered. What was she to do? "This will not harm. It will calm you."

Her patient inquiries resulted in his gasping and falling to his knees. He seemed to be shaking all over, burying his face in his hands.

Then, to her amazement, she realized he was not having some sort of fit, but was laughing.

Not from joy.

His expression seemed to her to be one of hysteria. When his hands came away from his face, she actually stepped back. Though unafraid she thought it possible he might be infected with some sort of viral agent and she had no wish to contract it.

His brows were drawn together over rounded eyes that held that same unreasoning fear she'd seen before.

And then, they shut and from between the lids, wetness appeared and flowed.

She watched, fascinated. The Texts also contained information regarding this phenomena; that, when a human experiences fear or sadness or pain, their eyes actually shed water. Extraordinary to see!

He was on his knees now, slumped over, cradling his head in his arms.

She wondered which it was: fear? Sadness? But he looked like he was in pain.

She moved closer again, determined to administer the dose without having to summon Rhengar again. She was becoming more than a little concerned regarding this human's state of mind.

This time, however, he didn't run. He didn't move from his spot on the floor.

She had not considered, as her arm reached to touch the instrument to his exposed forearm, that her rare zoological specimen might be tainted. If that were the case, she would have no choice but to destroy him. She was taking risk enough as it was but an uncontrollable study would be too much.

When she was a centimeter away, he raised his head and with red-rimmed eyes, whispered hoarsely: "Why are you doing this?"

Shocked, she didn't answer for a few seconds. Then, "You are ill."

He shook his head. "No. Where am - is...is this hell?"

Not understanding the reference. "Hhell? Is that a planet?"

He slammed his fists on the carpet. "STOP IT!" It came out as voiceless, high-pitched croaks. Suddenly, he was up and charging her, hands clasping around her throat.

She'd been unprepared for the burst of violence and his thin frame had sufficient velocity behind it to throw her off balance.

But not for long.

Deftly, she wrenched his hands from her neck, twisting his arms, first one then the other, around and behind him, far up his back. Then, with a vise-like grip and sheer brute strength, she forced him slowly to his knees.

But she didn't stop there. She pushed him forward until his right cheek was flat against the deck. There she held him, his legs bent underneath, knees spread far apart, immobile until he stopped struggling.

She held him longer, until he stopped gasping in rage.

Longer, until his breathing slowly returned to normal.

Longer.

Until she felt the tension leak out of his back muscles.

And longer.

Until she felt him relax completely. Until she knew he had given up.

And then to defeat him further, she held him there to prove to him that she was the more powerful. It was necessary to remove all doubt on that point.

When she saw the wetness appear at his eyes once more, she leaned in and spoke into his ear.

"Now you see how it is? Now you comprehend, human? What I wish is what happens to you. What I desire for *you*. You understand, so hear me very clearly: If you ever raise a hand to me again, if you ever look me in the eye without my permission, if you ever again raise you voice above a respectful monotone, I will have my Centurion Guards execute you the next minute."

She put her mouth right next to his ear so he could feel her breath. "Do you understand?"

The man under her made small wheezing, coughing noises, she was hurting him. But he said nothing.

"If you do not answer me, I will kill you right here, right now." And to prove she was serious she forced his left arm higher up his back, unnaturally high, in one lightening quick motion, until she heard it snap.

He cried out.

She whispered very, very softly, "Do you understand me now?", her lips touching his earlobe.

His mouth opened. A faint and scratchy "Yes.".

She realized she was restricting his breathing and eased up on her hold, then let him go completely, stepping up and back.

He lay unmoving. After a moment or so, he let his still functioning right arm, which she knew would even be sore, slide off his back. Then he moved his other arm, now appearing to have an extra joint in between wrist and elbow, his face twisted in pain. Moved it more slowly, groaning. But he forced it down to rest on the floor. It took him longer to get his feet under him, and cradling his broken arm with his good one, he moved to sit on the divan.

"No!" She ordered. "You have lost that privilege." She pointed to a spot on the floor by a wall where several large tawny colored cushions were placed. "You may only sit there now."

He moved without protest, and seated himself, resting his forehead on one knee, with his injured arm laying on the inside thigh of his other leg. He panted.

She knew he would be in considerable pain, but he needed to learn and the sooner the better. "I will call my doctor and he will repair it, and you will behave for him."

He nodded his cooperation and lapsed into silence but for his accelerated respirations.

When Rhengar arrived, he repaired the human's injured limb with practiced skill.

Afterward, the human seemed quietly astonished at the doctors handiwork, his arm being fully mobile again though quite swollen. He bent and flexed it, testing its range of movement and threw a grudging look of gratitude to the physician, nodding once.

The doctor coldly ignored him. He did, however, seem annoyed to be making his third trip to his Leader's quarters as a healer inside of a few short hours. He gave a respectful nod of his head to her before departing, one eyebrow on the rise indicating his unspoken opinion of her questionable choice of company.

The Commander's attention during the doctor's healing visit rarely strayed from her human charge who, after the doctor's departure, wrapped his arms around his legs, still favoring his left one, and seemed to fall into a doze.

It was just as well as she wanted quiet time to seek out some information on him.

Seating herself at her work station, she called up from her computer any data on the human species. There she found little on the species itself, a few facts on physical characteristics, brain capacity, average mental ability (not impressive). But almost nothing on their culture, religious beliefs or natures in general.

Politically, she found a bit more. They were instinctly territorial, yet charged with an almost fanatical need to explore, colonize and infiltrate every small corner of the galaxy. And to insinuate themselves into almost every culture they encountered, doing so almost effortlessly.

She re-read some of the history.

Incredibly, once a planet had agreed to the presence of the Federation, before they knew it (despite the Federation's so-called Prime directive), they were blending with them, having babies with them and, soon after, thinking like them.

Human/alien hybrid colonies had sprung up one after another until they were too numerous to count.

No wonder the Romulan Old council had become alarmed!

And the humans seemed to accomplish it all casually, without war or threats or promise of wealth. Species seemed to, with few exceptions, embrace them as long lost family. Then had come marriages and children in the millions.

Then billions.

And the human birth-rate! A single healthy female, capable of pregnancy as young as twelve earth years, could produce in a normal life span forty to sixty offspring.

Ten times the birth rate than that of Romulans.

Short life span or no, these humans had been on their way to filling the galaxy with their kind and with their hybrid offshoots.

The Humans had gone on increasing while the Romulans, stiff in their desire to remain pure, had begun a gradual decline. Until the danger of them fading to a black dwarf in the kaleidoscope of the galaxy had become all too real.

When the Romulan Old Council had learned of Romulan/Human hybrids (some even living on the home world!), they took to secret meetings to discuss what was to be done.

Even as the politically pacifistic Romulan First Party at the time debated for peace with the Federation, The Old Council and other factions protested and plotted otherwise. Their Fleet was still a formidable one, and if they broke the treaty of non-aggression with the Federation and struck, they had at least as good a chance of winning as losing. Particularly with their cloaking technology and the kamikaze attitude of their forces, who were itching for a battle.

It had depleted their war ships and bankrupted their economies but they had won that first and largest battle. And they won more than they lost of succeeding battles fought throughout the quadrant.

Until the human forces had been decimated.

And, like the Romulan Council had predicted, once those Federation associated worlds realized their Federation protectors had gone down in defeat, they withdrew their own ships and armies, unwilling to face the Romulan hordes for, if the powerful Federation of Earth could be taken, how could they prevail?

The rest was history.

The human home planet had been devastated, left bathed in radiation lethal to all but the most hardy of species.

The hybrid colonies were allowed to exist only if strict obedience to travel restrictions were honored. And only if all laws regarding reproduction were followed. In other words, no more human or human/alien offspring allowed. That, coupled with germ warfare in the product of a swift acting and lethal virus engineered for pure-strain human DNA introduced into the atmosphere of all human or hybrid colonies, had taken care of the rest.

It was then declared that to be human, marry one, breed with one, transport one or grow one in a laboratory was strictly prohibited on penalty of death.

The Romulan Empire had risen and become the liberators of all the galaxy, declaring themselves as the New Law- givers.

Veexow read the old texts and studied her sleeping example.

He hardly looked like an insidious threat. Sick, weak, alone. His existence from moment to moment held in her hands, his welfare resting on a word from her mouth.

In fact, he did not look well at all.

She went to him, not touching.

He appeared to be sleeping. A thin film of sweat coated his face.

"Human." she wanted to rouse him. He needs to eat, she thought, a gap in the side of his thin tunic displaying the faint pattern of his rib-cage.

He didn't wake, even when she placed two fingers on his forehead in order to lean his head back. His skin had a grey pallor. She speculated that was probably not a healthy sign. Neither the dark half-moons beneath his eye sockets.

But she could only guess otherwise. Was he feverish? But to her naturally hot body temperature, he felt cool.

Again she summoned Rhengar and he appeared momentarily.

"Rhengar, I believe this creature is ill."

Rhengar joined his Lady, crouching before the alien. He pressed his instrument to his patient's neck and Veexow heard the instrument hiss as the drug entered the human's bloodstream.

"This is an instant anesthetic. It will keep him out for a few moments while I examine him. I would like to move him over there." Rhengar gathered the creature in his powerful arms and lifted him as if he weighed nothing, carrying him to the divan.

Veexow followed closely. "What is wrong with him?"

Rhengar passed his instrument over the prone being and studied the results. He sighed. "I don't know, M'Lady. I have no training in human physiology. But my instrument can detect no foreign agents nor any known" - he emphasized *known* - "infections. I am forced to conclude that it is simply exhaustion. Without a detailed autopsy on this creature, which I cannot do because he is alive, I can say no more. Whatever medical knowledge of the species that exists is archived and guarded under Romulan Purity Control. Other than perhaps rest and food, I am able to recommend nothing."

"Do you think perhaps he has fever?" she asked.

"That is possible, but again I am uncertain. I do not know what his normal body value is, but he does feel warmer than the last time I examined him."

Veexow found his lack of knowledge, and her own, frustrating. For him to have survived this long, especially under the conditions in which she'd discovered him, only to watch him die now made her feel helpless, not something she was accustomed to feeling.

*He could be dying right now and all we can do is sit here and watch!*

"Well, leave me some more injections, then I have something to at least keep him calm if he becomes agitated again."

"As you wish, Dear Lady."

Rhengar put his instruments away and rose to leave, bowing to her.

"Rhengar!" She called after him, standing to face him when he paused before the door. "Thank you."

He blinked at this rare display of gratitude. His face was gentle. "Dear M'Lady, anything for you. Always." he bowed and left.

Veexow became even more concerned over the creature's deterioration during the next several hours. His jaw was slack, his body suffered tremors and in conjunction with them tiny bumps on the surface of his skin would periodically appear and then disappear. She found it as alarming as she did fascinating, noting each little fact, storing them away in her excellent memory.

Twice he opened his eyes and looked at nothing, or possibly at her but the gaze was unfocused.

Veexow left him there, after preparing some makeshift straps to keep him down, and that night slept in her anti-chamber.

At her habitual hour, she awoke and, after some quick attention to Romulan hygiene, she checked on him.

He hadn't moved but her soft rustling in the room roused him and his eyes opened, blinking. They appeared clear and lucid. Whatever had been making him ill the previous night had now abated.

She moved to stand over him. "You appear very much better."

Then went to her work station, ordering up some food, enough for two. Then added, "I thought you were going to die, human."

"Not quite ready for that yet." he answered weakly.

She turned, surprised to finally have elicited a whole and reasonable sentence from him.

His voice was cracked and strained. He coughed.

"You sound worse, however."

"Thirsty." he managed to get out.

Frowning at her own lack of foresight in giving him no fluids at all during his fever, she obtained a cup-full and, one hand supporting his head, put it to his lips. He drank it all.

She let his head fall back and he closed his eyes, that one action seeming to have sapped what strength he had.

She noted the bruising that had developed overnight on his newly repaired limb. Angry looking, dark purple discolorations on his forearm. She felt the tiniest pang of regret over having to have done it.

"You need to eat. " she said. "I've ordered food. If you remain docile, I will let you up and you can eat."

He repeated it. "

"Docile"?" He sounded annoyed but tried to sit up. "Yes, I'll remain "docile". Are you going to untie me?"

"The food is not here yet." She reminded him, not about to allow him freedom simply because he asked for it.

He sighed. "I need to get up for another reason."

"What?"

"I have to use the bathroom."

"The bath-? Oh, yes." She unstrapped him. She hadn't thought of that before bringing him here and now she really had no choice but to let his use hers. She didn't like the idea.

*

"It's through there," she said pointing.

He managed to get up on shaky legs, swaying a little.

"Are you able to walk?"

"I'm fine." he answered.

She knew it was a lie and understood the reason behind it. She was no fool. He was studying her as much as she was him.

He was communicating now in order to learn of her and her weaknesses. Seeing when and how she would let down her guard. This was a territorial, kill-for-freedom human. He would not accept his captivity this easily. Also he wanted her to believe that he was fine, that he required no more close care or observation. Or drugs.

No, he was not docile. He was a human.

But she was a Romulan.

When he came out, he looked puzzled.

"What?" she asked when seeing his expression.

He glanced at her, or rather, her feet, since he remembered her strong armed insistence that he not look her in the eye.

"I've never seen a bathroom like that. It's...a little weird."

When he offered no more explanation, she was disappointed. She wanted him to keep speaking, wanted to establish communication and begin to learn. But he fell silent again.

He paced a little, looking at her murals and the few personal items in a locked display case (made of non-breakable polymer) that seemed to hold his interest.

When the meal arrived, she placed a portion of it (the cultured meat) in a earthen cast bowl (nothing made of metal for him), saving the vegetables for herself. She placed it on the floor beside the cushions. It was a clear message that was his spot now. He was to expect no private room. He realized he was to have no privacy, in fact, other than trips to the Head.

Sitting down cross legged, he began to eat. Ravenously she noted and thought, *Starvation does that. The Ferengi deserved his execution.*

"The Ferengi's are not known for their generosity. I am surprised that any of you survived. I'm also curious how you came to among their contraband." He contemplated her words, looked at his empty bowl. Swallowed.

Shook his head, eyes shut tight.

He could feel a headache of immense power building deep in his brain. It was the hunger still gnawing at his insides, or the stress of what was happening or his own fear that he kept beating down into numbness. Probably all of it, he didn't care, only that he felt very tired and didn't want to acknowledge anything.

He lay on his side and curled up, crossing his arms, wincing because his left arm ached. That he had a soft cushion was his world.

Said to her, "I don't know what you're talking about." Sleepy.

She wondered if he was perhaps imbecilic. "The ship you were on of course, where you were discovered." She tried again.

"Lady, I don't know where I am right now much less where I was."

"You must have lost your memory, Human."

He looked longingly at his empty bowl, sitting on end like the rest of the room. It'd been tasty but it hadn't filled him. His stomach growled. He had no energy, however, to try and bargain for more.

"I never forget anything except my postal code, *Whatever*."

She didn't understand. "But you insist you do not know where you are."

He wished she would just shut up, he was helpless to keep his eyes open. Felt the powerful pull of slumber.

"I insist I'm either dead and Satan is a woman, which isn't much of a surprise when you think about it or I'm having this really twisted dream because I ate too much take-out before bed."

She narrowed her eyes, trying to sort out his words. Most she understood, but there were references that seemed to have meaning to him but left her at a loss. She could see he was fast dropping into sleep, again denying her opportunity to learn of him.

"You intrigue me, human."

"Y'know, I've-*name*." He mumbled.

"Tell me."

"Mulder."

She considered. "Very odd. Do you have another?."

"I've been called Asshole now and then."

"Sounds Andorian. Insufferable creatures."

"Fox, then. Happy??"

"PhaHks?" She hollowed out the short "o" sound, making it come out as a deep throated "awe", and lengthening the "s". on the end. *PhAWE-Kess*.

"*Fox*."

"PhaHks," she said again, with still the yawning vowel. "Klingon phonetics, I prefer it."

"T'rific. Can I go to sleep now? I'm hoping that when I wake up, neither of us'll be here and that'll generally settle the name problem."

"You may."

He sighed heavily. "Thanks for the food."

She blinked. Her intrigue for the human - for "PhaHks" - grew.

*

When he next opened his eyes he was disheartened to find that he was still sleeping on the floor of the mutant woman's house. Or that he was still in the dream of being in the mutant woman's house.

Whichever.

But his arm really ached badly for just a dream. And he still felt really bad.

He rubbed under his shirt, found his ribs. Somewhere along the way he'd misplaced about twenty-five pounds. But at least Freak girl was nowhere to be found.

He strolled casually around, walked through the six rooms. Found her bedroom. A large oval bed but, as far as he could tell, no cabinets or chest-of-drawers anywhere. The walls had a metallic sheen broken up by the few splashes of color from where she had pictures and the huge murals woven from some kind of cloth. He peeked into every cubbyhole, but there was little else to see.

Other than a narrow couch and comfy cushions, the place was spartan. Her decorator must be impotent, he thought, just no "oomph".

But within the jokes he told inside himself, the unwanted fear, craving attention, kicked at his guts. It kept shouting to be heard: If, IF this was real, he had no fucking idea where he was, who the Vampire-wanna-be was or how he was going to get out of it.

He tried not to think that if THIS was real, how he got there must have been also.

The thought passed through his mind, just for an instant, that maybe he'd gone nuts and Scully'd had him committed. That this was just a nice, soft cell and Ms. Forehead was his delusional dominatrix. A *green* dominatrix too. *Too many XXX Vid' nights, Mulder*

But his arm sure looked bad and he did remember it being broken and he did remember Doctor Forehead fixing it by waving some kind of little magic wand to and fro.

After trying the nearly seamless door and finding, not surprisingly, that it wouldn't budge, he stopped his circling at her desk, seating himself in her swivel chair. It molded to his buttocks.

The computer screen, set flush onto the desk's top was black. He pushed one button after another, but nothing happened.

"I have you locked out."

He looked up, his stomach turning to jelly. He quickly vacated her chair, walking away from her desk and her.

She had entered the room silently and he wondered how long she'd been standing there watching him.

"There's no need to flee. Besides, you've nowhere to go."

"I'd rather decide that for myself." he muttered.

Just the same, as she circled him and moved to her work station, he kept his front to her. Felt stupid that his heart was pounding. But then, she had broken his arm as easily as he opened a beer.

The false feeling of bravado that he'd managed to summon while alone for those few minutes rapidly bled away, leaving him feeling hollow.

But at her mention of him having nowhere to go, it was quickly being replaced by anger.

Fuck it! "Who are you?"

"I've told you, I'm High Commander-"

"ENOUGH! with the alien-joke-on-Spooky crap! I want to know who you are why you're keeping me here." His tone was agitated but he was not yet shouting.

"Mind how you speak to me." she warned.

He walked to he desk, thrust out his good arm.

"Here! Break the other one, but I'm fed to the teeth with this bullshit!"

She sat down elegantly, felt how his body had slightly warmed the seat.

"Be grateful that it was I who found you, because any other and you would be dead."

"What the hell's that suppose to mean? Does talking in riddles give you people hard-ons? What the hell do you want from me? Where am I?"

He could feel days of suppressed anger balloon like a lava dome. Any second now. Any second and he wouldn't give a shit if she broke his neck.

"Stay calm, PhaHks. " she said steely.

"Fuck calm!" he leaned over the desk, looked straight at her, eyes to eyes and all. "I want to know why you're keeping me here. I want to know what's going on."

"PhaHks!" She stood, had something in her hand.

He looked at it. Some kind of weapon.

"What's that? Are you going to shoot me? Well, go ahead, DO IT! I don't care, a'right? I want to know why I'm being held here," He pounded the desk with his fist, "and I want to know RIGHT. NOW!"

He didn't even see the beam of light burst from the object that sent him flying two meters beyond the desk, landing hard on his back. He was unconscious before he hit deck.

She slammed the device, now deactivated and harmless, down on the desk. She hadn't wanted to but he'd left her no choice.

Rhengar was right, he was human. He was too volatile, too difficult to control.

*He is what I should have expected.*

She went to him, leaned over. His breathing was shallow but regular. She would have no choice but to euthanize him now. That or keep him drugged or in a cell.

She touched his neck just below his jaw line, felt the bristle of his several days growth of beard (another feature that Romulans did not share with humans: facial hair), suddenly feeling a tiny throb of movement beneath his skin. She started. *The human heartbeat can be felt almost throughout the human body. In the neck, the fingers, the pelvis, the feet.*

She recalled the bit of trivia from what scattered knowledge still existed on the creatures. It must have something to do with the pressure under which the blood traveled, she theorized. Slow heartbeat but blood pumped under pressure.

A pressure of equal force in a Romulan would cause multiple aneurism, hemorrhage, internal bleeds followed by a quick death.

She touched his face, the temple. Paused. Well, if he was to be put down anyway, she may as well learn all she could, though this is not the way she'd envisioned. Not how she'd wanted it.

She moved her fingers to the set-points and concentrated. Shook off the feeling that what she was doing was, technically, mind rape. A violation one Romulan would never perpetrate on another.

But this was no Romulan.

She sounded the depths of his subconscious easily enough, gently sidestepping the natural barriers. Located his memories of recent events as seen through his eyes. Felt his terror strewn with confusion mixed with anger dashed with curiosity, and all of it riding upon pain and hunger. And blankness where he'd been aboard the Ferengi vessel. A blankness that was fear of looking too closely.

Deeper and that blankness became clear.

She shuddered at the naked memory of his ordeal aboard that ship among the other violated creatures selected for sale into slavery, zoo's (which is what he must have been gathered for - a rare specimen), or research.

That was a question she wanted answered: where had the Ferengi's obtained a living human being when they were suppose to be extinct?

It was not inconceivable that, in the thousands of inhabited worlds within the broad domain of the Romulan Empire, a few scattered human remnants remained despite the Extermination procedures. If so, the Ferengi's knew the location of at least one colony.

The next, deeper subconscious level might hold her answers and she probed. Met real resistance now. He stirred under her mind link and she applied a useful technique that fooled him into calmer brain waves. Deep sleep patterns that she could control.

It would be easier now, she could explore as she wished, did so for a moment or two, those deeply protected archives. Learn of...

Her eyes snapped open.

She gasped, releasing her touch.

Sat back, severing the connection to her unconscious prisoner.

She was swimming through his memories, kicking her way through the unexpected that had surrounded her own independent thoughts and self. Reached the surface.

Her mind was thick with his visions of home and life and people and times.

She leaned back on her heels, hating what she had just done, but now satisfied that she had decided correctly. Knowing the answers, now, as well, meant more decisions.

She felt ill.

Pitiful.

Even a Romulan commander could sympathize.

He knew nothing!

This sick, perhaps dying human, was why the Ferengi ship had run. He was why their commander had so desperately tried to bargain with her.

They knew.

As now did she.

Illegally obtained dangerous species.

So illegal, so contrary to enforced law, so dangerous to all established code as it now existed that the sentence of death would have been declared upon the entire vessel's crew.

Just carrying the knowledge of him was deadly.

Their asking price for PhaHks must have been enormous.

She knew everything.

Why he had no knowledge of her or anything of her people. Why the terror, the confusion. The reasons he was so tormented.

He was not to blame, did not realize. Could not.

She would not kill him now, even though Romulan law stated she must. It would be immoral. *Father raised no fool but neither did he raise a murderer of the innocent.*

No. Though it was a fools errand she was undertaking, she'd not deviate from it.

*Should I be so sure of myself? Even with this? I would have been better off just sending him to the Penal Colony as well.*

But she knew she could not have done. And she was glad she had not.

He was just too rare, too unique. Innocent of any crime against her people.

Veexow studied the pale face, oblivious to a fate that was being decided for him beyond his control and without his knowledge.

But all he was guilty of was being human. Something he could hardly have prevented or changed.

And not only being human, but one from another time where her ship, her power, her laws and life meant nothing at all.

Staring at the stark reality of him, the Extermination came under question. It made no provision for procedures against ancient humanity.

To condemn him to death for being born as he was, one from his own world and time, would be a crime against a Higher Law.

But there were difficulties. Somehow she had to get him off the ship. Elsewhere. Anywhere where he'd be safe until she could figure out what to do with him. Until then, she was in as much danger as he.

But there was really only one possible location. Her doctor would think her mad.

*

"Rhengar." She ushered him in.

He came and sat where she indicated with a wave of her hand.

She seemed preoccupied but he waited patiently for her. Taking her time was M'Lady's privilege.

"Rhengar," she began, "I have applied for early retirement. I've asked to be rotated to Romulas and serve my last few months there while I await the decision of the High Command."

Rhengar was thoughtful. They would agree. One of the most powerful families on the home world? To any reasonable request from her lips, the High Command would grant permission. Yes. They would certainly agree.

"I see, M'Lady. How can I assist you?"

She looked at him pointedly. "You can accompany me and remain in my service as my personal physician in my family home, on our land. Will you?"

He was taken somewhat aback. "You are generous, M'Lady. You know nothing would please me more. What may I ask, is the condition?"

She nodded, smiling at his astuteness. "One would think you were telepathic without the benefit of touch, Rhengar, but no matter. Yes, there is a condition. You must help me to transport PhaHks, the human, there undetected. I have a personal emergency transport pod. Together we could engineer a dampening field within to conceal his life signature."

"May I ask why, M'Lady, you want this human kept alive? It is a great risk you take."

"Yes, you may ask. My reasons are my own. But to be fair to you I will tell you that I have discovered certain knowledge of this human that prevents me carrying out his termination with a clear conscience."

When Rhengar didn't answer immediately, she went on. "I know I am asking you to take risk with me. If he is discovered, I will take full responsibility. I doubt the punishment for me would be too severe,-"

He nodded again. She knew of her families power in the High Command.

"-I would possibly lose my ship, rank and position, but not my life and not my family wealth. But PhaHks would certainly be killed. I could not allow the same for you. You would be safe."

His expression of polite attention wavered. Beneath his blonde eyebrows, passed a flicker of insult. "I would never undertake risk in your behalf and then deny my involvement, Dear M'Lady. I'm sure you know that."

He paused. What would his life here be like without her to serve? He knew it would be very empty indeed. Curse affection! Curse his heart taken with an extraordinary woman. "But I will take the risk."

"You are a great comfort to me, Rhengar. You always have been."

He said sadly, "If that is all I can be to you, M'Lady, it will have to do."

She fidgeted. "We will need to begin as soon as possible. Can you prepare an anesthetic that will be put him deeply under, so that his vitals are slowed. It would help conceal him from the import scanners."

"I will begin work."

"Two days," she said.

*

ROMULAS. FIRST YEAR

*

The bed was hot and uncomfortable and he was sick.

And tired.

Sick of waking up in strange places with stranger people. Tired of feeling soft and heavy from drugs or weak with pain.

It was getting mighty old.

But PhaHks forced himself to move off the flat bed; an odd one, very low to the ground so he had to kind of roll off and push himself to his feet.

Just managing to keep his balance, he glanced around at his newest cell. White marble, it looked like. One small ornate table. One padded chair. Both ordered out of "Really, REALLY Rich R Us" catalogue. Hand carved, he guessed.

The only other stick of furniture was that delightfully functional floor mat, better suited for wrestling than sleeping.

The door was flush against the jamb and no handle in sight. It, too, appeared hand-carved but shined like porcelain. He touched its surface. Wood.

The next few seconds were series of blurred photographs in his mind.

But the door opened while he was standing just to its side. Through proceeded two arms carrying a flat tray with a bowl of something he could only assume was edible.

But he sure as hell wasn't going to stand there and ask. Never the easy way.

He clasped together both fists and brought them down on the head of whoever was holding that tray. Didn't give a damn who, either, because the door was open and that sole exit meant escape.

His Quantico training had taught him well. Find an opening and take it.

The tray and its holder fell but didn't, unfortunately, stay down long.

As his made his dash for freedom, a lightening fast hand grabbed his ankle and sent his timbering. Then two hands clamped around his upper arms and threw him around back in the direction of the room.

His subdue-er hadn't counted on his countermove, however, and PhaHks used that momentum to continue his spin and finished by locking his own arms around his attackers neck. He got in one, controlled uppercut to a nose and felt blood spill over his fist.

No time to relish the small win as his opponent drove his own hydraulic fist into PhaHks' side.

It knocked the breath out of his lungs and his feet out from solid ground. He went down holding his cracked rib. Every breath was a knife.

"Try that again and you will certainly die."

Hellbitch's voice. Vampira. Gothic drag queen.

PhaHks didn't bother looking up or even acknow- ledging her. His hand hurt like hell - *snapped bones usually hurt* - and he examined it critically. Tried to keep breathing. His fingers were not stained with red blood.

The Bitch's blood wasn't blood.

Blood isn't green. Unless...

"JEZ-UZ!!"

He was on his feet then, and across the room before his brain registered the movement. Dizzy, he looked at his fingers. Wiped them thoroughly on his pant-leg.

Now he was staring at her. Her nose was bleeding though stopping quickly. She wiped at it with the back of one clawed hand. Long, painted, predatory nails.

Veexow wiped and watched the human at the other end of the room. Why the sight of her blood, alien or no, would have caused such terror in him, she didn't know. But he had given up the fight early on.

Across the room is where he stayed, covering his mouth and nose with his hands and staring at her as if her very essence was poison.

She could punish him severely for attacking her. Should. But he was staring at her, pupils wide, and so she choose an alternative.

"There are many creatures..." She spoke very softly, hoping to calm him, "...many varieties of life, everywhere, PhaHks."

He stared, warily, sucking air through fingers. But at least he was listening.

"Most of them bleed, including myself. I won't hurt you."

PhaHks listened. The first time he had encountered green blood - a big-ass, ugly, alien, killer's green blood - it had choked and blinded him. The second time - another alien mercenary - it had almost killed him.

Not *hurt*?? "You broke my fucking arm!"

Veexow nodded in understanding. A broken arm. Drugged down. Locked up. So why trust?

Reasonable, his attitude. But certain facts remained indisputable and those were that he was alone in her century and not entirely safe. And he would have died if not for her discovery of him in that filthy Ferengi cargo hold.

So, somehow, trust must come.

"Where am I?" he asked her. Eyes were still scared but he was calmer and listening. And angry too. She knew he had a right to be.

"You're safe."

"Who are you? Why are you keeping me here?"

Again, reasonable questions. "Someone you can trust."

He huffed at her, his expression absolute disbelief. "I can count on both hands the number of times I've heard that, and it turned out to be a lie."

Veexow, at the time, had wondered if her punishment on his arm had been too forceful to bring home her point. Now she regretted it.

Always with this human, there would be doubt, Rhengar privately had said to her. There would be the continuing question of how much would be too much? How far would be too far? They knew so little about them. Humans. Physically delicate, yes. Emotionally fragile? Possibly.

Of one thing she was certain, they were more stubborn than Romulus' High winter.

To have survived his abduction by the Ferengi's...

"Please sit down, PhaHks. I can tell you some things. But I think you need to rest, too. And aren't you thirsty? Hungry?" Her voice was liquid honey and it had the desired effect.

He moved to his mat and slumped but told himself it was only because he was groggy and weak.

"Where am I?" he asked, calmer.

"You are here in my home. Fighting me will not alter that and it was necessary to bring you here to keep you safe. You may not like it but you could be here for a little while. And despite what has happened to you, I cannot tolerate attacks upon my person."

She moved toward him cautiously. "You need that hand looked at." And, ever so carefully, she touched it. She turned it over, palpitated the fingers, making him wince.

"Definitely broken." Touched his injured side. Cool skin over ribs. He was underweight. "And this."

"I had to give it the college try," he said. He was pale and shaky.

"I will summon the doctor."

PhaHks nodded, suddenly very sleepy. Shock. Experience

"We all have enemies, PhaHks," she said. "I'd prefer it if you and I are not."

He didn't bother responding.

After Rhengar repaired his broken fingers, Veexow had food delivered to his room. He ate, used the Head. Slept.

Later, when she returned, the gentle creature who had stroked his injured hand had been replaced by "Commander" again and she was all business.

He asked her why he was locked in and she told him quite bluntly that since he was not trustworthy to behave in a civilized way, neither was he trusted to walk free.

Yet.

His scope of freedom, she explained, within her "Family home" depended upon him alone and then she left him to think about it.

For many days she let him consider her words before one day she simply unlocked the heavy doors, swinging them wide.

He had almost been too afraid to move. She'd opened the doors but had not given him permission to leave. Was it a test?

But it was only minutes before his inclination to step outside his little prison overcame his worry.

PhaHks exited and found himself in a larger prison. Much larger. Prettier too, with rooms upon rooms, many like his, some different.

So many rooms connected by cool corridors he nearly lost his way once, but he backtracked and found his direction. For some reason, as much as he hated them, he wanted to be sure that he could find his way back to his "bed" and his own bathroom.

It was the only privacy he was allowed. It was the only spot in this place, wherever it was, that in theory, was his.

