REV2: TOS A/U Deep Elem Blues 1/3, K/S h/c [PG13]

[Greywolf the Wanderer]

Okay, here is absolutely the last revision of this, I promise!!

I've been looking at it for several months, digesting comments various
lovely folks sent me, and just thinkin' about it. And finally I
realized that there was a piece missing, in the middle. Once I'd
decided to go ahead and add that, I figured I might as well clean up a
couple of continuity glitches and a phrase or two, while I was at it.

So. If ye want to read this again, the main change is a whole new
chunk in the middle, that was told as a flashback before <because I
couldn't See it, so I couldn't write it, if that makes any sense.> If
you don't want to, hey, that's cool.

ObDisclaim: ParaBorg owns the Trekiverse, and all appurtenances
pertaining thereto. I'm just playing with 'em for a bit, see. An'
I'm broke, so suin' me's a waste o' time. No money being made here
anyhow. The masters I own <ironic, ain't it>. OK to archive this,
long as my name and this disclaimer kept attached. No naughty bits;
rated PG13 for violence and other unpleasantness.

(This is for Jess, for writing "Beside the Wells", thereby
giving me the balls to finally write *this* one down.)

Deep Elem Blues, part 1 of 3
(TOS A/U; K/S; h/c)
(PG-13, for Violence and Other Unpleasantness)

