Love and War

First topic message reminder :

"Maggie, you were attacked." Kandros replied firmly, though he still didn't open his eyes. "I never hated you, only what that bastard did to you."

"Brave? That woman?" Quinn snorted. "I hardly think so. She was a brainless idiot who only cared what would make her dear husband happy."

Tyros chuckled at this. "Quinn used to tell me I wasn't important enough for the lot of you to worry about." When the contact broke he finally found himself able to look away from her. "I've always been a very minor player in the grand scheme of things I suppose."

"That wouldn't have happened. Tann w asnt worried about anything until you showed up. He was nothing but nice to me. 
"If you hadn't shown up I would have turned out exactly like my mother. Married. Kid. Pregnant. Dead at the bottom...at the bottom of the staircase..." Her voice caught and this time she sobbed in earnest. "Please. Leave me alone, bull."

"She cried for you when she thought I couldn't hear." Betty commented coolly. "About her not being able to keep some promise about teaching you to read." She added. "At least that's what it sounded like, she could have just been spouting nonsense to the voices in her head."

"Lori... tell me about her?" Brutus breathed. "You must miss your mother. Is turning out like her such a terrible thing... aside from the death part?"

"She never finished. I only ever learned how to read the one book." Tyros shrugged. "I never thought she truly cared one way or the other." 

"Brutus...Please!" Again Lori's fingers slid over the helmet latch. "You have no right talking to me! Not after what you did!"

"If you felt she never cared, why were you willing to give up so much for her?" Betty challenged.

"Then come in here and make me stop." Brutus shot back when he saw her fingers moving back to her helmet. "Look me in the face and tell me there isn't something between us."

Tyros didn't answer. He was tapping on the monitor in front of him. "I still remember kett though." Lori and Brutus came up on the monitors and he turned to watch them. 

"There is not and I will not." Lori said firmly, her fingers pausing yet again. "You are a turd and I hate you."

Betty wasn't watching the monitor, she was watching Tyros. It wasn't hard to see why her daughter had fallen for him. He was everything neither of them were; hopeful.

"Hate is a feeling, which means you feel something for me." Brutus pointed out, almost grinning.

"He's getting through to her." Tyros smiled, not realizing he was being watched. "Look at her fingers. She's beginning to shake. Can we hear what they're saying?"

"Shut up, hard head!"  Lori shouted, her fingers shaking, he was getting under her skin. "Leave me alone, damn you!"

Betty leaned past Tyros, the kind of close that would let him feel the heat of her skin through their clothing. A slender finger punched at the controls and Lori's voice filled the room. "And you say you don't want her..." She remarked with a snort. "She's just like Maggie, no man can resist that good girl sweetness."

"Or what?" Brutus asked with a quiet chuckle. "I told you, you'll have to make me stop if you want silence, princess."

"You do remember that I tried to trade Maggie for Quinn, right?" Tyros asked, turning his head to look at her as a tingle all through his midsection. He went quiet as Lori spoke again. 

"I know what you're doing, bull. It won't work. I won't come back in there so I can be a slave for Tann. My father is dead. I can't apologize for my mother anymore. I can't make it better now. Tell him to pay you and leave me alone!"

"I believe you felt you had an obligation. She sold herself to Ardwin for your freedom, I think you felt you owed her." Betty replied, close enough he would feel her breath on his cheek.

"Who said you would be a slave? I'll kill the little worm if I have to." Brutus replied without hesitation. "But I thought... Maybe you would want to confront your father's murderer? They have her locked up right now."

"That's hardly true...i..." Tyros thoughts were cloudy, sent spinning by the sweet breath he could practically taste on his lips. Before he realized what he was doing he was tasting those lips, his tongue sliding past to get a better idea of the flavor he was savoring. 

"There's a lot of people who wanted him dead. He deserved it, Brutus." Lori whispered. "Don't try to lessen what you did by making me think of someone else. Why do you keep doing that?"

Before he could stop her, Betty had tore Tyros away from the console and slammed him to the wall beside it. All this was while her full lips returned an all too forbidden kiss.

