Partner

Gahhhhh I'm bored and thus I wrote. But I'm exhausted and sleepy and have no interest in spending the two or three hours writing the next chapter.

Who is it... Breath Holding? Who likes the character interaction between Mik and Paw? Yeah. I keep thinking of that.

Anyways...

Read, Review and Enjoy.





“DNA tests are back,” Koln handed the reports out to everyone the next morning at the meeting, “Essuan has a certain immune type that none of Souse’s tribe have. Paw has a similar immune type but not quite.”

“Uh…” Mik raised his hand questioningly.

“Your body is attracted to someone with an immune system least similar to yours. Means their immune and your immune makes a new, better immune,” Koln responded quickly, “chances of the child coming out deaf are one in a thousand. Blind, one in five hundred. Mute, one in one hundred.”

“The hell?” Edno snapped, looking over the reports, “these have got to be wrong. If the possibility of such a broken child was so high, why would they couple?”

“Sidhe don’t know-” Koln started.

“Don’t know my ass. They talk about good blood and bad blood,” Edno growled, “Paw has good blood. Souse wanted his blood mingled with the tribe’s.”

“Essuan’s pairing with anyone else proves to be more disastrous, if that makes you feel better,” Koln murmured, opening the file he had kept for himself, “pairs with Souse, one in ten the child is born mentally deficient.”

“Wrong coding,” Mik said.

Edno looked up, startled, “how did you know what I was thinking?”

Mik shrugged, “they don’t act like us, what if the DNA sequencing is different? What if the sequencing for being blind is their sequence for being blue eyed?”

“… they have the same DNA as us,” someone growled from across the room.

“Time for you to shut up,” Koln growled back, “if what you suggest is correct, then why then would their heads map the same?”

“Same? Same shape you mean,” Mik responded, “then again, we won’t really know until the new MRI comes in.”

“Palt wants Essuan in for a blood test. Take Souse to the gym or something, he’s getting on everyone’s nerves. Lillow is due for her test, is she still agreeing to it?”

“Seems to be,” her partner murmured.

“Good. Two days from now we’ll be opening a gym room with odd assortments of objects in it. Wood bits, rocks, a few plants and such on. Take your Sidhe, give them the run of the room and select what they want.”

“Another discovery by Mik,” someone muttered vehemently.

“It doesn’t matter who came up with it,” Koln growled, “you are dismissed.”

The others filed out of the room one by one until Mik and Koln were alone. Mik wasn’t quite certain he wanted to have a conversation with Koln, let alone about this. Too much… he was asking too much.

“Yes, Mik?” Koln looked over the DNA sequencing as he spoke, not looking up as he turned the page.

“I… was wondering if I could ask a favour.”

“Favour?” Koln looked up.

“Mm,” Mik shifted in his sheet, “Ehm… a night without cameras.”

“Why?”

“For Paw.”

“Something he wants…”

“Something important to him.”

“And so you are willing to be indebted to me to gain this thing that is so important to Paw?” Koln murmured as Mik began to wonder if Koln knew what Mik wanted the night off for.

“Yes.”

Koln sighed and closed the file, setting it to the side before lacing his fingers together and setting them in his lap, “something you want to tell me, Mik?”

A lot of things. Nothing. Everything.

“I love him.” saying it out loud seemed like the stupidest thing he could ever think of to do. Saying it out loud to Koln? He could be yanked from the program.

Koln’s lips pressed into a thin line as he nodded, “we figured as much. Mik. The problem here is that there will come a time when one of you will have to choose. Between your own people and the other’s people. There are only so many steps you can take with him before the others see you as Sidhe.”

“Sidhe is the blood in your veins, not the way you act.”

“Science says that. Common man has seen more than one people child raised by Sidhe. The line is drawn in the sand, Mik. You haven’t come to it, but one day you will and one of you will have to cross over it. There would be no going back. It’s not fair to expect him to give up his life and his people and live amongst our people. Look at what we do to them.

“But it’s not fair, either, for him to expect you to give up your people and become Sidhe. You may not fit in well around here, amongst other men your own age or amongst the systems we have, but does Paw fit where he is? Does Hohi?”

“What are you saying? That there’s no middle ground? I thought that was what this was about. Finding middle ground. Understanding and coming to terms. The others don’t step at all. You, you distance yourself from Essuan to prevent yourself from bonding with her because you’re afraid she’ll die in childbirth, or that the death of another child would kill her. If you don’t take that step, if you can’t meet the, eye to eye, toe to toe at the line, how do you know it’s there?”

“Mik…”

“There might not be a line, there might be nothing there but a strip of no-man’s-land that we’ve all been looking for.”

“That is a very Sidhe thing for you to say.”

“And drawing lines is very people of you. Very military of you. This isn’t a campaign. The Sidhe aren’t the enemy, they are the allies we are trying to befriend. You don’t draw lines in the sand with an ally, you meet on common ground, in the middle. Some of this, some of that.”

“What the hell is with you?”

“I … don’t know.” Mik sighed in frustration.

“You act like a complete fucking retardic idiot and then you come up with philosophical nonsense that completely explains why the rest of us are struggling with our Sidhe while you are making leaps and bounds.”

“It doesn’t take bedding a Sidhe to make friends with it. It just takes compromise and understanding,” Mik responded.

“Which is what I show her each and every day and still nothing. The only reason I’m with the higher partners is because I’m running the program.”

“So… smarten the fuck up.” It was all he could think of to say.

Koln glared at Mik, “I’ll tell you what…”

“What?”

“I’ll give you that night… if you draw me a map to the middle ground.”



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