Eyes opened, to darkness and pain. It was nothing new;
he was in the world of pain now, and had been for a long time. He
still dreamed, sometimes, of bright-lit rooms, where it was
always warm, and there was always enough to eat. He'd had a
name, then, and duties. He'd still had pride, then, and
strength to spare for other things besides simple existence.
That world was his home; he remembered that, sometimes -- but
when he opened his eyes, it was always this one that he saw.
He hadn't always been alone like this. There had been
companions, once, comrades -- one he called t'hy'la -- but that
was long ago, and now he was no longer entirely certain that any
of that had been real. In that world he was whole, and healthy;
he walked easily on strong, undamaged legs. In that world, he
was a free man, among free men. In that world, the light didn't
burn his eyes. In that world, pain was a stranger, seldom seen
and easily vanquished. Surely that last was only a dream. How
could the pain be vanquished, when it reached to the very core
of his bones? It was the first thing he knew each morning, and
the last he knew each night. Its continued presence reassured
him that he yet lived.
It was himself, his own dark twin, bound to him more strongly
than steel to a hull, closer than any lover; deeper than life
itself. He would never be free of it; he no longer even dreamed
of that. The cost of such dreams was simply too high.
There were times when he doubted that he'd ever been
anywhere but here. The face he saw in dreams was that of a stranger;
it bore little resemblance to his own haggard visage -- only the
eyes were the same. That man's nose had never been broken, his
cheekbones never shattered. He had all his teeth. His hair was
pure black, unmarked by time or toil. He was unscarred. He
stood straight and undamaged, and bowed his head to no man.
But that was in another world; it was nothing that was any
part of this life. In this world, he dropped his eyes before the
masters, just as the others did, for to refuse was costly -- he
had paid dearly for that knowledge. In this world, he hauled
rocks, dug the crystals from the mine, made and stacked bricks,
side by side with the small brown people whose world this once
had been. The masters were tall -- even his own height seemed
lacking, compared to theirs. He barely came up to the chin of
the shortest of them. Their skin was velvet-furred, as black as
space itself; their hair and eyes were silver. He had never
seen anyone like them before he came to this place. The
overseers and the guards were of another kind. Their skin was a
deep green, much darker than his own, and their hair was black
-- he thought that once, in his other life, he had known such
folk. But he couldn't remember. They commanded, and he worked,
long and hard, forcing his damaged body to obey his will. The
work was heavy, the conditions harsh -- they lacked even the
simplest conveniences that might have eased the load. The
masters allowed them no power tools at all, and very few hand
tools. Such things belonged to another world than this.
It didn't matter; what was, was.
Sometimes something went wrong in his head; he would fall,
then, and lie insensible for a time. Sometimes it was his
lungs, always overworked in the cold, damp air. Sometimes the
veterinarian would put him into the animal hospital. Then he
would curl up in his cage, either to heal or to die as best he
might. But that didn't matter, either. He survived, because it
was all he knew to do.
It was always cold here, to him. He wore as many layers
of clothes as he could scavenge, but he could never really get
warm. The cold, like the pain, lived in the core of his bones.
Only so did he sometimes remember that he didn't belong here,
for at the height of mid-day, when the little brown people shed
all but a breechclout, he still shivered, unable to get warm.
The sun here was smaller, somehow, than he thought it ought to
be. Its light was a harsh blue-white. The masters wore
protective lenses, whenever they were outside. Even to his eyes
it was unpleasant, though the little brown people did not seem
to mind it.
To the masters, this world was too hot. They wore insulated
clothing, and clever devices chilled the air in their homes and
conveyances. On the rare occasions when they remembered him,
and had him brought before them, it was all he could do to stand
up, where every nerve and muscle protested against the cold. He
couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, and the cold iron of
the collar burned against his flesh like fire, drawing from him
heat he could ill afford to spare. They would stare at him
then, with their cold silver eyes, poking at him with bored,
disinterested fingers, and he could see in their thoughts that
he was less than an animal to them, merely property. They saw
none but themselves as being of any worth. All else existed
merely for their convenience. If they had known that he could
see their thoughts, they would have put him to death in an
instant. He put the knowledge away, as he had put so much else
away already.
At times the overseers came and took him, back to the place
where the questioners were. Those times were the worst. They
had devices that could fill a man's nerves with pain; they could
make him feel it, running like acid in his veins, and charring
