"Sins of the Past"

[OdileCondacin 0]

Harper turned up at Odile's door three hours after Alpha shift was supposed to end, a bottle of wine in one hand and her uniform jacket in the other.

 

"Come in before someone sees," Odile teased in a hiss, motioning her in. "Gracious gods; whatever would happen to my reputation?"

 

"Someone might think you had an ounce of humanity, and we can't have that." She tossed the jacket over a handy chair, setting the bottle on the table. "I don't suppose you have a corkscrew?"

 

"Just use --" Her face fell as she realized her substitute for a corkscrew was quite out of commission. "No."

 

Harper tossed her a sideways look. "Sit down, O'd'yl," she ordered quietly, walking to the replicator. "Waiter's corkscrew, two wineglasses. Red."

 

The Xenexian harrumphed but took the required seat, tucking her feet beneath her on the couch. "I guess you know what you're doing," she muttered, peering over at the replicator.

 

Picking up the requested items, Harper made her way back to the table. "That's why they gave me the wings," she teased, setting down the glasses and flipping open the corkscrew.

 

Odile decided not to comment what non-humanoid appendages she really thought the Colonel was gifted with, instead commenting on the choice of vintage. "This stuff supposed to be good?" she asked, leaning a little to look at the label.

 

"It ought to be," Charlie replied, popping the cork expertly. "It cost enough." She poured for them both.

 

The scientist, for all her prickliness and backwater upbringing, gave a fair impression of a member of the cultured elite, letting the bouquet of the alcohol waft to her nose before taking a small sip. "Ah. Yes. Not bad."

 

Taking the other glass, Harper dropped into the plush armchair and took a gulp of the crimson liquid. "Right. So, then?"

 

"So?" Odile looked at Harper expectantly for a moment. "Oh. Yes. You expected I had a good reason for having you come over here. Well, I guess I don't, really." Odile offered an apologetic look. "I guess I wanted to see if you would come, more than anything else."

 

"Of course I would," she replied. "Why wouldn't I?"

 

"I figured you were a little miffed. And I was a little worried about, you know, things. I guess we've never really been in this kind of situation -- with you a direct superior, and my being so subject to your whims." Odile stifled a laugh. "That just made you sound a whole lot more tyrannical than even I think you are."

 

Harper snorted. "I'm not heartless," she complained. "Even if 'the Tabby and Stabby Show' does tend to bring out the martinet in me."

 

O'd'yl remarked, blithely. "I have a very eager young human who thinks I suck at my job, and I know the Kitty has a nice little saboteur who'd probably be excellent in charge."

 

"Besides, I'm not so 'Stabby' any more." A touch of downcastedness.

 

Sobering, Harper replied, "I'm sorry about your knife, O'd'yl."

 

"I know. That means a lot, but it's just a loss that can't be helped now." The rest of her wine -- and quite a lot of it, that was -- followed her words.

 

"Easy on that stuff," Charlie remarked, refilling her glass. "It's stronger than it tastes."

 

"Mmm," was her noncommittal reply. "I suppose it's only natural. I am not sentimental or a softie, so anything that does have memories... poof. Bye-bye. Gone."

 

"Now you're being silly." She sipped her own wine. "I know how long you've been carrying that thing."

 

"Well... crying over it isn't going to help. I don't have my knife anymore. Not for a long time, anyway."

 

"I'm sure we can find some way to repair it."

 

"If -- when -- we get back, I know I can. I told Kitty -- any foundry on Xenex, or... well, they did make the thing, after all... Danter could do it. Though I'll go with Xenex, thank you very much."

 

"Would they remake a Danteri knife?" Harper turned in the chair, hooking her legs over the armrest. It was good not to have to stand on dignity sometimes.

 

"Of course they would. It's not as if one of those squat little bronze-skins would want it done, after all. Just because it used to belong to one, Charlie, doesn't mean it's forever tainted." She considered for a moment. "Though maybe the gods think so."

 

Charlie gave her a concerned look. "How do you figure?"

 

Odile looked at her hands for a moment, not seeing much -- not in the present, at the least. "I gave Day a... a warning, if you will, about old ghosts. How much a conscience can weigh down. I suppose I forgot to mention karma, too. Sometimes you have to wonder if things catch up with you."

 

"And what things do you think are catching up to you, Sin?" Harper asked quietly.

