by
Fandom: Titan AE
Rating: R
Pairing: Cale/Korso
Author's Note: This story is set 10 years after the movie. We never saw Korso die and this is my musing about what might have happened.
That said, I'm not entirely happy with this story despite the fact that I worked on it for over 3 years. So here it is, I've stuck a fork in it.
Copyright and Disclaimer: Titan AE and the characters of Cale, Korso, etc. are copyright 20th Century Fox. I make no claims to ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
Cale wound his way through the dimly lit and frankly grimy corridors of what had once been New Bangkok. Once a thriving, bustling colony, the large space station lay largely abandoned, only a few holdouts remained as residents, the rest of the inhabitants having moved to NE — as New Earth had commonly become known (or "Planet Bob" as Cale affectionately thought of it.)
He wasn't here to convince the last of the "spacers" to become "n'earthers". Part of New Bangkok had become a prison, and he had come to visit its most notorious prisoner.
Korso.
As part of Korso's punishment for having betrayed the human race to the Drej, it was decided that he should never set foot upon New Earth, but neither should he be allowed to forget the magnitude of his crime. Korso's cell featured a large bay window, permanently aligned to NE. He would spend the rest of his life looking at the eden he had almost destroyed.
"Miserable bastard" the guard accompanying Cale snarled, "I don't see why we can't just space the mongrel."
"Because," Cale said after a moment, "because then his punishment would be over. And also because, in the end, it was his actions that saved us all. He did what he did knowing that he would live to be hated. So, no, officer, I think he's being punished enough."
In a few moments they reached the door to Korso's cell.
"You can leave us." Cale said to the guard.
"My orders -"
"Fuck your orders. Leave. Us. Alone. If I need help, I'll call for you on the link. Now let me in."
Cale entered the cell, which was larger than he thought it would be, and dimly lit. The far end of the room consisted of nothing but window, providing a breathtaking view of NE. Noting the remnants of adhesive on the floor, Cale surmised that Korso's cell had once been a large carpeted meeting or banquet room. For the last 10 years, it had comprised the whole of Korso's world.
A solitary figure sat cross-legged on the floor at the far end of the room, gazing out at NE.
Korso.
Feet clomping on the bare steel floor, Cale strode toward the sitting man, who gave no acknowledgment at all to the fact that someone had entered his domain. Cale wondered what the years had been like to Korso. The last time he saw Korso had been a glimpse on a vidscreen. Cale had switched it off — he did not want to see Korso. The pain was still too fresh. When asked, he had simply stated that Korso should have to live with his crime, and left it at that, not wanting any further involvement with the trial or with the emerging governments and politics of NE.
The people would've made him a King, a god, if he had let them.
He didn't let them.
Cale had gotten the fuck off of NE at the first opportunity. He then spent the next 10 years running across the galaxy.
He wondered what he would look like to Korso. Cale still felt like a wild 17 year old — most times. On some days he felt like a sad old man of 50, and on others he felt like a 27 year old who had had one moment of shining glory and hadn't done shit with his life since. Physically, 10 years of roughnecking had left him with new scars, 20 more pounds of muscle, an inch of height.
When he was almost on top of Korso, Cale spoke, "Cap'n."
Korso turned his head, limned in light, and looked, "C-Cale?" he said, his voice breaking.
"Yes."
Korso turned back and looked at the hands folded in his lap. "Get out," He said after a moment.
"No." Cale laughed humorlessly. "I'm here now, and one way or another we are going to deal with each other, with what happened 10 years ago, and the ghost of my father."
"'The ghost of my father.' Now that's an interesting way to put it."
"I found him, you know."
Korso looked up, eyes flashing a kaleidoscopic mixture of emotions: wild joy, hope, bitter resentment. "Really." He said after a moment, his voice devoid — too devoid — of emotion.
"Yes."
"How is he?"
"Dead." At Korso's baffled gaze, Cale continued, "I was roughnecking it on a recycling yard -"
"What?!"
Cale swallowed hard and replied, "I didn't stick around after the trial. This is my first visit back to NE in about 10 years. I packed my clothes, left Akeema a note, and stowed away on the first outbound freighter I could find. I - I was becoming a living legend. I hated it. I still hate it. I didn't want to be the person they wanted me to be. I couldn't be that person. I wasn't ready yet."
"And are you now?" A bit of sarcasm, a bit of the old Korso tinged the words.
"No. But I know how to deal with all of that. I think ... I hope." "Akeema?"
"Pissed as ever." They both laughed and Cale said, "She's found another — kinda like I hoped she would. I mean, it would've been a hell of an ego stroke if she had waited for me, but Akeema is nothing if not a realist. I was gone. I didn't say when I was coming back, so she found someone. And let me tell you, Karen makes her life a merry hell."
