Fic: Know (Lorne/Parrish, PG13)
Title: Know
Author: enviropony
Recipienttaste_is_sweet
Pairing: Lorne/Parrish
Rating PG-13
Disclaimer: So very obviously not my toys. Just borrowing them. Will be returned in perfect condition. (Eventually.)
Word Count: 10,300
Summary: Evan Lorne gets taken as a slave. Luckily, his people rescue him before he gets to the slaving part. Too bad he doesn’t remember who they are. Warnings: beating, torture, implied child abuse, derogatory description of persons with mental disabilities.
Author's Notes: My experience with art is limited to a few semesters of photography, and to conversations with my best buddy, who has an MFA. My experience with human medicine is nonexistent. My ability to gets things done on time is likewise nonexistent, so this did not have the benefit of a beta. To that end, please forgive any inaccuracies, language errors, or moments of eye-rolling melodrama.
Evan wakes to a jolt of pain in his gut, grabbing first at his stomach and then, as his eyes focus, at the foot that’s swinging forward to connect a second time. He gets a luck grip on the leather laces and pulls hard as he rolls onto his back. His attacker flails and falls into a sort of half-split, one knee hitting the ground with an audible crack!, the other hooked over Evan’s side for a moment as he rolls again, onto his stomach, then out from underneath the guy. He doesn’t get further up than his knees, though, before something’s yanking him back to earth by the neck. Evan reaches up, and is shocked to find a thick rope at his throat, another length of it stretched taut between him and the hand of a snarling man who gives another hard yank before drawing his booted foot back. The last thing Evan thinks before everything goes blank is, That’s gonna hurt.
- - -
Awareness comes slowly, sound first, then pain, and then a pressing - instinctive - need to know where he is makes him open his eyes. The light is weak, but the quality of it makes him think it’s daylight, outside of wherever he is.
He tries to sit up, to get a better look around, but his head pounds mercilessly and his vision blacks out. His stomach twists, his guts turning suddenly liquid. Bile rises in his throat and spills from his mouth, and he slumps back to the ground with his arms wrapped around his stomach.
He lies there for a few minutes, letting his head and his insides settle, and tries to figure out where he is. He can’t recall having seen the place before - what little he’s glimpsed of it - and he doesn’t remember how he got here. When he manages, after the third try, to sit up without being ill, the other people slumped listlessly around the room don’t look familiar, either.
The weak daylight is coming from cracks between the boards that cover two large windows. The door, solid-looking wood banded with steel, doesn’t have any cracks in it. He can’t see anything through the small slit between it and the floor. He thinks about going to see if it’s locked, but he doesn’t think he ought to stand quite yet, considering the difficulty he had just sitting upright.
Instead, he examines himself. It feels like there’s some dried blood on his head, and the area above and beside his right eye is tender - that explains the headache, he suspects. His stomach feels bruised, too, when he runs a hand across it, hot and swollen, but not in a way that alarms him. It probably feels worse than it is.
He’s not sure how he knows this.
He doesn’t appear to have any other injuries, so he turns his attention to the clothes he’s wearing. The tight, black, short-sleeved shirt and the heavy pants with many pockets are unfamiliar.
He doesn’t remember putting them on.
The pockets are all empty. This, for a moment, worries him more than the fact that nothing is familiar. There was something important in at least one of those pockets, he thinks, and he didn’t want it found.
He can’t, of course, remember what that thing was.
He’s been working up to something for the past few minutes, from the moment he realized that he had no frame of reference beyond the present. He gives in, even though he’s afraid - doesn’t want this final proof that something’s very, very wrong.
He thinks, This is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, … but he can’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t know his own name.
- - -
He’s just about worked himself up to checking out the door - he’d feel pretty silly if it turned out to have been open all this time, even though he’s pretty damned sure it isn’t - when there’s the sound of a heavy lock turning, and several large, stoutly-built men walk in. The other people in the room shrink back, hiding behind each other, or trying to make themselves smaller. He holds his ground, such as it is. He doesn’t know much about himself yet, but he’s already learning: he doesn’t like to make assumptions, he does like this shirt he’s wearing, and he sure as hell isn’t going to back down from a bunch of thugs.
Even when one of them cracks a whip across his chest.
It feels like fire, even through the shirt, and he has his first flash of familiarity - a sense memory, like he’s been whipped before. It sends a brutal shiver through him.
The other thugs are on him before he’s got a grip on himself, holding him down and grabbing at his chin.
“Pretty,” one of them grunts. “Nice eyes.”
He starts struggling like hell, because he’s got a sick feeling about where this is going, but there are three of them on him, and he’s just too weak. One of them lifts his shirt up, though, and suddenly they’re letting him go.
“Worthless,” the tallest one grunts, and kicks him in the side.
He thinks about going after them for about two seconds, which is how long it takes the fat one to decide that a kick in the side isn’t suitable punishment for being ‘worthless.’ The fat one is the one with the whip, and by the time he’s through, there’s nothing left but to lie there and shudder in pain.
They collect three or four people, wrestling them out the door one by one, but he’s not paying much attention on account of the flashback he’s having - a real, solid memory of being hung by his arms from a tree and whipped across the back and chest so viciously that his body starts to twist with the force of it.
There are people standing in a loose half-circle at the base of the tree, but he can’t make out their faces. Some look restrained - one is on his knees - but he doesn’t know who they are. What overwhelms him instead is the breathtaking fear of waiting for another blow, the certainty that it will land on his face, across his eyes, that he’ll lose his sight, lose-
Lose something. The terror of pain and loss is all the memory gives him.
He crawls out of it eventually, manages to push the real pain aside enough to glance around. The thugs are gone and it’s getting dark outside. The other people in the room look mostly alright, except for the girl in the corner, who must have gotten slapped around a good bit, and the man by the door. He looks ragged, defeated, lying there in a crumpled heap of obvious misery. The young, blond-haired boy who was with him is nowhere to be seen. The two women in purple dresses who’d been huddled under the window are also gone.
He knows now why he is ‘worthless,’ why they didn’t take him, too, despite his “pretty eyes” - another on the short list of things he knows about himself: Hates to assume, likes this shirt, stupidly heroic, pretty eyes. Attention to detail. (The dresses were stitched with flowers and birds. The blond boy had been exceptionally graceful.)
Attention to detail is what makes him pick the driest spot on the hem of his shirt to tug carefully upwards. The fabric is shredded, all but fused to his bloody back and sides, and he lifts it gently, wincing as some of the threads pull away from his flesh.
On his stomach, in stark confirmation of his memory, are the scars of the previous whipping; the pale, granulated strips of raised skin are so numerous he’s actually shocked. He has another sharp flash of memory - a bright, burning CRACK! - and he knows the whip was something thin and sturdy. The scars are narrow, but the whip cut deeply. He thinks the wounds must have gotten infected, to heal so badly, but he has not recollection of it.
He’s sort of amazed at the difference between the things he knows and the things he doesn’t. His name, his family, his own appearance all elude him, but the name of the stone he’s lying on comes without bidding. It’s some kind of sandstone, a type of conglomerate, and his mind skitters through ridiculous levels of detail on how it probably formed. Probably, because he’s sure that this isn’t the planet he learned all that information about, and boy, is that one hell of a disconnect. He is utterly certain that there’s no such thing as other habitable planets, but he knows, in his very bones, that this isn’t his home. This isn’t where he was born.
He decides, at some point during the long, cold night, with the pain of his wounds made worse because he can’t stop shivering, can’t get up off this fucking conglomerate that’s sapping all the heat from his body… he decides, in a moment of clarity amid the night’s pain and confusion, that he needs a name. He talks to himself in his head and keeps stumbling because he doesn’t know what to call himself. The fact that half the time his inner voice is a woman doesn’t help. She doesn’t know his name, either.
The problem is that he can’t, at the moment, think of any names, let alone his own. He hasn’t had food or water since who-knows-when, and he’s pretty sure he’s delirious. He runs through different words in his head, names of rocks and colors and tectonic stress equations, and what he finally comes up with is Malachite - like Malachi, only without the inexplicable creepiness.
That, and Bob.
He falls asleep from sheer exhaustion at last, and when he’s startled awake by the lock on the door turning, what’s stuck in his mind is Kite.
It makes something warm up inside him, so he goes with it.
The thugs are back, this time with chains and collars - sturdier than what’s wrapped around Kite’s throat - that they wrestle onto everyone who’s still alive. Apparently he hadn’t been the worst off last night. All the same, they don’t have to wrestle with him very hard.
They run the chains through rings in the collars, connecting everyone together, then whip and bully the ragged line out the door. Kite is chained at the back, doubtless so they can cut him loose easily if he keels over and dies (which is something he hasn’t quite ruled out yet).
Beyond the door is a short hallway with a few other rooms opening onto it. At the end of the hall is another door, wide open and letting in harsh, morning light. He dislikes this sort of light - flat and white and cold - but he doesn’t have time to dwell as he’s yanked out into the yard, momentarily blinded, taking a deep breath and promptly choking on the stench.
There are people and animals chained, tied or caged everywhere he looks, some in excellent shape and some injured or starving, or ill. A handful of people are milling about, inspecting commenting, and occasionally exchanging payment and dragging away their new purchases.
The realization that he’s in a slave market makes Kite shudder. That, or his rising fever. He stumbles as the line lurches onward, catches his balance on the clothes of the man in front of him - the father of the blond boy. The man grabs his arm and helps him along, silent and weary and grim.
They’re led to a deserted corner of the yard, where only empty cages stand against a wall of remarkably colorful granite. Four people to a cage, they take up most of the available space. Kite thinks that last night, they would have filled every cage.
The blond boy’s father lowers him carefully to the ground. “Rest,” he whispers, in a gentle tone that makes it clear Kite doesn’t have long to live.
Kite doesn’t want to lie in the filthy straw at the bottom of the cage. The last thing he needs is an infection. The woman in his head assures him that he needn’t worry; the fever suggests he already has one.
Things go a little vague after that. He gets hot and cold by turns, there’s a bit of commotion, and he wonders at the ratio of feldspar to mica in the granite. Someone presses a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drinks without tasting. He tries to push it away when he’s full, but they force his mouth open and pinch his nose shut, and he has no choice but to swallow.
He becomes aware that he’s lucid, and then promptly realizes he has to pee. It’s getting dark again.
The other people sharing his cage are settled in the straw - not filthy, just a little moldy - watching the yard settle for the evening. The man who helped him glances over when Kite tries to sit up, and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Be still, friend,” he says. “The tea has cured your fever, not your wounds.” He produces a piece of bread. Handing it over, he continues, “If you can eat this and keep it down, you’ll probably live.”
Kite blinks at him, and at the coarse, half-stale bread. He shrugs off the restraining hand, then breathes a startled groan as the movement sets his back on fire. He struggles to rise despite the pain, and manages to get to his knees, panting heavily, hands braced against the ground the only thing keeping him upright. The bread digs into his left palm.
“You’re a stubborn bastard,” the man says disapprovingly, and then, “Don’t waste that bread. If you won’t eat it, I will.”
Kite takes a few deep breaths, and makes a possessive fist around the crumbling chunk. “I’ll eat it,” he grates out.
The man watches skeptically, and the other occupants of the cage eye the bread with longing. Kite brings it to his mouth and gnaws off a piece, chews determinedly, and swallows.
The pain that grips him when the bread hits his stomach makes his jaw clench shut, and he manages, just barely, not to throw it back up. For one long, bitter moment, he can’t move or breathe or think, and then a hand is carding through his hair. The sense memory it brings - warmth, comfort, a frisson of excitement - allows him to relax, and everything settles again.
“God damn,” he groans. “What the hell?” He doesn’t relinquish the rest of the bread.
“The tea is a powerful fever reducer,” says the only woman in the cell - the girl who’d been slapped around; Kite remembers the way her hair had framed her bruised eyes - “But it damages the stomach. Eating will be painful for some days. You’d best hope you don’t need another dose.”
The man runs a hand through Kite’s hair again. “Eat slowly. When they bring water, drink slowly. Do everything slowly, and perhaps you will survive. There is no sense in rushing. We haven’t anywhere to go.”
Kite snorts in acknowledgement. “I noticed.” He braces himself to take another bite of the bread. It goes down like steel wool and burns his gut like bad whiskey, but he rides it out. It’s well after dark before he’s done eating.
He relieves himself, aiming outside the back of the cage, like the other men had done. He wipes his hands on his pants, and tries to peel his shirt off his wounds, but the tearing burn of it almost makes him collapse.