That first day exploring (and finding no exits to outside which was his true objective), he was surprised to find an enormous circular hall. It looked like something out of the glory days of Rome or Greece. Polished, stone floor surrounding rows of pillars the girth of ten men and as tall as five stories.

Later Bitch explained that each pillar represented a generation of her family, upon which was written the names of all in that generation and some of things they had done.

But looking at it now, all he could think was that the Bitch must be richer than Bill Gates.

On impulse, he started to run.

That day, he ran the circle of that hall until everything hurt. All his pent up rage, fear, and frustration manifesting themselves as a primal need to vent physically.

When his body told him to stop, he ignored it and ran harder, faster until he had no choice but to collapse against a low ledge by the outer wall and pant until his breathing calmed.

It had made him feel slightly better, less strung like a piano wire. Less wanting to smash something to bits. Or kill something.

After that, he ran every day, sometimes twice a day or more, depending how wired he was and depending how much he allowed his thoughts to stray into dangerous territory; like where in the world he was and how to escape.

Weeks of exploring turned into months until he knew every corner and turn in her rich prison-castle.

Vampire lady visited with him once per day in his rooms or came to watch him run. She spoke with him (he rarely answered), had meals delivered to him, but left him alone otherwise.

He asked questions, she answered them halfway. He'd get angry and shout and sometimes attack. Try to hit. She'd hit back much harder. He never won those discussions.

Occasionally, she had her doctor examine him, which he bore silently. Resentful of the indignity of being stripped naked in her presence while Doctor Ears checked his vitals with his little buzzing instruments, sometimes making comments about how much weight he had gained, muscle compared to fat tissue.

They never seemed to think to ask him. He was nearly back to his regular 165 pounds and leaner than when he was in college. Running so much now, he'd toned up, his shoulders now filling out the boring clothing she'd provided; the button less white lose shirt and fly-less "leggings".

Okay, he considered, so he was a lab rat. Or a curiosity, or something to relieve her boredom.

But just what the fuck was she?

Running, however beneficial, and eating, however necessary, were not enough in themselves to constitute a "life".

It grew harder each day to retain his tenuous hold on reality, especially *this* reality.

His days did not go by in a blur but rather a series of stills.

Dead lifeless hours with nothing else to relieve the routine of restless sleep filled with new and changing nightmares (or the mercifully drugged, dreamless stupor Doctor occasionally inflicted on him. He had ceased asking why).

If they were brain sucking vampires and he food, what the hell did it matter? Nothing changed the staring and staring of the maidservant when she would bring his wake up meal.

Nothing stopped Vampira's visits, which were becoming more and more like brain-picking sessions and less like conversation.

What did they have to talk to each other about anyway?

Questions and questions, every day the same fucked up questions. Or, when she received no answers, fucking new ones.

Nothing could stop the bouts of depression that had been growing worse and worse, making him not rise from his bed as before, not look at the Bitch from Hell when she came with her questions.

But he didn't speak to her. Didn't eat.

Once, he even prayed to God to wake him up or, if he was awake, to send him home. Or at least kill him. God hadn't answered him of course. *It was the prayer of a unbeliever anyway,* he'd thought later.

He was fucking terrified.

Weeks - months - worth of fear, all settled into a painful fire in his stomach. Eating hurt.

Each new day he wondered if it was the day he'd end up nuts. He fought insanity as it lapped at his reasoning, tickling him with how easy it could make everything if he would only let it.

He didn't think he'd stepped over into real psychosis, not yet. But was walking the deadline for sure. Probably crazy. Maybe not quite ready to embark on a career of drooling in a straightjacket, but was fairly certain he'd tried it on. It would fit.

No doubt about it.

Seeing him dropping weight again and his lethargic attitude caused his Jailer to visit him more frequently, not the end he'd been trying for.

But she was less talkative which suited him just fine. She brought him his food herself, which suited less but he said nothing. The maidservant a female youth, would set the tray down, stare for a few seconds and leave. She would leave him alone at least.

Hellbitch would preach at him to eat, sometimes with a warning that if he didn't, she have him force fed.

Those times when his appetite refused to cooperate, he'd pretend to eat, breaking the gross bread into bits, nibbling, pushing the chunks of whatever around until the whole mass would turn the stomach of a blowfly.

Mostly he just blanked out and waited out the day. Too much thinking made his head ache and awakened the fear in his gut.

The thought occurred to him once:

What if, one day, you woke up and all the unbelievable things of the world - monsters, vampires, demons, UFO's, aliens - came true?

And you were there, in it?

Not willing to accept the answers, he'd put it out of his mind for good. It danced around his subconscious here and there but was never allowed center stage.

All those years and now: Truth. Just. Terrified him.

He'd do jerk-off surveillance 'till social security if it meant getting out of this.

Hellbitch could shove her questions straight up her yellow ass.

He hated and feared her. Mostly hated but too sick with paranoia to do anything about it.

His weight dropped sharply.

*

"Hey!" PhaHks shouted, the word echoing as he wandered through the high stone corridors and enormous rooms, rarely got mixed up now, not having to retrace his steps. He searched farther, deeper.

Doors but no exits. Nothing he could open. Or smash through either and proved it on occasion by dislocating a shoulder.

The rooms almost without exception were bare of furniture. Not a stick. But they were humid and pleasantly cool against his bare skin. He walked barefoot. Other than running, exploring was his only pastime.

"Am I the only one here?" Heard his own voice speak back to him off the beautifully grained stone blocks of every shape fitted together so perfectly, like a jigsaw puzzle. Even the floor was stone though polished to a glassy smooth shine. Like marble.

Each time he awoke in this place it sent his heart racing.

He hadn't seen Vampira for days. A servant would appear twice daily, leave food and vanish.

No one answered his shouts. The "M'Lady", how Doctor Ears referred to Bitch, was nowhere to be found. He stopped and listened. Not even a hum. Nothing.

After countless corridors and rooms produced no people, he felt a growing sense of panic. Tried to stifle it by shouting louder. No one appeared and that was worrisome, though he wasn't sure why exactly. But he needed to see someone, just so their presence would underline that he wasn't alive in purgatory.

He'd been drugged, strapped down, had his arm broken.

And his hand.

Been zapped with some kind of cutting edge laser gun.

Had his ribs broken.

All thanks to her. It was turning out to be quite a relationship.

But she was the only one with whom he had any connection in this insane reality. The only constant in between drug induced sleeps and disoriented awakenings. Thus far, that constant had held his fear at bay.

She was like Scary Auntie Vera and he was a little kid scared of monsters in the dark. Hating her, frightened of her but dependant on her too.

It was sick.

Right now, though, he needed to know he hadn't dreamed her up.

Ashamed of his frailty, he just needed to *see* someone, hear them speak his name.

He was about to yell again when she appeared so suddenly from around a corner, he thought maybe he was hallucinating. She wasn't there. Then she was.

It was nerve-wracking.

"PhaHks," she said, having heard his shouts over the mansions's monitoring system and locating him by scanner. No visuals here. She wouldn't allow it. This was her family home.

"Must you shout in my house?"

The anxious tension in his face, upon seeing her, eased. "I - I thought," he answered finally, "I thought I was -"

"What?"

"I thought I was the only one here."

"Clearly you are not. A meal has been prepared. Come." She walked back the way she had come, not bothering to check if he was following her. Evidently she expected him to.

And he did.

It was a small table in a small room adjoining a larger one. No furniture was present but for the ever present murals. She seemed to have a thing for them.

The table had place settings for two.

"Where's the floor cushions?" he asked sarcastically.

She seated herself. "They can be provided easily enough should you make that necessary."

He had not sat down. She motioned to the other chair and he seated himself. They were comfy.

"Docile" it is." he commented, frowning at the weird dishes. They were square and flat with no edge to hold in stray food juices. He had no idea what material they were made from. Only shallow spoons had been provided.

When the young female servant brought the food, he understood a little better. Three dishes were piled with pieces of varying "vegetables" - he guessed - none of which were soaking in excess water. The fourth dish held pieces of somewhat familiar grey semi-moist he-didn't-know-what.

She gestured towards this last food. "That is a synthesized high protein bake-meal peculiar to your physiological needs. We don't require it."

He looked at it dubiously. *Sounds irresistible.* But he didn't ask who in particular she meant by the "we".

She helped herself to ample portions of the vegetable dishes and left him to choose for himself.

He cautiously placed a few pieces of each onto his own plate. Took one heroic bite of the grossly described protein stuff. It wasn't bad. Tasted almost like pork. A bit bland.

She watched him nibble at the few vegetables, eating all of two kinds in earnest, clearly ravenous, saw him frown at the taste of the third, leaving it on the plate untouched, but she was satisfied that he was finally eating.

When he made no move for more once his plate was empty, she spoke. "PhaHks, you are thinner each time I look at you. Surely you must be hungrier than that?"

"I just haven't had my mind on food lately." In truth, the food was okay but he'd had his heart set on Chinese.

She understood she thought. "I have no intention of seeing you faint from hunger at my table and ruining my repast." She reached over and placed another slice of the protein meal onto his plate. "You need to eat or you will grow ill."

"Why do you care?" His eyes challenged her.

She wiped her mouth. "What has happened to you, PhaHks, is unfortunate. But I am not the one who caused it."

"Who did then?"

"Those responsible are dead."

"And what is it that's happened to me?"

Could he absorb such start truth? she wondered. Primitive human being, sitting in a chair crafted by non-human hands. He was five centuries beyond his own. Difficult to conceive let alone accept.

His mind, no matter intelligent and open to new truths, might never accept it.

Slowly. "What do you recall - what is the last thing you remember about your home?"

He responded without having to think, "I was driving home to.." he swallowed as the memory hit. "-to Chilmark, to my mothers. I stopped for a breather, climbed a small road-side hill. It smelled good." He choked on a piece of protein hell-bread, his voice trembled. "It was nice."

"And then?" she encouraged. Slow is better. Safer - for him.

He tossed the bread down on his plate. "And then I was puking up my guts in a black room surrounded by hairy bodies, my own shit and generally losing it."

She almost winced at the harshness in his voice. His words painfully sliced the air, arcing between them, causing a separation of perpetrator and victim.

She felt his carefully squelched demon memories which he could not yet look at. Knew them.

"And now you want to know where you are and who I am. What I am."

Saw him look down at his strange plate of food remnants he didn't recognize, at the walls made of foreign stone, at her and her yellow skin. Her other-worldly clothing, her upswept eyebrows and tipped ears, knowing them to be real.

"Now that you ask, no. No, I don't think I really want to know, actually."

"But you have another question."

"Yeah. I'd like to know one thing."

"What?"

"When are you taking me back?"

There was no hope in his eyes, she saw. But she would tell him. Could he handle the truth? A lie would be pointless since time would then prove her a liar.

"That is not feasible."

Too blunt when she saw his eyes panic though he did not move.

"I am sorry." she added.

He got up to leave the table, waited for her nod of permission which she quickly gave.

He spoke quietly, whispered it, "Figured as much." Carefully said words so as not to fold up and scream.

"Where are you going?" she asked him.

He wanted her to never ask anything again. *Where am I going??*

"I need to think," he said.

"About what?"

*Jesus!* He looked at the remainders of the meal and not at her: his future.

"I just need some time alone." he lied as his mind turned over the possible ways he could kick his own bucket. But he needed a tool, a stick, a rope.

Knowing his quarters were empty of anything sharp, pointed or useful for self-garotting, he wanted to go for a walk and see what he could find. He rolled the thought of suicide around in his mind. Tried it on for size.

"I think you have something on your mind, PhaHks. Something unwise."

Not only a life-sucking vampire but a BRAIN-sucking life-sucking vampire!

He closed his eyes against the scrutiny he knew he was under - was always under - and sighed heavily.

"Let me show you something." She announced and stood, walking away from him towards another imposing archway into yet another section of her castle/prison. She turned to see that he was not following her. "PhaHks, come."

He just didn't feel like wagging his tail.

Something on his face must have given away the hole in his chest where his heart used to be.

She stretched out one elegant yellow hand. "Come with me PhaHks. Please."

Soon they were sitting among trees and bushes and flowers; a garden all in pots. Big pots, little pots, long low wide rows of grasses and shrubs and all had opened before him at the top of a set of wide, stone stairs interlaced with wood carvings.

Stairway to a heavenly place. Compared to his sterile room it was heaven-like.

"I know you are frightened, in shock. Unhappy." she was saying.

He tried to drown out her voice and words and just focus on the warmth of the sun on his face.

Large, red sun.

It had scared him when he'd first stepped onto that tower top garden and saw a sun the wrong color. But as long as he didn't look at it, it felt delicious.

He tried to sort out some things as he baked his skin. Address his own questions.

Like, how to escape and where to. And where is *here*? These failing to be resolved - a nice high ledge and a flying leap into the hereafter.

But her words kept interrupting.

"I know you hate me and want to leave. But I think you understand the impossibility of that. I think you know the reasons why you cannot, even though you may deny it to yourself. You have been with me for nearly a year, PhaHks. We must find a way to establish a life for you here."

Heard some of her words.

He wouldn't do that. Not willingly. Fight her every inch of the way. Did she think he was just going to curl up and mew? Accept her warm bowls and little bed? Did she think he was her fucking pet?

A *year*?? A fucking YEAR?? They would think he was dead. The "Missing" file of him would still be case-open, and...he choked back a lump, swallowed it, ...his partner, she would never stop looking he didn't think. Not yet anyway.

Finally, in just a few months more, they'd become resigned to him being gone, and slowly "gone" would transform into "dead" in the backs of their thoughts.

And her life would go on. Probably improve.

He knew he wasn't home anymore. He knew something terrible had happened to him; something over which he was too terrified to think about; a god awful thing.

He knew but couldn't look.

Anguish was a physical thing. As real as lungs filling with air. As real as a broken mind.

He knew.

Hard experience.

*

[continued from part 1]

ROMULAS. SECOND AND THIRD YEARS.

There was no denying it any longer. During the end of that first year she felt his pull.

A year of PhaHks and she had learned...

Next to nothing.

Physiologically, Rhengar had made great progresses in understanding the species called Human. The nervous system, the musculature and skeletal structures, brain processes, respiratory tract, reproductive system, blood work, all carefully studied and very, very carefully recorded with triple geometric encryptions.

Not even Veexow had the entry codes.

She'd insisted on the precautions. Rhengar kept the codes, she kept the micro-crystallic that contained all they knew of him.

It was set into the bracelet she had worn all the time during his presence. It fit perfectly. It looked like it belonged.

But it contained none of the things she most wanted to know: the inner workings of his mind. Not his *brain*, the fleshy lump suspended in fluid and membrane, but those unseen, unrevealed motivations that were still his last secrets.

She knew nothing of his home as it had been and as he had seen it in his time, or his life there, though she suspected that he would refuse to discuss it under any circumstances.

Veexow had insight enough to know that it would distress him to do so.

So many truths still kept to himself.

That was the pull.

His undefinable, ethereal, impossible to isolate human gravity had caught her up in its invisible influence. Deny it she might, he had inch by inch crawled inside her and settled.

It was tantalizing.

And, she believed, a bit dangerous.

What was he after all, but a blood and bone creature? He was only human.

The only human. In her time, the last of his species. Left to the Ferengi's, he would have remained so, a piece of unfortunate history. Unattainable.

Veexow had never been one to resist a challenge and PhaHks had proved to be just that.

This intelligent, antagonizing, argumentative, stubborn, emotionally exhausting human had driven her, at times, into rages by his very proximity.

And, by his very proximity, he had taken up residence in her mind and soul and it was too late to expunge him.

Insanity though it was, she didn't want to.

Not when she saw his brows, down swept like the wings of the Staa'l bird on its bursting forth from the Plaine, pulled toward surface from the weight of the briny water.

Not when she saw the eyes beneath them, color fluctuating according body temperature; blood pressure; mood.

Not when she could taste his scent and had come to crave the flavor of it. Or felt his cool skin against hers whenever by chance he would brush a hand against her or she, by design, against him.

Not when she studied the languid movements of his muscled yet fragile structure.

Not when she could feel the quick thrills of her body whenever she caught a glimpse of his maleness.

He was human. He was weak.

But, against her will, she thought him beautiful.

But she did not take him. Wanted to.

More, however, was her un-Romulan need for him to want her.

With a simple look, he influenced her. With unconscious touch, aroused her unawares.

This alien captive, this imprisoned curiosity, the human with the hate-filled eyes, displayed his sexuality only to her. She alone possessed the ability to see it.

That this should occur infuriated her, however innocent his beauty, however unconscious his offering.

Taking up his position at her private center, she so wanted him. He displaced all other need.

Work, duty, Rhengar, were all common, ordinary and vulgar.

Her power was nothing in his orbit.

His control, that held her bound helplessly in agony, existed because she let it. She'd abdicated to him.

So it was him. Oh, yes, it was greatly him.

But it was her too.

Hadn't she always wanted to see and know the genuine thing?

*Be careful what you ask for...* Where had she heard that?

Now she thirsted for more than mere knowledge. She wanted touch and time consuming exploration.

Even in the face of his obvious distaste for her, her hunger remained.

It would be so easy to take by force but her desire did not rest with the merely physical. She yearned for the spiritual, the puzzling, non-corporeal "heart" he'd once spoken of. A figurative, undefined word that somehow held the essence of his humanness. She wanted to go within, be captured in its embrace and sustained in that most powerful and most frail portion of PhaHks.

That's what she wanted and did not know how to obtain.

She had PhaHks but didn't. Wanted PhaHks yet was thwarted.

Daily seeing him, listening to his voice, loving his strangeness, catching his scent...

...little touches...

Exquisite torture.

She compensated for her weakness, even as she hated her own actions, by being remote and cold.

Sometimes, even cruel.

She still had her rages.

"PhaHks." She'd been too busy with another unexpected visit by members of her endless parade of relatives, though only a two week inconvenience this time, to have seen him at all. Though by no means had she wanted the forced separation.

Keeping him isolated and concealed in his rooms was his only protection.

Never admitting her secret thoughts even to herself was her only refuge from her attraction to him, a weakness she despised.

He'd protested this confinement too, as always, with arguments, attempts at bargaining and finally, shouting, anger, to which she had answered with a carefully measured blow.

It astonished her that her discipline increasingly did little to discourage his outbursts. She continued to try, as rarely as was necessary, to domesticate him, but violence had quickly become a useless countermeasure to his own formidable will.

She knew, of course, that he hated being locked away. Understood that he had his own mind and wanted things just as she did, wanted to own himself.

He was sentient, highly intelligent (for a human) and needed more than just four walls to keep sanity together.

Veexow didn't believe he really understood the danger of his presence being discovered anywhere, let alone on the Romulan home world.

If found out, he'd be executed without trial or conscience. Her fate might be nearly as bad.

She felt a pang of guilt at her own deceit toward her superiors, but, once she'd started on a course, she rarely deviated. And, over the former years and since she'd found PhaHks and actually began to know and understand this pure-strain, her own doubts about the Final Judgement had multiplied.

Rhengar was the only one with whom she ever even hinted regarding her true feelings on the matter. And Rhengar was loyal to his last drop of blood.

As were her trusted family servants.

Here only, sometimes free to roam her mansion, sometimes locked away from sight, was the humans only sanctuary.

She entered his dwelling room. "PhaHks."

He was lying on his side on his bed, not asleep. He had long ago ceased to rise in alarm whenever she made an appearance. Not out of trust she knew, but simple human insolence.

She moved to the bed. Noticed that his bruised cheek had healed up from their latest battle.

He watched her, not answering but moved his legs aside a little to make room when she sat down.

"Servant tells me you have not eaten your meals for several days. Is this some new human physical phase or a test of wills?"

"Not hungry." He seemed uninterested in conversation.

Already she could see the meat melting off him again. After months of building him up.

"Not hungry? Servant tells me you have also been sleeping inordinately long hours. It is this "depression" again?"

"Can't imagine why I'd be depressed."

Veexow caught the irony, had learned its nuances.

"The confinement ended five days ago, yet you take no exercise. Are you certain you're not ill?"

He sat up, since it appeared she wasn't going to make it a short talk. Her nearness bothered him.

Sighing deeply he shook his head "no" in answer to which part of the question she was uncertain.

"Your body needs food and exercise, I expect you to indulge in both."

He rested his head in his hands. "I don't - I'm not up to it." Talking was too much effort.

Veexow sat nearer and took his chin in one efficient hand.

Face, thin and getting thinner. Eyes, red-veined. Parlor, pale.

"What is wrong, PhaHks? You've undergone restricted confinement before and it has never had this effect on you."

He tried to move his chin away from her touch but she held on. "I cannot allow you to continue fasting. I cannot allow you to become ill."

"Why the hell not?" he asked, irritated but immediately fell again into his stupor.

Veexow had welcomed his anger and was disappointed to see it vanish so quickly.

She took his face in both palms, turned his head from side to side, needlessly examining his sickly appearance. His smell drifted into her nostrils. A sweet fragrance, she breathed it deeply and felt her body answering.

Being this close to him...

She wanted him.

But the angry, voluble, ready to defy her PhaHks.

The PhaHks who slammed his fists into walls and faced her down again and again. Who bore her strikes and furiously came back for more. The PhaHks who let her know by the expression on his bruised face that her blows were a violation and an insult.

Not this slack-eyed, empty creature.

Yet his presence, only inches, was flippantly pulling her careful control asunder.

She held his face between her palms longer, until her hands warmed his cheeks.

Longer, until she thought she could feel his blood pumping just below his skin.

Longer, until she was certain she could feel his heart beating.

And longer, until she couldn't let go.

He blinked rapidly, her unusual touch jerking him out of his mental doldrums.

She could see the puzzlement on his features as she held him there, her own face a foot from his.

The surprise from within his always naked emotions as she leaned closer, her head tilting, lips lining up with his.

Saw his quiet shock as she pressed her mouth to his and let out a soft sigh when finally tasting him for the first time.

Sweet, alien mouth.

Then she saw the fear leap into his eyes as she pulled him closer, deepening the kiss and moaned in her pleasure of him. At his forbidden flavor.

Suddenly he turned even whiter and was pushing away and scrambling back, away from her touch.

Then across the room. Away from her.

She stood to follow, swept up in the fire of her fierce, Romulan need, a near uncontrollable force once ignited.

He stiffened as his senses came back to him; the fear in his eyes and the - was it disgust? - on his face; "Stay away from me."

It was a whisper but his will was screaming.

"I would not have hurt you, PhaHks." She was angry that he'd pulled away but wanted to salvage her pride and also that tiny spark of trust he'd shown her by allowing the touch to begin with.

"At least when you're hitting me, I'm safe." He answered.

The cryptic comment confused her for a moment until she realized that his words crudely echoed her own emotional conundrum.

She too, when she was striking with blows and not lips, felt in control of herself and him. This other left her open to doubt, danger, pain of soul and of course rejection which she'd just tasted.

He was feeling similarly vulnerable. Must be.

She moved closer to him, how to repair the damage?

"Don't ever touch me again." He warned, his voice contemptuous. Stricken.

Her anger flared and she went to him, raising the back of her hand. Hesitated.

"Don't touch me, you greasy vampire."

He had said it softly, daring her! Asking, egging her on, to hit him. It would make both of them feel comfortable again. Put things back in their proper place.

She struck but her blow was half-hearted and although it knocked him to the floor, he was unharmed.

She let her arm drop to her side.

"Feel better?" he mocked from below, glad things were back to normal.

Veexow searched and realized she felt, curiously, defeated.

She'd given him what he'd asked for. She'd done what he predicted - knew - she had to do to re- establish her control over him. It made her ever more furious. And, strangely, aroused at what he had inadvertently also helped her discover.

She needn't strike him anymore.

There were better ways to conquer.

"Get up!" she ordered.

He looked up at her, eyes satisfied with the return of routine mutual hatred.

Allowing him no opportunity to defy her she yanked him to his feet, shoving him hard back against the bulkhead. Her hands gripped like talons at his elbow joints, pinning him there.

Her tiny pupils locked onto his wide ones.

Predator to prey.

She studied his rumpled hair, rough, unshaven jaw, throat bobbing in nervousness. Felt his shallow, labored breathing; little puffs of air on her cheeks.

Felt her own even respirations. Superior strength. Stronger will.

Her two hands or just one word would grant him a particular pain or a type of freedom.

Punishment or reprieve.

He used his last offense and spit on her. She removing it from her own face by rubbing her wetted cheek on his, defeating even that small rebellion. Smiled.

It would be punishment.

Her eyes scanned his flesh, saw through his defenses, peered into his most secret parts. They travelled passed his throat, down his chest, over his abdomen and south.

She took her time, silently speaking, unveiling her intent. Allowing him to see plainly what it was she wanted and that if she only wished it, she could take it without permission.

It was...ooohhhh...so arousing to know that all that was separating her hands from his skin was a film-thin layer of cloth.

Which clung to and defined his sex. Shaped itself to his shapes. It folded and tucked in places she longed to touch, telling him so with a throaty rumble. Brushing the back of her hand against him, she groaned at her first feel of his silken shaft.

Taking it in her hand and teased him until he was hard.

So hard.

He gasped when she roughly clamped down her mouth hard on his. Rough and uncompromising, vicious teeth grating against his lips, hurting him, until he had no choice but to open. When she felt that surrender, she rewarded him by pressing even harder, forcing her tongue inside.

Using her body to glue him to the wall, her hands now invaded and pillaged. Under his shirt, along his chest, up and down his ribbed sides. Inside his pants, kneading his buttocks as he struggled futilely to shrug her off, violently cursing her, his only weapon left.

She laughed out loud at him and, her desire for him building, building.

Laughed again when his cursing ceased. Her win.

Then she was at his front, clutching his hardened organ, pumping him, making him feel pleasure under her cruel handling, until he whimpered.

Ignoring it, she mauled and bit, drawing blood from his lip and neck and chest.

She increased his involuntary thrusts, one hand on his backside, nearly lifting him off the floor. He was close and she knew it.

She'd brought him kicking and screaming to the edge of his own physical need.

Then she stopped and stepped back. Quickly.

He was shaking, ever so slightly. Trying not to. Looked like he might be sick.

She smiled an Imperial Romulan Commander's smile down on him, content with the fruits of her campaign.

She had overcome, swarmed through and vanquished him like a vengeful god.

She'd reaffirmed her power to shatter his resolve and re-enslave him or to free him whenever the will took her.

To prove it, she kissed him again and he didn't move, though this time she kept her hands at her sides, her body not crushing against him, not touching at all.

Her kiss was tender, gentle. Sweet on his bruised and swollen lips. She tasted his blood. Salty. Metallic. Earthy.

He was shaking and weak. She ended it because the destruction was sufficient.

Leaving him to finish himself off, if emotion and energy would allow, she passed through the door that slid aside to allow her egress.

Campaign complete. Retreat.

*

PhaHks had the shakes for a long time after she was gone.

The revelation of what he was to her and of what little she had to do to take it, left him reeling and SICK!

He spent the next few minutes throwing up stomach fluid all over the polished floor.

Finally, his strength returned and he got to his feet. Had to get away. One way or another.

Tonight he'd go exploring again, since his door was left open all the time now. He'd find a way out or make one. A weapon of some kind maybe.

He'd explored the whole place before but he was more determined than ever now for lots of new reasons. Had to succeed this time.

HAD to.

*

Grandpa Mulder'd died at sixty-two. Heart attack.

Uncle Samuel at sixty-four. Cardiovascular disease.

Dad dead (albeit from a gunshot to the head), while pushing sixty. But hadn't he been taking medicine? He'd looked bad that night. Probably heart.

Stressed out herd - the Mulders.

He could look forward to twenty-five years, maybe.

If he was good.

If he didn't eat the wrong things (what a laugh), and he got eight hours a night, and he didn't strain his ticker by over-doing the exercise.

The ol' pump was at a hundred and ten percent right then, kicking at his chest-wall like a hoof.

Still he ran.

Not far *enough*. Not *fast* enough.

Calf and thigh muscles would cramp and spasm and make him stumble. He'd just get up and start again. Reckless. Uncaring.

A taste of freedom is all that had gone through his mind when he'd awakened in the middle of the night and done his wandering. Hellbitch had unlocked his door, so...that was signal for him to go where he pleased whenever he damn well pleased it.

She hadn't said anything about middle of the night haunts but - screw it - this playing "keeper-of-the- specimen" thing wasn't gonna go by the book if he had anything to say about it. Not by her rules.

Not by a long shot.

Besides, being the sole exhibit consisted mainly of boredom. And her unwanted fire-eaten eyes.

Stomach rotting NUH!-thing to do in between visits from Hellbitch.

So when he spotted the little servant girl furtively tapping in whatever code or inscription it was on the keypad to the door that he knew led outside!, he'd - oh! - so carefully and - oh! - so quietly followed her through it.

That huge metal panel had silently slide aside, ushering in all that dry, cool early dawn air and, taking his body in its tendrils, carried him out.

Unfortunately, she'd seen him.

Then he'd seen her.

Sunshine. His nickname for her toothy grin.

She'd been transferred to "Kitchen Duty" and they hadn't exchanged grins for months.

When she'd been assigned to clean his rooms, he had expressed surprise at the tiny little thing. She couldn't have been more than twelve.

~~The little cleaning girl entered, carrying her utilities. When she saw him, she turned to go because she had never seen the human before. Usually, he was running at this time of morning.

"I won't bite," he said to her, knowing she probably wouldn't understand and leave anyway.

But she didn't.

"I'm sorry. I guess I'm kind of in the way, just didn't feel like going for a run this morning." Didn't *feel* much of anything.

PhaHks lay down on his bed and snoozed as she cleaned around him.

The next day, when she came, she brought her little pet. Something that looked like a very fat ferret road around on her boney shoulder while she went about her duties.

Soon it became his habit to be sure he was there when she came. She brought her little pet sometimes, sometimes not. But always bright eyes and a fresh face.

One day when she came, he slowly worked his way to where she was sweeping, her little pet balanced perfectly on her thin frame, digging in its claws for support. She didn't seem to mind.

When he reached out a hand to pet the creature, it squeaked in alarm but then stretched out its head for more. The animal's cry had made her turn in alarm too, but when she saw his obvious admiration for her best friend, she quickly relaxed, smiling at her happy pet.

Then smiled at him, revealing a mouth full of crooked teeth.

PhaHks' heart broke, not because it made her ugly, on the contrary, it endeared her to him more, but because for all the technology that must exist in Hellbitch's world, no one seemed to think it necessary to fix them for her.

But her smile was unabashed, wide as the horizon, and shined like the sun.

Sunshine he began to call her.

Every day she came each day bringing a smile, and a laugh at "Fromooohhh.", her name for the fuzzy thing. PhaHks re-christened it "Fat Fromoh", because of its waddling girth.

And she brought him a smile. It felt good to see them and even better giving them back, his 'smile muscles' twitching from misuse.

Occasionally, she'd babble out a long sentence in her gibberish language and he'd answer in his which baffled her.

Small talk that neither understood creating a bond neither expected. A little bud of joy took root in him and that, too, was unexpected.

Forty minutes a day of watering the bud. That was what her visits did to him.

*

Veexow came one morning which was not her habit and found him weaving something out of the strips he'd made from a shirt he'd obviously sacrificed for whatever was his project.

"What are you doing, PhaHks?"

"Making something."

"Making what?"

"It's for the cleaning girl."

Veexow sighed. Always it was five of her questions to gain one complete answer of his. "And what are you making for the cleaning servant?"

"A mat for her shoulder. Something to protect it from her pets claws."

"Why?"

"Why"? Haven't you seen the scratches? She loves that animal."

Veexow looked at it. "No, I hadn't."

"Well, *I* did and this will keep her from getting more scars. Doesn't she have a mother?"

"No, I believe she was raised as a house servant from birth."

Strange answer. "House servants have no mothers?"

"Sometimes they do. This one doesn't."

PhaHks finished his handiwork as they spoke, tying the ends together and tucking them out of sight in the weave.

Veexow approved of the workmanship. Neat and clean if basic. "Why did you not ask me for something to give to her?"

"Because then it won't really be a gift from *me*. I want to give her something I made myself."

Veexow felt a tiny charge of annoyance at his indulgence of the girl. It would not do to spoil a servant of her caste.

PhaHks had never shown the inclination to create anything for her. And she sensed he did not want her around when time came for the bestowal.

"When you are finished with this, join me for the midday meal." Not a request.

He nodded once. The reminder was unnecessary as they almost always ate together.

When Sunshine arrived PhaHks presented his gift to her.

She smiled a neglected twelve year olds smile. Surprised and shy, then delighted and possessive. She even let him help her strap it on.

PhaHks had made Sunshine special for a day.

She took him by surprise with an impulsive hug.

PhaHks was almost too moved to respond, then gave her a warm squeeze. It was the best, best reward he could have received for so little time and effort. It was wonderful.

She was his morning light and her smile was a warmth he carried inside each day.

*

"Where's Sunshine?"

"What?"

