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visible_sarielShe swears it's a bonfire. Has to. Clings to. she swears it's the usual; smoke and brush set alight and fallen palm branches in a ragged square, kicked sand and real wine and music. She swears.
Has to.
Clings to. but the smell is acrid, a shade closer to rusted iron than driftwood and flame and when she turns toward the sound of her mother's voice drifting from the open front door in the middle distance - her own, but tarnished in warmer colors than it's usual green - something warm-rain consistent drizzles from above just a breath before she sees the flames.
they're leaping from her roof.
And they are, or at least one of them is; the female voice has faded, and the male one was never raised, but that's unmistakably a masculine shadow standing out against the blaze at the soutward facing edge. Standing, leaping, fallen - and the flames shoot skyward, obscuring any further view over and downward in a heat-yellow haze turned sickly amber by flying ash.
It's a pyre, a pillar, and it's over in three smoke-clogged breaths, and the sounds of wood catching and the voracity of flame are easily enough to drown Sariel's screams.
She sees angels in that haze, cinder-flecked, char black and amber - faces she recognizes even while spattered in sick, strange dust: There's Lian, who would be beautiful and golden if dark hair weren't captured by the wind and flaming; and there's Alyssa, dashing fruitlessly toward the heart of the blaze and vanishing in a burst of white-hot sparks, trailing cotton cloth banners as she goes. Selar is a wraith, copper gone beryl gone transparent and barely-seen, black on green and gone in an instant, evaporated on a harsh, hissing wind; and Mandy, batting futilely at her crackling uniform just before what's left of the roof goes over in a hail of shrapnel-sharp splinters and fragments of alloy.
And Sariel can't do a thing.
she would, for all she's no medic, no healer and just a kid born with a compulsion to fly - she'd leap into the madness and burn herself alive to save just one of them any of them - but she. can't. move. She's sobbing, screaming, railing at her feet to unstick themselves from grey-flecked white sand and when she looks down, there are shackles keeping her rooted. Arms, hands, wrists, ankles.
On the ward, 2369.
And looking up again brings her eyes level with Admiral Kirk's face.
He sounds entirely natural, even amid the fire; "What did you think was going to happen?" It could have been a lecture to one of his hundreds of past cadets, the tail end of a simulation gone wrong but there's a flash of something rainbow-shaded and fluttering in his hand, and those eyes are colder than the hot-blooded legend's had-have likely ever been. "It's for the best, ensign."
And that's not Kirk. Oh no, not by any stretch of the imagination. the image is the same, uniform and all but the voice has changed, gone cultured, icy; make no mistake. that's Captain Picard. and even then, at the end it's tenor and no less severe; that's the child that Captain Picard's become.
The shackles are centuries old, rapidly-heating metal and dragging in tangles of rust and black iron and it's not the spectre of two superiors who's holding the key.
Harding is. And he's glaring daggers at her as he brandishes a half-melted metal sliver pinched between ivory fingers; "Cardinal sin, you know." Behind him and above, Valerie flies past on a stinging zephyr of sand and superheated air, and a shred of Angel's skirt snarls around a dangling chain as she's lifted bodily from the sand and thrown toward the blaze. Mouse's skin is glowing weirdly in cast light, and River's giving her an emotionless stare as the inferno builds behind her. "At least you never lied." It's equally flat, and it's the sort of statement that should ordinarily count for something but now it brings yet more fresh tears to smoke-stung eyes.
And Will's sword is flaming a foot above her head - "If I'd known ye was like tha', Milady Rager I'd ne'er've bothered t'welcome ye," and Sonya--oh God, Sonya's just in front of her, suspended in midair and burning. And everything's
clickclickclick clickclick clickclickclick
an experiment, a lesson, the sort of discipline that's dealt out as a matter of course to deviants on the ward when they misbehave, and when the rest of the picture is going dark at the edges, the image in front of her is staying constant. There's bile rising in her throat, and she'd have bent double where she stands long ago if the chains weren't keeping her upright and immobile, and from somewhere over her right shoulder, Troi is shouting forceful, insistent questions. "What did you do then, Sariel? I need you to tell me! What did you do then? You need to say it!"
But there's nothing to be said, and the only answer Troi gets is a near-wild, frantic shriek as the figure before her vanishes and the metal at her wrists begins to glow smouldering red and searing. None of them would hesitate to die for someone else in a situation like this, she knows that; Will wouldn't; Kirk wouldn't; Lian wouldn't; Valerie wouldn't; Sonya wouldn't, and neither would she but she. has. to. watch. On the ward, 2368. And she's frozen here, and locked here, and they're making her watch this for who she is and what she is and she can't do anything, can't help with any of this; she's just a girl born needing to fly.
She's choking on sobs as one lungful of acrid air turns into the ship's recycled atmosphere, and she's bolt upright before she registers her surroundings. No fire. No fire-no smoke-no burning house and no-- the images are still fresh, still enough to make her insides churn, and "god, oh my God," is all she can get out as she struggles for elusive calm.
It takes five seconds, ten, for her heart to begin to slow and her tears to trickle almost to a sniffly stop--not quite, but almost. She's alive. She is, and sonya is, and Lian is and her parents are and it's her own world's 2369 so no one minds that she's--
she's nearly thrown sideways off the end of the bed as the ship rocks in time with the sound of distant pressure brought to bear, distant force applied.
It's a graceless tumble off the matress's narrow end that brings her to stocking feet, and she barely has time to step into unlaced boots and clumsily knot strings before she's lurching for the door, tear tracks still visible on her cheeks and eyes still welling. "Bloody buggering hell, now what?"