 

"One thing in particular."

 

Odile finished a bit more of the spice wine, and sat back against the sofa, voice intoning the tale quietly, without pretense.

 

"I was seventeen when the son of a bitch killed my mother. I didn't know why, I barely knew how -- all they told me was that I didn't want to see her. I guess it was one of those cases where the deceased couldn't be made to look restful enough to set the family's mind at rest. I suppose it was stupid of me to go after the prick, but then again, a true Danteri confrontation was a hard thing to find by then. And I was young, and hotheaded...

 

"But it wasn't the Xenex you hear about the most often, with daily battles for the freedom of the world. Hell, I wasn't even born until the war for liberation had been over for eight years. I grew up with the Federation's limited reconstruction plans bolstering the economy and the new order settling into place. I think it was engrained into the mind from early childhood stories that Danteri were things to be hated, though. Even the mild, simpering delegations were given filthy stares in the street. They say humans have a long memory for subjugation? 'They' have never met my kind.

 

"Even so, it wasn't commonplace to see true conflict between the Danteri delegation we had on Xenex and the populace. I think both sides were smart enough to avoid it -- the Danteri knew our tendencies towards hating them, and we knew their tendency to blow matters out of proportion and attack. "Some of the best chances we had for negotiation during the war were ruined when there was some small issue made a mountain from a molehill.

 

"Still, though, there remained a few -- a few, I repeat -- Danteri on our world who lacked that survival instinct. Rebels -- terrorists. They were slick; you could never pin them down to being in just the right spot at the right time to stick their heads on spikes, but most people acknowledged and stayed clear of them.

 

"It was one of those ones who'd attacked, murdered Mother. There were witnesses, and my father, being province's leader and such, wanted it handled properly, without much attention drawn to what we'd have to do. Xenex, member of the Federation, had grown beyond the need for tribal symbolism and slayings. Xenex wasn't so primitive and warlike. Xenex was... enlightened.

 

"Which no one, outside the educated and privileged few, really believed. For such an uplifted planet, the shamans and amulet-sellers in the streets certainly heaped in their share of credit chips and barter-goods. Ahh." Odile smiled a little bit. "There're no bazaars like the ones in Condacin for pure superstitious trinkets and toothless spellcasters."

 

"But in any case... I'm not one-hundred percent sure why I set out in pursuit of vengeance. A combination of elements of the time, I suppose. Frustration needed an outlet." Now the Xenexian was wistful. "How ironic -- the same bit of violent emotion causing both the acquisition and destruction.

 

"So I chose a weapon from home -- my father's largest sword. Heavy -- well wrought, but so very cumbersome to wield. The phasers and such were locked away," Odile explained, "and besides, it was hardly fitting to do battle in its finest Xenexian tradition with a plasma or Federation weapon, was it not?"

 

"Of course not," Harper remarked wryly. "Although something more appropriate to your size..."

 

"Youth," she dismissed smoothly, "excuses many errors in choice of blades."

 

"Tracking down information and leads from a few supportive sources -- mainly old spiteful folk who remembered the days when such an occurrence was commonplace and the middle-aged soldiers who'd missed their glory days of taking out the bronze-skinned, short little bastards -- proved fairly easy, and by the late afternoon, I had an address. In retrospect, I don't know how pathetic I had to have seemed. A long-faced teenager setting off with bold plans of vengeance and honor.

 

"I didn't go in through the front door of his room. Funny how I remember and regret that so much. I didn't chime once or knock like a civilized person before I killed him. As if somehow that would have justified or made it all right.

 

"I busted in the back door. I don't know really what I was expecting. The evil Danteri in a torture chamber, sticking little children in the Iron Maiden? Corpses strewn about? Prisoners? Pain and suffering?

 

"He was preparing evening-meal. The -- even now, I can't make myself think of him as a man -- bastard was just cutting up some brown leaves for his supper. Gods help me -- the whole scene was so normal, so domestic and clean. Someone who ate and cooked and grew vegetables in a little yard's garden like a Xenexian. I think it shocked me, because I didn't charge forth with a war cry as I'd seen myself doing the whole day.

 

"He looked surprised. Not frightened, so to say, but surprised. I mean... I guess you have to be if someone suddenly charges into your home with a sword and bloodlust in their eyes.

