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eldritchazure · 1 year

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this is part 1 of azure rambling about stralka!! buckle up.

okay SO.

a thirteen year old vulcan child goes to live with a grandfather on a vulcan-run federation outpost because she’s “too much” for her parents to deal with. (everyone calls her a name that’s pleasant enough on its own but doesn’t seem to fit her. but she says nothing, because she doesn’t wish to be more difficult than she already is.) the outpost is on a small, barely m class planet in a solar system. the forest around the base itself interferes with sensors, so the child is forbidden to venture into it. sometimes there are even electrical storms, but the personnel and families of the outpost are safe within the base and they wait out the storms. they are all safe within the base.

until they aren’t.

one day, the vulcan child chances a glance up at the sky and sees strange space ships appear out of nowhere, as if by magic, although the child is too mature to believe in such things by now. and then the world dissolves into chaos.

people are running and yelling at each other. it’s so loud the child can barely hear anything at all, but she catches words like “romulans” and “attack” and “evacuation”. shamefully, the child finds that she is afraid. the child is rather short, and she keeps having to dodge running feet that aren’t looking where they’re going. so, she decides the most logical thing to do is find somewhere less crowded to sit and wait for her grandfather to find her. and that’s what she does. she waits for hours and hours. then she hears phaser fire, and then silence. she ventures out, thinking to herself that whatever battle that occurred must have ended by now. then she hears unfamiliar voices speaking an unfamiliar language. she peaks around a corner and see strangers who look like her, but not. their foreheads are wrong. their eyes are cold with cruelty, not control. there floor around them is smeared in places with a sickening green. the vulcan child does not know much yet, but she’s intelligent enough to grasp that these people are not the good guys, with their dark, strange uniforms and dark, strange weapons. and once again, the child finds herself afraid. she decides the most logical course of action is to run. she finds the little-used backdoor she had often used to sneak out and look at the stars when logic was difficult, and she ran out into the previously forbidden forest.

eventually, she finds others who managed to escape the battle. in the end, there are thirteen total. when they introduce themselves, the child hesitates. oddly, she finds she does not wish to introduce themself with the name her parents gave her. it feels like a lie. vulcans do not lie. the child introduces herself himself as stralka, rolling the name around in his mouth. it does not feel like a lie.

three are adults, or at least people who seem like adults to stralka. v’elak and t’prill are starfleet cadets. v’elak is a fourth-year and this was their first assignment. they are twenty-two and therefore the oldest. t’prill is a second-year cadet and she was at the outpost to observe first-hand how the neutral zone was monitored. she is twenty. sejik is sixteen and he lived on the outpost with his parents, who were starfleet officers. that was the story for all of the others, as well. but they were all younger than stralka. v’elak and t’prill, as the oldest and therefore wisest of the group, decided it was most logical to stay where they were and hide out until the federation sent a rescue team. because thete would be a rescue team. sejik agreed, and the younger children all went along with what the “adults” said.

they stayed on the outpost for about a year.

t’prill died first, taking a disrupter blast for eleven-year-old t’miva who had to be dragged away to whatever passed for safety because her eyes could not leave the spot where the older girl had stood a moment before. after that incident, the romulans were alerted to their presence and began to hunt them out, driving them deeper into the forest. it wasn’t enough.

v’elak went next. that battle (could it even be called a battle? it was more like a slaughter.) was one of the worst. stralka watched in horror as he ducked behind a tree to avoid a disrupter blast as one of the beasts in a dark uniform (because that’s what they were to the children now, beasts) shot little five-year-old t’svai point blank between the eyes.

after that they just dropped like terran flies. sejik fought bravely to keep them all safe, but in the end he was only sixteen and was not, in fact, an adult. sejik went, then nesser.

by the end of that first year, thirteen became nine.

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eldritchazure · 1 year

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characters that are like orpheus and eurydice except to both of them the other is eurydice

#lt. cmdr. stralka #cavair #tagging this as my ocs is probably cringe #but like #i first thought of it with them #they occupy my thoughts at all hours of the day #star trek ocs #star trek #orpheus #eurydice

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eldritchazure · 1 year

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hi!! here’s the final installment of the stralka-cavair backstory thingy. i know i said i’d post it yesterday but!! i forgot. so here we are now. buckle up (:

by the fourth year, stralka and the others had begun to engage in some even more dubiously legal activities. in fact, this was just straight up illegal. it would almost certainly get them tortured and executed if they were caught. but that wasn’t anything they hadn’t faced before, and it was for a good cause!!

