Chapter Fourteen:

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“I don’t need to go to medbay, I was teasing about the aches. They’re so minor I’ll be better after a night’s rest,” Kat teased...and pleaded.

“And what about your cramps?”

“The beginning of a monthly. Can’t you tell?” She blushed and squinted when they entered the bay and the bright white lights powered on. It was always a shock to be in a well-lit room these days. It was even more so to see the Cyborg without his cloak of shadows. “Look, I should go check my message log and get back to Mia. Shouldn’t you be piloting?” Please work.

He set her gently on a pallet. “Are you afraid? A nurse, afraid of being looked at?”

“I saw Dr. Cagley yesterday, I’m fine,” she said as the pain of her cramps came back, making her flinch.

Kat sat up and watched as Dommik grabbed a reader off the wall and came towards her. What if he finds something? I don’t want him to know my medical history. Kat went to stand when his arm snaked around her waist and pressed her back onto the bed.

“I know you’re hiding something from me, Kat, I know when I’m being lied to by humans.” He warned, but released her. She didn’t breathe. “But I won’t force you to tell me.”

He lifted the medical reader between them, expectantly, waiting for her to come clean. She bit the inside of her cheek and glared at him in challenge. Damn you. “Was Argo a lie?”

Dommik looked surprised at the question and she felt a twinge of guilt.

“No.”

“Then why are you trying to get to know me? You could barely stand me not even yesterday morning.” Kat tugged the sheet from under her and wrapped it around her naked body. She couldn’t help but flinch as he set down the reader with rage furrowing his brows.

He made her angry by being angry.

“What’s it going to be? I let you back on my ship, I opened myself up to you and not because of forming some sort of connection between us, but because you chose this course. You chose me and whether you thought about it or not, you chose to go with me into Trentian airspace.” He leaned over her, making her fall back into the bed. “You trust me with your life but you won't trust me with your secrets?”

Kat glared at him while her heart raced in tempo with the medical equipment’s light. She glanced at the reader sitting next to her and decided.

There’s nothing wrong with me. He won’t find anything. And if he does…

It wouldn’t matter anyway.

She picked up the instrument and handed it to him. He took it from her slowly, their fingers brushed against each other sending electric shivers through her.

“You won’t find anything,” she whispered and laid back. Their eyes remained locked as he flipped on the machine and ran it over her body.

“Then what are you so worried about?” he asked, his anger tempered.

“I don’t know.”

His eyes left hers as he ran each of her limbs under the reader, quietly, tenderly and almost as if he was polite about it, if he sneaked up on it, there wouldn’t be anything to find. Like a hunter. Kat steadied herself.

One arm down. Her hand. Her fingers. The other arm, up from her palm and over her shoulder and neck.

Nothing.

The readings were beyond her sight but she watched Dommik’s face. It was all she needed to know.

He ran it over her chest, her torso and each breast. Kat’s breathing picked up. Down he went over her ribs, running his knuckles over her after each swipe of the reader. Until it reached her stomach and his movements went even slower, eyes hooded and concentrating.

His face cringed. His finger tapped.

It beeped.

Her heart exploded from her chest and his hand clamped down on her shoulder and pinned her to the table.

Kat’s eyes flooded with tears while her body struggled for freedom.

“Calm down!” He set the reader out of her reach.

“What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “I don’t want to die.” Kat stared at the machine just out of her reach and continued to fight for it, fight him.

“You’re not dying.” Dommik pulled her into his chest and held her tight. “Why do you think you’re dying?” Kat fought until her breath gave up...until her muscles melted and ached. He didn’t let go nor did his hold on her lessen. She was jailed. It warmed her body but not her mind.

“What did the machine say?” she settled into him, out of breath. He picked her back up and left the bay behind. Her eyes didn’t leave the reader until it was out of sight.

He laughed under his breath, “Pretty much that you’ve had vigorous sex recently.” Kat looked up and they were back in the star alcove, their clothes now folded on the seat beside them.

“My grandmother died.”

Dommik caught her chin and forced her to look at him. His lips downcast.

Emotion looks odd on a Cyborg. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“We were close. Very close.” Kat stared at the wall, remembering. “We went through a lot together, two people who had no one else in the universe to relate too, separated by generations and entirely different experiences but that couldn’t change how we felt. She died a month before you and I met.”

“Is she why you’re afraid to die?” He combed his fingers through her hair but it didn’t comfort her.

Kat let out a crazed laugh. “I help people die. I know death. I hold their hands until they breathe their last breath and death takes them away from me. I was born into the profession.” She shifted in his embrace. “Like how you were created for yours.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I’m afraid to die...because I think I will.” Kat let it out and closed her eyes.

