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carcinogen) wrote2010-10-12 09:34 pm
carcinogen) wrote2010-10-12 09:34 pm
fic: Your Soul's On Sale At The Black Market (Star Trek XI)
Your Soul's On Sale At The Black Market
Star Trek XI; Sulu & Chekov.
920 words.
..... you can tell I lost interest with the Floyd references about halfway through, sob.
Hikaru’s got a snapdragon smile and a bottle of shipboard moonshine when he shows his face at the bear pit, warm with a taste for the talking they’ll do tonight but also roughed up by the rigors of discipline; boy’s been on deck since ship’s dawn, which wouldn’t be such hard news if he hadn’t felt the nervous fluttering of an unwritten tune beating on the back of his hand like toxic wings the whole time, impatient to be conceived. And people on the bridge crew, when they say: Command to Hikaru Sulu, do you copy? he can’t really snap: what do you want from me, and slip back into the warm wash of his personal starlight symphonies, no. There’s a job to be done. Don’t set the controls for the heart of the sun, kid. Steer her clear and true.
Fair enough, he thinks, but they don’t have to be obtuse about it. Don’t any of them have some imagination. There’s more to starships than steel, and deep space missions should maybe have a little more substance than rank and protocol. Can’t they see where they are, what they’re a part of? Aren’t they curious about each new moment? Is there anybody out there, looking in? These parts are vast, the open reaches; a good place to lose the mind and drift comfortably numb, all the worries falling away. Pavel knows what he means, but then Pavel’s always been the same way. They weren’t really meant for Starfleet; not for the military end of it, the exercises that train them into dogs of war. It was the best way, though, to break the sky gate and touch the stars. Creative minds are flexible anyway; Pavel writes his best songs when he’s supposed to be tracking velocities and plotting slingshot paths around giant planets. Sitting in the bear pit, his mind is all disorganized, unchallenged, and it looks as though he’s having a hard time putting the notes together until he looks up and claps eyes on Hikaru.
“Hey, you,” Hikaru says, and Pavel smiles.
He’s a bit young to be drinking, right; but then Command didn’t think he was too young to be fired off into the ether. They crack a bottle of unlabeled spirits, split it between them in a quarter of an hour and lounge around in the pit like they own it, talking about nothing, slowly coming back to life.
“Academy life,” Pavel says, “you think it’s hard. You study and when you don’t study, when you make time for the things you love, there’s a strange feeling. Guilty, rebellious, good and bad together. And you think, here it is, the best year of my life, the worst, because this will be the most difficult time I ever experience. But then comes the next year. And then, for us, comes assignment of duties when nobody expects it, and then. Then you understand that you have been a child all along, that you always will be a child. Until you grow old.”
He lies back on the stiff, foam couch, staring at nothing with radiant eyes.
“I know,” Hikaru says, “I know. It just takes the energy out of you. There’s no time. There’s too much time. I was hearing a song all day but now I forget it.”
“Sad to know that,” Pavel says solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got high hopes that it’ll come back, you know, if it was really worth it.”
“That’s a good way to think of it.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long, smooth silence; echoes on the other end of the rec room, voices in empty spaces, but too far away to be intrusive. In fact, they’re vaguely reassuring.
Pavel suddenly announces: “I am thinking about a few things, and we should not have trained to be navigators, helmsmen, no. Obviously we are meant to be rock stars.”
Both of them are laughing before Hikaru catches up with what he’s talking about. Maybe that’s what he used to dream of doing: climbing up on a stage, filling an antique amphitheatre with thunder while he looked out at all the people looking back at him, like a bank of stars drawn down from the sky. Pavel Andreievich Chekov, first officer of hard rock, and Hikaru almost kills himself laughing about it, even though he can picture the scene perfectly.
“Hey,” he says. “Listen, we’ve still got time.”
“Yes,” Pavel chuckles, “lots of that.”
And it’s true; they’ve got time to grow out of their dreams a little more, time to settle into the duties thrust on them by a catastrophic collapse in the chain of command. Who knows if this is the life they really wanted to lead. Sometimes Hikaru envisions them all as a battalion of burnouts, just keeping each other company. Waiting for a purpose, an explanation, hoping it’ll all make sense. One of these days.
Pavel seems to drift off and Hikaru watches him from the other end of the couch, half-dreams the sight of him in another life, passed out after a night of boozing and smoking and filling his body up with toxins that even music can’t expel. Earth fame doesn’t glitter so brightly now that he’s had a good, close look at a few hot-star nurseries, he thinks with a smile. But it’s got appeal. Got a ring to it. Gotta go catch a song in my guitar strings, captain. Music falls flat in space; not sure I want to go back there, not sure if I know how to leave.