"The Cleaning Girl, she didn't come today, is she sick?" PhaHks tried to keep the worry out of his voice and doing a poor job of it.

"No."

"Then where is she?"

Veexow did not look at him, but continued to eat.

"She cleans in another section of the estate now."

PhaHks' heart raced from worry to horror to devastation without the slightest sign of their passage across his face.

"When did this happen?"

"Yesterday."

The day after he had given Sunshine a second gift, a collar and leash for her pet.

"You did it on purpose, didn't you?" *You cold, heartless bitch!*

"I often rotate servants, PhaHks."

"Interesting that you rotated her away from me. She never did anything to you."

He had never mentioned the hug to her, it had been his and Sunshine's happy secret. Hellbitch got his brain and his soul but not his affection. That was for Sunshine and no one else.

"Where in the estate? Where is she working in the house?"

"I had her rotated to kitchen duty."

Kitchen duty! Hot, laborious, grinding work that would run a skinny baby girl to bones.

"Where is that?"

"It is off limits to any but kitchen servants, PhaHks."

*I'm not surprised you goddamn FUCKING WHORE!* It took all of his control not to wrap his fingers around her aristocratic throat.

"You had no reason. You have no right to keep her from me."

"I have no right?!" One clawed appendage gripped his wrist painfully. "I do exactly as I please with my servants and I'll do exactly as I please with YOU!"

PhaHks was murderous and yet he did nothing. COULD do nothing.

The evil Bitch shuffled everyone's lives like a deck of cards.

"Control. It's a drug for you, isn't it?"

"It is about keeping things in their proper place." She let his arm go.

"And you can't stand it when someone else has it."

"Is that what you believe?" Her tone was bored, but PhaHks could tell he was getting under her skin.

"I'm talking about a cohesive, bonafide connection with another. You don't know what it's like, do you?"

"I weary of this, PhaHks."

He stood without her permission.

"Sit down!"

"Go to hell.">>>

Now Sunshine was older, taller. Fourteen? He hadn't known her actual age then, but had estimated it at about twelve.

When she'd turned around to re-close and lock the big, metal door, she recognized him. Smiled at first and then seeing what it was he intended, her smile dropped nervously.

The alarm button was right there beside the lock-out panel. Her hand had been closing in when she'd spotted him. Now it hovered there, inches from the buttons, not moving.

He could see her indecision. Wanting to help him, a friend (at least he supposed they were still friends), and wanting to do the one thing that would keep her out of trouble.

But he had to try. "Don't Sunshine."

She frowned, so wanting to be able to do both things, he figured, by the struggle on her face.

She had to push the alarm of course. Hellbitch would not go lightly on her if she were ever found out.

But Sunshine seemed sad that she had to do it.

He loved her for that.

But he *had* to get out. Either that or go crazy.

So he'd hit her.

Just enough to knock her out, but his hand still hurt from it. She had an iron hard head! He checked her breathing to make sure she was okay. His act would protect her.

Poor Sunshine. Probably sneaking out to rendezvous with some pimpled sprout, out and away from the sound monitoring system. The whole goddamn place was wired. What a shitty life for her.

Despite the teeth, she'd grown into a pretty young woman. No wonder the boys were sneaking her around. But tonight, some green skinned, blue-balled Romeo was gonna have to settle for a date with his hand.

Hellbitch would probably have him beaten all the way to the morgue for this. She'd most likely perform the autopsy herself, before he was actually dead.

So once he'd started running, he figured it'd be a good idea to just keep on going.

He imagined the Bitch barking and screaming at her gargoyles right now. *"FLY, FLYYYYYY...!"*

This flight had been impulse. Where was he going to GO, really?

Once that cage door had swung free, though, he just had to do it. Free for a while of locked doors and unwanted drugs. No more chained up mind and beaten up will.

Just for a while.

Cared less about the consequences of his actions than about how good the action felt.

Kind of like the day he lost his virginity.

PhaHks ran until he HAD to stop. Until he, really and for good, fell.

This time, his body would not obey his command to roll over, push up, get up, run, run, run!

He nearly fainted from the pain that told him he'd come near to running himself to death.

Coronary infarction and some decent shuteye.

But his reptilian brain ordered otherwise. Just so far and no farther. He wept dry-eyed at his failure.

*"Wonderful, the persistence of life..."*

Words that came to him with eyes shut tight against the red sun filtering in ribbons down between tree branches. Eyes shut so tight he saw blood.

Black words against red fire.

Thirsty suddenly.

Not hungry. Not for Hellbitch's protein husks or veggie-surprise. He'd been puking up most of it anyway in his own private little commode.

If he was going to get skinny, fuck her. If he showed bad manners by vomiting din-din all over her bad taste flatware - bite cock!

Her problems.

On the other hand if he died out here, all cozy in the sun: no more problems at all.

It sounded like a good deal and he crawled over to the base of a huge leaf laden tree, curling up on its spongy bed of dead fall.

He was asleep in minutes.

*

PhaHks had run.

Not escaped of course, he'd simply taken it upon himself to test her. He seemed to have the need to continually be pushing at her boundaries and stretching her bands until she snapped.

If he had returned on his own, tired and hungry, she would have been angry and would still have punished him for the infraction, but not harshly.

But he hadn't and now, after scanning the surrounding hills and locating his position (which was not moving), she was more concerned than angry, though she was still *displeased*.

He would not survive the Romulan night, when temperatures plummeted into single digits. Human PhaHks did not know that.

Impressive, however, how far he had run.

During the last four months, her patience for his blatant defiance of her rules had broadened. His unpredictability and illogic was annoying but fascinating and granted her much material to think about regarding his species.

Puzzling creature.

Disobedient (even when living conditions were wholly provided and beneficial). Rebellious. Contradictory. Infuriating.

But beautiful in that alien way of his.

Colored irises. Salt-water tears.

Emotionalism par none.

He had access to her private rooftop gardens where he spent a great deal of his time. She supposed he went there to get away from curious eyes and, naturally, to enjoy the greenery.

Whenever he wasn't sneaking down to her private spring.

One of the most interesting things she'd learned of the human PhaHks she had learned there...

...that he was not merely a combative human; the one living representative of his species; a interesting study of contradictions.

That he was not only a poor innocent condemned to live out his life under the curious eyes of an alien race.

Though she had seen him before in various states of undress, watching Rhengar examine him and learn of muscle/fat ratios, nerve responses, cardio-pulmonary rhythms and a host of other mysteries. All learned and catalogued. All before she had ever been conscious, really, of his masculinity.

Way back in those first few months. Before her spurred violation of him.

The time came, at her mineral spring to where he had snuck down, where she began really *seeing* him.

That was the time a mystery choose to unveil itself.

That night, out from the cleansing steam of a private pool, under subtle light and moisture.

She learned.

PhaHks was *exceptionally* MALE.

*

~~He heard trickling.

Somewhere water was running.

He'd explored the entire mansion and had found nothing new. So had sat down on the edge of an opaque window, dark because it was night. The thick glass felt cool.

Cold. Inside it was warm.

Warmer than he felt, more substantial than he felt. More real than he was.

Then the trickle of water, very faint. He looked around, the dim lanterns (lit with something other than oil or gas, there was no flame), cast just enough light to avoid tripping.

He walked one way and when the trickling sound ceased, he turned, quickly walking the other. Caught it again. Followed it to what he thought was the end of the long hall, one he had walked down many times.

Funny how sounds seemed to travel farther at night.

When he came to the end, he noticed a small opening. One which would have been very difficult to see during the day. But night shadows were different and it was plain.

Where the decorative masonries wall appeared to end and join at ninety degrees with its counterpart, it actually only blended in. It was a false front. In what would have been the closed off corner was actually two feet of receding space. Enough for one person to pass.

PhaHks stepped behind it into a much darker passage that sloped down. One feeble light lit it up for only a few meters ahead, beyond was blackness.

The trickling was distinct.

In behind the wall, the sound of water became clear and inviting. He could feel instantly the change of humidity against his skin.

Spiraling, stone-carved steps descended into near darkness but for the feeble illumination of the one lantern. Damp and cooling the soles of his feet, he followed them.

A staircase behind a wall leading to an underground swimming pool, he thought. The place seemed to have been constructed without much consideration to convenience.

He grudgingly recalled Hellbitch telling him that it was her ancestral home and had been added to countless times.

The pool itself lay in shadow. And it was a well, the water in the darkness as black as ink. Two more tiny lanterns were all that kept the shadows from swallowing up him and everything he saw.

But the thick moisture left a sweet sulphured flavor on his tongue.

PhaHks shed his clothes and stepped onto the final stair, slippery under his feet, when something broke the surface. He in full view of the water and whatever was emerging was half hidden in shadow.

It froze him for a moment, the shape of it. It rose and exhaled, spraying tiny droplets into the yellow glow of the lantern.

From vivacious curves steam rose, ascending to God.

Neurons coalesced, struggling to connect archives fallen into disuse, shooting a unsolicited ping to his groin.

She had arrived ahead of him. Someone who obviously made it their habit to be here. He could see the shed clothing and the folded blanket laying at the edge of the natural rock-hewn spring.

Shoulders glistened in the half-light as long black hair was swept back from sharp features.

One smooth boost with hands on the pool edge and she'd propelled herself out of the water, standing naked, breasts bouncing under the ministrations of drying herself off.

PhaHks retreated up the stairs like he had been speared.

As quietly and quickly as his legs could carry him, he sought refuge in his room.

Didn't want to think about what he'd just witnessed. Did NOT want to acknowledge how his body had reacted at seeing curving moist flesh and round, hard-nippled breasts.

Laying down, he pressed fists into his genitals until it hurt. Didn't want to feel his penis hardening at the sight of a navel and of the dark, softly carpeted folds below, covering the inner, inviting flesh of a wet, waiting vagina...

Until that moment, Hellbitch had been a safe image of ugliness and pain.

A Thing to despise.

A power hungry, sadistic, controlling fucking Icon. Satan's little mistress-bitch. Macaulay's wet dream.

Now his deceitful, Judas Iscariot had hardened, trying to convince him otherwise.

It stated that, (ejaculating to emphasize the discovery),

...she was female. A Woman.>>>

*

When next PhaHks' eyes opened, he was laying on his bed.

Hellbitch was there, watching him. From across the room in a padded chair, hands resting on the arms. Queen Feline on her throne.

Cat's caught the rodent and what was mousie going to do now?

That is how she watched him. With those patronizing "I win" eyes.

PhaHks felt like a gerbil thrust back into his cage with nothing left to do but run the squeaky wheel.

He was losing his mind.

When he tried to sit up, he couldn't.

Then felt his nakedness beneath the thin sheet. "Fulgh." His speech was slurred and the swearword came out like sludge.

"You would have died out there, you know." she announced.

He shook his head once. Lay back. Gave himself a rest from the eyestrain of staring at her from the horizontal.

"Howth grrl?"

"She has a headache but is otherwise unharmed." He seemed relieved.

Veexow frowned. "You strike her down, then ask after her well being. What a contradictory creature you are."

"Sh'uz t'do m' rmm nice."

"Oh?"

"Tha'zall. Sh' dint help me'nite. Y' don'av t' punizher."

That angered Hellbitch. He could tell.

"Everyone has a place, PhaHks. Everyone has restrictions."

"So 'v'notssed."

"I refuse to play Battle of Wills with you."

"But arenn ye' gon' punssh me?" That was better.

"Is that what you expect?" She rose and walked over until she was hovering over his face.

"Yrr p'ticlrr brnnd, yeh'." Her face floated above him like a grotesque Halloween mask. She'd completely stoned him on something.

Junkie-Madam and her goddamn drugs.

The jack-o-lantern mouth moved in slow motion. His head swam.

"I think you have punished yourself enough, PhaHks. The reason you cannot move is because there are tiny bacteria multiplying in your bloodstream as we speak. From there hey enter the cells of the central nervous system and paralyze the victim. The doctor believes you will recover, he has already treated you for it."

She seemed pleased to report the next bit, he thought.

"But it will be several days until you can sit up or eat or walk or relieve yourself without assistance."

And the next...

"You see, you made the mistake of falling asleep upon a bed of dead fall over a nest of burrowing Reed worms. Their bodies carry this particular bacterium. It is, by the way, deadly to us. You are fortunate you are human, this time it has saved you, you seem to have a natural defense against it. The worms only come forth during the cool of the night. Of course, by the time we had arrived, they had covered you."

PhaHks felt even more like shit now, from visions of being swarmed alive by worm-lice.

Woman or not. Big tits or not, he wanted to knock that victory smug off of her vampire fucking face.

"I knew you would try to escape once I allowed you access to my home. But I had not supposed your human ignorance would get you into trouble so quickly."

Condescending cunt.

"When you are well, we shall try once again to get along. From my observation, you really have no choice."

*

Stir crazy.

Two weeks locked away in his own "dwelling". One room, ten by ten meters and no windows to ease the boredom. No views of sky, lake or land to keep him sane.

Only "activities" during his recuperation.

A computer unit programmed with hundreds of tests which she ordered him to do and which, for that very reason, he didn't.

At least not for the whole first week of being locked in his one room and denied access to her the Great Hall and basement pool.

Then, after his brain screamed at him for a whole day to provide it with entertainment, he sat down and started to do the bitch's tests. Hundreds of mathematical, spacial, emotional response and logic questions. Some he could answer, some he couldn't. Some he didn't.

Some he answered dementedly, just to see if he could piss her off.

For days he did the hated quizzes until his head pounded. But M'Lady, after her initial visit to inform him of his confinement during which time she would be occupied with "unavoidable visitors", and "since he was healing anyway", informed him he would be unable to roam about the mansion and his meals would be brought to him in his room.

His prison had become temporarily smaller.

Two weeks and he was ready to climb the walls.

This day he'd spent pacing, itching to crush to bits the test unit if he'd had the strength to. He'd done all the tests over and over until he was fairly confident he could puke the answers up alphabetically.

When his evening meal arrived he welcomed, not the food, but the distraction of seeing another living creature, however brief.

The servant girl, a new one, entered and he retreated to the other side of the room.

Sitting on his bed, he'd watch her, look away. She'd stare, look away, stare again. But today the distraction made him feel tired and shitty.

And fucking depressed. He could be losing his mind and not know it but since there was no one he could ask who would know one way or another, he let the thought slip away like so many others.

Visitors. That's what his thoughts felt like, little brain ghosts that floated around in his head, moaning their protests and then fading away.

He was fading away maybe.

He rubbed his eyes and face, felt wetness slide from the corners of his eyes to wash his face in salt.

The servant said something in her incomprehensible tongue and he opened his eyes, startled to see her standing before him.

Stared up at her. She was standing a foot in front of him, gesturing back towards his table. He looked and saw the new tray sitting beside the old one still piled with untouched, drying out food.

He guessed she was asking about that. He shook his head.

"No."

Had no idea if she understood but she made no expression one way or the other.

During his confinement, he'd eaten his meals obediently but the shit hurt going down and burned when it got there. Daily he ate it until he could choke it down no more. Now it was pulpy cubes and dry flavorless husks that, hungry as he might be, turned his stomach over.

It smelled of them and its taste was prison.

The servant girl said something else and he shook his head to let her know he didn't understand her, sighing heavily and rubbing his gritty eyeballs. What he needed was conversation and it was typical of HellBitch to send a servant who couldn't speak a letter of English.

Without warning, the girl reached out and touched his face, the wetness that still hadn't evaporated.

He froze.

Her curious hand moved to his hair which had regained its shine now that he'd returned to near his normal weight.

She touched him the way a small child would want to touch a fluffy dog if she had never seen one. What does it feel like? Stretch out fingers. Stroke.

It felt nice, that small contact. She couldn't have been more than twenty. Not pretty.

Not Sunshine.

He didn't think she was making a try for him because there was nothing sexual in her touch. And, though he'd had no woman in longer than he could remember, he didn't want her. Not because he didn't feel the need, in fact his penis stirred under this unexpected gesture, but because she was too foreign looking.

Too alien.

He hoped, however, she'd continue for a moment or two. In his intolerable existence, it was a tiny reprieve. To have fingers gently raking his hair was transfusing the numbness.

She leaned closer to see his eyes. Her blank, ugly face registered the slightest surprise at the colors she found in them.

The servant girl didn't have time to even turn around when the door to his chambers slid aside, revealing two beefy guards and HellBitch behind them, barking something in her impossible speech.

Without a hitch in step, the two guards unceremoniously grabbed the servant girl and began half-carrying, half dragging her to the door.

He felt her touch leave and it hurt. A cold severing.

"Huh, wha...?" he looked at Veexow's furious expression as she turned on him.

"Silence!" then she barked something to the guards who hurried their pace out the door.

By the girls cries and the quick exit of the guards PhaHks didn't need to understand the language to recognize the implications of what was happening.

"Wait! She didn't DO anything." He stood and went to Veexow, careful to stay out of striking distance.

Veexow was venomous. "She was to serve meals. That was all."

Her anger was a shock. "All she did was touch me. She was just...curious!" He tried to explain.

"She knew the rules and disobeyed. And she is older than you, PhaHks." Veexow turned to leave but he quickly placed himself between her and the door, facing her down.

"What are they going to do to her?"

"She will be punished of course. Executed." Stepping around him.

"WHAT?!" He snatched at her arm. "No - why? - please, *PLEASE* don't do this. She was just trying to communicate, she didn't mean anything. It was nice and-"

It had been the only emotional and physical gesture of kindness he'd received in an eternity. It had been a precious gift and they were going to destroy the offer-er.

He knew he was begging but had nothing else to try.

"-nothing would have happened!"

At his raised voice, unsolicited words and daring to touch her so roughly, Veexow, face twisted in rage, backhanded him. Not hard enough to kill but plenty hard enough to do damage. He spun around from the force of it before landing on his hands and knees.

One minute he was having a conversation - of sorts - the next he was on the floor trying to shake the ringing out of his ears and figure out which part of his head hurt worse, his brain or the skull that encased it.

As quickly as her anger had arisen, it vanished seeing him on the floor and gasping in pain. She moved to help him to his feet but he forcefully shook her off, pulling away.

Staggering to his feet, he belligerently faced her, unwavering. She could see the purple bruise already darkening his cheekbone and the blood seeping from the cut above it where her ring had caught.

"I did not use my full strength PhaHks. You will not speak of this. You will not be leaving this room until I decide it's time."

His voice shook. "You vindictive bitch!"

Without a twitch of warning, she struck him again, lightening fast.

Hard.

On his other cheek.

This time he did not get back up, just stayed down and gulped for air, holding his hand to the side of his head. He glared up at her, savoring his growing hatred which was quickly becoming his constant companion.

"*Trust* you"??" he mocked, "What a goddamn joke!"

"You WILL learn to cooperate!" She yelled.

"Or you'll what? - hit me? You'll sure as fuck never get me to bend my knee any other way." He coughed. Spit blood.

Her eyes narrowed. "Eat, PhaHks, you're getting thin again. Eat or I will have it liquified and poured down your throat." She moved to exit without a backward glance.

"You're FUCKING insane!" he screamed after her retreating back.

PhaHks got himself up off the floor. His jaw ached and he wondered if it was broken. Moved it around. Still worked.

Hellbitch had been more than just angry at the servant for breaking a rule, she'd been angry that the girl had touched him, and furious with him for allowing it.

The blows had been his punishment.

He was dizzy and went to lie down. Sleep it off.

But the image of what that HellBitch was going to have done to that young girl....

Maybe she wouldn't kill her. Maybe it was all just emotional manipulation to - what? - get him to be more docile (Hellbitch's favorite word)? Hell of a way to gain obedience.

It wouldn't work either.

He was used to it.

Thirty years ago, he'd logged in plenty of it. A decade of it.

In the lessons of painful humiliation, Hellbitch had nothing on dear, old dad. He had taken it to a fine art. A regular goddamn professor.

Hellbitch didn't realize he could slip into the victim role like it was a used coat and then just shrug it off again. Get knocked down, get up, spit blood.

Spit back.

Practice makes perfect.

Kill someone because they were curious? Kill them for lingering? Kill them for being young and inexperienced?

Those were the choices.

Something had lit her fuse and she had come through that door prepared to explode.

Why?

And her face had changed during that two minutes. >From tightly reined-in indignation to absolute-

-jealousy!

Her twisted rage at his comments, had said it all. He'd just missed it at first because they were dragging that screaming girl away to be guillotined or whatever the hell it was they did here.

He was Hellbitch's pet and hands off?

Christ, that's why she'd had Sunshine taken away.

If that's what he was...

It was a bit of insight that might prove useful though in what capacity he wasn't sure. For a man out of options it was maybe an opportunity.

He'd do a bit of manipulating himself if his theory proved true.

If he was correct and played it right, maybe it could get him home.

*

Only sometimes did Veexow declare the pool off limits.

The rainy season that would come twice yearly to wash torrents of dark waters into the Rhemu valley.

The pool, being as it was fed from the filtered streams of the nearby hills, would systematically rise and fall. The basin would become murky and violent as the flooding advanced and receded.

The feeders, the inlets and outlets, that normally flowed with gentleness out of regard for its fleshy visitors, would rush in. The brown, icy sludge sucked out again along the deep underground flutes. Any creature clumsy enough to fall in, would be taken away with it to die.

So one night, as PhaHks wandered the endless passages of Hellbitch's mansion, he was surprised to see his little servant girl, the one he had cold-cocked in his failed escape attempt. And it still hurt to think about it.

Another did his rooms now, an older woman who ignored him completely if he happened to be there.

He'd gone through two servants so far. One Hellbitch had had murdered for the terrible crime of curiosity. And the other was Sunshine.

Disappearing through the narrow entry to the underground cavern...

...there she was, and she was almost grown up. Even taller than the night of his botched escape into the countryside.

Still a skinny little thing but filled out. Her face was no longer cast in the impishness of girlishness. It now held the expression of young womanhood with its questioning exploration.

And seeing her brought it even more home to him how much he had missed her smile every morning.

Her giggles and her little orphan Annie ways that just made his heart ache with compassion. And joy too, for her ability to have been so purely child-like in her bleak existence.

Protectiveness. That's what he felt too. Still.

His little Sunshine.

She was going to the pool, nothing else was down there, and he had a pretty good idea why.

More than curiosity compelled him to follow. He followed at a good distance. Did not want to give Hellbitch any reasons for punishing her.

He was lonely, wanted to speak to her, but no sweet kid was going to literally lose her head over his mistakes ever again.

Quietly she descended, unaware of her tag.

He heard voices and sat near the bottom of the stairs to listen.

Sure enough, a young male voice mixed with Sunshine's and sounds of clothing being shed and fumbling in the dark.

There was no lantern lit and the blackness was nearly impenetrable. He could see shapes and that was all. How they were managing in near total dark he didn't know but evidently they were as sounds of lovemaking replaced breathless whispers.

Yes, she had grown up.

Flesh slapping flesh and groans of pleasure washed over him, sparking memories that hurt.

A jerking fist had nothing on real, warm muscled depths, kneading fingers and sweet tongue. Then he felt ashamed because he was imagining it while eavesdropping on his little girl.

A cry of surprise followed by a thick splash shook him out of his guilty porn moment.

The adolescent stud must be showing off.

"OteesaH!" The voice of the male youth trying to yell but not so loudly to arouse the household and Hellbitch's wrath. PhaHks didn't blame him.

Splashing...

Another splash. Then lots of splashing, hands striking water. A large splash. The male had dived in.

PhaHks could see nothing.

PhaHks heard nothing for long seconds. Then a surfacing. "Oo-teee-sahhh!" No answer came from the girl.

PhaHks jumped up from his hiding place and was at the water's edge. The youth gasped, but didn't follow when PhaHks dived in.

Her name was OteesaH. Pretty. Like sunshine.

Under the silty liquid, he could see nothing. For one second he ventured to open his eyes and had them stinging like fire. He dived deeper, groped blindly, and did not find her. The mineral basin was deep, nearly one hundred feet, Veexow had told him.

Coming up for air, he inhaled and exhaled, big ones, then held and dived again. Deeper this time. Forty, fifty feet down, the first outlets tugged on his strong swimmers body.

During one rare vacation from the Bureau, he had taken Free diving. On his best dive, the deepest he had gone was eighty-five feet. Excellent for a beginner. But that had been with benefit of mask, snorkel, fins...

The second inlets/outlets pulled him deeper, he hardly had to kick now to descend.

PhaHks knew the depth of the outlet but only a vague idea where on the cavern wall it was located.

The pull on his own body was strong.

Seventy-five feet, he calculated. Part of Free diving was a good grasp of speed in relation to fathoms.

Just a few more feet would be all he could do. The need for his lungs to exhale was becoming overwhelming, the water pressure squeezing his rib-cage.

Sunshine. OteesaH.

Sweet, smiling Sunshine. His little girl.

Arms outreached, moving in circles, he felt for solid form.

Then a foot, flailing spasmodically, brushed his hand. PhaHks missed it the first time. The second time, he latched onto it and didn't let go.

Wrapping both arms around two legs he kicked furiously toward the surface, lungs screaming.

The ascent was worse with the pull from the outlet, the extra weight and his own near exhaustion.

Ten feet from the surface, he could no longer stop the reflex to exhale. Once all the bubbles from the oxygen depleted air left his lungs they immedietly sucked in. He couldn't prevent it.

Sucking and gasping, he swallowed gritty water, inhaled it but did not let go of his burden.

Finally the surface, and hands wrestled the limp body from his. PhaHks was left to pull himself the rest of the way to safety.

Resting on his hands and knees for a moment more, He coughed until water came up. His chest burned like fire.

When he saw the girl laid out nude and not moving, he crawled over to her. The boy had lit the lantern and was crouched beside her, speaking to her, patting her face but doing nothing else.

PhaHks shoved him aside, taking her slack jaw in one hand. Pinching her frothy nose he began breathing for her.

Blow.

Blow.

Blow.

Then he found the correct spot on her rib-cage and compressed it an inch with the heels of his hands. Rhythmic downward thrusts for eight seconds.

Blow.

Pumped. One, two, three...

Blow...

With one ear to her chest, he listened for a sound.

Nothing.

"What are you doing?" The boy asked.

"What does it look like?"

The youth roughly shoved PhaHks aside, "Don't touch her!"

PhaHks sprawled. He scrambled back as the powerful youth stood guard and, searching in the pockets of his discarded clothing, found some sort of tiny transmitter, (PhaHks guessed), speaking into it. He was summoning the doctor.

With the youths attention momentarily diverted with the doctor's response, PhaHks resumed his attempts to revive his drowned girl.

The youth yanked PhaHks to his feet and bound his arms behind him, holding him immobile.

"What the hell are you doing? I'm trying to save her!"

"You are human. You're trying to kill her!"

"Why would I risk my life to save her from drowning just to kill her!?" He yelled, twisting, trying to free himself.

"The doctor will be here and he will save her. Your human intervention isn't welcome!"

"Let me go, goddamn it! She's dying! She'd DYING!!" PhaHks yelled, twisting this way and that in his attempts to shake off the much stronger youth.

Rhengar suddenly was there with a portable light and began swiftly administering his healing ways.

Veexow also arrived in time to see Rhengar shake his head at the anxious boy.

She arrived in time to see the youth let go of PhaHks' arms without warning and watch PhaHks fall to his knees.

He was freed too late.

Veexow was in time to watch PhaHks crawl slowly over to the girl. Her petite face was blotched yellow and she saw only with dead eyes. Strands of brown soaked hair splayed across her cheek and PhaHks brushed them away with trembling fingers.

Veexow had arrived in time to see PhaHks close his eyes, his face twist up and silent tears inch down reddened cheeks. His eyes were shut so tight, he might be beseeching a god. It was painful to watch.

PhaHks held her tight. Her expression in death had been one of surprise just as had been her youthful desire in life.

A life that *Should Have Been*.

He wanted to hug back to life her smile and laughter.

Sunshine had been so tiny, so perfect. So goddamned innocent!

He could have saved her.

PhaHks' eyes pooled and he screamed at the boy.

"Why didn't you let me save her?!" PhaHks' eyes burned holes through to the grieving youth.

Then turned back to the girl OteesaH, Sunshine. She hadn't deserved this! She was just beginning. Once upon a time, she'd cleaned up his messes and had brought bright, pretty eyes every day to his loneliness and desolation.

He hadn't even known her real name until now.

OteesaH. But to him she would always be Sunshine.

"PhaHks."

Veexow rested one hand on his shoulder.

He slapped it away. "Get off me!"

But Hellbitch was there beside him and he laid the dead servant back down, gently.

Ever so gently.

He had no opening for retaliation to anyone or anything for her death.

Hellbitch was going to take him away from his mourning of her.

He would not be allowed even that.

Veexow gripped his arm and lifted him to his feet. "PhaHks. Come with me now."

Rhengar ignored the commotion, gathering up his things.

PhaHks rose and followed Veexow up the stone stairs.

*

PhaHks paced, eyes darting everywhere. Veexow thought that he was looking for something but what she did not know.

"PhaHks, there was nothing more you could have done. Or any of us."

"I could have saved her. If he'd released me, if ANY of you had helped!, she'd be alive right now."

"You do not know that. In fact,.." she went to him and stood in front to stop his restless movements.

"..in fact, it is doubtful what you were attempting would have benefitted her. She was...different than you."

He swallowed. Nodded. She seemed to have distracted him.

"But," she continued, "neither would it have hurt."

In her own way, she was thanking him for trying.

"You should rest now."

He nodded but made no move toward his bed. She, instead, moved to exit.

"PhaHks."

"Yeah?" He sounded spent.

"Why do you distress yourself so over her? She was just a servant girl."

Cold, heartless female.

"You mean easily replaceable? Expendable? Cheap property? Like the one you had murdered?!" Bitch!

"Be careful, PhaHks."

"Why? Or you'll kill me too?"

"Don't be so dramatic. Things, people die every day. The rest of us have to go on."

"How enlightened. Maybe some of us don't want to."

"I don't believe that and neither do you. You are no killer, not even of yourself. I knew it then."

She seemed to be waiting for some response.

"Is that what you thought?" he asked dully. Too tired to keep up the fighting words.

"Yes." She turned back to him. Considered. "If you had the opportunity to leave, to really escape,.."

She was absentmindedly rubbing her hands together, her face wanting truth.

"...would you have killed me to take it?"

She saw his eyes flick from side to side, then at her.

He always looked at her directly now. Gaze to gaze, having somewhere along the line conveniently forgotten her rule of never doing so. A rule she had quickly discarded.

"In the beginning, yeah." Fuckin' Aye!

She carefully controlled the odd sensations those words incited in her chest. "And now?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because,...because *here*,...now, you're all I have." He rubbed his tired face. "That isn't saying a hell of a lot about my life, is it?"

She nodded, one of understanding if not agreement, but since she had no reply for him, didn't answer.

No words would change the reality of his world as he saw it.

"Goodnight, PhaHks."

*

He had free run of her mansion now, including the extensive courtyards and, provided he told her in advance, was allowed access to outside for hours at a time.

In between excursions to the top gardens (to be alone), to the Great Hall (to run), to outside (to be alone, explore or run) and to the pool, PhaHks kept to his rooms.

He idled.

Slept (whenever the nightmares cooperated and left him alone), ate the boring food when he got hungry and coped with the periodic bouts of overwhelming depression.

And every day or so she would come to him and they would have sex.

Quick sex. Slow sex. Sometimes great sex.

He welcomed it. He had instigated it.

Not long ago in fact by an evening visit to her chamber. So powerful was the need, he'd been unable to get it out of his head.

All day. He thought he might go insane. And there was no one else so he'd payed Hellbitch a visit one evening and just plain offered himself up to her.

He'd read her right, she hadn't refused.

In fact, she'd nearly injured him. But she owned the complementary plumbing and his pussy choices consisted of one.

It had been so long since he'd experienced that kind of physical connection to someone; the give and take; the exchange of body fluids; the stresses and urges slaked in the taking of flesh.

She showed him things he didn't think his body could do. He even taught her a few tricks.

It made him feel good for a little while. Almost like being needed, in a way, again. He hadn't felt like that since...well...since before he could remember anything else.

Shit, he was pretty sure he must have fucked a vampire somewhere along the line (lots of former things having faded before this constructed reality), because looking down - or more often - looking up at Veexow's Dracula face didn't feel so freaky anymore.

Her yellow pallor, pointed ears, upswept eyebrows...

...Love in the Twilight Zone.

His groin had rediscovered sex and when his stomach found out it was through "Hellbitch", it quit heaving. Gave up.

Now, when her hot hands raked over his back or kneaded his naked sides, there was no fear. His dick was literally jumping for joy at every opportunity.

She'd show up, make her intent crystal clear by telling him to get undressed whether he felt like it or not. It never occurred to her to *ask*.

But usually he felt like it.

Somewhere in the caverns of his feelings, he still hated her, but the sex made him forget that for a while.

Her sexual appetites were frequent and often rough, but, occasionally, when she appeared, she bore an offering of gentleness.