it’s really no secret than the rihannsu live under an oppressive dictatorship. even ordinary citizens lived in fear of vanishing without a trace via tal shiar. so, it makes logical sense to assume that there are at least a handful of groups of either incredibly stupid or incredibly brave people who try to fight back against the malevolent government.

and it was one of those groups that stralka and the others fell in with. they were decent people, if a bit idealistic. of course, stralka worried about t’miva, vantik, and sava’s involvement, but he couldn’t control them. as hard as it was for him to admit it, they were growing up, and soon they’d be able to look after themselves. they were at a formative stage in life and didn’t need stralka constantly breathing down their necks. so gradually, he learned to let them stand on their own a bit. that didn’t stop his incessant worrying, though. as for sekal, he remained at the little area they had come to call home. and as long as someone was there to watch him, there were no issues.

stralka and the others weren’t technically apart of the resistance movement. they sort of just helped, functioning a bit like mercenaries (which tells you a lot about this resistance movement, if they were hurting teenagers as mercenaries) but instead of getting paid, the resistance fighters swore to assist them to return to their “home planet”, a small colony that was towards the edge of the empire. in reality, the plan was to use the resistance fighters assistance to just get off the planet and get as far as they could, before they swapped ships and essentially just hitchhike until they got close enough to the neutral zone to steal a ship and go the rest of the way themselves.

it was the first time in a long time that they allowed themselves to hope for a way home. as for cavair, they sure as hell weren’t leaving him. they’d make up some fake vulcan name and pass him off as one of them. stralka estimated that it would work long enough to get them to safety, after which they could disappear on their own and retire to some quiet backwater village in the mountains behind t’paal where no one would even think to look for them. the plan may not have been watertight, exactly, but it was something, and that was more than they’d had in years.

speaking of cavair. it had taken the two of them a frankly embarrassing amount of time to realize why their bond was different from the familial bonds they shared with the others.

it had started with a bottle of cheap romulan ale on the night watch. the stuff was as rare as latinum in the federation because it was contraband, but here it was easy to come by. it was cheap ale and therefore didn’t taste very good, but it did the job of calming frazzled nerves after yet another close call earlier that day and kept them warm as they sat shoulder-to-shoulder by the “entrance” to their lean-to, which had grown in size since it’s creation.

maybe it was the ale. maybe it was the knowledge that one of them could’ve lost the other earlier than day. maybe it was the golden bond tethering the two of them together, buzzing between them. whatever it was, it inspired cavair to lean closer into stralka’s warmth and whisper, “you wanna know a secret?” stralka raised a questioning eyebrow and nodded.

“my name is vrilas.”

“… i thought your name was cavair.”

“it is! but rihannsu have a lot of names. vrilas is my secret name. my true name. and now you know it,” cavair, or vrilas, whispered conspiratorially. stralka contemplated that for a moment, before nodding solemnly.

“thank you for entrusting me with your secret. i shall guard it with my life.”

vrilas giggled at his companion’s seriousness.

“may i use it around the others? or no?” stralka asked.

“hm? oh, no, definitely not. a true name is like, really secret. you only give it to really special people,” vrilas replied.

“i see,” stralka said. “and what constitutes ‘really special’?”

vrilas didn’t answer for a moment. stralka isn’t sure who noticed first, but at around the same time they both became aware that their hands were awful close to one another. stralka went very still, suddenly completely unsure of how to proceed. picking up on stralka’s indecision and slight panic, vrilas decided to make the first move.

“really special like…”

he moved his hand slowly, giving stralka ample time to withdraw his hand if he wished, but they knew each other’s minds and they both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“…this.”

vrilas tapped his left pointer and index finger to stralka’s in an ozh’esta.

oh. okay then. and that was that.

and the odd thing is, nothing really changed between them. they had simply finally became aware of and put a name to something that had already been going on between them for quite a while. and it was nice. really nice. their minds and bodies fell into step together side by side with ease like always, but now that they were aware of it, it felt like it had more gravity. it was good. it was really, really good.

so stralka should’ve known that it wouldn’t last. it couldn’t.

they’d been working with the resistance movement for a few months now. stralka and the others did good work. they were trusted allies, and more than that, they were trusted friends. and they actually helped people. it felt good, to help people.

and now the time had finally come for the resistance to keep up their end of the deal. they said their goodbyes with smiles and even a few hugs here and there. they’d made some good friends among the resistance, and stralka almost felt bad for leaving them. he knew he’d worry and wonder for quite some time over how they were doing and if they were still alive. but more than that, he wanted to get home. he wanted to watch the twin suns of vulcan rise at dawn and show vrilas everything. vrilas had never had a home before meeting stralka and his family, and now stralka wanted to share his home on vulcan with vrilas.

