"Interesting."
"Is that all?" Vasiht'h said. "It's just 'interesting'?"
"I'm not dead yet," Lisinthir replied. "Anything that doesn't immediately kill me can afford to be relegated to mere notability." He flicked his eyes to the overhead lights. "Granting that we must set aside the possibility that we might not survive, of course."
Jahir ignored that and pushed off the bed. He took the hekkret handed to him by the Glaseah and turned it in his fingers. "So this is what?"
So many secrets. So many memories. Must he now drag them into the ugly light of the Alliance with its judgmental normalcies? He didn't want to discuss it, but he could still feel the silk of Jahir's hair in his fist. "That is the hekkret. That preparation in particular is... therapeutic."
He could see the questions, the fascination, and the mind suddenly at work on the puzzle. Jahir narrowed his amber eyes. "And which preparation was poisoning you? The internal one, I'm guessing."
Lisinthir inclined his head.
"Then why were you smoking it?" Vasiht'h asked, ears sagging.
"Immunity?" Jahir guessed, lifting his brows.
"A very limited one, but yes."
Jahir came closer, still examining the hekkret. "I am guessing, then, that the examination of this formulation won't tell me much about the mechanism of action for the ingested variant."
"I wouldn't know," Lisinthir admitted, resting his sweating hands on the bed's edge. Talking was beginning to get difficult. Moving his jaw made his head worse, and his tongue felt swollen. "But I doubt it."
"It's a place to start?" Vasiht'h offered.
"It is," Jahir agreed. He plucked an AAP from one of the banks alongside the bed, loaded an ampoule in it. "And thank you for giving it to us, Ambassador."
"Is this more nutrition?" Lisinthir asked.
"Tilt your head." When he looked warily at Jahir, the other Eldritch met his gaze and said, quiet, "Tilt your head. That way, away from me. It will work faster from the neck."
He turned his face away, though exposing his throat made all his instincts snarl. They relented when the pump hissed and a cold wave washed up the side of his scalp and sank into his head, behind his eyes, between his temples. Despite himself, Lisinthir shuddered.
"Good?" Jahir asked.
Because the question sounded clinical, Lisinthir answered, curt, "Yes."
The other nodded. "There are better painkillers, but they exacerbate nausea. The alternatives have a higher toxicity at high doses, so I'd like to limit their use if at all possible. Your liver won't handle much strain, and if it fails this clinic will not save you."
"They might have a stasis field," Vasiht'h muttered. "We should ask Hea Borden."
Jahir frowned, thoughtful. "That might be the only thing, yes. But a stasis field requires a great deal of power." He glanced up at the emergency lighting. "I'm not sure we'd have much time with one unless the Fleet personnel restore the engines."
"So then," Lisinthir said dryly, touching the skin at his temple. "The less medication the better."
"If you can manage your pain in any other way...?"
His first thought involved the Queen and the Emperor and wasn't suited for externalization. But then he wondered what his healer-with-unexamined-needs would say in response to the idea. "Not unless I can find a lover willing to provide me with an endorphin or two."
Vasiht'h folded his arms and eyed him. But Jahir, pulling the empty ampoule out and replacing it with a longer one, only said, "I fear you'll have to make do with your own company there."
"Pity," Lisinthir answered, submitting to the second, longer injection. "It's far more enjoyable with other people."
"Should I be checking you for sexually-transmitted diseases, then?" Jahir said, sounding distracted.
Lisinthir glanced at him, saw the golden eyes fixed on the slowly draining tube. He chose a truth that would obfuscate and lead, and wondered a little that he was willing to do the latter at all. "I would be surprised to have one, for sooth."
"So would I, given what it would imply." Jahir squinted, then pulled the AAP away. "That should be your meal for the next five hours. Would you lie down? I'd like to get a new baseline for you."