his bones to ash. Yet it was all a trick of some sort, for
afterwards, when he curled, shaking, sweat-soaked, in his bunk,
there were no marks upon his flesh, no sign that any of it had
happened at all. There were only the memories of pain, the
bruises where he'd fought, without success, against the
restraints that held him captive, and the tremors, that never
completely went away any more. He could not answer their
questions, and he did not understand what they wanted of him --
and the questioners couldn't, or wouldn't, accept that. And
then there were times when they didn't ask him anything. They
just put him in the chair, and used the machine on him. At
those times, the prospect of death took on new meaning -- that
of peace, and freedom from the pain. But his body wouldn't let
him die; it clung, fiercely, to life. He no longer really knew
why.
He did not let himself dream very often. What was the point?
Here he was, and here he would eventually die, and although he
knew that he had once had a reason for clinging so hard to life,
he no longer remembered what it might have been. He didn't
remember how he came to be here, or why he'd come, or when. He
didn't even remember what his name had been. There was only
this life, and the vague recollection of another, long ago.
Everything else he had lost, over the years, for in this place,
merely surviving demanded his full attention.
No one here spoke his language, and he could only speak
theirs a little. The masters' speech had a much higher pitch than
his, and although he could hear and understand it well enough, his
voice could not repeat it. Attempts to speak it in his own
vocal range had brought only scorn, and punishment. It didn't
matter -- he could hardly speak his own tongue, any more, and
no-one else here knew it. He hadn't tried in a long time.
There seemed no point. He had learned to read the script they
used, but it was of little use to him; there were only a few
signs posted, notices on this shed or that. Among themselves,
the small dark people spoke a chirping, twittering language,
sounding more like birds than people, and that speech he could
not reproduce at all, nor did he understand it. So he used the
signed speech, which the others had taught him, when he had to
communicate. That, the masters accepted. It would have
surprised him to know that when he slept, and dreamed, his hands
moaned and wept and cried out, in lieu of the voice that he
never used any more. The others never mentioned it, for so it
was with many in this place. It was the only privacy they could
give to one another, and so precious beyond any price.
It was less cruel when the overseers grew angry and beat
him, for the mercy of shock eventually put an end to that pain. He
could seek refuge then, in blessed oblivion, a release that the
questioners' machines denied to him. But best of all were those
times when it seemed that they had forgotten he existed. Then
he did his work, ate his meagre rations, and slept, as much as
he could -- not seeking dreams, but rather nothingness, simple
not-being. Only then did he feel any real peace.
Days were much alike here; it was easy to lose the flow of
time, in this place where nothing ever changed. There were no
seasons; once, he had known what it meant when that was so, but
he didn't remember it now. He knew that he had been here a long
time, some years perhaps -- but he had no idea how long. He had
no way to keep track.
It felt doubly strange, therefore, to awaken, one morning,
hours before sunrise, with a man's face held clearly in his mind
-- a face he once had known, though he had forgotten about it,
over the years. It had surely been a dream. And yet...
And yet, it had not. As he lay there on his hard, narrow
bunk, trying to think, he found himself, more and more, believing
that it hadn't been a dream. He never did get back to sleep that
day. That face... unruly sand-brown hair and hazel eyes, that
lazy cat-smile -- that face was a part of his other life, that
life he'd sometimes doubted ever was. Once, he had known that
face as well as he knew his own. That was all he could
remember, but it stayed with him all that day, making him sleepy
and distracted. He almost died that afternoon, stepping unaware
into the path of an overseer's ground car; the only thing that
saved him was his bad leg, which gave way and pitched him to the
ground. He missed the mid-day ration, too, for by the time he
remembered to go to the cook shack, the food was all gone.
He couldn't afford to do that; he didn't have the strength to
keep working, without food. Slaves who could no longer work
were given to the guards, to be killed. Desperate, he tried
once more to push it all away, back into his mind. Best to
forget such things here, where a moment's distraction was often
fatal.
But that night he saw the face again, saw worry in the hazel
eyes, saw the lips forming words that he could not hear. In his
sleep, his hands moved again, crying out words he no longer
remembered how to say. He tossed and turned, but every time he
fell asleep again, the face returned to haunt him. Even in his
dreams, his head ached, and confusion dogged his thoughts.
He saw the same face again the next night, and the next; on
the following day, exhausted, he slipped and fell from a roof that
