Black Swan

by Mylochka

(Standard Year 2252)

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Noel DelMonde watched the two shadowy figures hover over him as he lay on an operating table in the Drake’s sickbay. Although the expression didn’t quite reach his inexplicably stiff face, he frowned. “Watched” might be too strong a term. His eyes wouldn’t open for some reason. What he was “seeing” was a mental image. The colors of the emotions of Lian Rendell and her nurse Rajana Blake glowed in colored auras, making them look as if they were ghosts made of rainbows.

“Don’t try to talk, Del,” Dr. Rendell advised. “You’re still anesthetized.”

Since his face seemed to be made of hardened leather, he didn’t have much choice other than to obey. That didn’t make him happy. Having a face made of leather and eyes that wouldn’t open wasn’t making him happy either. Even if he could talk, at the moment it was just too hard to squeeze his vast unhappiness at the current situation into the form of words.

Drugged, was his first coherent thought. Very drugged.

His tongue explored the strange feel of his rigid lips.

“Are you thirsty?” Rendell asked, despite the fact she’d just told him not to talk and was already signaling Blake to get something for him.

The nurse put something to his lips that wasn’t visible because it had no glow. He had to figure out from the strange sounds that she was wearing gloves as she gently guided his mouth to close around the invisible tube and start to pull liquid.

Memories of incredible pain began to tingle around the corners of his mouth as he sucked carefully rationed drops of medicated coolness into his dry throat.

He’d been in an accident. A bad one.

“Don’t try to move yet,” the doctor warned.

Correctly anticipating that he was going to attempt to ignore this, she had her nurse adjust the restraints over his arms and chest.

Sneaky bitches, he thought, irritated.

“Doctor?” Blake asked, short-handing a query about increasing the dosage of the pain medication they already had flowing through him.

“No, let’s have him fully conscious for a few minutes,” Rendell replied.

Pain and the memories of greater pain howled silently outside the bubble of artificial calm Rendell’s medicine had created for him. He knew he’d be screaming without her drugs.

One good t'ing 'bout havin' a Haven doctor, he reflected, they ain’t stingy wit' the dope.

He decided he’d like more information on exactly how he wound up in this pitiful state. “Hhhhaa…” was all he managed to rasp.

“You were in an accident,” Rendell informed him. “Can you remember?”

If I could fuckin’ remember, he thought, why the fuck I be askin'?

Pieces of it began to come back to him, though. An engineering lab. Dylan Paine talking. Replacing his tools. More talking. Turning back. The world exploding in his face…

“Whe’ he?” Del had to let these sounds convey his inquiry about the puppy’s current location and state of health.

“Mr. Paine is fine,” Rendell assured him. “He was still wearing his protective gear at the time of the accident. Why weren’t you?”

Del sighed. “I a' idio',” he was able to say as his face gradually began to thaw.

He could tell from her emotions that the Haven was smiling wryly. “No argument here.”

He’d been working with Paine on an experiment to try to boost the sensors of the small craft they were working on using photonic energy. Del could remember now that the testing hadn’t gone well. He’d given up for the day, but true to form, the puppy had refused to admit defeat. The Cajun had left him to his tinkering. He’d taken off the protective heavily shielded helmet and was replacing his tools when Paine had called, “Hey, I think I’ve got it. Watch this!”

DelMonde’s whole body flinched in remembered agony at the thought of the white blast that had seared him.

“Nah th’ boy faul',” he said, nonetheless.

“You tell him that,” Rendell replied dryly as she took readings with an invisible whirring instrument. “We’ve all tried.”

The Cajun sighed again wearily. “Nah’ ri’ now.”

“No, not right now,” his doctor agreed.

Del was beginning to worry that his eyes wouldn’t open. “H’ bad?” he asked.

“The burns on your face and hands were largely superficial,” Rendell answered, slowly, the auras emanating from her glowing with the emotions she was trying to keep out of her voice. “We’ve already taken care of them and they should be gone without any scarring within a few hours. However…”

“M’eyes,” Del said, his horror quickly growing despite the calm being medically enforced upon him. “They ‘ready op’n, ain’ they?”

“Yeah,” Rendell admitted apologetically, her sorrow hanging in the air around her.

Blind. And from what the Haven was thinking, it probably wasn’t going to be temporary either. The feeling of utter helplessness crushed in on Del. Nothing he could do. Nothing. “Oh, shit,” he muttered, and returned to the welcoming arms of drugged oblivion.