they made it to the docking hangar. the ship they’d be taking off the planet arrived without a hitch.

it was as they were crossing the hangar to board the vessel that everything went south. suddenly, soldiers in uniforms burst in, guns blazing, shouting something about them being under arrest. that was good, stralka thought to himself absently. if the soldiers were trying to capture them, then there was a good chance that those phasers weren’t set to kill just yet. fighting erupted. stralka, vrilas, and sava drew their knives and contraband phasers and attacked whilst vantik bundled sekal onto the ship and t’miva provided them with cover. stralka, who had always been better with a blade, engaged the nearest soldier in close range combat, slashing for the hand that held the phaser. they went on like that until it was the three of them against the four remaining soldiers. stralka had just stabbed one in the gut when he felt a sharp, burning burning burning pain in his side. he went down hard, his vision darkening. he saw the blurry outline of sava kick the soldier they’d been fighting to the ground in favor of pouncing on the one that’d stabbed him. there was phaser fire, a cry, more indistinguishable sounds, before the darkness swallowed stralka.

when stralka finally woke up, he couldn’t breathe. the pain in his side was a footnote compared to the pain in his head.

the ship’s medic was saying how he was lucky that they’d had the equipment to resuscitate him after he was essentially dead for approximately two point forty-five minutes, but stralka could barely hear him over the thunderous silence of the mind that was supposed to be right next to his. it felt like someone had reached into his brain and torn out half of himself, and then left the part that had connected the two halves on the floor to bleed and bleed and bleed. this doctor didn’t know what he was talking about, because clearly, stralka was dying. he couldn’t not be. vrilas was- his vrilas was-

stralka blacked out again, his weakened body unable to handle the stress and pain, but the pain followed him into unconsciousness. the pain and the silence and the unbearable coldness of a dead bond, it’s frayed edges fluttering in agony in a phantom wind.

#tw child death #tw death #tw violence #tw blood #tw injury #so yeah!! they escape!!#but at what cost? (:#but fear not!! this is not the end of stralka’s story #if you want to #maybe stick around for more stories and art of stralka & co!!#so yeah ((:#star trek ocs #vulcans #romulans #star trek #lt. cmdr. stralka #cavair

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eldritchazure · 1 year

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here’s part 3!! it’s a bit shorter i think but ya know

in the third year, alrighty stralka had long lost count by that point, things had almost settled into a new kind of normal. they scavenged for food and resources, stole when they needed to, and fought with other urchins and sometimes even local law enforcement when to defend themselves and their meager supplies. their hair grew wild and unrecognizable from the neat bowlcuts they used to be. they acted more rihannsu than vulcan in those days, even when they weren’t in public. they no longer spoke of things like their parents. they were each other’s family, and talk of their old life would only cause them grief, and grief caused distraction, and distraction was deadly.

stralka and cavair did most of the work, because they were the oldest and strongest, even occasionally taking on odd jobs from kind people who were willing to look past their unfortunate appearances and stralka’s strange accent. occasionally, the jobs were from less charitable people and were of dubious legality now and again, but they took them anyway because they paid more. with such basic medical tools, stralka had amassed quite the collection of scars. his left ear had so many notches in it, it was just shy of being shredded. cavair hadn’t faired much better. meanwhile, the others guarded their little group of lean-tos and took care of sekal.

t’miva was the loudest and most aggressive, and she was left in charge when stralka and cavair were out. she often pretended to be braver than she was, and her anger mirrored stralka’s. they were both fiery and had a willingness to get their hands dirty to protect the others. she looked up to stralka, and that made stralka very nervous.

vantik, who now had one less eye than when he started, seemed to have an affinity for medicine. at the very least, whenever stralka cauterized a stab wound with a heated up knife, vantik did his best to clean and bandage up the wound. and since no one had died yet, they all assumed vantik was doing a pretty good job. he and t’miva weren’t related, but they may as well have been twins. they had always been close as a result of being the same age.

sava was quieter than the other two. they were clever and the fastest of the bunch, and therefore were the best thief of the bunch. whenever money was especially tight, sava wandered unassumingly into a crowded street and came back with pockets that clinked lightly as they walked.

