#>solo

[exastrisnonnocere]

>did he who made the lamb make thee?

"Do you wish to come with us?" "We will come with you." "Let us see your hand."

“we are ten of eleven, quaternary adjunct of unimatrix zero”

A child of worlds.      Silas met Ten in the brig of the Enterprise, in the heart of the Collective.  He met her at the birth of time, at the culmination of eons, at the deaths of suns.  Across galaxies.  She has always been Borg.  All Borg have always been Borg.

Until they are not.

     [    ten is the creation of my long-time friend and rp buddy, and so does not get played here on my blog, nor is she really canon to my blog, but she is perhaps the most crucial element to the completion of silas as a person.  the two of them became acquainted after an incident in which silas was partially assimilated, and after which ten was detached from the borg collective.  at the behest of his spouse, she was adopted, and silas retained custody of ten upon their separation and subsequent divorce.    ]

Personal Log, Stardate 2258.171:      I don’t know why I caved.

     That’s a lie.  I thought, at first, it would make him happy to take in yet another stray as he tends to want to do (like the birds, like me), but realistically that would not have been enough to force my hand in such a way.  She terrifies me.  Child or no, I am distinctly aware of her capabilities and the vastness of her knowledge, as well as the potential cruelty in her lack of empathetic experience.  She has never had to love, or hurt, or be afraid -- incomprehensible emotions isolated so effectively in the face of the bigger picture.  The Greater Knowledge.

     And yet she is sad.  She is alone.  I know that feeling.

     Separation I feel is as difficult for her as it was for me.  The strangeness of a thousand minds, the invasive nature of it, is indescribably overwhelming.  I felt surrounded in that place, eternal and vast but also nothing.  Who are you among a herd?  What is a bee in the hive?  Nothing.  No one.

     I understand her because I am her.

     We see these things through different eyes, but I feel connected to her in that way.  Maybe I am imagining things.  Going insane.

     I remember her like a face in a crowd, and yet I cannot separate that face from my own.  Looking at her is looking in a mirror and through a window, out into space and time with no concept of either.  I have always been her.  She has always been me.  Mother.  Father.  Child.  There is no distinction, here.

     I don’t want her to be alone, or sad, though perhaps it is unavoidable.  A man cannot protect his child, always.

     But I can try.

[exastrisnonnocere]

>these last ditch efforts will never save you

“You could have left a long time ago.”

Silas walks his fingers across the observatory glass, tracing an imaginary line from one star to another, the radiant blue of Earth’s surface just below them lighting up his face in the dark room.  The observatory deck of the USS Meridian is a gem of design, larger than most other ships in its class, extending into the black of space so that the vivid curve of that horizon sweeps beneath his feet where they hover into orbit, drifting silently above the atmosphere.  Breath clouds the surface, a fog of weary condensation dissolving before his eyes.  Where does it end, he wonders.  This lonely, open rift across space and time.

Where does it stop?

“I thought I could make it work.”  He tries to sound nonchalant, as if this were his plan and all had gone according -- as if this were his state of design, unsurprising and inevitable.  The doctor refuses to turn around and acknowledge the man behind him, his small frame a sharp, imposing shadow framed in the light from the corridor, but altogether unimposing.  A creature of observation and dignity.  If he is compromised, if he is sad, Silas will never know.

Never.

The constellations beneath his fingers crawl across the endless sky in silence.  Serenity amidst a roiling, catastrophic demise.  He wishes the man would just go.  The man.  The other.  His husband.

Not anymore.

“You thought I would change,” he observes, and Silas scoffs away his truth.  “You knew what this was, Silas.  It isn’t my fault you wanted what you knew I would never give you.”

I know.  “Don’t you have a shuttle to catch?  You’ll miss it.”

The disdain is a palpable mass at his back, wretched and selfish.  Silas wants him to go.  He wants to be alone.  He has always wanted to be alone.

“Play the victim all you want.”  He’s right.  He’s always right.  “You and I both know what you are.”

Fog.  And the soft brush of his hand against the glass.

“I know.”