"I'm not. I'm not even an asshole, an asshole has a use." Brutus replied. "I just thought you would want retribution against your sister."

Tyros grabbed her hips and hauled her hard against him. He was kissing her even more deeply, moaning against her lips.

"Where are you?" Lori turned toward the doors, her fists balled at her sides. The air lock opened and she yanked off her helmet, shaking out her hair. There was rage in her emerald eyes as she marched toward her office, assuming that's where she'd find him.

Betty's nails dragged across her partner's chest once she had removed his shirt. It wasn't long before she was beginning to unfasten his pants, not a single thought about what this would do to her already broken daughter entering her head.

Brutus was indeed in her office, and was sat at Lori's desk with his feet up by the time she entered.

Tyros simply felt unwanted. It was another of the many reasons he longed to return to his kett form. Quinn had never once even tried to touch him like this in his true form. 
As he push himself inside of Betty he was reminded about what she had said about Quinn's attraction to monsters. Now that he was nothing but a worthless....unattractive drell...it was no wonder she'd moved onto Ardwin. 
This broke him more than he'd intended it to. He did his best to turn his thoughts back to the woman who was at last pretending to want him, and sat in the chair with her. He missed the sight of her fingers going to the console behind her as he buried his face in her hair and began to thrust harder, moaning softly. 
He had no idea that his beloved was now able to see everything that was happening.

Lori hit Brutus hard enough with her helmet to flatten his nose if it wasn't already. She watched him tumble out of the chair and onto the floor. She was, for a very brief moment, satisfied. 
When she saw the blood coming from his nose when he got to his feet, she felt terrible but she wasn't about to let him know it. Instead she hit him with her helmet again, this time in the stomach. 
She knew she wasn't really hurting him. [size=34]They both knew he'd been through far worse than this throughout his life. But it was what she needed and whether she seemed to realize it at that moment, he was prepared to take it for her.[/size]

The irony was, Quinn thought Tyros most beautiful as a drell. She had fallen for him as a kett, and was actually ashamed to admit to herself that she had loved him even more once he was returned to his true appearance. That was why it had hurt her so much to see him hold his wife. She was a worthless mongrel, made even worse once her mother had stolen so much of her body from her. Quinn hadn't really cared about not having children, she had only cared that Tyros would care.
Now, as she sat in an isolation cell she was finally truly broken. Her long hair had been hacked off to the length it had been when she first met Tyros, they deemed it a suicide risk if she wished to end her life rather than face punishment for what she had done to the General and the people of the colony she 'helped' the kett attack. The left side of her face was bruised and her full lower lip split thanks to the strike Ardwin had given her moments before he too betrayed her. Quinn had sold herself for Tyros. She had betrayed her people to secure his freedom. And now, she sat in a holding cell, but as of yet didn't know that was also because of him. 
That ignorance didn't last long, as the entire wall beside her suddenly lit up with the projection of something happening in that very moment. Quinn's heart was well and truly broken when she saw not just her mother, but the woman who had tortured and mutilated her moaning the name of the man Quinn herself had given everything she had to. She couldn't take her eyes away from Tyros, able to hear him breath Betty's name with a desire he had never shown her. The young woman punched at the wall with her cybernetic fist, sobbing as she struck it over and over again. The attacks were strong enough that alarms began to shriek.

Brutus made no effort to defend himself against Lori's attacks. It wasn't just that he felt he deserved this, he knew it was what she needed. He would give Lori anything at all, even if it was at the cost of his life. "That's my girl..." he wheezed as she hit him again. "Let it out. Your sisters betrayed you, Tann used you. I'm all of them, hit me harder! Show them you won't be pulled down!"

Tyros released himself inside Betty, gasping as he rested his forehead against her shoulder. He hated himself the moment it was over with. A small part of him knew she had used him. 

"It's not them I'm pissed off at!" Lori roared, slamming her helmet into his crotch. When he went down she hit him in the head again, this time with a hard slap. "You lied to me. You used me! I didn't deserve that! I had my whole life figured out and then you come along and ruin everything. Why? Why would you do that to me?!" She slapped him again and then grabbed his face and kissed him wildly.

