Something to Applaud

Red Pow-Gai, the highest hand, the hand that all players dream of. Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of diamonds for the poker hand. Ace and King of hearts for the blackjack hand. Marpessa had to concentrate on pretending to be bored and uninterested as she waited for the other player to bet. She glanced briefly at the pile of coins in the middle of the table – golden Harkoen five crowns – just briefly, not greedily.

The other players wanted to consider their bets carefully, to finger their cards, to re-arrange them several times to get the best hands. Finally the other player threw a five crown piece onto the top of the pile.

"Are you sure that's all?" As soon as Marpessa spoke the words, she wished them back inside of her mouth. Such an obvious comment! The other players would know that Marpessa was wishing for the pot to grow richer.

"That piece is more valuable then you think, girl! It is the currency of the dead!"

Startled, Marpessa forced her eyes off her cards. It was her grandmother, Momma Fortula. But Marpessa quickly answered, "I know old woman, I saw you steal it from Alessio. It is worth five crowns to the living and the dead! Bet!"

"No, the dead count differently. Here is something for you to think on granddaughter, all those years, crying over the dead for three days, all of the money I took for that was stolen. It only takes one true tear to release a soul."

"Why tell me this now? I don't make my living in fake mourning. Bet!"

"I didn't always fake it you know." The old woman laughed quietly to herself, but did not bother to look up at Marpessa, she only continued to re-arrange her cards. "I am waiting for him to bet," Momma Fortula pointed to the third player at the table, StJohn Treegarden.

He looked like she remembered him, his wavy blonde hair falling across his forehead even though he had carefully combed it to the side. She could tell by the way he was leaning his chin on his hand that he had been staring at her for some time. His cards were still face down in front of him.

"StJohn!" she said.

"Yes Marpessa? Oh, yes, my bet . . . sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" She stared into his face. He seemed so happy. How could he have killed himself?

