Family Matters

by S E Zbasnik

  "WEST, raise the lights!" A desktop lamp illuminated awake revealing the twisted face of Marek as he shook his fist at the corner of metal desk that did in his shins.

  Variel leaned onto her chair but didn't sit down, "Gods damn it, WEST. The lights!" Another lamp lifted, this one in the middle of her bed, but aside from the emergency "so you don't think you've gone blind in the middle of space" lighting, it remained stubbornly dark.

  She tapped lightly into her husband's shoulder to move him out of the way and nudged the embedded console up. It flickered a green screen before throwing up some incomprehensible runes that turned into 1's and 0's and created a rising mountain range before resetting. "Great. This part of its brain's rotted into avid cliff climbing." She watched her husband still massaging his knee into place, "It's your fault, you know."

  "Mine? I didn't put a desk right next to the door."

  "The entire ship is one good sneeze away from death. That's your doing," her voice was cool, cooler than her talking about the death of her ship warranted. It was probably that heavy dose of mood suppressant Monde shot her up with. She hated the blighted things, but had to agree to a lot of stuff before he'd even think of taking on her elective surgery.

  "And that's all my fault?" Marek pouted.

  "If you'd just stayed on Arda none of this would be necessary," she said, leaning into him more than she'd want if her brain wasn't slipping behind a fog.

  "And if you'd stayed dead I wouldn't have to be here for my cut," he backed off from her teetering form, letting her hand fall heavy to her desk.

  She watched her exhausted hand flop about on her desk and slowly pushed the chair back. It greedily accepted her form, or maybe she imagined it did. The pocket of life savings poked into her muscle, causing her intestines to spasm. She wasn't going to be eating until that was out of her Variel realized as she slumped to the desk.

  Marek used the time she was distracted to snoop around her room. It was mostly empty, traveling light was second nature to a career spacer, but a few knick-knacks graced the metal desk that abused his lower half. A thick book of cardboard, a small frame with nothing in it, a rock.

  When his fingers graced upon the red rose sealed in a plastic coating she snapped, "You're an ass. A big, fat ass clogging up everyone else's life."

  Marek leaned back from the rose, "I didn't abandon my life long dream for an empty picture frame on a derelict starship."

  Variel snorted, her head slipping onto the desk in her creeping drug stupor, "What life long dream? All you wanted was the easiest high you could get. And when that wore off, to find the next."

  "I could have had dreams," he pouted, "but they all choked in the dust of the bright star on her way to knighthood."

  Variel lifted her face off the cool metal of the desk, one of the torn postcards sticking to her cheek, and stared at her husband. "You're, honest and true," she laughed at the absurdity idling in her brain, "You blame me for how you turned out? I was only married to you for five years."

  "You took the best five years of my life and spent them fucking every lieutenant that saluted to the right and licking the anus of anyone's ladder to get one rung higher."

  She tried to growl but it sounded more like she had a bad lob of phlegm clogging her larynx, "Get out. Go back to where you came."

  "That cheap foldout cot cordoned to the wall with bungee cords? Yeah, real high class accommodations you got here." Marek yanked something out of his pocket, "And even your complimentary hats are a joke." He slipped on a piece of blue fabric that frilled on the edge. 'Segundo' was scrawled across in bright gold lettering by a paint pen.

  "If you won't go back to Arda at least get out of my quarters and let me be for a night," she moaned, wanting an hour away from her greatest mistake.

  He pouted, probably planning some crass joke but let it die. It only worked if there was an audience. If he solicited her for "reconciliation sex" she'd just punch his ass down a few decks, even in this state. Not that he'd touch her with a ten foot tentacle, that new face didn't do her any favors and she already started with a handicap.

  "Fine," Marek settled on. "Try not to die in your sleep. I still need you."

  "Was there ever a time you didn't?" her voice called from the table's surface as she tried to pour the rising fever into it.

  Marek huffed, but didn't respond. Instead, he slammed open the locked door and nicked his finger on the hatch's lock. Cursing to himself, he began the arduous task of climbing down to a deck, any deck, that didn't hold his soon to be dead wife. Variel rolled her head up and gazed at the gaping hole he left behind. Bastard can't even be bothered to close a door. Was he raised on a colony?