he was helping to patch, wrenching his knee, breaking one wrist,
and giving himself a good sharp knock on the head. Several of
the little brown people brought him back to camp.
The same veterinarian who doctored the other livestock
treated him, brusquely cleaning the scrapes and scratches from his
fall, splinting his knee, then setting and splinting his arm. The vet
ran the regrower over the break once or twice -- it never worked
very well on him, but it helped. He could feel the man's
thoughts, through his touch; they were neither kind nor hateful;
it was only important to the vet that a useful piece of property
not be permitted to die. He lay quietly, offering no
resistance; his head was still spinning from the fall, and that,
plus the sedative the vet had given him, left him
semi-conscious, at best. Once again he lay in a cage, among the
other animals. He stayed curled in a ball, and dozed, slipping
fitfully in and out of strange and disturbing dreams.
Eventually he saw the hazel-eyed face again, but this time,
he could hear the man's words. He didn't understand them at first,
but as the face kept speaking, old memories began to surface,
memories he hadn't known were there, hadn't thought of in
years...
<<Spock!! It's me, it's Jim! I can feel you; I know you're
there. Can you hear me? You have to remember, please -- listen
to me. It's Jim!! Spock, can you hear me?>>
His head hurt, a bright fierce pain behind his eyes. There
was something -- almost, he knew what it was... In his sleep his
hands reached out, trembling, trying to touch -- and there was
nothing and no-one there. Again he reached, and something
slipped and twisted, inside his head, one sharp hot spike of
pain, an instant of release -- and then he was reaching out in
another way, a way he had forgotten that he knew.
<<...Jim?>> He *did* know that name. It came from the
time before this place, the time he could hardly remember...
<<Jim... t'hy'la?>> Was any of this real?
A quick, light touch, of joy, then, before the other veiled
his thoughts. There was something about that -- he frowned, but the
idea was elusive; it vanished again. The other touched his
thoughts once more, and he recognized that touch -- and the
other felt it.
<<Yes! It's me -- you *do* remember... I thought -- I
thought they'd killed you... It's been years, since I could feel your
thoughts -- not since that day...>> A series of images came to
him, then -- of a stranger that he somehow knew was himself,
still proud, then, unbroken, fighting off a full hand of
swaggering, green-skinned assailants -- the ones he knew now as
overseers, and guards. His body was straight and strong, his
muscles powerful. He fought like someone trained as a warrior,
quick and lethal in his moves -- three previous opponents lay
crumpled on the ground. But another came up behind him, with a
shockrod upraised; there was a fat blue spark, a loud "crack!"
-- and the man with the smooth olive skin and the straight black
hair convulsed, and fell. He dropped limply to the floor, and
his skull struck it with a sharp, hollow thud. A thread of
green trickled from his mouth, and stopped. The green-skinned
ones closed in around him then, kicking, hitting... The searing
memory of grief, then, in the mind of the watcher -- grief, and
rage -- and hopelessness, for no-one knew that they were here,
or even that they still lived at all. Hands kept the hazel-eyed
one away; he watched, helpless, as the other was dragged from
the room, hanging limp and lifeless from the enemy's hands, a
wide smear of blood trailed green across the floor. In the
watcher's mind was only emptiness; darkness, and the hopeless
knowledge that he was truly alone, now.
The flow of memory began, then, to show him other things --
and was abruptly veiled once more. The other's thoughts were tinged
now with shame, though he did not understand why. There was an
odd quality to those thoughts, a peculiar sort of clarity,
almost a mechanical flavour. There was a strength behind them
that he didn't recognize, something that was not familiar. But
he let it pass. There were many things here that he did not
understand.
<<Gods... I can't believe you're still alive,>> came the
thought. <<All this time, I never found a trace of you. I've
been alone for so long... I thought it was a dream, at first,
when I felt your thoughts the other night.>> The face in his
mind shone with tears, now, the taste of them an undercurrent in
the man's thoughts.
He reached again, feeling something long unused somehow
stretch, growing more limber with this use. <<...Jim? >> Even
in thought, his words, long unused, failed him. He frowned, and
in both their minds came flashing images, in quick succession --
a star-filled sky, turning suddenly to rainbow streaks; a third
man, dark-haired and smiling. A ship, gleaming whitely,
floating out of spacedock... An arena of blood red rock, and
fine grey sand. He and this man face each other, and in their
hands... Laying curled in the cage, still he had to grip the
bars tightly, lest he fall -- dizziness swooped and roared about
him, as memory, long neglected, began to return...
Though he did not know it, a voice gone harsh and rusty
whispered the name, even as his thoughts framed it. <<
...Enterprise... I -- remember.>>
Enterprise -- she was Jim's ship -- no. She was *their* ship.