"Karen?"
"Yes, Karen." And Cale left it at that. "Your father?" Korso prompted.
"My father. Like I said, at a recycling yard we got an old Monopod Cruiser to dismantle. Remember those? I popped the hatch and one of my buddies and I went in to see if there was anything to salvage before we took it apart. We found my father frozen in one of the chairs. Who knows — maybe he died in his sleep, maybe the life support failed. The log books gave no clue.
"Anyhow, I took a few days off to sort through things." Cale took a deep breath, and forcing his voice to remain steady, said, "I read his diary."
"Oh." Korso said in a small voice.
"He suspected that you were in love with him. Were you?"
Several moments passed, both men watched clouds scudding over the surface of NE. Finally Korso said, "Yes. Yes, I was."
"But he didn't return that love."
"Not in the way I wanted, no."
"Why?" Cale asked — the loaded word carrying volumes of meaning.
Korso finally turned and looked Cale full in the face. Cale drew an involuntary gasp when he saw the full extent of the scars etched into the left side of that once magnificent visage; Korso's left eye, iris ruptured, pupil distorted into a bizarre oblong, fixed him in its sightless stare.
"You don't know how I've dreaded this moment." Korso rasped, slowly, stiffly climbing to his feet. He limped toward a small table and poured himself a glass of water. "I'd pour you one, but I only have one of anything." He said in passing, before draining the cup. "You don't know how I've dreaded this moment." Korso repeated, settling with a pained hiss into a chair. "I think it might be easier if I could face you as an older version of the man you remembered — instead of in this scarred and broken body — imposing, in the prime of my life.
"You turned out much the way I thought you would, by the way.
"Yes, I loved your father, worshipped him, held him up as the ideal of what a man should be. Of what I should be. And then he left. He left on that final journey, and he didn't take me with him. I wondered, Cale, I wondered if he had died, or if I had driven him away. Either way, I felt abandoned. I felt useless and hopeless, and as I watched the human race decay little by little, watched us become refugees — shat on refugees — I began to hate. I hated my race. I hated myself. I hated your father. I think you can identify with that last one."
Cale nodded.
"So, one day, an agent of the Drej came to me. Came to me after a particularly dark patch in my life, and made me an offer." Korso chuckled mirthlessly. "And I said yes. Why not? It was a way to rid the galaxy of the embarrassment we had become, and it was a final act of revenge against your father.
"And then I met you. So much for my plan — ah, but I was locked into it at that point. And now we are here in this place, and now you know. Satisfied?"
Cale said nothing, just sat on the table and quietly studied Korso.
What could he say? That he understood the ways in which love turned to bitterness and resentment? Korso knew that. Ironically, Korso had helped him get over the bitterness and resentment he had felt toward his father. That he forgave Korso? What good would the words do? And, would Korso accept them? Should he say that the memory of Korso still haunted his deepest dreams? That he hadn't found the same thing with Akeema, or the others he had shared his bed (but not his heart) with? That even still, a part of him loved and worshipped the "Cap'n"? And that he still wanted him, even in his current state of magnificent ruin.
"I'll see you tomorrow." He said at length.
"Why?"
"We still have unfinished business, you and I." Using his comm link, Cale signaled to the guard that he was ready to leave.
Cale came several times in the next few weeks to visit with Korso. He brought a chess set as well as a backgammon game, figuring that there was no way to get a fighter simulator into Korso's cell, and that the scars that ridged much of the left side of Korso's body would prevent him from being effective in one.
Besides, Cale knew that any idiot — well, almost any idiot — could eventually train fast reflexes. A good fighter also had a swift and agile mind, that is what made them so dangerous. Thinking back on it, Cale realized that that was the thing he had admired the most in Korso all those years ago: that clever, calculating mind. Korso might not be able to run a flight simulator, but he sure as hell could play chess.
The hours passed largely in silence, the occasional word spoken, the clink of the pieces as they moved about the board...."Checkmate!" Korso said with relish as he brought his knight into position.
"Shit." Cale dragged his fingers through his hair and dry scrubbed his locks violently. "Argrrh!" Then he smiled and laughed.
Night had fallen on the planet below. Cale bit his lip pensively for a moment, then asked, "Do you ever miss it? Not being down there?"
"What do you think?"
"I don' t know. I think on the one hand, having never been on NE, you can't truly miss it, but on the other hand, it's the curiosity that eats at you."
