The BLTS Archive- My Chakotay
#13: No Mere Mortal
by MaisieRita (MaisieRita@aol.com)

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copyright 1999

Disclaimer: Paramount owns 'em. I borrow 'em from time to time.

Warning: This will make no sense if you haven't read the first twelve.

Feedback: Please! All constructive comments will be seriously
considered. Grammar nits welcome. <g>

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The female lies motionless on the floor. The small part of us that is
human worries that we have killed her. It is an unfortunate side
effect of this union: in taking his body we have had to accept his
soul as well. In time, he will truly become one of us; in time he will
no longer feel remorse or pain for the suffering he witnesses, the
suffering he causes.

In time.

For now, though, his soul regrets the injury of this one who is so
dear to him. Even so, the worry is fleeting. His human compassion can
not withstand the seduction of the power which was ours and is now
his. The humans are nothing before us. We are as we were meant to be.
Powerful. Unstoppable. Supreme.

Throughout the ages we have never been as we our now. United with the
One, our essence flows through him and his body gives us entrance to
the world so long denied us. Shadows, tricks of the light, invisible
to all but for a few gifted ones, we have never before felt mortal
blood pumping through our veins, never before heard a man's pulse
pounding in our ears, never before drawn the sweet breath of life. Oh,
we have captured others, of course, turned their eyes to fire and
taken their bodies for our own, but that crude and forceful act never
truly united us with the host. It is a different thing which we have
achieved now, a fusion of inhuman spirit and human soul through which
we have gained true consciousness and a new coherence of thought. As
painful as was the process, we can find no fault in the result.

It could not have gone better had we planned it.

We have existed throughout the ages. We are not human, yet we exist
only where humans dwell. For countless millennia, we have lived among
them, with them, in the dark spaces between their dreams.

They call us demons.

For as long as humans have walked the Earth, we have been bound to
them. Their history is filled with stories of ghosts and phantoms, of
spirits who dwell in the darkness and wraiths who lurk in shadows. For
millennia, they lived and died and feared us, and we lived among them,
feeding on their fears, made strong by their belief in the very
creatures who fed on them.

Yet inevitably, as civilizations rose and fell, faith and fear gave
way to science and reason, leaving us behind. There was no place for
us in this brave new world of shiny metals and sharp lights,
skyscrapers and subways. Weakened, forgotten, we settled into the
places of power that had long been our homes and waited. We waited for
the inevitable catastrophe to strike, the disaster that would set the
humans back hundreds or thousands of years. Then, when death and
despair were rampant, we would emerge again.

We waited in vain.

For innumerable years we lingered in the darkness, weakening by the
day, by the hour, until we had become so frail we could no longer
bridge the gap between our world and theirs. As the centuries
stretched on, we forgot who we were, what we had once been. No longer
even aware that there had been a time of light and heat and power and
fury, we drifted, waiting for a death which was not ours to claim.

Until he came.

Lost and alone, he wandered through the caves where we dwelt, tracing
the ancient patterns on the wall with fingers that trembled as though
they belonged to a man much older than he. Thousands of humans visited
these caves each year, but we had long since lost the power to see
that which was physical, and remained unaware of their intrusions.

This man was different.

As he walked through the caves, he cut a path through the eternal
darkness that had become our domain. Somehow, some way, he had gained
entry to the world of spirits and shadows, and his soul shone to us as
a torch in the dark. The light he cast awoke us from our long period
of slumber, and though we no longer held the capacity to think, our
instinct led us to follow him.

Out of the caves he led us, back into the world, his world, a world
changed almost unrecognizably from the one we had known. Had we still
possessed the ability to reason, surely we would have been awed by the
changes centuries of technological advancement had wrought. As it was,
we saw of none of it. The physical world had long been lost to us, and
we possessed only the vaguest awareness of the lands through which the
One led us.

Had he been a different man, we might have stayed as we had become.
Weak. Blind. Powerless. We had been without that on which we fed for
so long, we no longer even possessed the ability to seek it out.
Fortunately, we did not have to.

Fear was ever our first and best nourishment, but despair is a more
than acceptable second, and misery ran like blood through this man's
veins. We followed him, drinking in his anguish like sweet nectar
after eons of starvation. We shadowed him for years, around the globe
and off the planet, regaining strength and power as he wandered
helplessly through an ever deepening nightmare of drinks, drugs, and
worse. Out of money, out of options, out of hope, he resigned himself
to a life spent serving others, trading a few minutes of humiliation
for enough money to buy himself a few minutes of oblivion. At the
time, he perceived it to be a fair enough exchange.

