Lieutenant JG Amelia Semara - Betazoid Words

[Max]

(( Vulcan's Forge Sauna, aboard The Indulgence of Chocolate-Coated Jama'haron ))

The sauna's heat seemed to loosen everything - not just muscles.  It was letting everything bubble up slowly between Amelia and Ras: all the regret, passion, grief, yearning, affection, ambition...  Experiences and emotions from more than a year aboard the Khitomer seemed to begin coalescing in the haze, the truth of what it all meant almost in sight.  One truth was Tori had revealed something Amelia wasn't quite ready to admit yet: that her time out here in the Isles had become more than a little adventure or an amusing science project, and the people in it more than just crew.  The truth was Amelia's heart was now just as bound up with them and this little corner of space as it was her childhood home.

In a way, Amelia had always been called to be more than a valley girl, and to a life beyond that of a quiet scientist.  Perhaps it really was in the blood that pumped through her heart.  A nobility and fierce passion speaking to her, passed down from some regal, ancient matriarch who loved her home and her family more than life itself.  Only more and more Amelia's feeling of home took the shape of the Alpha Isles and the Khitomer.  Her feeling of family took on the color of pale sapphire eyes, set into a valley of grey ridges...

El'Heem: Amelia…

Her eyes shifted over to their corners at the wobble in his voice.

El’Heem: What are you saying?

All the embarrassment was long gone now, and anyone else who may have been hiding in the sauna's steam was forgotten.  She felt herself wind up, coiled by the turn of Ras' total attention to her.

With all the talk of what had passed, and was still to come, the forgotten thing stood in stark relief.  The more they ruminated, the more they missed out on making the most of the moment of sauna-heated peace between them.

Semara: With Tori, I wonder if what we missed is...  The future starts now.  With us. The little moments.  The little things. Like… :: Beat :: How come you move your face like that? :: A longer, harder pause. :: I can guess, but, I mean... Why do you do it with me?

Searching his face, the green in her eyes was almost totally lost to black in the dim, diffuse light.  Hoping little motions - left, then up, the down, the left again, then right - betrayed the question was just as naked for her as it was for him.

At last the muscles in his face quieted, and the chromatophores in his eyes launched into a painterly firework show she could watch for ages.  She could almost sense him reliving something...  She ached to reach out and know what it was... To walk with him in the dappled memory.  It was good, whatever it was.  Better than good - a revelation.  Like Amelia, he was now seeing some collection of moments from a place in time that was a summit of clarity, hard won through a long, hard climb through everything it took to get here.  It was like... For the first time, laid out beneath his gaze was a wide valley ringed by gem-topped mountains.  And it took his breath away.

It was her.

Amelia, taken aback, watched as this man - the same who nearly screamed when she hugged him a moment ago - mustered whole armies of bravery to show her what she already knew.  She found she no longer had a discernible heartbeat - simply one gusting, adrenaline-filled rush of willing him to do it already.  Instead, she forced stillness on herself, the agonizing wait between impulse and action drawing out almost to the snapping point.  No wonder she'd simply acted without thinking earlier.

Finally - Finally! - his hand took hers again.  She let slip a low, spontaneous chuckle, the heady mix of empathic sensation almost ticklish on her pairing with the satisfaction at being able to squeeze his hand as if to say, "good choice."

El'Heem: You mean like how I look like I’m studying you? ::beat:: Because I am. It’s me trying to figure out why I feel so at ease with you. And why I feel so much more present when you’re around. Why I think about you just a little bit more than anyone else when things get rocky on the ship.

It wasn't what she meant - not quite.  But now she flushed openly from the pleasant, surprising poetry of feeling as much as his thumb on her hand and the plain meaning of his words.  What she had meant seemed positively mundane in comparison.

He wasn't alone in the flash of clarity.  When had she gotten in the habit of letting herself float off to empathically check on him?  Probably after he'd lost his hand.  She remembered what it felt like seeing him asleep in the biobed in the aftermath.  It was why she'd hoarded the still in her quarters until she could get Connor's help fixing it.  It was the way she knew to bring him to the arboretum where they found Baba Yaga...

El’Heem: I know there’s something more you see too, you’re the only one who seems to be able to read me like a book. I don’t have to tell you what I’m feeling. Unless you want me to?

She honestly wasn't certain.  Too many words might spoil the way he shifted towards her, his meaning bathing her with a surprise symphony of feeling.  Each undertone she picked out effortlessly: the warm cello of affection, the clear dancing violin of yearning, the noble horn of courage, the quiet tender oboe, and the tremulous clarinet of vulnerable fear of what would happen when his words reached their endpoint.  Yet, joined together, the striking music it all made was unlike anything she'd felt before.  In that one, perfect moment, she wanted nothing more than to let him cradle her with its dense harmony and wrap herself into the counterpoint of their closeness.

Semara: :: Almost a whisper. :: You never had to before.  Some things are better just felt.  Like this.

She reached across to put her other hand on top of his so that she could keep him there, feeling the texture of his skin under her fingertips.

El’Heem: Yes. Exactly that. ::beat:: and so you saying that the future starts with us, I have trouble parsing what that could look like. But I want to figure it out. With you, Amelia.

For her part, Amelia had no trouble imagining a whole plethora of futures that started right then and there.  Staring at him, ideas sprouted up like rabbits in springtime and started running away from her to all sorts of happy places.