The conscientious healer, his cousin. And yet his behavior had his Glaseah worried, for Lisinthir caught the look Vasiht'h shot his oblivious partner. They both knew what had happened in his cabin had been as significant as any concussion. But he lay down anyway, and let Jahir consider his readings, and wondered what he would do—wondered in fact that he was thinking of doing anything. Part of it was a desire not to face just how irrevocably his world had changed. He had been divorced not just from his lovers, but from a life where he felt vital, necessary, productive... and ejected into a world where he would have to guard himself from overreacting to the unintentional provocations of an over-civilized populace... alone, and surrounded by people who would assume that he didn't want to be so much as casually brushed, much less anything more intimate. If he looked too closely at the days louring before him, he would truly need the mandatory therapy Vasiht'h had mentioned.
But that, he knew, was only part of it. The other was fascination, because his cousin had proven himself aggressive enough to fight... and then turned around and given in to him with all the trust of a lover. He was an Eldritch, but also apparently a xenophile. A healer, but who had been given martial training outside their own world, or how would he have ever learned stavework? A man who loved a Glaseah, one of the most steadfastly platonic of all the Alliance's species... but whose arousal had been very plain through their skins when they touched.
A man who could have been him, or that he could have been, had his father been less angry; had he been more Galare than Imthereli.
So many contradictions. It was perhaps inevitable that they should draw his attention when he'd spent over a year seeking the fault lines in others in order to exploit them to guarantee his safety, and the Alliance's. What Lisinthir hadn't expected, given that he no longer had to, was how much he wanted to dig under that surface and pry out everything hiding there. It would be a form of violence to do so... but then, there was every possibility that Jahir would enjoy it if so.
Perhaps so would he.
Another form of battle, perhaps. And the prize? What was his goal? That was the part he wasn't certain of.
Yet.
CHAPTER 6
It was a piece of the Goddess's own luck that Jahir was too busy with his own thoughts to be as attentive to Vasiht'h's as he would normally be... because Vasiht'h didn't particularly want to share. His head was a tumult, breathless and full of noise, one precipitated by the sudden feeling that his closest friend in all the worlds—closer than that, a brother in everything but blood—was about to pass into a dangerous arena that Vasiht'h was barred from entering.
Vasiht'h was many things, and a fool was—he hoped—not one of them. Not often, anyway. And he recognized the complex and bloody knotwork that Lisinthir had yanked up from Jahir's subconscious: not just for what it was, but for the many potential traumas its secrets and denials promised when exposed. He and Jahir had seen similar complexities in other patients, and inevitably referred those clients to one of the handful of trusted practitioners they knew who specialized in sexual dysfunction.
The irony of it was that dysfunction in the Alliance was usually a product of an internal narrative at war with external responsibilities or mores. There were so many ways to be normal... and none of them, not a single one of them, would matter to Jahir. Jahir had to be normal by his own standards, and nothing about the mess Vasiht'h had glimpsed in that room would ever be even close. Had they been home, Vasiht'h would have gotten his partner to one of their colleagues himself, because this was one subject on which he could give no advice; not just because he was Glaseah, but because he loved Jahir, and there was no untangling his own fears and needs from his friend's.
But they were not home. They were here, in the middle of nowhere, without access to so much as a
communication channel they could have used to talk through the problem with a trained and licensed professional. And they were as good as yoked to the client who had fomented the crisis, a man to whom they had a duty as the only people who could see to his care. A man who had done more for the Alliance than just about anyone Vasiht'h could name, and who deserved their best efforts.
The Glaseah taught that the breath of the Goddess was Her divine inspiration, Her call to make, to think, to create the world. They also taught that there were moments where She held Her breath, and until now Vasiht'h had never experienced Her withdrawal, the way he felt it in this moment as an absence of something vital and omnipresent.
Vasiht'h had never felt quite so alone in his life.
"What now?" he asked in the corridor, as they left the clinic.
"Now, he rests, or returns to his room. And we... we do the same, I imagine. I can start the analysis on the sample when we wake." Jahir shook his head minutely, more a flinch than a gesture. "I lose the time here, without the light changing the way it does at home. But it feels late. I don't want to do anything intellectually rigorous while feeling so depleted."
