AMNESTY: Five Minutes After Challenge

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Author's notes: Heartfelt thanks to Luba Kmetyk, Dr Benway, Domenika Marzione and Alicia McKenzie for helpful comments and much needed encouragement.

This story features characters, which are copyrighted by Alliance and are used without permission. The use of these characters in this story is not intended to infringe on that copyright. No profit is being made on this work.

 

NOCICEPTOR, 497 words

 

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NOCICEPTOR  or FORTITUDE PASS, REVISITED

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Nociceptor = a receptor that responds selectively to destructive stimuli.

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He is sleeping now. You sit in bed, beside him, chin on knees, and watch him. The room is cold. He gave you all the blankets, but you shiver anyway. Sleep smooths the sharp lines around his eyes. A few of the lines suggest pain, fewer still laughter. It's a hard face, the face of a man who asks little, receives less and gives nothing away. His hands, calloused and roughened by frostbite are unused to caresses and hard coils of muscle lie beneath his skin. You cannot pretend to have been comfortable in his arms.

Yet there is no place you'd rather be. There hasn't been one day in ten years when you haven’t thought about him. When the doctor cut into you, you clenched your teeth and visualised his face. When the guards took you and slammed you up against the wall again and again, you saw his face, felt his hands on you. But since he was the guard, the guard is also him and what should have been love, what could have been redemption, was violation instead.

Some people give life, hope, meaning. You bring ruin and burn ships. What you touch, you taint. It has always been thus.This man was your last hope and as your mouths met and your bodies entwined, you prayed, your hands clenched into fists: Fill me again. Give my life meaning. Take this cup of bitterness from me.

It was as useful as all your other prayers and realising this, you put toys aside and played to him instead, an full evening's symphony of desire and longing. The real you stood to the side and watched the show, only mildly interested in the mounts and dismounts of the act.

Of more interest to you was the emotions washing over his face and displacing the placid vacancy of innocence. Long have you thought him untouched and untouchable. This is the first time you have been able to trail your footprints across the snow and even if marring him gives you no pleasure, you were satisfied to see that it could be done.

You aren't sure if there are victims here or who they would be. His friend, perhaps. Your friend, most certainly. But you and him deserve what is coming to you, no matter what it would be  And your plan is hardly unreasonable. One day of what your life has been for the last ten years is but a taste and then you'll take him away from here. If he’ll follow, it’s proof enough of his love for you . That you came here is proof of yours.

He might, of course, see things differently. Men are that way, full of surprises. Like the handcuffs at Fortitude Pass. And maybe you cannot make him understand what it was like, what it’s like for you now. But you know you have to try.

FIN

Comments

[zerl.livejournal.com]

I love this! I love this! I love this!
Sorry for the drive-by comment, but can I just say how much -- I loved this!? Mwah!
What can I say, I love Victoria. And the 2nd person narrative works so well in this story. Brava, and thank you, for showing me a brave new world.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *mwahs you back*

I don't know if I love Vic exactly, but as Fraser fell crazyinlovecray with her, I find her very interesting to write :-)

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

Oooh! Victoria's motivations and self-justification have always been a source of cold fascination for me, this illustrates them so well!

This in particular:
Long have you thought him untouched and untouchable. This is the first time you have been able to trail your footprints across the snow and even if marring him gives you no pleasure, you were satisfied to see that it could be done.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I imagine that she must have, I dunno cared so much about Fraser, to do all these things to him.

In hindsight, I wince a little at the pompous prose -- at the time, it seemed to mirror her crazy staccato thought patterns, but I'm not sure now.

[chesamus.livejournal.com]

This woman's motivations have always puzzled me. This insight into one of the pivitol characters in Fraser's life give a more complete picture rather than the caricature she sometimes becomes in lesser hands.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! While Victoria is an insane murderess, she doesn't see herself that way. All she sees is Fraser, how she can make him suffer and how he'll understand her when he has suffered enough. She comes bearing gifts the only way she knows how...

[mergatrude.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Vivid. Much applause.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

*beams*

Thank you! She's fascinating in all her murderous glory, isn't she? :-)

[jenboo.livejournal.com]

wow...this is a fascinating study of Victoria. The second person narrative gives her an eerily detached quality that I think is so appropriate for her.
excellent work!

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I think her imprisonment brought forward a few very interesting sides of her personality, some of which probably never would have surfaced had Fraser let her go the first time. No blame, just cause and effect and a lot of time in prison spent either obsessing or detaching or both.