Then why couldn't she chase them?  What was It that had snared her in abrupt, nameless fear when he was right there?  Where did that chill shadow of worry come from?

Semara: Ras, I...  :: halting. :: I'm afraid my words are gonna just come out a mess.

El’Heem: Messy is okay. ::voice low, almost a whisper:: We’re scientists, we can figure it out.

And his attention was on her with all the heat of a blue sun.  It took her senses by storm - she hadn't ever imagined he was capable of feeling like this.  From the way he trembled, perhaps neither had he.  They were so wonderfully close...  She barely even realized the way her own eyes bore back with the same intensity and even more intention, full of a knowledge of a whole other host of feelings she could give him.  After all, who needed words when she could show him so many things...

Her lips parted.

And then It won.

There were few words in the many Betazoid languages to describe the various manners of friendship, but there were a great many to try to categorize the various kinds of more intimate bonds that formed between two people.  "Imzadi" - the best-known - described that powerful, mythic entwining of heart, soul, mind, and body: the greatest, deepest mutual knowing any Betazoid could have with another.  It was the word used in all the great legends of romance.

There was another word for a man who suggested physicality without knowing a woman's mind and heart deeply - meaning telepathically.  Several in fact.  They varied by intent: romantic or casual, one time or several, and so forth...  Many of the words were unkind - some were cruel, even.  Such was a matriarchal cultural heritage when there were far fewer words for the reverse situation.

Amelia couldn't bear to bestow Ras with any of them.  That wasn't what he wanted.  Neither did she.  If she was going to give any piece of herself to him, she wanted to give all the rest, too.  With those eyes on her lips, she was drowning in the knowledge there would be no halfway, and no holding back.  She cared too much for him to have him any other way.

There was no way for Ras to know.  It wasn't something they'd talked about, and Amelia held all the telepathic cards between them.  Instantly, she knew she should have asked to share her mind with him a long, long time ago, if not to hear his in turn.  But when?  Now?

At last, It made itself known.

Alix.  Shayne.  Both afraid.  Both gone.  Not because of her, of course...  ( Probably. )  But it weighed just the same.  She knew even some of the less openly fearful were sometimes wary of her.  What if Ras was afraid of that part of who she was, too?  She knew her Betazoid powers and Betazoid ways were mysterious to him, and he had innocently misunderstood both, on occasion.  He'd learned each time, and she treasured that, but... If she asked now, what if he still didn't understand?  Or what if he understood perfectly, and said no?  Or, perhaps the worst of all, what if he allowed her to touch his mind because he felt like he had to, and not because he genuinely wanted to experience that connection with her?  She'd never forgive herself for hurting him that way.

Semara: Ras, I -

Then, another memory-thought in the rising fear of It...

Just what did he think Talia and her were doing off on their own in the arboretum when they rescued Baba Yaga?  Amelia was a gifted telepath by Betazoid standards and that gave her automatic respect among her society, but even her own kind would have considered what she did that day powerfully strange at best.  Talia, being Talia, had gracefully taken the one-off confession of Amelia's little personal secret a long time ago and never told a soul, goddesses shower her with blessings...  Could she tell Ras?  Or would knowing how far her perception went make her seem even more like some frightening fairytale witch?

Semara: Ras, I'm sorry.

Stammering, her eyes fluttered, and she pulled her gaze away from him, already regretting speaking instead of chasing the fire in her heart.

El'Heem: Response

There was one more, terrible shape of It.

Even if she could bring herself to ask - and she wanted to - she wasn't entirely sure she knew how anymore.  At least not when it wasn't another telepath.  She'd spent too much time hiding it away now, never entirely certain how friends and crewmates would understand what she could see and feel and do.  In more than a year, her telepathic conversations totaled up to two.  One was the bodiless entity the day she'd met Ras.  He had witnessed that.  She must have seemed so fantastical.  Once something merely part of moment-to-moment life, the mere couple of days with Tori were the closest to her old definition of normalcy.

Semara: Ras, you just got back from savin' your world.  Again.  And I just said goodbye to Tori...

Tori, her Betazoid daughter, heiress to the Golden Leaf of Semizad.

Too late, she understood unintended insinuation from her spinning-apart thoughts left hanging: he could never give her a Betazoid daughter.  She even said as much before!  Stupid, stupid stupid...  She'd merely meant that they were both still healing, both still running high on emotion and maybe they just needed time.  If nothing else, time for her to figure out how to say what she really wanted to...

El'Heem: Response

Could she even honestly say passing on her Betazoid heritage and line wasn't important to her?  And like that, she was shaking, unable to find a way to get any of what was in her head out.  Now that It was there, It was there to stay.

Semara: Ras, I - :: Faltering :: I ain't --  I don't -- :: Face squishing in frustration, then finally pleading. :: Please don't go?  :: Tugging lightly on his arm. :: Come to dinner.  Teach me how to make a favorite dish.

She knew all too well she hadn't given him any real reason to stay with her.  It was just her begging, trying to stop a disaster of her own making and her own fears.  She wanted to thread her arm through his, and pull herself fiercely against him into a tight ball, hiding herself away from all the things she couldn't name behind his bulk.

Now she had to just wait and see how badly she hurt him...

El'Heem: Response

Tag / TBC...

---------- ○● ----------

Lieutenant Junior Grade Amelia Magnolia Semara

Science Officer - Special Projects

USS Khitomer - NCC-62400

A239710MA0