"Out of money again . . ."

~~~

"Computer, increase volume," she said.

The singers on the stage became louder, their operatic voices rising to the balcony where Marpessa sat, stomping her feet to make sure she was awake. She calmed herself by looking at the holograms in the chairs around her. A woman in a violet evening gown sat at her left. A man in a black and white suit sat at her right. Her grandmother and StJohn were not there. They were in the land of the dead and dreams and Marpessa was in the holodeck of the USS Scorpion.

"Computer, if I fall asleep again, increase the volume until I wake up."

"Understood," the computer efficiently answered.

Marpessa's dreams were driving her to flee from sleep. She spent her time in noisy places, drinking coffee, her eyes wide and staring. She had picked this program because it was loud – the opera Don Giovanni – and she hoped it would keep her awake so that the ghosts of StJohn and her grandmother could not haunt her dreams. As she watched, she began to regret choosing the story of a man who went to hell because he never fell in love.

She felt the movement of air across the back of her neck. The holodeck door had slid open, and then shut. She leaned over the railing of the balcony and looked down. White's hair made him easy to spot. So did his uniform. Its dull gray and black contrasted the bright colors of the evening clothes the holographic audience members wore.

She pulled her padd out of her pocket and tapped in the command to have the computer change her uniform into an evening gown. She quickly specified that her shoes would not be changed. The dress the computer selected was deep red, low cut and long. It hid her boots well.

The first act of the opera ended. Marpessa stood up with the rest of the crowd and began to move slowly towards the holodeck door. Even though she was surrounded by holograms, she felt exposed. The air felt strange on her neck and shoulders. The dress was lower than anything she had worn before, so she self-consciously folded her hands over her chest.

White had followed Marpessa through the ship, intending to bury the Hatchet once and for all. She'd led him on a tortuous route through the bowels of the ship, and White wondered why on earth she would be going so far out of her way. In a flash of sudden understanding, as he watched her check the next corridor, he realized she was avoiding someone. Avoiding White himself, most likely. He'd dropped back even further, letting her distance him. He didn't want to panic her. He'd worked out – from the number of areas in the ship she'd bypassed - that she was either heading for the bridge, or the Holodecks. She wasn't rostered on, so he surmised that she was off duty and heading for the holodeck.

He'd waited a decent amount of time before following her into the holodeck, and when he entered it was dark, and an opera was being played out on a stage. A packed hall watched and listened, and White wondered how he was going to find her. The scene drew to a close, and the holographic patrons stood for intermission. White walked back to the holodeck door standing openly in the arch, so Marpessa would have to leave past him.

He was beginning to wonder if she'd already slipped past him, when his attention was caught by something he knew was out of place in a holodeck. As good as the programming for realism got, there were some things a holodeck just couldn't spare the processing power to accomplish. Especially in crowds, where there were many figures for the computers to keep track of, the computer just couldn't handle the complex realism of a live person. What he'd seen was a woman covering her cleavage with her hands. A modest gesture that the computer could not, and probably wouldn't have tried to mimic in one of its holographic denizens. He slipped through the crowd of people, sliding gently through the crowd until he dodged one final person and fetched up directly in front of her.

"Hello, Marpessa." He said.

"White!" She said, "If you will excuse me, I would like to be alone." She turned to walk back up the stairs to her balcony seat, rudely pushing audience members aside as she went. On the first landing she stopped to look behind her. She saw White's namesake white head of hair following her.

She ran up the next flight as quickly as she could. She was thankful that she had remembered to keep her boots on; she would not have been able to move so quickly in the delicate high heels the female holograms wore. At the top of the stairs, she hid behind a long velvet drape that was held back with a braided cloth rope. While she waited for White to push through the people and continue his climb to the top, she wondered how his monofilament blade would feel as it lashed through the exposed flesh of her neck. She pulled the velvet drape close to her and leaned her cheek against it.

White appeared at the top of the stairs and walked towards the chairs at the front of the balcony. Marpessa pulled the rope from the drapes, threw it over White's head and pulled backwards with all of her strength.

Surprised by her attack, White let his instincts take over. He fell backwards, falling with Marpessa's tug. He avoided a broken neck, but the rope garrote gave him a nasty burn. He scrambled back to his feet and lunged at Marpessa, grabbing her wrists. She immediately twisted in his grasp, and launched her knee upwards at his groin. White caught her up-rushing thigh with his knee, preventing her from connecting with his…vital organs.

"Marpessa!" He said, as she tried to headbutt him. White knew he had to end this before someone got hurt. He pushed her backwards, squashing her against the wall behind. He slipped his legs between her thighs as the impact knocked her off balance, and used his chest to hold her immobile, pinning her hands against the wall. Chest to chest he held her, knowing how difficult it was to extricate oneself from such a pin by a heavier person. She tried to butt him again, and he used his higher shoulder to brace her head against the wall. White was suddenly aware of the intimacy of his hold, and uncomfortably aware of Marpessa's breasts pressing against his chest. She was panting hard, her breath hot against his neck. With an effort, he forced his mind back to business.

"Marpessa. I'm not here to fight you. Relax. Please."

His uniform felt rough and unforgiving against the tops of her breasts. She let go of the fighting spirit within her and closed her eyes. She stopped trying to push his arms back. Her hands relaxed open, palms toward White. She stopped trying to squeeze her thighs shut and let her legs relax. When her body softened, White fell more deeply into her.

The theatre lights blinked twice, and them dimmed. The second half of the opera began. As the two humans in the holodeck remained locked in their strange embrace, the stage curtain was swept aside, to reveal a simple stage setting. This act took place in hell, in Satan's sitting room, so to speak. The set designer decorated the stage with one oversized piece of furniture, a throne wide enough for two people to sit in, padded in bright scarlet, with golden rococo scrolls building up to a flame-like point. A singer took the stage. "Don Giovaaaaaannnni, I've come for you . . ." So Satan announced his arrival to the soulless lover, Don Giovanni.

She started to say, 'White.' She opened her eyes, then her mouth, but said "StJohn."

~~~

"She just called to you, go to her, see her again, hold her." Momma Fortula said. After Marpessa left the card table, Momma Fortula reshuffled the cards and asked StJohn to cut the deck. Then, she laid them out on the table as she spoke.

"I can't," he said.

"You can, just get up and walk over to your brother."