"I wouldn't mind resting." Vasiht'h resisted the urge to rub his arms, knowing it was his partner's impulse and not his. "I wouldn't mind not being here right now, actually."
Jahir's look was rueful, but sympathetic. That the Eldritch shared the feeling made Vasiht'h feel better. Their interactions were oscillating between closeness and uncomfortable distance; the only thing that made the latter bearable was knowing that it was the result not of Jahir pushing the Glaseah away, but of Jahir pushing himself away... from everything. There was a bewilderment in him that felt like a shock victim's, as if he still wasn't sure what was going on.
They had not reached their quarters when they were intercepted.
"Oh, aletsen," Borden said, her ears flagging. "I'm so glad I found you. Can you spare a moment?"
Jahir said nothing, so Vasiht'h offered, "Sure? Should we go somewhere? Our room is... right behind you."
"That'll be fine," she said, and backed up so they could enter first.
Once they'd all settled, Vasiht'h continued, "What can we do for you?"
"This is a piece of luck," the Seersa said. "That you're here and you're xenotherapists. This kind of situation, with the ship... it's really hard on a small crew, especially since we've lost some people. Normally I'd be the one doing the counseling, but I think... since you all are experts... is there any way you could be spared from your work with the Ambassador for a little while?" She pressed her hand to her mouth, dragged it down her chin and shook her head. "The strain is bad. It's getting to us."
"Of course," Jahir said, sounding more like himself. Even the mindline cleared enough for Vasiht'h to sense his friend's disorientation directly. "We'll do what we can. If you could give us any background?"
"Like how bad the situation is," Vasiht'h said. "And who had the closest ties to the people who passed away."
"Right," Borden said with a deep breath. "I'll start with the situation. Which isn't the worse we've been through together, but... it's pretty rough."
Vasiht'h listened, felt his partner's attention socket into the mindline, soothing out the jagged edges where they no longer perfectly matched. For that alone he would have been grateful to Borden. That she also gave them something to do afterwards, something that engaged talents they'd spent years perfecting together, something that could remind them how to reconnect....
Of course, in payment for that blessing, he had to receive the knowledge of just how badly off the ship was, and how much difficulty the crew was having getting the engines back online without the chief engineer's help. All of the crew had some cross-training, but none of them had had the chief's way with the machinery, and they were working off of technical manuals that required a great deal of concentration to understand even with the necessary background. And they were all suffering from the burdens of their grief and fear.
"We can do something about that, at least," Vasiht'h said. "And we can start now."
"Really?" Borden asked, hopeful.
Jahir smiled for her and said, "Show us to someone who's sleeping. We do our best work then."
The glance she threw them was perplexed and curious, but she seemed willing. As they followed her, Jahir said privately, /This is also of debatable morality, as we have not gained consent for treatment./
/No,/ Vasiht'h said. /But this counts as emergency medicine. Doesn't it?/
The mindline broadened, brought him the familiar and welcome sense of his friend's mind at work, thoughts like silver gleaming glimpsed through the current between them. /I don't know. I do know that if the personnel at work on the ship cannot do their jobs effectively, we are going to die. And they have joined a military organization. They may not have the same right to refuse treatment. You were the one who booked our first Fleet clients. They were sent by their chief medical officer, were they not?/
Vasiht'h frowned. /Yes. I hadn't thought of that./
"What exactly are you going to do?" Borden asked at the door to one of the cabins.
"We'll pass through their dreams," Jahir said. "And soothe the anxieties there. You may stay, if you wish."
"I should." She nodded. "Not that I don't trust you, but I'm their shipmate. We look out for one another."
Vasiht'h said, "That brings up something we were discussing, actually. Are we allowed to do this? Usually we need to be formally engaged to work on someone. Particularly without their knowledge."