“Let that be,” the young woman advises, frowning at him in the weak light of the slavers’ campfire.
“The wounds are infected,” he counters. “If I could get some air to them-“
“If you open them up they’ll only fester more,” she says. “If you’re still alive in the morning, the slavers will clean them.”
That sounds ominous. “The slavers will?” He thinks he knows how that’ll go down. What he’s not sure of is why they’d bother, and it shows in the skeptical tone of his voice.
“It’s worth trying to keep you alive,” the final occupant of the cage puts in. He’s older, balding, but tall and wiry. Somebody will put him to good use, maybe. “You’re too damaged to be a whore, but you’re strong, and handsome enough to attract attention. They’ll make a pretty coin, selling you to some merchant.”
“What makes you think I’ll go willingly?” Kite asks, a little offended, but mostly curious. “Or that I’ll stick around once I’m sold?”
“You will,” the old man assures. “You want to live badly enough, I think. If you fight too hard, they’ll kill you. If you try to escape, they’ll kill you. If you manage to get free, no one will help you. The mark of the Teslon slavers is unmistakable, and they kill anyone they catch helping their property escape.”
“Mark?” Kite echoes.
“Tomorrow,” says the man who’s lost his son. “A brand, in a visible place. On the face, or the neck. With your looks, one on the back of each hand. Nobody who sees it will help you.”
“Perfect,” Kite grumbles “Like I’m not marked enough already.”
- - -
The woman’s name is Erale Fikaan, and the old man is Wabo of the Cliffs. The other man is Gramin Ora Ahando; his son was Janel Tak Ahando. None of them are from this planet, either. They greet the unfamiliar morning with trepidation. Kite greets it with another fever.
“Try to look alert,” Erale insists, pulling him upright and slapping his face until he bats her hand away. “Another dose of the tea and your stomach will eat itself.”
“Thank you for the lovely image,” Kite says, and sways a bit. There’s no way he’s going to fool them.
Sure enough, the slavers pour more tea down his throat when they drag him out of the cage, but they force a white, chalky sludge down first. The same part of his mind that’s been dwelling on
the granite tells him it’s a calcium compound, meant to neutralize the acids in the tea. He doesn’t find out that it works until much later, though, because after they dose him, they clean his wounds.
He thought the original whipping was excruciating, but it had nothing on the firewall of pain that comes when they pin him to the base of a well and start to scrape the scabs off his back. He roars in outrage, bucking and twisting against their holds until they run a length of chain through the ring in his collar and ropes around his wrists. They tie him, spread-eagle, to the posts that support the well’s roof, and hook the chain over the bucket pulley before pulling it taut. All he can do then is flail, half-suspended, and choke himself as they scrape at the wounds with cruel efficiency. Kite passes out long before they get to the washing.
He comes awake with a jerk, muscle spasms forcing him to awareness as his body starts to fight itself, the search for a comfortable position aborted by near-paralytic stiffness. His throat is raw inside and out, and viciously bruised. His wrists are rope-burned, and his knees swollen from where he’d banged them against the well in his bid to escape the slavers’ treatment.
The pain in his back and sides swallows him like white noise rising to full volume, washing over him in a wave with each breath he takes, obliterating everything else. Three, four breaths, and he’s gone again.
Waking up the second time is easier. He’s aware of the whip wounds first, prickling and burning still, but nowhere near as intensely as before. The throat next, when he tries to swallows, and then the knees. The wrists are almost an afterthought. He’s still stiff as hell, but the spasms are gone.
He’s in the cage, face-down in the straw, and he can feel the others hovering over him.
“When you can sit up,” Erale says, “you can try a piece of tuber.”
Kite moans miserably. The thought of sitting up makes him want to cry.
“Come on, man,” Gramin Ora murmurs, running that soothing hand through Kite’s hair once more. “If you’re not up by nightfall, they’re giving you up as a lost cause.”
That gets Kite stirring. Wabo and Gramin Ora lift him slowly upright, ignoring the groaning whines that he can’t keep inside. Once he’s more or less sitting, Erale waves a small piece of root vegetable at his face. His eyes cross trying to follow it, and he almost makes himself ill. Wabo grabs it out of her hand with a snarl, and lifts it to Kite’s mouth. Kite chews and swallows gingerly, but his stomach doesn’t rebel.
“I wondered what that grey stuff they gave you was,” Erale says. “We don’t have that at home.” Her face falls as she fishes another bit of root vegetable out of what must be their communal bowl of food for the dinner meal.
Kite can’t believe it’s evening again.
They get him standing eventually, just in time for the slavers to decide that he’s worth keeping another night. As he grips the bars of the cage and wishes they were the fat slaver’s neck, he notices strange, burned wounds on the backs of hands. They’re in the shape of five surprisingly fine chain links encircling three large dots.
“The moons of Teslon,” Gramin Ora says, pointing at Kite’s hands, and then up to the sky, where the three moons hang, pale and stark and identical in size. His own mark, on his neck, is black and oozing.
Kite scowls in disgust. Everything else hurts so much that he can’t even feel the brands.
- - -
Gramin Ora cries when he sees Janel Tak. Tears track his dirty face, then smudge like reverse war paint as he wipes at his eyes.
The boy has been washed and fed. His clothes are plain but neat and well-fitting. He walks with his head held high, but the grace of his movements comes in fits and starts. It’s obvious that he’s in pain.
The two women in purple are chained together behind him, linked at the wrist as well as the neck. Their dresses have been washed, and their hair brushed out of its matching buns to hang in loose tresses down their backs. They look at the ground as they walk, shoulders brushing with every stride, but they do not falter. Kite thinks maybe nobody’s touched them yet.
“They’re a package deal, now” Erale murmurs. “Poor wenches.”
“You won’t be any better off,” Wabo says. “At the beck and call of some farmer, perhaps.”
“I’ve skills beyond looking pretty,” Erale counters. “I’ll be useful as more than a bedwarmer. And if he has a wife…”
“You can hope,” Wabo mutters with a snort.
“What else is there?” she shoots back.
The women are put in one of the empty cages with a bench; the straw inside looks fresh. Kite thinks they’ll be the prime attraction in this corner of the yard.
He expects the boy to be put in with them, or in a cage of his own, but is surprised to see that instead, the child is stripped of his fine clothes and shuffled, naked and bruised, toward Kite’s own cage.
Gramin Ora claps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. He stands in complete silence as the cage door is opened and the boy thrust inside.
“Wish you’d mentioned he was an imbecile,” one of the slavers mutters. “Saved everybody a bucket of grief.” He slams the door shut and locks it.
Gramin Ora falls to his knees. Janel Tak hurries forward and wraps his skinny arms around his father.
Behind Kite, Erale sniffles suspiciously. Next to him, Wabo wipes at his face.
“Imbecile,” Janel Tak repeats softly, with a sardonic twist that tells them all he is anything but.
Gramin Ora takes a heaving breath, hugs his son back, and starts to weep in earnest.
- - -
“The Teslon treat imbeciles - those who are so dumb that they can’t fend for themselves - as a warning from the Ancestors,” Wabo tells Kite as they settle in for their third night in the cages, and the end of the first day of buying in their corner of the yard. “It is meant to be a sign to the arrogant that they, too, can be brought low, and that there is no thwarting the Ancestors’ will. To hurt such a deficient person is a sign of cowardice and incompetence; to kill one is forbidden outright.”
“He knew that, even though he wasn’t from this planet,” Kites observes. “Smart kid.”
“Oh, yes,” Wabo agrees. “Oh, yes.”
Between an “imbecile,” a bruised woman, a damaged man, and a grandfather proficient at looking feeble when necessary, their cage had gotten little attention during the day. Kite is glad of it. The people locked in with him are all he has, all he knows. He isn’t looking forward to losing them. It’s another thing he’s added to the list of things he’s learned about himself: emotionally dependent. He needs other people. He knows how to make them laugh, how to comfort them, and how to keep the peace. He wants to make them happy He needs to make them safe. He can’t imagine what other purpose he has in life.
This won’t last, though, and even if it could, another thing he’s learned is that he won’t be able to stay still indefinitely. He may be trapped while his wounds heal, but he’s been paying attention all along. He knows the slavers’ ranks and names, and their guard routines. He knows who is the weakest, and who the most dangerous. He knows what each of them prefers for breakfast. Attention to detail. It will server him when the time is right, he’s certain.
The next morning dawns overcast, and rain is falling before the cookfires are lit. Kite and his cohorts huddle together, Janel Tak in the middle, and try to ward off the bone-deep chill of the rain with stories of their home planets. It’s mid-morning before Kite’s turn comes. He tells a tale of how the stone around them came to be, complete with grating, grinding “rock” voices for Janel Tak’s benefit. What he wouldn’t give, he thinks, for a small pool of molten lava to drive off the cold.
Around midday, when the rain lets up, the slavers start making noises about cleaning his wounds again. Kite shivers, and it has nothing to do with the weather.
They are thrown bread - wet, like everything else - for lunch, but one of the slaving bastards takes pity and heats the drinking water over a fire before passing it through the bars of the cages. It’s little better than luke-warm, but to their chilled bodies, it’s a boon.
A couple is making its way to this corner of the yard, dressed in fine, form-fitting leathers and woven, earth-toned coats. Their graceful, confident strides set them apart from the common rabble of the yard. Wabo sits up a little when he sees them. “Athosians,” he breathes, an odd note of hope in his voice.
The word means nothing to Kite, and he says so.
“They are allied with the Lanteans, the few that are left,” Wabo tells him. “And whatever you may have to say about the Lanteans, they detest slavery.”
Kite has nothing to say about the Lanteans, because that word means nothing to him, either. “You think they’re scouting?” He watches the pair approach. They are, he thinks, looking for something specific.
“No,” Gramin Ora says. “But even if they are, they’re in no position to free this entire yard.”
“Maybe they’ll come back with help,” Janel Tak offers quietly.
“Not unless they see one of their own here,” Gramin Ora declares, sounding a little bitter. “When I say they’re in no position, I don’t mean just these two, son of mine.”
Janel Tak considers this, and then says, “The Athosians altogether? Or the Lanteans? The Athosians have been all but destroyed, and the Lanteans…” He pauses, then forges on. “They’re not going to make any more enemies than they have to, are they?” He looks up at Gramin Ora. “They won’t help us.” His face shows a striking mix of understanding and betrayal.
Gramin Ora nods. Wabo sighs sadly. “I think you must be right, child. What can we offer them, after all?”
Kite mulls this over, but without knowing who the Lanteans are, he has no concrete answer.
The Athosians have made their way among the cages, but they seem to be dismissing the people within more quickly than before. It’s as if they’ve seen what they needed to see, and are eager to leave. Kite’s cage holds its collective breath as they pass by, and he catalogs their clothes, faces, the pleased widening of their eyes as they scan over the people within-
-and slide to a stop on him.
The pause is brief, barely noticeable, and they’re moving on, walking away, the woman first, the man following without a backward glance.
These people know him.
Or want him.
What’s he supposed to do if they try to buy him?
Kite huddles closer to his cage-mates, and starts to murmur a story about how slimy, stinky Muck turned into sharp, bright, brilliant Diamond.
- - -
The Athosians don’t return. Kite is relieved. He doesn’t think he’d be able to live with himself, knowing that his friends are still trapped here, even is his fate ends up worse than theirs.
His relief is short-lived. Not long after breakfast the next morning, as the slavers are hanging their clothes to dry in the sun, a large group of men move purposefully through the yard, zeroing in on Kite’s corner. Their clothes are unfamiliar to Kite’s friends, a mix of black leather and green broadcloth in simple, inexpert cuts. Their manner is brusque and efficient. Of the eight of them, only two have faces that Kite would call open. One is a stocky man, short-haired, blue-eyed, hands and mouth always in motion. The other is lanky, calmer, completely quiet, and with distinctly more hair. Kite can’t pin down the color of his eyes - a washed blue or green, or even grey, depending on how the light hits them - and blushes when he realizes that the man is regarding him in turn. Instead of the reprimand Kite expects, he gets a shy smile.
“This one!” another man declares. “The whole cage.”
“The whole cage?” one of the slavers echoes, staring at Kite, and Kite realizes they’re talking about his cage.
His heart begins to pound. What do they want with the whole cage? They act like soldiers, so he can guess what they might want with Erale, and even Gramin Ora, but the rest of the cage should be practically worthless to them. And old man, a boy and a half-skinned amnesiac - not that they know about the amnesia… Kite can’t believe that this is going to end well. He’s no match for these men, though. Even if he were in prefect condition, the could never take so many.
