In Your Eyes

I should be working - signing reports, approving supply and crew requests, preparing for our upcoming mission. Instead I find myself drawn away from the desk - the Natharian peace stone heavy in my hand. My thoughts are on it - light years from where they should be.

I hold the peace stone up, shifting it under the light, captivated by the colors. So many shades of blue.

Just like your eyes.

I found the stone on Natharius Prime just after we first met. The price was exorbitant. I didn't care.

The memory of your eyes haunted me - invading my waking hours, chasing me into my dreams. It was madness; like nothing I had ever experienced before. I welcomed it.

I hoard the memory of our first meeting. It is among my most precious treasures. Even now I can close my eyes and envision yours - pure indigo, mirroring such love, such pain. It still leaves me weak.

In my darkest times I think of that - and of so many other times I found revelation in your eyes.

The peace stone shifts colors as I hold it, mirroring the shades I've seen so often in your eyes.

I remember the second time I ever saw you - how your eyes had lightened with love, the pain still there, but muted. It was easier meeting your gaze after that. Your eyes held nothing for me but friendship. I could see Jack's influence in your every movement, hear it in your laughter. He made us both laugh so easily.

I thought it the most natural thing in the world to spend time together, never, well almost never, questing for meaning in your eyes. We were happy then. All of us. It only made sense that I would take Jack with me, and that you would trust him to my care.

The next time I saw your eyes, they were dark - so different from the sun-brightened pools I remembered. The color of midnight sky, they drew me closer, seeking desperately for answers. What I saw frightened me. I could have accepted anger, maybe even hatred. I could not accept the abandonment that haunted me in those blue depths.

It tried to draw me in and like a coward I turned away, ignoring the pleas and the pain that were never spoken, but which you voiced so loudly with your eyes.

It was more than a decade before I would see you again. Your eyes betrayed you to me as always, from the moment I saw you on my bridge. They were blue-gray, with a wariness and cold resolve that seemed so alien to my memory. Were you really the same woman I had once been so drawn to?

It didn't take long before I had my answer. Fate, some people call it. At times I might have called it that as well, using the word damnation just as often. We were like two exotic chemicals - spectacular if combined correctly, deadly if not.

Those around us never understood. It was so simple to them. They couldn't see the truth in your eyes. They couldn't see the danger.

How many years has it been? How many ways have I seen your eyes?

Standing beside you when you grieved for a patient, your anger at the fates showing itself behind the sorrow and the grief.

Sitting beside you at a dinner party, merriment and mischief brightening your whole face.

Kneeling beside you on an alien world, pain from your injuries not quite hiding the fear of death you try so hard to conceal.

Lying beneath you as you cover my weakened body with your own, protecting me, determination to survive so plain in your eyes, an act of defiance against my frailty.

Looking up at you from a biobed, seeing the frightened lonely child once again.

Holding you as we make love, seeing the raw need, wondering how I can ever fulfill it. Nearly weeping when you cry out in completion, seeing the blue reflection of that cry.

Watching you as you sleep, so different when you are dreaming. Fighting the desire to wake you just to see your eyes. Bereft without the rainbow of blue that colors so much of my life.

You demand so much from me, without speaking a word. Sometimes I weary of it - of trying to satisfy the needs and desires in your eyes. I am no longer a young man, able to slay dragons for my lady. Yet, I know I could not live without those indigo mysteries you offer.

Perhaps that frightens me most of all.

My mind tries to offer me shelter from these thoughts, but I won't - or can't - allow it. I find myself crossing the room without making the conscious decision to do so. I linger in the doorway, not wanting to disturb you, yet needing to despite my resolve.

You save me.

Your head turns slowly, unerringly towards me, although I am sure I made no noise. I feel myself smiling like a fool.

You reach out to me, and I obey. As if I ever had a choice in refusing you. A few steps and you are in my arms.

In your eyes I see my reflection, an indgo-tinted image surrounded by love. It fills my heart with courage and I hold you tighter, brave enough, for the moment, to face everything I see in your eyes.

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