She was -- home.
And she was far away, years gone, most likely beyond their
reach. But even so, he *remembered* her now; he had snatched
back that much, of what he had lost. He wasn't just dreaming.
This was *real*. That ship -- was real.
Her name was Enterprise. His was Spock. And he had
belonged there, once, at this one's side. He remembered...

-----///-----

The man in the cage lay dreaming, and in the dream, a pair
of hazel eyes watched, from over his shoulder; the images of the
dream showing what he still had no words to tell.
...reaching up, his hands sore and broken, to feel the collar,
cold and hard, about his neck. He tries to pull it off; and a
shockrod reaches through the bars and knocks him flat. A
sneering, green-skinned guardsman taps the rod against the bars,
and walks away. He is in a cage, in a bare, chilly room that is
lined with stalls and cages. In the stalls are beasts of
burden; in each cage, a sick or injured hominid. None are of
his kind; most are smaller than he, light-boned and dark of
skin. No-one speaks, though he can hear a twittering in the
background, somewhere. He leaves the collar alone for a while,
and examines himself -- he is injured, as if from a fight. His
face is swollen and damaged; he can only open one eye. He is
very dizzy, and even the dim light that comes through the
shutters is too bright. Bruises and scrapes abound, some of his
ribs are broken, and there is some sort of poultice bound about
his head. He is dressed in something soft and worn, a
nondescript dark grey. Neither the clothes nor his surroundings
are at all familiar; he has never seen any of it before. His
wounds are clean, and have been smeared with ointment; there is
clean water in a pan on the cage floor, but there is no food.
The only bedding is two thin and shabby blankets, crumpled in
the corner where he lies. It is as if he were an animal, in a
veterinary hospital. He cannot remember how he came to be here.
He feels strange, dreamy and disconnected. He realizes that
he has been drugged, perhaps for some time. Somewhere in the
back of his mind is worry, and fear -- and... grief? He cannot seem
to concentrate; as he reaches for the knowledge it falls apart
and vanishes, leaving him confused, but oddly unconcerned.
There is something he should be doing, but he cannot remember
what it is... Somewhere under the drugs his head hurts, a lot.
It is easier just to curl up again, and let the darkness take
him.
More fragments of memories... An image, mostly dark --
the cockpit of a small ship, lit only by red and yellow lights --
and a few, only a very few, still green. Once more his hands
move as he sleeps on, unaware, but now their movements are
quick, precise, manipulating remembered controls that are surely
dust and gone, by now. For just a moment, he gets the
viewscreen working again -- just in time to show the incoming
salvo that will finish them. He looks up, to meet the other's
worried hazel eyes -- there is nothing more that can be done.
...one of the first sessions with the questioners. Something
kept going wrong, inside his head -- he'd forgotten, how bad
that used to be. Every time they turned their machines on him,
his mind greened out and he lost consciousness. He had almost
no words at all -- even if he'd known what they wanted, he
probably could not have told them. Even through the fog of
confusion and pain, he could feel their frustration in their
thoughts, every time they touched him. He barely noticed. He
kept listening for something else, and not finding it -- and
*that* lack hurt him more surely than any blow of boot, or fist.
A memory of a room, all white and chrome, gleaming and
spotless. More cages, each with its single occupant. Many were
in restraints of some kind; a few were on life support. The
gradual panicked realization that he couldn't move *at all*...
<<No.>> Startled by that comment, he awoke. A quick look
around showed everyone asleep in their cages, the familiar
grubby walls of the animal hospital. There was no chrome in
this place; nothing here had been painted in years... He
blinked, fighting off the pull of the sedative.
<< ...??... >> *That* memory wasn't one of his...
<<I'm -- I'm sorry, Spock. I keep waking you up, and you
need your sleep.>> Again that feeling of shame surrounded the
hazel eyes; beneath it he could feel a steely determination. <<I
need some sleep, too,>> the voice in his head continued. <<We
can talk more tomorrow -- I'll be here for a while, yet.>>
In the cage, the black-haired man sat up, and pulled his
blankets up around him. There was something still puzzling him
about all this, but he did not have the energy to pursue it.
Even in the dark, he could see his breath condensing in the
cold, still air. He shivered, and curled himself back up again,
as tightly as he could. He frowned, finally finding some of the
words he needed. << ...Jim. I -- remember. Tomorrow?>>
<<Tomorrow. Get some sleep, Spock.>>
<<I... will.>> Acknowledgement came; then the contact
diminished again, until it was just a mutual awareness of one
another's existence. The ache in his head was almost gone, now.
He pulled the edge of the blankets up over his face; and
slowly, very slowly, he began to get warm, and to relax. After
a time, he fell once more into a deep, exhausted sleep.