The man with the shifting eye-color is still watching him. He glances at the slavers, and when he sees that none of them are paying attention, he smiles more widely, and mouths something. Kite can’t understand any of the words, but the smile, bright and open and honest, sparks something in him, and he can’t help but smile back.
Then the slavers are opening the cage, hauling them out one by one, running that damned chain between their collars, and the man who’s buying them is pointing to the women in the purple dresses. “Them, too,” he says, and the slavers whoop. The women are added to the line, payment is argued over and finally made - a heavy-looking box that Kite doesn’t get a glimpse into - and suddenly they’re being quick-marched through the yard, out the massive wooden gates, and onto the road beyond.
Kite’s head is spinning, his back and sides are throbbing, his knee are grinding, and all he can do is mutter up and down the line, “Play along, we can’t beat them like this.”
At first he thinks that maybe his friends are humoring his hopes of escape when they nod their replies, but he sees the tense set of their shoulders, and the fear on their faces. When they look at him, he sees something like pleading or faith in their eyes, and he knows he has to protect them - has to make this evolve so they all come out of it alive.
He doesn’t know how.
The leader, the one who bought them, is called Sheppard. The talkative one with the waving hands is McKay. Three of the stone-faced ones are Stackhouse, Povod and Deckinger. The other three, including his pale-eyed admirer, have yet to be addressed.
They’re out of sight of the yard before long, and trees along the road grow more dense as they walk, but the pace doesn’t slow. Kite watches Janel Tak stumble and has to call out, “Slow down. We can’t all keep up.”
The stone-faced men are strangely deferential when they look at him, and one of them shouts ahead to the front. “Colonel, they can’t keep up this pace, sir!”
Sheppard turns, still walking, and his eyes land on Janel Tak. “Carry the boy, Corporal. We need to keep moving. How’s the major holding up?”
The corporal glances at Kite, frowning, and calls, “Not so great, sir!” Then he pulls out a knife and moves toward Janel Tak. When the boy cringes back and stumbles again, he says, “Take it easy, kiddo. I’m just gonna cut off the collar, okay?”
“Hold on,” Sheppard is saying, suddenly beside them. “Halt the line, Povod!” Wabo, up in front, staggers to a halt, and they all pile up behind him to lean on each other, breathing hard.
Sheppard nods at Kite. “I don’t think you remember any of us,” he says, “but we’re trying to help you. We need to get off the road before those assholes back there figure out they got screwed, and that means we need to hurry. Walhurst’s going to carry the kid. We’ll get you all off your feet as soon as we can, but there’s not time to rest right now. You just need to trust us.” His voice is low and hurried, but he sounds earnest. Kite wants to trust him, wants this to be real, but there’s no way he could be this lucky - someone knows him, has come to rescue him, and is taking all his friends along, too. He can’t bring himself to believe it.
Sheppard must see the doubt in his face, because he huffs, frustrated, and says, “Fine, then keep in mind that you’re chained up, and there are more of us, and-“
“Colonel,” the pale-eyed man interrupts, moving close. “Could I…?”
Sheppard gives him a once-over, then glances around, as if looking for something. “Make it quick,” he says at last, and moves off. He starts giving orders, sending one of the men back down the road as a lookout, but Kite loses the rest of it because the man in front of him licks his lips and grins that shy, honest grin again.
“Hi,” he murmurs. “Look, I know this looks sketchy, but you have to trust us. The stuff we gave those guys for payment is worthless, and it won’t take them long to figure that out. We have a place to hide, but we need to hurry.” He moves closer, so that Kite can see the sweat beading minutely on his brows. “Please don’t fight us, Evan.”
Kite blinks. That doesn’t sound even remotely familiar. “My name is Kite,” he says.
“No,” the man counters softly. “No, it isn’t.”
“Parrish!” Sheppard is back, the talkative McKay in tow. “They’re on to us. Are we good, or what?”
“Sorry, colonel,” Parrish says with a sigh. “I thought-”
“You thought wrong,” McKay cuts in. “This isn’t a fairy tale. He won’t wake up just because you kissed him.” He waves a small device of some sort at Parrish. “They’re on the move.”
Parrish blushed, and Sheppard whacks McKay on the arm before turning to Kite. “Seriously, major, we need to go. Walhurst’s going to carry the kid, and we’re all going to run, all right?” He raises his voice to include the rest of the line, who’ve been crowded protectively around Janel Tak. “We’re not going to hurt anybody, but we need to go!”
He doesn’t wait for acknowledgement, but points at Janel Tak. The corporal, Walhurst, has the collar off before the boy has a chance to really struggle, and is hoisting him over one burly shoulder. “Move out!” Sheppard shouts, and Povod, at the head of the line, grabs Wabo around the waist and starts to haul him along. The others look to Kite as the chain pulls taut, and he winces, but nods, and they all start to run.
Far too soon, they’re struggling for breath, tripping and stumbling, too weak to match the pace Sheppard sets. The colonel shouts and points, and Parrish is at Erale’s side, Deckinger helping the other women. The one called Stackhouse offers Kite his arm. “Move faster if you hang on, sir!” he declares, not even breathing hard. Kite has little choice but to latch on the man’s shirt and let himself get dragged along.
“Sheppard!” McKay is in the lead, panting heavily, waving his little device at the woods on the left side of the road. “Right here!”
Sheppard sprints up to him, stares intently into the trees for a moment, and says something Kite can’t hear. McKay nods, and Sheppard’s waving at Povod and Wabo, who slow as they reach him, then swerve off the road and into the trees. Gramin Ora stumbles at the change in direction, but McKay hauls him up and shoves him onward, then falls in next to him. It’s a good thing the chain is so long, Kite thinks as he and Stackhouse follow, or they’d end up in a tangled pile every time one of them slowed down.
He can hear Erale and the other women gasping behind them, and he can’t seem to get enough air himself, but the pace isn’t slowing. They’re crashing through the low underbrush like a herd of frightened beasts; Kite can’t help the strangled cry every time a branch scrapes across his back. They’re being too loud. The slavers won’t have any trouble following them.
He’s watching the ground as he runs in an effort to stay on his feet, but the change from dense greenery to bare ground barely registers. It’s the change from bare ground to echoing, unyielding metal that startles him, so that he trips and falls to his knees, screaming as he feels something fracture. Then Stackhouse is hauling him up and out of the way, gripping his arms tightly to keep him from falling again. The women are already inside - wherever inside is - and Walhurst with Janel Tak brings up the rear. There’s a thin, whining noise, and the floor in front of them starts to rise like a drawbridge, closing them in. Kite catches a glimpse of Sheppard’s last man vanishing into thin air before the door seals shut.
He’s not happy to realize that he’s started hallucinating.
Something’s dragging at his senses, like humming and whispers across his skin, and he knows that they’re taking off, lifting into the air, that Sheppard’s at the controls and the winds aloft are weak but the visibility’s limited because of the haze. His lungs are heaving, his vision is blurred, his body trembling with pain, and there’s something in his head nagging for acknowledgement.
He’s terrified to give it, so he lets himself black out.
- - -
He comes to slowly, like he did in the cell. There’s the murmur of low voices, and the occasional shuffling. His body aches dully, and he wonders about the pain that will come when he tries to sit up. He’s in no hurry, though - doesn’t even care where he is all that much, which seems like it should be worrisome. He was a lot more curious about his surrounding that first time.
Someone touches his face, and he pulls away, then hisses when his neck twinges. He realizes he’s lying on his side. “Open your eyes,” he hears. The voice is familiar, so he does, and there is Erale, kneeling over him, with the boy, Janel Tak, at her side.
“Father, he’s awake!” Janel Tak calls, and the voices all die down for a moment before rising in a brief, happy cacophony.
Gramin Ora eases himself down next to Kite, making Erale scoot over. “How do you feel, my friend?” he asks. “They gave you medicines for the pain, and bound your injuries as best they could.”
“They said they are taking us to their home,” Erale adds. “Your home.”
“I don’t know these people,” Kite rasps. Erale frowns, and produces a bottle from somewhere.
“Here,” she says. “Let us give you some water.”
They lift him just enough so he can swallow a few sips, then lay him back down. Whatever medicine the soldiers gave him is not enough to cut the pain of their brief grip on his back and shoulders, and he groans when his head hits the soft cushion under him. He lies there for a moment, not caring about anything, until a soldier - Sheppard - looms over him.
Gramin Ora shifts over, so that Sheppard has room to kneel at his shoulder, and Janel Tak ends up at his feet. Sheppard looks concerned, but far less stern than he did on the road. He’s tugging at his shirt collar as if it’s unfamiliar.
“How’s it going, major?” the man asks. “Don’t suppose you remember us yet?”
“No,” Kite says, and feels inexplicably like he’s failed at something.
Sheppard just nods. “That’s okay. We’re just waiting for the sunspot activity to die down, and we’ll get you to the infirmary. The docs will get you sorted out.” He tilts his head at the others grouped around Kite. “Your friends, too.”
“Who are you?” Kite asks. If these really are his people, why is none of this familiar?
Even as he thinks it, though, the buzz at the back of his mind becomes a pleasant, comforting hum, and he continues, without thinking, “Flare’s dying down.”
Sheppard grins. “Feel that, huh? I think you’re gonna be fine.”
McKay’s voice drifts, loud and impatient, from somewhere beyond Kite’s head, and Sheppard stands. “Time to go,” he says, and disappears from view.
The others are all watching Kite with a mix of wonder and apprehension.
“What?” he snaps, or tries to. It comes out like a petulant whine.
“You’ll never believe it!” Janel Tak whispers, excited, like he’s about to share a secret. “Remember the Athosians?”
“Yeah,” Kite says.
“They were looking for you,” Janel Tak tells him. “They’ve been looking for days. You know what you are?”
“What, already?” Kite prods.
With the reverence of a holy man, Janel Tak says, “You’re Lantean!”
Kite sighs. It still means absolutely nothing.
- - -
He’s still awake when the ship tells him it’s landed. That’s nice he thinks fuzzily, but where are we?
He gets vague images of towers and an ocean and numbers in his mind; Sheppard calls, “Get him out of here before he tries to launch this thing!”
There’s a lurch, and he’s rising in the air. He tries to focus, and makes out someone at his feet, and realizes there’s someone at his head. Two of the soldiers, he thinks, taking him somewhere. He wonders where his friends are, but he’s starting to feel tingly and nauseated, so instead of asking about them, he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. Then he takes another, and another, and when he opens his eyes again, there’s a kind face peering at him, and the world has stopped moving.
“Ye’re a right mess, aren’t ye, major?” the man says. “How’s the pain?”
“Who are you?” Kite asks, his voice scratchy and weak.
“My name’s Carson Beckett, lad,” the man replies. “I’m yer doctor. Can you tell me how much pain you’re in?”
“Worse than earlier,” Kite says. “Still better than before.”
“Before they got ye out, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, here’s what we’ll do,” the doctor tells him. “We’re going to try to clean and dress these wounds-“ He cuts off when Kite flinches violently. “Okay, son?”
“Don’t touch me,” Kite grits out.
“We’ll be careful,” Beckett promises. “If it gets to be too much, just tell us. I don’t want to overload ye with painkillers just yet because I’m going to have to sedate ye for your knee.”
“Why?” He doesn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong with my knee?”
“Cracked your kneecap, it feels like,” the doctor says. “Should heal fine if I can get to it soon. Let us clean these wounds in the meantime, all right?”
Kite grits his teeth again and scowls, but gives a single nod. It’s all he can manage.
“There’s a lad. It won’t be so bad.”
It isn’t so bad, but it’s bad enough that Kite’s sweating and growling by the end. The doctor is careful, though, and the nurses solicitous, so he keeps his cursing to himself.
“All done,” Beckett says at last. “We’ll let ye rest for a bit, and then I think it’ll be safe to prep ye for surgery. There’s a line of visitors clamoring at the door. Feel up to seeing one of them?”
“No,” Kite forces out, because he’s exhausted, and he’s pretty sure he’ll pass out long before they come to sedate him.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Beckett confides, leaning in a bit, “but Doctor Parrish is wearing such a hangdog expression that I hated to say no outright.”
“Parrish?” Kite echoes. “The one with the smile?”
Beckett chuckles. “Aye, the one with the smile. I’ll let him in after the surgery,” he assures.
Kites tries to nod again, but he can barely move, so he just hums in agreement. Beckett says something else, and Kite hums again even though he doesn’t really hear it.