 

" 'Put the sword down,' he said, as soon as his nerves had calmed enough for him to speak. 'There's no conflict here; the war ended quite a few years ago.'

 

"Either he took me for very stupid, or he didn't recognize me. I tend to think the latter. If only because, for all their faults, Danteri aren't idiots. Foolish, yes, but for a terrorist to survive on Xenex for any length of time?

 

" 'I beg to differ,' I remarked, coldly. 'Or maybe that's a bit odd of me, to assume that witnesses to my mother's murder were accurate.'

 

"Now he looked me over a bit more appraisingly, searching for resemblance, more than likely. He wasn't going to find it. In height, my face, even eye color, I took after my father. But even so, he must have taken me at my word -- one of his ugly, burly hands twitched towards something at his hip.

 

"I started, assuming it'd be a weapon -- and it wasn't as if my sword could deflect phaser blasts. It was enough to send me darting towards him. 'Don't move,' I ordered, before I realized that between burning muscles and my own nerves, the sword was shaking. How... terrifying.

 

" 'You don't even know how to hold a weapon,' he commented, hand still hovering near his hip -- and whatever weapon lay underneath the loose poncho. I didn't reply, and he continued. 'You're straining not to drop your sword, girl. Can you even swing it?'

 

" 'Insulting the woman holding the weapon really, really isn't the smart thing to do right now.'

 

"Then he started laughing. The son of a bitch started laughing, and he even went so far as to turn his back to me, cavalierly assembling his salad again. He was tempting fate. Or maybe I looked like that little of a threat. I about went offensive right then, but he started talking again.

 

"In retrospect, he was stalling, probably, trying to figure out the easiest way to take me out without the slight chance of being caused injury in the process. But he ended up causing himself more damage than, perhaps, if he'd just fought it out. Then again, if he had, I might not be sitting here right now.

 

" 'I don't doubt your story, you know. A woman like you? Really couldn't be anything but T'alia's daughter.'

 

" 'What do you mean?' I asked, a surge of emotions -- anger and hurt -- rising at how... how normally he said her name.

 

" 'You're just like her. Spirited, fiery. You know the cowed women on this world -- you're not like them.' He turned his attention back from those horribly dry-looking little brown plants, and back to me. 'Of course, it makes sense. It's instilled in you because your father needs you to take over the province someday, and he isn't counting on your marrying a well-born tribesman...'

 

" 'Shut up.' I didn't like how... familiar with my life he sounded. Like he knew me. It was... unnerving.

 

" 'She spoke of you often. But then again, she always did care for her family -- and her people -- so.'

 

"I have a temper. I admit it. And it was starting to go on low simmer -- the dangerous setting that tends to take a long time to blow, but burns hotter than blue flame when it finally does. It was happening then, and it happened last night. But it rarely flares up just so very often. Almost too calmly, I shouldn't have asked, 'And how would you know?'

 

"Another of those condescending laughs. 'Oh, I knew most everything about her. She and I got along quite smashingly. It truly was a shame to lose her from our organization, but... sacrifices must be made for security.'

 

"Really, I shouldn't have listened to another word he said. But you know my curiosity, Charlie, probably better than most people still alive. 'What the hell are you talking about?' I snarled, the little waver in the sword now coming from repressing the anger starting to wash over me."

 

" 'Oh, come now. You, of all people, must know that she didn't fully agree with the split between our worlds. The Federation isn't doing as much as they promised, and without the care and nurture of Danter, Xenex suffers. There's less food, less healthcare, less order... look at the main thoroughfare in Condacin, little avenger, and think. Your mother cared less for the drama and empty promise of freedom and liberation than for her people's welfare, and she helped us. That is... until she decided on the path of betrayal.' "

 

"Now I'm confused," Charlie commented. "He was claiming that your mother was a double agent?"

 

"I thought he was lying," Odile replied, distantly. "I honestly thought he was. He had to be, didn't he? But... there was something that rang true about it. She and father were already married during the war, and there were always stories about unexplainable attacks on Condacin -- some kind of an informant even then. But I don't know why she did it. I wish I could have asked her. There had to have been another way.

 

"Father had to have known. But... he loved her, I suppose. I guess it just shows -- when you're so close to someone that you can't be objective... what ill can come of it.

