"Death Becomes Her"

[Guest TroNoQ]

She was dead. His precious little buttercup -- the light of his life for the past few weeks -- was gone. Wiped away in a fraction of an instant... brushed aside by fate and fortune. The cruelty of the world! What had he done? He'd tried everything... everything! Every cell of his being he'd thrown into saving her... and her people. How could he have come to these abysslike depths?

 

Pulling himself off of the still-lovely corpse, he headed towards a large flask located underneath the sink, draining the intoxicating contents into his mouth with a few large chugs.

 

A moment later, a shelf of glass medications and fluids was pushed off a mid-level shelf onto the floor with a satisfying 'crash'. Then another, and another.

 

Then Tro'NoQ bellowed, crumpling to the ground with a low, pained groan.

 

She was gone...

 

"Honestly, I thought your race was all bravery and chest-thumping. I had no idea you'd melt into a blubbering idiot just because I died. You couldn't have been that attached to me." Meyvn sat perched on one of the lab counters, fingers drumming on the polished surface without making a sound. She looked as healthy as she had ever been, without any trace of illness or fatigue. The only hint that she wasn't quite there was that she didn't cast a shadow.

 

She glanced briefly to where her lifeless body lay and frowned, wrinkling her nose as she peered back at the quivering mass that used to be a Klingon. "A fine mess of things you've made. I thought I was coming to you for help and instead I find myself just as dead."

 

He stared up at her, eyes widening, "You're... alive? Or dead?" The Klingon reached to embrace her. "My lovely, lovely Meyvn. I thought I lost you!"

 

Her voice came from behind him and she was no longer sitting where she had been. "First of all, I'm not your lovely anything. I'm probably a hallucination caused by whatever it was you just poured down your throat. Or perhaps my lingering spirit here to torment you for not saving me." Leaning on one of the unoccupied biobeds - or at least appearing to lean - she frowned at him.

 

"Are you a spirit? Shouldn't you be in Sto Vo Kor? You're a warrior... even if you are a medical warrior?" He appeared confused. "Which must mean you're a hallucination. I'm tormented enough without you!"

 

"Medical warrior? Is that what you fancy yourself?" She smirked and approached him, pausing only a few inches away. "A warrior howling in grief over a woman he barely knew? That's very interesting. And if Sto Vo Kor is your version of an afterlife, I've never believed in that sort of thing. When you die, you return to nature. I wonder if that's why I'm stuck here on this ship? It is unnatural..."

 

His eyes met 'hers' and watered. "But it comes from natural components, originally." He paused, turning from her. "I'm sorry that I lied to you, Meyvn. That haunts me worse than you. But I was worried... the stress on your system..."

 

"Proved to be more than my body could handle." The ghost of Meyvn past wandered over to her corpse and bent to read the last scanner readings. "Those little machines you introduced into my body proved to be worse than the actual virus. I suppose that your superior technology wasn't what we thought it could be." She shrugged. "Ah well. Circle of life and all that. My species has been eradicated and will make way for a new one, I imagine."

 

Tro'NoQ leaned against the counter. "I was trying to save you."

 

"Yes, at least that wasn't a lie. But are you upset because I'm dead, or upset because my death deprived you of a toy?" Turning back to him.

 

"You were always more than that."

 

"Not according to your leer." Her violet gaze was enough to bore through him. "If I had lived and the rest of my people had perished, what sort of life would I have had on this ship?"

 

"We could have been equals in the medical department. You wouldn't have been anyone's underling except for the commanding officers, and only them by necessity." The look on his face bordered on devastation. "Oh Meyvn... you could have been happy here..."

 

"And us...?" She appeared by the lab table again and seemed busy trying to force one of the virus samples into her hand. Her fingers slid through the clear case again and again before she finally gave up.

 

"Anything you wanted... or didn't want," he added hastily before rushing to the case of viruses. "Let me help..."

