VIsiting an Old Friend

Posted on Sat Oct 12th, 2024 @ 3:36pm by Commander Zhaan D'Sai
Edited on on Sun Oct 13th, 2024 @ 12:29am

689 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: A Silence of Friends
Location: Brig, USS Steadfast
Timeline: (Some Time Ago)

Zhaan sat, cross-legged, on the floor with only a force field between them. Even in their prisons, everything was clean and proper. The Federation was like that. Freecloud prisons wore the despair of its residents embedded into the cold walls. She wasn’t sure in that moment which was better. More honest.

Her white-blonde hair, unbound, fell forward, brushing the slim curve of her cheek, because her head was bent forward. Out of cowardice, she kept her gray eyes trained on the floor between them. Hard to sit there. Harder to do nothing when she wanted to rant and plead and cry. Better though because the first move had to be from the man on the opposite side of the energy field. There would be no path forward without it.

After awhile, though how long Zhaan couldn’t have said, Kai came to sit on the floor in front of her. Were it not for the barrier, they'd be sitting knee-to-knee. From what the guards had said, her old friend hadn’t said a word since his capture. Not one. He spoke Federation Standard well enough to understand and be understood and yet, not one word. Strange really when Zhaan considered how much and how often Kai had spoken in the before days. They would have told her of his crimes, tried to even, but she didn’t want to know just yet. The weight of the past was still heavy on her mind.

“My enemies have succeeded, say true,” Kai said quietly. His voice was rich and deep, a rumble within his chest, that carried in its depths, the language of home. It was, in fact, Freecloud slang that referred only to the bad luck of being captured. Zhaan remembered the old man at the hotel nearly falling down the stairs and, when he caught himself, had said ‘my enemies nearly succeeded.’

“Abundant, you must be,” Zhaan answered finally. The Freecloud way of saying that the Steadfast didn’t go after petty grifters. She looked up at Kai, meeting his gaze with her own finally and whispered, “What have you done, say please.”

The man shook his head slightly, His dark brown eyes, once full of laughter, rolled upward slightly and then toward the guard, before returning to search his face. There were creases now, a certain weathering along the planes of his face, and a scar along his right cheek that Federation doctors could have fixed. His hair, once his pride and joy, was longer now and limp, as though the curls also had lost their joy. Almost Zhaan didn’t recognize him but then as he rolled his head, she saw the tattoo on the side of his neck and understood.

Zhaan's breath drew in sharply, one hand lifted of its own volition to press back the cry that surged to her lips. “The road doesn’t have to end in sorrow,” she said softly. “Say true.” Even as the words left her lips she knew that her old friend, almost-brother, would not listen. Could not. The tattoo spoke louder than he ever could but, for the boy he once was, she felt she ought to try at least. “There’s a peaceful way here, Kai.”

Hardened he was. Zhaan could tell that just by looking at him. How he had accepted the choices he’d made long ago. He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “Birth is just …”

“… death begun,” Zhaan finished. She nodded, once, in acceptance. “You are fixed on heading to the clearing then, say please?”

“Soon,” Kai said. “It’s not a thing that can change, say true. Go now.”

Zhaan rose smoothly to her feet with a natural, liquid grace that had been hers long before the long hours of practice in martial arts and walked out of the room, heedless of the tears that slid down her cheeks, on a straight path back to her quarters. Tonight, the ship's First Officer would cry for the boy and hope that the man Kai had become found peace.

A post by

Commander Zhaan D'Sai
First Officer
USS Steadfast

 

RSS Feed