fic: Conversion (ST:XI/CoR)
Title: Conversion
Author: bandearg_rois
Words: ~2200
Fandom: ST:XI/CoR
Summary: A tale told in three parts, about life, love, and keeping afloat in a dangerous universe.
Author's Note: Part I, Subverted Affections, was originally written as a comment fic for these pictures over at jim_and_bones (comm is locked, join for the pretty) of Chris Pine as Darwin from Smokin' Aces, and Karl Urban as Vaako from Chronicles of Riddick. Part II, Healer-cum-Destroyer, details Vaako's journey from Leonard McCoy, to the Necromonger General. Part III, Death and Dishonor, chronicles Jim's life.
Subverted Affections
“There's only one speed. Mine. You can't keep up, don't step up.” the big bald man said, and Jim gritted his teeth when people that would have made it stepped back out of fear. He knew most expected him to step back as well, but he was ready to leave this place, had practically grown up here. He had to get out, and this Riddick was just his ticket off this rock. When Kyra looked at him strangely, he just picked up a dropped rifle and checked the cartridge before grabbing another mag, daring her to say anything.
And then they were moving, and there was no time to talk, no time to think. Everything they had was set toward running, and running fast. The Guy kept giving him looks, but he pressed on, surpassing them most of the time. And then there was shooting and Kyra was screaming and if he was weaker, he would have gone for her, but she was angry, not hurt, so he kept going. Stay ahead of the light, stick to the darkness. That was the only mantra he had for now.
Later, there was a battle, a game. 'Who's the Better Killer?' They were all players, with Kyra and Riddick as the obvious best, but Jim was a close third, stealing one of the strange concussion weapons early on. And then they all lost. He stayed with Kyra, both of them scared to death about what had happened to Riddick, but confident that he was okay, simply because Kyra believed in him. However, that didn't stop them from accepting the Necro Curse. Belief, after all, meant nothing when all that stood between them and death was a painful procedure that left them altered, but still alive.
When he woke up, everything was different. He still remembered his home, his first family, Crematoria, and Kyra, but it was all somehow less, like someone had put glass between him and his memories. But that was okay, because he had Lord Vaako, who had been assigned as his tamer, despite Dame Vaako's vehement protests. It was amazing, learning everything from Vaako, who he learned had once been called Leonard, many years before. He felt he got the better end of the deal, even with having Dame Vaako's acid tongue to deal with; the Lord Marshal was frankly hideous.
It had been nearly a week since he'd escaped and taken the Mark, and he was finally being allowed out of his rooms on his own, though Vaako still usually accompanied him, and he began to work on his master. He would be deliberately enticing, trying to get him away from Dame Vaako. The woman was a viper, trying to poison Lord Vaako and ultimately take over the Necromongers herself, hiding behind false ambitions and pretty lies. And finally, he was successful, at least in part.
They were alone in the throne room, which was strange, but Jim didn't question it, not when Vaako pushed him roughly to his knees and then sat on the throne, opening his pants. Both of them were in court-dress, making it much easier than the armor would have been. Vaako was perfect, thick and long, and Jim bent to his task with abandon, instinctively stopping his own noises; the throne room was cavernous and carried noises too easily.
Vaako, however, was nowhere near as quiet, bucking into his mouth with sharp breaths and muttered curses, petting his hair with misplaced tenderness. Jim had no illusions about what he was, a simple Breeder who was being used to scratch an itch. It was nothing he hadn't been used for before, after all, and he welcomed the possible return to something familiar.
Until, of course, Vaako dragged him up and behind the throne, going out the back door as he closed up his pants. The Lord Marshal wandered in, followed by the other generals in full battle dress, and Jim knew what he was supposed to do before Vaako even opened his mouth.
“Watch and wait,” he rasped quietly, feeling a frission of pleasure at the approval in his master's eyes. There had to be some kind of obedience drug in the cocktail he was given, because he was never this subservient before. But when Vaako melted away, he did as told, and as it was revealed that Riddick was here, he crept in, looking for Kyra. He found her too late, far too late. And then the Lord Marshal was dead, and Riddick was the victor. While Jim wasn't entirely displeased with the turn of events, he and Dame Vaako shared one point of view: Vaako would make an excellent Lord Marshal, though of course he didn't want his master killed later.
