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Posted by Commander Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher - Yellow (Engineering)) in Flames of Fate - A Reunion in the Shadows

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Akirel Ros (Consultant Researcher (Engineering)) in Flames of Fate - A Reunion in the Shadows

The moment seemed to last an eternity, the light flickered and struggled as the shadows clawed and screamed their silent rejoicing of victory, hungry to feast on the new memories and feelings that were in the pit. Fear, anguish and grief were fresh and the shadows fought with the light to claim their banquet. The fire within him struggled as the memories assaulted him, the darkness spreading in the doubt and fear that welled within him.

She could sense the doubt within him, bitter acid driving the taste of him from her tongue. Fear, loss, inadequacy, potent deluge of acrid emotion spilling from each of them in turn. Around them the air grew heavy, each drop of uncertainty and suspicion taking form into a physical shroud, lamentable chill of a pale, unwelcome morning, forbidding for them the sanctuary to be found in a lover’s arms.
Was it himself that he doubted in that moment? Or had he glimpsed the abyss within Kara Nakuto as surely as she had sensed it in him?

For years Ros had fed the fire, used his soul as a bargaining tool to dull the pain of the loss of Kara Nakuto, willed the fire to consume him, to end the grief and mourning he felt inside but couldn’t face. An unholy pact of his blood and flame had kept him breathing, kept him focused on existing when he didn’t want to exist. The shadows knew this, felt it. Felt Kara’s armor had a chip and their senses swirled with a cry of abyssal pleasure as Ros’ defenses dropped fully. He let them in.

His surrender broke upon her, tsunami of shadow rising up and he captured by the resulting swell. Anchor-chain coiled within her stomach, knots and tangles too established to hoist, leaving her motionless as she watched on. Helpless. Impotent. Until she could no longer distinguish the point where Ros ended and the shadows began. As if he had become one with the darkness. As it had been within her.
A singular and tentative step forwards, hand reaching out for the Bajoran but then retreating, as if burned, at the last. Afraid. Terrified of this man whom had once been her universe. but was it truly Ros who now scared her? Or was it merely herself and the knowledge that her love came laden with danger, with risk that threatened to unbalance reward. If he was to return to her, then he must do so willingly and with abandon. From the void that churned within her, she could conjure no protection for him.

Ros’ eyes flared with heat, fire almost as the wall sconces dropped their flame. The darkness enveloped Kara and Ros and the cold fate that awaited them here spread like thunder. Ros raised his hand, a bat’leth that he hadn’t held before gripped between his palm and fingers, blade bright and hungry as he faced Kara Nakuto finally. Ros and Kara had trained together, many times on the Viking. Many times had he faced her as they sparred, she was his better, Ros a pale imitation of warrior when faced with the pure primal rage and passion that was Kara.

Warm light met cold steel, the fusing of polarities a vibrant dance of passion and danger, of pleasure and pain, all united along this razor edge. Kara felt the swell within her, that primal need for the touch of a hand or a weapon, interchangeable in their immediacy, indistinguishable in the connection they made with her body, raw need for teeth and for metal to bite deep into pleading flesh.

“I have found you,” Ros told Kara, his voice a growl while the shadows swirled around them and he lifted his Bat’leth into his battle stance, two hands on the hilts of the weapon, blade angled away from him and a deadly angle. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say ice. From what I have tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire. But, if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate, to say that for destruction ice, is also great, and would suffice.” Ros recited the lines as his eyes were fixed on hers. The words were not those of the poem he recited to her before their first joining, but she would know them. Fire and Ice, a symbol that had meaning for Kara and Ros in the past and she would know, that only the real Ros would understand this.

“The world will end,” she echoed, eyes locked onto his as they blazed with near-insatiable hunger. “And the joining of fire and ice will be the undoing of both. For as with each lick of flame the ice will find itself thawed, so too with each breath of frost will the fire be diminished. Two opposites joined in destructive union. And when only meltwater remains, then the heavens will fill each warrior cup and as one will they take their seat in the great hall of Sto-vo-kor.”

“The great hall will shake at their arrival,” he continued, his blade moving in slow, deadly circles around him as he stalked the shadows that surrounded them but dared not approach the pair. Moving close to Kara, Ros circled her as she had done to him earlier, stopping behind her and turning to her. His head moving over her shoulder beside hers as his chest lightly rested against her back and his breath caressed her neck. “An arrival none have seen since the great Kahless and his love Lukara stepped foot victoriously in those halls. Warriors will roar and raise their tankards as they take their seat, and songs will be sung in voices of legend.”

Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply of his unique and familiar scent, wide grin coaxing her lips into a mirror of the weapon now raised in gleaming smile before her.

“I will not lose you again!” He roared at her, lunging forward past her and spinning, swinging his bat’leth. The fire of his soul matched against the ice of her determination. Fire and Ice. Ros’ blade passed into the shadows beside her as the dark souls closed hungrily around them, eager for their feast.

Akirel Ros

“I will not allow you to!” she roared in return, bat’leth tearing through shadow as the leviathan through a tumultuous sea. Until in the darkness it found his, then sang out in reverent hymn as steel collided with steel, chorus met with primal roar unleashed from the depths of her throat. For a moment they remained locked, both in motion and in time, amber eyes boring into green and savouring each temptation within. Until her own resistance failed and, with almost predatory need, Nakuto brought her face up to his and collided their lips for that first, desperate kiss.

Ros grunted, both in the pain of the impact and the memory of her taste brought alive on his lips. Hungrily his lips returned the kiss, an urgent need of passion riding on a wave of determination. Shadows forgotten and ignored, ghosts of the past banished in that kiss as the taste of Kara filled him with a fire once again. A fire that bore love, and a passion of commitment. Gone was the fire of shame and hate, of a pact of blood used to feed an existence not worth living. Kara Nakuto was in his life once more.

His taste so familiar, like the sweetest bloodwine drawn directly from a newly fallen host. Her teeth finding home on that soft, tender flesh and sinking in deep, marking him anew as her own. Then tender kisses as a soothing chaser, pleasure and pain as eternal companions, each intensifying the effect of the other.

And for a moment the chasm between them diminished and they returned in spirit to the Naglfar, keen engineer and nervous captain, abandoning the artifice of dutiful propriety as they seized from each other those precious moments of delight and of comfort and strength.

The shadows around them screamed as one, a unified peal of anger and despair. The dark souls fed on hate, loss and fear. The withering souls of the mourning and lost fed their appetite and fueled their passions. The two reunited lovers before them were a blazing wall of none of those, as fire and ice mixed and fed an inferno of passions that swirled into an invulnerable shield that the shadows reviled. Fire and Ice together forging a steel that no shadow could darken.

And herein lay the true miracle of their joining, the majesty and power inherent in this union of fire and of ice. Each a warrior alone, together they became legend. In that moment, with this man in her arms as solidly as she stood entwined in his, Kara Nakuto felt invincible.

Ros’ lips curled into a smile on hers, the groan turning into a laugh as his eyes opened once more and both amber and green eyes found each other again. He gave himself to her in that moment, that essential moment when before battle complete surrender was needed between them.

One hand released from the bat’leth and found its way into his hair, that soft, familiar tangle the reigns with which she clung to him, controlled him and took direction from him in turn, deepening their kiss as she relished the taste and the tease of her tongue in his mouth.

But it was not enough. For still those shadows lurked, whispering now of abandonment, of loneliness, of the anger at being torn from her ship, the humiliation of her interrogation at Starfleet. For days had they questioned her, screamed at her, thrown accusations at her, in an attempt to force a confession on the location of her missing crew. They had suspected her of killing them. Of killing him. As if the power to breath could remain within her after desecrating her own soul, after tearing out her own heart to cast it, withered and barely beating, to the floor.

Almost instinctively her hand returned to the bat’leth, defences once again rising as the shadows clustered in. It took every atom of strength that she possessed to teat her lips away from his, the loss of him devastating and immediate, even though he remained at arms length.

Then Nakuto retreated and the connection was torn, her weapon driving towards him and grazing his left cheek as she aimed for the shadow at his back. These steps she could retrace to the end of all time. Pain then pleasure then pain until each was indivisible from the next. And in that moment, Kara finally understood the true horror she had encountered in the void. Nothing. Every moment, every second of excruciating torture had been empty without the requisite pleasure. Just as each celebration of her eventual escape had been meaningless when uncoupled from pain. It was here, in this infinite circle, that she was completed by Akirel Ros. Here that she drew sustenance from the forged dichotomy of delight versus despair. Of life versus death. Of fire versus ice. Of Kara Nakuto versus Akirel Ros.