It was the gentleness part he mostly looked forward to. It spun the illusion of being at the center of someone's universe for a few hours.

And screwing made some of his horribly lonely nights, or days as the case often was, disappear. And, after a couple hours of her vigorous bump and grind, he'd sleep like a baby.

All he had to fork over, besides his genitalia, were a few healing wounds where she sometimes lost control and bit him.

But what's a few tooth marks between friends?

It was a prize deal.

Other than a good run, a good fuck was the thing he did second most often these days.

Sex and him had always been pals. That is, his dick and his right hand. Now he had the ongoing real thing for a change. As much milking as he wanted and real bondage too.

But he would give it up if it meant getting out of there.

He would give up seeing and speaking.

If it meant going home, he would cut off his own penis.

*

"What are you thinking?"

"Nothing."

"You are constantly closed to me."

"Spelunking."

"What?"

"Spelunking, that's what I was thinking about."

"And what does "spul-un-king" mean?"

"Once I went on vacation to Peru and went cave exploring - spelunking."

"Why?"

Phahks frowned, it seemed a retarded question. "Because I'd never done it before."

"And what did you find in these caves?"

"Guano mostly. Bat shit. It reeks like you wouldn't believe. Everything was coated in it."

"So you went on a retreat to view foul-smelling dung?" She was pleased to see her attempt at humor (a human characteristic with which she still had difficulties, either using or understanding), spark a small smile from him.

"I went because I wanted to learn something new. I wanted to see something I'd never seen before."

"Did you?"

"Nothing I couldn't have read about in a book I guess, except for the smell."

Veexow touched his face as they lay on their sides facing each other.

Phahks did not return the gesture but left his hands tucked beneath the pillow.

The sex had been, as usual, insisted upon by her, and ardent and fatiguing. But he hadn't refused it on that account.

As much as he thought he hated her, his mouth had slid across hers. As much as he thought he wanted her to die, his hands had groped and clutched.

Even as his mind remembered her cruelties, he had pumped her furiously, wanting to drive his cock straight through her like a stake.

Nail her to the floor.

Now he just wanted to pass out.

But she wanted to "talk", so of course...

PhaHks kept his jaw clenched and spoke through his teeth. He wanted to keep it together. Wanted control. Control!

He was tired, and long, thought-free sleep was all he craved. That was all.

Jesus, that was all! For fuck sakes, was it too goddamn much to ask?!

If he shouted, Veexow would strike and he really didn't feel like losing a back tooth tonight.

Didn't much fancy the notion of Doctor mother fucking "Rheng-ele" standing over him with his metal tray of Nazi-probes!

"Is that what you feel? PhaHks? Is this a cave of awful things you would have preferred seeing only in a book?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I want to know your feelings, I want to understand you."

"No, you don't."

She sighed at his customary sidestepping. "You share nothing with me, PhaHks-"

"Is that a fact? I seem to remember just sharing my dick with you."

Veexow pursed her lips. He often did this post sex. Trying, through words, to turn their lovemaking into something ugly.

"But nothing else. We make love and then you-"

"Is that what we've been doing?? I thought we were fucking. But, shit, if you say it's something else, then it's not my place to argue, is it?"

"PhaHks-"

"So, let me get this straight: draining me of semen gives you the right to suck out everything else. Do I pass?"

He watched her face. Had calculated his words to incite her anger and pride and sense of ownership.

"Don't cross the line, PhaHks."

Bingo!

"You want to hit me, don't you?" He said.

She stared, knew most of his games and how he protected himself. This thrust and parry was just one.

He continued, "

"Express my feelings"?, "Tell you what I think"?"...

Crossed him arms and shifted restlessly, shimming back a foot. Widened the gap.

"...you want the truth, and when I fucking hand it over and you beat me for it."

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Veexow tried to grasp his hand but he wouldn't untuck it from the crook of his elbow.

"I don't *want* to do that. But you must start accepting things as they are, PhaHks. You must try and accept your life here."

His face flushed. From observation, Veexow knew it meant reined-in anger.

"No, I don't." He answered succinctly. "This isn't a life, it's a sentence. A home doesn't have bars behind the curtains or a Warden who fucks the prisoner when the lights go out..."

The anger found release in his voice.

"...I don't care if you beat me or break my neck, I don't HAVE to accept anything."

He turned his back to her and went to sleep.

*

Veexow received the communication into her hand. Read it. Retrieving something out of her cabinet, she gripped it in her fist and went directly to PhaHks' rooms.

"Take this."

PhaHks looked at the orange pill she held out imploringly. Registered the anxiety on her face and in her posture.

Without moving to accept the pill, "What's going on?"

Veexow stood ridged, arm outstretched. Her eyes were frightened. "We have to leave." was all she offered.

Not enough for him. "What are you talking about?"

He stood with his hands on his hips, an attitude he adopted frequently. When he sensed he was being lied to. When his instincts told him to question everything. He did it when he became the interrogator.

Veexow came forward, pressed the mystery pill into his palm and closed his hand over it. The uncharacteristic gesture and the alarm behind her eyes startled him.

"What is it? Tell me?" It was a demand.

"Please! Can't you just once do ask I ask without questioning it? We have to leave as soon as possible. Immediately."

PhaHks took her elbow in his other hand.

It was a rare occurrence. He never voluntarily touched her unless it was in the rush of sex. "Just tell me what is happening and I'll swallow the goddamn pill."

In trusting her, she realized it was as far as he would go.

"There is a small force on its way here, to take me to the Capital. And you."

PhaHks knew that was not a good thing without really knowing all the reasons why. Exactly.

But if it scared her this much, and she was trying to protect him, then he'd take fucking drug. "What's it going to do to me?"

"Just put you into a deep sleep. It will..."

Veexow looked at his rainbow irises and pink flush. Chin stubble. Caught his scent. "...keep you safe."

He moved to swallow the pill but a thought stopped him. "Are you...letting me go?" A tiny hope.

Veexow closed her eyes and then opened them again, looking at him miserably. "I am taking you somewhere where you'll be safe. Where we won't have to worry anymore. Where we can live peacefully."

She could see PhaHks expression harden at her word usage. The idea of "living peacefully" anywhere in her world seemed to be beyond the human's grasp. But it was his destiny. Perhaps he knew that.

If so, he hated her for it.

He swallowed the pill.

*

Veexow did not know who had betrayed her. None of the family servants and she would stake her life on that. Generations of them had been born and raised in her very house. Loyalty was their seal.

But she had enemies she supposed. Could think of no particular names.

Evidence said she did have them though. The evidence of the intercepted communique' that Rhengar - praise him! - had brought to her attention. They now had to flee.

A picture of her father's disapproving face appeared before her eyes, but she quickly banished it.

She was her fathers daughter. Same line of jaw and same determination when it was set.

Choose a path and do not deviate.

Make a choice. No regrets.

On one of her fist missions as an Imperial Fleet Commander, she had followed that axiom.

~~What the Klingon Scout ship was doing in Romulan Territory, she did not know.

But they had not responded to her attempts at communications. Once, twice, three times she had given them the opportunity to explain themselves and they had remained silent.

Her own vessel, though not a Bird of Prey, easily outclassed the Klingon ship's weapons.

Then she had made one flying pass. Then another as a final warning. Then she had performed an un- common action for a Romulan ship, and had fired a warning shot over the other vessels bow.

The Klingon ship had remained silent but armed and ready to fire.

So she had given the order to fire upon it, not to destroy but to cripple.

And cripple it she had.

The final count was an unrepairable hulk left to drift and twenty-one, including the captain, of the twenty-nine aboard dead.

Seven officers and one small child, who had all been delivered to the nearest Klingon outpost.

The scout ship should have responded.

But their communications had gone down prior to their encounter with the Bird of Prey.

A mistake but an honest one.>>

Sometimes it haunted her.

But, choice made.

No regrets.

*

PhaHks Part III

ON "KOL'KEK". YEARS Four THROUGH Eight.

"When are we going back?"

PhaHks demanded of Veexow as soon as she stepped foot into his rooms.

Four years and a month together on her world.

Now here they were, having just arrived at Kol'keK and he still spoke of "going back", "going home". He was not, she knew, really referring to Romulus. They were both talented pretenders.

Rubbing his face, "I've been stuck in this room for days, I can't stand being cooped up." When she didn't answer his question.

"PhaHks, be patient."

*Fucking story of my life*. "You keep saying that." His accusation being that she asked it of him a lot but rarely told him why.

Veexow came and took his hand, leading him to the exit. "Come. You need to eat. Then we will speak."

She led through the door that until that moment he had been forbidden to pass.

Then down one darkened corridor after another. Through a large, wider chamber, the walls decorated with weapons that seemed to consist of blades.

Lethal looking, rip-you-wide-open-with-one-swipe blades. Some had the tell-tale dark crust of old blood still on them. Someone had forgotten to wipe.

He thought it was stupid of her to show him such handy items. If he could get his hands on them...

As though reading his mind, she said: "All those implements are permanently fastened in place."

Bitch.

"What are these? Souvenirs?" Who would he have used them on anyway?

Single blades, double blades, serrated blades, lots and lots of blades....he swallowed, trying not to think of what had used them to disembowel who.

When he was nervous, Veexow knew he often used his acerbic wit to hide it so ignored his comment.

He looked around curiously as they entered a softly lit, cheerier room that had one long, heavily food-laden table...

...Plates!

PhaHks sat near Veexow and examined the utensil before him. A shallow, normal looking earthenware bowl.

The trays of food were another matter. They looked scarier than the halls of Jack the Ripper specials through which they'd just traveled.

PhaHks examined, not too closely, one bowl that held something moving. Little teeny black tentacles, dozens of them, clawed the air.

"Cooks day off?" he remarked.

"It is supposed to be eaten live." Veexow explained, not having completely fathomed his humor.

He nodded.

No EFF-ing way was he eating dinner tonite.

Instead he looked around the room.

With the exception of dinner, the room was pleasant enough.

Great colorful curtains hung ceiling to floor, carvings of nothing he recognized filled the corners. Low, flickering lanterns (bonafide flames) cast soft fire-glow over their table and them.

The room had a comfortably used look and feel to it. Its presentation was very...mediaeval.

...Sorcerers have passed this way.

He glanced at Veexow who had, during his distraction with their surroundings, chosen a few dishes for herself and piled her own plate high.

A yellow glow lit tiny fires in her black eyes. Her aristocratic nose cast a long shadow over her high cheekbones. Black and grey streaked hair brushed back in a severe and unflattering style, she looked like a music video gothic. Or maybe...

...In Veexow's alien sternness, PhaHks had yet to find feminine beauty. But now, in the warm dance of light across her stone carved features, a kind of old world esthetic emerged and suddenly her face was the face on the bow of a ship, or a witch un-justly condemned to burn. He played with it absently for a moment.

He could see her wrapped in a royal rug, being secretly ferreted into the bedroom chambers of Anthony -

- Shaking his head. Yeah. Right.

Phahks scrutinized all the dishes on the heavy table. Finding nothing that looked remotely palatable, he spoke instead.

"So where are we *now*?"

Veexow heard the defeat.

"We will not be here for long, PhaHks." She tried to sound more assured than she felt. "Here." She passed him a plate of his old standby. "I had my friend's servant fix this for you. I told him you would be unable to eat most of this food."

"Try *all* of it. And I'm unWILLing."

She raised an annoyed eyebrow. He never passed by an opportunity to assert his independence. "I don't know when we will be able to go home."

PhaHks had never personally referred to her large prison house as home.

"But," she continued, "Kol has kindly invited us here to stay as long as required."

PhaHks rubbed his eyes, suddenly they were burning with fatigue. He didn't remember sleeping badly lately. "Kol? That's your friend?"

"A very old and trusted friend. You will be safe here. You will meet him tomorrow."

Thought of the death-knives. "Can't wait." He closed his eyes. Nibbled his vegetable squares. Chewed a protein cake.

She recognized the sarcasm. "Kol is not one to be crossed, PhaHks. He and I, we are old...companions. You *will* show him respect."

Like I have a choice? And skipped out on the rest of her words and her attempt to counsel him. It all came down to his being where he didn't want to be.

"Surprise!", she, in effect, was saying. "You'll get used to it. You're safe here. Not FREE, of course, but fed, watered, fucked and tucked in every night."

Nothing stayed the same long enough to get comfortable. Not that he was really at all *comfortable*, anyway. But nothing ever got beyond feeling abnormal because whenever he closed his eyes too long on the unfolding of his life, Hellbitch changed the reel.

Veexow was still talking. "...but you will be staying in my chambers for as long as we are here."

That he heard and stopped chewing for a second. Shit. "What the hell for?! Why can't I just stay where I was?"

"I didn't ask why, that is the way Kol wants it. He may be old and befuddled but we are guests."

No goddam privacy. No fucking time alone to think.

And no way now to sneak out and explore the place and maybe find a permanent exit.

She'd probably anticipated that he'd try it, the buddy-system actually being HER idea.

Lying bitch. Time to stick a needle in her.

"He probably knows you're humping me like a rabbit." Didn't blink. Waited...

Veexow stared coldly. "I don't care what he knows or what he thinks he knows. If Kol says we should share a compartment at night, then we will. He will have his reasons. He may be a Klingon but he's no fool."

PhaHks didn't bother asking her to define exactly what a "cling-un" was.

"And I have not heard you protesting our mutuals, PhaHks," her voice cold, "be careful what you say to me."

There. Pay back. He'd pissed her off. It wasn't much, but it made him feel a bit better after her unsolicited rearrangement of his downtime.

He wanted to comment that her attentions "usually relieved his boredom" but decided not to press his luck. His jaw was still sore from the two blows she'd already delivered recently.

Sometimes he just couldn't hold back and had to let fly what he was thinking. And, equally, she just had to haul back and make it plain what she thought of what he had let fly. For every action, an opposite and equal reaction.

Universal truths.

"I'm tired." He muttered and he was still feeling the effects of the drugs she'd made him eat.

One pill and a brand new set of furniture. He was so tired.

But she was right, he did enjoy the sex. Dysfunctional to the last.

"I'll summon Rhengar. You don't know where to go."

"I'll remember," he said, barely managing to keep his voice level.

She considered. "Very well. Through that door, down three archways, left, down to the end, right, door at the end."

He rose to leave.

"And PhaHks. I expect you to be there when I arrive."

He wanted to hit something. "I. *said*," emphasizing each word as if to an imbecile, "I. was. tired." He pushed his chair back, rather too harshly, it skidded and almost tipped over.

Veexow watched him storm away. She knew he was angry and wanted to go off and seethe for a while. And she knew he was furious at the sleeping arrangements.

Yes, Kol had mentioned the idea, not insisted, only mentioned. But Veexow had taken one look at Kol's sober expression and had made the decision herself. PhaHks must be prevented from taking night excursions, that much was true. But her reasons were less selfish than he supposed.

It was merely precautionary.

Kol had said nothing except in his tone, so the insurance of having PhaHks stay in her quarters was probably not necessary.

But she wanted him safe.

"Veexow." A rumbling, slightly slurred baritone caressed her ears.

She turned to find her old friend and host grinning at her from behind and rose to greet him. "Kol."

He was older, fatter, greyer and his breath smelled of yesterdays drink. But she kissed his lips, her heart remembering his youth.

They parted.

"You are as ravishing as ever, Veexow."

"And you as smooth of tongue as ever." She strolled to a side table and poured herself a small mug of his ever present ale. He was already holding one. "I see you still try to hide your head, Kol."

He frowned, it had always been a sore point with him. He'd been born with only two, tiny ridges, a throwback to the days before the last, great purge where after the ancient breed of Klingon had genetically emerged.

Kol had always brushed some of his great mat of hair over the top of his head from back to front, holding it there with a piece of family jewelry. After all these years, it suited him.

"And you still see fit to state the obvious, Veexow. You haven't changed."

"You would be disappointed if I did."

"Disillusioned." He smiled at her, baring sharpened teeth. "The old reliable things are still the best things."

Veexow chuckled. He had meant himself. "I am not here to be seduced, Kol. We will probably not be staying for long."

"And what have you got yourself into, Veexow?"

She turned, took a sip. "I thought it wise to vacate Romulus for the time being."

"You mean you didn't want to be caught holding your ill-gained booty."

The ale burned her throat. "My reasons-"

Kol walked away from her. "Your reasons, your reasons." Turned back. "Your *obsession*, Veexow. You always did have..." He leered, "...exotic appetites." Waved a hand to her. "You need not lie or make excuses, I heard your little one's comment. He is no fool either, obviously."

Kol slapped his own drink back in one swallow. "And I am not as befuddled as you seem to believe. You may keep him here, obviously, since I have invited you. I'm sure you still have access to all your family riches though I suppose the second chosen heir to your fathers land has moved in, now that you are among the Unwanted."

Veexow's face thundered. It was a term the Upperclass used to describe those outside the Law. Criminals.

He saw her and changed the subject a bit. "But what will you do with him?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, what will I DO with him?"

Kol eased his bulk into the chair she had vacated moments before. "I mean, what will you do with him? He's human. He's not suppose to be alive, you're breaking your own Law in keeping him so: What. Will. You. Do. With. Him?"

She straightened. "I will keep him-"

"-Keep him?? Keep him where? Under your pillow?"

"I was going to say, I will keep him safe!"

"Oh, I see." He nodded in exaggerated comprehension. "And how will you do that?"

Veexow stepped up to Kol. Stood over him.

It fazed him not at all.

"Why don't you just say what is on your mind, Kol, and cease your ridiculous comedies?"

"The human will be discovered and he will be killed. Is that plain enough?"

"He will not be if..."

"IF what? If you convince all your servants, all *my* servants, if you pay enough over, that they will ignore the risk to their lives and honor and look away? Do you think we all can be bought, Veexow?"

"You wouldn't-"

"No. No, *I* wouldn't, I have no loyalty to Romulus! But someone else. You've always loved power, Veexow. In our lifetime, I've watched you wield it like a Romulan saber. You were glorious. But to some, honor is before power and eventually, somewhere, sometime, someone will tell the story of your little human to the right Romulan and your PhaHks will die."

Veexow had forgotten how this Klingon used words. Most Klingons - warriors - acted, then spoke. Kol was a Sacrementarian, he had always spoken (usually a great deal) and rarely, if ever, acted.

"I will not allow that to happen."

Kol raised himself up. Sighed. "You haven't asked little PhaHks whether or not HE wants to be here, I assume."

Veexow did not know how Kol knew the circumstances of her discovery of PhaHks. "He would have died."

"So, instead you rescue him out of one cage and put him in another. Human's, Veexow,.." He was pouring himself another drink. "...do not do well in captivity." He searched the table top for his favorite spice and added a generous pinch.

"He has adapted."

"That's because he hasn't yet figured out how to escape. Or doesn't have the courage or the will to cut his own throat. But if you think he has stopped thinking about either, you are more fool than I."

"Of course I know he wants to leave. But I know what he does not and that there IS no escape for him."

"None that you would ever divulge, no. But he, of course, doesn't know that."

"If this is your concern over my ability to control him, you can relax. PhaHks obeys me."

"Oh, does he? Just like that therapist of yours who still follows you around, prostrating himself like a Ferengi."

"Rhengar? Of course. He is a loyal and dedicated servant."

"And hopelessly in love with his Commander, not that I blame him. I doubt, however, he realizes how truly hopeless it is. But then he is still young."

"Rhengar is an exceptional physician. But he and I have nothing in common."

"Yes, different casts. The fabulously wealthy and powerful verses the hand to mouth intellectual and subservient. Nothing what-so-ever in common. But what do you really know about him?"

Veexow was curious now. "How do you mean?"

"He's served you for decades and yet did you know that he is the son of a Judgement Rebellist?"

At her surprise, "No, I can see you did not." He continued. "Let me enlighten you. Rhengar's family were against the Extermination and campaigned against it. They lost their entire estate doing so. He would have been wealthy, famous perhaps had it not been for the unfortunate political choices of his parents. But, as it is, he grew up poor learning a trade and had to take a post."

"Is there a point to all this?"

"Only that you are often blind to what is right in front of you, Veexow. Why do you think Rhengar applied for the post aboard your ship as therapist? It's because he fell in love with you on first seeing that glorious beauty. He could have got on at some prestigious medical facility on the home world and worked his way to riches. But instead he stays with you earning a pittance and saying "Yes, M'Lady" all day long."

"Rhengar is young!" Said as if that would explained it all.

"So is your human."

"That's different. Where PhaHks is concerned, age is irrelevant. He is already an adult. Practically middle aged. It is unlikely he will see even his hundredth year."

"Gratifying to know you do realize that. Does he know he'll be spending the rest of those years in a cushioned cage in this century with you as his owner?"

"Of course he doesn't." She spat. "He would never be able to accept the truth! His mind-"

"His mind is not the weak vessel you make it out to be. I suspect that you underestimate PhaHks. I could hear the Warrior in his voice myself."

"Oh!..." Dismissing his words with a peeved head shake. "You and your "Warrior Voice"!"

"I know better than you his spirit and that from hearing only a few words."

"Is this the Cleric I hear? Is that your spiritual belief?" she mocked.

"Ex," he raised a finger for emphasis, "EX-Cleric. But I am still a priest and I still have the abilities of the calling. The ability to read The Voice and understand souls being just two."

"And what is my voice saying to you right now?" She mused.

"Your *soul* is telling me that you have finally found something that you love more than yourself."

"Incorrect. What a philosopher you are."

"And what a liar YOU are. With all of your other lovers over the decades, including me - curse my weak loins and foolish old heart -!, I don't think you have ever achieved that particular state until now. THIS," he raised his mug, "is an historic day." And swallowed the dregs.

"Now I see why I gave up on you years ago, Kol. You. Are. TALK."

Veexow shut-up at his fallen expression. She had actually hurt him with that. But the words were said and once said, words were as easily gathered back as feathers in a storm-wind. Quickly, "Forgive me, Kol. I am on edge."

Kol's good humor, to her benefit, returned immediately. "There is nothing for me to forgive you for, Veexow. When I fell under your Romulan wiles, I was not drunk THAT day." His voice softened, reminiscing, "But, somehow, after you, the Chronicles of Kahless no longer fulfilled me."

Kol seemed to sag a little, but then raised his mug, having made a decision. "More wine!"

"Appears to me you have had enough."

Ignoring her, "Not nearly. I still have to get through this night," leered back at her, "*alone*. Unless you are inclined to remedy that?"

"We were in love once, Kol, and it was a long time ago."

"I was in love. YOU were out to conqour. And you succeeded for here I am."

"You love your life, here. No Klingon Duty, no one to tell you what to do, when to drink. You're even richer than me, I hear."

"Tell me, Veexow..."

Her good mood had returned somewhat. "Yes?"

"Is he...*tender*?"

Veexow stopped her pacing in circles, stared at Kol. "What?"

"I asked you if he is tender?"

"You're drunk, Kol." And he was rambling like a drunk. He was what she had said to him before, what she had heard over the years from other Klingons: <"Kol is TALK. TALK. TALK."> It was not meant to be flattering.

"If so, I might even try him myself."

She slammed her mug down on the table. Little droplets landed on the leftover dinners. "Gods! And to think you used to be a priest!"

Kol roared at the effect his words had produced in her. And he *was* drunk. "Ohhhh, you are beautiful when you're furious, Veexoooow."

Her anger abated quickly. Kol was up to his old flirtations as always. It was a very old game they played.

She leaned in closely, so close that her breath fell on his lips but did not touch him. "You are a frustrating old Klingon, Kol."

Kol bared his teeth.

But Veexow straightened up. "I am going to sleep now."

He sighed and called after her. "So, now I have to compete with a weakling human? It is humiliating, Veexow. Will you dishonor me? Your old "tender"?"

His soft laughter followed her down the corridor.

Both knew the other had enjoyed it.

*

PhaHks was sleeping. Not on a Klingon palate, the hard bases preferred by most of the species, but on what she preferred, a Romulan bed.

A wide, soft, fiber-filled mat complete with coverlets.

He was curled up well over on one side.

She divested herself of clothing and slipped beneath the covers, coming to rest with her front pressed up against him.

He hadn't undressed and she knew it was his way of asserting his will in response to the sleeping arrangements. Knew why he would rather have preferred a hard bench to this. It was PhaHks' instinctive need for space and self-determination. The human craving for freedom.

He stirred under her touch and curled into a tighter ball. If she had any urges tonight only he could satisfy, such would have to be forced from him.

But that is not how she liked it.

Not from PhaHks.

His willingness is what she wanted and, most often, what she received if she played him well.

Veexow settled for sliding her arms around his sleeping form and pulling herself flush against his back. And she let her mind do the rest, taking her to that condition where he, tonight, would not go.

In private pleasure and practiced detail she recalled her first taking of PhaHks:

*

~~She didn't know why, at first, he had come to sit with her that night. It was any evening. It was like a thousand other days and evenings that he had spent in her home, on her world.

Morning repast, he eating almost nothing. (She had grown used to his sometimes alarming fluctuations in body mass. It seemed to be a human state).

He had gone running but had returned earlier than usual. This after she had allowed him near total freedom to run where he willed within her dozens of hectares of formal and informal gardens and grasslands at her Romulan estate.

PhaHks had seemed restless and withdrawn. Having also grown used to that, she had paid it little attention and had turned her face back to her computer screen.

Other times he had come (she assumed because he was lonely), to sit with her - always on the other side of the room - in her chamber during the evening hours. Therefore this visit was nothing unexpected at all and she had kept to her task of responding to her vast personal correspondence.

Until he spoke: "Who are you writing to?"

Her low murmur ceased and she switched off the computer. It was her first sign that night that something was going on with PhaHks. He rarely ever began conversations. And, until that moment, he had never once asked her about anything personal.

"I am recording a message to an old friend whom I have not seen for a long time."

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of him. PhaHks was seated on her low divan, elbows resting on long legs. His fingers were laced and he kept rubbing his thumbs together, one along the length of the other and back again.

She watched the unconscious action, fascinated.

"Where does your friend live?"

Veexow sighed, softly so he wouldn't hear. Still, to this day, he pursued it. "He lives far away, PhaHks. Very, very far away."

The thumbs ceased their motions. He sat very still. She wondered if he was still breathing. Then, in the space of an eye blink, he was heading for the door.

"Where are you going, PhaHks?"

"Pool," he said before the door slid shut and she was alone again.

Veexow did not return to her communique' but sat and thought over what had just transpired. The meeting had disturbed her. She mentally replayed each of his movements and words, trying to discover what it was she had missed.

Nothing that leaped to the eye.

Except for the unheard of personal questions. And perhaps his voice. The fact that there had been no recognizable tone in it is what was niggling at her. There had been no tone at all. PhaHks' voice and words coming from that lovely mouth, but level and deadened.

He had been soliciting information. He'd just wanted to know...something. PhaHks had come fishing tonight.

For what?

When she had readied herself for slumber and approached her door to leave and quickly check on him, her habit, ensuring he was back from his bath and safe in his own rooms,...

...he was there.

Standing at her door.

Dressed in the dark comfortable clothing she'd had made for him. (Somehow the stiff, layered outfits of traditional Romulan dress seemed unstylish for him, a human. And his old, white clothes reminded her too much of the early days and of his pure, unadulterated hatred of her).

His clothes, now, were simple, but fit properly and, (rolling the image around in her mind), he did look ravishing in black.

As he did now, for the second time in one evening.

"PhaHks?" She was concerned now, at his expression. Completely unreadable.

"I can't sleep," he said and entered. Carefully measured steps he was taking. He might have been tight roping the edge of the Underworld.

"Are you ill?" she inquired, and not waiting for an answer, she moved to retrieve an ampule out of her private cabinet. It was a sleep drug, one she had given him before when his "N-sAHM-nee-ah" became intolerable.

And again he was there. Behind her.

It had been power she loved.

Not duty.

Not regulations quoted and obeyed from waking to slumber.

Power. The might the uniform had brought her and not the uniform. She had held that might for decades. Her shield and her weapon.

But on one night in a thousand, pale, cool fingers, heart-blood pulsing in each digit, came into contact with her pillar of strength. Rested briefly on thin material. Caressed shoulder skin.

Veexow the rock, turned, melting into the ocean-washed sands of his earth.

Deliberate contact on his part. A touch shouting a need too overwhelming to ignore. The final lap from an insistent water that had been washing against her since the beginning, now disintegrating the rock.

His look said *Help me in this way*.

She stared at his voiceless communication, the pill forgotten.

He had said, May I? He had said Please.

Veexow knew he was aware of her desire for him and had known since the beginning. She had carefully controlled it. With that knowledge, he could have come presumptiously snatching. Yet he stood quietly asking permission.

Respectful, enigmatic.

PhaHks.

Veexow took that first hand he had extended and placed it between her two. The beginning.

His eyes said things to her, whenever he raised them so she could see, before he dropped them back down to what she was doing to his hand.

His dilated pupils said Do you want me? They said I offer my sex.

She answered him by rubbing his one hand between her two, rolling his fingers sensuously as if they alone were the objects of her desire.

Powerful, but wanting. Aching for him for so long.

To provide that for which he clearly hungered, she panged.

He was a male near sick with need.

She was female and she could feed it, now, eagerly, because her hunger was greater.

Veexow recalled that very first lesson, so long ago, in rape-sex. She had not touched him again after that.

His withdrawn and fearful silence had taught her a thing about humans. That for them some wounds went unhealed.

She deeply regretted that miscalculation. Had not wanted him falling into perpetual silence and fear whenever she entered a room, which is how he had acted for several weeks after that unfortunate battle of wills. One victory that worsened the actual war.

Which had been her lesson.

His lips touched her face, barely a whisper of a kiss when he leaned closer. Feather-like on her cheek, the softness of them. The cool, moistness.

He was offering tantalizing promises in the here and now while she was racing ten steps ahead in her thoughts, planning, charting and imagining what she would do to him this night.

What would he be like?

She could see his chests quick movements, in and out, his panting. Human sexual excitement. What else would she learn from his body?

PhaHks' lips delicately placed tender kisses on cheek and neck. Human hands that began an exploration of her flesh (when she was wearing entirely too much clothing!).

With great effort she refrained from placing her hands on any part of his body. But for her eyes which stared at the quickened pulse of his throat.

His hands touched her. Moved.

Down her front and -

(She inhaled and was full of PhaHks fragrance).

- and cupped her breasts.

A bit of fear was there in him still. The sensation of his forbidden human digits was torture. She wanted him to enter her right there and then but she knew that was generally not the human way.

For certain, not PhaHks'.

Veexow could tolerate no more such appetizers. She wanted the solid food of him. His gentle, starving touch fired her.

She kissed back now. (But not lips. Not yet. Savor him. Keep the delicious parts for later). Face, throat, shoulder, chest...

At first, gentle, then more insistent, Veexow demanded. She was tasting, pushing, sucking. Her images becoming physical reactions in her swollen place. The first entry of him, how he would feel, inside her, engorged with sun-red-blood, long, and hard and wet and PhaHks!...and thrusting, THRUSTING!

It was everything she could do not to hurry things along and mount him. But she didn't want to scare him off with her Romulan fevers, which could become mindless desire if not kept in check.

She quickly led him to her bed, divesting herself of her own sleeping garment along the way. The chambers air was a sexual blanket, they would need no other draping.

She removed his clothing swiftly, expertly, slipping the tunic over his head without warning so he had to quickly raise his arms. Then she pushed his trousers down in one motion, taking selfish pleasure in raking the soft pads of her fingers over his backside and thighs on the way down. He stepped out of the pants and she did the same on the way up.

Veexow had unveiled his sex for herself. She had seen him in this vulnerable state before, but not in the offering of his body. Never with his approval.

He was beautiful...

**(She'd wanted him from the first, of course. From the discovery of him, certain of what she had found. Angry at Rhengars reaction when she'd voiced thoughts of keeping PhaHks:

<"Why do you obsess over this human? I believe you are drawn to him somehow."> (Rhengar had said).

"Is that what you think? Do you honestly believe that I care in the slightest for what YOU think?!" (He had angered her. Had never before addressed her thus).

"What are you planning, Commander?-"

*Commander*, he had said. Not *M'Lady*. It hurt!

"-What are you planning? Children? A family? A whole new generation of HUMAN-oids with the blessing of the Romulan Government?"

"PhaHks is a curiosity, that is all! I..."

"Now you lie to me." (He had sounded deeply hurt, she had always been completely truthful with him). "I believe you would protect him, an Illegal, over anyone of us. Over me."

"Enough, Rhengar! Your over-reaction is typical."

"I am being the careful, pedantic Doctor Rhengar. You think me dull and conventional. What do you really know of me? I may be in love with you, Veexow." (the first mention of his feelings and the speaking of her name), "but do not presume to minimize me or my cautions. You had that girl killed because of this human. I am an accessory to a murder of my own species. I have tolerated much in your service. Now it is to my own detri- ment." (And then Rhengar had poured out his heart) "And you are no nearer to opening your eyes to me than when I first came to serve you. I am a fool but I have made my choices and am willing to live with them. To that extent my conscience is at peace. What will you do to cleanse yours?">

*

Veexow had known *what* PhaHks was: A human male.