And when Vaako immediately divorced his Dame when Riddick made it possible, Jim was hopeful and happy that he might have a chance with his former master. He was right.
Healer-cum-Destroyer
Lord Vaako, a General of the Necromonger Horde, was not always as ruthless as his title and lifestyle implied. He, too, had once been a simple member of a poor planet beset by the Lord Marshal's forces. He'd been a man named Leonard McCoy, a healer. He'd also been an avid hunter, but for most of his Life he'd been a healer first and foremost, fixing broken bones and soothing hurts and staving off death. And then the Necros came. Initially, he'd resisted, but his wife Sadie's quick capitulation after the death of their child in the initial raids had blindsided him, forcing him to consider whether he loved her enough to follow her into this new existence.
In the end, he had, becoming Vaako and stripping himself of everything that had made him human. He rose quickly through the ranks, Sade at his side, neither of them acknowledging the chasm that had grown between them from the unstrippable pain of losing Suzanna. Sade grew cold and vicious, a viper that Vaako was more wary of than of a summons from the Lord Marshal himself. He knew that losing their daughter had destroyed her mind, making her a shell of her former self, stripping her to her base emotions and reactions even before the Curse had taken effect, making her the most dangerous associate that Vaako could ever have.
And he began to hide things from her, learned how to use her ambition to suit his own needs. And slowly, the last traces of Leonard faded into distant past, blunted memories that could cause no pain. Suzanna's death, too, took on the pall of a story he'd heard, rather than something he'd lived. And yet he loved Sade still, burned for her touch when without it for too long, let her think she was controlling his actions in order to keep her close, continue to make her his.
And the years passed not in hours and minutes, but in conquered planets and new Breeders. And Vaako grew nearly as cold as Sade, the only heat between them being that of their coupling, rising higher and higher with each successful campaign. Sade thought that she was making plans, subjugating and undermining the Lord Marshal. But Vaako knew his Lord better than even she, with her wiles and selective cheating could glean. The man - if indeed he could be called such - had fear of nothing, and could put down any challenge made to him with a lift of his pinkie finger.
Until the Breeder called Riddick arrived. For the first time, Vaako saw real fear in the Lord Marshal's eyes when the Regressors screamed in terror and defiance that the man was Furyan, a race that Vaako had never heard of. That made this man interesting, especially when he escaped without a scratch from the heart of Necropolis. Vaako was dispatched with finding and killing him, and off he went, chasing a veritable ghost to a dead, boiling world that housed Crematoria, the largest no-daylight slam in any system, and the worst.
He was certain that he had killed Riddick, and the two Breeders who joined them in their madcap escape from the harsh burning sun of Crematoria seemed to cement that, leaving Riddick, their obvious leader, to bake in the unbearable heat. He didn't notice the absence of the High Priest for three days, occupied instead with healing from his inexplicable injury and coaxing the Breeders to join with the Necros, take the Curse and become one of the Faithful.
When they returned to Necropolis, and the Breeders submitted themselves, he was given the man as a token of the Lord Marshal's esteem, something that Sade likely found unbearable, but that he was hard-pressed to give a damn about. The boy, Jim, was beautiful, all golden hair and electric eyes, neither of which could be dulled by the near-death that had been inflicted upon him. And Vaako noticed that the more time he spent in Jim's company, the more he remembered things from his Life, of being Leonard, husband and father, healer and hunter. And it unnerved him.
And when he finally gave in to his awakened desires, desires that had been buried under layers of conditioning and guilt and Treatments, Riddick returned to Necropolis. Sade immediately sought him out, whispering her poisonous words about ruling the Necros by using the distraction caused by the Furyan to kill the current Lord Marshal, installing himself, of course, as the new one. Vaako had no love for her words, and indeed, felt almost apathetic about the same plans he'd been making for nearly twenty years. The decision was taken from him in an instant when the Furyan's knife sunk into the Lord Marshal's skull, felling him instantly.
And everything changed. Under Riddick's rule, he could be Vaako-and-Leonard, reassimilating personality traits that he had long left behind in the interest of survival. And Sade could be safely discarded, since he knew that Riddick would not tolerate her whispering in his ear, and would be more likely to cut out her tongue than let her manipulate him. The only problem he had left was Jim, who was waiting, patient and silent, for his decision. He already knew exactly what he would do, and when he told the boy his plans, he received the first genuine smile he'd seen since he'd last looked upon Suzanna's laughing face. It felt like the sun.
