<USS Avalon> "Transference"

Transference
By Senior Lieutenant Elissabeth Marksbury 
and The Shadow


Darkness. It wasn?t the sort of darkness behind her eyelids that she?d grown 
used to, but more the ?faint light from another room shining into yours? sort 
of darkness. It was the only way Elissabeth knew she was awake. It had been one 
dream to one nightmare for longer than she possibly knew... or maybe it wasn?t. 
Time had lost all meaning.

Gently turning her head to the side, she tried to get more comfortable, 
burrowing further into her pillow. Licking lips that were swollen and cracked, 
she whimpered slightly at the taste of blood. Faint, but it was there. 

And then she felt... lighter somehow. That awareness had returned, the gentle 
tingle running under her skin when he was near.

His lips slowly touched her forehead, kissing her lightly. 

She tried to speak, to form a greeting with her mouth, but the words wouldn't 
come. Instead, a tear of frustration trickled from the corner of her eye to 
land softly on the pillow. 

He brushed it away, and then put the finger to her lips, "Don't speak."

She vaguely nodded, as much as her head would allow, not entirely sure what had 
happened. 

"You had acute radiation poisoning, you're going to be all right." He trailed a 
hand down her cheek and then kissed her gently on the lips. "You're a hell of a 
trooper, you know that?" 

She opened her mouth once again, struggling for the words to come out. What was 
wrong with her voice? "S-soldier," she managed to whisper almost inaudibly. 

He perked an eyebrow in the darkness. Tel thought briefly for a meaning, but 
shrugged and leaned against the bed in which she was laying. "Soldier?" 

"Like you. Me." God, this was frustrating. Thoughts were slow in forming, words 
were failing her, and she still wasn't quite sure what was going on. 

He smiled, "Yes, yes you are." He felt almost helpless standing over her, 
unable to do anything but watch as she writhed in recovering agony. He wanted 
to take that pain away, he wanted to help that feeling go away. "You don't 
deserve this, no one does." 

"Doesn't matter," she said. The words were incredibly flat and hollow, 
containing none of her passion or zeal for anything. 

Tel palmed her face, placing it between his hands. He was a bit more gifted 
than most Betazoids. In a couple of seconds his hands began to burn, pulsing in 
pain as he extracted that pain away from her. Tel always called himself a 
healer, but it wasn't the type of healing that made the pain vanish - he took 
it upon himself. It traveled up his arms and into his shoulders, he gasped, 
"You'll be better in no time..." 

She felt it leave her body, some of the ache, the fatigue, the nausea, and she 
knew what he'd done. "Don't," she said more strongly now. "It's mine to suffer. 
Don't do that again." 

"You have a crew to help..." he said, absorbing more. 

"Tel..." His name came out nearly a cry of relief as she felt even stronger in 
that instant. However, she reached up and removed his hands from her face. 
"That's enough. Please." 

He dropped to his knee, the pain pulsing through his body, "They need you, 
Lyryn, they need you." He coughed, the taste of blood erupting into his mouth. 
"I can handle it."

Much stronger than she had hoped to be, she sat up, pushing aside the dizziness 
that accompanied the movement. She slid down into the floor next to him, the 
cold tile quite a shock from the warmth of her bed, and gathered him into her 
arms. "You are being foolish," she whispered, not harshly, but with love. "We 
share this, as everything else." Pressing her lips gently against his in the 
darkness, she could taste his blood mixing with her own. 

Helpless. What he hated even more than seeing her helpless was feeling it 
himself. Tel wanted to fight the feeling, wanted to fight the embrace, but 
found himself too weak to do much of anything. "I need to get back to my 
quarters. There's a device on my right wrist, press the red glowing button 
please." He coughed. More blood. 

"Damn you, Tel," she whispered to him again. "Send you back weak? Let you die? 
Take me with you." She held him tightly, willing him some of her newly given 
strength, but it was futile.  She desparately wanted to make up for what he'd 
done, to take some of the pain back.

"You know that I can't do that, just press the button." 

"You can take me or you can stay here and get help." The words may have been 
harsh, but her voice was far from it. She was not going to let him die for her. 
Would not. Could not. 

Tel shook his head, the best he could anyway, "I'm not going to die. But, I'm 
in no position to resist if they suddenly burst in here and want to know what's 
going on. Lyryn, push the button." 

She had never been so angry with someone in all her life. How dare he take this 
from her and make it his own? How dare he? It was her pain, her mistakes, and 
she was the one who should pay for them, not him. But he was right. Pressing 
her lips to his with more emotion than she quite meant, she slid her arm down 
his and applied pressure to the device he'd indicated. 

The last thing he felt was her kiss, that amazing feeling, before he vanished 
again.


                
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'

Other related posts: