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Like Glowing Embers
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2003
DISCLAIMER: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
ARCHIVE: Yes, just keep my name on it.
RATING: R for low-key sex.
CATEGORY/KEYWORDS: Angst, romance, Knowle/Shannon.
SPOILERS/TIMEFRAME: Pre-XF, 1991, spoilers to NIHT II.
SUMMARY: "You're a stranger. And yet you know me better than
anyone."
RELATED STORY: Follows Caro de carne mea (stands alone).
DEDICATION: To Spica. Happy birthday!
FEEDBACK: Cherished at deslea@deslea.com.
MORE FICTION: http://fiction.deslea.com
AWARDS/ELIGIBILITY: Spooky Awards 2003 eligible.
It's raining when you get home.
You draw her close under the eaves, shielding her while you open
the front door. It's a strange, awkward intimacy, you think,
fumbling with your keys, cupping her shoulder with a cautious
hand. The forced intimacy of strangers, not the intimacy you
have with the woman you just screwed against a wall.
You break apart at just the right speed when you get inside.
Not too fast, not lingering either. You're momentarily pleased
with your adept handling of the situation, and then it occurs to
you in a wave of heat that it's a little late to be worried about
playing it smooth.
(can't wait baby need to be inside you please it's been so long)
It wouldn't have mattered to you before. You like to think you
weren't a selfish lover, but even if you were, it was no big
deal. Plenty more fish in the sea, and you were young back then,
strapping young soldier, plenty of time to settle down.
But now...well, you can't afford to fuck this one up, can you?
She's all you've got. You hate thinking of it like that - like
what they did to you made you a meat market of two. It feels
calculating. Callous. But then, she knows it too, doesn't she?
Why else would she invite herself back here? Why did she lead
you into the alley at all?
She's looking at you in the dim light. Listening to the rain,
waiting patiently while you think of something to say.
"Come into the bedroom," you say, unthinking, and then you
wince. "I mean, your clothes. I'll get you some clothes."
She nods. A little stiffly. Hugging her ruined shirt around
her.
You go to your room and drop down before the dresser, pulling
out drawers in search of clothing. All business, even though
your heart is pounding. She appears in the doorway and watches,
leaning against the doorframe, and watching her from the corner
of your eye, you're conscious of warring impressions. The clean
starkness of her flimsy white shirt, belying the strong lines of
her body beneath it. Jeans snug around slender hips, and you can
remember kneeling before her, drawing them down with shaking
hands as she watched you with those glittering dark eyes, still
alive even now with fading heat. And something darker lurks
there, too - an abyss of loneliness you know all too well.
You force yourself to concentrate on the matter at hand.
Your hand closes on two USMC t-shirts, and you consider them a
moment, pondering the perverse irony of the matching set.
Considering, too, the ways that they bind you, with their ties to
the service and to the past. You weigh it up, and it seems to
you that they could equally help or hinder, but there's only so
far you can second-guess her, and in the end comfort wins out.
You put hers on the bed, sparing her the indignity of letting go
of her shirt to retrieve it, and then you turn your back on her,
facing the window to change.
Her hiss of pain penetrates the stillness.
"Shannon? What is it?" you say, turning, caution forgotten.
Urgent. Panicky. Wondering crazily if you've done something to
her. What if your biology isn't compatible with hers after all?
What if-
"My back," she says. "I scraped it. On the wall."
It's the first time either of you have alluded to what happened.
"Let me look."
She turns her back in silent acquiescence. Gingerly, you draw
her shirt off her shoulders. It's stuck to her with blood, and
tugging it free opens freshly-scabbed wounds.
"How is it?" she wonders, and you know what she means. Not how
bad. How clean.
"Not too bad. There's some cotton fibre in there. A bit of
plaster. I'll get it."
"Be quick."
You get a cloth from the bathroom and wet it under warm water,
and by the time you get back to her, her flesh is already healing
up. It still bothers you, watching it, even after all these
years, and the same old words rise in your mind. Unnatural.
Inhuman. But for the first time that you can remember, your
instinctive horror of your difference is tempered with something
kinder. You frown a little, surprised by the realisation before
you get to work.
You get it clean in time, taking your time to be sure. It heals
up good. No ripples, no scar. You admire your handiwork, and
risk a touch on her shoulder. "It's okay."
"Thank you," she says. She slips the t-shirt over her head and
pulls it down over her body, but you stay where you are. Wary of
breaking the tenuous connection you've made. She looks over her
shoulder at you. "You know, I was in the Gulf in January."
You were there as well, but you don't want to interrupt
whatever's sparked her train of thought by saying so. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. Got shot up pretty bad. I wouldn't let anyone touch me.
Let them heal over with the bullets still in there. I opened
them up myself and got them out later."
You've done just as bad yourself, but you still wince in
sympathy. "Afraid of being found out?"