Soon, (thrilled, aroused, obsessed), had learned what he *was*: Prohibited, exotic, fascinating, moody, sexual being).**

That first coupling had lasted hours.

When they, momentarily spent, laid back, he panting, a film of sweat evaporating from his skin and making little convections in the still air of the room, she satisfied and energized and hungry for more of him, they began again. Over and over, all night.

It was better than she had expected.

Better than she'd hoped.

After finally parting for the remainder of the night, she had slumbered like no other night before or any since.

The sleep of the confessed. Of the soul-cleansed and the contented, knowing that they have at last declared their hidden, baser truth, if only to their hired priest.

She passed into the netherworld satisfied and unaware of what their first night of lovemaking had cost him.

PhaHks slept the eternity of the self-condemned. A bloodless, crooked finger pointed up from hell. His own un alive soul had accused him and so he had entered.

Perpetually immolated in unearthly fires, he had drunk deeply the blood of the Devil and was dirtied. Even in dreams.

~~He dreamt that night that he was no longer human. Unwelcome to mortals but not yet acceptable to the dead. He was neither spirit nor flesh, angel or demon. Soulless. He walked hand-cobbled streets in a green, moist place and it was daytime. He had lay down on his bed and awakened huddled in a strangers doorway wearing clothing he hadn't put on, a black cloak he knew he didn't own wrapped around shivering shoulders. He walked the cobbled Way, looking for his address that wouldn't leave his thoughts yet one he couldn't remember either. All he knew was that he had to get there. Whom he passed he didn't know. They had no faces. All who shared the street with him were headless torsos with working limbs, all traveling the direction from which he had come. He could hear their voices and the noises of the street venders, but see no-ones face where, above their collar- line, flesh faded out. Eyes and mouths disappearing. They spoke but not to him. He soon understood that his was an irreversible transaction. It was the price of being un-alive and non-mortal in this dream place; perhaps he would eventually become a demon but never again behold human faces for which he now longed. The propitiation. A complete death and there would be no going back. He understood that he had traveled beyond his elusive destination a long time ago, as it was carved into the stones at the mortal's feet over which now only they freely passed. He was his own end. His own begin- ning. As a self created thing, he would have to learn to accept that which had been chosen for him. The Way he now walked willingly, yet with chains. Unfree. Self sacrifice. No choice.>>

PhaHks had awakened from that dream soaked in the sick sweat of understanding.

He became conscious. He comprehended.

When it confronted him, his living nightmare, he mourned with silent screams into his bed sheets.

Then fell asleep for a long time.>>>

*

Veexow, craving his sex but making no sexual motions other than to drape one leg over PhaHks, slept.

*

The next morning, Veexow took PhaHks' hand "Come with me, there is something I must show you."

And led him to a window.

A wide portal.

Alien world. PhaHks looked at orange and black. Tawny fire and shadowed cold.

Moonscape. A distant sun. White hot but too far to warm the planetoid nor encourage atmosphere.

Veexow let him soak up what he was seeing, then she spoke gently.

"This is Kol'keK. We may be here for some time. For now, this is your home. Kol has given us leave to stay as long as we wish. As long as needed. You may wander, PhaHks. You may go running, you may explore. But there are some things you cannot do here. You can't enter the Bay..."

(didn't know what "the Bay" was)

"...you can't enter Kol's private chambers..."

(didn't want to)

"...and you can't ever go outside."

PhaHks was very still. Veexow stood beside him also very still. He would scream, faint, cry, get angry, pound his fists, try to kill her or himself or he would accept it.

But PhaHks didn't seem to be doing any of those.

He only stared for many minutes on this outside world where he could never go. One that killed instantly.

Veexow sighed heavily. "I know you hate me for this."

Without a word or gesture of any kind, he turned his back on it and her and walked away.

Veexow did not know which for himself he had chosen.

Life or death.

In the days ahead, he never spoke of it.

*

PhaHks mostly kept his eyes on his food. Despite the quiet hum of conversation, he'd never heard such a chorus of baritone's, like low native drumming or distant thunders.

Including himself, seven was the number seated around a heavy stone table crowded with bowls of consumables and mugs. There were no utensils, eating with ones hands being the customary etiquette.

An intermittent sprinkle of food-laden saliva adorned PhaHks' supper whenever one of them laughed or was seized by a thought and spoke it. Plunging into the middle of a conversation without first swallowing, the young one across from him in particular had decorated PhaHks' plate with a rainbow of masticated bits.

Every so often, a servant (a blue skinned, hairless male) would appear out of thin air - it seemed - and lay down another bowl of stomach turning dead things. None of the partakers appetites appeared to be diminishing.

Veexow was paying more attention to her wine and PhaHks' delicious thigh than Kol's friends.

Knowing PhaHks would understand little of what he would hear, (he had picked up a good smattering of Romulan but less of Klingzai, being that she and PhaHks generally communicated in Old Human), she never-the-less had insisted that he accompany her to Kol's party. She firmly believed PhaHks needed the diversion as much as she did.

She and PhaHks had been with Kol nearly five years. This was the first time Kol had any other visitors, his little home not in close proximity to most systems. And spending any amount of time on an drunken Ex-Cleric's sterile moon was the choice of only a few, hardy souls.

Kol'keK (his moon) wasn't exactly uppermost on many traveler's holiday retreat destination list.

Kol, the consummate egoist, would not have agreed.

But these Klingons were different. All knew him well. None, upon seating themselves at Kol's table, had even looked askance at Veexow and then only puzzled a bit over PhaHks. Rhengar they ignored completely. Over Romulan Law regarding humans (regarding anything), Veexow could sense their mental indifference. As with most Klingons, the Law was *Romulan* law and nothing more.

In spite of the Klingonized repast, it was turning out to be quite a civilized affair.

She glanced in turn at each of Kol's dinner guests. These were more of Kol's crowd. None were members of the warrior class. All, rather, of clerical vocation or inclination. Some by bloodline.

Rhengar was present and polite but abdicated conversation. He disliked formal gatherings.

The topics of the moment were cerebral (Klingon version), and actually quite interesting.

"There are some who believe that a good honest war with Romulus would cleanse this tension between our two Empires once and for all. Some think the Non-Aggression Pact simply a delay tactic on the part of the Romulan Government, to fool us into thinking that the reason they do not want a war is because they could not win one."

The speaker was the eldest of the party, nearly bald. A learned priest of Kahless. "All the while, they are probably preparing for it while our warriors waste their time and resources celebrating their past "honors"!" His tone was contemptuous.

Another, the youth said, "The Romulans WOULDn't win."

The former sighed, having heard that and more from this idealistic member of the younger generation.

"You are a fool. Both sides would be evenly matched. It is too bad that the Romulans keep themselves so socially isolated. Still, to this day, they think that everyone in the galaxy should be acting and talking and *thinking* like them, and if not, "persuaded" to."

He smiled at his own joke, baring teeth not of enamel, but precious metals.

"The Klingon Empire has the experience to know that such a belief is ultimately self-defeating.".

A non-cleric but former student of Kol and present priest-intern of the old Klingon, spoke: "There are rumors that Romulus has its political eye on Ferenginar and its trade routes. They are trying to convince the Ferengi Exchange that a greater sharing of the profits with Romulus,.."

..eyed each table-member knowingly,

"..in other words: *taxes* would bring great benefits to Ferenginar.

"The Romulans would provide them with new technologies, cloaks and weapons. Not to mention trading passes to more distant systems."

Again, the old, wise Priest offered his insight: "If the Ferengi are stupid enough to believe any- thing a Romulan Official says,.." looking at Veexow, "no offense,.."

She was amused, not offended. He was correct.

"...then they deserve their fate."

The Blue-Man brought out another keg of ale, setting it by Kol's plate. No Klingon servants walked the halls of this house because there were no Klingons alive in the universe willing to play waiter.

Kol poured Blood-wine and passed the barrel to his right. It went around the table.

Veexow took it and poured herself a mug. Then she poured out a small one for PhaHks, who tried to indicate to her through a small shake of his head that he didn't want any. She ignored him and pointed to his cup.

He had been silent the whole evening, not speaking a word to her or anyone. In fact, when they had sat down at the table, he had shifted his chair over so it touched hers.

PhaHks had paled at the sight of so many Klingons all at once. Tonight was his first taste of a gathering here and the first since he'd been with her.

And Phahks had been nervous and jumpy all through the meal (she knew because he had not eaten a crumb), until she had placed a hidden hand on his thigh to calm him. Instead he had jerked, knocking over her full mug of wine and she'd had to pour herself out another.

Since then, he hadn't moved hardly at all, keeping his eyes on his food, her or, occasionally, Rhengar or Kol, whom he was used to. His untouched food had dried to wrinkled lumps on his plate hours ago.

Since he'd kept his weight acceptably average - for him - Veexow had decided not to nag him about it.

But, for the remainder of the meal, Veexow kept her hand on his leg, offering, now and then, a gentle caress to let him know everything was all right and that he was safe. In fact, all this secret touching of PhaHks was causing warm upheavals in her wine-tempered emotions and arousing tingles in her progressively relaxing limbs.

Rhengar had then excused himself and retired to his rooms for the night. He had seemed pensive.

Veexow dismissed thoughts of the therapist and pointed to PhaHks' mug again.

He sniffed it and took one obedient sip. It tasted like hundred proof prune juice with cloves.

Veexow wanted him to relax, maybe even enjoy himself a little. Perhaps he would realize that he didn't have to hide away, that he didn't always have to be in control, that things were improving and that he was alive and that *this* could be his life. Not a bad one either.

PhaHks sighed, exasperated. He drained his mug.

She poured him another and he glared.

"Where is your Sworn-One, Kol?" Old Wise Priest asked.

Kol looked around at the faces of the guests, as if expecting to find the person in question among them. "He has been gone for years. Was supposed to be back already." Shrugged. "Could be dead." And went back to his food.

"Well, did he go off on some quest of glory?" Old Wise Priest inquired, sarcastic but frankly curious.

"Well, he IS of the warrior class. What he does is his own affair." Kol offered in bored explanation.

Young Idealist: "How is it that a lone warrior pledged himself to *you*?'

Again, Kol shrugged, but was annoyed with the question. He was a Sacramentarian, an educated and rich Ex-Cleric who owned and entire moon! Why wouldn't some young orphaned warrior want to pledge himself to him. Besides, it meant he had a personal protector of his families honor. Even though he had no descendants, he was Kol! And the price - occasional food and lodgings - was hardly out of his budget.

"Perhaps he wants to socialize with someone of breeding?" Kol offered modestly.

A round of laughter was all he received in reply.

PhaHks didn't laugh. He didn't get the punch in. He was feeling woozy.

Old Wise Priest rose from the meal and wine. The other guests took this as a signal to get up as well.

"Kol," Old Wise Priest announced, "you are all Klingon." It was thanks for the hospitality. "But this was only one stop on our journey, and we must go."

Kol half rose out of his chair, too drunk to make it all the way, but Old Wise Priest seemed to take it in stride. He knew Kol's vices and had accepted them long ago.

The party, robes swaying in holiness, migrated down the hall. Their voices faded out. Clearly, Kol intended they see themselves to their own vessel.

Veexow knew Kol probably wouldn't have managed the trip.

"Breeding"?" She offered, a contrite smile about her mouth.

"Don't YOU start." Kol warned but glowing from inebriation.

"You would have been a High Priest by now. Perhaps even the Figure Head." (She hadn't added *if it weren't for your drunkenness.*).

"I was corrupted by a seductress, a Romulan Commander, no less."

"Oh, "corrupted"! You pursued me."

"Perhaps. But in the end, it was I who initiated my own moral downfall. You waved your power like a Beh'ah'Let, and I was defeated." He smiled at his poetry.

PhaHks listened, comprehending only a little of what they were saying. Because, just as at dinner, they were oscillating between her torturous dialect and his guttural clicks and groans that stood in place of real language.

But after years of being exposed to both, he was managing a phrase or three.

"You wanted that power!... (unintelligible)...have it for yourself." Veexow said.

Kol snorted. "Klingons value honor, not power. Power, control, is an illusion..." (Grunts. Clicks.) "...fragile..." (gibberish)"...only strong..." (nonsense)"...a club." Kol's voice had taken on the sound of fire and brimstone. "Respect, honor, has force..." (guttural groan), "...even in death."

Veexow waved away his hell fires. "We have held the Law for..." (no-clue) "...years."

"That Law is..." (long, throaty gurgle), "... crumble, Veexow, can't you see that?!"

Kol was up and pacing, the drink having worn off or perhaps having had completed its objective; that of numbing the Klingon's center of reason.

"Oh? And why is that?" PhaHks could feel her stiffening more and more with every Kol-spewed syllable.

"Because the Romulan Council underestimates...' (bark, growl) "...conquered. Always have."

Suddenly Veexow turned to PhaHks and enunciated in perfect English, "PhaHks, leave us. Next room. Wait." glaring at Kol.

PhaHks heard that unmistakable tone of voice that said he was to obey her in this. She would brook no arguments. It was clear the two were spoiling for a fight.

Assuredly, the dinner party was caput.

Feeling lightheaded and not wanting to be present for the screaming match anyway, he wandered into the next chamber, closing the heavy door behind him. At least the damn place was soundproof.

At least here, he was afforded a view of the outside world for a while. A desolate, shadowed scape of dunes and rock, darkening even more as the distant sun sunk behind the bleak moonrocks and thousands more stars became visible. What could be alive out there? Knew the answer before he'd asked it.

*

Back at the dinner table...

"...and you underestimate that skinny human I'll wager." Kol smiled at Veexow's sudden angry eyes.

Whenever he spoke of her new pet, she turned to fire.

"PhaHks is none of your concern."

"He's in my house, he's my concern if I wish him to be or if I do not. But as I was saying, you think he is defeated and passive. You believe that he thinks not of his home or that he has resigned himself to this..." Waved a hand, indicating the house and everything in it, "...comfortable prison you have provided, or rather, that *I* have."

"PhaHks *has* settled. We have been together for over seven years. He understands that this is his life now and that he has no choice. There is no way to return him home after all."

"Hah! What do you think he sees, Veexow?"

Shook her head. "And what are you talking about now?"

Kol was again at the wine jug but his mind was still sober. "When PhaHks looks out one of my portals and sees a lifeless, airless moon or when he looks to the night sky and sees a hot white star instead of the cool yellow of his Sol or when he looks at you,..." Pointing his mug her way.

"...he sees," not yet relinquishing the floor, "a dead moon, an alien star two thousand million KeHl'kems away and a woman, though a beautiful one, with the face of a demon." He paused so his point might meet its mark.

"And if you believe he sees anything else, then you are the one living in a cell."

Veexow stood erect and unwavering. "I grow weary of this. I am going to bed."

"You know I mean you no insult but it was necessary to tell you this, Veexow. You are blinded by your love for that human. Nothing else seems to matter anymore. It is disturbing. I,." spread his hands in defeat over his still captured feelings for her, "..worry for you."

She smiled, just a little. "You mean well, Kol, but I can assure you your concern is misplaced. Goodnight."

"I hope so," he said to her retreating back, "I hope so."

*

PhaHks let his mind escape into the still-life of the portal. For a while, it felt good to think about nothing at all. And it was helping clear his fuzzy head - the wine had hit him harder than he realized.

At best he was still tipsy and didn't react right away when he heard a soft sound behind him.

Finally turning he found himself nose to nose with another Bonehead -

- *Cling-un!*

Veexow was constantly reprimanding him on his use of "pet" names for Kol. Wisely he had never mentioned his private list of variations on her.

This Cling-un was huge, PhaHks standing, in fact, forehead to chin with the gargantuan. The losing side of the equation.

When the demon-turned-man spoke, he sounded like Darth Vader (with a bad throat) on downers.

"Soooooo, YOU are the cause of it."

*English*. PhaHks found his voice and the guts to stare Ugly right in the eye. But his balls were doing the tuck.

"The "cause"? Of what and who wants to know?"

He was glad his voice didn't quaver as they each tried to out stare the other. They might have been two drunks in a bar challenging each other about who next got the pool table.

Not bad, PhaHks thought, considering he'd probably just granted Bonehead the moral right to crush his skull in its maw. After dinner snack.

"The dishonor..." Bonehead spoke the word as if PhaHks had just defouled his shoe. "...that is polluting this House."

PhaHks could feel the Thing's sour breath, glimpsed brown razor teeth edging curled back lips. He may as well have been conversing with a rabid rottweiler.

Jesus. He was about to die.

He wondered if he could diffuse this very bad situation and make an exit with all of his organs tidy.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, moving to pass the two hundred and fifty pound monolith.

Almost made it too.

Until a thick hairy limb wrapped itself around his throat, spinning him one hundred, eighty and slamming him back against the wall. The air rushed out of his lungs like he was a balloon and something had just popped him.

"The Romulan Bitch's human flower is not welcome in this House."

Managed to squeak out, "Who says so?"

His next lung full of air was squeezed off when an arm was switched for fingers, the Klingon wrapping one hand around PhaHks' throat. The thick digits nearly touched at the back.

"I am DhrAH'Ken. I am the Keeper of the Honor of the House of Kol."

So, fido had a name and obedience training too.

"Has she deflowered you yet human?"

PhaHks didn't like the direction this conversation was heading. But, all energies having to focus on locating a molecule or two of air, it was the least of his worries.

"What do you want from me?" He tried to sound brave, as if being nearly garroted was just another day and nothing special. Like this kind of shit had happened before.

Actually, it had. But at that time, he'd at least had a sporting chance.

"Surely, she told you there would be other interested parties?" The Thing pulled out from some hidden cache the most lethal looking knife he had ever seen. Three blades in one. The two little serrated blades flanking the main shaft like cock spurs. The larger blade had holes in it to, no doubt, pull asunder intruding flesh with each withdrawal from victim.

It was waved before his face and pressed against his rib cage.

"I have pledged my life to Kol and his House because I have none of my own. He has dirtied that honor by allowing in the Romulan whore,.."

The blade was drawn slowly down PhaHks' side, tearing fabric and separating skin. He stiffened. Felt the little stinging trickles of his warm blood.

"...and you. But Kol is old and his mind is weak. He does not know enough to kill that Romulan filth and I cannot do so without dishonoring him. So now it is up to me to restore that honor. Would you like to know how?"

Not really.

Actually, the question had startled him. He'd been busy listening to the rumbling cadence of DhrAH'Ken's voice. A storm was brewing in the creature and PhaHks knew its fury was about to come down all over him like the hammer of Thor.

Sheathing the knife, DhraAH'Ken, without further ado, sliced one finger down PhaHks' front, tearing open his shirt and pants sternum to groin. The answer cometh.

Oh, Christ.

He started kicking his soon-to-be rapist as hard as he could in the legs. All it did was losen the talons at his throat enough to draw one lung full of Demon-stinking breath, making him cough violently.

He supposed his dying right that minute was not on DhrAH'ken's game plan, because the hand released him, allowing him freedom enough to pile to the floor. Which was just enough.

Absolutely sober, PhaHks coiled his long legs under him and sprang at his molester, driving his head forward as hard as humanly possible.

Bull's-eye, the top of his head rammed DhrAH'Ken's privates dead center. The fucker howled.

PhaHks didn't stick around long enough to figure out how many seconds his little trick had bought him and leaped to his feet.

He got in three running steps before he was again griped in DhrAH'Ken's steel pinchers and dragged into the next chamber, his legs dangling. One massive kick from DhrAH'Ken and the metal door swung shut with terrifying finality.

PhaHks was lifted up and thrown hard against the nearest wall. An octave of cracking ribs was heard accompanied by the crunch of skull against stone.

Dazed, he was barely aware when he was flipped around, his chest and groin compressed painfully against the unyielding structure. He could hardly breath for the hurt and pressure on his broken rib cage protecting uselessly his oxygen starved lungs.

His pants were ripped down to his knees. Felt cool air on his buttocks and hot breath at his neck. Calloused fingers spread his cheeks while a hand retained its death grip around his throat, clenching tighter, pinching off his air, whenever he struggled.

This was to be no gentle introduction to homosexual sex. This hadn't anything to do with sex. It was retaliation, revenge and retribution. He was to be raped, beaten, humiliated and possibly *eaten* all for the purpose of punishing someone ELSE!

There was no warning at all when a tree stump was cannoned up his ass, nearly making him faint.

Eternity was nothing grand.

It was being fucked in the anus without lube', preparation or consent.

It hurt so fucking bad, he was crying even as the barnacled son-of-a-bitch torpedoed him harder. Dick- barbs scraped him. There was lubrication after that. >From PhaHks' own bloodstream as his innards were churned to raw hamburger.

As quickly as it had started, it ended and he was dropping to the floor.

When his senses told him he was still alive and lying on the floor with his pants down around his ankles and his last shred of dignity seeping out from between burning cheeks, he opened his eyes.

Demon stood over him and the knife was back.

So he was going to die after all.

PhaHks' hands groped the floor around him, if for nothing else, then to find a place of leverage. If he could get to his feet-

-his hand found and wrapped around a wedge of stone. One that must have thoughtfully separated from the wall back when his head had introduced itself. He didn't care. It was thin, sharp and pointy and it was a gift from somebody's pitying deity.

Demon/Fucker got down on one knee.

Raised the knife.

Last words. Make 'em good. "You didn't even buy me drinks." He croaked. It hurt to talk.

The gallows humor was wasted on the Klingon as DhrAH'Ken leaned in closer. Grinned. "Now you die, human."

PhaHks couldn't prevent the knife from making that first deep cut to his arm when he raised his own crude weapon and plunged it into DhrAH'Ken's right eye.

He felt an immense surge of accomplishment when the prick screamed and fumbled to remove the offending flint.

When DhrAH'Ken finally managed it, he looked around with his one good eye and saw PhaHks hobbling out the far end of the chamber, hiking up his ragged trousers. The human started limp-running.

With a growl of rage, DhrAH'Ken wiped his own bit of blood from his eye, the human's pathetic weapon having only penetrated fatty flesh. He ran after the creature, who was proving to be a peskily innovative and quick-thinking prey. And one light on his feet judging by the distance he had managed in just a few seconds.

DhrAH'Ken was almost impressed.

But the human was bleeding and leaving a trail a blindman could see. The Sworn-One followed the pattern of little red blood drops. Soon, he would make a river of it.

*

[continued from part 2]

Veexow opened the door through which PhaHks had disappeared a short time ago. Kol was good and drunk on his wine and she was tired. PhaHks she would keep with her tonight as usual in her own chambers. Besides, she did not trust anyone to watch him (and watch out for him) with the kind of close attention she preferred.

She entered the chamber. "PhaHks?"

It was empty.

Anger flared in her at his disobedience. She had specifically told him to remain in the next room and wait for her.

Foolish, insufferable creature! Veexow silently debated the possible punishments for this latest infringement.

She passed through to the next room. It contained no wayward human either.

Something, however, was there on the floor that shone dully in the low light. Stooping to examine it, it was wet and cool.

The tiniest black thread lay there as well, the tip of it stained red. Just as the sticky liquid was red.

There was also one small drop of purple.

Fear entered her. "PhaHks?" She called to him.

The red droplets made a broken line out the archway and into the night darkened hallway.

She walked faster. She ran. "PhaaauwH-kesss!"

*

DhrAH'Ken caught up with him around two more corners, where he'd watched the human disappear through the entryway to the Hall of Conquests.

Surrounded on all sides as they were with weapons of courage, each stained with the different lifeblood of a sworn enemy, DhrAH'Ken thought it the ideal setting for his task. The human's blood would decorate these walls.

He tackled PhaHks, sending both of them sprawling in a heap.

DhrAH'Ken managed the upper hand as the human twisted and turned, trying to buck him off.

Raising the Klingon blade in both hands over PhaHks' trapped body, he shouted triumph, bringing it down on him.

Once.

Blood spilled from PhaHk's upper thigh, the blade deflected there due to his desperate struggle to protect his vital organs.

DhrAH'Ken raised it again, tiny spatters of red arcing off the weapons tips, leaving little bloody sprays over the floor and nearby table leg. Brands of triumph. Red color of victory.

The knife was raised again.

Twice.

*

Two sounds, both of the slicing of meat and tissue, reached her ears two steps before PhaHks' weak cry of agony did.

She entered the room, racing, in time to see Kol's Sworn-One bury his blade to the hilt in the hollow of PhaHks' shoulder.

Veexow didn't even pause to check its setting as she brought up her particle weapon and watched its energy send DhrAH'Ken across the room, far away from PhaHks.

Though DhrAH'Ken moved mo more, she was disappointed to see that he still breathed.

Phahks! She scrambled to his side.

Checking him, he was conscious but not alert as his iron blood poured from the ragged wound. She gathered folds of her robe into her hands and pressed down on it, trying to retard the flow of life.

Knew from Rhengar's descriptions that vital blood vessels passed through this delicate area, main canals of precious fluid pumped by a heart only inches away.

He had other injuries. She didn't know how many, how serious.

Summoning Rhengar through her bracelet communicator, she waited, speaking to PhaHks. Whispered words in his ear. Meaningless sounds that were said only to keep him alive for another few seconds.

"PhaHks," she said, "Stay awake. Listen to me you stubborn human. You will live. You've proven to me that you can. Terrible things have happened yet you were not defeated. You must not follow death to its door. Refuse! Will you? Will you do this for me? Please? There, how's that? I have said please to you for a second time, that should give you reason for life, you have to respond to that. You must wake up and spit some ridiculous, insolent humanism."

PhaHks groaned under her touch and her voice. His skin cast was lifeless now as the blood left his body and filled her hands.

She was being coated in him.

"PhaHks?" No sound now. There was barely a flutter to his chest as his breathing shallowed out.

Under her probing fingers, his pulse, that curious, fascinating, alien second heart-beat at his throat

Stopped.

"PHAHKS!" She shouted at him. Screamed it directly into his ear.

He had bled to death under her helping hands.

Rhengar appeared in shimmering transporter waves, instant travel that to Veexow was taking infinitely too long.

"Rhengar!" she cried. He didn't need to be told the condition of the human. It was clear by the evidences of red blood on and around him and the stained hands of M'Lady.

He passed his instrument over the limp body, noting at once the absence of cardiac rhythm and respirations and that the creature's brain patterns were becoming erratic.

He took a Stimulater, after adjusting it to suit his best assessment of a humans need, and placed it over PhaHks' heart. Next, he injected his patient with a mix of drugs designed to increase the body's natural healers. It was meant for Romulans, but he had recently modified it. Did not know if it would work.

Rhengar touched a control on the heart stimulator. A tiny, guided current of electrons passed from it to the heart muscle, making PhaHks' body jerk slightly.

No other sign of life however. He placed a second Stimulator on PhaHks' forehead and synchronize them.

Veexow had rose and backed away from her doctor and his patient, to give them room.

It was an silent lie.

Meant for her.

PhaHks was dying.

PhaHks was dead.

Phahks' blood had spilled onto a stone floor in her world. It had been ushered forth from its host for her humiliation and punishment. She had murdered him and his blood clung to her hands like a second skin. It would never wash off.

"You must save him."

"I am not certain I can." Rhengar sensed something and turned to see M'Lady's personal blaster pointed at him.

"If you kill me, I can do nothing for him." He pointed out. He saw her face contort with her efforts to control what she was feeling.

*He* knew.

The blaster clattered to the floor. "I'll give you everything I have."

She whispered it but Rhengar had heard the wail of deprivation. The suddenly starving.

He turned back to his patient and increased the power from stimulators to heart and brain. The human's body jumped.

"What I need is help. Here." Rhengar held something out to M'Lady. "Take it. We must start artificial respiration."

She took the nose/mouth piece and its attached micro-oxygen-generator.

"We have little time to spare." Rhengar urged.

She quickly joined him and placed the device over PhaHks' nose and mouth, cradling his head in her other hand.

Rhengar increased the stimulators output by two more fold. If the setting didn't bring him back to life...he was dead anyway. That much power would begin to cook the organs if used a second time.

PhaHks' form jerked violently. Rhengar felt for a pulse and found it. He nodded to M'Lady.

Understanding dawned on her quickly as PhaHks' chest rose and fell, shallowly, on its own.

"We must get him to my chambers." Rhengar said.

Total control reined once again. "So he will be all right?" Her voice leveling like water.

He shook his head. "I have to prepare some synthetic plasma or he will not be alive for long."

"What are you all doing in my trophy room?" A drunken Kol had entered unnoticed and was taking in the scene. His "trophies" were in fact a collection, bought and paid for.

Veexow stood and spun around on him, enraged.

"Why didn't you tell me your Sworn One was DhrAH'Ken?! I demand that VAHROOL be executed!" Pointing to the still unconscious Klingon.

Kol's puzzled frown followed her finger. "And just why should I want to do that?"

"DhrAH'Ken tried to murder PhaHks." Rhengar explained, "and if we do not tend to him immediately, he will have succeeded.

Veexow turned her attention back to the doctor and the injured in question. She bit back the obscenities she wanted to sling Kol's way, instead, crouching and holding PhaHks' head in her lap. Rhengar touched his belt controls and all three transported away.

Kol nudged the Sworn-One with his boot. His Sworn didn't stir. "Strange, that my words should shout their fulfillment so quickly."

He gave up trying to rouse the unconscious Klingon and staggered out the door. When DhrAH'Ken awoke, Kol would find out what had happened.

For now, he wanted to go back to his wine barrel.

*

Rhengar had PhaHks on full oxygen and fluids replacement but he was grim. "He has lost much blood, M'Lady. If his body can produce enough iron rich cells quickly, he may survive."

Phahks lay on Rhengar's own bed (there were no hospital or nursing facilities on Kol-keK). He was a thin, pale rag under the thick coverlets.

"Can you not provide him with those?" Veexow urged.

"Of course. I have already administered the appropriate drugs to boost his immunities, bone- marrow cell production and the like. But there are other difficulties. His kidney functions have ceased. Possibly due to the physical shock."

"Well, start them again."

Rhengar sighed. "It is not that simple. I cannot risk them infecting, something which, at this point he will be prone. His state is critical. His body would not be able to fight it off, he is simply too weak. And there are other factors."

Veexow payed little attention to Rhengars clinical details, taking PhaHks' limp, ghost-hand in her own. "Will he live?"

"He has a chance. I have done all I can, now the rest is up to him."

Veexow closed her eyes and the vision of a ruddy, panting PhaHks, hardened with lust and slaking himself in her body nearly made her cry out.

"PhaHks must live, Rhengar. You must make him live."

Rhengar put away his instruments. "You know I will do all I can."

Veexow, suddenly remembering her impulsive act of pointing her weapon at the doctor, looked back at him. "Forgive me!"

Rhengar had already done so. "You would not have harmed me, M'Lady. You never mean to harm."

She gazed at PhaHks' naked sickness. "But I have. I have."

*

Hands touched him without purpose.

That's what he hated the most: the touching, checking, pressing hands.

And the freezing wet water that smothered him in chills and aching fingers.

Even more despised, though, was the metal instrument that was shoved into his mouth with infuriating frequency. Rhythmic, vile proboscis, making him gag and choking off his air.

Veexow raised PhaHks' head from the pillow just enough to tip the ladle so the soup would pour between his lips. Cracked with fever, they would open just so far. She would then scoop it in.

"Just one more, PhaHks, and you can go back to dreaming about killing and eating some poor, little furry forest creature. That is what humans prefer, isn't it? Real, blooded fire-cooked meat?" She didn't repress her shudder. PhaHks was still too far gone to have noticed anyway.

Veexow had taken the habit of talking softly to him about things. She wanted his mind kept busy, even in its delirium, so he would fall down no farther into that long, dark sleep.

She spoke to him of her daily routines, Kol's drunken antics, Rhengars therapeutic plans for his recovery,...anything really, just to keep PhaHks thinking and maybe even goad him into sitting up and lashing out at the source of the noise in order to shut it up.

Veexow tilted the mushy stuff over his tongue again, gently manipulating his throat to encourage the swallow reflex. Her glassy-eyed patient obliged and the soup slid down his gullet.

Very, very slowly, each day, PhaHks' color was returning and his strength increasing. But it had been a slow and laborious journey back to relative health.

Veexow, to Rhengars open-faced shock, had insisted on attending to most of the patients nursing, including the feeding and bathing of him. Sometimes even the changing of PhaHks' bed linen and his anal and urethra drains.

He suffered bouts of terrible fevers and bone rattling chills in addition to his compromised general state. But the ragged wounds had healed well and he no longer required Rhengar's breathing apparatus.

Veexow knew for certain, however, that PhaHks was going to ultimately get well when one day, as she was lathering up and disinfecting his privates, he opened his eyes, looked down, reddened and spat at her:

"Fuck off!"

*

Someone was chiming his door.

No one ever chimed his door.