Elsewhere, the man who had once been Captain James T.
Kirk of the Federation StarFleet showed his teeth to the night.
Tamed lightning danced in the depths of his eyes.
*Sleep well, t'hy'la. Gods know, you need it.* Fingers
curled, unnoticed, into fists. *I don't know how, yet -- but I
know this much. I'm not leaving here without you again.*
Fingertips danced across control pads, with the ease of long
practice. He felt one short, sharp jolt of pain, as the field
retuned. Then the fierce hazel eyes snapped shut, and welcome
sleep washed all of it away -- the anger, and the shame -- and
the worry, over what he would have to do.

-----///-----

It was cold and dark, when !Mzh!w*hee Called him to her
side the next night. It didn't matter. The Caller did its work, and
his nerves, long-trained, brought him to her alert and aware,
with just the slightest of tremors thrumming through his flesh.
He knelt, as she had taught him to do, and offered her his
control. She had her own, master's unit, of course -- but it
pleased her, to see him so, and when pleased, sometimes she
would be merciful, as much as was in her to be.
Once, he had sworn that he would die before any could break
him to their will -- but the long, weary years and the wire's cruel
and subtle grip had taken that freedom from him, years ago.
Property did not die here without permission, and permission was
never granted. The last time he'd tried to kill himself had
cost him months of pain and weakness, a seemingly endless time
when only the wire permitted him to function at all -- and it
had done him absolutely no good.
And then she'd decided to return to this place, and of
course nothing would do but that he must accompany her. She'd
heard there was a new shipment; she needed more labourers for
her estates... It wasn't until they'd arrived that he had looked
around, and known what place this was. Here it was that Spock
had died, trying to defend him from the Orion guards. Here it
was that the masters' accursed surgeons had taken his freedom,
his will -- even his very soul -- from him. Here it was that
they had taught him the real meaning of captivity; how it was to
be played like an instrument, imprisoned not by bars and locks,
but by his own mind and body, traitorously turned against him.
Only a quick dance of fingers upon his control had saved
him from vomiting in front of her, and the punishment that would
have brought. A few swift taps of a fingertip, a slide -- and
blessed numbness had wrapped him, safe and calm, within the
wire's sly counterfeit of peace.
Oh, it was a *good* trap, that wire -- with it, he could be
anything she allowed. It held pleasure, or pain; sleep, or that
total humming alertness once reserved for a dance along the very
edge of Death. With the wire, he could force his nerves and
body to fulfill her needs, in ways he'd never thought were
possible. He could turn nausea into passion, pain into
pleasure... He could go without sleep till he fried his very
nerves, if need be. He could do anything.
But he couldn't live without it, any more. It had controlled
his every mood, every sensation, for so long... Once, perhaps a
year ago, as punishment for some imagined wrong, she had powered
it off, taken his control, and left him caged. By nightfall he
was convinced that he would die, as his outraged nervous system
went into revolt; by morning, he knew he wasn't going to be that
lucky. She'd left him there like that for three days; it seemed
like three thousand years of reeking, shivering, soiled and
desperate Hell. And when at last she'd returned, unlocked the
cage, and handed him the control again, he had knelt before her,
still trembling, in full submission, the ashen taste of total
defeat cold and bitter in his throat. Pride, after all, was a
luxury possessed by free men, and there was no-one like that,
here.
But he had endured. She had taught him ways to use the
wire for his own pleasure, as well as hers. The controller would not
permit some things, but others he was allowed. He grew skilled,
and therefore grew in value -- and slowly, very slowly, he came
to understand more of what the wire was, and how it did its
work. Only a week ago, he'd finally figured out a possible way
to cheat the control, and give himself to Death -- and then
they'd come here, and in dreams that first night, he'd felt that
touch within his mind, which he'd thought was gone forever. It
was faint, and hard to read; damaged, even as he was himself --
but it was unmistakable. Somewhere in this cold, accursed
place, was Spock -- t'hy'la -- the man he'd thought had died for
him, all those years ago.
And suddenly, everything looked different.

-----///-----

End part 1

Greywolf the Wanderer
<to email me remove nospam from header>