/Rather what the Queen did with the Ambassador,/ Jahir observed, and something about the words felt like gathered shadows.
/We already decided we're not treating him for his psychological issues,/ Vasiht'h pointed out. /Besides, don't you all owe a liege-duty to your Queen? I thought that meant she could tell you what to do./
The welter of thoughts and ideas that inspired... like fireworks and wounds, streaking through his nervous system like lightnings. Vasiht'h shivered and rubbed his arms.
"That is a good point," Borden was saying. "It's never been an issue before, of course, because Fleet has its own medical professionals. You aren't within the system though...." She frowned. "Well, easy way to solve it." She tapped one of the walls awake. "Borden to Captain Raynor."
A pause. Then: "Raynor here."
"Sir, the civilian therapists have offered their services, but they work on the dreams of sleeping patients. Some sort of esper thing, I take it." She glanced at them, received Vasiht'h's nod, and continued. "In my judgment, we can't afford to wait on letting everyone wake up and say 'yes.' If we can start solving some of our mental health issues, we have to."
Another, longer pause. "You think it's that severe a detriment to crew efficiency."
"I think even the smallest thing that gets in the way of us succeeding right now, sir, is a severe detriment. We have to pull out all the stops. I wouldn't have consulted with them if I hadn't believed it."
"All right, Borden. I'll authorize it. Keep an eye on it, report on the results."
"Aye, sir. Thank you. Borden out." She nodded to them. "All right, let's go. Your first patient is Evgeniya Sarya. She was the engineer's second, and the pressure on her is intense."
"I imagine," Jahir said, quiet.
The Seersa stepped into the cabin and they followed. Their client was in the small room adjacent to the one that led into the corridor, on a bunk with her back turned to them. Vasiht'h held out his hand, felt Jahir's fingers slide through his. The warmth of that touch and the trust it signified released the tension in his heart.
/With you, arii./
Jahir answered, soft, /Always./
They turned toward their patient together and sank into her dreams.
For the next few hours, they worked through the sorrows and agitations and fears of three more members of the ship's crew, with Borden their faithful attendant. And the work was healing, because it remained the best of who they were and all they could offer, an a
ffirmation of the vow they had taken together, to help those in need.
"That's everyone down this shift," Borden said. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you so long, it's just...."
"It's fine," Jahir said, gentle. "It is our work."
"Anything we can do to help you is all we can do to help us all get out of this," Vasiht'h added. "So thank you for asking us."
"When you put it that way...." She smiled, lopsided. "I'll tell you if I see any changes. If it works, I'll be back."
Inside their cabin, they prepared for bed; it no longer mattered that neither of them remembered what time it was or how long it had been since they'd slept, they were definitely both tired. Vasiht'h was content. The mindline felt close again, and deep, and his sense of Jahir's presence had returned to normal. He fluffed up the cushions he'd brought from the couch in the main room and arranged them beside the bunk, then nestled into them. Jahir turned the lights off and walked past him to the bed... and then went to one knee alongside it rather than climbing into it.
Surprised, Vasiht'h sat up from the pillows. "Arii?"
In answer, cold hands slipped over his shoulders and over his back, drew him into one of Jahir's rare embraces. The mindline bruised beneath the weight of his partner's emotions, compacted so tightly Vasiht'h couldn't read anything in them but their smothering pressure.
/What is it?/ he asked, his heart racing.
Jahir's head came to rest on his shoulder, and the mindline let some of that weight leak: so much fear. Am I really who I think I am, and How can I be thus with any honor, and It can't be so, and over and over: I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid.
With a great calm that litany resounded, and yet with a trembling that shivered out from the spirit and into the flesh that Vasiht'h held against his. Jahir said nothing and didn't need to. That he sought comfort, that he knew that he needed it... that was more than enough. Even after Jahir parted from him and sought the bunk, Vasiht'h could hear the echoes in the mindline, regular as a metronome in his musician-partner's mind: I'm afraid—I'm in danger—I'm afraid.
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