Far away from our native soil, we grew dependent on the One as our
sole source of strength. As we regained an awareness of the world
through which we moved, so did we begin to regain the powers we had
once possessed, though we were not yet strong enough to use them. At
the same time, we began to realize how utterly we had become bound to
this one man.

Soon enough we became afraid that his burdens would prove to be too
much for him to bear. Nightly we walked in his dreams, saw his hopes
of redemption slowly fade, and knew that before long he'd end his life
rather than prolong the misery. Weak and dependent on him as we were,
stranded on alien soil which provided no refuge, we had no hope of
survival were he to die. We were addicted to him as he was addicted to
the toxins he daily pumped into his veins. Our only hope, slim as it
was, was his return to Earth. There, at least, we could seek shelter
in the caves that had been our home for so long.

It was beyond our influence to remove him from this alien planet, but
we infused his dreams with images of home in the hopes that he might
take it upon himself to return to the world of his birth. Carefully!
We had to be so careful, for it was his sorrow on which we fed and we
could not risk destroying our sole source of power by filling his mind
with hope.

It took months, yet eventually he returned, driven by forces he
couldn't understand and nightmares from which he couldn't escape. He
returned to Earth, to a place called Marseilles, to a friend who kept
him supplied with liquor but who allowed him no access to the other
poisons to which he'd grown accustomed.

Those were hard months for him. We fed well.

It was there the Other first encountered him.
We dare not think his name, for even those few syllables are enough to
hurt us now, infused as he is with power. We could not have foreseen
the role the he would come to play in the life of the One. We had no
way of knowing that dreams and memories and regrets would drive the
man who was our salvation to the Other, seeking relief for the sins of
his past. We did not understand how he could find redemption in the
very act which for so long stood equivalent in his mind with
degradation.

We grew to hate the Other, for it was he who gave the One the sense of
peace he'd sought for so long. We weakened then; those nights when the
two came together were extraordinarily painful for us, and we could
not bear to approach the One, even in his dreams. Battle lines were
drawn, though two of the contestants were as yet unaware that they had
entered into war.

Impossibly distanced from our world, bound to one man in unholy
wedlock, we knew we would have to destroy the Other. There was no
choice. There *is* no choice. The Other is approaching, though not yet
on this deck. The weakest of us, still recovering, feel his
unmistakable presence first, and shriek in warning and pain. Our
human host, still contemplating the motionless form on the floor,
flinches. As our power is his, so is our discomfort. He reaches out
with his mind and feels the Other's presence. It is no comfort to him
any more. A curse under his breath in a language dead thousands of
years before his body was born, and he stands tall and walks towards
the door.

As we pass the mirror we catch a glimpse of ourselves. It is an odd
thing, to see one's likeness reflected in polished glass, even when
that image is not a true reflection of what lies within. A pale human
face looks back at us, violet eyes the only external sign of our most
unnatural union.

The door slides open as we approach it. Women line the hall, armed
with weapons which will prove useless against us should we choose to
let them fire. The slight buzz of an equally useless forcefield
whispers softly in our ears. Slipping this body briefly out of the
physical world, we pass through the forcefield as if it doesn't exist.

The scent of human fear rises as the security team backs away, and we
drink it in ravenously. Women, the guards are, all women and so our
powers are weak against them. The simple mind trick we used to silence
his lover will not work against a group as big as this. We have not
yet regained enough of our power, and the One's emotions work against
us in this regard. However, intimidation alone may prove to be enough.

A guard speaks. "Don't come any closer," she says, desperately trying
to sound brave as she hefts her weapon.

We laugh. "You can't threaten us," we answer and we see many eyes
widen at the use of the plural.

A new voice speaks. "Tom." It is the Captain of this starship. We have
to be careful with her. The One's affection for her is second only to
his affection for the female who was his lover, and more than a few of
the dreams we interrupted were filled with images of this lady. He
will not willingly damage her any more than he will willingly damage
his former lover, and we dare not force him for fear that he will
rebel against our presence.

"Captain." We are cautious.

"Where's B'Elanna?"

"Inside. She'll be alright." Our speech takes his patterns without our
intent, and it is hard to tell how much of that is by his deliberate
effort.

"You didn't hurt her?"

"No, ma'am." We feel a frown cross our lips -- *he* is frowning -- and
we are relieved. Anger at this one can only serve our cause. Subtly,
we flame the displeasure, and are rewarded by the surge of irritation
that flares up within us at the Captain's worried glance at the door
behind us.