“Don’t talk about something unless you want that something to happen. The devil hears everything.”

“Did you kill someone?”

She jerked. What? “No, I’ve never killed anyone.”

“I’ve killed many.”

“How many?”

“I’ve pumped people full of so much poison they never wake back up, I’ve torn out their throats with my teeth, sliced them into a thousand pieces with my claws, and shot countless more. I’ve looked Death in the eye and have been him myself. It’s a raw look, Kat, his eyes. They don’t look back at you but through you, into you, until you’re no longer breathing, no longer thinking. Then he disappears and leaves you cold and you hate and fear him all the more for it. You might know it but what you do, helping people die is far closer to heaven than it is to hell.”

Kat found herself holding him tighter in a comforting embrace that matched his own. “I’m sorry, Cyborg.” She kissed his chest.

“Don’t be. The difference between you and me, angel, is that I love what I do.”

She shook her head, “That’s not true. I love what I do too. It haunts me because it feels right but it makes me a hypocrite because I don’t want to die. I’m afraid of dying.”

Dommik held her close as she told him her story, the way she had been born and never held by her mother, watching her parents die miserably behind a glass barrier, being in quarantine for the first third of her life, up to her choice in letting her grandmother die on her own terms. Leaving Kat to pick up the pieces and clean up the fallout.

She told him about the Gliese parasite and how she lived each day that she might have it hidden within her.

It was word vomit. Her neuroses on display for him to digest and judge at his own free-will and she hated being judged. Kat had stopped telling her story when she was barely out of her pre-teen years because of how people reacted. Pity and fear. Pity for the domesticated medical animal she was and fear that she could be a host to a thing that would destroy them from the inside out.

When she was finished, Kat didn’t feel better, her heart felt as heavy as it always had and she knew that whatever Dommik would decide, life would go on and her burdens would remain.

They sat in silence. Not by choice but because he had yet to respond to her past. Kat waited with every frozen fiber of her being.

“Were you,” she watched as Dommik tried to find his words, “were you a virgin when I claimed you?” It was the first time she saw real emotion in his eyes.

Kat blushed. “No. I wouldn’t have potentially killed someone but I was not a virgin.”

“Who was he?” His question came out harsh, edged with venom.

“It’s not what you think,” She stammered and had to look away embarrassed. “One of my patients, doomed to die from a genetic disorder. We became close and he knew what could be in me but it didn’t matter to him. He was going to die anyway. I held his hand also.”

“I’m sorry.”

His apology embarrassed her more.

“It’s in the past.” She leaned up and kissed his lips. “I like knowing I can’t hurt you. That you’re safe to touch, to kiss. I would say it’s my favorite thing about you but it’s not.” Kat said into his chest.

“What is your favorite thing about me? You have me curious.”

“Right now? My favorite thing is that you’re not disgusted by me.” Her courage grew. “You’re so…”

“Monstrous?”

“No. Thoughtful, you’re thoughtful. I like that the most.”

He kissed the top of her head and she felt the familiar intake of his breath, breathing her in. “You’re not sick, Kat, You need to listen to me. There is nothing inside you. And today I don’t want you to think of it again, ever again. Do you hear me? You’re not near death anymore. You’re an assistant to a monster hunter and what we do prevents death.”

“Okay.” Kat swallowed. “I’ll try.” She lied.

“I need to show you something.”

She let out a stale breath and got up when he moved to stand. She pulled on her clothes while he watched. Dommik took her hand in his and led her back to the menagerie. The half empty room that was encased in heavy layers of steel and reinforced glass cages. The androids were milling about keeping the creatures within healthy and hopefully happy.

He led her to the one room she hated the most. The roaches.

Always the bugs.

The door closed behind them, the bright light blinded her. They stood in front of her least favorite case. He let go of her hand and opened it up.

Kat jumped back as he pried the roaches off of a branch that she had fed them earlier. They critters scattered away from him, some up his arms, over the interior of the glass. She was on the other side of the room while Dommik picked the bugs off of himself and enclosed them again. Kat was gagging by the end.

“Why would you do that?” she coughed with disgust. Shaking herself as if they had crawled all over her instead. “Now I’m really going to be sick.”

A mangled and chewed on plant appeared in front of her face. “Take it,” Dommik demanded of her.

She gripped it with the edge of her two fingers and held it away. “Why?”

“That’s the plant that you think killed your parents. Nargeo.”

Kat flung it away from her in horror.

In shock.

“It’s harmless,” he said.

But she didn’t hear him.

The ship’s speakers went on and transmitted the one message that saved her from herself:

“Warning. Warning. Entering Trentian territory.”