ataraxionlogs | (no subject)

CHARACTERS: "Todd"/Guide, James T. Kirk, and all volunteers
LOCATION: Medical Bay
WARNINGS: Extensive description of the Wraith feeding process, and internalized self-loathing. Possible profanity.
SUMMARY: You can never win, you can only break even. With a Wraith, you can't break even - even if you are one.

He's growing used to the fire in his bones, and the thought disgusts him more than he would dare to admit. This repetition of siphoning off a bit of life and then slowly starving again is not the way of a Queen's man. It is short-sighted - but the kine are a short-lived species, as it should only be that they cannot imagine so far into the future. Yet he has agreed to this deal, and their short-sightedness is his own. It will not be long before he starves again, and then more humans will have to sacrifice themselves to him. So this vicious cycle will begin anew.

He kneads the dark vein that winds itself abound his wrist so that it does not swell with enzyme, but he closes his fist as he does so. He can grow used to the fire in his bones, but never shall he look upon a hungry hand without shame.

Guide waits in the medical bay, squinting at the too-bright lights. When he has the strength to do so, he stands; when he hasn't, he rests, sitting as regally as one can in torn leathers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jim says nothing to the concept of leaving men Queenless; it's likely that the men from Earth didn't understand. If they were military, the probably went in guns blazing. Kirk frowns a little at that. As much of a fan as he was of old fashioned westerns, there was a reason Earth had changed it's tune by the time Jim was born.

"Michael?" He asks, because despite the history listen, this sounded... different somehow.

"His is not a story that Wraith enjoy dwelling upon. I did not know him personally, but I knew of his reputation before the Lanteans gave him his false name. He was a man of his Queen's harem, and brilliant in battle. Yet the Lanteans turned his own love of the fight against him, and captured him as he bought his own men a chance to retreat. They brought him to Atlantis, where they tested their retrovirus upon him. They ground down his claws so that he could not tear at them, they cropped his hair so he would look like one of them, and their retrovirus stripped him of everything else that made him Wraith."

His brow creases as he closes his eyes. It's a subject that has cropped up too many times to not be addressed, that it is not impossible to transform him into a human. He would not starve to death, but it would be a living death. He would not be Guide, and those precious memories of Snow, of their daughter, would be lost. "They stripped him of his memories, and they stripped him of his name. Now even we Wraith call him only by the name the Lanteans gave him."

Jim's eyes widen, and it'd be comical if the reaction was genuine. "They-" He closes his eyes tightly for a moment, processing, before he squints at the wraith. He's not even sure what he was going to say to that. They essentially took everything that made this person himself and ripped it out of him. Changed his race and his mind and lied to him.

Like they could cure him of his race.

Kirk hands find his hips and he turns away from Nick, a hunch in his shoulders that's impossible to define. Maybe a guilt, or the full realization of what had happened. Kirk had heard of terrible things, the awful courses war could take. The hubris of men who thought they were better than others.

He lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. He couldn't afford to feel guilt for something that he wasn't involved in, but as he lets the feeling rise and then fade away, he knows what it really is:

Disgust.

When his hand falls away, Jim turns to face him again, and regards the sharp angles of his face for a long moment. "I'm sorry." He says, not because he did it, or because his race was responsible- but that it happened at all.

"What have you to be sorry for? I did not tell you this so that you could apologize for it." He crosses his arms over his chest, glaring defensively. "You have tried to understand a war as old as myself without any context. You are trying to solve a problem that has plagued we Wraith since the dawn of our species. And you have been handed options that mirror the very same that the Lanteans have used to destroy men utterly.

"I am not telling you this so that you pity Wraith. I am telling you this so that you do not take the same course as the Lanteans."

He didn't expect anything less, and Kirk's hands return to prop on his waist, looking away with a crease in his brow. It's less a surrender than it is just a thoughtful gesture. The wraith wasn't looking for pity, and he recognized that. He was being given data to formulate an equation with.

Well, at least they didn't have a chance of coming onto a hive and waking every wraith in existence up. He doesn't bother trying to explain the apology, even if it isn't pity that he feels.

"Well, we'll just make sure that doesn't happen, won't we?," He says, without any bite, and he nods when his gaze comes back around. "Are you going up to your lab?"