She shrugs. "Afraid of being found out, afraid of transmitting
it maybe - I have no idea if this thing can be passed on. I was
afraid to ask."
You nod. Understanding perfectly. "They might have wanted more
tests."
"Or quarantine."
"Yeah."
She gives a sudden, half-laughing sound that might just as well
be a sob.
"You know, I don't even know you," she says, shaking her head.
"It's been years since we served together - we were kids, for
Chrissake. Now - now you're a stranger. And yet you know me
better than anyone." She sighs. "I don't know if that's a good
thing, or whether it's just pathetic."
You don't know what to say. Tentatively, you stroke her arm
with the back of your hand, and she doesn't push you away.
"I feel like I owe you an apology," you say. "Back there - I
was pretty, uh, gauche." It seems like an odd word, almost
quaint, and it doesn't really capture your fumbled efforts in the
alley, but you're not sure that you really want to capture them.
There's a hint of a smile in her voice. "I think we both were.
Eight years is a long time." She holds you with her gaze, openly
curious. "Did you know there was another one, Knowle?"
"Yes," you say. "But I didn't know who."
"Same."
An uneasy silence falls, punctuated only by the sounds of the
storm, and you see in her the same desperate search. The same
panicky hope that maybe the unknown other would be the one who
would make it all make sense, the one to take you out of the
wilderness of whatever it was they did to you and help you to go
forward.
And now that you have her, you have no idea what to do with her.
What the fuck did you think was going to happen, Knowle? You
were going to fall into each other's arms and face the world
together? You feel mildly ashamed of your own stupidity and
naivete. Then, hot on the heels of that, a host of inarticulate
hopes crumble beneath you. They fall away, leaving you suddenly,
abruptly bereft.
"I'm not always - I don't -" you begin, and then you lose the
thought. Sadness rushes over you, grief for a myriad of things
lost to you, so hard and fast it leaves you reeling.
Instinctively, you reach out, groping blindly for her. Tears
slip down over your cheeks, just a couple of them, but you
haven't cried since 1983, since the bombing of the MAU.
She stares up at you. Almost as shocked as you are.
"Knowle," she whispers, and she turns in your arms and she holds
you, grasping at your shoulders, strong and ferociously tender.
You cling to each other, and wracking sounds of grief pass
between you without you knowing whether they're yours or hers.
You never really know where pain ends and passion begins. It
isn't the first kiss, huddled together in the warmth of a shared
breath - that's soft and slow and it tastes of mingled tears. It
isn't the second, her shaking fingers finding your jaw as you
push back her hair with your hands. It might be the third, when
you gather her up, fiercely tender, and her palms grow firmer and
surer and find their way into your hair.
"They'll use us against each other, Knowle, you know they will,"
she whispers against your lips.
You nod. You know.
It's gentler this time. Infinitely soft and slow. Not the
harsh flames of ravenous hunger before. More like glowing embers
splashing warmth and light in the dark. You see it when she
kneels on the bed and stretches out her hand to you. You feel it
when you sink down together into the pillows, blankets drawn over
you both against the cold. You hear it in her voice when she
seizes around you, sighing out your name.
"It's dark days ahead," she says when you're done and spooned
together, watching the lashings of the storm against the
windowpane.
You tighten your arm around her. "Yeah."
"They made us like this for something, Knowle."
"We'll face it together." You know that counts for very nearly
nothing, but you say it because it seems like the right thing to
say.
"That's not going to fix it," she says, but there's a note of
indulgence in her voice, as well.
You don't have an answer for that. You stay there with her,
stroking her, frowning.
"It's enough, Shannon," you say finally. "Maybe it doesn't fix
anything, but it's enough."
She nods a little. Kisses your hand. Doesn't answer.
You drift off to sleep together in the dark.
END
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The title of this one, like its prequel Caro de
carne mea, is another biblical reference. This verse is less
directly relevant to the story, but geeks - er, trivia buffs
might be interested to know how it came about.
It started with the first story. Caro de carne mea is from the
Latin Vulgate version of the creation story, in which Adam and
Eve recognise their own likeness in one another and make love,
much as Knowle and Shannon did.
However, this spawned a discussion of biblical etymology with a
Hungarian friend, who mentioned that the Hungarian word for
(hu)man is ember. This really appealed to me, with its
connotations of warmth and (to mix my religious metaphors) the
kind of phoenix-like themes I like to work with, of love and life
springing out of the ashes of destruction.
So when the time came to name this sequel, I exposed my big ol'
biblical geek roots and pulled out my concordance. "Like glowing
embers" is from the NIV translation of Psalm 102:3, and it
relates to being in pain and aching for comfort. It's also, I
might add, a pretty crappy translation when compared with the
Latin (I haven't checked it against Hebrew), but hey, literary
licence and stuff.
And yet again, I've exposed the full range of my geekiness. Go
me.