  It was all her damn fault. Oh, she could run from it and pin a lot of the blame on Marek. Most of it, but this was a problem she could have solved years ago with the use of an assassin or lawyer. She had enough dirt on him, pounds and pounds of the stuff, to keep him quiet about her new life. But it was easier to run, to keep far away from everything Terrwyn Yates ever touched. To forget for a brief moment that she ever was that other woman.

  Variel lifted her head off the table and placed it back down slowly banging her forehead until a soft bruise dented it. The pain in her body was redirecting itself away from the new wound as the anesthesia went on a road trip seeing how the spleen looked this time of year and catching up with some old friends down by the kidneys. But the forehead, that still kicked up a good level of "look what you got yourself into" pain.

  A soft cough resounded around her narrow room, the echo all the more stronger in her empty quarters. She spun about in her chair and watched as a black shadow extracted from the wall beside the bed. "Gods, how long have you been there?"

  Taliesin lifted one shoulder, "Awhile."

  "So more than an hour." She'd started to suss out the assassin's dictionary. "Awhile" meant anywhere from one to two hours, "a bit" was ten to twenty minutes. She feared she'd never live to see "some time."

  Walking out of the shadows, Taliesin slipped towards her into the low light of the room. Variel shook her head, "What would you have done if Marek saw you up here?"

  "He would not," the assassin said, certain in his skills.

  Variel nodded. Knowing her husband he couldn't spot an illuminated neon sign if it didn't have breasts or spicy salads involved. "What brings you up here?"

  "It is Tuesday," Taliesin said with a small smile.

  "Shit, is it?" Variel leaned back in her chair trying to catch her lover's eye, "I coulda sworn we skipped right into the elven week and came out onto Mawrth with that last pinch."

  His eyes glanced down at her weeping wound still begging for attention, "You have gone through with it, then?"

  "Didn't have much choice in the matter," Variel said sucking in a breath as she pushed on the mass bulging under her skin.

  Taliesin dropped to his knees in concern, trying to lift her fingers away from herself. "He injected the mood dispersant into you, did he not?"

  She nodded, her head slipping, "Can't argue when your orc's a doctor."

  He held his hand a moment away from her wound, afraid to touch it. Those golden eyes, orange in the waning light, pierced into her drooping ones, "I came to tell you important news, things I have discovered."

  "Orn finally washed behind his ears?"

  "No," Taliesin shook his head, "And I fear how I would discover such a fact."

  "Spend a night traipsing through a hot ice planet and you'll know," she babbled, or perhaps not. There were a lot of things about the captain's and pilot's life everyone, including themselves, were happy to forget.

  "I did a background search upon your hus...Marek Yates," Taliesin said, getting the focus of her eyes. "I'm afraid he is untrustworthy."

  "Oh?"

  "He appears to be in deep with someone called 'The Black Death.' The monetary amount is staggering."

  "Yeah, I know," Variel said shrugging off his extensive digging into contacts he shouldn't technically have.

&
nbsp; Taliesin paused and did the elven double take, his hair falling in front of his ears, "You know?"

  "Course. You're not the only one that can run a Hex search. Doesn't change anything."

  "Does it not? He clearly only wants the money to pay off a mob boss, drug lord, or possibly pharmacist. The data was inconclusive."

  "So? I don't care what he wants it for as long as it gets him out of my body." She had trouble finding the right words in her medicated fog but the elf would rather chop it up to poor translations. As Taliesin leaned back, hurt filling those gargantuan eyes, she cupped his cheek with her hand and pulled him closer. "I ain't doing this, cutting myself up, tossing years worth of squirreling into the wind, for some hackneyed sword chaser from one of the outer colonies in the ring."

  Her eyes drifted down to his tiny lips as her finger circled around him. Gods, she couldn't concentrate. Looking back up she continued, "Terrwyn Yates needs to die. Permanently."

  "Why?" Taliesin asked, his hand delicately holding onto her wrist. "Was it...was there something she did to require such lengths for an execution."