sekal was the baby of the group. they all worried about him constantly, and called him sek’kam, despite the fact that he was probably too old to be called such a childish nickname by now. he neither protested nor endorsed the nickname. he did not speak much at all. he only communicated through the limited rihan sign language he’d learned from cavair, or, more often, the familial bonds they shared.

cavair had yet to be included in the family bonds, but he was on his way. at first, the others had been extremely skittish around him, especially sekal, but eventually they warmed up to him. he was the one who taught vantik how to disinfect and bandage wounds, and sava how to pickpocket. he also had also been teaching them rihan, so they were all mostly fluent in it by then. he was especially close with stralka in particular. the others were like siblings to stralka, and cavair was his best friend. stralka hadn’t really had a best friend before, and it was nice. they had saved each other’s lives so many times by now that they’d both lost count. they were partners in crime, literally. and cavair was still so easy to talk to. the two were nearly inseparable. cavair insisted on taking the night watch so that stralka could actually catch a few hours of sleep. stralka insisted that cavair eat all of his food instead of giving it to the others. stralka knew that if anything ever happened to him, cavair would take care of the others. the first time stralka mind melded with him reinforced this.

cavair had been badly injured while on a job, and stralka couldn’t move him. they had to wait for vantik to come to them with their makeshift medkit. cavair’s face was twisted up in pain and the strip of sleeve stralka had ripped to staunch the bleeding was soaked through with green. stralka was at a loss. he hated how helpless he felt. he hated seeing cavair in so much pain. it felt almost like a physical ache. he scrambled for an idea as he murmured empty platitudes of “everything is going to be okay” and “you are going to be alright”. if only he could somehow ease cavair’s burden. he’s gladly take on some of cavair’s agony if he could. and then he realized that oh, he actually could do that. he’d momentarily forgotten he could do that. (sometimes it was almost like he forgot he was vulcan at all. and that was… unsettling, to say the least.)

he presented the plan to cavair, and though it took cavair a moment to formulate a response through the likely blinding pain, he assented. stralka took a moment to center himself with some difficulty (he usually didn’t bother these days unless he had to initiate a mind meld with one of the others and had fallen a bit out of practice), before moving his fingertips to cavair’s meld points and murmuring, “my mind to your mind, your thoughts to my thoughts.”

stralka’s first impression was fire.

it was, to say the least, most unpleasant.

stralka was very inexperienced (and as such probably shouldn’t have attempted this in the first place), but he managed to take on some of the flame so that it was easier them both to manage. after the initial burning pain, it really wasn’t so bad. it was actually… kind of nice. it was easy. distantly, stralka was aware that cavair’s breathing had evened out, and that they were breathing in sync now.

cavair showed stralka his mother and all of the places he’d lived in and people he’d met growing up, and stralka showed cavair the little sister he’d had in another life, and the beautiful, larger-than-life rock formations on the beaches of t’paal that he’d hung around and explored as a child.

they stayed that way, distracting each other to the flame that was still simmering in the background, until vantik arrived.

afterwards, stralka discovered a bond that hadn’t been there before. it was a new kind; it didn’t feel quite the same as the familial bonds he had with the others. it was golden and it glowed and when he poked curiously at it, it was warm. stralka smiled ever-so-slightly to himself, and knew the expression was mirrored on cavair’s face.

#tw blood #tw injury #this one is a bit less heavy than the previous two #we get to be better acquainted with some of the other characters!!#no one died!!#lets hope it stays that way haha!! ha.#fourth and final installment for this little series will be out tomorrow hopefully!!#star trek ocs #vulcans #romulans #star trek #lt. cmdr. stralka #cavair

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eldritchazure · 1 year

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i’m out of school now so here’s part 2 ((:

by the second year, stralka was fourteen and the oldest, and therefore the de facto leader.

ven and stenet went, then skyv. it became clear to stralka that they could not stay at the outpost, and that no one was coming. the forest protected them from the enemy’s sensors, but it also blocked and federation ships scanning for survivors. at that point, twelve-year-olds t’miva and vantik, ten-year-old sava, and eight-year-old sekal remained, and they were all too exhausted and numbed with fear to offer any protest when stralka proposed his plan. the next time a supply ship came to drop off resources to the soldiers manning the stolen outpost, they made a run for it, sneaking around the armed guards who weren’t actually paying all that much attention and hiding in the ship’s cargo hull. stralka didn’t know where the ship was going, for he had not yet learned rihan, but maybe they’d have a better chance at survival there. desperation was illogical, but at this point, stralka was fourteen and willing to take any chance he could get to ensure that they’d live.