StJohn stood, smoothed his hair, straightened his clothes, and left the table.

~~~

White felt his world tilt, his vision blurring, Marpessa's face swimming under his gaze. He felt a rushing sensation, that of falling quickly, the strains of Don Giovanni's pleas for life sounded ghostly in his ears. He felt Marpessa's pubic bone pressing against his thigh, smelled the soft scent from her hair, and it felt familiar. He'd smelled this hair before, and beneath it, the delicate aroma of her skin.

"Marpessa." He croaked, his voice suddenly hoarse. Why was he having so much trouble thinking? Why was the room so hot? Why had she called him StJohn? That wasn't his…

His head cleared and finally he could see clearly. He took a deep breath almost tasting the fragrance of a just-cut frond of heather in Marpessa's hair. He released her wrists, and slid his fingers delicately along the exposed flesh of her arms, drawing his touch towards the center of her body. He dropped his head, pressing his lips to the side of her neck, at the apex of her collarbone. He felt the skin of her arms rise in gooseflesh, and he kissed her again higher this time. His fingers reached her body, and trailed their way downwards, until they found her hips.

"Mao-Ming will never find us in here, Marpessa." StJohn murmured, His lips touching her between words.

The sensual feel of his hands on her hips terrified her more than when they pinned her wrists to the wall. She thought he was the kind of asshole who would fuck her before he killed her. Here he was, babbling on about Mao-Ming, his previous murder victim. But she played along. Her arms were still over her head. She hadn't moved them once he let her go. She brought them down around his neck and felt the burn the drapery rope had given him.

His lips moved higher, up her neck, her chin. As he reached her lips, she quickly turned her head to the side to avoid meeting his lips with hers. Instantly, she regretted it because her tortured mind thought that her survival depended on making this last. So she turned her face to his, and met his lips with hers. Their kiss was so tender, so true, that she ran her fingers upward through his white hair.

Then she remembered that she was kissing White. She moved her hands down, over the front of his chest, then around, under his arms and lower until she held the small of his back. As she flicked her tongue in and out of his mouth, she moved her hand between his legs. It was there, long, stiff, easy to find. Slowly, she stroked upwards and pulled it out of his trouser sheath.

StJohn Gasped as he felt her fingers trail up his hip, and he kissed her again under the ear. Then she wasn't touching him any longer, and she was stabbing him with a knife. White flashed his hand inside the arc of the deadly blade she'd taken from his trousers, as the tip penetrated his jacket and sliced into his torso. He twisted her hand, and the knife fell to the floor, the blade sinking into the floor, quivering upright. White wondered, groggily, what had happened to him - dick was as hard as stone and his left hand was stuck in the shoulder strap of Marpessa's dress.

"What..?" He said, before Marpessa finally connected with her head. He staggered backwards, lights exploding in his brain. He saw, vaguely, Marpessa stumbling towards the stairs, when she fell sideways. He instinctively flung an arm out, and only succeeded in catching her dress as she slid backwards. He was left with a fistful of holographic material that vanished when he dropped it. He saw, through the haze of his pain, the broad, smooth expanse of her thigh exposed by the torn dress. For some reason, as he steadied himself with against the balcony railing, he found his gaze locked on a tiny, heart shaped mole on the inside of her thigh.

That's a familiar sight! He thought to himself, giggling because he knew there was no way the thought could be accurate. He'd never seen her thigh before.

Marpessa backed away from White. She didn't dare to take her eyes off of his to look behind her. She knocked over the chair she was sleeping in earlier, and collided with one of the holographic audience members. It didn't stop her; she kept moving back to escape. When she reached the balcony railing, she was unable to stop the momentum she had created, and so she fell backwards. She felt the rush of air go past her, and the skirt of her long red dress flutter about her legs as she fell.

White watched her drop, his head suddenly clearing as he launched forward, reaching to stop her fall. Safety protocols on a holodeck meant she couldn't be killed by the fall, but she could be badly injured by the sheer kinetic energy of her passage. His hands, made clumsy from her attack, closed on her bare knee, and slipped immediately down her leg. He was insanely aware of the firm muscle under his fingers, at the incredible, silky feel of the skin. She continued to drop, and his fingers snapped together as the toe of her boot slid from his grasp.

She landed in front of the great red and golden throne that dominated the stage. To the left of the throne, a line of female chorus members qued up to face Don Giovanni, challenging him to remember their name. If he could remember just one lover's name, he would be set free from Satan's contract. But name after name was wrong. Marpessa didn't feel any pain at first. She just knew the falling had stopped because the air was still again.

White slid his fingers through the grille of the railing, pulling himself over and down, slinging himself down to the stage in a controlled fall. He thought to ensure Marpessa was uninjured, but landing on the stage, his foot slid on the smooth, dusty floorboards and he fell, smashing his already abused forehead on the back edge of the throne. He swooned again, his eyes fixing on the smear of blood left by his head. That's odd. I'm not supposed to be able to hurt myself in here! This is the holodeck. Some dickhead must have turned the overrides off…. He heard himself think, as if shouted from a great distance, and through interference such as heavy rain.