*** ** *** *** ** *** *** ** ***

“Feeling any better?” the blob of color he knew was Lian Rendell asked.

“No,” Del answered flatly.

It was several hours later. The engineer had been in and out of consciousness a number of times. He figured from the sound and smell of things that he was still in sickbay. Maybe in a small, isolated room. There had been a few medical attendants in and out, but no one had said anything. His eyes were bandaged now, so it was easy to pretend he was sleeping. Always hard to fool a Haven on anything, though.

“Well, you look a lot better,” Rendell said, coming next to the bed. He imagined that she was consulting the readings on the diagnostic panel and making notes.

Del’s hands and face itched like mad, but since they still had him restrained there wasn’t much he could do about it.

“Looks ain’t ever't’ing, cher,” he informed her sourly.

“No, they’re not,” she began.

He could tell from the color of her mind that this was the beginning of a “let’s keep a positive attitude” lecture. “Skip it,” he advised. “An’ don’ go into a bunch o’ medical mumbo-jumbo I ain’t gonna understand either.”

Pity muted the Haven’s exasperation. “Would you prefer I just left?” she offered.

He focused on the swirling mass of color where her face should be. “Jus’ tell me my odds.”

“You aren’t going to die, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she answered assumed lightness.

“That not what I worrin’ ‘bout,” he replied humorlessly. “Try the next one.”

He heard her take a deep breath as she decided how frankly to answer. “We’re headed at top speed to the closest starbase. With the facilities available there, you have about a twenty-five percent chance of regaining your sight.”

“Seventeen, you mean,” he corrected from her thoughts.

“Seventeen to twenty-five percent chance,” she admitted.

He snorted weakly. “Them sure ain’t odds any Haven in they right mind’d take.”

“It’s the odds we’ve got,” Rendell replied pragmatically.

To cover what he was feeling, Del growled and pulled at the restraints holding his arms down. “You gonna keep me chained up like this ‘til we get there?”

“Your face and hands need more time to heal,” she explained. “I didn’t want you to damage the new skin.”

“What the fuck difference is that gonna make t’ me now?” he asked bitterly.

“There’s a twenty-five percent chance it’ll make a big difference to you,” she retorted, but bent down to disengage the bands around his wrists anyway.

“Seventy-five say it won’t.”

“Don’t scratch,” the Haven warned, as he immediately began to rub at spot on his cheek that had been tormenting him for what seemed like an eternity. She lifted his fingers firmly away and sprayed the area with something cool and soothing.

“I expect there a line out th’ door o’ people come to pester me,” he said, as the Haven gently turned his face and treated the other cheek.

“Literally, no,” she said, spraying the back of each hand in turn. “Metaphorically, yes… Job one in Sickbay for the past 16 hours has been giving out updates on your condition. As soon as you’re able…”

“Lian…” Del was able to judge where her hands were well enough to grasp one of them. He let his grip do the sort of pleading he would have normally done with his eyes. “Tell ‘em all you had to knock me out again.”

Rendell paused. “Even the captain?”

“’Specially the captain,” he confirmed. “Gimme another half-day or so. I need some time…”

After a moment of consideration, the Haven carefully squeezed the uninjured parts of his hand. “Sure,” she said, then sighed at the thought of all the additional calls this meant she’d have to field. “But you owe me for this, DelMonde.”

He gave what he knew was weak imitation of his normal suggestive grin. “What you got in mind fo' payback, cher?”

“We’ll save that discussion for when you’re fully recovered,” she said coolly, although her amusement and the sadness that tinged it were completely readable to him. “I do want to make a bargain with you right now, though.”

He snorted. “Considerin’ that you got me flat on my back an’ tied up, what kind o’ Haven would you be if you didn’t?”

“The bargain is this,” she said, ignoring the cultural jab. “You promise not to scratch your face or hands and I leave the restraints off.”

“How ‘bout you leave the restraints off an’ I not choke you as soon as I able to get up outta here?” he countered ill-humoredly.

She patiently put her hand out so that it was touching his fingertips. “Do we have a deal, Mr. DelMonde?”

“Throw in that bottle o’ spray an’ I t’ink ‘bout it,” he countered.

“Not more than once every half hour,” she cautioned. “I’m setting a timer so you’ll know when.” She put the ointment in his left hand and took his right. “Deal?”

“Deal,” he agreed reluctantly, knowing that it was perilous to enter even the most trivial and innocent-seeming bargains with members of that race.