 

"I attacked then, but he countered with a defensive strike of his own. Danteri are smaller, but compact -- stronger, something I was dimly being reminded of as he forced back my sword. And if he thought I was just a child playing... he didn't fight like it. He took me off guard, pulled back, and let a blow hit my arm.

 

"I jerked back, trying to hold my sword despite the pain in my injured arm, and he just kept talking.

 

" 'Yes, girl. Your mother was working with us. Gathered information -- you know your household is an access point for a wealth of information regarding the three major provinces...'

 

"I didn't know what the hell to do. The injury cut deeply; the confidence I had was shattered. All I wanted to do was kill the self-assured monster, but now I was starting to doubt that I could. I realized at that point only one of us would ever again leave the house alive."

 

"Obviously it was you," Charlie remarked, topping up both their glasses.

 

"Obviously," she said with a faint smile, hand unconsciously covering a spot on her arm, which, once she let go to take the wine, revealed a thin and long scar just above the elbow.

 

"I started swinging again, and his short sword kept beating back every attempt. He didn't draw any more blood through that, but it was even more wounding and... disquieting... to see how effortlessly he was fighting my attack where I was giving one-hundred percent. I'm a better fighter now -- I trained tirelessly after that -- but then... I think you'd have laughed to see it.

 

" 'You're a lying bastard,' I finally informed him with about as much certainty as I felt, once I'd pulled back again to catch my breath.

 

" 'So convinced, are you?'

 

"I pulled the last iota of theory I had against his claim. 'You're not exactly authority figures. Terrorists have little sway over what the Danteri government does in regard to Xenex.'

 

" 'Don't be a fool,' he replied, quietly. 'The government of Danter knows what we're doing. They know we'll succeed.'

 

" 'Like hell.' Refueled by that, I renewed my efforts, but things only got worse. I still don't know what kind of offensive he used, but somehow, he was able to back me into a corner, just flat out grab the sword away.

 

"I decided then, in that moment, that if he was going to kill me, I wasn't going to beg for my life. I'm no stickler for honor, Charlie, but... somehow, I determined that in battle, in conflict, it would have been something worse than dishonor. It would have been cowardice. I think I still operate like that, as a result of that day...

 

" 'I'll let you go,' he told me, waving that stupid little sword at me with one hand, mine in the other. 'I'll let you go so that you can go tell your people what a traitor their leader's wife was. It'd dishearten your miserable little lot, and if you promise to do that for me, you'd be more valuable alive than dead.' That fake gentility was gone now, and all that we hate in the Danteri was in full force. 'Like mother, like daughter.' "

 

Charlie snorted. "I'd have killed him just for the bad dialogue."

 

"Have you ever met a Danteri, Harper? They're unimaginative. Battlefield, conversation -- it's why we beat them.

 

"I hissed out a 'never' reply. What the hell did he think I was? Vehemence from my words echoing, I elbowed away the ugly little Danteri sword, and it clattered to the ground some ways away. But then... considering my comparative proficiency with a weapon, he did something even more frightening.

 

" 'This,' he commented, throwing aside my sword, leaving us both -- I thought -- bladeless, 'is too heavy. A worthless weapon.'

 

"It was a good move on his part. Hand to hand against that kind of bulk, and I was finished. He emphasized my stricken fear with a blow, knocking me backwards, and I barely avoided falling.

 

"I slammed my own hand into his gut when he was close enough, but it didn't even faze the bastard. Another try with similar results, though it seemed to be pissing him off. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe he'd be sloppy.

 

"Or maybe, as I realized next, it just made him more dangerous. He shoved me roughly, and that time I stumbled into the wall. Weapons on the other side of the room, the Danteri looming over me, my life didn't quite flash before my eyes, but...

 

"He knelt down to my level, put a hand on either side of my face. I thought he was going to just snap my neck, or worse, strangle me. I've always thought that suffocation has to be one of the two worst ways to die. You're so aware in those slow, last seconds. The other one equally horrible, in my book, is being bled dry, which... I wouldn't have dreamed it, but was basically what he had planned. Or close to it.

 

"I finally realized it when he took out his second, smaller weapon. I wouldn't have guessed he had it. I wouldn't have dreamed there was a second after he went hand-to-hand. But he was holding it -- trying to scare me with it, and it was working.

 

" 'Going to beg?' he asked, heartlessly. 'Going to plead and beg me not to cut you apart?' He waited a beat. 'Like your mother did?'

