nymeria_dw

What a fascinating challenge! Focusing on non-canon pairings required a good deal of imagination, that's the reason I was surprised when this idea sprang, fully formed, in my twisted mind… Tighten your seat belts!!

UNREQUITED (?) LOVE

I know you love me. I have to believe you love me, or it means that all these long cycles I have wasted my time and affections on you. And yet you act as if you don't care. No, I must keep convincing myself that this is all part of a plan, one of those wonderful, masterful plans you always bring to fruition, leaving me breathless with awe and amazement.

I know that at least I have your trust – this is something I could never doubt: from those very first days, when you ousted my former commanding officer and took me into your confidence, showing me unsuspected horizons of possibilities, all mine for the taking, I felt sure that our destinies were forever linked.

Consummate Peacekeeper, that's what you called me, and I felt that it was both an endorsement and a promise. And on the wings of that promise, I knew I could fly – no, soar.

The things I did for you! I went from being your faithful ear, when you bestowed on me the wisdom of your teachings, to becoming your right hand – no task was too hard or even impossible. Not when I did it for you. And as my admiration grew, so did my feelings. Feelings I thought must be reciprocated.

If they had not been, you would never have trusted me with your very life, would you? You would not have asked me to stay at the side of that noxious upstart, that pitiless tralk trampling up the ranks not on merit but on the effluvium of her poisonous oils! Do you have an idea of what that cost me? Do you realize that affecting to revile your name was the easiest task, but that much worse was required of me? I'm not speaking of having to bear her aromatic attentions, no. That I could do, and gladly: I would close my eyes and think of my duty, and of you, and pretend I was somewhere else. What was unbearable, what nearly killed me, was pretending to hate you, and having to mistreat and hurt you, while she watched with that terrible smile on her face. When I had to shoot you – even though I knew it would not kill you – I nearly died myself. When I had to watch as dirt was being piled on you, I had to restrain myself from jumping into the pit to carry you out to safety.

Yet I did it, I did it all, because you had asked me to. Because I knew that in the end I would reap my reward.

I saw again the promise of that reward when I met you on the Leviathan, in the neural cluster: that kiss on my forehead, your beloved voice whispering "Well done", were only a glimpse of the future, and I held on to it with all my strength in the harrowing monens that followed.

But today, watching you fondle that weird, red-haired creature, my certainties started to crumble. Of course she had proved to be a valid ally, even an indispensable one, but was it really necessary to let her ravish you so? To let her steal from me what I've longed for all this time? What's worse is that you knew – and this is what wounds me so deeply – that I was up there, watching, while you seemed not to care at all if my heart shattered in a million pieces. Such a vicious show of cruelty!

No. I must remind myself that this is all part of your grand design, that in the end you will discard her, as you discarded all your other pawns, and that together we will forge ahead toward the glorious destiny that awaits us. Together.

Forgive me for not telling this to you in person, but if I had, my composure would not have withstood the onslaught of emotion, the tidal wave of my feelings for you. This is easier, and yet it miserably fails to convey the depth of my commitment.

Please give me a sign that all has not been in vain.

Your ever devoted Miklo Braca, Captain.