“And done,” she said giving him an encouraging pat on the arm.

As he “watched” her glowing form walk towards the doorway, the engineer could not help giving a deep sigh.

“What is it, Del?” she turned and asked gently.

“Ninety-eight percent o’ the advantages o’ havin’ a doctor wit’ a nice ass are lost if you can’t see,” he informed her.

Rendell gave a wry smile. “Consider it motivation for recovery,” she said, adding an extra deliberate layer of provocativeness purely in the interests of medical science.

*** ** *** *** ** *** *** ** ***

Click here to hear the song

What will grow quickly, that you can't make straight
It's the price you gotta pay
Do yourself a favour and pack your bags
Buy a ticket and get on the train
Buy a ticket and get on the train

Del wished he’d asked for his guitar -- even though he doubted his hands were up to playing. Anything to get the damned tune out of his head…

Cause this is fucked up, fucked up
Cause this is fucked up, fucked up

“True dat,” he agreed with the lyrics.

He couldn’t think. The damned room was too damned dark to think. He wished another nurse would walk through just to break up the blackness. He felt like he was choking on darkness.

You cannot kickstart a dead horse
You just crush yourself and walk away
I don't care what the future holds
Cause I'm right here and I'm today

In a way that he normally avoided, Del let his mind reach out. Anything was better than this empty darkness. Even Sulu’s worry. Even the puppy’s anguish.

He could hear people mentally rehearsing the stupid and annoying things they were going to say to him about blindness not being the end of the world. As talented as he was, there were plenty of things he could still do with his life. Other things, that is. Del could hear them acknowledge the thing they were planning never to say to his face. His Starfleet career was over. He’d never be able to do all the necessary re-training quickly enough. Engineering was probably out, too. Although a good engineer used more than just his or her eyes, again the amount of re-training it would take to work at his current level was daunting…. Of course, he still had his music and poetry…

“Yeah,” he said aloud to the darkness. “I just set up on Jackson Square an’ pass a hat through the crowd fo’ credits…”

If it were them in his place, he knew that they would then understand that blindness was not just about what job you could do. It was about sunsets and oceans and nebulae you would never see again. It was about the faces of loved ones you’d never look into again…

His tortured tear ducts suddenly ached with moisture they couldn’t shed.

“Too damned much o’ that goin’ on already,” he said to himself, swiping futilely at the bandages over his eyes.

Be your black swan, black swan
I'm for spare parts, broken up

He could hear Sulu outlining the argument they were destined to have about the feasibility of contacting a certain keheil they both knew…

People get crushed like biscuit crumbs
And laid down in the bed you made
You have tried your best to please everyone
But it just isn't happening
No, it just isn't happening

Maybe darkness wasn’t so bad after all, he decided, pulling his thoughts in. As the babel of voices gradually quieted down to the normal dull roar he’d learned to put up with, Del noticed something.

He wasn’t entirely alone.

It was faint… On the far periphery of the edges of his awareness. A something that wasn’t nothing…

The harder he tried to focus on the something, the more elusive it became. It was like trying to see something that purposefully stayed just beyond the corner of your eye.

“Who there?” he asked the darkness sharply.

There was no answer. The something remained just beyond his grasp.

“I know you there, motherfucker,” he warned. “Don’t make me come after you.”

When there was no response to his threat, Del belatedly realized that he had no way to back it up. There was no equivalent to turning around real fast in psychic reality.

“It could jus’ be the drugs,” he told himself.

A soft beeping noise and the sensation of gentle vibration near his left palm distracted him. When he closed his hand around the bottle of ointment, the sound and sensation abruptly ceased.

“That a neat li’l trick,” he said aloud, realizing that the alarm Rendell set for him must be in the bottle itself, simultaneously alerting him that it was time to apply the medication and making it easier to locate the container.

He’d have to start figuring out all sorts of clever little doo-dads like that for himself now… And then hiring someone to fabricate them for him, he thought sourly as he sprayed a fresh coat of ointment on the back of each hand.

“Miss Lian got me doin’ her job fo' her,” Del grumbled aloud. “Must be drugged outta my mind to make a deal wit’ a damned Haven…”

As the salve began to once more quiet the tingling in his cheeks, he wondered how bad he looked. “Probably red as a baked lobster an’ twice as shiny,” he speculated glumly, holding up his right hand to examine.