Death and Dishonor
Jim was once Jim Kirk, a poor farmboy on an even poorer planet, son of a man who sacrificed himself to save his new wife and newborn son from a fire that decimated their land. It would have been kinder to let them burn with him. Their life was hard, and soon after his death, Winona, Jim's mother, married again just to have someone to help around the farm. By the time Jim was 8, he wasn't Jim Kirk, and he would never be Jim Kirk again. He became Jim, the boy who was sold by his step-father to pay debts owed on the already derelict farm.
By the time he was 10, he'd been bought and sold nearly twice as many times as he had fingers and toes, and had enough scars on his young back that he firmly doubted the existence of smooth skin from the top of his shoulders to the top of his thighs. The slave brand was burned deep into tender, healing flesh, growing with him, and defining him. He managed to escape his captivity when he was 16, moving from world to world, nary a thought going to his one-time home other than to curse his father for putting his mother on that horse.
By the time he was 25, he had visited every unpopular planet in all the galaxies that could be reached, all in hopes of escaping his past. But he learned that no one can run from their pasts, no matter how far or fast they move. The mercs caught up to him on a tiny godforsaken farm planet, much like his birthplace, dragging him to the only place he couldn't escape: a no-daylight slam. He languished there for the gods know how many years, there being no way to count time down in the depths of the mine. And then a little girl, maybe a year older than he'd been when he went on the run, if that, was dropped in among the wolves. Wolves who learned very quickly that Kyra was a whole different animal from those seen before.
He and The Guy appointed themselves as her unofficial guardians, making sure that she never got into scrapes she couldn't get out of without letting her know. And Kyra flourished and grew, learning more and better ways to kill. Jim watched with puzzled amusement as she got hold of 20 menthol Kools and proceeded to try and wheedle an 'eye-shine' out of every single doctor in the prison, and then with dismay as her search and the lengths to which she would go became more desperate. And finally, after nearly a year of increasingly alarming behavior, she stopped asking the doctors, stopped soliciting the guards, and Jim breathed a sigh of minute relief.
And then there was Riddick. That was where all his problems and their solutions started. With a mad-dash to outrun the sun that led to a love that would last lifetimes.
Author: bandearg_rois
Words: ~2200
Fandom: ST:XI/CoR
Summary: A tale told in three parts, about life, love, and keeping afloat in a dangerous universe.
Author's Note: Part I, Subverted Affections, was originally written as a comment fic for these pictures over at jim_and_bones (comm is locked, join for the pretty) of Chris Pine as Darwin from Smokin' Aces, and Karl Urban as Vaako from Chronicles of Riddick. Part II, Healer-cum-Destroyer, details Vaako's journey from Leonard McCoy, to the Necromonger General. Part III, Death and Dishonor, chronicles Jim's life.
Subverted Affections
“There's only one speed. Mine. You can't keep up, don't step up.” the big bald man said, and Jim gritted his teeth when people that would have made it stepped back out of fear. He knew most expected him to step back as well, but he was ready to leave this place, had practically grown up here. He had to get out, and this Riddick was just his ticket off this rock. When Kyra looked at him strangely, he just picked up a dropped rifle and checked the cartridge before grabbing another mag, daring her to say anything.
And then they were moving, and there was no time to talk, no time to think. Everything they had was set toward running, and running fast. The Guy kept giving him looks, but he pressed on, surpassing them most of the time. And then there was shooting and Kyra was screaming and if he was weaker, he would have gone for her, but she was angry, not hurt, so he kept going. Stay ahead of the light, stick to the darkness. That was the only mantra he had for now.
Later, there was a battle, a game. 'Who's the Better Killer?' They were all players, with Kyra and Riddick as the obvious best, but Jim was a close third, stealing one of the strange concussion weapons early on. And then they all lost. He stayed with Kyra, both of them scared to death about what had happened to Riddick, but confident that he was okay, simply because Kyra believed in him. However, that didn't stop them from accepting the Necro Curse. Belief, after all, meant nothing when all that stood between them and death was a painful procedure that left them altered, but still alive.
When he woke up, everything was different. He still remembered his home, his first family, Crematoria, and Kyra, but it was all somehow less, like someone had put glass between him and his memories. But that was okay, because he had Lord Vaako, who had been assigned as his tamer, despite Dame Vaako's vehement protests. It was amazing, learning everything from Vaako, who he learned had once been called Leonard, many years before. He felt he got the better end of the deal, even with having Dame Vaako's acid tongue to deal with; the Lord Marshal was frankly hideous.