- - -
After the surgery, when he wakes for the second or third time (that he remembers), Kite’s beginning to get some of his caution back. He asks after his friends, but the nurse tells him it’s the middle of the night, and they’re all asleep. He asks where Beckett is, and is told he’s asleep as well.
That all seems a little too convenient to him, so as soon as the nurse is gone, Kite tries to get up. He doesn’t even manage to get his feet off the bed before the lightheadedness knocks him flat on his face. Something begins to beep insistently off to the side, and the nurse comes back in.
“You tried to get up, didn’t you?” the man says. “Doctor Beckett said you might.” He makes the beeping stop, helps Kite take a sip of water, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and asks, “Would you like a visitor? Dr. Parrish started hanging around again an hour ago. I think he’d really like to speak to you.” He grins knowingly.
Kite frowns. “I want to see my friends, first.”
The nurse frowns back. “I told you, they’re all sleeping. A couple of them are on the other side of the infirmary, but we didn’t have enough beds for everyone, with half of your team still in here, and Major Teldy’s, so the rest of them are in guest quarters.”
“Half of my team?” Kite repeats blankly. He thinks he’s going to be doing a lot more of that.
The man nods. “They tried to get you back when the slavers took you - don’t think they didn’t. Two of them got shot full of arrows. The others are just banged up, mostly. They’re all going to be fine.”
Kite tries to nod like he knows what the man’s talking about. He gets another smile, this one tinged with sympathy. “I know you don’t remember yet, but Doctor Bellows said it’s best to talk as if you do. He thinks it’ll help you get your memories back.”
“Doctor Bellows?” Kite smiles, but he can’t understand why. “His name’s really Doctor Bellows?” he has the urge to ask.
“Doo-doo, doo-too dee-doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-too dee-doo-doo,” the nurse singsongs. “See, it’s working already. You know it’s funny; now try to remember why. Just don’t start calling yourself Major Nelson. Do you want to see Doctor Parrish?”
Kite shrugs minutely. “Sure, since you won’t let me see my friends,” he says pointedly.
“As soon as one of them wakes up,” the nurse promises. “Just so you’ll stop bugging me.” He slips out through the curtains that surround Kite’s bed.
A few minutes later, someone else slips in. Kite feels a smile tugging at his lips against his will. “So, your name is Parrish,” he says by way of greeting.
The other man nods. “Will told me we should talk about old television shows,” he says.
Kite blinks at the non sequitur. “Who’s Will?” he asks, trying to keep up.
“The nurse,” Parrish says. “Um, sorry, I’m really bad at this.” He sighs. “Okay, so the thing is, we know each other. Really well. I mean, really well. Except that you don’t remember me, and you don’t remember how nervous I was when we first… well. You don’t remember me. It’s like you’re meeting me for the first time, and that makes me nervous.” He swallows, shifting from foot to foot, and looks at the wall behind Kite.
Kite regards him curiously. He’s drawn to Parrish, to his smile and his eyes and to the energy he can see in the tense, fidgeting frame of the man. “Why don’t you find a chair,” he says, “so I don’t have to crane my neck to look at you, and you can tell me about the first time we met.”
Parrish blushes, which makes Kite lick his lips, and disappears. He comes back shortly, carrying a chair that he sets down next to the machines Kite’s attached to. “Doctor Bellows said we shouldn’t tell you everything, just bits and pieces, to make your mind want to retrieve the information on its own, or something.”
“Dr. Bellows,” Kite repeats, because he can, and they both snicker.
“So, uh, the first time we met, or the first time we actually had a conversation?” Parrish asks.
“Do you have another name?” Kite asks back, covering a yawn. “Is it just Parrish?”
“No,” Parrish says, and laughs. “No, my first name is David. Call me David.”
“Okay, David.” He likes the way that sounds. It’s a lovely name, he thinks. “The first time we had a conversation. What was it about?”
David blushes again. “Uh, plants. It was our first off-world mission in this galaxy-“
Kite starts, wincing at his back protests at the sudden movement. “Whoa, wait, galaxy? We’re from another galaxy?”
“Yes,” David says. “We just returned from there a few months ago, actually. This whole city did.”
Kite snorts, incredulous. “Okay, that’s great. Mess with the guy who can’t remember anything. Why would a city’s worth of people-“
“No, no, the city,” David corrects. “The whole city. It flies.”
“It flies?” Kite’s starting to feel like a parrot.
“You flew us some of the way back here,” David says with an eager nod. “Can’t you feel her now? It’s like someone humming a song in the back of your head.”
He can, when he thinks about it. The hum is louder than it was on the ship, but less insistent. David’s right; it’s humming a familiar, sleepy tune. He tries to be disturbed by it, but it feels so right that he can’t bring himself to worry.
“Yeah, I can,” he says at last. “But why don’t we stick to the first time we talked? With no spatial references.”
David eyes him, amused. “Okay. Well, we were out on a mission, our first one here, and our first one together…”
David lights up as he talks, remembering with a bit of self-reflection how excited he’d been about the plants. Kite listens intently, trying to remember, but there’s nothing. All he has of this place is the hum in his head, a name that makes him laugh, and the sense of warmth and welcome that he gets from David’s voice. He falls asleep to that.
- - -
The next day brings Gramin Ora, early in the morning, and the others one by one as they wake up. Even the women in purple stop by to say hello, grateful to him even though Kite hasn’t done anything. It makes him uncomfortable, and he knows he’s blushing by the time they leave.
Sheppard seems to have kept his word. Kite’s friends are all recovering, no fresh injuries, no sign Kite can see that they’ve been anything other than kindly treated. Wabo tells Kite how thrilled he is to speak to the Lantean cultural scholars, and to the Athosians, who he hasn’t had direct contact with since before the Lanteans came to this galaxy.
Kite can’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that he’s not in the galaxy he was born in. It’s the same disconnect he had in the cell, only twice as bad, because now it’s not a gut feeling, it’s a stated fact, offered up as casually as the day’s menu. He’s sure it’s impossible, but he also knows, knows that many of the things he was taught before he joined the Lanteans - for not all people from his home planet are Lanteans - are incorrect.
Once again, he’s sorting through the things he knows, and those he doesn’t. Memories are all but inaccessible; information is readily available. Doctor Bellows tells him that he has a form of global amnesia, apparently induced by post-traumatic amnesia due to a head injury that was left untreated. The doctor is worried because the stage at which name recall is gone should have passed long ago.
Sheppard tells him that he had been missing for about eight days when Teyla Emmagan and her partner, Kanaan Morrett, found him in the slave yard. They’d tracked the slavers across several different worlds, with Ronon Dex and Jinto Rafte following other, more obscure leads. Half the military personnel of every shift went off-world looking for him, with many of the civilians voluntarily joining the search teams. Kite can’t believe that so much effort was spent on his behalf, even after Sheppard explains that Kite is his second in command.
Teyla, when she comes to visit, says that he ought not to flatter himself, as Colonel Sheppard expends such resources on anyone who goes missing. He realizes that she’s making light of his discomfort, though, when she pulls his forehead close in a traditional gesture and whispers, “We would not have stopped looking for you, my friend. None of us. Not until we knew the truth of your fate.”
David brings him a pad of heavy, white paper and a box of pencils, graphite and colored. Kite doesn’t know what to do with them at first, until David puts the pad on his lap - he’s sitting up despite Beckett’s order’s, and the pain - and a pencil in his hand. He squints at David, then at the pencil; suddenly he knows it’s the wrong one. He picks a softer lead and starts putting lines to paper, long and flowing. A harder lead, next, and short, sharp marks that nevertheless come out indistinct. He rifles through the colors, tries one, two, three purples before he finds the right one. He feels frantic, like it will all disappear if he doesn’t get it down, and there won’t be any memories left for him at all.
What he has when he’s done, when he rips the paper from its pad, is a rough, hurried sketch of the women in purple, shuffling toward their open cage. All that surrounds them is grey; they stand out like an accusation among the sharp angles of the slave yard.
He still doesn’t know their names.
David takes the drawing, and says, very gently, “Do another.”
Kite goes back to the soft lead: sinuous curves this time, but halfway through, before he’s set the color down, he growls, “No, this won’t work,” and tears the page out. David takes that, too, and asks, “What do you need?”
Kite taps a pencil hard against the pad, starts to draw and stops again. “I don’t know,” he says, frustrated.
David stands. “I’ll be back. Keep going.”
Kite hurls the pencil at his back with a snarl, then has to call the duty nurse - Marie - to pick it up and sharpen the broken tip.
Sheppard pops in while Kite is fighting with the hardest of the pencils, trying for the soft, straight lines of a distant wall and failing because his hands shake. His worried frown makes Kite try to rein in his nervous anger. “Something you needed, sir?” he asks, and wonders at how natural it is to add the honorific. He’s used to giving this man respect. It feels right.
“Nah,” Sheppard says. “Just wanted to see how it was going. I can see you’re busy. Need anything?”
“David went to get it, sir,” Kite says, and watches another frown form. “Is something wrong?”
Sheppard shakes his head. “Just… be careful. Don’t get too familiar with him in public.”
That makes Kite twitch, though he doesn’t know why, and he rifles through the pencil box again. “Charcoal,” he mutters. “I need charcoal.”
David returns right then, another box in hand. He gives it over, and Kite grins so hard it hurts. David knows him. No doubt about it.
The list of things he wants to draw is getting longer, but it has to be in a certain order - he doesn’t know why. Teyla and Kanaan have to be in charcoal first, stark and surreal. When he’s done with that, he starts over with the pencils, draws them in their approach, lithe and predatory, earth-toned leathers blending into the dull yard, heralding the traders’ loss.
The well is next, little more than a black hole line with stone, but here it’s colorful, all those reds and greens he noticed in the granite when he first entered the yard. He thinks those colors will always be etched into his mind.
At last he notices that Sheppard is gone, and the man’s last words come back to him. “What did he mean,” he asks David, “ about not getting familiar in public?” His panic is abating. The memories are there, on paper, and he knows he can summon more whenever he wants. He lays the fir green pencil on the bed, and grimaces. His back hurts like hell.
David is looking at the floor. “There’s a policy in the US military,” he answers quietly. “It’s called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…’”
With those words, Kite’s buzzing again. He knows what to draw, exactly what to draw, and he remembers what he was looking for when he first woke up in the cell. It hadn’t been there, and he’d been worried even though he hadn’t known why. Now he knows why he was hiding it, and therefore what it was, and it all starts to fall into place.
He wants it back right now, or something like it, so he’s hurried and sloppy, but he takes the pencils up in familiar order. He’s done this countless times before. The shapes of the face first, in the same regimented style that his mother taught him - set the shapes down first, and the rest will be obvious. A slight profile, turned just a bit to the left, then the eyes, the mouth and nose. Just one ear at this angle, and hair, then back for the details. He sketches intently, hopeful eyes, deep hollows beneath them - when’s the last time David slept? - a worried turn to the mouth. David in the chair is watching him on the bed, but David on paper is watching someone else. Evan thinks it’s the him in the cage, so he throws lines of stone into the background, and the edge of the well - just the roof - and that’s it, there it is. David came to get him.
David’s always the one who brings Evan back to himself.
Evan looks up, and he can tell that David can’t see anything different. He tears the page off the pad and hands it to the botanist.
David takes it carefully, but his focus is on Evan. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Evan says, and then, because David clearly doesn’t believe him, “When I was little, I wanted to soar and dive like the snail kites in the marsh. My father took me to see them every morning, and I’d run around with my arms out, whistling like they did. He was the one who called me Kite.”
He watches the transformation from worry to awe. “Oh my god,” David whispers. “Evan?”
“Hey, babe,” Evan whispers back. “I missed you.”
David whoops and jumps up, grabs him by the neck and reels him in for the most careful, heartfelt hug Evan’s ever gotten. “God, Evan, I was so worried,” he huffs into Evan’s ear, and runs a slow, gentle hand through his hair. Evan shivers with pleasure.
David pulls away, puts himself at arm’s length and examines Evan critically. “After all that drawing, I think you need a nap,” he says decisively. “Sheppard’s going to foist his paperwork on you as soon as he finds out that you remember how to do it.”
Evan basks in the joy and affection in David’s eyes. “How did I ever forget you?” he murmurs, tugging at David’s shirt to draw him closer.
“Like McKay said,” David reminds him. “This isn’t a fairy tale.”
“You sure?” Evan asks, “because I feel like Sleeping Beauty waking up to Prince Charming.”
“You’re mixing up your stories,” David says, “and anyway, I haven’t kissed you yet.”
“Too true,” Evan says, and kisses him instead.
It’s everything he remembers.
