#nala answer.

@rasskaz4ik sent : ∞ + 27 (for Pasha from either Nala or Leonard??) the song -> natural by imagine dragons (235 listens)

she's bent, crouched with one arm up and ready, holding onto the softer bo staff that she's employed for herself while pasha has been given solid wood, while the other hand touches the cushioned floor of the training room between defensively spread, wrapped feet. her head pops up, hair she lets stay loose even in these more strenuous sessions flipping back over and out of her face as she gives the kid a grin, toothy and with a bit of blood between them from where he'd gotten her.

"good, you're getting better," the augment rumbles as she rises to her full, minuscule height and takes a step towards him. it's a threat, but not one he has to have any real worry over. "you know what this means, yes?"

@deficd sent : you decided not to make a change. (( khan for nala! ))

@deficd sent : what was that all about? (( khanala! ))

he's behind her before she can turn around to exit the interaction that had taken place a moment before, the other party already distant, but she's not at all shaken by the presence of the man that has implanted himself quite directly into her life. he towers her, but this means little when her ego is as massive as he is.

so, when she turns about with her face there in line with his chest, her boots doing some of the heavy lifting there, she tilts her head back so that jade greens meet those wintry, ethereal blues. she'd swim that sea for decades should he ask or get lost in a tangent of anything that allowed her the opportunity.

"he will be no issue," she hums, melodic in the same way a discordant organ from a century prior would be. but it is clear that this is not enough in the way that the silence lasts a little bit longer. she glances over her shoulder, around his arm, then returns her gaze back up to him.

voice lowers.

@deficd sent : [ hand ] a chivalrous kiss on the back of the partner's hand + you visited me in my dreams last night. (( khanala ))

five years. she has been an official part of the enterprise crew for five years, and they are finally docking back on earth after as much exploration as she had signed on for when she initially enlisted in the augment program. she has friends. people that care and love her, have helped her grow into a more healthy human being. in the end, that is what she calls herself now. five years without the bloodlust and the rage, and she has changed.

but one thing has remained: her love for the man that never came.

the captain that, even knowing the odds, did everything he can for those he knew were still alive in the tubes they were forced into by arbitration, but had not known of her. of all the things that marcus had done to her in the basement of a building deep beneath the surface of the earth that had been worse than even the testing in the augment programs. then, at least, she had consented and been able to claim limits. the man with white hair did not care for any of that.

she is walking with her beloved pasha, stepping off the deboarding ramp and into the port while discussing how the application process for captain was going to go moving forward, little teases about how she would make the best second in command. it is what she was born to do.

"ari'fal."

black boots halt, and it's here she realizes that pavel stopped a few paces back, but his face cannot compare to the blankness upon her features. if mccoy were off the ship and beside her, he'd declare medical shock.

that voice.

nala's jade gaze -tired, older, worn - finds him immediately after he speaks, and though she remains still, each inch of tissue inside of her skin is swirling into a whirlpool of mixed emotions. she fears that he is a hallucination, but pavel comes to her side and barely grazes her hand with his, and she can feel the tension in the young russian as well. but nala steps forward, until she is square in front of him.

khan noonien singh. her captain, her truth, her home, lost to time and complexities beyond her control.

"you visited me in my dreams last night," the augment king states, taking her hand up into his and brushing his lips against her knuckles, no longer stained with blood, but scarred over. when he releases her hand, it drops back to her side, the diagnoses of a doctor not present still ringing true as her brain tries to process the fact that he is, indeed standing before her now. khan's fingers lightly touch at the flared sleeve of her more casual crimson uniform, the black undershirt that covers the declarations of war scrawled in white ink on her bicep. "red was always your color."

so casual, as if it has not been centuries since they last spoke, or saw one another in something aside from a screen capturing a moment passed.

propriety and condemnation be damned.

the woman jolts her hand up, grabbing her former captain by the front of his shirt and yanking him down those two feet to her level, her lips pressing to his as the other arm hooks around the back of his neck. tears, constructed of silver that matches the olde of her hair now gone white with something she cannot explain, roll down her face and wet her skin heavily, even as she separates from him by the few inches necessary to speak in that hoarse husk.