It had been nearly a week since he'd escaped and taken the Mark, and he was finally being allowed out of his rooms on his own, though Vaako still usually accompanied him, and he began to work on his master. He would be deliberately enticing, trying to get him away from Dame Vaako. The woman was a viper, trying to poison Lord Vaako and ultimately take over the Necromongers herself, hiding behind false ambitions and pretty lies. And finally, he was successful, at least in part.
They were alone in the throne room, which was strange, but Jim didn't question it, not when Vaako pushed him roughly to his knees and then sat on the throne, opening his pants. Both of them were in court-dress, making it much easier than the armor would have been. Vaako was perfect, thick and long, and Jim bent to his task with abandon, instinctively stopping his own noises; the throne room was cavernous and carried noises too easily.
Vaako, however, was nowhere near as quiet, bucking into his mouth with sharp breaths and muttered curses, petting his hair with misplaced tenderness. Jim had no illusions about what he was, a simple Breeder who was being used to scratch an itch. It was nothing he hadn't been used for before, after all, and he welcomed the possible return to something familiar.
Until, of course, Vaako dragged him up and behind the throne, going out the back door as he closed up his pants. The Lord Marshal wandered in, followed by the other generals in full battle dress, and Jim knew what he was supposed to do before Vaako even opened his mouth.
“Watch and wait,” he rasped quietly, feeling a frission of pleasure at the approval in his master's eyes. There had to be some kind of obedience drug in the cocktail he was given, because he was never this subservient before. But when Vaako melted away, he did as told, and as it was revealed that Riddick was here, he crept in, looking for Kyra. He found her too late, far too late. And then the Lord Marshal was dead, and Riddick was the victor. While Jim wasn't entirely displeased with the turn of events, he and Dame Vaako shared one point of view: Vaako would make an excellent Lord Marshal, though of course he didn't want his master killed later.
And when Vaako immediately divorced his Dame when Riddick made it possible, Jim was hopeful and happy that he might have a chance with his former master. He was right.
Healer-cum-Destroyer
Lord Vaako, a General of the Necromonger Horde, was not always as ruthless as his title and lifestyle implied. He, too, had once been a simple member of a poor planet beset by the Lord Marshal's forces. He'd been a man named Leonard McCoy, a healer. He'd also been an avid hunter, but for most of his Life he'd been a healer first and foremost, fixing broken bones and soothing hurts and staving off death. And then the Necros came. Initially, he'd resisted, but his wife Sadie's quick capitulation after the death of their child in the initial raids had blindsided him, forcing him to consider whether he loved her enough to follow her into this new existence.
In the end, he had, becoming Vaako and stripping himself of everything that had made him human. He rose quickly through the ranks, Sade at his side, neither of them acknowledging the chasm that had grown between them from the unstrippable pain of losing Suzanna. Sade grew cold and vicious, a viper that Vaako was more wary of than of a summons from the Lord Marshal himself. He knew that losing their daughter had destroyed her mind, making her a shell of her former self, stripping her to her base emotions and reactions even before the Curse had taken effect, making her the most dangerous associate that Vaako could ever have.
And he began to hide things from her, learned how to use her ambition to suit his own needs. And slowly, the last traces of Leonard faded into distant past, blunted memories that could cause no pain. Suzanna's death, too, took on the pall of a story he'd heard, rather than something he'd lived. And yet he loved Sade still, burned for her touch when without it for too long, let her think she was controlling his actions in order to keep her close, continue to make her his.
And the years passed not in hours and minutes, but in conquered planets and new Breeders. And Vaako grew nearly as cold as Sade, the only heat between them being that of their coupling, rising higher and higher with each successful campaign. Sade thought that she was making plans, subjugating and undermining the Lord Marshal. But Vaako knew his Lord better than even she, with her wiles and selective cheating could glean. The man - if indeed he could be called such - had fear of nothing, and could put down any challenge made to him with a lift of his pinkie finger.