- end -
Author: enviropony
Recipienttaste_is_sweet
Pairing: Lorne/Parrish
Rating PG-13
Disclaimer: So very obviously not my toys. Just borrowing them. Will be returned in perfect condition. (Eventually.)
Word Count: 10,300
Summary: Evan Lorne gets taken as a slave. Luckily, his people rescue him before he gets to the slaving part. Too bad he doesn’t remember who they are. Warnings: beating, torture, implied child abuse, derogatory description of persons with mental disabilities.
Author's Notes: My experience with art is limited to a few semesters of photography, and to conversations with my best buddy, who has an MFA. My experience with human medicine is nonexistent. My ability to gets things done on time is likewise nonexistent, so this did not have the benefit of a beta. To that end, please forgive any inaccuracies, language errors, or moments of eye-rolling melodrama.
Evan wakes to a jolt of pain in his gut, grabbing first at his stomach and then, as his eyes focus, at the foot that’s swinging forward to connect a second time. He gets a luck grip on the leather laces and pulls hard as he rolls onto his back. His attacker flails and falls into a sort of half-split, one knee hitting the ground with an audible crack!, the other hooked over Evan’s side for a moment as he rolls again, onto his stomach, then out from underneath the guy. He doesn’t get further up than his knees, though, before something’s yanking him back to earth by the neck. Evan reaches up, and is shocked to find a thick rope at his throat, another length of it stretched taut between him and the hand of a snarling man who gives another hard yank before drawing his booted foot back. The last thing Evan thinks before everything goes blank is, That’s gonna hurt.
- - -
Awareness comes slowly, sound first, then pain, and then a pressing - instinctive - need to know where he is makes him open his eyes. The light is weak, but the quality of it makes him think it’s daylight, outside of wherever he is.
He tries to sit up, to get a better look around, but his head pounds mercilessly and his vision blacks out. His stomach twists, his guts turning suddenly liquid. Bile rises in his throat and spills from his mouth, and he slumps back to the ground with his arms wrapped around his stomach.
He lies there for a few minutes, letting his head and his insides settle, and tries to figure out where he is. He can’t recall having seen the place before - what little he’s glimpsed of it - and he doesn’t remember how he got here. When he manages, after the third try, to sit up without being ill, the other people slumped listlessly around the room don’t look familiar, either.
The weak daylight is coming from cracks between the boards that cover two large windows. The door, solid-looking wood banded with steel, doesn’t have any cracks in it. He can’t see anything through the small slit between it and the floor. He thinks about going to see if it’s locked, but he doesn’t think he ought to stand quite yet, considering the difficulty he had just sitting upright.
Instead, he examines himself. It feels like there’s some dried blood on his head, and the area above and beside his right eye is tender - that explains the headache, he suspects. His stomach feels bruised, too, when he runs a hand across it, hot and swollen, but not in a way that alarms him. It probably feels worse than it is.
He’s not sure how he knows this.
He doesn’t appear to have any other injuries, so he turns his attention to the clothes he’s wearing. The tight, black, short-sleeved shirt and the heavy pants with many pockets are unfamiliar.
He doesn’t remember putting them on.
The pockets are all empty. This, for a moment, worries him more than the fact that nothing is familiar. There was something important in at least one of those pockets, he thinks, and he didn’t want it found.
He can’t, of course, remember what that thing was.
He’s been working up to something for the past few minutes, from the moment he realized that he had no frame of reference beyond the present. He gives in, even though he’s afraid - doesn’t want this final proof that something’s very, very wrong.
He thinks, This is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, … but he can’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t know his own name.
- - -
He’s just about worked himself up to checking out the door - he’d feel pretty silly if it turned out to have been open all this time, even though he’s pretty damned sure it isn’t - when there’s the sound of a heavy lock turning, and several large, stoutly-built men walk in. The other people in the room shrink back, hiding behind each other, or trying to make themselves smaller. He holds his ground, such as it is. He doesn’t know much about himself yet, but he’s already learning: he doesn’t like to make assumptions, he does like this shirt he’s wearing, and he sure as hell isn’t going to back down from a bunch of thugs.
Even when one of them cracks a whip across his chest.
It feels like fire, even through the shirt, and he has his first flash of familiarity - a sense memory, like he’s been whipped before. It sends a brutal shiver through him.
The other thugs are on him before he’s got a grip on himself, holding him down and grabbing at his chin.
“Pretty,” one of them grunts. “Nice eyes.”
He starts struggling like hell, because he’s got a sick feeling about where this is going, but there are three of them on him, and he’s just too weak. One of them lifts his shirt up, though, and suddenly they’re letting him go.
“Worthless,” the tallest one grunts, and kicks him in the side.
He thinks about going after them for about two seconds, which is how long it takes the fat one to decide that a kick in the side isn’t suitable punishment for being ‘worthless.’ The fat one is the one with the whip, and by the time he’s through, there’s nothing left but to lie there and shudder in pain.
They collect three or four people, wrestling them out the door one by one, but he’s not paying much attention on account of the flashback he’s having - a real, solid memory of being hung by his arms from a tree and whipped across the back and chest so viciously that his body starts to twist with the force of it.
There are people standing in a loose half-circle at the base of the tree, but he can’t make out their faces. Some look restrained - one is on his knees - but he doesn’t know who they are. What overwhelms him instead is the breathtaking fear of waiting for another blow, the certainty that it will land on his face, across his eyes, that he’ll lose his sight, lose-
Lose something. The terror of pain and loss is all the memory gives him.
He crawls out of it eventually, manages to push the real pain aside enough to glance around. The thugs are gone and it’s getting dark outside. The other people in the room look mostly alright, except for the girl in the corner, who must have gotten slapped around a good bit, and the man by the door. He looks ragged, defeated, lying there in a crumpled heap of obvious misery. The young, blond-haired boy who was with him is nowhere to be seen. The two women in purple dresses who’d been huddled under the window are also gone.
He knows now why he is ‘worthless,’ why they didn’t take him, too, despite his “pretty eyes” - another on the short list of things he knows about himself: Hates to assume, likes this shirt, stupidly heroic, pretty eyes. Attention to detail. (The dresses were stitched with flowers and birds. The blond boy had been exceptionally graceful.)
Attention to detail is what makes him pick the driest spot on the hem of his shirt to tug carefully upwards. The fabric is shredded, all but fused to his bloody back and sides, and he lifts it gently, wincing as some of the threads pull away from his flesh.
On his stomach, in stark confirmation of his memory, are the scars of the previous whipping; the pale, granulated strips of raised skin are so numerous he’s actually shocked. He has another sharp flash of memory - a bright, burning CRACK! - and he knows the whip was something thin and sturdy. The scars are narrow, but the whip cut deeply. He thinks the wounds must have gotten infected, to heal so badly, but he has not recollection of it.
He’s sort of amazed at the difference between the things he knows and the things he doesn’t. His name, his family, his own appearance all elude him, but the name of the stone he’s lying on comes without bidding. It’s some kind of sandstone, a type of conglomerate, and his mind skitters through ridiculous levels of detail on how it probably formed. Probably, because he’s sure that this isn’t the planet he learned all that information about, and boy, is that one hell of a disconnect. He is utterly certain that there’s no such thing as other habitable planets, but he knows, in his very bones, that this isn’t his home. This isn’t where he was born.
He decides, at some point during the long, cold night, with the pain of his wounds made worse because he can’t stop shivering, can’t get up off this fucking conglomerate that’s sapping all the heat from his body… he decides, in a moment of clarity amid the night’s pain and confusion, that he needs a name. He talks to himself in his head and keeps stumbling because he doesn’t know what to call himself. The fact that half the time his inner voice is a woman doesn’t help. She doesn’t know his name, either.
The problem is that he can’t, at the moment, think of any names, let alone his own. He hasn’t had food or water since who-knows-when, and he’s pretty sure he’s delirious. He runs through different words in his head, names of rocks and colors and tectonic stress equations, and what he finally comes up with is Malachite - like Malachi, only without the inexplicable creepiness.
That, and Bob.
He falls asleep from sheer exhaustion at last, and when he’s startled awake by the lock on the door turning, what’s stuck in his mind is Kite.
It makes something warm up inside him, so he goes with it.
The thugs are back, this time with chains and collars - sturdier than what’s wrapped around Kite’s throat - that they wrestle onto everyone who’s still alive. Apparently he hadn’t been the worst off last night. All the same, they don’t have to wrestle with him very hard.
They run the chains through rings in the collars, connecting everyone together, then whip and bully the ragged line out the door. Kite is chained at the back, doubtless so they can cut him loose easily if he keels over and dies (which is something he hasn’t quite ruled out yet).
Beyond the door is a short hallway with a few other rooms opening onto it. At the end of the hall is another door, wide open and letting in harsh, morning light. He dislikes this sort of light - flat and white and cold - but he doesn’t have time to dwell as he’s yanked out into the yard, momentarily blinded, taking a deep breath and promptly choking on the stench.
There are people and animals chained, tied or caged everywhere he looks, some in excellent shape and some injured or starving, or ill. A handful of people are milling about, inspecting commenting, and occasionally exchanging payment and dragging away their new purchases.
The realization that he’s in a slave market makes Kite shudder. That, or his rising fever. He stumbles as the line lurches onward, catches his balance on the clothes of the man in front of him - the father of the blond boy. The man grabs his arm and helps him along, silent and weary and grim.
They’re led to a deserted corner of the yard, where only empty cages stand against a wall of remarkably colorful granite. Four people to a cage, they take up most of the available space. Kite thinks that last night, they would have filled every cage.
The blond boy’s father lowers him carefully to the ground. “Rest,” he whispers, in a gentle tone that makes it clear Kite doesn’t have long to live.
Kite doesn’t want to lie in the filthy straw at the bottom of the cage. The last thing he needs is an infection. The woman in his head assures him that he needn’t worry; the fever suggests he already has one.
Things go a little vague after that. He gets hot and cold by turns, there’s a bit of commotion, and he wonders at the ratio of feldspar to mica in the granite. Someone presses a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drinks without tasting. He tries to push it away when he’s full, but they force his mouth open and pinch his nose shut, and he has no choice but to swallow.
He becomes aware that he’s lucid, and then promptly realizes he has to pee. It’s getting dark again.
The other people sharing his cage are settled in the straw - not filthy, just a little moldy - watching the yard settle for the evening. The man who helped him glances over when Kite tries to sit up, and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Be still, friend,” he says. “The tea has cured your fever, not your wounds.” He produces a piece of bread. Handing it over, he continues, “If you can eat this and keep it down, you’ll probably live.”
Kite blinks at him, and at the coarse, half-stale bread. He shrugs off the restraining hand, then breathes a startled groan as the movement sets his back on fire. He struggles to rise despite the pain, and manages to get to his knees, panting heavily, hands braced against the ground the only thing keeping him upright. The bread digs into his left palm.
“You’re a stubborn bastard,” the man says disapprovingly, and then, “Don’t waste that bread. If you won’t eat it, I will.”
Kite takes a few deep breaths, and makes a possessive fist around the crumbling chunk. “I’ll eat it,” he grates out.
The man watches skeptically, and the other occupants of the cage eye the bread with longing. Kite brings it to his mouth and gnaws off a piece, chews determinedly, and swallows.
The pain that grips him when the bread hits his stomach makes his jaw clench shut, and he manages, just barely, not to throw it back up. For one long, bitter moment, he can’t move or breathe or think, and then a hand is carding through his hair. The sense memory it brings - warmth, comfort, a frisson of excitement - allows him to relax, and everything settles again.
“God damn,” he groans. “What the hell?” He doesn’t relinquish the rest of the bread.
“The tea is a powerful fever reducer,” says the only woman in the cell - the girl who’d been slapped around; Kite remembers the way her hair had framed her bruised eyes - “But it damages the stomach. Eating will be painful for some days. You’d best hope you don’t need another dose.”
The man runs a hand through Kite’s hair again. “Eat slowly. When they bring water, drink slowly. Do everything slowly, and perhaps you will survive. There is no sense in rushing. We haven’t anywhere to go.”
Kite snorts in acknowledgement. “I noticed.” He braces himself to take another bite of the bread. It goes down like steel wool and burns his gut like bad whiskey, but he rides it out. It’s well after dark before he’s done eating.
He relieves himself, aiming outside the back of the cage, like the other men had done. He wipes his hands on his pants, and tries to peel his shirt off his wounds, but the tearing burn of it almost makes him collapse.
“Let that be,” the young woman advises, frowning at him in the weak light of the slavers’ campfire.