Betty held Tyros against her, smiling as the anger she knew would be tearing Quinn apart right then. Anger was good, anger was strong. Of all her children, Quinn was the only one she had treated this way because she believed she could take it. 

Brutus let Lori kiss him for some moments before he gently rested his hands against her shapely hips. "She never told me anything about you. I never came into this expecting to lose myself in you... girl." He breathed. "My life was figured out too... until I met you."

"You're not going to let her go, are you?" Tyros asked after a moment. He sat back, looking at her with shame in his eyes. 

"What am I going to do now?" Lori whispered, her voice broke, her eyes filling with tears. "My father is gone. I'm alone. My whole life has been about him...my mother... I deserve Tann..."

"Let who go?" Betty asked, though she knew full well who he meant.

"Princess, you are not alone." Brutus breathed, a broken finger touching her cheek lightly. "I've seen the way people flock to you. You're their light, and I'm not ashamed to say I'm one of them."

"Why..." Tyros was still trying to catch his breath. "Why me? We both know I'm not your type either. Why did you choose to you woth me?" 

"You should get to the medic." Lori said as she turned her face away from him. "I'll go with you if you want but...after that...i guess I have wedding to plan for." She muttered. Her shoulders slumped and she stared at his broken finger.

"And I am only your type because of who my daughter is." Betty pointed out thinly. "Would you have done what we did if I was anyone else?"

"The hell you do?" Brutus growled, grabbing her wrist firmly. "If I have to gut that worm just to stop you, I will." He told her sternly as a shrill alarm sounded somewhere else on the nexus.

"I...i don't know..." Tyros felt so lost and alone. "I didn't do it because of who you are. I did it because of how you made me feel." 

Lori opened her mouth to argue when the alarms began to sound. "Let go of me." She hissed at him, trying to pull herself away.

"Then why is it so hard to accept that maybe I did it for the same reason?" Betty asked as she began hunting for her clothing where it was strewn about the room.

Brutus glanced to the monitor on Lori's desk, though didn't let go of her. "It's the holding cells..." That filled him with dread. It wouldn't be the first time Quinn Talos had escaped custody.

"We both know it's not." Tyros shook his head. He took a long moment to put on his shirt, the silence deafening. "Let her go. I'm willing to change the deal to free her. All you have to do is say yes." 

"Why does that seem to bother you?" Lori asked, no longer struggling. "Bull..."

Betty paused with her fingers on the zipper that ran up the front of her environmental suit. "How is that any kind of a deal now? You just made it clear you don't really care about her anymore."

Brutus battled with whether to tell Lori anything at all. Eventually he did decide she deserved the truth. "Quinn was the one who killed your father. That woman... She is insane. She shut down all the defences on an initiative colony before you were woken from cryo, allowing the kett the swarm in and kill every one. All so she could fuck one that she had become obsessed with. That's who may have just broken confinement. My money... would be on her coming for you next if she took out your father."

Tyros said nothing more. There was nothing else to say. He'd made a grave mistake and for what? A few moments of feeling like he mattered to someone. He turned and walked away from Betty without another word. He knew when he'd been beaten. 

"Quinn?" Lori frowned at the very idea. "She killed the General? But why?" It didn't surprise her to think her littlest sister would want her dead. The girl was insane. She always had been. Death was the next logical step.

Betty sat back down once she was alone, a slender hand running over her smooth belly. It would be perfect this time. This time she would have the son she craved, she just knew it. This time... she would have someone to love her.

Brutus shook his head, as he didn't have that information. Yet. "Rumour is she isn't even human anymore. Now do you see why I want you some place safe?" He breathed.

"We're going to see her." Lori needed to know the answers before they executed her sister. Unlike Brutus she wasn't convinced the younger woman was getting free. "I want to talk to her." With her free hand she dug in her drawer for her glasses and put them on her face.

Lori was right. Quinn had never left her cell, or really done much of anything beyond punching the wall. What point was there in escaping? Even a kett failure preferred her mysterious and beautiful mother to the broken thing her youngest daughter was. Quinn simply sat there, one lavender eye staring at the cracks she had made in the wall, trying to understand why the universe wouldn't just let her die.