@deficd sent : [05.] sender fucks receiver against a wall, holding a leg up to support them. (( is this too soon for khanala ))

nothing has never intimidated the commander that has spent the last four nights pretending to slip into her own cabin after assuring that the surveillance systems were conveniently triggered, shut off, so that she could slip into the captain's quarters just beside her own. there is no doubt that every augment that has been assigned to the botany bay can be trusted wholly with any information, as well as their lives, but this? it is too new, and too precious. too sacred for anyone outside of the two to know about yet.

nala has loved khan for years. accepted and recognized it for months.

the dance that had ensued after that recognition had been a parallel to that which had led to his role as captain, and her his commander. he had pushed, demanded equality and proven it was deserved, then relented when the pressure had been near its peak. that had resulted in an quite unceremonious admission, not of that love buried deep in her chest and within her guts, but that she not only saw him as a powerful figurehead, a leader, but a sexual being as well. that, led to this, only a short time later.

nothing has ever intimidated commander nala k'haresh ari'fal.

not until now.

CHARACTER HEADCANON GENERATOR

Rules: Mark if the HC is wrong or right.

nala, leonard, butcher, klaus and xephyr.

tagged by: @rasskaz4ik for nala & leonard, and stolen for the others! tagging: @wihlted, @awkwardcourage, @garglemyballsack, @thcbvtcher / @starliqqht, @etharest && you !! tag me so i can see it.

NALA.

she is an introvert. ✘ she is awful with technology and don't know how to use a smart phone. ✘ she is constantly singing for no reason. ✘ she listens to 80s music. ✔ she is not good with social cues. ✔ explanation: she's not introverted, she's just better than all of the people around her and refuses to lower herself to interacting with them. she is a tech wiz and picked up the technology of starfleet within days despite the 300 year gap between it and what she had last utilized. she never sings; it is a waste of valuable time, air and energy and you're not worthy of hearing it. she loves classical by modern standards when she's officially enlisted in starfleet, favoring the beastie boys, queen, cyndi lauper, ac/dc and guns 'n' roses. she doesn't have time or enough care to figure out if you're sad because you're frowning or distant; tell her or fuck off.

LEONARD.

he gets ready for christmas way to early. ✘ he stole a lollipop at the checkout when he was 5 and he still feels guilty about it. ✔ he is not allowed to drink energy drinks. ✔ he likes to sing at four in the morning. his neighbors hate him. ✘ he had an emo phase. ✘ explanation: he actually doesn't celebrate christmas for a very long time because it's a sore spot after his divorce from angelina, though he will get gifts for his mama and serena, and after ellie mae is born he starts to decorate with more emphasis after lizzy comes to live with them. he didn't even realize it was stealing until he was in the truck with his dad eating it and mark asked where'd you get that champ and leonard suddenly felt so bad even though later on maggie told him that his dad actually paid for it. less that he's not allowed, he just won't because they're really bad for the health of humans and he prefers coffee anyway. even if he does sing, that early even, it's never that loud because it would be a lullaby for ellie mae or something soft for serena only for whoever it is aimed at, very quiet and private. that man has been y'all'd to death; he didn't wrassle gators for you to assume he would let his hair get in the way or his phat ass would fit in skinnies.

BUTCHER.

he shops exclusively at hot topic. ✘ he sings in the shower. ✘ he can't sit in a chair properly. ✔ he has punched a hole in the wall. ✔ if he was presented with an intergalactic portal, he would enter it without question. ✔ explanation: he looks like it, if we were talking about older hot topic but we're not; he looks like he's from the porno version of the matrix, get it right, GOD, IDIOTS!!! he dies in the shower occasionally, but he doesn't really sing often enough for it to be definitive, though he has caught himself being n*sync pilled by nelly a time or two after she was taken by vought. he manspreads, one leg up with knee towards his chest, criss cross applesauce, you name it; never correct, always radiating phat dick energy. this one's a given, on purpose and on accident and while fistfighting god (homelander) or his daughter. hell yeah he's going through that, his first wife came out of one so there's probably all kinds of cool shit in there!

KLAUS.

he has punched a hole in the wall. ✔ he killed princess diana. ✘ he likes board games, but no one else wants to play with him. ✔ he has one, very simple word that he cannot figure out how to pronounce. ✔ he got hit by a bus once. ✔ explanation: purposely and in the midst of a fight several times but it was more 'damn i need to check if this arm works and can go through brick'. baby no. it's not that no one wants to play with him, it's that he cannot bring himself to play games again because he used to play with lore every tuesday and friday all night long, and it just brings up too many painful memories and flashbacks. you leave that man and his heavy german accent alone. is this really surprising, or that he survived and just kinda got up and kept running from the dynacorp cops.