It was odd to see himself like that – as glowing colors against the blackness instead of as flesh and blood – even odder than it was to see other people that way. The auras around him were sharper and brighter than around most. Del watched rose-colored ripples form as he idly moved his fingers. When he turned his palm towards his face, he could see something else that distinguished him from other people – a deep core of a particular shade of blue….

“So the poison go down that far, does it?” he commented aloud.

As he watched, the cerulean blue began to pulse, growing a bit stronger with each beat.

“Damned useless shit.” Del frowned at the throbbing line of color that he could now see flowed in threads up and down his arm. “All the power in the friggin’ universe an’ not a damned t'ing I can do wit’ it…”

Watching the glowing blue, the thought came to him that there was one thing that he might be able to use a Loonie Booster Pack to do…

“Nothin’ ventured...” he said aloud and took in a deep breath.

Taking in a generous pull of blue, Del let his mind slip slightly out of gear, then as the borrowed power crested, he willed himself to do the previously impossible psychic equivalent of turning around really, really fast.

What was there turned out to be more shocking that he could have imagined.

It was blue too.

It wasn’t a person. It didn’t have the colors or shape of a person. It did, however, have the echoes of a person. A very specific person.

The blue thing seemed as shocked as he was. It was very, very still for a moment as if it was hoping that by being still it could convince him it wasn’t there.

Del couldn’t have looked away if his life depended on it.

Gradually, the blue began to swirl within itself… almost like a person.

“I certainly didn’t expect you could pull that off,” it said in the voice of an angel… a very specific angel that had once been alive… that he had once held in his arms.

The force of unsheddable tears burned in his eyes. He didn’t dare speak or even think for fear of scaring the thing away.

Hi, Del, it said, giving him the psychic equivalent of a heavenly smile.

The name he was afraid to give breath to echoed in his mind. Pelori?

In a way that seemed surreal even in black dreamscape he now inhabited, the blue thing stepped out of the back of his head and into the sickbay room. It stretched itself out into the shape of a woman. Its colors, however, were still confined to a limited spectrum of shadings of cerulean blue.

How you here? The question formed in the engineer’s mind of its own volition.

I’m not, it informed him simply.

Then what the fuck is this? he demanded.

Ummm… The blue thing put what would have been a person’s hand on its hip and seemed to think for a minute. It then snapped incorporeal fingers in a gesture he’d seen Pelori do in life. It’s a hallucination. You’re on a lot of drugs right now.

“Bullshit,” he said aloud. “I do know a t’ing or two ‘bout drugs, y'know. An' what Lian Rendell is givin’ me designed to make my life much less excitin’, not more. No reason I should be seein’ t'ings.”

There was a remarkably human-seeming awkward pause as the thing avoided saying anything about how he wasn’t actually able to “see” anything right now anyway.

Your poor eyes, it said, drawing near to him.

“Are you dead?” he asked bluntly.

The thing withdrew. I can’t talk about that, it informed him with an achingly familiar tone of apology.

“Damn, girl.” He shook his head. “Even your friggin’ afterlife is fuckin’ classified.”

The blue ghost gave Pelori’s sweet half-laugh. I guess so. Par for the course, isn’t it?

“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

The ghost shrugged insubstantial shoulders. Maybe it’s a dream.

“If it a dream,” the Cajun suggested pragmatically, “then get me out this damned bed an’ let’s screw.”

The thing gave a ghost/angel laugh. Always the romantic… I wonder if we can?

Del could feel something like electricity as the ghost came near him. He reached a multi-colored hand out for her. He thought he could detect a crackling tingle in his hand as it passed through her, but nothing more.

Wait, the blue thing said. Let me try. Just stay still.

He held his breath as the cerulean form floated up on the bed beside him and curled herself against him carefully and gently until she was wrapped around his heart like an infinitely soft blanket.

Tears welled up like an ocean within him. “Oh, Jesus,” he breathed. “Pelori, my Perlori…”

There was no denying that it was her now. The presence of her love within him was as real and palpable as the ointment bottle he still gripped in his hand.

Sorry it can’t be more, she said, her voice whispering through him like chimes in a warm breeze.

He had to smile as he held her tightly within his emotions. “It a fuckload better than nothin’, Li’l Mac.”

I don’t know how long I can even manage this, she said.

“It all right, darlin’,” he replied, pressing his hand over his heart to help hold her there. “We jus’ take what we can get.”

Her ironic laugh shimmered inside him. Par for the course again, Mr. DelMonde.

*** ** *** *** ** *** *** ** ***

Go To Part Two

"Black Swan" by Thom Yorke

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