Hell bitch, certainly not.

He would be in any stage of indignity; bare-assed and passed out, showering out his pits, crapping on the John, whatever. And through the door she'd steam like an out of control locomotive to run rough-shod over him for some rule or other of hers that he'd breached.

Or she'd slither in and start squeezing his cock like a Boa-Constrictor in a prelude to one of her fucking marathons.

Either way, no privacy.

But someone was *chiming* the door.

PhaHks opened it to find the Doctor waiting politely.

"She's not here." PhaHks told him, assuming Hell bitch to be the reason for the impromptu visit.

"I know." The therapist replied and walked in.

PhaHks hadn't invited him but in the Land of Pointed Ears good manners were a rare commodity.

He didn't really want the doc to stay because he had nothing to say to him. Never had. 'Get the fuck away from me!' could just about sum up his part in most of their conversations.

He was sure the feeling was mutual.

But it looked like Rhengar was here for some reason other than scouting around for Hell bitch.

And - what the hell - he'd been feeling lonely.

Hollow actually.

For weeks and weeks since his memorable tangle with DhraH'Ken and all his "fun" at Doc's "Palace of Probes", he'd craved company but hadn't got it.

Hell bitch was treating him like a china cup.

Display, admire, but don't touch or even breath on it!

Rhengar circled the room and then came to stand before PhaHks. Right in front of him.

"Veexow,..."

PhaHks had never heard the Doctor utter her name before.

"...is obsessed with you."

It was suddenly feeling very weird in the room. Weird being a relative term.

Rhengar leaned in, closer, but PhaHks felt un- threatened. It was just...weird. Then the one- sided conversation got stranger.

"I don't know why. Perhaps it is because you are exotic and I am common,..."

The Romulans voice had dropped to a throaty whisper that forced PhaHks to lean in to hear.

"...perhaps because you are beautiful and I am plain."

The doctor had come to see him. PhaHks.

Rhengar was not one for socializing, not even in Hell bitch's chamber as far as he knew. Were they fucking each other? He didn't know.

But she hadn't touched him in weeks.

Rhengar was so close he could read the humans thoughts.

"I think she is afraid that you have been damaged..."

Rhengar stood mere inches away. PhaHks could see the black irises below fine, white up sloped brows and blonde hair. Such a contrast to Hell bitch's dark looks. And Rhengar was younger.

He touched PhaHks' chest with the tips of four fingers.

"..In here. I think she is afraid that if she touches you, you will die."

PhaHks frowned, puzzled. Nervous. Curious.

"Will you die, PhaHks?"

The doctor placed his palm flat against PhaHks' chest and left it there.

"Will you die, PhaHks, if you are touched?"

Rhengar slid his hands beneath PhaHks' shirt and up his chest. The quick caress made PhaHks inhale quickly and breath quicker afterward. It was scary and alien and sensual. He was not calm but he did not run.

The first gentle touch since DhraH'Ken's cruelties. The first indication in two months that he was not something sickening to look upon. That he wouldn't crumble into a stink of alien parts (that would have to be disposed of) if they got too close to him.

Someone actually wanted to be near him.

Rhengar whispered, his lips hovering near PhaHks'.

"I wonder if her flavor is still on you? I can smell her skin on you, did you know that? After you have made love to her, you carry her perfume for days."

Rhengar kissed him once. A soft touching of open lips. "Washing does not remove it."

PhaHks felt Rhengars wide hands move up his sides and the hairless, muscled arms around to his back.

Rhengar was solid, healing heat.

Rhengar encircled PhaHks' body as far as his own would allow and kissed him, not stopping now. Teased open red lips, inserted slippery tongue and tasted him fully.

PhaHks relaxed completely under the Romulans sexual machinations.

The seduction had been so tender, so conscious of PhaHks' frail emotional, physical and mental state, so beautifully executed, that he gave in to it absolutely. Total surrender.

It was so comforting to be wrapped in anothers warmth and strength that he didn't want it to end. Ever.

The overwhelming experiences of late, the brutal attack, his near death and the long bed-ridden weeks had left him so vulnerable and his senses so raped that, without warning, PhaHks started crying right there in Rhengars arms.

He tried to pull away, then, placing his hands on the doctors shoulders to facilitate. To push.

But Rhengar would not let him go.

Would not acknowledge the embarrassment PhaHks was feeling for his other world display.

Refusing to give the shame any life, Rhengar held him tighter. Kissed his hair as PhaHks, head bowed but not touching, wept silently, his shoulders shaking from its power.

"Come here."

Rhengar walked PhaHks, in little steps, backward toward the bed and gently, gently lowered him down onto it, never letting his body separate from the humans.

Laying on top of him, full weight, he so, so tenderly removed PhaHks' clothing until he was exposed naked beneath him, the pink flushed gold of PhaHks' skin was so far removed from his own yellow flesh.

Rhengar shed his own layers quickly and kissed him.

Eyelids, the still wet face. The lips a long time. Soon a little harder, more insistent as his desire burned hotter.

Rhengar covered PhaHks' body, pressing his swollen penis into his patient's groin, rocking his hips in circles, until he felt PhaHks' shaft harden equally.

Rhengar kissed those lips that had kissed hers. He imagined round excited breasts jiggling under his movements.

"She loves you." He spoke in PhaHks' ear soft, sexy whispers that told all. "I love her, but I am not allowed. She doesn't want me." The last word was drawn out into a sigh of something dying.

Rhengar wanted her. Would take PhaHks instead. Perhaps he would know her through him. Perhaps he would get a hint of her flavor and feel.

Perhaps...

Rhengar turned PhaHks over and lay on him, whole surface to whole surface. By now he was so hard, it was painful.

Reaching around, he lifted PhaHks' hips off the bed by a few inches. By comparison to his own thickly muscled form, the human was so light that he could toss and turn him at will.

Rhengar took the hard PhaHks penis in one spitted palm, stroking it. Varied the intensity because he wanted to hear all the noises humans made. PhaHks was panting, but even that made Rhengar moan in anticipation of an unexplored sex and the poor creature who was giving it up to him.

He stroked PhaHks, up and down, harder and faster, the sex organ felt alien silky and almost as warm as he was. He slid his hand over it until PhaHks cried out, bucking his hips under him and shooting his human cum into Rhengars ready hand.

Rhengar gathered it up and spread the tacky substance between the fuzzy pillows of PhaHks' buttocks.

He raised PhaHks' hips a little more and lined up with that inviting entrance.

Rhengar imagined his penis driving into Veexow as he inserted one finger into the humans hole and then plunged his wet-tipped cock deep into that velvet cavern in one delicious thrust.

Rhengar fucked him slowly, luxuriously at first...

...and then slammed home harder and harder, his Romulan blood driving him. PhaHks' ooohhh-ing and aaahhh-ing made Rhengar's desire flame into a lust that was tenfold to its ignition.

Mindless now, Rhengar shoved it in him to the hilt and out again, faster and harder until PhaHks' body was thrown forward and back, forward and back,..

...and when he heard PhaHks whimper from the might of his slippery sex plugging the holes in the captives body and soul, Rhengar slammed harder, thrusting violently until he was body surfing PhaHks as he would a tidal wave.

Rhengar fucked the human madly, sightlessly, until neither could stand the urgent sweetness of it.

Rhengar imagined Veexow, her smooth ass offered up to him the same way, her gasps and moans, her movements and begging of him.

Then he thought of PhaHks' own surrender and beauty and his virginal part in their sexual collision as he rammed his penis deeper and harder into the welcoming squeeze.

Physical laws were broken, time stopped and he was fucking them both!

The power of it was slick and intoxicating.

Using the human's words so PhaHks would understand and remember, "I am going to fill you so full of my fuck, you will carry it with you forever." Ragged grunts. "Someday, she will have this as well."

Rhengar came, moaning like a Alpha wolf, and gasping open-mouthed as he shot and shot into PhaHks, grinding his balls against the exhausted human's quivering hips.

Rhengar shuddered. Softened.

Released him.

PhaHks lay falling asleep.

Rhengar had kissed him a long time at the beginning. At the end just as tenderly but in an anxiety to leave.

PhaHks knew why of course.

Hell bitch would kill even the good doctor if she ever found out about their erotic interlude. And maybe him too.

Visions of Rhengars thick shaft pumping him and teasing his gland, the round chock-full balls slapping his ass and touching, invading hands and lips and fingers...

...replayed in PhaHks' mind as he dozed to sleep.

The fact that he had done something that would unequivocally infuriate her (whether she ever learned of it or not), was very satisfying.

It compensated, somehow, for a lot of things.

He had in every way disobeyed his Keeper and that thought took him to restful, dreamless sleep

*

Nearly five years at Kol's stone palace.

That's what she had told him.

PhaHks sighed deeply. There was no pool here to soothe the throbbing or the stiffness of his right arm.

Six months since that delightful encounter with the knife and his arm still ached at night and moved like sloth. But at least he was allowed to walk freely where he liked now (not outside of course), and do pretty much what he pleased whenever Hellbitch didn't require his presence.

Like at their shared meals. (He would have preferred to eat alone but then it made no difference anyway. His preferences were never discussed).

Or when she got hot and bothered and desired his flesh, (just about ALL the time lately). But his preferences for when and how often they screwed was, again, not a consideration.

Today he was lonely and bored, bored, bored! Mostly lonely.

He'd already taken a run for the second time down the long, cool corridors. This place didn't have any "Great Hall" to use as a track.

Now the day was only half over and he'd already run out of ideas on how to kill the rest of it. So it was a rare occassion that PhaHks winded his way through Kol's hallways and found himself knocking on Hellbitch's door.

Nobody home.

But she'd left the door wide so he wandered in and looked around. There was nothing to see that he hadn't seen before. Not since she'd finally allowed him to return to his own room to sleep at night after he was healed up.

He would never admit to missing sleeping next to her warm body, but at least he'd been provided with a decent bed and not just a goddamn *ledge*!

One thing was different. When he came the rest of the way in, he saw it.

The computer screen had been left on.

Hell bitch had never, ever allowed him use of a computer. She had explained that he would be unable to read the language anyway.

He'd requested that she teach him.

She had said that the information would be mostly incomprehensible to him.

He'd suggested that she only allow him access to the pictures then, please. At least those!.

She had grown very angry.

He had dropped the subject altogether.

Not once in all the time he'd been with her had he used one of her computer terminals. She always turned them off. She always locked him out.

So this was Christmas!

Checking the door, PhaHks sat down immediately.

Surreptitiously looking over her shoulder all those years, PhaHks had learned a few things. Like how to turn the damn things on and off, that is, which control did it. And how to screen advance/retreat and which button did that.

PhaHks looked at the rest of the symbols on the control pad in front of him (no keyboard, even, just a flat, backlit control panel. Goddamn serious high tech' shit). The markings were a complete fucking mystery.

He played around with a couple other controls but they seemed to do nothing. And, not wanting to leave any sign that he'd been screwing around with her private computer, he settled for what he did know and advanced the screen by one.

It did not scroll by, like what he was used to. It would switch from one screen to the next, like channels. Like television he figured, but this stuff obviously wasn't filmed or even live.

The first dozen or so screens were more rows and rows of what looked to him like Hebrew-Chinese.

The one after that was grafts and schematics of who-the-fuck-knew. And the next one was...

PhaHks stared and stared. Stared some more until his eyes dried out. A big, round, black pupils stare.

A picture of a woman and a man. Well, not exactly "pictures", more like computer- generated representations of them. But good ones: full-bodied nudes. And - jesus! - they were beautiful. The woman anyway.

The next screen he couldn't figure out at first. Red, white and purple...

...body parts. Medical shit.

He retreated the screen. Wanted to see Miss Centerfold again.

But then he went back. The body parts were really real looking. They looked like...

PhaHks advanced another screen. Then two, then three, four, five, six...

Two human beings under the process of dissection. Like someone had kept a visual record of the categorization, labeling and preservation. The pieces being sprayed in some sort of polymer resin. The quick-dry variety.

Little sculptures of people meat.

Grafts, blueprints,.. screens of chemical formulas. Some he actually recognized.

Then screen after screen of:

Eyeballs (and diagrams),

Brain sections (schematics),

Hearts (graphs),

Livers and kidneys (more formulas),

Sinews, bones and muscle, bisected lungs.

But the *piece-de-resistance* was the paperweight Embryo.

Tiny, curled up little blind human who would never see mom and dad.

PhaHks was shaking, bile threatening to announce itself all over Hell bitch's private terminal.

That night, when she showed herself for the purpose of fucking him, he sprayed acidic puke all over her yellow tits just as he came.

*

Veexow cleaned herself off in her pressure shower, concerned over PhaHks' sudden illness. He hadn't mentioned feeling unwell (though he had looked a trifle pale), nor had he said much afterward.

Over the following day or two, he would experience no more attacks of vomiting that she knew of, yet would remain sullen and withdrawn.

*

When she approached Kol's sleep chamber, DhraH'Ken was there, just exiting.

Her intention was to ignore him until he stopped her hand on the door panel by grasping her wrist.

"How is he?" she asked.

"I am his Sworn-One, not his nurse."

"Then I shall see him."

DhraH'Ken, however, did not relinquish her hand.

"When I heard you had arrived on Kol'keK, I decided to come and kill you."

She stared back defiantly. Two old fierce warriors eyed each other like beasts in the arena.

"How-" She jerked her arm and he let her hand free "-did you know I was coming?".

"I am a warrior, I knew, that is all. I knew you would come here to hide your human toy."

Her smile was contemptuous. "Was that all, the reason of a warrior? Did you come here only to restore honor to Kol?"

"Why do you care?"

"Because if I learn it was for any other reason, other than for the sake of Kol's honor and good name, If I learn you have pledged yourself to him under a lie just to get to me, I will kill you myself."

"Courageous words for an Unwanted. No, killing the human was enough. My honor is intact and I have fulfilled my vow to Kol,.."

DhraH'Ken exposed his forearm to her. It bore a fresh knife cut and was oozing purple blood.

"..And now he has fulfilled his to me."

Veexow looked upon the wound, her blood running cold because of its implications. DhraH'Ken was now Kol's heir, as good as next of kin. Kol's name, if not his blood line, would continue.

"Kol is dying? I must see him."

"See him or do not, I do not care. But when he has crossed over the River of Blood, Kol'keK will be mine."

Talk of Kol's death disturbed her for many reasons, not least of which the safety of PhaHks, despite DhraH'Ken's words.

"You have seen to events well, DhraH'Ken. You should have been a Romulan."

"And you have caused your own destruction because you allow your passions to dictate your fate instead of honor or reason. You would have made an excellent human."

It was his best insult and he left her there.

Veexow entered Kol's quarters. The decor was a Warrior's taste. Uncomfortable chairs, battle art, the inevitable blades adorning one black stone wall.

It was powerful and dark and fierce looking. Not at all like Kol himself.

He was sitting up in bed (his bed was anything but a metal shelf), a large square affair, thick and comfortable and buried in skin blankets and fur. Kol himself was nearly buried.

"I came to see how you are feeling." Veexow moved to sit beside him. Kol's fever had not run its course. His color was darker than usual.

"I'm old," he said.

Veexow took his hand. She still felt the old warmth that had once fired their passions. It had dwindled to coals but it was a good feeling still.

"You should have told me Kol."

"I thought he would have forgotten all that Veexow."

"I meant your health but, no, Klingon warriors do not forget or forgive so easily."

"He was just a boy."

"A boy learning to be a warrior aboard his fathers ship. A ship for which I gave the order for destruction."

Kol was a priest, she thought, he would not have considered such things. Would not have counted on the long memory and heart of vengeance inherent in the warrior class.

Having commanded a vessel and ordering the deaths of many over decades of service in the Romulan Fleet, she had come to understand that she was more a warrior than Kol.

Kol shifted uncomfortably, "PhaHks is dead in DhraH'Ken's eyes. He will not touch either of you now."

"I do not share your optimism. DhraH'Ken's father died because of me. How can we stay here now, PhaHks and I? How can I be certain DhraH'Ken will keep his word and not harm him?"

"Because as long as I am alive, DhraH'Ken will do nothing to dishonor me. He is a *warrior*, Veexow."

Veexow did not address the question of how long a life Kol was to have. He did not look well at all and it pained her to see it.

"You never told me why you left, you know," she said.

Kol seemed a trifle surprised at the question, and shifted to a higher, more comfortable position.

"How could I? You were to be a Commander in the Imperial Fleet. What was I but a priest. And one about to be expelled from the order because of the unforgivable act of wanting to take as mate a Romulan woman. In those days, it was un- heard of."

She knew all this. "I suppose I was foolish to think we could have been together." she admitted.

"We were young and foolish in matters of love. Well, YOU were young, I was just foolish."

"Was that the only reason, Kol, or was I the reason you left? Had we been able to mate, would you have made the Call?"

She was referring to the Klingon warriors way. The Call of Mating, a vocal display. The public vow.

Kol looked sideways at her, cleared his throat. "You were everything I would never be, Veexow. Powerful, influential. I don't know that I could have lived under the shadow of so great a female."

He was trying to be tender. Veexow nodded. He would not have stayed. "It was me, then." she answered. "Tell me why."

Kol frowned. "Oh, you wish to keep him. This is about the human again." He was insulted.

"No, this is about me. What is it about me that drove you away?"

"You are beautiful and intelligent, Veexow. You also have the fierce passion of a Klingon woman - there - I have paid you a great compliment."

She smiled. Coming from a Klingon male, it was.

"But you are ambitious and though you claimed to have loved and respected me, I doubt you would have been content spending the rest of your life with a man you couldn't wholly dominate."

She dropped her eyes at shared memories, but she was not sad. "We did have some glorious battles, didn't we?"

"Yes."

"What is this illness, Kol?"

He was unprepared for the change of topic.

"It is nothing unusual for a Klingon my age who has overindulged in the best things."

Meaning drink.

Veexow searched his eyes. "You are an exceptional Klingon, Kol. I did love you, you know."

He was embarrassed and dealt with it Klingon fashion. "You'd better go be with that human before he thinks you've come back to me."

Veexow kissed him once, on the lips, lingering. "I remember that."

She didn't leave. "Kol, about DhraH'Ken..."

"Do not worry about him. As far as he is concerned, the human is dead. The fact that Doctor saved his life is of no consequence to a warrior." He maneuvered himself to a flat position again. "Now there is a creature who will never leave you. That Romulan has no ambition what-so-ever."

Veexow eyed him affectionately. Kol had always been jealous of Rhengar.

"Will you be all right?"

He knew she meant his illness and he replied in philosophical standard.

"If death came to call, who am I that it should turn away?"

Politely, she said no more. Kol must be allowed to retain his Klingon pride in the face of his impending end.

She left him to rest.

*

Two evenings later, at their customary dinner together, PhaHks had returned from his run lathered in sweat, his hands shaking with fatigue as he took his seat to her right.

He had sat reluctantly. By his smell he hadn't even bothered to bath before joining her, something she usually insisted upon.

After the meal was placed before them, the minutes passed and his remained untouched.

She spoke. Words left her mouth, ricocheted off the walls and never made it to his hearing.

"There is no more need to worry. DhrAh'Ken is a warrior and Kol does not question his motives. Kol has no status in the Empire, so being the Sworn-One of an ex-priest, though hardly a duty that would bring one to Honor, is a respected post. Priests are considered sacred, even to the warrior class."

PhaHks had never tried to understand all the talk of honor and Swearing one- self to another (though he comprehended the concepts), but neither had he much cared. As long as the thorny-dicked psycho rapist kept his attention on the old, pickled "cling-un" priest and not on him.

At the pictures in his head, his chest tightened

*Bleeding, fire-eaten ass cheeks. Broken ribs.*

Veexow ceased talking abruptly, and now appeared lost in thought. She did not look at him and it was out of character.

*Sharp teeth grinding his fate into his ear.*

PhaHks hadn't seen the old priest for several days. Wondered absently if he was sick.

*Finger-bruised throat.*

Still couldn't bring himself to ask after the health of a "cling-un" who, whenever he saw PhaHks, bared brown teeth and rolled bloodshot eyes in disbelief.

*Sliced open abdomen, numbed thigh, knife embedded in a slick-wet shoulder.*

Could not make his arm stretch that few icy inches of table space to take her hand in sympathy, as she started to slowly consume her meal.

Hell bitch had carved out slice after slice of his soul. DhraH'Ken had taken another portion. Even Rhengar, with his gentle ways, had extracted his piece.

*Rape. Monster semen leaking out of him.*

Satisfaction, not sympathy, was nearer the mark; if Kol was sick, maybe she was finally experiencing a bit of the raw mourning he felt every hour of the day. It was a kind of victory.

PhaHks. Veexow. Lovers encased, each separately within their favorite armor, neither touching the other.

Then "PhaHks, you're not eating." It was practiced phrasing born of years observing the human.

His breathing had not slowed very much. Then.

One breath.

He shook his head. Defeated motion of the hopeless.

PhaHks only tried to get air and nothing else.

Two breaths. Held then released. As though the rooms air had become toxic, afraid to inhale. All other parts of him were motionless.

Veexow stared at her human mate. Nothing else.

Because he was like an open circuit. Touch him only at great risk.

He was a quantum explosive. Get too close and he would detonate.

And now this thick, coiled silence.

His lips parted. A long, even exhalation.

"I can't take anymore." Quietly said, perfunctorily delivered. Nothing to do with food.

She sighed. *At last*. "Well, you must eat. I am concerned. Now that we have grown closer..."

He laughed out loud. Two ill-humored barks.

Ignoring it, Veexow straightened her shoulders. "Kol has died..."

He looked at her once. Turned away. Knew what was coming.

"...and we will have to leave Kol'keK."

Wrapping his arms around himself he was blind to her grief over Kol as his own stepped forward to gulp him down whole.

Veexow had seen this reaction before as his eyes squeezed shut and his breaths became great straining billows. He shook from the force of trying not to shake, trying to stop the panic and the "fight or flight" reaction (which is what he had once called it).

"What is it?" She wanted to keep him talking before he shut her out completely. Her own heartache was momentarily set aside.

He cared no more. "Nothing."

Another place, another "new" life. Another series of "adjustments", another set of rules. More chains on his feet, more bars on the door.

*Screens and screens of human body parts, all shiny-coated in grotesquely naked patterns. Frozen for all time to be viewed with scientific detachment. Human curios.*

"Do you need something? Water?"

Christ! she was actually trying to be helpful.

*Awesome goddamn timing, Bitch*, his mind screamed, and tears rolled down parchment skin over cheekbones, *You're one rape and a couple of fucking hundred beatings too late*.

Aloud. "No, I want-" He was shaking so bad, his voice choked.

"What? What do you want?" She didn't want to deal with this right now. She wanted peace and time to grieve over Kol. Good, misguided, drunken, wonderful KOL!

PhaHks heard the irritation in her voice. Hell bitch's good graces never did last long.

"I want to go home." Words he hadn't said in years. Minutes since he'd thought them.

She kept it simple and neutral. It was his sensitive spot and more harshness might sink him into another human depression for more weeks.

"You know that's impossible, PhaHks."

He cried harder, wrapping his arms around his body, eyes squeezed shut to halt tears that wouldn't halt, trying to implode.

Then suddenly, consequences be damned, she was shouting.

"I saved your life! Isn't that worth something?!" Kol was dead. PhaHks was alive, safe but hating her. Hating her!

His forehead was on the table, his crying silent and painful. But he managed a squeak.

"Looks like...it's worth *every*thing."

"This is how things are. It is how they'll be tomorrow. These episodes are growing tiresome..."

He screwed a one-eyed look up at her as she sat, regally marching out the Law.

His Governess.

His Disciplinarian.

His Rapist and Seducer.

His Zoo-Keeper.

Here he was sitting down with her to fucking *dinner*!, listening as she spelled it all out. As she laid down the fucking facts of life.

My Years With Hell bitch. For *years* he had even let her FUCK him. He was as crazy as she was.

Fuck. It was a best seller!

Bitch.

"...It is your life now, though you may not understand..." she talked on...

Whore.

Liar!

He hated her. He hated her so much.

Cruel, goddamn fucking vindictive baby killer!

Does she think I'm stupid?

Bone-marrow rotten bitch! Does she think I'm some kind of pathetic breed? Fucking crippled puppy trained to yelp or whizz on command?

Fuck *ALL* of it!

Suddenly he was launching his plate of food in her direction, showering her in chunky mush. Slimed her with what in seconds had transformed into just another putrid serving of his life.

Veexow had felt something ripple through the air of the room directly before she found herself dripping in food. It'd been rather like the crackle of a lightening bolt before it hits, charging everything, tingles shooting across her skin.

A clear warning of danger but coming too late to avoid it.

The plate bounced off the side of her head with a resounding *THUNK*!

The heavy table was next and PhaHks sent it crashing over in an adrenalin charged rush that surprised even him.

"Don't you think I know?! Don't you think I know where I am?! I know where the fuck I am!! Don't you think I know what you are, you bitch?! I know you, you Hole! I hate you! I hate your fucking guts!-"

Salt water sprayed from his eyes like two fountains.

"This...*stuff*. This SHIT! I can't fucking DO this anymore, I can't, I can't, I-just-fucking- can't-I-CAN'T!-FUCK!-"

Veexow, all other matters at hand forgotten, watched PhaHks as his frantic hands raked his hair over and over, feet circling, the spirals growing tighter.

She stared, too stunned to move for a moment as PhaHks orbited himself.

Faster and faster, like he was winding down and down into nothingness. PhaHks had collided with a mental black hole and was being eaten alive by it, getting smaller and smaller until he would disappear in a burst of anti-matter.

He stopped long enough to look at her, trembling with rage.

"-I fucking hate this! I hate this! I hate this goddamn shit! I hate you, you FUCK! YOU slut!, You pig! You ugly, stinking, fucking alien Queen Bee! FUCKTHISFUCKYOUFUCKYOU!!"

PhaHks' face was scrunched in torment. Twisted. Crying. Hysterical.

Veexow had to stop him. She had to calm him down before he hurt himself. Before DhraH'Ken used this as a reason to have PhaHks caged or worse.

He'd been angry before, shouted before, used his human expletives on her before, but she had never seen him like,..like *this*!

In two moves, Veexow got hold of him, one hand on his upper arm and the other on his throat - not to squeeze - but to quiet. To silence his screams. To control.

He fought wildly, kicking and hitting with his one free arm, teeth clenched and wild-eyed.

She forced silence by pressing thumb to voice box, just enough to cut his voice but not enough to bruise. It had worked before. Calm him. Placate him.

Control, comfort, convince.

Forcing him against the wall to still him, she pressed her whole body to his, ready to ride out whatever had set him off. He was trembling in fury and then.

He was not. He sagged, instantly, as if her touch had somehow exorcized his demons.

Veexow didn't have to calm him.

PhaHks went limp except for his accelerated respirations. He leaned his head back and exposed his throat, that sweet, delectable tissue upon which she had sucked, waiting.

Closing his eyes, it was his invitation for her hand to tighten.

Veexow caught her breath at the unmistakable meaning. PhaHks wanted her to crush the life out of him. Push in that jutting, male larynx and snap vertebrae.

She immediately let go and stepped back a good meter and when PhaHks felt her touch leave, his eyes opened.

Two sad visions watched each other. Black eyes looked to hazel and were stunned by their vacancy.

Eyes were a window to the soul, PhaHks had said to her. Once. A long time ago.

Those were rarities, where he would express a private thought, share an opinion, open up the tiniest bit and set something free that wasn't stained in anger, hatred or fear.

PhaHks jewels, few and treasured.

He'd even complimented her once. Had told her (after a particularly satisfying afternoon of lovemaking) that he thought she was "sort of pretty".

Those things, those times, she suddenly realized, were ending here in the space of a terrible minute.

Veexow was not certain how or why or where it had begun, but together they had reached a critical mass. Meltdown.

PhaHks' eyes pleaded. He was reaching out to something Veexow didn't believe was present in the room.

He was asking for something...help? Hope?

She did not touch him again, alarmed. Then

He broke.

PhaHks collapsed forward like he had been severed at the waist. Horrible, strangled sobs and he was falling to the floor.

He had made his request and she had declined.

Nothing. Left.

Veexow stopped his fall and he fought her again, feebly. Stopped struggling when her unconditional strength made it clear that it was useless. She relaxed her grip on him, only to have him sway unsteadily without her stronghold. Quickly placing her arms again around his back, he steadied.

Frozen immobility.

Both of them frightened by what was happening.

She, by his physical tremors and defeated countenance, by his grey face and blood- reddened orbis's.

He, she thought, perhaps afraid of everything. Of her and her touch. Of no touch. Of living. Of dying.

Of dying here.

He didn't move. And no amount of her clutching stilled the trembling in his limbs or the quick, shallow breaths in between the deep gulped-back sobs that even she had to strain to hear.

Even now he was struggling for control, if not over her, then over himself.

But the shaking of him and what she realized was some profound grief, seen with her eyes and confirmed by telepathy, stilled her actions.

She simply did not know what to do.

Whatever it was, Rhengar's useful injections would not cure it.

"I'm dying."

She quit breathing.

Yesterday, (longer?), he was alive and vibrant. Not happy perhaps but content. Content!

Now,...now dying? Dying because...

His proud voice had sounded strangled and weak.

Held him tighter, petted his hair. Somehow it had to end this. In the past, it had succeeded.

Comfort. Control. Convince.

He whimpered and - gods - it sounded like she was hurting him instead.

Impossible.

Could think of nothing better but rubbing his back.

"Ihateallv'thisss..." His words were strung together and inarticulate.

"What?" she asked softly.

He was breakable, she knew, but this was something new and alien. He seemed as fragile as cobsilk. The touch of a finger and he would tear in half.

His face was ashen when she tilted his head back to look at him. The eyes sunken, the veined whites glazed.

It was a sickness. Must be.

PhaHks focused on her, frowning as if she had just appeared out of vapor and had not been standing there holding him vertical. Then he let his head fall to her shoulder and made noises.

Words. Painful sounding confessions for which there was no penance.

She felt them pass through the fabric of her wrap and enter her. The words were his ending and they exploded in her heart.

"Icandothisssnymooore..."

She felt him jerk as sobs rose up from some previously untapped reserve of sorrow. It was painful to feel him shaking inside her arms, the hacks near pulling him apart, clogging his respiratory system.

"I'vvvelosteverythiiiing..." he cried softly.

Veexow felt a strange sensation travel through her abdomen, Nameless Fear.

Fear for what was happening to PhaHks. Fear for her lack of ability to do anything about it.

His cool body was warming under her, which meant he was fevering.

His hair felt soft under her stroking. His skin was smooth and eatable, but...

...she sniffed him...

...he smelled different.

PhaHks had many smells that she recognized. His sweat after he'd gone for his daily run. His clean hair after a mineral swim. His sex after a night of coupling. The sea saltiness of his tears and the pungent reek of his vomit during one his frequent bouts of seemingly incurable stomach illness.

But this odor that swirled around her nostrils, this was unknown.

It was the smell of sickness, yes, but other.

It was stronger, coming from the whole of him, welling up from his deepest tissues. The smell was blood tainted with disease holding the flavor of rot.

Unhealthy, dangerous smell. It frightened her. Scared for him.

She had seen PhaHks enter emotional episodes where he would suddenly become morose for long periods. Teary-eyed, non-communicative, he'd stay awake for days, forsaking sleep and food until she was forced to threaten him into eating and resting; that he would be forced to do both through drugs if necessary.

These states of human instability would eventually pass, with or without her intervention.

Moody creature.

But he had appeared to adapt well to his life with her, although he still argued every decision she made concerning him. And he had still fought her with angry words and the occasional escape to the hills back on Romulus or running the farthest corners of Kol's moon-based home now. Did so whenever things in this life became too much for him; the life he was forced to live; the life she had created.

But how could so adaptable a creature also be so frail?

A Romulan under the same circumstances would have committed suicide almost immediately. Not due to emotional self-torture, but through simple logic.

Unacceptable state. Leave.

Leave even if it meant self-murder.

But PhaHks had stayed. Learned. Accepted. Kept on despite the invisible prison which she knew is how he thought of this life.

Strength was there in PhaHks.

Extraordinary, that the universe would see fit to place such an indomitable spirit inside such a fragile shell. Only to incorporate that spirit with its own fragility.

Human. Red creatures that struggled against impossibilities for survival only to, in the end, crumble under their own weaknesses.

And then a second irony.

They, not completely succumbing, continued the fight despite themselves. Creatures that risked certain death to remain unfettered.

A species that still lived, even in her time, under the instinct for freedom.

Confinement, even for PhaHks who had ceased looking for escape years before, was a daily test. Though he did not wear any chains, he struggled with his "prison", always.

Before he'd given up, once he had nearly died from exposure to the harsh creatures of the Romulan night. The sickness had been a good lesson for him she thought.

Trying to be free, he had come close to killing himself. Nearly died trying to live.

Illogical, ironic, unfathomable creature.