“The wounds are infected,” he counters. “If I could get some air to them-“
“If you open them up they’ll only fester more,” she says. “If you’re still alive in the morning, the slavers will clean them.”
That sounds ominous. “The slavers will?” He thinks he knows how that’ll go down. What he’s not sure of is why they’d bother, and it shows in the skeptical tone of his voice.
“It’s worth trying to keep you alive,” the final occupant of the cage puts in. He’s older, balding, but tall and wiry. Somebody will put him to good use, maybe. “You’re too damaged to be a whore, but you’re strong, and handsome enough to attract attention. They’ll make a pretty coin, selling you to some merchant.”
“What makes you think I’ll go willingly?” Kite asks, a little offended, but mostly curious. “Or that I’ll stick around once I’m sold?”
“You will,” the old man assures. “You want to live badly enough, I think. If you fight too hard, they’ll kill you. If you try to escape, they’ll kill you. If you manage to get free, no one will help you. The mark of the Teslon slavers is unmistakable, and they kill anyone they catch helping their property escape.”
“Mark?” Kite echoes.
“Tomorrow,” says the man who’s lost his son. “A brand, in a visible place. On the face, or the neck. With your looks, one on the back of each hand. Nobody who sees it will help you.”
“Perfect,” Kite grumbles “Like I’m not marked enough already.”
- - -
The woman’s name is Erale Fikaan, and the old man is Wabo of the Cliffs. The other man is Gramin Ora Ahando; his son was Janel Tak Ahando. None of them are from this planet, either. They greet the unfamiliar morning with trepidation. Kite greets it with another fever.
“Try to look alert,” Erale insists, pulling him upright and slapping his face until he bats her hand away. “Another dose of the tea and your stomach will eat itself.”
“Thank you for the lovely image,” Kite says, and sways a bit. There’s no way he’s going to fool them.
Sure enough, the slavers pour more tea down his throat when they drag him out of the cage, but they force a white, chalky sludge down first. The same part of his mind that’s been dwelling on
the granite tells him it’s a calcium compound, meant to neutralize the acids in the tea. He doesn’t find out that it works until much later, though, because after they dose him, they clean his wounds.
He thought the original whipping was excruciating, but it had nothing on the firewall of pain that comes when they pin him to the base of a well and start to scrape the scabs off his back. He roars in outrage, bucking and twisting against their holds until they run a length of chain through the ring in his collar and ropes around his wrists. They tie him, spread-eagle, to the posts that support the well’s roof, and hook the chain over the bucket pulley before pulling it taut. All he can do then is flail, half-suspended, and choke himself as they scrape at the wounds with cruel efficiency. Kite passes out long before they get to the washing.
He comes awake with a jerk, muscle spasms forcing him to awareness as his body starts to fight itself, the search for a comfortable position aborted by near-paralytic stiffness. His throat is raw inside and out, and viciously bruised. His wrists are rope-burned, and his knees swollen from where he’d banged them against the well in his bid to escape the slavers’ treatment.
The pain in his back and sides swallows him like white noise rising to full volume, washing over him in a wave with each breath he takes, obliterating everything else. Three, four breaths, and he’s gone again.
Waking up the second time is easier. He’s aware of the whip wounds first, prickling and burning still, but nowhere near as intensely as before. The throat next, when he tries to swallows, and then the knees. The wrists are almost an afterthought. He’s still stiff as hell, but the spasms are gone.
He’s in the cage, face-down in the straw, and he can feel the others hovering over him.
“When you can sit up,” Erale says, “you can try a piece of tuber.”
Kite moans miserably. The thought of sitting up makes him want to cry.
“Come on, man,” Gramin Ora murmurs, running that soothing hand through Kite’s hair once more. “If you’re not up by nightfall, they’re giving you up as a lost cause.”
That gets Kite stirring. Wabo and Gramin Ora lift him slowly upright, ignoring the groaning whines that he can’t keep inside. Once he’s more or less sitting, Erale waves a small piece of root vegetable at his face. His eyes cross trying to follow it, and he almost makes himself ill. Wabo grabs it out of her hand with a snarl, and lifts it to Kite’s mouth. Kite chews and swallows gingerly, but his stomach doesn’t rebel.
“I wondered what that grey stuff they gave you was,” Erale says. “We don’t have that at home.” Her face falls as she fishes another bit of root vegetable out of what must be their communal bowl of food for the dinner meal.
Kite can’t believe it’s evening again.
They get him standing eventually, just in time for the slavers to decide that he’s worth keeping another night. As he grips the bars of the cage and wishes they were the fat slaver’s neck, he notices strange, burned wounds on the backs of hands. They’re in the shape of five surprisingly fine chain links encircling three large dots.
“The moons of Teslon,” Gramin Ora says, pointing at Kite’s hands, and then up to the sky, where the three moons hang, pale and stark and identical in size. His own mark, on his neck, is black and oozing.
Kite scowls in disgust. Everything else hurts so much that he can’t even feel the brands.
- - -
Gramin Ora cries when he sees Janel Tak. Tears track his dirty face, then smudge like reverse war paint as he wipes at his eyes.
The boy has been washed and fed. His clothes are plain but neat and well-fitting. He walks with his head held high, but the grace of his movements comes in fits and starts. It’s obvious that he’s in pain.
The two women in purple are chained together behind him, linked at the wrist as well as the neck. Their dresses have been washed, and their hair brushed out of its matching buns to hang in loose tresses down their backs. They look at the ground as they walk, shoulders brushing with every stride, but they do not falter. Kite thinks maybe nobody’s touched them yet.
“They’re a package deal, now” Erale murmurs. “Poor wenches.”
“You won’t be any better off,” Wabo says. “At the beck and call of some farmer, perhaps.”
“I’ve skills beyond looking pretty,” Erale counters. “I’ll be useful as more than a bedwarmer. And if he has a wife…”
“You can hope,” Wabo mutters with a snort.
“What else is there?” she shoots back.
The women are put in one of the empty cages with a bench; the straw inside looks fresh. Kite thinks they’ll be the prime attraction in this corner of the yard.
He expects the boy to be put in with them, or in a cage of his own, but is surprised to see that instead, the child is stripped of his fine clothes and shuffled, naked and bruised, toward Kite’s own cage.
Gramin Ora claps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. He stands in complete silence as the cage door is opened and the boy thrust inside.
“Wish you’d mentioned he was an imbecile,” one of the slavers mutters. “Saved everybody a bucket of grief.” He slams the door shut and locks it.
Gramin Ora falls to his knees. Janel Tak hurries forward and wraps his skinny arms around his father.
Behind Kite, Erale sniffles suspiciously. Next to him, Wabo wipes at his face.
“Imbecile,” Janel Tak repeats softly, with a sardonic twist that tells them all he is anything but.
Gramin Ora takes a heaving breath, hugs his son back, and starts to weep in earnest.
- - -
“The Teslon treat imbeciles - those who are so dumb that they can’t fend for themselves - as a warning from the Ancestors,” Wabo tells Kite as they settle in for their third night in the cages, and the end of the first day of buying in their corner of the yard. “It is meant to be a sign to the arrogant that they, too, can be brought low, and that there is no thwarting the Ancestors’ will. To hurt such a deficient person is a sign of cowardice and incompetence; to kill one is forbidden outright.”
“He knew that, even though he wasn’t from this planet,” Kites observes. “Smart kid.”
“Oh, yes,” Wabo agrees. “Oh, yes.”
Between an “imbecile,” a bruised woman, a damaged man, and a grandfather proficient at looking feeble when necessary, their cage had gotten little attention during the day. Kite is glad of it. The people locked in with him are all he has, all he knows. He isn’t looking forward to losing them. It’s another thing he’s added to the list of things he’s learned about himself: emotionally dependent. He needs other people. He knows how to make them laugh, how to comfort them, and how to keep the peace. He wants to make them happy He needs to make them safe. He can’t imagine what other purpose he has in life.
This won’t last, though, and even if it could, another thing he’s learned is that he won’t be able to stay still indefinitely. He may be trapped while his wounds heal, but he’s been paying attention all along. He knows the slavers’ ranks and names, and their guard routines. He knows who is the weakest, and who the most dangerous. He knows what each of them prefers for breakfast. Attention to detail. It will server him when the time is right, he’s certain.
The next morning dawns overcast, and rain is falling before the cookfires are lit. Kite and his cohorts huddle together, Janel Tak in the middle, and try to ward off the bone-deep chill of the rain with stories of their home planets. It’s mid-morning before Kite’s turn comes. He tells a tale of how the stone around them came to be, complete with grating, grinding “rock” voices for Janel Tak’s benefit. What he wouldn’t give, he thinks, for a small pool of molten lava to drive off the cold.
Around midday, when the rain lets up, the slavers start making noises about cleaning his wounds again. Kite shivers, and it has nothing to do with the weather.
They are thrown bread - wet, like everything else - for lunch, but one of the slaving bastards takes pity and heats the drinking water over a fire before passing it through the bars of the cages. It’s little better than luke-warm, but to their chilled bodies, it’s a boon.
A couple is making its way to this corner of the yard, dressed in fine, form-fitting leathers and woven, earth-toned coats. Their graceful, confident strides set them apart from the common rabble of the yard. Wabo sits up a little when he sees them. “Athosians,” he breathes, an odd note of hope in his voice.
The word means nothing to Kite, and he says so.
“They are allied with the Lanteans, the few that are left,” Wabo tells him. “And whatever you may have to say about the Lanteans, they detest slavery.”
Kite has nothing to say about the Lanteans, because that word means nothing to him, either. “You think they’re scouting?” He watches the pair approach. They are, he thinks, looking for something specific.
“No,” Gramin Ora says. “But even if they are, they’re in no position to free this entire yard.”
“Maybe they’ll come back with help,” Janel Tak offers quietly.
“Not unless they see one of their own here,” Gramin Ora declares, sounding a little bitter. “When I say they’re in no position, I don’t mean just these two, son of mine.”
Janel Tak considers this, and then says, “The Athosians altogether? Or the Lanteans? The Athosians have been all but destroyed, and the Lanteans…” He pauses, then forges on. “They’re not going to make any more enemies than they have to, are they?” He looks up at Gramin Ora. “They won’t help us.” His face shows a striking mix of understanding and betrayal.
Gramin Ora nods. Wabo sighs sadly. “I think you must be right, child. What can we offer them, after all?”
Kite mulls this over, but without knowing who the Lanteans are, he has no concrete answer.
The Athosians have made their way among the cages, but they seem to be dismissing the people within more quickly than before. It’s as if they’ve seen what they needed to see, and are eager to leave. Kite’s cage holds its collective breath as they pass by, and he catalogs their clothes, faces, the pleased widening of their eyes as they scan over the people within-
-and slide to a stop on him.
The pause is brief, barely noticeable, and they’re moving on, walking away, the woman first, the man following without a backward glance.
These people know him.
Or want him.
What’s he supposed to do if they try to buy him?
Kite huddles closer to his cage-mates, and starts to murmur a story about how slimy, stinky Muck turned into sharp, bright, brilliant Diamond.
- - -
The Athosians don’t return. Kite is relieved. He doesn’t think he’d be able to live with himself, knowing that his friends are still trapped here, even is his fate ends up worse than theirs.
His relief is short-lived. Not long after breakfast the next morning, as the slavers are hanging their clothes to dry in the sun, a large group of men move purposefully through the yard, zeroing in on Kite’s corner. Their clothes are unfamiliar to Kite’s friends, a mix of black leather and green broadcloth in simple, inexpert cuts. Their manner is brusque and efficient. Of the eight of them, only two have faces that Kite would call open. One is a stocky man, short-haired, blue-eyed, hands and mouth always in motion. The other is lanky, calmer, completely quiet, and with distinctly more hair. Kite can’t pin down the color of his eyes - a washed blue or green, or even grey, depending on how the light hits them - and blushes when he realizes that the man is regarding him in turn. Instead of the reprimand Kite expects, he gets a shy smile.
“This one!” another man declares. “The whole cage.”
“The whole cage?” one of the slavers echoes, staring at Kite, and Kite realizes they’re talking about his cage.
His heart begins to pound. What do they want with the whole cage? They act like soldiers, so he can guess what they might want with Erale, and even Gramin Ora, but the rest of the cage should be practically worthless to them. And old man, a boy and a half-skinned amnesiac - not that they know about the amnesia… Kite can’t believe that this is going to end well. He’s no match for these men, though. Even if he were in prefect condition, the could never take so many.