 

"Adrenaline in my veins and unparalleled fear running rampant, I seized his wrist with both hands, shaking with the effort of trying to get his knife. He pried one hand off his arm.

 

"I clawed at his face, gouging at his eyes, and for a fraction of a second, he faltered. The force decreased, I still couldn't get that damned dagger away from him, but I did force his arm back, and the hilt smashed into his temple.

 

"He was dazed; I did it again, and finally got the thing away from him. I kept at it, seized on that weakness again and again, and finally, he was unconscious.

 

"I didn't think at all at that point. I was operating on adrenaline and instinct. I gutted him like a fish, Charlie. He was still alive, and I thoroughly... just... gutted him. He didn't pose a threat to me. I could have brought him in, called in the authorities. I could have been merciful. I could have forgiven him. There were a lot of things I could have done besides... besides that. But I killed him like an animal, with his own knife. I murdered him." Odile went silent, her jaw tight with memory.

 

Harper was silent for a long time, sipping her wine and looking out the small viewport at the stars. "If you're looking for censure," she said finally, "you're talking to the wrong woman."

 

Odile didn't reply, walking over to a small bundle she'd retrieved from her office before resigning herself to her quarters, and unwrapped it slowly.

 

Within it was an undamaged hilt and four pieces of darker metal, which, together, made up her knife.

 

"That's how I got this. That's why it means so much to me. Not because I always have to have a weapon, or I feel insecure. No. Because that afternoon was a turning point I can't ever come back from.

 

"I don't think it's really possible for most people to even comprehend, but when I talk about ghosts, and karma... I know what it's like to be haunted by the past. Every day it haunts me, and it will until I die. And when I do die, he'll be waiting."

 

Plucking one of the shards from the cloth, Harper turned the metal fragment over slowly in her hands. "You have a superstitious streak, O'd'yl," she commented finally, running a careful finger over the broken part of the shard. "But I'm not going to argue with you over it. Look at it this way -- perhaps the reason this knife shattered was because you aren't bound to that death any longer; because you're not defined by that point in time any more." She laid the metal back on the cloth. "I'm not saying don't reforge it, but if I were you... I would think about what I was recreating."

 

"I know," she replied, softly, staring at the knife with an inscrutable expression. "But... I don't know that I would do anything different, now. And if I don't hold onto what's brought me on a life's journey... what good has the journey done?"

 

"The journey is what matters in the end," Harper paraphrased, folding the cloth back over the knife. "What set you on the path is irrelevant."

 

"I suppose," she said, slowly, "But I think the knife serves a purpose in reminding me how long regret can last. The knife keeps me in check, keeps history from repeating itself," O'd'yl admitted, quietly. "I worry that its shattering just shows that control is failing. It scares me," she admitted. "A lot."

 

She thought back over the last few days, and the emotional rollercoaster her old friend had seemed to be on. "I think," Harper said at last, "that if you're worried about it, you still have the control."

 

"I hope," O'd'yl said, then sighed. "I suppose that you were hoping for something a bit more lighthearted, tonight. A bit of teasing, maybe. A bit of fun. Not tales of gore and hearing your friend spill her guts about her dark secrets."

 

"I was hoping," she replied, "to find out what the hell was going on with you. I think I have, now."

 

"There you have it. A little more... sinister than you'd have liked?"

 

Fatalistically, she shrugged. "It is what it is. I told you, Sin; if you're looking for censure, you've got the wrong woman."

 

"I suppose I appreciate it. I'm sure there are some in your position that'd either have me in to a counselor or off duty permanently."

 

"You've been living with this longer than I've known you, and despite a somewhat... how should I put this... casual relationship with military decorum --" Harper grinned at her friend. "--you've always gotten the job done."

 

O'd'yl had to smile back. "Most of the time I can fool the bosses, anyway," she teased.

 

Dramatically she clapped her hands to her ears. "I didn't hear that," she said, humming a little. "I haven't heard anything to suggest my chief of science isn't wholly devoted to her job..."

 

"Oh hush, Harper. You know science is my second dearest love."

 

"After yourself?" She laughed and poured out the last of the bottle into their glasses.

 

"You overestimate my ego." O'd'yl grinned. "It's still Knife."

 

"Sometimes I worry about you, O'd'yl..."