they slept through most of the journey despite themselves, jolting awake and freezing in fear whenever footsteps passed their hidden corner.

when the ship finally docked, they scrambled out like rodents as soon as the coast was clear. they hid behind some crates as they took stock of their situation. they were at a spaceport in a city. cautiously, stralka stepped into the light, and to his immense relief and slight surprise, no one started shooting at him. slowly, the others followed him, t’miva coming to stand beside stralka with her best impression of a brave face, sava bringing up the rear, half-hiding their face behind stralka, and vantik carrying the silent sekal who hadn’t uttered a word since t’svai died. there were other children hanging around the spaceport, stralka mentally signaled to the others (because children needed a strong mind to lean on in the absence of their parents, and who better to fill that role than stralka?) that they would pretend to be one of them. and just like that, they went from fugitives to young street urchins, hanging around at the spaceport with nothing better to do.

and that was how they stayed for a while. slowly but surely, they picked up bits and pieces of rihan until they could hold a short conversation (for the most part). they figured out where they could scavenge for food and where to avoid so they wouldn’t run into law enforcement.

and then sekal got sick.

they had no access to medicine, and they couldn’t exactly forage for it because people didn’t just throw away perfectly good medicine. the only visible option was to steal it. but stealing was illogical. stralka paced in their chosen alleyway for the night, trying to look for other alternatives, as sekal’s coughs grew weaker and weaker. stealing was illogical. but if they didn’t steal, sekal would die, and letting sekal die was illogical. stralka huffed in frustration, having long since forgotten that frustration wasn’t something he was supposed to experience. everything about this situation was illogical! the violence was illogical, the killing was illogical, the fact that no one even looked twice at scrawny, starving children was illogical.

so maybe the solution to their current predicament would have to be illogical too. after all, the teachings of surak hadn’t saved v’elak and t’prill and sejik, and they were adults! surak wasn’t going to save sekal from succumbing to sickness, and it wouldn’t save them all from dying of starvation in the future. at the moment, logic was effectively useless, and continuing to abide by it and would be foolish and would likely cost them all their lives.

stralka stole the medicine and got a phaser burn just under his left eye from a glancing shot, and he thanked the unfeeling stars that it hadn’t hit his eye and hadn’t been set to kill. still, it had certainly hurt. but sekal would live, and that was all that mattered. so now they were not only street urchins, but petty thieves as well.

stralka had gotten lucky that time, but that wasn’t always the case. there were multiple close calls with local law enforcement. it was during one of these close calls when he ran directly into another young street urchin about his age in an alleyway, who seemed to be having the same problem if the shouting and footsteps that were following him were anything to go by. stralka didn’t know what possessed him in that moment, but he told the other boy to follow him and scrambled up a pipe attached to a building to get to the roof. seemingly against his better judgment, the other child had followed, and from there took the lead, running across rooftops until they reached an abandoned building. the other boy jumped through a smashed window, and after a moment of hesitation, stralka followed. so there they were, two strangers sitting alone in a dark abandoned building. they stared at each other in silence. having gotten a better look at the other boy’s face, stralka thought that he could’ve been vulcan. he didn’t have the brow ridges that most romulans did. it wasn’t rare to find a romulan with a smooth forehead, but it was an uncommon gene.

“my name is stralka.”

silence. the other boy frowned in what stralka was fairly certain was confusion and a healthy amount of suspicion.

“oh. right. ro- people do not use first names with strangers. apologies. i do not possess a last name,” stralka murmured, cursing his blunder.

“… stralka’s a weird name,” the other boy said finally, his tone still heavy with suspicion.

“i… know that,” stralka said unsurely. “my parents were… creative.”

“you talk weird too,” said the other boy. “you’re also a really bad liar.”

“apologies?” said stralka, because what else could he say without digging himself a deeper hole?

“you’re not from around here, are you?” the boy asked.

“n- no,” stralka replied.

“i’ve never heard an accent like yours before. where are you from?” this was becoming a bit like an interrogation, and stralka had no idea how to answer that question without raising further suspicion. so he opted for silence instead.

“are you an alien?” the boy asked bluntly, now leaving forward with a new fascination in his eyes, almost replacing the suspicion. almost.

“and if i am?” stralka asked, now suspicious as well. his eyes narrowed and his tone was just shy of hostile. he could not allow this stranger to endanger the others. he would do whatever was necessary to keep them safe.

“how did you make yourself look rihannsu? what species are you actually? are you spying on us? are you planning an invasion?” the barrage of questions was… unexpected, to say the least, and stralka found he was having difficulty keeping up.