XEPHYR.

tiles are cold. biting. they dig into knees and the softer parts of shins where the muscle hasn't almost entirely deteriorated from lack of use over — how many years had they said it had been? three hundred something? and now, she is further in the drowning depths of being a lab rat than she had been even when the tune had shifted from military volunteer to augment.

head hangs low as it can with her wrists bound up to the tile walls by solid metal cuffs and chains, her shoulders leaned forward and body slumped. nala cannot tell how many days — or if it's been weeks, months, years — since she had originally been placed in this cell, but she does know that the man with white hair is coming, and that he will bring with him endless pain. extended suffering that pierces through the walls built up over nearly a decade of intentionally causing herself harm alongside brothers and sisters in order to craft immunity to everything they believed could be thrown at them.

but this is different. they use the fallen of that family to pick and prod and peel back the flesh of wounds they cause to see if there is anything they can manage to utilize for themselves.

who they are, she does not know.

the men that come into her cell always wear either a uniform of some sort, though, so she assumes military, even if the medical staff that draw her blood and commit the atrocities themselves at the behest of the uniformed ones wear scrubs and whites. perhaps, she wonders, they had come full circle and made it all the way back to earth.

back home.

though it has not been home for longer than she can remember.

the heavy, creaking door opens, that sound rousing her from the near delirium she's begun to fall into thanks to lack of sleep, food, and water. head lifts, silver hair parting around face that's gone pallid, and she swears she must have died.

him.

her captain — @deficd. the man that had vowed to be with them all through everything. he stands before her in the last thing she recalls him wearing before they were forced into isolated cryosleep. a black long sleeve she swears she can smell, black trousers, bloused into his boots the way that he had taught her to do so when they first entered the augment program together.

her body shivers, lower lip quivering in the seconds it takes him to step closer, to kneel in front of her and take her chin in his hand. place a finger to chapped and torn, busted and bruised lips. "hush." his voice, as if it has not been a day since the last time they spoke. "say nothing. give nothing." it is an order, despite the kindness that laces the tone — the way he pulls finger back from her lips to allow that hand to assist in cradling her head and keep it aloft.

it's oh, so heavy now.

"it is not your fault," he whispers, and it is gospel. it is the vaccine for the guilt that had begun seeding itself in her belly when she had seen their fallen brethren's bodies; photographs in a strange device shown to her by the man with white hair so she could see just how many of them had been cracked out of their tubes and used before she had the honor of being revived, giving them the bulk of the results for their research. the blossoming tree it had begun to grow into withers with his words, repeated, again in a harsher tone that echoes not the adoration she places on him, but the command he possesses over her.

"it is not your fault."

his hand comes across her cheek. rough, fast, painful. her head jerks to the side, and she's hovering in that position for a moment.

"GET UP."

her head returns to the previous position, and her commander? her captain? the only love she has ever known herself to possess? is gone. whatever fragmented part of her brain had summoned him has deemed the job done, and so she spits blood to the side of herself before pulling her wrists towards her center, using that leverage to haul herself to her feet, bare and as bruised and broken as the rest of her body.

jade stare sets on the pane of glass thirty feet across the plain white room from her. on the door that had never actually opened. her chest aches with the realization that captain khan noonien singh is likely dead, and yet the figment bolsters her still.

"bring to me the man with white hair."

a demand, made by the minuscule woman that had once commanded a crew more powerful than these whelps can understand.

@deficd sent : did you two have a nice chat? (( coming in swinging with khan 4 nala ))

there is a quirk to the woman's brow as her fellow augment approaches and the program director walks away, her small but now more powerful body turning on the flat toes of her uniform boots so she can look that long way up to khan, hidden stars of realization in her eyes as that lofts thing then furrows with its twin. her arms tighten around the manilla envelope within them, and she lets her chin tilt down some.

she cannot tell, for it is too soon and there has been no admission on either side — does he even know? or is he being aggressive for the sake of the position at stake? does he even feel similarly?

"i will have you know, mister singh," the woman begins, shifting those lithely toned arms to extend that envelope out to him should he wish to take it, her heart athunder in her chest behind the collected outward visual of her. "that was director bathory, and i was merely receiving the copy intended for my records of my pulling out of the running for captain."