"If she's injured-"

"She'll be *fine*." How much of that conviction is ours, we wonder,
and how much is his? For surely we took no great pains to guarantee
that the damage to the female would not be lasting; as we forced
ourselves into her mind we were concerned only with her silence, not
her continued survival. And yet, perhaps, there was the slightest
tempering of our will by his, enough so that his human soul can rest
easy in the knowledge that the woman was not unduly harmed by our
actions.

The Captain is not convinced. Another benefit of this union . . . we
can now interpret subtle human facial expressions whose meanings would
have eluded us not long ago. The woman frowns and looks beyond us to
the closed door again. "Are you sure-"

Another burst of irritation, fiercer this time, as we repeat the
answer. "We didn't hurt her."

Silence, then a whispered, "We?" She's scanning our face and the sight
of those gray eyes so close to our own is discomfiting. Involuntarily,
we take a step backwards. "Who are you?"

An interesting question. We have no intention of answering it. Yet,
"Cousins."

She repeats it blankly. "Cousins?"

To our surprise and annoyance, the One begins to explain, despite our
attempts to stop him. He sifts through our memories for a past so
distant it has all but been forgotten. "Relatives from Earth."

Everyone is silent.

It is quickly becoming obvious that we have less control of this union
than we'd believed. As his agitation lessens, so too does our
influence over him. Fortunately, we have other weapons at our
disposal. Faster than thought, we send forth the call to those of us
still at large. They respond instantly, merging with those whose
presence will serve us best and gently urging them towards us.

It is not so big a ship. Within minutes the first of the men arrives
in the corridor. Dalby and Ayala and Jackson. Some of the worst. They
are followed by others. Hostile, all of them, and all of them Maquis.

Images of violence flash through the One's mind, and the dark emotions
rise from within him without any further interference from us. This
hatred is all his own. Memories jostle for dominance in his mind; each
powerful in its own right, together they produce an unstoppable
wellspring of frustration and rage. Countless beatings, harsh threats,
brutal words that left scars no regenerator could heal. Night after
night spent trying to erase the evidence of the fights he couldn't
prevent, and day after day spent trying to ignore his utter isolation.

The fury rises. It is as addicting as any drug. Though it gains us
nothing -- it neither strengthens us nor strengthens him -- it is
overwhelming in its intensity. Before, we had no conscious thought so
we could not be aware of its absence. Yet now we feel this most primal
of emotions sweep away all the rationality we've so recently gained.

For an instant, the human part of us tries to regain control over this
overpowering rage, but it is a struggle in vain. One man's fury is
difficult enough to contain, but when combined with our own demonic
frenzy, it is impossible. The fleeting moment passes, and then there
is no thought left, neither his nor ours. There is only anger, pulsing
through our veins as surely as his blood does. The world tints red;
our demon aspect appears in his eyes as he calls again upon our power.

The closest of the men go flying according to the One's wishes. Lifted
without warning into the air, he has time only for a panicked shout
before his head impacts the wall with a sickening crunch. He lands in
a boneless heap on the floor -- dead, perhaps.

A laugh crosses our lips, and we feel for the first time the glory of
revenge. Human fear, potent and intoxicating, floods the room and
swells our power.

Another man goes flying, then another. With each act our union with
the One deepens. His will, our will -- there is no easy way to
distinguish the two any longer. We move as one.

Another man rises into the air, shrieking as he is held against the
ceiling by no force that he can see. The female guards have finally
begun to fire their weapons, but it is far too late for them to have
any effect. It is a simple act of will to make this body invulnerable;
a simple act of *his* will, not ours. He calls upon our powers now
without thought or restraint. What human could resist the lure of
limitless power? What demon could resist the pull of human emotions,
gloriously unbridled?

More men arrive. More men are injured.

The pleasure running through us is almost carnal in its nature. Drunk
with the elixir of fear that fills the corridor, drugged by the joy of
revenge, we give no thought or consideration to the consequences of
this violent orgy. If the humans all die, we will have no source of
power left, for as surely as we live on their fear, we can not live
without them. And yet . . . another man hits the wall with such force
that his spine breaks upon impact, and we laugh.

No longer merely mortal, he; and we, no longer simple spirits. We are
something other, now. Something stronger. There remains only one
problem to be dealt with.

"Tom."

Pain shoots through us but now our human self is strong enough to
deflect it. We are even strong enough to whisper the Other's name in
return.

"Chakotay."

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The End