He defied understanding.

Veexow slowly, gently, guided PhaHks over to her bed and laid him down on it. Quickly locating her small supply of drugs (though it had been some time since she'd had cause to use them on him), pressured in a swift injection through the fabric of his shirt.

In a few seconds, his breathing evened out and he slept peacefully.

Impulsively she lay down with him, draping her one leg and arm across his legs and torso, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest. The silent rest of his sleep.

Somehow, she would bring that kind of peace into his waking life.

She would.

For him.

"I cannot reverse what has happened to you. Neither can I change what I am, just as I now know you cannot."

"But, if it's worth anything to you at all, know that as far as I am able, I have loved you, PhaHks. I realise that is probably not enough."

*

Veexow had gone to PhaHks the next night and lay down beside him in his bed. With a gentleness from her he had never known, she had stroked his cheek, his hair, his mouth, but with only feather light finger-tips.

Asking nothing of him, coming only to provide if he should so request, to comfort her lover in his terrible state.

They ended up making love when his lips, in needy supplication, sought out hers.

*

Veexow, one article at a time, removed his clothing.

There was no hurry. She was here for him more than anything. Above all else.

Later, for herself.

She lay him out on his bed and her practical, working hands slowed to a measured caress. She wanted to take her time now, if eternity would allow it.

She wanted to look at him.

Straddling his hips, she wanted him to see her looking.

Without even touching him, his penis responded to the smoldering desire in her black pupils; grew and changed; hardened into a thing of irresistible form. Thick and engorged; wet-tipped and ready.

His breathing quickened and shuddered a little, his lids half closed in the weakness of lust. His eyes looked far away to an ecstasy that was calling him.

Veexow licked her lips and he gasped.

She plunged forward as if diving to her destiny and stopped just above the silky head.

Kissed it once. A movement of lips just touching, as if in prayer.

Let her closed mouth rest on the moistened member for a delightful second before opening her mouth and swallowing him inch by inch. Lips conformed and molded to his shape on the journey down, until she reached almost to his base.

On the skyward return, tongue squeezed the sensitive underside.

She sucked.

So. Hard.

And.

So. Long.

Drawing her head up, craning her neck, she raised her eyes up as if to a vision, as though to the approval of an ancient god looking on.

And wanted to take PhaHks with her. Wanted to take him to a place where it would never stop. Wanted to learn and retain the perfect caliber of his private sex. He was the only instrument she wished to play, his desperate moans the only music.

Veexow quickened her motions with her mouth on his turgid cock and her hand cupping his swollen testicles, until his hips bucked, his red shaft hardening further.

She placed one finger in behind his delicate sacs and pressed softly up into his body. His blood would not escape until she released it. Press. Release. Press...

Press. Press.

PhaHks tangled his human hands in her non-human hair so she wouldn't stop anything.

She didn't until he bucked wildly and shot into her over and over, crying out as she swallowed and swallowed, as though his hot fluid was the source - the only thing - that gave her life.

In succeeding love plays, he or she administering the greater half, each came to know the others secrets. What tongue on what part, what touch and how often, what rhythm and how fast, repeatedly took each to the teetering edge of a precipice.

Veexow was over him, on him, watching him as she humped. She wanted to see herself fuck him and so would lean back on her muscled thighs, raise her body off of his wet, ruddy shoot and then slide back down, eyes never leaving it as it was buried in her again.

His breaths were the gasps of a newborn, his trembling the spasms of a fallen bird.

His beautifully long abdominal muscles flexed and relaxed then flexed again under her. She writhed and grinded above him. Splayed hands on male chest, tongue and mouth and teeth kissing, sucking and nibbling fine hair and finer skin.

As she moved, changing rhythm often, she watched his face looking back, relishing the responses her sexual ministrations evoked in him.

His features had aged. Tiny crows feet at the outer edges of his eyes were evident when he frowned or, like now, when he grimaced, wrapped within her promise.

His eyes half closed, she kissed them over and over. A soft, barely audible moan escaped his lips as she lengthened her movements, rocking faster.

At one point, he opened his eyes, pupils dilated from the drug of sex, reached out one hand and stroked her up sloping eyebrow as if it were another sexual part of her. It made her groan, that one sensual, beautiful touch.

"I'm FUCK-ing you, PhaHks!" Suddenly she had to cry it out. All in the Universe must hear it and know. "I'm fucking you....fucking you.... I'm going to fuck you forever....Forever." The Tongue of possession and one possessed.

"I love y-o-o-o-u-u-u-u..."

His answer, "U-h-h-h-h-h-n-n...", open mouthed. A surrendering.

She looked at him, committing to perfect memory every hair in his eyebrows, every uneven colored speck of green and brown in his "Ha-ZaHl" irises.

Taking his hands in both of hers she gently forced them above his head, using them as a brace so she could pump his granite even harder and longer.

One quick down thrust and he writhed in the pleasure and pain of it. She slowed again.

*Not too much or he will break.*

The fact that she could actually cause him pain while fucking him was incredibly erotic.

*But only sweet pain, my PhaHks.*

She wanted him to remember what she did to him here. She wanted him to see, feel and be swallowed by her. And to hear his own desperate sounds as she nudged him near climax and then eased him away again; building him into such a frenzy that every breath that came out of his mouth was a whine; a plea for her to end it.

She almost came when she heard that but stopped for a few seconds, seeing his lips move but unable to speak. Seeing his body spasm but unable to move. Feeling his lung's shallow gasping, but unable to draw a full breath.

She had performed a sexual hypnotism.

He was deep.

So vulnerably deep. And the fact that he was hers; every part of his body belonged to her and that thought, that he was unknown to all but her alone, that he was her forbidden fruit made her want to come again.

But she wouldn't. Not yet. Not until she was frenzied too. She wanted him to hear what he was doing to her as well.

She kissed his mouth and he opened for her. She sucked and bit his bottom lip. She twisted her fingers in his hair, holding his head to one side.

Kissed his cheek softly, barely touching. Kissed the laugh lines around his mouth that had deepened and nibbled hair, temples. Nothing remained untouched by her.

The fact that he had grown older just made her want him more than ever and she lay flat on him, breasts pressed onto his cool chest.

Veexow wanted to learn his body blindly, exploring with tactile hands. She wanted his seed inside her with Romulan fury. She had wanted him.

*I have always gotten what I wanted.*

She looked at his face, shiny with perspiration, and felt new throbbing at his flushed color, at that red hue that was still as alien as it was beautiful.

Not the color of Romulan blood, green-grey like an ice-covered moon, cold and dark, but red, like the burning surface of a star. Like a red sun that had existed for billions of years - ancient.

Existence enduring beyond all comprehension.

The faint lines at the corners of his alien eyes and the thought of his impending old age (he was beyond forty now) made her cry out.

*Let him think that I cry out in passion and not that he has divided, sewed and now severed my heart. PhaHks, what you have done.*

But she could deny no longer that she loved him, whatever that meant. No longer pretend but that she had done it to herself; come to treasure this human more than her power or wealth.

Or her life.

Now, as the love swelled, so did regret. She'd wasted so many years standing coldly, stupidly distant, as though to admit to loving him was a weakness. As if it were something to consider, to examine clinically but to avoid as if an unpalatable alien dish.

She focused on him again, rolled with him, breathed him and was almost satisfied.

He gave out a little cry of mercy when she executed some hard down thrusts of her pelvis and begged her.

She rocked him with long measured strokes, sliding up and down his thick cock until all she could feel was him.

Only PhaHks.

The planet beneath her vanished without form or pull. Gravity and substance evaporated. Bed, floor, walls and all things dissipated under their exhales.

All that existed was the velvet mass of him.

She was skewered on the center of the universe, loving every inch of it.

If it were possible, he became harder and she wetter, as his girth rammed her.

It was too much.

She finished it, writhing up and down, faster and faster, feeling his monument swell her particular spot until she herself could no longer stand the teasing of it.

He stiffened and cried aloud what she had done to him, his body jerking upward to meet her as he came inside her. She let out a cry, arching her back, trembling as wave after wave of satiation crashed...

...everywhere.

It was better than she had expected.

Better than she'd hoped.

*

When they had slipped passed the orgasms of sex and calmed into the pleasured after state, Veexow did not raise herself up and off him immediately.

PhaHks said nothing though puzzled by her stillness.

But this was how she wanted to see PhaHks. This is how she wanted to remember him. In many ways, but mostly like this. Connected.

One being.

Now that she had made love to him, and he to her her heart began its breaking.

Veexow knew, this night when she pulled up and allowed air to pass between their bodies, once she separated from his softening sex, it might this time be forever.

*

Kol was dead and DhraH'Ken had made it clear he now owned KeK.

Veexow knew it meant the sooner she, Rhengar and PhaHks made their departure, the better.

Two mornings later, she told Rhengar to prepare her shuttle to leave for good.

*

As she entered her chamber for the last time before fetching PhaHks from his (she'd thought it best he remain in his quarters now that DhraH'Ken was in control of things on KeK), Kol's old kitchen servant appeared from around a corner and followed her in.

He stood there in the door, waiting for her permission to speak. He was a quiet creature and she remembered he excellent preparation of Klingon fare. Had told him so on more than one occasion.

"What is it?" she asked, not really wishing to indulge in conversation when they were nearly ready to leave.

"I must clear things between us, you were kind to me," he said.

A cryptic parting message. She supposed he was thanking her, in his Blue-skinned BreeOn way, for enjoying his food.

"Thank-you for your service." Polite but did not encourage further exchange.

"They are coming, Madam."

She tended to her packing. "

"They"? They who?"

The BreOn fidgeted. "I overheard him speaking to them late last night. Only light years away now."

Veexow froze. Looked at him.

The BreeOn had told her everything without saying a thing really. DhraH'Ken might spare him if any doubts should surface.

She closed her spherical case. Went to him, and pressed something into his hand.

He looked at it. A jewel. One valuable enough to keep him in comfort for years to come.

"Thank-you," she said, looking directly at him, eye to eye. "Thank-you."

He bowed deeply and, checking over his shoulder, swiftly disappeared down the corridor.

Veexow lost no time in gathering up PhaHks, hurrying him through the vast complex headed for the Landing Bay, but saying nothing.

They entered the Hall of Conquests, had almost passed through when,

"Leaving so quickly?"

Veexow spun to see the massive Klingon, Beh'ah'Let in hand, watching them from the darkness. The Beh'ah'Let was dripping black blood.

She stepped in front of PhaHks protectively. "You said it was finished between us."

"Yes, I did. But Kol is dead now, and I have changed my mind. Your Romulan police would have arrived here on time to do it for me, but the servant - the dead one - warned you, so now I must repay the payment."

"That is not the way of a warrior." She mocked. She had no weapon. Her energy phaser had not been recharged for months and though an excellent fighter in hand to hand combat, her opponent had learned from infancy to execute swift, lethal strikes.

And he was outweighed her by one hundred pounds.

And he had a Klingon sword.

She was defenseless.

DhraH'Ken, seeing her step in front of PhaHks, laughed. "My argument is with you, Veexow. I decided that simply killing the human is not enough to balance the death of my father."

"And,.." As he spoke, he closed distance.

Veexow put the table between DhraH'Ken and herself and PhaHks.

"...The cook, before he died, also told me you had one of your own kind slaughtered for your little flower. That is not the way of a Romulan Commander."

Closer. Within striking distance.

"It appears we are both liars."

He lunged, clearing the table in a single leap.

Veexow used two countermeasures. First, she shoved PhaHks back behind her as hard as she could, getting him out of harms way. Next, she dived under the stone table and scrambled out the other side. That she had donned casual dress that morning was standing her well now.

PhaHks landed on his butt and watched the next moments unfold.

Veexow was on the losing side already, and things were about to get a whole lot worse for her. And then, for certain, him.

She was backed against the Wall of Many Battles, its entire surface adorned with weapons suitable for slicing and dicing. But all fastened in place and useless.

DhraH'Ken charged, raising his blade like a club to bring it down and divide her in two.

Veexow just managed to twist and dodge out from under it as the weapon clattered against the wall, dislodging some of the trophies.

One skittered across the floor to PhaHks.

He scrambled to pick it up. It weighed sixty pounds if it weighed an ounce. It felt solid. Potent.

Veexow was again trapped against the thick table, no escape in sight with DhraH'Ken poised to split her in half.

Once more, she turned the right way as the weapon dropped from above and it missed her most vital portions but for her right shoulder. One of the blade's many points grazed the slope of it, removing a slice of flesh.

Blood spurted and she cried out.

DhraH'Ken had the weapon already above her again and this time she would not be able to flinch, not while injured and in pain.

But PhaHks was there. Behind DhraH'Ken.

And he had a sword raised high over the Klingon.

And then he brought it down as if it was a sledge hammer and the Klingon the "Test of Strength" target at a fair ground.

It sliced through air and through DhraH'Ken's shoulder unhindered, lopping it off at the hinge. The weapon and the arm that held it tumbled away in a purple fountain.

DhraH'Ken screamed as he watched his warriors flesh and blood abandoned it's duty. In his overconfidence, he had forgotten about the warrior human.

PhaHks had not hesitated in lifting the sword high again.

This time, his aim had improved and it met DhraH'Ken's neck at the shoulder-join.

DhraH'Ken's head lolled to one side as gushers escaped into un-confining air.

The warrior's heart still beat but his death was assured as his bled-out body timbered to the stone floor.

PhaHks was not finished yet. Not by a long shot.

Payback time was what raged through his arteries and he began striking the fallen body.

His mind screamed and he swung and swung the blade again and again until the head separated from the shoulders and rolled across the floor, coming to rest at Veexow's feet. DhraH'Ken looked up at her with locked eyes.

DhraH'Ken.

DhraH'Ken was the reason for it all.

PhaHks brought the sword down hard. He was striking the other dead shoulder.

For brutal rape...

...*strike*!

For broken ribs...

...*hack*!

For two dead little girls...

...*Hack! Hack!*

For all the pain brought to every person everywhere in the universe.

...*slice*!

For dead fathers and missing children...

...*gouge*!

For abductions...

...*STRIKE!*

For comas, cancers, murders...

...*strike, strike, strike!*

Because of scars on body and in mind, PhaHks dismembered the Klingon. For all of it.

For her.

For himself.

He struck and struck until he fell back spent. The blade, finally free of its morbid task, lay still on the floor beside him, once again just part of a collection.

*

PhaHks wasn't finished, it seemed, when DhraH'Ken was dead. Veexow was very still and stared as a great battle was waged ten feet from her.

Simultaneously she attempted to halt the flow of her own blood and watch as PhaHks caused more to spray the room and those objects in it.

PhaHks, she, the table, the room, all became sticky with it. Blood mixed with tears rained down over them all.

She watched him as he hacked at the lifeless body of DhraH'Ken with all the fury the Klingon had shown but with a face of rage unlike any she had ever seen.

The face of pure hate and total fury. Of punishment, revenge and grief. Of macabre satisfaction. Twisted and wet with tears, it was not quite a sane face she saw.

But it was an very old face. She realised she was seeing thousands of years of violence rewarded for violence. Millennia of humans slaughtering their own kind, murdering and raping of neighbors and even their own children. For reasons political, immoral, demented. Out of religious fervor or selfish gain.

This is what the Romulan High Council, all those decades ago, had feared.

Not the civilized, polite Federation with its policies of non-interference and good will, but the base, animal brain of the species itself. Instincts that shaped the creatures known as Human.

Territorial. Greedy. Mankind bent on war and self- destruction.

Instincts that had survived through eons of adaptive change. Urges still present in the heart of them.

The Federation, springing as it had from these roots, had learned to use words and sugar sticks instead of violence and weapons.

This race had enveloped the galaxy.

The Romulan war with the Federation had been hard fought and slowly won, such had been the "die for life" inner force the humans had practiced throughout their bloodied history.

Until that telling war, the humans had thrived because they'd conquered their baser desires and refocused them on growth and knowledge.

PhaHks had killed DhraH'Ken to protect her.

But a simple death had not been enough for him, she'd seen it plainly, there on his face.

PhaHks had continued his kill, slaughtering the dead enemy to cleanse himself perhaps. Or maybe to send someone else to the underworld and give them a taste of it. To have an other drink of the cup of despair as he had for years.

How many strokes of that sword had been struck with her in mind?

She knew the image of him, mindlessly hacking at the gruesome corpse, would remain vivid in her forever.

But so would the next picture of PhaHks.

Collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, looking sick. Staring at the gory wrath as though it were something unreal and as though he had no idea how it had happened. Sweet innocence.

Whatever force in him that had surged to the surface had expelled itself and was gone. He was PhaHks again, the cloak of ancient fury lifted from him as if it had never been.

Then he came out of it, standing and coming to her.

Checking her wound, he removed his shirt, tore it to strips and carefully wrapped it around her upper arm.

PhaHks shivered in the cool air of the Hall.

"Thank-you, PhaHks. Are *you* all right?"

He said nothing but nodded.

Veexow took PhaHks' hand with her unhurt arm and led him to the Bay where Rhengar and the ship waited.

*

"Have you set our coordinates?"

Rhengar was not only an excellent therapist, but a first rate pilot. "Yes, M'Lady."

Veexow occupied the co-pilots seat in her small but well equipped shuttle craft. Every so often she would stare back at PhaHks who sat in one of the two passenger seats twenty feet to her rear. Slumped down he periodically rubbed his hands together, a sort of catatonic daze having had come over him.

Veexow had led him aboard the craft and he had come without protest or even seeming to notice what was happening.

Now his eyes remained closed and he was non- responsive. Things had folded back. She and PhaHks, it seemed, had returned to their beginnings.

"Rhengar."

"Yes, M'Lady."

"I want you to change our destination." As she said it, she input the new vectors herself.

Rhengar stared. "That planet's a myth."

"It was a well kept Federation secret. One known to only the very highest echelon of the Empire. To those in the elite Royal Council."

"But you are not of them."

"My father was. He told me stories of it when I was a child."

"Just stories."

"No, Rhengar. My father was also a Talshiar Commander. An expert in ferreting out the truth. Father never told me faerie tales."

"But why there, M'Lady?"

In answer, she looked back at PHaHks who remained unaware of his surroundings or their conversation.

"I see." Rhengar nodded. "But why, M'Lady, after all you've gone through to acquire..."

She glanced sharply at the doctor.

He finished carefully "...to save him?"

"What is salvation to one can be torture to another and..." her gaze rested sadly on PhaHks.

"...I have grown weary of causing pain."

"It is a long journey M'Lady, parts of three days."

When one elegant hand came to rest on his shoulder, he looked at it sharply. "Please, let him sleep through it." Veexow asked.

If it were possible, his heart softened even more towards her. *I will have this woman.* he thought but only brushed her cheek with his fingers. She had said please to him a great deal the last few months, and thank-you.

"For you, Dear Lady, anything. Always."

Rhengar fetched his medical supplies and the drugs he'd designed for PhaHks.

After PhaHks was drugged to deep slumber, Rhengar piloted the small ship to a new goal.

*

"PhaHks..."

"...PhaHks!" Veexow spoke louder.

She helped him sit forward. Crouched before him.

"Come," she said to him.

"Where?"

He was still very low.

"To a nice place. A familiar place. For you, the best place."

Rhengar had watched the exchange and administered a mild stimulant to hasten the humans progress towards consciousness.

"PhaHks?"

He had slept for thirty-eight hours.

Veexow took his hands in each of hers. "We should go now."

"Trrd. Why d'we haf d'go'gin?"

He was still in a half-asleep state.

Perhaps a good thing, she thought.

Veexow took his haggard face in her hands and kissed him very tenderly. "PhaHks, please, just this once, trust me."

She helped him to rise and he didn't resist.

"Trust me."

*

** Never.

PhaHks had never lived in her world.

He had only waited in it.

Waited and held onto hope like a breath suspended.

Veexow tried to pull him in, wanted a last close touch but instead he stepped away, leaving only a few fingers entwined in her outstretched hand.

It came to her then.

It came to her as they stood before The Guardian of Forever. The Portal that lived and saw all the living while situated upon a forsaken and lifeless planetoid.

It came to her that it was not hurting him to leave. Not like it was hurting her.

His brown eyes, flecked as they were with green and gold - the colors of Earth - did not moisten at this leaving.

He wanted to go.

She wondered if she might stop breathing. She wondered if she would have the strength to finally release his hand and as she wondered it, he pulled it free.

He took two steps back, allowing her no opportunity to clasp it again. No room to change her mind.

He knew her well.

And he was going to leave without saying another word to her.

She was wrong.

"Thank you." They'd been spoken out of gratitude. Relief. She couldn't tell.

He looked away to his right, to distant cliff faces and electric sky, eyes closing once, shutting out so many things now, then looked back at her.

"I want, I hope..."

Whatever it was he was trying to say, she wanted to hear it desperately. But mostly, she wanted to smell and feel him again. She wanted him to stay.

By stepping away and widening the gap of rocky soil between them, he had been right. Had he given her another minute, she might have convinced herself to make him stay. Convinced herself that she could somehow make him want to.

"I hope..." He didn't finish. Shaking his head sadly, a bone-deep sigh was the last thing she heard from his lips before he was turning away - suddenly - facing away.

Veexow gasped softly. Seeing his body turn, he was taking nothing of her with him.

The pain.

PhaHks had rejected her touch, left her space, and now was severing his physical self along with his mind and heart.

The pain of it.

He was removing everything he was from her and doing so willingly. Happily.

Veexow wondered now if she had ever dwelled in him.

He gathered up the physical part of himself that he *had* allowed into her world and was set to again offer it and all he was up to his own time where his spirit dwelled. The life he had never really left.

Somewhere deep in unexplored regions of her passions, something previously undiscovered and alive burst and died. When he stepped through the portal, all that was left was the shriveled skin of that new death, already brittling inside her.

Veexow grieved as a Romulan: whole bodied, whole minded, but no outward sign. If she had known how to weep, she wondered if it would have helped.

Veexow was alone now before The Guardian.

Nothing had changed in her universe. The Empire remained.

There were no human beings.

She was who she had been. Perhaps.

On the planet, PhaHks had stepped through and back.

Now, he was there. Already. In his time and life. His human filled earth.

The space-time, the exact moment in the continuum, had been relatively easy to calculate.

Eight years to the day that he had been taken she had returned him.

She wanted him to remember her. Could not have bourn his having no memory of her and what they had shared, all of it.

However small a portion of him she had gleaned, in the end, it had been worth it.

Simple to do the sending of him back.

The loss she felt was the loss of every wonderful thing she had ever known.

Imagining him still alive and fighting and beautiful... was some comfort.

Now, in her time no humans breathed but for the tiny body suspended within her womb. Her secret.

She could have told him. Maybe it would have kept him back. Perhaps he might have stayed, then, willingly.

Perhaps not.

But bribery? Coercion?

No. Her Romulan pride had kept her silent.

She could hurt him no longer.

But she had kept something alive.

Half PhaHks.

Her heart panged even now, his name though unspoken.

It had been so easy to take him from the Ferengi. So simple to confine and study him, lock him away and observe.

Not so simple when she began to love him. His kind of love; human. Illogical and impassioned. An unquantifiable joining that had made her near mad with desire, spurring her with a drive to protect him no matter what the price.

Impossible, then, to see chains, however figurative, ever again encircle his wrists.

The sadness of his abduction, the uncontrollable events that had led to the dissolving of her comfortable existence, this terrible fate that had caused two voyagers over an eternity of time and distance to by chance cross each other had, in the end, twisted them together.

Adversity has caused a mating of enemies, each blind in their own way. Each having learned dependance upon the other so to survive the darkness.

Now this same destiny had sheared them apart and she, in all those years of battles and lovemaking, had never heard him utter her name. It had fallen from his lips to greet her, not once.

Veexow would never hear him speak it now.

Too much pain caused for her to have even apologized for it, and so she would never know its peace.

She had lied to him for a long time. Lied for herself, wanting him to stay. Could not - would not lose him! Impossible to bear!

Until his own anguish at living in her world, the hopelessness on his face that terrible day.

His Hay-zahl eyes drained of animation, she could no longer look upon and live herself.

The ecstasy of love had bound her to him with such exquisite torture that she could not breath comfortably unless she'd known how he was hour to hour; that he still lived; that he was all right.

How much worse the agony in letting him go.

At the Guardian, she'd been calm, cool and logical as her ancient Vulcan ancestry allowed her to be when needed.

She'd watched him walk through the portal without looking back and had not flinched. Had not done what her heart begged of her, to run after him, to hold him back, to keep him with her forever. Or go with him.

But she could no more easily have existed in his world than he had in hers.

Yet he had been simply a man.

When he had stepped through and was gone, as it swallowed him from her reach forever, grief enclosed her heart in its frozen fist. She thought her Romulan soul might go mad.

Empty wind spoke to her of him and his absence.

And when it whistled down through the rocks as that pale yellow sun dipped behind jagged hills, only then did she come to understand what she had lost.

She ceased to feel as a Romulan Commander. Knew it had happened long before.

Wealth.

Power.

Position.

Less than nothing.

Meaningless.

Her small understanding of human love had made her send him back against all more powerful desires that said bind him.

Surprised at how strong her ancient Vulcan heritage really was. The urge to seize him had almost been beyond her control. An insane urge to possess, outside all reason.

But his grieving face and eyes that begged had defeated those ancient instincts to impotence.

All that mattered had been him. All that remained was him. A small part of him inside her.

A tiny, frail, precious piece that was already growing stronger. Hidden but alive. A beating half-human heart.

She lay her hand upon her already swelling belly, and signaled Rhengar to beam her up.

*

Veexow returned to her small vessel and to her small room. There she let the grief have full sway for a while until exhaustion demanded she rest.

When Rhengar entered unannounced, it awakened her from a dream that might have been pleasant but it slipped away and lost form like a breaking wave on a distant shore.

"Dear Veexow. You should eat."

He'd brought food and set it on her desk.

She sat up. "Rhengar. Always practical."

He sat beside her. "Your health is paramount. Especially now."

Veexow sat up, saying nothing and making no move toward the meal he had brought.

Interpreting her silence as a need to be alone, he rose to leave.

When he reached the door, she called him back.

"Rhengar. Do you love me?"

He turned, looking at her beauty and the open sorrow on her features. She was showing her self to him for perhaps the first time in his memory. "I think you know the answer to that."

She bowed her head. "Yes." Acknowledging what she'd known for seven decades, that he was passionately in love with her. "What would you do for me?"

He spoke without hesitation. "I would do anything for M'Lady."

"NO! Not "M'Lady"! For ME, the one you say you love! Do you love me with all your soul and life?!"

He knew she was saying: *As I loved him?* He answered, "I would die for you."

"I do not need you to die for me, I need you to make him live again."

Rhengar peered at her unblinking. "What are you saying?"

"You know what I'm saying. I'm pregnant with Phahks' child and I intend this baby to be born and grow up and live as freely and as beautifully as he lives."

She stood, the passion in her voice becoming tempered with reason, plans being laid out, set in motion. "I'm saying I want you to factor out my DNA in this fetus, I want all Romulan element removed from his child. I wish it to be fully human."

"The technology is available, M'Lady, but the risk to the child is high, I do not know if it is possible."

"It is possible, we will do it. We must."

She grasped his arm, to *make* him understand.

"We, - we took on a role that did not belong to us, that of gods. We judged another sentient race as unfit - "

*PhaHks. PhaHks unfit?! Passionate. Driven. Spiritual, sorrowful, sexual, beautiful PhaHks!....so beautiful...*

"- we decided their fate, their right to exist in this universe and we were wrong! We were arrogant. Stupid! I have learned that they had as much right, maybe more to be here."

"I want this child to be human. I want it to be unstained with the guilt of his mother whose own people would have murdered his father and his own kind. That is a guilt I will have to carry until the day I die."

"Do you know what it is you ask of me? Do you understand the step you are taking? You are speaking of the reintroduction of the human species in the galaxy, in our time."

"I understand what I am saying. Will you do it? Will you do it for me if not for him?"

"I love you, Veexow. You know yourself that I will do it."

She had been standing before him, every muscle tense with the depth of her passion, of what she wanted. Now she visibly relaxed, released his arm and turned away. Walked to the food he had brought, looking at it, making no move to eat.

Suddenly, Rhengar was beside her, laying a hand upon her shoulder, turning her away from the tray of vegetables and from whatever memories might be found there.

"This grieving will end, Veexow, someday. Eventually you will be yourself again. You will feel again."

"Who I was, Rhengar, is dead. But as long as he lives in this child, I will continue. For him, I must."

"You always have. You have always survived, anything."

"But to feel again? What does that mean? Feel what? What should I feel?"

"Something besides grief."

She sighed, irritated at the thought. "Maybe that is what I want to feel. What else is there?" Her tone mocked the impossible.

"If not those, perhaps love."

"No. It costs too much. I will never forget what it has cost me, what it is costing me. I've lost everything including that for which the sacrifices were made. But I would still love him again. I would do everything all over again. Don't you understand? I will never forget him. I CAN never forget."

Rhengar took her hand and held it tightly, bringing it up to his strong, young chest, his other hand touched her face with such compassion, she almost couldn't meet his eyes for fear of seeing her pain in them.

"Never?"

He leaned in and kissed her, his lips saying for him what his words could not. She let him, wondering if her heart could possibly break anymore than it already had.

She loved PhaHks. She did not have him.

She had Rhengar. Did not deserve him.

"Perhaps, one day, Veexow, you'll let me help you forget."

*

PhaHks Epilogue

EARTH.

There it was. Right in the phone book: "Scully, D.K., MD., Quantico." He lifted the receiver and almost dropped it. Wiped his hand on the side of his coat. Sweaty palms.

He was scared shitless for some reason.

*Jesus, it's *her*, not a stranger. She'll be happy.*

She wouldn't hang up, would she, thinking it was some sick joke? Fuck.

Hand shaking, he pressed the little numbered, square buttons that would connect him.

Anyone passing by the phone booth would have seen a tall, brunette, good looking man in faded jeans and blue T-shirt, a worse for wear trench coat hung losely about slumping shoulders. Anyone caring to look closer might see exaustion etched into the flesh around the dialated eyes. Eyes that looked scared and tired and relieved all at once.

Anyone stopping to look would notice him occassionally covering those eyes with his free hand. They would see that he was having difficulties. That he was trembling and crying a little and failing to keep it completely hidden.

No one stopped.

He heard it ring once on the other end.

Twice.

Would she even be there at this hour?

Eight years, he thought.

Eight....

...*Years!*.

I'm thirty-seven years old.

It's Two-thousand, Six.

Thirty-seven plus eight...

...forty-five. A forty-five year old man.

It was gone,...fucking gone,..

Once they'd lost nine minutes with no memories.

She hadn't believed him.

Now what he remembered bunched together behind his minds eye, orbiting a black hole. A legion of demons called. The event horizon of his soul.

Eight. Forty-five.

The values really had no meaning. He forced himself to listen to the tiny chirp of a ringing phone.

*Treeeep, treeeep...*

He didn't want to go insane quite yet.

Five rings.

Had Scully moved on? Other job? Better life? He didn't know. But he knew the year so she must have.

He'd seen himself once in a bathroom mirror, after breaking into that familiar house and taking some clothes. Brown hair now not all brown. Face not all smooth anymore, and his eyes!

His eyes had scared him. Sunken, except he was not that much underweight, and smudged underneath with grey bags. And wrinkles where there'd been none. They'd looked like someone else's eyes.

Left as himself and came home a stranger. A haunted creature that was no longer familiar with its own shell. Like a trapped animal which had chewed off its own limb to escape, he'd come home missing something. Half a soul. Some of his mind.

Now that he was among remembered things,...

...he didn't have to run here. No-one took from him, but left him alone, undisturbed, in his phone booth...

...he was truly afraid.

As for how he had arrived there...

His mind was still pretty fuzzy on that point. He did remember crawling over rocks, he did recall stepping through a...doorway,......a passage?, something like that.

Then, dressed in only dusty white shirt and trousers, the next thing he recalled was walking along a dirt road somewhere on a planet called Earth and he couldn't remember where he'd left his car.

After finding out he had no weapon, keys, phone or money, he'd sat down on the scrubby rise at the side of the gravel road and puzzled on it for a while. Puzzled for ten, fifteen minutes. Couldn't make sense of it.

The sky was charcoal against which hung a white, fingernail moon. The air smelled good and the dirt felt right. The trees were normal. Coniferous, pine odor. Deciduous, their brown leaves teased from their hold in a feeble night breeze and dropping.

When he'd reached a two-lane highway, he began to see discarded fast-food cartons and empty cigarette packages and knew for sure he was where he should be, as far as he could remember. Sort of.

But he was - oh - so tired. That really deep, bone-aching weariness that just made you want to curl up where you were and fuck it all.

But instead he walked along the highway's ditch, more-or-less in the right direction he thought.

Found an old Times magazine, thrilled at seeing something so ordinary. Read the caption: The Breaking of the Tech' Barrier; Fifty Years of Scientific Revolution.