Korso swallowed and said, "And you would be right. Until you returned, my life had been for the past 10 years little more than to look out the window and dream." Korso snorted as if at some joke and continued, "If I understand my history right, out of such conditions come some sort of artistic or philosophical work. Well, I'm not that kind of a person, and there's only so many ways to say, 'Shit, I'd like to run through a green meadow with the sun on my face, or sit beside a lake on a hot day with a cold beer, or pelt some poor fellow with snowballs.' And isn't that — " Korso gestured at the room " — the whole point of this exercise? Why write a book about the obvious? Why wallow in it?"
Cale had no answer to that.
Silence fell over them as they stood at the window, watching the twinkling stars and the golden glimmers of light from NE.
"Why aren't you down there, Cale?" Korso said, breaking the silence. "Why aren't you running through green fields?"
With a long sigh Cale said, "Truth is Cap'n, I don't know how.
"Oh, I remember Earth, and I've been on NE, and I've run through green fields, but frankly, I know space better. Zero G is my natural environment now. Besides, I don't really like the feel of grass under my toes anymore, it feels —" Cale chuckled at the absurdity of what he was about to say "— unnatural to me. Give me no skid steel flooring any day."
"And?" Korso, ever perceptive, pressed in.
"You don't let up, do you?" Ruefully, Cale continued, "I'm still a fucking messiah to them. Akeema? She knows how to treat me. Karen tries to be natural, and I like her a lot, but I keep catching her looking at me with this kind of awe. People down there expect me to be important. To act important. To say and do important things. Hell, whatever I do or say becomes important to them because of who I am.
"I'm just not cut out for that sort of thing, Cap'n. I'm not a great leader. I'm a maverick. I always have been. I always will be. I can deal with respect — honest respect that I earned — but I can't do this worship shit.
"So, where can I go? Space. In space, in the more remote regions, when I'm roughnecking it, there's no room for that kind of worship. I'm liked because I'm just another guy, and I'm good at what I do. But I can't roughneck it forever. It's just not enough.
"I came back up here because you're about the only person in about 70 light years who isn't going to cling to my every fucking word as if worlds hung on it. You treat me like Cale, Cap'n, and that's what I want.
"And," Cale turned and cupped Korso's chin in his hand, index finger tracing the scars, "It's been 10 years, and you broke my heart when you betrayed me to the Drej, but despite all that, I still want you. I still think about you. I think about the storage locker." Cale flushed. He hadn't meant to say all that, but there it was, for better or for worse, out in the open.
"You always were one for letting your feelings come busting out into the open, boy. Even when you tried to hide them." Korso smiled.
"Yeah, well, you're about the only person I can be honest with about it. The folks on NE won't ever understand, and Akeema still hates you with a passion. You understand."
"Understand what?"
"The loneliness." Cale said softly, then panicked when he realized he had said too much again. "I - I have to go now." He signaled the guard on his comm link. "I'll be back tomorrow." He said over his shoulder as he went out the door.
Cale came early the next morning, earlier than usual. Korso was doing sit-ups, hissing with pain, but pushing forward nonetheless.
"Hello, Cap'n." Cale spoke, breaking the silence
"...63...Hello, Cale...64...65..." Korso neither looked his way nor stopped his slow, tortured movements. A sheen of sweat slicked his brow, whether from pain or exertion, Cale could not tell.
Sitting on the floor, gazing out at the blue jewel of the planet below, Cale remembered when a sheen of sweat had slicked Korso's body for another reason entirely. He remembered making Korso sweat that way — and no doubt Korso had made him sweat the same way. A wistful sigh escaped his lips at the memory.
"What's that gust of wind for?" Korso had finished his sit-ups and mopped at the perspiration on his brow with a small towel.
Cale thought about telling Korso of his rembrances, then changed his mind. "I miss affection." He finally said, glancing at Korso's small bed.
"Do you now?" Korso's voice held a bantering tone.
"Yes. I may be younger than you. I may be some sort of messiah, but even as a kid, I've always known what I wanted. And I think you'll recall that I'm not afraid to take what I want."
"I recall that quite clearly." Korso swallowed and licked his lips. "Cale," he said hesitantly, "are you sure this is what you want?"
"Yes, Cap'n." Cale spoke through a mouth gone sand dry.
Korso knelt before Cale and began fumbling with the buttons of his breeches.
Cale stopped him. "No, Cap'n. Not like this. There —" he looked meaningfully toward the bed "— both of us, together."
Korso's face turned ashen, "Cale. I - I can't...I..."
"Yes Captain. You can. You will." Cale hauled Korso up and kissed him tenderly on his scarred cheek. Then a thought struck him. Blushing furiously, Cale stammered, "Um, Cap'n. I mean ... I just thought ... the explosion didn't ... shit. I'll just come out and say it. You still have what it takes, right?"
Korso laughed with relief and said, "Yes Cale, I still have everything, and it all works just fine. I'm just afraid, is all."