 

"What is the use? All you can do is study it now and hope that you've not become a carrier to other species," she stated as she glanced up. Her gaze drifted to the damage he'd done to his medical facility. "That would be ironic, wouldn't it... each race with which you come into contact ends up contracting the disease. You could single-handedly sent entire planets into extinction. I'd keep an eye on those strains, if I were you, and hope they were specific to my people's genetic code."

 

"I'll have the Bajoran do that. He's more familiar with their intricacies..." He paused. "And I'd advise that the ship be destroyed before that happened."

 

"Good." She perched on the lab table again a few inches away from him and seemed resigned to her fate. "I really am surprised by you. I thought I was disposable and you seem crushed by my death. But I'm more surprised by the fact that this is your hallucination and I'm fully clothed."

 

"Would I sound like a lecherous hump if I said that it's truly a shame?"

 

"No more than you did before I died." She smirked. "So what shall you do now? Am I to follow you around the ship as a reminder of your failings? I think I could enjoy that."

 

"Do you really want to drive me insane?"

 

"That could be interesting to watch. Think of it as a scientific study. You are the one that brought me here, after all."

 

"I brought you here to help you!" He growled, kicking a few pieces of broken glass with a spike-toed boot. "You're a hallucination. I could make you go away..." But his voice wavered. Clearly he didn't want her, or her apparition, to leave.

 

"You probably could, if you really wanted. Just as you could change my appearance if you truly desired." She seemed unmoved by his distress. "Why don't you?"

 

"Because I might not be able to get you back," he replied simply.

 

"Is that fear, I sense in you? How un-Klingon of you. Let me help you rid yourself of your fears, then." She disappeared completely: there in one moment and gone the next.

 

Swiping at the air, he managed to knock over another container, this time of a greenish liquid which splattered all over the floor. "Come back!" he cried.

 

"You are that attached to a hallucination? Perhaps you should seek medical help." The voice came from where Meyvn's body lay. Her ghost was perched on the bed next to her body, sitting cross legged, her posture perfect. "Which makes me wonder... what are you going to do with my body?"

 

"Stasis," he murmured with a relieved sigh. "Perhaps we'll be able to revive you in the future."

 

"Revive me? My heart is totally obliterated and there is no brain activity present. What do you think you'll be getting if you bring me back to life?"

 

"Hopefully you... You never know what technology we could encounter."

 

"We toyed with that notion for a while, but did not get the best of results. It is unnatural to bring the dead back to the world of the living. Which is why we switched our focus to extending our lives through means of genetic manipulation. Perhaps that was our downfall. This virus of ours seems too perfect to be a naturally occurring phenomenon."

 

"My thoughts exactly." Then again, of course they were. She was his hallucination.

 

"Well?"

 

He thought about it for a moment. "I'd prefer to keep you around. If possible." The qel huffed. "If only because you're too pretty to let go of."

 

"Typical." She'd not moved from her chosen seat. "I'm here for a reason, surely. Some underlying psychological need? That was never my field of expertise, however. Do you have someone you could talk to about it?"

 

"... Riko." He hated to admit it, but he seemed like the only sane person who could take hearing anything of that nature.

 

"I wonder if he'd be able to see me as well. He has much to answer for with his haphazard programming of those machines. Perhaps I am not a hallucination, but rather some sort of residual energy."

 

"I should hope so. And you're always welcome to stay..." A wistful sigh.

 

"You really do need to find yourself an actual mate. Perhaps you might be able to keep a female of the next species you encounter as a pet. Provided, of course, you can keep her alive."

 

He hissed. "That was below the belt."

 

"Probably, but you are the one controlling this hallucination, right? It had to be in your subconscious somewhere." She smiled sweetly. "So go find Riko before someone sees you talking to yourself and decides you've gone insane."

 

"You'll be around?" he asked.

 

"That's up to you, isn't it," she replied.

 

He smiled. "Then you will be."