  "No," Variel shook her head softly, her own matted hair falling into her face, "It was what she didn't do that renders such a verdict." That young brow crocheted in confusion, thick knots of concern tying up the eyebrows. Her finger tapped against his lips again and she sagged back, "Gods, I am tired."

  "I'm sorry," Taliesin said, rising to his feet. "I should not be monopolizing your time so. You require rest. May I?" Uncertain what he wanted but not in a position to argue, Variel nodded. Wrapping his hands under her arms, he easily lifted her until her feet barely grazed the ground, her limping body curling to his touch.

  The taut elf was warm, warmer than most humans. Normally she'd have to break away to cool her skin, but now it felt good. A bit of the flaming burn to match the one building in her abdomen. This was such a stupid idea.

  He settled her onto the bed, pulling the dreaded blanket off the floor. She didn't roll her eyes, but the doting was building to such an excess she'd have sprung from her bed if her emotions weren't in a puddle at her feet, as unreachable as a mountain top. "Sin," her voice whispered in the darkness, "the door."

  Taliesin glanced at the hatch and his shoulders fell. He'd tried to do what was right, what seemed proper, but she could be infuriating, pulling away at even a hint of closeness. Terror at being needed, or worse, needing.

  "Could you close it before Orn comes wandering in and spots you?" she continued, her form rolling over to provide a familiar spot on the bed.

  He easily yanked back the hatch, pressing down the lock, and -- for good measure -- placed one of her heavier shoes down upon it. His fingers tapped against the desk light, turning them off one by one until only the emergency glow remained. Stepping near the bed, he laid his hand upon her shoulder and asked softly, "Are you...do you wish me to stay?"

  Her head turned, unable to see anything in the low light, but his elven eyes still spotted her as a smile lifted her scar, "I wouldn't have moved over if I didn't."

  Taliesin bowed his head to hide the growing smile. It seemed improper given the circumstances, but he couldn't bury it even as he slipped into bed with her. His hand dropped around her stomach, grazing past the lump that held her future and past. She hissed in pain but didn't say anything. Mea culpas dripped from the assassin's silent mouth as he tried to find a safer zone. Eventually, her own hand dropped to his and lifted it up around her shoulders. Patting it twice on the knuckles, she let go.

  The elf's voice cut through the still air as the ship breathed beneath his head, "This is the appropriate time I ask you to define our relationship and where you see this going, yes?"

  "What?!" Variel sputtered, his deadpan cutting through her fog.

  "Got you," the assassin chuckled, his warm breath tickling her ear.

  "Gods, I've created a monster," Variel laughed herself, her fingers tickling up and down his leather wrapped arm. Her breathing slowed as sleep came for the beleaguered captain suffering from blood loss and an excess of shame. The fingers drifted off his arm and collapsed onto the thin mattress.

  Taliesin counted in his head the breaths, then the beat of his heart. Sleep would not come for a few whiles for him, but he did not mind. This was nice.

  As he buried his face into the back of her neck he asked aloud to himself, "Why did you invite me into your bed?"

  "Because you wouldn't have left my side either way," Variel didn't turn out of her slumbering pose. "At least now we both get some sleep."

  Two months earlier...

  "I've got it," Variel said, swinging her legs under herself and snagging a plastic tube. As she stood, the IV ripped straight out of her vein. A mixture of blood and whatever vile stuff Monde insisted burn through her capillaries spilled upon the floor. "Gods damn you, you twisted bag from hell!" She punched at the quickly emptying bag in her impotent rage, splattering more across the floor.

  Taliesin didn't respond as he pinched off the tube and picked it up off the ground. He offered it to the heavily bandaged captain but she shook her head, "Oh hell no, I just got it out of me. I'm not putting it back in."

  "Will it not help with your stab wounds?" he asked, knowing damn well they did. One bag of those T-bots changed every 12 hours or so to seal up a few of the 'failed to dodge an insane Knight swinging her sword like a weed whacker' gaping holes in her sides. Doctor's orders. It also burned when it entered and exited, and stained clothes a blotchy rainbow of pinks. She despised them every time she needed it, which was probably far more than a scant three and a half decades should.