Until the Breeder called Riddick arrived. For the first time, Vaako saw real fear in the Lord Marshal's eyes when the Regressors screamed in terror and defiance that the man was Furyan, a race that Vaako had never heard of. That made this man interesting, especially when he escaped without a scratch from the heart of Necropolis. Vaako was dispatched with finding and killing him, and off he went, chasing a veritable ghost to a dead, boiling world that housed Crematoria, the largest no-daylight slam in any system, and the worst.
He was certain that he had killed Riddick, and the two Breeders who joined them in their madcap escape from the harsh burning sun of Crematoria seemed to cement that, leaving Riddick, their obvious leader, to bake in the unbearable heat. He didn't notice the absence of the High Priest for three days, occupied instead with healing from his inexplicable injury and coaxing the Breeders to join with the Necros, take the Curse and become one of the Faithful.
When they returned to Necropolis, and the Breeders submitted themselves, he was given the man as a token of the Lord Marshal's esteem, something that Sade likely found unbearable, but that he was hard-pressed to give a damn about. The boy, Jim, was beautiful, all golden hair and electric eyes, neither of which could be dulled by the near-death that had been inflicted upon him. And Vaako noticed that the more time he spent in Jim's company, the more he remembered things from his Life, of being Leonard, husband and father, healer and hunter. And it unnerved him.
And when he finally gave in to his awakened desires, desires that had been buried under layers of conditioning and guilt and Treatments, Riddick returned to Necropolis. Sade immediately sought him out, whispering her poisonous words about ruling the Necros by using the distraction caused by the Furyan to kill the current Lord Marshal, installing himself, of course, as the new one. Vaako had no love for her words, and indeed, felt almost apathetic about the same plans he'd been making for nearly twenty years. The decision was taken from him in an instant when the Furyan's knife sunk into the Lord Marshal's skull, felling him instantly.
And everything changed. Under Riddick's rule, he could be Vaako-and-Leonard, reassimilating personality traits that he had long left behind in the interest of survival. And Sade could be safely discarded, since he knew that Riddick would not tolerate her whispering in his ear, and would be more likely to cut out her tongue than let her manipulate him. The only problem he had left was Jim, who was waiting, patient and silent, for his decision. He already knew exactly what he would do, and when he told the boy his plans, he received the first genuine smile he'd seen since he'd last looked upon Suzanna's laughing face. It felt like the sun.
Death and Dishonor
Jim was once Jim Kirk, a poor farmboy on an even poorer planet, son of a man who sacrificed himself to save his new wife and newborn son from a fire that decimated their land. It would have been kinder to let them burn with him. Their life was hard, and soon after his death, Winona, Jim's mother, married again just to have someone to help around the farm. By the time Jim was 8, he wasn't Jim Kirk, and he would never be Jim Kirk again. He became Jim, the boy who was sold by his step-father to pay debts owed on the already derelict farm.
By the time he was 10, he'd been bought and sold nearly twice as many times as he had fingers and toes, and had enough scars on his young back that he firmly doubted the existence of smooth skin from the top of his shoulders to the top of his thighs. The slave brand was burned deep into tender, healing flesh, growing with him, and defining him. He managed to escape his captivity when he was 16, moving from world to world, nary a thought going to his one-time home other than to curse his father for putting his mother on that horse.
By the time he was 25, he had visited every unpopular planet in all the galaxies that could be reached, all in hopes of escaping his past. But he learned that no one can run from their pasts, no matter how far or fast they move. The mercs caught up to him on a tiny godforsaken farm planet, much like his birthplace, dragging him to the only place he couldn't escape: a no-daylight slam. He languished there for the gods know how many years, there being no way to count time down in the depths of the mine. And then a little girl, maybe a year older than he'd been when he went on the run, if that, was dropped in among the wolves. Wolves who learned very quickly that Kyra was a whole different animal from those seen before.
He and The Guy appointed themselves as her unofficial guardians, making sure that she never got into scrapes she couldn't get out of without letting her know. And Kyra flourished and grew, learning more and better ways to kill. Jim watched with puzzled amusement as she got hold of 20 menthol Kools and proceeded to try and wheedle an 'eye-shine' out of every single doctor in the prison, and then with dismay as her search and the lengths to which she would go became more desperate. And finally, after nearly a year of increasingly alarming behavior, she stopped asking the doctors, stopped soliciting the guards, and Jim breathed a sigh of minute relief.
And then there was Riddick. That was where all his problems and their solutions started. With a mad-dash to outrun the sun that led to a love that would last lifetimes.