(OOG: Solarian speech is in brackets "[]". Jo and I came up with this during some conversation or other, so I've had to change a few things to fit them in with the flow of the post - I hope I've kept the integrity of your half, Jo. ^^)

Many a time, Shaina had flown over the earth in the early morning, sometimes while the moon still shined, speeding on her way to a mission or a rendevous point. If one passed over the right region of land, why... it was almost as if she was still flying among the clouds. The fog sometimes covered the land so thickly that only the very tips of mountain tops poked through, looking like mere shadows over a thick, cottony white blanket of mist.

She'd gotten lost in the haze once, back when she was still young and training with the Jugend classes. What a frightening experience that was, for a thirteen-year-old girl to find herself wading through a haze so thick that she could not see her own feet, or breathe anything but a watery thickness that hurt her lungs. Sunrise had been the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, that morning... Since then, she'd always been fond of the sparkling azure sky and the sun that peered like an eye out of its depths.

But there was no clear sky here, and no sunlight; she was wading through that mist again with all of her strength, eyes shut tight, breathing restricted. Or, that's what it felt like, in any case.

When Shaina finally managed to break into a semblence of awareness and open her eyes, it felt to her as if a miracle had just taken place.

Yet that miracle... Everything was clear, crystal clear. Every color, the glint of the bulkheads, the lights... But it still felt as if she was under water. The heaviness in her chest didn't go away, and moving was a supreme effort, almost as if the clouds in her dreams were real and thick as cotton, and trying to bind her in.

"[I see you're awake. Sleep well?]"

That... voice again. Shaina closed her eyes, jaw clenching. That man from the infirmary - one of the pirates, she had assumed upon seeing him... though she couldn't quite remember that moment. But he was more than a pirate - much, much more... his words proved it. Not just anyone knew the Solarian tongue; only citizens, slaves, and... "[What do you want?]" Her arm hurt. She could hardly breathe. Why, she would have bet money that she was under the influence of some sort of drug, or at least the beginning of it. How humiliating. And this Lamb... he was here to enjoy it, wasn't he?

"[You don't have anything to gain by being hostile, Element.]" Something rustled, moved, not far from her head; her visitor, she assumed. The cell, or whatever it was, must be very small then. Figured... it /was/ a sand cruiser she was trapped on, after all. They weren't known for spacious prison areas.

"[I don't see that I have anything to gain by being polite to a traitor, either.]" She turned her head toward his voice - flopped it over, really - and opened her eyes with some difficulty to glare at him through the great distance between herself and the man leaning casually against the door. //Definitely a drug...// Surely he couldn't have been more than an arm's length or two away from her. What in the world had been done to her?

"Traitor?" The reply was nonchalant, calm. It was obvious who was in control of the situation. "As much as you can betray kidnappers and murderers..."

"[Murderers of what? Animals?]"

He raised a cool eyebrow, but otherwise seemed unfazed by her retort. Interesting... most Lambs reacted to that, certainly when they were so aware of Solaris... "We're all animals, little girl. You. Me. Your masters don't differentate in the end. All the soylent looks the same."

"[Then practice what you preach, traitor. Don't lord it over your 'fellow beings'.]" Speaking was getting rather difficult... or just thick. Hard to ennunciate - he had deviated back into his Lamb dialect, but speaking anything but her own native language would have required more concentration than she could give at the moment. Gods, she hated drugs... There was a reason she avoided Drive and all of its accursed variations. "[You have less right than the rest of us.]"

"I'm not lording anything, kid. You broke into MY home, and killed MY people after I rescued apparently YOUR friend from the desert." Marien paused, his eyes shifting as if he were listening to something else - maybe another conversation outside that was too low for her to hear? - and rolled his eyes, looking back at her. "She's a nice kid, by the by. You might want to get the Jugend stick out of your backside once in a while and take a cue from her."

"[Nice...]" Shaina chuckled grimly, a smile in her eyes that would have chilled Victoria, had she seen it. "[We'll see about that.]"

"You mean the power she's got?" The man tucked a mass of silvery-green hair behind his ear absently, revealing his scar with a softly amused laugh. "I felt her halfway across the desert."

What was it? Shaina couldn't think clearly no matter how hard she tried... and that laugh made her wish she could wipe the smile off of his face with a blast of ice. But ether was even farther from her reach than coherant thought. That's how it felt, anyway. Unfortunately, that made all the difference... she wasn't about to kill herself trying to destroy this one, insignificant man when she still had a mission to complete. "[Her presence isn't worth the trouble it's going to cause you, traitor. It'll be to your best interests to let us take her back.]"

"She's going to follow her own path, kiddo." He finally moved away from the doorway, sitting down carefully at the edge of her bed and looking her over with with shadowed eyes, distant as if in a memory of... something. "Like we all do, eventually. Were you always such a zealot?"