  "Don't care," Variel said, kicking to the back of the room the IV stand Taliesin carefully pulled up to the captain's deck. "I hate that shit."

  Her assassin shrugged and let the tube slip from his fingers, "I despise the mixture as well."

  "Oh?" Variel didn't hide the rise in her curious eyebrow. What little of the fighting she'd seen from him had been as pristinely elven as one could get. The turd didn't even singe his jacket after she set the entire roof on fire.

  He pointed to where the kidneys on a human would be and sighed, "I'd completed a job, and as I back into the shadows -- thuck -- right onto an MGC conductor."

  "Eee," Variel sucked in her breath in solidarity. Shaped like orc teeth, only about three feet longer, they were supposed to balance the MGC in a house to make it more in tune with blah blah something about opening your third eye, unless you already have three then maybe it closes one. They'd been outlawed by every right thinking species who took one look at piles of spikes scattered across the house and thought, hm, maybe that isn't such a bright idea after all. Of course this proved the conspiracy nuts right, and they increased in popularity.

  The assassin nodded, his hair falling from his bare bounds. Absently, she tucked it back behind his skyscraper ears and felt a twinge of embarrassment as her hand fell back to her side. Whatever Monde added into his T-bag mix swelled across her mind like a shame reducing blanket. Taliesin's orange cheek burst into a vibrant crimson. The elf was cold as ice until she let her fingers inch near him, then he melted into a babbling puddle. A crueler woman would push that to her advantage. Variel was surprised to find herself flirting right back.

  "Thanks for the assistance," she said, gesturing to her room. After two days in the med-bay pretending she couldn't hear Monde shuffling about in his room, couldn't feel Orn sneaking another round of medical grade lolly pops, or that damned beeping machine that beeped every time you thought it wasn't going to -- the insanity inducer she dubbed it as it claimed her dreams -- she'd have crawled across broken glass to return to her room. As the captain's deck was a ladder's climb away it felt about the same to risk it, and she knew Monde would make good on his promise that if she couldn't get up there she'd be back in that med-bay, trying to bash in the insanity machine's hard drive with her bandaged, tube filled fists.

  Taliesin didn't say much on his second trip into his captain's boudoir, politely ignoring the norma
lly meticulous laundry tossed about on the floor after Orn was sent on a quest to find something fresh. In his panic, the dwarf grabbed up an old costume from a Chaos party and Variel had to spend her first few recuperating hours dressed like a slutty rabbit before she woke up and threatened to strangle her pilot with the IV.

  "This would not be such a challenge if you were to requisition one of the beds on the lower decks," the elf said as she inched her way towards the bed. Most of her muscles were sore to the point of refusing to work. She slid across the floor in her socks, afraid if she lifted a foot she'd never get it back down again.

  "I could never sleep anywhere else," Variel said, counting under her breath and then dropping her backside down onto the nice but nothing to write home about mattress. "I'd miss the heartbeat."

  "Heartbeat?"

  "Every ship's got one," she said, sliding her feet under a blanket covered in fuzzy stars with varying funny faces. She'd found it ages ago in a box hidden in the back of a storage closet. Variel kept meaning to get a new one after cobbling a few scraps of coin together. "It's the soft spot, the perfect balance of engines and life support, where the heating and cooling systems all come together to provide a soothing thub thub thub."

  "Thub thub thub?" Taliesin had heard of no such thing before, most of his time onboard space flights spent in the passenger side of life. Crew grew nervous when an assassin began to poke around the engines.

  "Yeah," Variel leaned back and let her mind drift off, "the heartbeat of the ship. If something slips, if a calibration goes out of whack, the thub sputters or skips, the pattern breaks, and boom, captain's out the door yelling at someone to fix the problem. Took me ages to find the thing on board. Normally they're tucked away in a corner; served on one ship where it was inside the cake stand cupboard. Got a lot of looks when I'd shove my face down in there every morning for a listen."

  "I see..." Taliesin said slowly. "Perhaps you did not receive a thorough enough examination of your cranium."