“i… did not make myself look… rihannsu. i look like this normally,” stralka said honestly, unsure of what else to do. “i am vulcan, which is why we look so alike.” he wondered if telling the truth was a mistake. after all, the romulans and the federation, specially the vulcans, were not exactly the best of friends. but the other boy did not show any animosity, nor was he especially alarmed.

“so the lloann’mhrahel is using kids as spies now?” he asked, brimming with curiosity.

“i- no. the- the ‘lloann’mhrahel’ is the federation, yes?” the other boy shrugged. “well. we are not federation spies, nor are we part of an invasion. it is… a long story. why do you care anyway? i thought romulans- or, um, rihannsu did not like vulcans, regardless of whether or not they were enemy soldiers.”

the other boy shrugged again. “i don’t care too much about politics. even if you were here to mess with the government, i don’t think i’d care too much.”

stralka furrowed his brow. “why not?”

the other boy stared at him with narrowed eyes, the suspicion back in full force. after a moment of silence, he said, “you tell me your story, and i’ll tell you mine.”

perhaps if stralka were a little older and a little wiser, he would’ve said no. he wouldn’t even be entertaining this conversation. he wouldn’t have spoken to the boy and climbed onto the roof without him, and they wouldn’t even be in this situation. but stralka was fourteen with four mouths to feed and four minds to keep steady and yet he felt so, so alone and this boy seemed nice and maybe they could be friends. so he told the boy his story, from start to finish, and decided that if the boy tried to run to the guards about it, stralka would just have to kill him first. when he was done, the boy looked shocked.

“wow. that’s… horrible. although, i can’t say i’m surprised. we’re known for our ruthlessness for a reason,” the boy said with a sigh, and the sympathy was surprisingly… nice. it was nice to be able to vent about it to someone who wouldn’t start crying or staring off at nothing or pointing a phaser or disrupter at him about it. it felt like a weight was lifted off his chest and he could breathing became just a little bit more easy. talking to this boy was easy.

stralka nodded. “now it is your turn,” he reminded.

the other boy hesitated for just a moment, but nodded.

“my family name is xoral,” he began. “but you told me your story, and i’m going to tell you mine, so we might as well be friends instead of just acquaintances, so you can call me cavair,” he said all at once, before taking a breath and continuing his story. the boy, cavair told the tale of an empath. (he had to take a moment to explain that empaths were taken as infants by the tal shiar to be trained as agents. cavair shivered involuntarily and stralka nodded in sympathy.) his mother, a retired tal shiar agent, had decided she didn’t want a life of danger and secrets and loneliness for her son, and so she took him and ran. cavair grew up all over the empire, his mother teaching him the tools of her trade as they went, despite the fact that they were on the run in the first place because she hadn’t wanted him to have to learn to be like her. and that was how it was for a while. though they were constantly looking over their shoulders, lived in relative safety, because the only person who could protect you from the tal shiar was the tal shiar, and that was what cavair’s mother was, even in retirement. however, cavair’s mother was only one person, and she was not a young woman. it took them a decade and three years, but finally, about a year ago, tal shiar agents had caught up with them and cavair was separated from his mother in the ensuing firefight. he barely escaped with his life and hadn’t seen any sign of his mother since. but he remembered what she’d taught him. he was fourteen now and had managed to survive on his own.

all throughout the story, stralka listened attentively. when cavair was finished, all stralka could say was, “i grieve with thee.”

the two sat in silence for a time, watching the other. finally, stralka mustered the courage to speak first.

“you… you could come with us, if you wish? making allies is logical. there is safety in numbers, and we could pool resources. also, you have more experience with ro- rihannsu than us, and that could prove useful.”

cavair was still suspicious. “how do i know i can trust you? how do i know you won’t turn me in for some kind of reward?” stralka thought for a moment.

“we both have leverage on each other. i have your story, you have mine. that way, one of us cannot betray the other without risking his own secret being exposed,” stralka explained. cavair thought on that for a moment, before nodding.

“that’s agreeable.”

the two nodded at each other.

and so, by the end of the second year, there were six instead of five.

#tw child death #tw death #again sorry if it’s bad and sorry for any sorting mistakes!!#at this point i’m too lazy to proofread #what matters is that you get the gist of it!!#also #cavair makes an appearance!!#so that’s fun (:#also btw tell me if i missed any tws #i know this stories are a bit. violent.#so it’s very possible i missed something #star trek ocs #vulcans #romulans #star trek #lt. cmdr. stralka #cavair

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