Star Trek XI; Sulu & Chekov.
920 words.
..... you can tell I lost interest with the Floyd references about halfway through, sob.
Hikaru’s got a snapdragon smile and a bottle of shipboard moonshine when he shows his face at the bear pit, warm with a taste for the talking they’ll do tonight but also roughed up by the rigors of discipline; boy’s been on deck since ship’s dawn, which wouldn’t be such hard news if he hadn’t felt the nervous fluttering of an unwritten tune beating on the back of his hand like toxic wings the whole time, impatient to be conceived. And people on the bridge crew, when they say: Command to Hikaru Sulu, do you copy? he can’t really snap: what do you want from me, and slip back into the warm wash of his personal starlight symphonies, no. There’s a job to be done. Don’t set the controls for the heart of the sun, kid. Steer her clear and true.
Fair enough, he thinks, but they don’t have to be obtuse about it. Don’t any of them have some imagination. There’s more to starships than steel, and deep space missions should maybe have a little more substance than rank and protocol. Can’t they see where they are, what they’re a part of? Aren’t they curious about each new moment? Is there anybody out there, looking in? These parts are vast, the open reaches; a good place to lose the mind and drift comfortably numb, all the worries falling away. Pavel knows what he means, but then Pavel’s always been the same way. They weren’t really meant for Starfleet; not for the military end of it, the exercises that train them into dogs of war. It was the best way, though, to break the sky gate and touch the stars. Creative minds are flexible anyway; Pavel writes his best songs when he’s supposed to be tracking velocities and plotting slingshot paths around giant planets. Sitting in the bear pit, his mind is all disorganized, unchallenged, and it looks as though he’s having a hard time putting the notes together until he looks up and claps eyes on Hikaru.
“Hey, you,” Hikaru says, and Pavel smiles.
He’s a bit young to be drinking, right; but then Command didn’t think he was too young to be fired off into the ether. They crack a bottle of unlabeled spirits, split it between them in a quarter of an hour and lounge around in the pit like they own it, talking about nothing, slowly coming back to life.
“Academy life,” Pavel says, “you think it’s hard. You study and when you don’t study, when you make time for the things you love, there’s a strange feeling. Guilty, rebellious, good and bad together. And you think, here it is, the best year of my life, the worst, because this will be the most difficult time I ever experience. But then comes the next year. And then, for us, comes assignment of duties when nobody expects it, and then. Then you understand that you have been a child all along, that you always will be a child. Until you grow old.”
He lies back on the stiff, foam couch, staring at nothing with radiant eyes.
“I know,” Hikaru says, “I know. It just takes the energy out of you. There’s no time. There’s too much time. I was hearing a song all day but now I forget it.”
“Sad to know that,” Pavel says solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got high hopes that it’ll come back, you know, if it was really worth it.”
“That’s a good way to think of it.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long, smooth silence; echoes on the other end of the rec room, voices in empty spaces, but too far away to be intrusive. In fact, they’re vaguely reassuring.
Pavel suddenly announces: “I am thinking about a few things, and we should not have trained to be navigators, helmsmen, no. Obviously we are meant to be rock stars.”
Both of them are laughing before Hikaru catches up with what he’s talking about. Maybe that’s what he used to dream of doing: climbing up on a stage, filling an antique amphitheatre with thunder while he looked out at all the people looking back at him, like a bank of stars drawn down from the sky. Pavel Andreievich Chekov, first officer of hard rock, and Hikaru almost kills himself laughing about it, even though he can picture the scene perfectly.
“Hey,” he says. “Listen, we’ve still got time.”
“Yes,” Pavel chuckles, “lots of that.”
And it’s true; they’ve got time to grow out of their dreams a little more, time to settle into the duties thrust on them by a catastrophic collapse in the chain of command. Who knows if this is the life they really wanted to lead. Sometimes Hikaru envisions them all as a battalion of burnouts, just keeping each other company. Waiting for a purpose, an explanation, hoping it’ll all make sense. One of these days.
Pavel seems to drift off and Hikaru watches him from the other end of the couch, half-dreams the sight of him in another life, passed out after a night of boozing and smoking and filling his body up with toxins that even music can’t expel. Earth fame doesn’t glitter so brightly now that he’s had a good, close look at a few hot-star nurseries, he thinks with a smile. But it’s got appeal. Got a ring to it. Gotta go catch a song in my guitar strings, captain. Music falls flat in space; not sure I want to go back there, not sure if I know how to leave.