The man with the shifting eye-color is still watching him. He glances at the slavers, and when he sees that none of them are paying attention, he smiles more widely, and mouths something. Kite can’t understand any of the words, but the smile, bright and open and honest, sparks something in him, and he can’t help but smile back.
Then the slavers are opening the cage, hauling them out one by one, running that damned chain between their collars, and the man who’s buying them is pointing to the women in the purple dresses. “Them, too,” he says, and the slavers whoop. The women are added to the line, payment is argued over and finally made - a heavy-looking box that Kite doesn’t get a glimpse into - and suddenly they’re being quick-marched through the yard, out the massive wooden gates, and onto the road beyond.
Kite’s head is spinning, his back and sides are throbbing, his knee are grinding, and all he can do is mutter up and down the line, “Play along, we can’t beat them like this.”
At first he thinks that maybe his friends are humoring his hopes of escape when they nod their replies, but he sees the tense set of their shoulders, and the fear on their faces. When they look at him, he sees something like pleading or faith in their eyes, and he knows he has to protect them - has to make this evolve so they all come out of it alive.
He doesn’t know how.
The leader, the one who bought them, is called Sheppard. The talkative one with the waving hands is McKay. Three of the stone-faced ones are Stackhouse, Povod and Deckinger. The other three, including his pale-eyed admirer, have yet to be addressed.
They’re out of sight of the yard before long, and trees along the road grow more dense as they walk, but the pace doesn’t slow. Kite watches Janel Tak stumble and has to call out, “Slow down. We can’t all keep up.”
The stone-faced men are strangely deferential when they look at him, and one of them shouts ahead to the front. “Colonel, they can’t keep up this pace, sir!”
Sheppard turns, still walking, and his eyes land on Janel Tak. “Carry the boy, Corporal. We need to keep moving. How’s the major holding up?”
The corporal glances at Kite, frowning, and calls, “Not so great, sir!” Then he pulls out a knife and moves toward Janel Tak. When the boy cringes back and stumbles again, he says, “Take it easy, kiddo. I’m just gonna cut off the collar, okay?”
“Hold on,” Sheppard is saying, suddenly beside them. “Halt the line, Povod!” Wabo, up in front, staggers to a halt, and they all pile up behind him to lean on each other, breathing hard.
Sheppard nods at Kite. “I don’t think you remember any of us,” he says, “but we’re trying to help you. We need to get off the road before those assholes back there figure out they got screwed, and that means we need to hurry. Walhurst’s going to carry the kid. We’ll get you all off your feet as soon as we can, but there’s not time to rest right now. You just need to trust us.” His voice is low and hurried, but he sounds earnest. Kite wants to trust him, wants this to be real, but there’s no way he could be this lucky - someone knows him, has come to rescue him, and is taking all his friends along, too. He can’t bring himself to believe it.
Sheppard must see the doubt in his face, because he huffs, frustrated, and says, “Fine, then keep in mind that you’re chained up, and there are more of us, and-“
“Colonel,” the pale-eyed man interrupts, moving close. “Could I…?”
Sheppard gives him a once-over, then glances around, as if looking for something. “Make it quick,” he says at last, and moves off. He starts giving orders, sending one of the men back down the road as a lookout, but Kite loses the rest of it because the man in front of him licks his lips and grins that shy, honest grin again.
“Hi,” he murmurs. “Look, I know this looks sketchy, but you have to trust us. The stuff we gave those guys for payment is worthless, and it won’t take them long to figure that out. We have a place to hide, but we need to hurry.” He moves closer, so that Kite can see the sweat beading minutely on his brows. “Please don’t fight us, Evan.”
Kite blinks. That doesn’t sound even remotely familiar. “My name is Kite,” he says.
“No,” the man counters softly. “No, it isn’t.”
“Parrish!” Sheppard is back, the talkative McKay in tow. “They’re on to us. Are we good, or what?”
“Sorry, colonel,” Parrish says with a sigh. “I thought-”
“You thought wrong,” McKay cuts in. “This isn’t a fairy tale. He won’t wake up just because you kissed him.” He waves a small device of some sort at Parrish. “They’re on the move.”
Parrish blushed, and Sheppard whacks McKay on the arm before turning to Kite. “Seriously, major, we need to go. Walhurst’s going to carry the kid, and we’re all going to run, all right?” He raises his voice to include the rest of the line, who’ve been crowded protectively around Janel Tak. “We’re not going to hurt anybody, but we need to go!”
He doesn’t wait for acknowledgement, but points at Janel Tak. The corporal, Walhurst, has the collar off before the boy has a chance to really struggle, and is hoisting him over one burly shoulder. “Move out!” Sheppard shouts, and Povod, at the head of the line, grabs Wabo around the waist and starts to haul him along. The others look to Kite as the chain pulls taut, and he winces, but nods, and they all start to run.
Far too soon, they’re struggling for breath, tripping and stumbling, too weak to match the pace Sheppard sets. The colonel shouts and points, and Parrish is at Erale’s side, Deckinger helping the other women. The one called Stackhouse offers Kite his arm. “Move faster if you hang on, sir!” he declares, not even breathing hard. Kite has little choice but to latch on the man’s shirt and let himself get dragged along.
“Sheppard!” McKay is in the lead, panting heavily, waving his little device at the woods on the left side of the road. “Right here!”
Sheppard sprints up to him, stares intently into the trees for a moment, and says something Kite can’t hear. McKay nods, and Sheppard’s waving at Povod and Wabo, who slow as they reach him, then swerve off the road and into the trees. Gramin Ora stumbles at the change in direction, but McKay hauls him up and shoves him onward, then falls in next to him. It’s a good thing the chain is so long, Kite thinks as he and Stackhouse follow, or they’d end up in a tangled pile every time one of them slowed down.
He can hear Erale and the other women gasping behind them, and he can’t seem to get enough air himself, but the pace isn’t slowing. They’re crashing through the low underbrush like a herd of frightened beasts; Kite can’t help the strangled cry every time a branch scrapes across his back. They’re being too loud. The slavers won’t have any trouble following them.
He’s watching the ground as he runs in an effort to stay on his feet, but the change from dense greenery to bare ground barely registers. It’s the change from bare ground to echoing, unyielding metal that startles him, so that he trips and falls to his knees, screaming as he feels something fracture. Then Stackhouse is hauling him up and out of the way, gripping his arms tightly to keep him from falling again. The women are already inside - wherever inside is - and Walhurst with Janel Tak brings up the rear. There’s a thin, whining noise, and the floor in front of them starts to rise like a drawbridge, closing them in. Kite catches a glimpse of Sheppard’s last man vanishing into thin air before the door seals shut.
He’s not happy to realize that he’s started hallucinating.
Something’s dragging at his senses, like humming and whispers across his skin, and he knows that they’re taking off, lifting into the air, that Sheppard’s at the controls and the winds aloft are weak but the visibility’s limited because of the haze. His lungs are heaving, his vision is blurred, his body trembling with pain, and there’s something in his head nagging for acknowledgement.
He’s terrified to give it, so he lets himself black out.
- - -
He comes to slowly, like he did in the cell. There’s the murmur of low voices, and the occasional shuffling. His body aches dully, and he wonders about the pain that will come when he tries to sit up. He’s in no hurry, though - doesn’t even care where he is all that much, which seems like it should be worrisome. He was a lot more curious about his surrounding that first time.
Someone touches his face, and he pulls away, then hisses when his neck twinges. He realizes he’s lying on his side. “Open your eyes,” he hears. The voice is familiar, so he does, and there is Erale, kneeling over him, with the boy, Janel Tak, at her side.
“Father, he’s awake!” Janel Tak calls, and the voices all die down for a moment before rising in a brief, happy cacophony.
Gramin Ora eases himself down next to Kite, making Erale scoot over. “How do you feel, my friend?” he asks. “They gave you medicines for the pain, and bound your injuries as best they could.”
“They said they are taking us to their home,” Erale adds. “Your home.”
“I don’t know these people,” Kite rasps. Erale frowns, and produces a bottle from somewhere.
“Here,” she says. “Let us give you some water.”
They lift him just enough so he can swallow a few sips, then lay him back down. Whatever medicine the soldiers gave him is not enough to cut the pain of their brief grip on his back and shoulders, and he groans when his head hits the soft cushion under him. He lies there for a moment, not caring about anything, until a soldier - Sheppard - looms over him.
Gramin Ora shifts over, so that Sheppard has room to kneel at his shoulder, and Janel Tak ends up at his feet. Sheppard looks concerned, but far less stern than he did on the road. He’s tugging at his shirt collar as if it’s unfamiliar.
“How’s it going, major?” the man asks. “Don’t suppose you remember us yet?”
“No,” Kite says, and feels inexplicably like he’s failed at something.
Sheppard just nods. “That’s okay. We’re just waiting for the sunspot activity to die down, and we’ll get you to the infirmary. The docs will get you sorted out.” He tilts his head at the others grouped around Kite. “Your friends, too.”
“Who are you?” Kite asks. If these really are his people, why is none of this familiar?
Even as he thinks it, though, the buzz at the back of his mind becomes a pleasant, comforting hum, and he continues, without thinking, “Flare’s dying down.”
Sheppard grins. “Feel that, huh? I think you’re gonna be fine.”
McKay’s voice drifts, loud and impatient, from somewhere beyond Kite’s head, and Sheppard stands. “Time to go,” he says, and disappears from view.
The others are all watching Kite with a mix of wonder and apprehension.
“What?” he snaps, or tries to. It comes out like a petulant whine.
“You’ll never believe it!” Janel Tak whispers, excited, like he’s about to share a secret. “Remember the Athosians?”
“Yeah,” Kite says.
“They were looking for you,” Janel Tak tells him. “They’ve been looking for days. You know what you are?”
“What, already?” Kite prods.
With the reverence of a holy man, Janel Tak says, “You’re Lantean!”
Kite sighs. It still means absolutely nothing.
- - -
He’s still awake when the ship tells him it’s landed. That’s nice he thinks fuzzily, but where are we?
He gets vague images of towers and an ocean and numbers in his mind; Sheppard calls, “Get him out of here before he tries to launch this thing!”
There’s a lurch, and he’s rising in the air. He tries to focus, and makes out someone at his feet, and realizes there’s someone at his head. Two of the soldiers, he thinks, taking him somewhere. He wonders where his friends are, but he’s starting to feel tingly and nauseated, so instead of asking about them, he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. Then he takes another, and another, and when he opens his eyes again, there’s a kind face peering at him, and the world has stopped moving.
“Ye’re a right mess, aren’t ye, major?” the man says. “How’s the pain?”
“Who are you?” Kite asks, his voice scratchy and weak.
“My name’s Carson Beckett, lad,” the man replies. “I’m yer doctor. Can you tell me how much pain you’re in?”
“Worse than earlier,” Kite says. “Still better than before.”
“Before they got ye out, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, here’s what we’ll do,” the doctor tells him. “We’re going to try to clean and dress these wounds-“ He cuts off when Kite flinches violently. “Okay, son?”
“Don’t touch me,” Kite grits out.
“We’ll be careful,” Beckett promises. “If it gets to be too much, just tell us. I don’t want to overload ye with painkillers just yet because I’m going to have to sedate ye for your knee.”
“Why?” He doesn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong with my knee?”
“Cracked your kneecap, it feels like,” the doctor says. “Should heal fine if I can get to it soon. Let us clean these wounds in the meantime, all right?”
Kite grits his teeth again and scowls, but gives a single nod. It’s all he can manage.
“There’s a lad. It won’t be so bad.”
It isn’t so bad, but it’s bad enough that Kite’s sweating and growling by the end. The doctor is careful, though, and the nurses solicitous, so he keeps his cursing to himself.
“All done,” Beckett says at last. “We’ll let ye rest for a bit, and then I think it’ll be safe to prep ye for surgery. There’s a line of visitors clamoring at the door. Feel up to seeing one of them?”
“No,” Kite forces out, because he’s exhausted, and he’s pretty sure he’ll pass out long before they come to sedate him.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Beckett confides, leaning in a bit, “but Doctor Parrish is wearing such a hangdog expression that I hated to say no outright.”
“Parrish?” Kite echoes. “The one with the smile?”
Beckett chuckles. “Aye, the one with the smile. I’ll let him in after the surgery,” he assures.
Kites tries to nod again, but he can barely move, so he just hums in agreement. Beckett says something else, and Kite hums again even though he doesn’t really hear it.
- - -
After the surgery, when he wakes for the second or third time (that he remembers), Kite’s beginning to get some of his caution back. He asks after his friends, but the nurse tells him it’s the middle of the night, and they’re all asleep. He asks where Beckett is, and is told he’s asleep as well.