Has to.
Clings to. but the smell is acrid, a shade closer to rusted iron than driftwood and flame and when she turns toward the sound of her mother's voice drifting from the open front door in the middle distance - her own, but tarnished in warmer colors than it's usual green - something warm-rain consistent drizzles from above just a breath before she sees the flames.
they're leaping from her roof.
And they are, or at least one of them is; the female voice has faded, and the male one was never raised, but that's unmistakably a masculine shadow standing out against the blaze at the soutward facing edge. Standing, leaping, fallen - and the flames shoot skyward, obscuring any further view over and downward in a heat-yellow haze turned sickly amber by flying ash.
It's a pyre, a pillar, and it's over in three smoke-clogged breaths, and the sounds of wood catching and the voracity of flame are easily enough to drown Sariel's screams.
She sees angels in that haze, cinder-flecked, char black and amber - faces she recognizes even while spattered in sick, strange dust: There's Lian, who would be beautiful and golden if dark hair weren't captured by the wind and flaming; and there's Alyssa, dashing fruitlessly toward the heart of the blaze and vanishing in a burst of white-hot sparks, trailing cotton cloth banners as she goes. Selar is a wraith, copper gone beryl gone transparent and barely-seen, black on green and gone in an instant, evaporated on a harsh, hissing wind; and Mandy, batting futilely at her crackling uniform just before what's left of the roof goes over in a hail of shrapnel-sharp splinters and fragments of alloy.
And Sariel can't do a thing.
she would, for all she's no medic, no healer and just a kid born with a compulsion to fly - she'd leap into the madness and burn herself alive to save just one of them any of them - but she. can't. move. She's sobbing, screaming, railing at her feet to unstick themselves from grey-flecked white sand and when she looks down, there are shackles keeping her rooted. Arms, hands, wrists, ankles.
On the ward, 2369.
And looking up again brings her eyes level with Admiral Kirk's face.
He sounds entirely natural, even amid the fire; "What did you think was going to happen?" It could have been a lecture to one of his hundreds of past cadets, the tail end of a simulation gone wrong but there's a flash of something rainbow-shaded and fluttering in his hand, and those eyes are colder than the hot-blooded legend's had-have likely ever been. "It's for the best, ensign."
And that's not Kirk. Oh no, not by any stretch of the imagination. the image is the same, uniform and all but the voice has changed, gone cultured, icy; make no mistake. that's Captain Picard. and even then, at the end it's tenor and no less severe; that's the child that Captain Picard's become.
The shackles are centuries old, rapidly-heating metal and dragging in tangles of rust and black iron and it's not the spectre of two superiors who's holding the key.
Harding is. And he's glaring daggers at her as he brandishes a half-melted metal sliver pinched between ivory fingers; "Cardinal sin, you know." Behind him and above, Valerie flies past on a stinging zephyr of sand and superheated air, and a shred of Angel's skirt snarls around a dangling chain as she's lifted bodily from the sand and thrown toward the blaze. Mouse's skin is glowing weirdly in cast light, and River's giving her an emotionless stare as the inferno builds behind her. "At least you never lied." It's equally flat, and it's the sort of statement that should ordinarily count for something but now it brings yet more fresh tears to smoke-stung eyes.
And Will's sword is flaming a foot above her head - "If I'd known ye was like tha', Milady Rager I'd ne'er've bothered t'welcome ye," and Sonya--oh God, Sonya's just in front of her, suspended in midair and burning. And everything's
clickclickclick clickclick clickclickclick
an experiment, a lesson, the sort of discipline that's dealt out as a matter of course to deviants on the ward when they misbehave, and when the rest of the picture is going dark at the edges, the image in front of her is staying constant. There's bile rising in her throat, and she'd have bent double where she stands long ago if the chains weren't keeping her upright and immobile, and from somewhere over her right shoulder, Troi is shouting forceful, insistent questions. "What did you do then, Sariel? I need you to tell me! What did you do then? You need to say it!"
But there's nothing to be said, and the only answer Troi gets is a near-wild, frantic shriek as the figure before her vanishes and the metal at her wrists begins to glow smouldering red and searing. None of them would hesitate to die for someone else in a situation like this, she knows that; Will wouldn't; Kirk wouldn't; Lian wouldn't; Valerie wouldn't; Sonya wouldn't, and neither would she but she. has. to. watch. On the ward, 2368. And she's frozen here, and locked here, and they're making her watch this for who she is and what she is and she can't do anything, can't help with any of this; she's just a girl born needing to fly.
She's choking on sobs as one lungful of acrid air turns into the ship's recycled atmosphere, and she's bolt upright before she registers her surroundings. No fire. No fire-no smoke-no burning house and no-- the images are still fresh, still enough to make her insides churn, and "god, oh my God," is all she can get out as she struggles for elusive calm.
It takes five seconds, ten, for her heart to begin to slow and her tears to trickle almost to a sniffly stop--not quite, but almost. She's alive. She is, and sonya is, and Lian is and her parents are and it's her own world's 2369 so no one minds that she's--
she's nearly thrown sideways off the end of the bed as the ship rocks in time with the sound of distant pressure brought to bear, distant force applied.
It's a graceless tumble off the matress's narrow end that brings her to stocking feet, and she barely has time to step into unlaced boots and clumsily knot strings before she's lurching for the door, tear tracks still visible on her cheeks and eyes still welling. "Bloody buggering hell, now what?"