~~~

"StJohn, you must go back there now!!" Momma Fortula stood at the card table and raised her cane at him.

"No, she didn't know it was me. No matter what I say, she will think my brother is speaking to her." He sat down, and began flipping the cards off the table.

"Listen close, I am going to tell you something only she and I know, then you go back there, to your brother, and tell her. She will know that you have been here with me." With that, she leaned close to StJohn and began to whisper.

~~~

Slowly, painfully, Marpessa rolled over and tried to crawl away from him, towards the front of the stage. The holographic audience members continued to watch the opera with mixed expressions of boredom, excitement and sorrow. A few of them were crying and Marpessa silently cursed them for that. She felt like crying but she kept her tears in. White would not get the satisfaction of her tears, an easy fuck, or an easy kill.

He blinked again, his vision suddenly clearing once more, a hot rivulet of blood trickling down his nose. He wiped at it ineffectually, and swayed to his knees. He saw Marpessa ahead of him, also crawling. She looked hurt. Well, I know one way of curing hurt. A long, hard…

"Marpessa…" StJohn called. "The most delightful old woman just told me you've got some coins hidden in your boot! Don't you think Alessio would like them back? Or better yet, why don't you give me odds on that I can give you a night that you'll never forget. Ah ha ha." He laughed, dragging himself to his feet, and stumbling across to Marpessa's delicious body. He tripped over her exquisite foot, measuring his length beside her. He managed to land on his back, a maneuver he'd practiced through long nights in one tavern after another, and gazed upwards into her eyes. They were just as beautiful as ever. Her hair all but obscured them, though, and he reached up and gently tucked the offending fronds back behind her ear. Some of her hair had tangled in with her eyelashes, so his touch seemed to pull at her eyes.

She rolled onto her back and brought her knees up so that the soles of her boots were flat on the stage floor. Pushing her feet into the stage, she felt them, two on the left, three on the right. The morning after she stole them, she hid them, first to keep her grandmother from stealing them back. After her grandmother died she kept them there because the feel of them against her foot calmed her. "Who told you about the coins?"

"A delightful old dame who taught me to play a game called Bezique - and who insists that I call her momma." Stjohn said. He gave her one of his famous winning smiles, and all at once noticed, oh-so-innocently, that he could see, from his vantage point, the pink arc of her nipple rising from the top of her neckline, like the sun rising over a bank of red clouds at dawn.

She rolled onto her side and stared into White's gray eyes. First she said, "Computer, end opera." The richly-dressed Don Giovanni and his host of lovers disappeared. The red and gold throne remained, so did the theatre stage and audience. Then she said, "Who are you?"

StJohn paused, trying to regain his composure. Difficult, when one was lying on one's back, streaming ribbons of blood from a head wound. Nevertheless, no one had ever said that StJohn Treegarden could not answer that question with aplomb, be it from a husband in the dark of a wardrobe, or from a beautiful half dressed woman, crawling around an operatic stage.

"My dear Marpessa. Has it been so long that you cannot remember the voice of your dear StJohn? My, you're like all women: unless you keep them begging for more, they'll forget you in a trice!" He joked, sliding his finger along her jaw line.