That all seems a little too convenient to him, so as soon as the nurse is gone, Kite tries to get up. He doesn’t even manage to get his feet off the bed before the lightheadedness knocks him flat on his face. Something begins to beep insistently off to the side, and the nurse comes back in.
“You tried to get up, didn’t you?” the man says. “Doctor Beckett said you might.” He makes the beeping stop, helps Kite take a sip of water, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and asks, “Would you like a visitor? Dr. Parrish started hanging around again an hour ago. I think he’d really like to speak to you.” He grins knowingly.
Kite frowns. “I want to see my friends, first.”
The nurse frowns back. “I told you, they’re all sleeping. A couple of them are on the other side of the infirmary, but we didn’t have enough beds for everyone, with half of your team still in here, and Major Teldy’s, so the rest of them are in guest quarters.”
“Half of my team?” Kite repeats blankly. He thinks he’s going to be doing a lot more of that.
The man nods. “They tried to get you back when the slavers took you - don’t think they didn’t. Two of them got shot full of arrows. The others are just banged up, mostly. They’re all going to be fine.”
Kite tries to nod like he knows what the man’s talking about. He gets another smile, this one tinged with sympathy. “I know you don’t remember yet, but Doctor Bellows said it’s best to talk as if you do. He thinks it’ll help you get your memories back.”
“Doctor Bellows?” Kite smiles, but he can’t understand why. “His name’s really Doctor Bellows?” he has the urge to ask.
“Doo-doo, doo-too dee-doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-too dee-doo-doo,” the nurse singsongs. “See, it’s working already. You know it’s funny; now try to remember why. Just don’t start calling yourself Major Nelson. Do you want to see Doctor Parrish?”
Kite shrugs minutely. “Sure, since you won’t let me see my friends,” he says pointedly.
“As soon as one of them wakes up,” the nurse promises. “Just so you’ll stop bugging me.” He slips out through the curtains that surround Kite’s bed.
A few minutes later, someone else slips in. Kite feels a smile tugging at his lips against his will. “So, your name is Parrish,” he says by way of greeting.
The other man nods. “Will told me we should talk about old television shows,” he says.
Kite blinks at the non sequitur. “Who’s Will?” he asks, trying to keep up.
“The nurse,” Parrish says. “Um, sorry, I’m really bad at this.” He sighs. “Okay, so the thing is, we know each other. Really well. I mean, really well. Except that you don’t remember me, and you don’t remember how nervous I was when we first… well. You don’t remember me. It’s like you’re meeting me for the first time, and that makes me nervous.” He swallows, shifting from foot to foot, and looks at the wall behind Kite.
Kite regards him curiously. He’s drawn to Parrish, to his smile and his eyes and to the energy he can see in the tense, fidgeting frame of the man. “Why don’t you find a chair,” he says, “so I don’t have to crane my neck to look at you, and you can tell me about the first time we met.”
Parrish blushes, which makes Kite lick his lips, and disappears. He comes back shortly, carrying a chair that he sets down next to the machines Kite’s attached to. “Doctor Bellows said we shouldn’t tell you everything, just bits and pieces, to make your mind want to retrieve the information on its own, or something.”
“Dr. Bellows,” Kite repeats, because he can, and they both snicker.
“So, uh, the first time we met, or the first time we actually had a conversation?” Parrish asks.
“Do you have another name?” Kite asks back, covering a yawn. “Is it just Parrish?”
“No,” Parrish says, and laughs. “No, my first name is David. Call me David.”
“Okay, David.” He likes the way that sounds. It’s a lovely name, he thinks. “The first time we had a conversation. What was it about?”
David blushes again. “Uh, plants. It was our first off-world mission in this galaxy-“
Kite starts, wincing at his back protests at the sudden movement. “Whoa, wait, galaxy? We’re from another galaxy?”
“Yes,” David says. “We just returned from there a few months ago, actually. This whole city did.”
Kite snorts, incredulous. “Okay, that’s great. Mess with the guy who can’t remember anything. Why would a city’s worth of people-“
“No, no, the city,” David corrects. “The whole city. It flies.”
“It flies?” Kite’s starting to feel like a parrot.
“You flew us some of the way back here,” David says with an eager nod. “Can’t you feel her now? It’s like someone humming a song in the back of your head.”
He can, when he thinks about it. The hum is louder than it was on the ship, but less insistent. David’s right; it’s humming a familiar, sleepy tune. He tries to be disturbed by it, but it feels so right that he can’t bring himself to worry.
“Yeah, I can,” he says at last. “But why don’t we stick to the first time we talked? With no spatial references.”
David eyes him, amused. “Okay. Well, we were out on a mission, our first one here, and our first one together…”
David lights up as he talks, remembering with a bit of self-reflection how excited he’d been about the plants. Kite listens intently, trying to remember, but there’s nothing. All he has of this place is the hum in his head, a name that makes him laugh, and the sense of warmth and welcome that he gets from David’s voice. He falls asleep to that.
- - -
The next day brings Gramin Ora, early in the morning, and the others one by one as they wake up. Even the women in purple stop by to say hello, grateful to him even though Kite hasn’t done anything. It makes him uncomfortable, and he knows he’s blushing by the time they leave.
Sheppard seems to have kept his word. Kite’s friends are all recovering, no fresh injuries, no sign Kite can see that they’ve been anything other than kindly treated. Wabo tells Kite how thrilled he is to speak to the Lantean cultural scholars, and to the Athosians, who he hasn’t had direct contact with since before the Lanteans came to this galaxy.
Kite can’t quite wrap his mind around the fact that he’s not in the galaxy he was born in. It’s the same disconnect he had in the cell, only twice as bad, because now it’s not a gut feeling, it’s a stated fact, offered up as casually as the day’s menu. He’s sure it’s impossible, but he also knows, knows that many of the things he was taught before he joined the Lanteans - for not all people from his home planet are Lanteans - are incorrect.
Once again, he’s sorting through the things he knows, and those he doesn’t. Memories are all but inaccessible; information is readily available. Doctor Bellows tells him that he has a form of global amnesia, apparently induced by post-traumatic amnesia due to a head injury that was left untreated. The doctor is worried because the stage at which name recall is gone should have passed long ago.
Sheppard tells him that he had been missing for about eight days when Teyla Emmagan and her partner, Kanaan Morrett, found him in the slave yard. They’d tracked the slavers across several different worlds, with Ronon Dex and Jinto Rafte following other, more obscure leads. Half the military personnel of every shift went off-world looking for him, with many of the civilians voluntarily joining the search teams. Kite can’t believe that so much effort was spent on his behalf, even after Sheppard explains that Kite is his second in command.
Teyla, when she comes to visit, says that he ought not to flatter himself, as Colonel Sheppard expends such resources on anyone who goes missing. He realizes that she’s making light of his discomfort, though, when she pulls his forehead close in a traditional gesture and whispers, “We would not have stopped looking for you, my friend. None of us. Not until we knew the truth of your fate.”
David brings him a pad of heavy, white paper and a box of pencils, graphite and colored. Kite doesn’t know what to do with them at first, until David puts the pad on his lap - he’s sitting up despite Beckett’s order’s, and the pain - and a pencil in his hand. He squints at David, then at the pencil; suddenly he knows it’s the wrong one. He picks a softer lead and starts putting lines to paper, long and flowing. A harder lead, next, and short, sharp marks that nevertheless come out indistinct. He rifles through the colors, tries one, two, three purples before he finds the right one. He feels frantic, like it will all disappear if he doesn’t get it down, and there won’t be any memories left for him at all.
What he has when he’s done, when he rips the paper from its pad, is a rough, hurried sketch of the women in purple, shuffling toward their open cage. All that surrounds them is grey; they stand out like an accusation among the sharp angles of the slave yard.
He still doesn’t know their names.
David takes the drawing, and says, very gently, “Do another.”
Kite goes back to the soft lead: sinuous curves this time, but halfway through, before he’s set the color down, he growls, “No, this won’t work,” and tears the page out. David takes that, too, and asks, “What do you need?”
Kite taps a pencil hard against the pad, starts to draw and stops again. “I don’t know,” he says, frustrated.
David stands. “I’ll be back. Keep going.”
Kite hurls the pencil at his back with a snarl, then has to call the duty nurse - Marie - to pick it up and sharpen the broken tip.
Sheppard pops in while Kite is fighting with the hardest of the pencils, trying for the soft, straight lines of a distant wall and failing because his hands shake. His worried frown makes Kite try to rein in his nervous anger. “Something you needed, sir?” he asks, and wonders at how natural it is to add the honorific. He’s used to giving this man respect. It feels right.
“Nah,” Sheppard says. “Just wanted to see how it was going. I can see you’re busy. Need anything?”
“David went to get it, sir,” Kite says, and watches another frown form. “Is something wrong?”
Sheppard shakes his head. “Just… be careful. Don’t get too familiar with him in public.”
That makes Kite twitch, though he doesn’t know why, and he rifles through the pencil box again. “Charcoal,” he mutters. “I need charcoal.”
David returns right then, another box in hand. He gives it over, and Kite grins so hard it hurts. David knows him. No doubt about it.
The list of things he wants to draw is getting longer, but it has to be in a certain order - he doesn’t know why. Teyla and Kanaan have to be in charcoal first, stark and surreal. When he’s done with that, he starts over with the pencils, draws them in their approach, lithe and predatory, earth-toned leathers blending into the dull yard, heralding the traders’ loss.
The well is next, little more than a black hole line with stone, but here it’s colorful, all those reds and greens he noticed in the granite when he first entered the yard. He thinks those colors will always be etched into his mind.
At last he notices that Sheppard is gone, and the man’s last words come back to him. “What did he mean,” he asks David, “ about not getting familiar in public?” His panic is abating. The memories are there, on paper, and he knows he can summon more whenever he wants. He lays the fir green pencil on the bed, and grimaces. His back hurts like hell.
David is looking at the floor. “There’s a policy in the US military,” he answers quietly. “It’s called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…’”
With those words, Kite’s buzzing again. He knows what to draw, exactly what to draw, and he remembers what he was looking for when he first woke up in the cell. It hadn’t been there, and he’d been worried even though he hadn’t known why. Now he knows why he was hiding it, and therefore what it was, and it all starts to fall into place.
He wants it back right now, or something like it, so he’s hurried and sloppy, but he takes the pencils up in familiar order. He’s done this countless times before. The shapes of the face first, in the same regimented style that his mother taught him - set the shapes down first, and the rest will be obvious. A slight profile, turned just a bit to the left, then the eyes, the mouth and nose. Just one ear at this angle, and hair, then back for the details. He sketches intently, hopeful eyes, deep hollows beneath them - when’s the last time David slept? - a worried turn to the mouth. David in the chair is watching him on the bed, but David on paper is watching someone else. Evan thinks it’s the him in the cage, so he throws lines of stone into the background, and the edge of the well - just the roof - and that’s it, there it is. David came to get him.
David’s always the one who brings Evan back to himself.
Evan looks up, and he can tell that David can’t see anything different. He tears the page off the pad and hands it to the botanist.
David takes it carefully, but his focus is on Evan. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Evan says, and then, because David clearly doesn’t believe him, “When I was little, I wanted to soar and dive like the snail kites in the marsh. My father took me to see them every morning, and I’d run around with my arms out, whistling like they did. He was the one who called me Kite.”
He watches the transformation from worry to awe. “Oh my god,” David whispers. “Evan?”
“Hey, babe,” Evan whispers back. “I missed you.”
David whoops and jumps up, grabs him by the neck and reels him in for the most careful, heartfelt hug Evan’s ever gotten. “God, Evan, I was so worried,” he huffs into Evan’s ear, and runs a slow, gentle hand through his hair. Evan shivers with pleasure.
David pulls away, puts himself at arm’s length and examines Evan critically. “After all that drawing, I think you need a nap,” he says decisively. “Sheppard’s going to foist his paperwork on you as soon as he finds out that you remember how to do it.”
Evan basks in the joy and affection in David’s eyes. “How did I ever forget you?” he murmurs, tugging at David’s shirt to draw him closer.
“Like McKay said,” David reminds him. “This isn’t a fairy tale.”
“You sure?” Evan asks, “because I feel like Sleeping Beauty waking up to Prince Charming.”
“You’re mixing up your stories,” David says, “and anyway, I haven’t kissed you yet.”
“Too true,” Evan says, and kisses him instead.
It’s everything he remembers.
- end -