"Don't be." Cale pulled Korso to him and claimed his lips in a gentle kiss. The Captain still did have everything, Cale thought, and it was just as impressive as he remembered.
Taking Korso by the hand, Cale led him to the bed. Slipping his hands under Korso's baggy, wash faded smock, Cale drew it over the surprisingly docile Korso's head. Not even pausing to look, he untied the drawstring of Korso's pants and pushed them down to where Korso could step out of them. Then Cale stood back and took a long look at Korso's body. Years ago, the arrangements on Korso's ship and the need for discretion didn't allow for much in the way of intimacy. Despite having gotten and given several handjobs and blowjobs, Cale had never seen all of Korso's body. Now he stood back and drank in the sight.
The thick matrix of scars that ran down most of the left side of Korso's body, served, oddly enough, to enhance Korso's attributes — at least in Cale's eyes. Lean, sinewy muscles flowed over Korso's rangy frame. Hard won muscle, Cale realized. A lesser man would've let his body atrophy rather than endure the pain of exercise. Tentatively Cale reached out and touched Korso's shoulder. "Cap'n...I..." He couldn't get the words out. He hoped his eyes expressed what his tongue could not.
A smile tugged at the edge of Korso's lips, relief flooded his eyes. "C'mere, you." He said, voice hoarse with emotion. Drawing Cale to him, Korso slowly undressed him.
Wordlessly the two of them laid down on the bed. They did not try for the fullest intimacy. Somehow they both knew they weren't ready for that yet. Instead, Cale and Korso gave themselves over to the pleasures of lips, tongues, and fingers, reveling in the feel of damp flesh on flesh, drinking in the heady aroma of arousal. Slowly the heat and feeling built, both of them savoring each new plateau of arousal. In the end both men surrendered to the need, violently thrusting against each other, fingers clawing, lips and tongues ravenous in their hunger to tangle and taste, breathing each other's breath they came, the last frantic spasms of their bodies mixing their seed.
Seconds slowed, stretched out, to Cale it felt as if they were living, breathing, and moving in a world made of honey. Each golden moment slowly drawn out, languid. Not knowing what to say, Cale kissed Korso softly on the forehead then let his eyelids drift down. He could feel sleep stealing over him and welcomed the sensation. Dimly he felt cloth wiping his belly, then breath ticking his collar bone, then nothing but soft warmth of sleep.
When he woke, the twinkling lights of the planet below let Cale know he had slept for several hours. Dressed in his faded smock and trousers, Korso sat before the window, watching NE.
"Boy, am I hungry." Cale said.
"Breakfast isn't for another 2 hours."
"Wow ... they give you what? Two meals a day?"
"This isn't the Ritz, boy." Korso said in an edgy voice.
Cale held his tongue.
"So what now?" Korso asked coldly. "Is this where you dress and walk out the door and maybe I see you again?"
Silence stretched between them for several seconds.
"I don't know, Cap'n." Cale said, in a small voice. "I don't know. If this is the part where I dress and go out the door, where am I going to go? I'm tired of running across the stars, and there's nothing for me on NE. The time I've spent with you here, it's the freest I've been in years. You don't expect anything from me, Cap'n, anything except what I know how to give."
"Could you make this room your world?"
"I think so."
Korso sighed, letting go of his bitterness. "Don't. Not if you have to think about it." In a softer voice he continued, "Not right now. Not like this. Go out to the stars again. One more time. Not to run, but to seek." He gestured at the room, the window, at NE hanging like a jewel in the vast blackness. "This is it, Cale. This is the rest of my life."
Cale climbed off the bed and pulled on his trousers. He crossed the room and sat beside Korso, placing his hand on Korso's shoulder. "Seek, Cap'n?" He asked.
"Seek. This isn't your place, Cale. Not yet, maybe not ever. Here there are only dreams and regrets, might have beens. Go out there and look for something. Do. Be."
Biting his lip, Cale thought about Korso's words. In running across the galaxy, had he really run from responsibility? Opportunity? "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," He murmured under his breath.
"Exactly, Cale. Exactly. If you come back, I will understand. If you don't come back, I will understand, but I can't have you walking in and out of my life, in and out of my heart, whenever the mood suits you. Gather your things and don't walk back through that door unless you mean it."
Beneath them, a golden arc of light edged the planet, bathing it in a warm predawn glow.
Cale squeezed Korso's hand, brought it to his lips, kissed it, dressed and left.
Tomorrow, a month, a year, 5 years, 10 years from now, he might walk back through that door again and happily retire from the larger world. He might die out there amongst the stars. Or, he might find something else out there, something else worth living for.
But he had to take that first step.
He had to find out.
Last Updated: 3/22/2004