"[Zealot?]" Shaina rolled her eyes - about the extent of what she felt she had the energy to do at the moment. But little by little... "[Is that what they call patriotism these days? At least I'm not strung up on Drive like the rest of the grunts in service.]"

"That's good. That stuff's no good for you." He laughed again, a bit more subdued. "I'm not going to argue politics with you, Element. It's like teaching a sandshark to tapdance - wastes one's time and annoys the other. But you're young. I hope you get a chance to look beyond the blinders they welded on in the Jugend and see there's a lot more to the world than the Sacred Empire. Elly seems to be catching on to that."

Her lips turned in a faint sneer. "[Elly is more of a dupe then you think. But, as you will...]" The words were slipping out more easily now - was the drug wearing off... or was it just loosening her tongue?

"A dupe? To what? The charms of war-torn Aveh?"

Typical idealist. Traitors from Solarian ranks usually were - it wasn't exactly an uncommon occurence in the groups that contained slaves. "[Ask her what she remembers, sometime. And don't be surprised if she decides to disappear on you later. She's such a capricious girl.]"

"Well, everyone has to go sometimes. Did she disappear on you?" The man took a deep breath, taking a distracted glance over his shoulder, then turning his gaze back to her.

Hearing voices, was he? "[She's 'lost'... I was only sent to find her.]"

As soon as the statement was out, Shaina berated herself, throwing curses in her mind that she was willing to bed most Solarians didn't even know. Why in /hell/ was she saying anything to him? This was a covert operation, or had been - things were already bad enough as they were, and now she was volunteering /more/ information? What in the world had gotten into her...?

"Ah, well. Good job, kid." He shook his head, and his silvery hair slid over his hear again, obscuring his scar. "Though, stands to reason, had you done intelligence on this little run of yours better, you could have just shown up like an angel with that boytoy with you, and come to take Elly ...home. 'stead, you had to play Element and look where it got you. Your instructors aren't going to be pleased when this gets back."

Oh, Gods curse the bastard... "[I don't think I need to be worried about that.]"

Her captor shrugged expansively, his tone almost literally grinding on Shaina's fragile nerves. "I'm just offering the voice of experience. Getting captured by a bunch of.... Lambs is bad form, kiddo."

She offered him a flat, pale smile. "[Not if there isn't any proof.]"

"There will be. Believe me. There will be. Now," he changed the subject smoothly, his tone pleasant. "Would you like some soup?"

"[Soup...?]" She squinted up at him, unable to hide her confusion. But she shouldn't have been confused. She should have stayed silent in the first place, for that matter. Good god, Victoria was going to be angry at her for this. Bad form? It was far worse than that. "[What are you talking about?]"

"Soup. Liquid nourishment. You know.. a broth, generally with vegetables, meat, and sometimes noodles? I brought you some."

Hate. It wasn't something she was overly familiar with, being more inclined to apathy or indifference, but... this man was the exception, it seemed. She /hated/ him, right then... He was treating her like a child, taunting her with her glaring failure... What /right/ did any Lamb, any /traitor/ have to criticize her? "[You're really a piece of work, Lamb...]"

"Thanks. I try." He reached over to the side and placed a bowl on the bedside table, pushing it a few centimeters closer to her. She could smell a hint of chicken - /real/ chicken, not the trash Soylent put out - and her stomach felt hollow, suddenly. "Don't worry. I'm not going to give you Lambcooties."

Shaina summoned as much strength as she could and pushed herself up onto her elbows with a soft grunt. It wasn't just the drug that weighteed her down; she couldn't remember much of what had happened in the infirmary, but her mind felt positively fried. Whether it was ether exhaustion or the burn of someone else's spell, it tried to pull her down out of consciousness like a ton of iron chains. Sitting up this far was a victory of heroic proportions. "[That's not what concerns me.]"

The man reached over and scooped a spoonful into his mouth, wagging the spoon at her as he swallowed. "It's clean. We're not monsters. If we were, we wouldn't be sitting here talking, kid." He gave her a crooked smile, blue eyes deadly serious. "I don't like what you represent, but in the end, I'm not a killer, and neither is my ...captain." Somewhat amused, he offered her a shrug. "And I find it hard to maintain hatred for the young, for some reason."

//Oh hell.// Shaina let her head drop back, and she flopped rather ungracefully back onto the cot. "[I should have stayed in bed.]"

"Well, I'll leave it here. We can always warm it up if it gets cold." He set the spoon back into the bown with a dull clink. "Look at the world sometime... Shaina. You might be suprised by it." His smile surprisingly gentle, the man rose from the bed and turned to the door. "We'll talk later."

(Summary: Shaina awakens in the Yggdrasil's brig and finds that she and Marien share a mutual distaste for each other.)