The two warriors moved as one, weapons swung into the shadows around them harmleseley as they flowed around the two, now vulnerable again. The being that was Akirel Ros matched the warrior Kara Nakuto, bat’leths met in the shadows sending sparks forth, creating a flash of light which repulsed the shadows. Faster, the two warriors flowed into battle as blades clashed and sparks flew. The Thunderdome ringing with the sound of singing steel, broken sometimes as blade met flesh and drew blood but never slowing.

Ros laughed, felt the blood trickle down his cheek from her blade and numerous other small nicks as the pair flowed around each other. “Enough!” He roared at the dark souls surrounding them, stepping back and holding his arms out, feeling the heat in him flare once more. Passion woken from somewhere deep inside that pierced the despair that had been in his heart and the smile he showed the world that hid his pain. The heat burst forth, the wall sconces of the holodeck flaming to life as if immeasurable power flowed behind them and Ros himself just for a second seemed to grow and wreath himself into a cloak of fire, the room seeming to dissolve into a cavern bathed in the light of fire and rock. The shadows that tormented them screamed in agony as they were torn from the ethereal emptiness they thrived in, ripped asunder and banished into the abyss where Ros and Kara had endured their torments. They would return, but only the tormented stood victorious now.

The majesty of him filled her whole vision, shadows momentarily forgotten as she drank in those breathtaking features - that firm, chiselled jaw, those magnetic, emerald eyes, the adornments of every beautiful tear and scar across his body - that spoke of belonging and of togetherness. That spoke of coming home.

Eyes open, flame consumed him, bathed him in a gown of fire. Just for the barest hint of a second then gone before one could blink, he stood once more before her in the Thunderdome.

Which Ros now stood before her? She no longer cared to separate the two. For the truth was that Akirel Ros was both darkness and light. And in him, Nakuto knew she would find both fear and love in equal abundance. And from each drop she would craft them a home in the deepest recess of the abyss.

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)

He stepped the few short paces to her and reached forward, taking hold of the hair behind her head and pulling Kara into him. He kissed her urgently, passionately. Blade held to one side he drank in the taste of her, both her lips and the blood on them from their joining earlier and her blade cut. Now Ros needed her, the memory of the Naglfar gone but the woman he had longed for in his empty despair before him.

The kiss broke upon her like dawn, flaming sun rising to banish all memory of the night. Of the dark. This time he sought her out willingly and her acceptance came without question. Without pause or concern. No longer afraid but now hopeful, for they were clawing, together, from the abyss. And might yet make it back into the light.

Letting her go, Ros stepped back slightly, his deep green eyes lowering to her amber orbs and gazing into them intently, urgently. “I have found you and I will not leave you, Kara. Not now. I will kiss you in every place of legend and glory, so that you can never think of them again without tasting me like blood in your mouth. I will destroy you, in the most beautiful ways you can imagine, so that when your eyes open each morning you will smile and finally understand why storms are named after people. My heart is yours, my life, is yours.”

“You are the storm that I welcome without question,” she growled in response, her own weapon once more fallen to her side, body open and unblocked for the taking. “You are the tsunami in which I would drown, the hurricane from where I draw breath. Destruction at your hands would be glorious. A noble end for two warrior hearts that shall from this day forth beat as one.”

His eyes flared again not with flame but with something deeper as he brought the blade to his hand and sliced, letting the crimson ribbon of his blood fall to the floor of the Thunderdome when he reached for her hand with his. Now the only sound was crackle of flame in the wall sconces, embers dropping to the floor. The clash of Fire and Ice settling for the moment as the eye of the storm engulfed them.

Akirel Ros, Consultant Researcher

The shadows slowly crumbled to ash, incessant whispering now banished by a void of silence that was both peaceful and foreboding. Until into that silence came a new sound, a rhythmic drumming, powerful and hypnotic. And now Nakuto recognised it as the beating of her own heart and of his, in decadent harmony to her own. Their hands joined tightly as blood flowed from each palm, poison and vitality a potent shot for each of them in turn.

“Come, my par’Mach’kai,” she murmured against his ear. “Let us leave this place to the shadows, where they may feast on the scraps of old memories, while we forge ones new and glorious such as will be sung of loudly in the halls of Sto’vo’kor.”

In that moment, she felt complete. In that moment, she felt the old storm pass, chased by raw spirit of a new day.
“I am ready to welcome the new storm, Ros,” she announced, grinning mischievously at this titan by her side. “You’ll look good in a raincoat.”

• Kara Nakuto (Consultant Researcher)