Then he saw the date:

2005.

December, 2005.

His hands shook so badly that the letters blurred.

It was fall, it was still warm out at night. Eyes burning, he looked at grass and trees. Dead leaves. They were falling.

Autumn. Not winter. So it must be 2006. September maybe.

And then his legs turned to water when terror struck. Guts quivering, he fell to his knees and then to his elbows in order to contain it.

Toppling to all fours, crushing the heart-bursting, dirtied glossy cover to his face to absorb the tears or the blood or whatever it was that was spurting out of his eyes and pouring down his cheeks, he was broken.

Sobbed. Little whines escaped his lips, words formed within his throat and on his mouth that never made it to his intellect. Noises that made sense only in the context of the greatest grief imaginable. The power of them had no place in everyday language.

Crashed and burned, metaphorically speaking.

Hours later, he'd turned away from that mirror, the mirror in his mothers house, afraid for himself and, for some reason, ashamed.

He'd found no money anywhere there, except for a bit of change in his mother's emergency jar tucked away behind the books on the living room shelves. It was only enough for public transportation and a couple of phone calls, so he'd grabbed the only source of food in the pantry, dried macaroni, and shoved a handful into his coat pocket. Mom wasn't home.

Somehow he knew she was dead.

But he stopped thinking about her. And the calendar date. On purpose.

He tightly clutched the phone until his fingers ached. A good, honest, self inflicted hurt.

Every so often, he popped a few macaronies into his mouth and munched loudly. At least it was filling the hollow in his stomach.

He wished he could have dressed better, taken the time to shower, maybe brushed his teeth, but the house'd been wired with a silent alarm and he hadn't wanted to take any chances by staying too long. Showing up after...a long time and breaking in would be an easier matter to present to Scully than to the Chilmark police department.

At least he hoped so. Her face caught in his memory, making him smile - inside, not outside - still, it didn't come easy.

That pretty face.

Suddenly his eyes filled and tears leaked out beneath fingers desperately trying to keep them in. Crying made him tired.

Drew in a long, shuddering breath for control.

On the sixth ring, a woman answered.

"Thank-you for waiting, Doctor Scully's office."

Not her.

Must be a secretary. *Good for you, Scully.*

He managed to get out a stammered question, one hand squeezing his eyes shut, the other hand holding the phone to his ear, knuckles white.

He was crying freely now but somehow keeping the sobs out of the mouthpiece.

In between questions, lots of little gasps though.

The woman was speaking, giving him answers.

Yes, Doctor Scully was in. No, she was in the middle of her evening class. Do you want to leave a message? Yes, the Doctor is Chief pathologist. What do you mean, is she married??

*Fucking hell! Did I ask that?! FUCK!*

The womans voice turned from polite irritation to annoyed suspicion. "Who is this? I am not authorized to give out personal information!" The last words he heard before she hung up.

He remembered another number, shocking himself. Pretty good after...after no telephones.

Pushed the right buttons.

He guessed she wasn't married because she was still using her last name. But then, she might anyway.

One ring.

"Scully." The disembodied voice announced neutrally.

He stopped breathing. Felt like sinking to his knees and passing out. But that would have to wait for a better time and place. Still, he couldn't make his tongue work. Say something!, he begged the person at the other end.

"Hello?" Now she sounded annoyed. He must have interrupted a speech to her students or something.

Lungs starved for air, he gasped, and the tears would not stop.

Goddamn it, it should be easier than this. Every word he'd practiced scattered in the wind like dust.

"Pervert!" The line went dead.

She must have heard his heavy breathing and thought he was some kind of bored deviant getting his rocks off.

Almost the good old days.

It should be funny and if he could stop crying like a baby, he would laugh.

He redialed, hand trembling so bad he might have missed a couple numbers.

"Hello?!" this time she was angry and her tone had said: "If you don't say something intelligent immediately I'm hanging up and I won't be answering a third time, asshole!"

The power in her voice, the beautiful fire that came through with that one word warmed his soul like no fifty year old bottle of scotch ever could. It helped him find his voice.

And it almost stopped the tears. Not quite.

"Sc-scully." It had come out all wrong, a sob wrapped in a whisper but it would have to do.

"Hu..hello? Who IS this?"

At least she'd heard it this time.

His muscles turned to liquid and the phone dropped away momentarily. He forced it back. After two droughts of air:

"Scully."

Clearer this time, but he couldn't get out anything else. Nothing came to mind. Everything he'd rehearsed seemed ridiculous now. For the first time in,...in...so long, he really wanted to speak and couldn't make it work.

The seconds of dead silence that followed terrified him.

"WHO is this?" she asked again. Now she was whispering, fearful, puzzled. Afraid to believe.

"It's me." *Brilliant!* But it was a beginning and his heart was pleading. Don't hang up! He wanted to say it but didn't. He wanted to say other things, right then, while he had the chance, before fate decided to remove the opportunity. But then fate had brought him here.

"Meet me?" It was a question and it was all he could think of. His soul and life and everything begged for her to believe.

Her answer was a sharp intake of breath that caused a sob to escape him, so terrified that she would hang up, that she wouldn't believe her own ears. Or that she might believe and it would be too much for her.

A dial tone would kill him.

It was agonizing, that long minute or more of silence but for her quick breaths through the line into his ear. His heart pumped painfully with her uncertainty and his own fright. He felt like a six year old lost at the World's Fair. Long, sickening waves of fright.

He was not a child.

He was a grown man.

And what happened in the next few seconds or so would either save or destroy him. Everything depended on it.

"Where?" so far away, she had sounded. Light years distant. So faint. A whispered scream trying to reach him across years of separation.

He couldn't stop crying but it felt good now because it wasn't from fear of darkness or hopelessness, but from possibility. From the faint light up ahead of this black tunnel he'd been stumbling through. He wanted to see her see him as she always had. If she saw him and believed, he would be real again.

It was all he wanted, to be in her sight and feel alive.

Salvation.

Scully.

He forced syllables out through his mouth. "Bus station. Downtown. Gate 23." Telegraphically said. Complete sentences still impossible.

Somehow, she'd located her own voice box. "Stay there. Don't leave. Just stay where you are. I'm coming right now, okay? Don't go ANYwhere."

As if he was planning on going anywhere ever again as long as he lived.

Whispered "Okay." Unable to manage anything else and didn't want to hang up, either, the voice on the other end his only hold on gravity and substantial things. He couldn't bear to sever that tenuous connection through fiber optics to them or her, not until she hung up and did it for him.

He replaced the phone before the dial tone came through, wiped his eyes, and made his way back through the doors into the building. Off the busy street and into the hustle and bustle of the crowded Greyhound station.

Gate 23 was about in the middle. He choose it because it was central, no other reason really. It didn't stand out any more than any other gate but it was the easiest decision.

He didn't sit down in the hard, plastic uniform chairs or lean against the wall, he just turned in little circles, feet shuffling, covering about six square feet every minute or so.

Circled where people milled around and moved passed him, some sitting with their suitcases and griping about the lateness of their connections. Some drank coffee out of Styrofoam cups.

The aroma of coffee, his first since.... it came to him, eight years, made his mouth water. It was physical torture. He had forgotten how good it smelled. Couldn't remember how it tasted. His stomach churned acid and uncooked macaroni.

Small circles. Eight year old habit.

He looked for her, afraid of the what if's. What if he didn't recognize her, or if she didn't know him?

If she couldn't find him.

If she changed her mind.

If she was furious at him and hated him for leaving without warning and returning the same way.

But to see recognition in her eyes when she looked at him would make it all better. To know he was not a stranger to *her*.

Because he was so to himself.

It wasn't much to ask but still hard to hold on to; to hope for; to believe in that little, teetering maybe.

*

Doctor Scully shut off her cell phone, excused her class, removed her goggles and hair-cap, grabbed her white lab-coat and made a fast dash for the door, mumbling "family emergency" to her wide-eyed pupils.

Out of the room and the building, into her car and out of the basement parking garage, driving as fast as she dared. As she handled the wheel and the quick turns she prayed, her first prayer in a long while to her God who had been too silent these last years: *Let this happen. I need this. As much as I think I still need you, I need this more. I need him.*

Keeping emotions strictly in check, she swallowed apprehension and doubt. There would be no hesitation in her if - when - she found him, she allowed no room for it anymore. But, for right now, because she was still a scientist and functioned and thought as one, she would await the evidence before committing herself to the truth of him. Allow no opportunities for hope unless this time she saw with her own eyes the very living reason for that hope.

Maybe she'd be able to rebuild her faith if this wasn't just all a terrible mistake. Someone's cruel joke.

She thought about phoning her old boss, Walter Skinner, now Director of the F.B.I. but no, she would wait until she knew first. Until she found out what the voice on the phone wanted and there was some sort of order to it all.

Couldn't even let herself *think* his name yet. It wouldn't do to allow too much in there, in that spot in the center of her chest which was already swelling.

What to say if he were real? The hundred questions she'd for years stored away under mental lock and key meant nothing now. Just words and what were they? Noise.

Stupid to have thought that answers were always the crucial goal.

To hell with answers. What was really important had nothing to do with pat knowledge. Things like friend- ship and warmth, happiness and hope, forgiveness and love. Those were worth seeking and fighting for.

Few words had been spoken during that phone call.

But enough.

Her eyes misted. It had sounded like him.

*God, if you're listening today, listen to me. If you want me to believe in miracles, then give me one. Let it BE him.*

She parked her Explorer right outside, illegally, not giving a shit. Let them ticket and tow it!

Taking only her keys and dressed still in her working greens, she tried not to run into the bus terminal, forcing her limbs to behave as normally as possible under the rush of adrenaline. Ignored the looks people gave her stained medical garb.

So many people. Everywhere, blocking her view. Where the hell did they all come from? Why don't they go home?

She couldn't see squat.

The doctor would have given anything if she'd only worn her three inch heels that morning. But standing lectures and hours of being on ones feet meant low heels or better yet, sneakers.

She strained to raise herself up above the sea of human heads.

*Tall. He's tall. Look for tall and dark.*

Minutes went by and her mind left the pseudo calmness of reason, entering the blunt rush of panic. Goddamn it, she couldn't see!

Then she did. The back of a dark head that reached an inch, two, above most others. It was the right shape, the right shade.

She opened her valve of possibilities and let a little of it flow freely. Bit her lip from the painful flutter inside her.

Hope was beating its wings.

She moved closer, picking up her pace, finding her way passed bodies.

The hair color looked the same. Stance, the same. Movement appeared the same.

Hurry.

Then the one that seemed to fit turned her way but missed her, looked passed her, not seeing.

She stopped, clamped a hand over her mouth when the rest of him fell into place within the mental template of her mind, stifling a sob.

My God.

It was.

Yes.

*MyGodMyGod*.

No. Have to touch first.

Make sure.

She walked more quickly, pushing passed strangers, getting them out of the way, all meaningless obstacles.

Kept her eyes forward, not letting them drop for an instant, not blinking lest she lose sight of what might have been an apparition but, by all that was holy, surely was not.

Quickly.

Then she saw his eyes on her. And they fit too.

God, they were the same eyes! They had the same dark depth and the same sorrow.

Maybe more.

A laugh escaped her, boiling up out of an unbelievable joy. It mixed with her quiet choked-back sobs. Her lips trembled.

"Ohmygod, ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod..." Rushing through the crowd who no longer existed or mattered.

Nothing else did now. Or ever would.

Not like this.

*

When he saw her, terrible years and incomprehensible distance shriveled to twenty normal steps.

Tears he'd conquered threatened to resurface at that first sight but he beat them down.

She was closing the last thirty feet, finding a quicker path between dozens of bodies while her eyes never left him at all. Her hair was shorter, wavier, lighter and softly framed those beautiful features that had almost faded away in his mind forever. She was older, must be, yes, but nothing had touched her beauty.

Perfection and paradise walked toward him.

*

He'd prepared himself to embrace her tightly, apologize, hold her hand, beg forgiveness, defend himself against the anger he knew was coming - anything to keep her there. Anything in the world.

Was not prepared when she, (finally reaching him), gathered his shoulders in her arms and then his head between her palms, pulled him down and kissed his lips.

Then kissed him again. And again, trembling and clutching at him, not letting go of any part of him.

She kissed him, little kisses and then longer ones and back to little ones.

Heat rushed up his torso to his head when her meaning became obvious to his dulled senses. It was no accident, this. She knew who he was and she wanted to do this; had wanted it and been denied for years. She meant to tell him her meaning silently with her mouth and that it should have been said long ago, before the hard lesson had to be learned. She was apologizing herself in a way.

He responded now, kissing back, then buried his face in her soft neck, smelling her perfume and couldn't stop the shaking in his shoulders or the old, decomposed, grief anymore.

"I'm sorry-I'm-sorry-I'm so sorry-I'm sorry..."

She clung to him, still as an anchor in a shallow lake.

"It's okay. It doesn't matter. It's okay. You're here. You're here with me. It's okay now..." Lifted his face to kiss him again.

For minutes upon minutes they stayed that way, on their tiny island, while the world lapped at their edges.

Then, strangely, Mulder pulled back, "Scully?"

She bit her lip then. His face. She'd seen the expression before during her medical internship. The time when she'd spent a few weeks in an ER before switching to pathology when she found she couldn't take seeing that face anymore.

The face of shock and tragedy. The faces people wore when they were told that their son or their daughter, their husband or wife or whole family was dead. That their broken and bleeding bodies couldn't be saved.

Or the face of the victim on the emergency room table, surrounded by machines and strangers, when they knew they were in big trouble. When they could see by the look in the nurses eyes that they were dying.

Just like the face Mulder wore now.

"Scully. Where've you been?"

"Well, you know, Mulder,...r-right here." He had sounded as if they'd missed each other at coffee break. "Just waiting for you,...like always." She forced an apologetic smile. Let him think it.

She drank in the remembered face, seeing unfamiliar faded scars on cheek and forehead. And, through his torn T-shirt, a painful looking one in the hollow of his shoulder. It was an unusual shape. It was pale, a deeper scar than the others, the flesh surrounding it puckered. She noted every new tiny fact but asked nothing. That he was warm under her hands was more than enough. Plenty.

To hell with questions.

Fuck the truth.

"I need to ask you something," he said, his face buried in her collar, his voice hoarse.

She kept her cheek against his, if for her comfort alone, so she could keep him from vanishing into nothing. She hadn't the courage to let go just yet. "Anything."

His breath was tiny wisps of warmth on her neck, he was buried in her hair and skin. Just where she wanted him.

"Are you married?"

She smiled a little. Rueful. Interesting first question. She'd just kissed him harder than she'd kissed anyone. It had been spontaneous and, she felt, absolutely necessary, but completely unexpected for both of them she thought. Now he needed to know if it was the only time.

He seemed to be existing in two mental places at once. Switching back and forth from today to years ago and what horrors they had held for him, and back to today.

He was so vulnerable. On the proverbial knife's edge. One misstep on her part...

But he wanted to know.

HAD to know if what he was holding was her and was something he could keep - hold onto like a life jacket - or did she belong elsewhere? Were things going to be the same or was she just some kind of cruel joke god was playing on him.

And of all the things for him to have said or asked after eight agonizing years, it was completely Mulder that it was not only one she couldn't possibly have guessed, but one that, in a way, involved sex. She had to chuckle.

"Divorced." She felt his arms tighten.

He was glad. "Good. Then I want...I-I want you to...m-marry me, Scully,...please."

She hadn't expected that. "Um, marry you?" Not trepidation, strangely enough, or doubt, just surprise.

He straightened and looked down at her sweetly shocked expression. "I d-don't ever want to...lose y-you. I couldn't survive it. Never. Please."

Scully stared. Really stared. He looked physically exhausted. He looked sick and frightened and he was stuttering. Mental exhaustion too.

Something had reached inside him in those missing years and pulled him inside-out. Taken him apart.

Crushed him.

She didn't know what or who or just how bad or if he was beyond repair. Mere damage control would this time be out of the question.

"I've missed you," she said to him. "But I think we should take this one step at a time."

"Scully - "

"-Mulder....I just left a classroom full of med-students standing over a partially dissected corpse..."

...Terrible images against his will. Body parts swam through murky memories. People. Dead and dismembered and displayed on shiny metal slabs. On display screens with incomprehensible symbols...

His head hurt.

..."I don't even remember what I said to them before I ran out of there"... She touched his hollow cheek. "And you're not well."

"Scully, I need to know...I need an answer...something. I don't,...don't knuh-know what's going on..." He began to shake. Really shake. A high fever trembling that started somewhere and ended everywhere.

A panic attack? she wondered. Scully felt sure he was near to collapsing from fatigue. His eye bags were so deep and dark, they looked as if they'd been carved into the flesh with a spoon. Something had made a long meal of him, and the simple task of speaking was sucking up the leftovers.

Whatever he had been through, even in just the last few hours, all the emotions, all the tears and possibly the shock of seeing her again, was costing him even more. She had to get him out of there and to a hospital, or at least home.

Her place.

"Please, Scully."

This is insane, she thought. Only Mulder could show up out of thin air looking like an eight year binge hang-over, ask something like that and pull it off.

He was ill. He needed rest, food and drugs. Not a honeymoon.

At his eyes brimming with a bit of hope and a lot of fear, she bit off anymore excuses, either for him or herself.

He needs something to trust.

I need him.

Admit it.

Then she spoke furiously, not leaving either of them wondering a minute longer. "Yes, okay. Yes." Nodded. *Fuck. Of course!* She'd been waiting to say it for - what? - ten, twelve years? No beating around the bush anymore. "Yes."

"There's a...a condition."

She looked up at him incredulously. "What? What kind of condition?"

He poured the words out, like he wanted to get them over with. "I don't..ruh-really k-know what's happened to me..."

His voice broke. The anguish in it was painful to her ears and what his face showed nearly made her heart stop. But she made efforts to follow his jumbling sentences.

"...Don't ask me what..where I've be...what's happened. I c-c-can't talk about it, I don't kn-know. A-and you'd th-think I was crazy, and,"

Then in a barely audible voice, terrified of something he could not look at.

"...I don't...I don't think I ever wi-will...be able to. M-maybe I...I could be...I just can't." Pressed the side of his face against her clean hair. "Suh-sorry."

She kissed that face. "I know it was something horrible but it's over now. I promise you, I won't ever ask." She held his head between her hands, "Not until you want me to." Stroked the faint scar above his right eyebrow. "Anything, Mulder. Anything to keep you here."

"I think it was something...r-really bad...." He wanted to tell her though, even though it made his guts twist and melt in fresh fear. Even though the swirling, nightmare images were as starkly ugly as she was softly beautiful.

- Even though he couldn't separate them from the terror in his mind or from the pain in his body.

- Even though they were intertwined within those elements like cancerous tendrils.

Even though all of that - her words of promise had reached one loving hand through the bars of his polluted, self-erected isolation, and warmed him.

So maybe someday he could open it wide and she would cross that dirty threshold.

"It doesn't matter, Mulder..."

"Scully, there's something else..."

She looked at his troubled face. "Whatever it is, I'll understand, okay?"

He swallowed. Nodded. "I'm...there's,...I-I'm totally...." He frowned at himself. Took a breath and tried again. "I think...I think I'm completely...fuh-fucked up, you know," he said it as if he were describing a disease. And warning her. Do you know what you're getting? he was saying. Do you know what you're in for?

"I don't care, Mulder." If he'd had two heads, she'd have kissed both of them.

"Scully..."

Physically, emotionally, he did remember some things.

But mostly the time that he was gone tumbled with visions of terror and pain. He was a fallen prophet being punished for sins, replete with the dreams of demons.

Tears started again. It was as if he was ill with anguish and his body was trying to fix it, leach it all out, excrete the terror and hurt like sweat. They came steady and silent, soaking through her working clothes to her skin underneath as she hugged him close.

"Please help me." Barely audible, it drifted into her right ear. It was not the whimper of the slightly suffering nor the cry of the mildly distraught in search of quick healing. No. It was an against-all-odds last request, the faint shriek of the hopelessly damaged. It was a death plea. One that contained no expectations for salvation.

So would the forgotten scream from Purgatory.

She bit her lip. Mulder was not, she sadly realized, even asking for her to be his final rescuer. All he wanted was to be brought back to the surface. One quick tug to keep from going down forever, even if she would only pass than responsibility onto another.

But she would do much more than that.

Eventually he would of course need a hospital and a thorough going over, and then she'd call Skinner. But for now her only prescription for Mulder was a bath, a soft bed, a gentle hand and sleep. For now the destination was home.

Everything else could wait.

His quiet shaking crumbled the last of her control and she had no voice with which to answer. But two hands would do just as well as she, protectively, held him and, possessively, pressed her face into his shoulder, nuzzling him.

"Oh, baby..." Tender words mouthed silently and she would have sliced out her soul and served it up to Satan on Melba-toast if it would've softened her old partner's pain.

So this was loving someone.

"It's me, Mulder, it's me. It's us. You and me, okay? You and me. Just us, okay?" Held him tighter. "Both of us."

It didn't stop the shaking in his frame, but his breathing slowed. "Take me somewhere. I can't stop." He was feeling embarrassed and she was glad because it meant he still had an sense of himself. He was still there with her slouched in reality, dressed in torn T-shirt, wrinkled coat and ugly black-top sneakers. Garage sale Mulder.

Scully offered up a silent prayer of thanks.

"It doesn't matter, Mulder. You've come back to me. You're home. I'm taking you home. No escaping me now." Took his wet face in her hands, the last three words a gentle tease.

Somehow, heroically, he smiled. Did it for her, she knew. The little crows feet at his eyes, the wisps of grey at his temples, were somehow profoundly moving. And his face, complete with scars, stubble and red-rimmed eyes heralding the look of the newly freed damned, was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

From pictures she had seen of him, in youth he had been recklessly gorgeous. When she knew him during their years together on the X-Files, his face had sculpted to a rare, but more mature, masculine beauty.

Now, in middle age, his looks had settled in to that comfortable handsomeness that would now be timeless. A few more wrinkles and grey hairs to come, that was all.

Seeing his face every day for the next thirty or so years, which she planned to ensure, it *would* stay as it was. The way treasured things kept their same colors and texture; they way they kept the faith. His was the face, no-matter one terrorized by unknowns, that she remembered and it belonged to her again.

Her heart was airy and sunlight penetrated, warming it as she held on to his arms tightly and kissed him again, unable to get enough of his taste. Kissed slowly, responding back to his response.

"Scully - "

"I know, Mulder, I know." Held him fiercely.

"Fox"," he said between kisses. "Fox."

"Really?"

He shrugged. "I've k-kinda gotten used to it. N-not sure why."

She heard him say something else under his breath in an exotic language. She didn't understand it of course and he'd said it without thinking. She was sure of that, because he was looking at the cross around her neck, and now appeared unaware that he'd even said it. He offered no translation and had not seen her surprise.

He'd been somewhere, that was for sure.

"What are you going to do? Come back to work?" She kissed and asked.

It seemed the thing to do - normal - to stand in the middle of a crowd in a bustling Greyhound Station, hugging, kissing and talking in between.

"I don't know; haven't th-thought that far. Too much. All I could think about was g-g-getting to you. That's all."

*You did that years ago!* "You could apply to having the X-Files reopened."

Except for the occasional visit to the damp and dusty office, she had finally let them go two years previous.

He shook his head. "No. No, I d-don't think so. I don't think I w-want, need, them anymore. I've h-had enough...'nuff... ..for a wh-while." He liked the feel of her in his arms. "I don't want to think about anyth-thing right now. I j-just want to go home. P-Please take me out of here."

"But what about Samantha?"

Like an electric switch, something in him was turned on. Or off.

*Click*.

Scully saw Mulder go still. He was thinking about her words, puzzled, like he had forgotten there was long, lost sister in his self-accused, guilt-ridden past.

Saw the transformation, his comportment going from shaky calm to shaking fright. "I hope she's a-l-l-r-i-i-ght."

Scully sucked air, swallowed. He had spoken as if Samantha had vanished only hours before. He spoke as he must have when he was twelve. After the hospital and the drugs and the doctors trying to figure out why he couldn't speak or recognize his parents. He spoke raw, bleeding terrified anguish.

"I mi-mis-s-s-s her." Said like the suddenly invisible son who could no longer bear the silence of the parents.

A well known truth, Scully thought and hugged him. God, he was shaking.

Her heart was pounding.

She kissed his cheek. The way she hoped his mother had when he'd woken up screaming from the nightmares of his sister's empty bed.

"I want to go home now," he said, the trembling fading.

"I want to go home. N-nothing else." he repeated, shyly, as if worried she would think he was asking too much of her.

His emotions were switching back and forth like a metronome. She couldn't keep pace.

He was hugging her tight and she was soft. She felt like...like...It was faint.

No, he couldn't remember.

It was all over, whatever had happened, was history. Finished. A horrible nightmare that was fading now. Fading and fading forever...soon even the memory of the dream would disappear.

He sighed contentedly. "Think you cuh-can stand me?" he finished.

She smiled ironically. Kissed him again in answer.

Yeah.

Yeah, she thought she could put up with him.

After eight years of grief.

Eight years of searching, of futile inquiries, dead ends, hope shrinking until it whimpered and died. X-Files shut down. Re-assignment. Struggles to rebuild, new people, new workmates, new job, new secretary, new life.

One failed marriage. One big mistake.

Eight months the vows had lasted. One month for every year Mulder had been gone. She seen her own sabotage from the beginning and was helpless to stop herself. No room for a new man when the old one still occupied one's waking thoughts almost to the exclusion of all else.

Had forced her features into saying: Yes, I have accepted that he is dead and I am moving on with life. See (proving it to them)?: New job, new husband ("This-is-Alan's-wife-Dana- she's-a-doctor-too.". Introductions all around. Seminars, conventions. *Drowning* in conventionalism, she'd step forward and smile), new life...

But her heart remained stubborn and unyielding in its devotion to the old one, which had quickly become all too plain to her intelligent, surgeon husband.

He hadn't had a chance really.

She and Mulder fighting mutant killer worms in the frozen arctic.

Serial killers, gargoyles, clones, Moth-men and demons.

Mulder and she tailing alien mercenaries.

And, of course, the Biggies...

...Abductions and conspiracies, government death-camps, Black Oil, genetic manipulations, U.F.O's, Purity Control, Deep throat, Krycek, Cancer-Man...

SPECIAL Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

And then suddenly she was sitting over meatloaf, listening to a man who was her husband describing his latest appendectomy.

In the crazy race, it didn't even place.

Scully and Mulder against the world. How could Sunday dinner with the in-laws ever top that?

She'd been cruel and unfair to Alan, but the denial had become too much. More painful than the Marriage/Lie.

Eight years and lots of lying.

Yeah, she thought she could "stand" having back Special Agent I-love-him Mulder. She thought she could "put up with" having back in her life forever "Fox I-missed-him-so-badly-it- nearly-fucking-killed-me William". She thought she could "stand" it.

Just no more Samantha talk.

"I kept your Mom's house exactly as it was." In those words she spoke what she suspected he already knew, that in his absence his mother had died.

"Do you think I'd do less for you? My God, Mulder, do you think for one second I'm going to let you out of my sight ever again?" She kissed his mouth to seal it. "I don't want you walking to the corner store without me knowing. I wouldn't take it lying down."

He hugged her and whispered. "I hope you'll take *some* of whu-what I have to offer l-lying down." It had sounded sexy and seductive and humorous, like Mulder. He was nearing his limit, his voice fading to a raspy whisper and his eyelids drooping. He was shutting down.

Years ago, it would have been a joke only but now it was medicine to her aching heart and bolts of lightening to her body.

"You're in my life for good, Mulder. It's us. Just like it's always been." She took his hand and led him (he was practically asleep on his feet) through the swinging glass doors. "Let's go home."

He didn't protest.

Scully led him out into everything that was Earth: green and yellow and blue, familiar colors. Birds and welcoming sounds, breathing things and life-giving sun.

"Scully?"

"Yeah, Mulder?"

"Thanks."

*

On AHNYA (a Neutral Territory trading post), orbiting the Fourth Moon of CEITAN PRIME. Year: 2491 (Old Earth Calender).

"Mother."

Veexow looked up from her reading, quickly shutting off her monitor.

"Son."

Her son. Tall, red-blooded, growing into a man before her eyes, entered her sleep chamber.

His mussed black hair, still damp, told her he had just come from a swim. He loved the water, was drawn to it. The child of an ocean planet.

Something was on his mind and she knew what. His thoughts, always visible in his emotions of the moment, ventured forth as his green eyes watched for his mothers reaction.

"Do you know what today is, Mother?'

Of course she knew. Fourteen years ago, her son took his first breath in her arms. He had wailed for a long time. Veexow knew at that moment the sort of man he was to become.

"Certainly."

Veexow had grown to understand that her child didn't always approach things, conversations, head-on. He liked to circle first and gauge the depth.

He had always been so cautious about her feelings, never wanting to hurt her by sounding painful memories. However, in the end, his curiosity usually got the upper hand.

She had even learned to smile for him and did so now. He sat by her.

"Do you think,,,is there anything else you can remember?"

The topic she had expected. This was always his question on this particular day of the year.

"Well, I've tried to remember anything about him that I might have overlooked or forgotten...there really is nothing you don't already know. But I will repeat any part of it if you wish."

"You loved him." Not a question.

"Oh, yes," she said.

Rhengar had known it. Rhengar who had, by her side, raised the male child as his own.

Rhengar, who treated her with compassion, tenderness and love.

Rhengar, who knew that Veexow, though returning his affections and eventually taking the Vow with him, had loved PhaHks more than she would ever love him.

Rhengar knew this, but was content.

It was for him enough, as he had assured her on the day of their joining: "It will do, Veexow."

The tall youth looked nothing like his mother but for jet-black hair. He was intelligent (spoke eleven languages, including Old Human), and insightful. And so curious and passionate.

Questioning. Searching.

Always her son needed to *know*.

She understood these things and had never kept a truth from him. Never, ever lied to him.

Her son settled down on the floor near his mother. "Tell me again why he left..."

She did and soon she was telling the story from the beginning.

They talked a long time for he had so many questions. Picking out the smallest details he would then ask more. Never satisfied.

Human mind.

PhaHks' child. Her son.

She had named him carefully, checking the meanings behind thousands of names of all species, languages and cultures.

Finally discovering, in an old encrypted file that those on AHNYA had forgotten about or for which they no longer cared, the right name. One that was all human; that made sense; that was perfect. As her tiny baby was perfect.

An old Earth legend of a beautiful bird that rises from the ashes of its former life.

Phoenix.

Was beautiful.

**End**(See "CHALLENGE!")

~~~~~*~~~~~

"Suddenly I knew that you'd have to go, My world was not yours, your eyes told me so, Yet it was there I felt the crossroads of time.

And I wondered why..."

("The OLD WAYS" by Loreena McKennitt).

~~~~~*~~~~~

Author's Notes:

"PhaHks" was written in response to a private challenge, that being to write a crossover of X-Files and Star Trek where one character (or both) really IS abducted and then brought back. The plot-line of "PhaHks" came to me immediately and just kept coming until I couldn't stop it.

THERE were two things I wanted to voice with "PhaHks".

One: If ever anything happened to a person the likes of which Mulder experiences in this story, insanity would be almost a given. A person could survive it I think, but only by drawing on deep, DEEP reserves of stubbornness and strength.

Fox Mulder has an abundance of both. And insolence! I love the character, in fact I adore Fox Mulder, but let's face it, sometimes he can be an arrogant prick! Defenses rearing their ugly heads, though, is sometimes the only way to survive in any life.

Two: PhaHks is a tragic love story, and one with some pretty dysfunctional stuff happening. But, no matter what the plot, you will find that all of my stories are either love stories or at least contain one.

**If in this story, there appears to some to be anti-God innuendo, it does not originate from my personal beliefs. I was simply trying to write with power and in line with character.

BY The WAY: If you're a writer (of my strange ilk), then writing is not a pastime for you, it's a disease. One that eats away at you until you start treatment by getting to that keyboard or pen and paper.

Writing is a lover who calls at the worst times (out driving your car, during an important meeting, in church, when you're trying to sleep, or when you're just getting up and you're already late for work!).

Ever told yourself: "Tomorrow morning, I can sleep in!" only to be awakened by your "lover's" whisper at 01:21 AM? If that has happened to YOU, then we're kin...

*I really enjoyed doing this story. I am working on other stories, (An X-Files & an X-Files/Millennium Crossover) but now that "PhaHks" is done, I'm taking a break.

My husband has been an angelic DOLL for putting up with me during the writing of this series during which time he hardly saw his wife. But I just looooooved using his computer.

"CHALLENGE!": (I may be continuing the story (a sequel) from the end of the Greyhound Bus Station scene. But does anyone care to try their hand at a continuation from EITHER of the Two places I have left off (from AHNYA scene or Bus Station)?

I would love seeing what anyone could come up with!!

---

Continue to Focus