The Orville Fic: And Dream I Do: Chapter 1
Dec. 8th, 2024 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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puppetficChapter: 1/?
Word Count: 4,437 (Chapter 1)
Here’s the thing: Alara Kitan is not in love with her sister.
She returns to her home after saying goodbye to her friends—her family. They’d been her family for so long, but now she has blood love, now she has the loving arms of her mother and the loving arms of her father and the loving soft wonderful beautiful enchanting holy divine soft otherworldly graceful arms of her sister. Her crew was wonderful in every way imaginable, but she’s spent time with them, she has lived that life, she’s filled the void of adventure. She has seen so many things, lived so many lives, but she hasn’t had her family.
She hasn’t had Solana. Solana hasn’t taken her yet. She hasn’t been close to her sister, and oh, how she wants to be close to her sister, how she wants to be the first person Solana comes to when she’s in distress, how she wants to watch Solana try on wedding gowns tomorrow, how she thinks of Solana in her sleep, how she craves the unknown forbidden closeness more than anything else.
But she’s not in love with her sister. Obsessed? Maybe, but who wouldn’t be? Who, in her position, wouldn’t develop an obsesion with someone like Solana? Her family brags about Solana, and it infuriates Alara, and it makes Alara stir within, and it makes a warmth spread between Alara’s thighs, and there’s too much complication and not enough relief. She isn’t in love with her sister for a lot of reasons, the first of which being that in almost every Union world this is seen as fucking disgusting, and if Alara is in love with her sister then she is irrevocably, unbearably disgusting. She used to think she was deeply unfit for her job, and if she’s in love with Solana, she is deeply unfit for life.
So no, she isn’t in love with Solana. She’s just.
She’s been feeling a lot better since the Orville left. She’s been able to walk from her mobility chair to her bed and back, she’s able to get to the bathroom and to shower, but her sister doesn’t know that. Her father is off doing research of his own, and her mother is cleaning their bedroom, so only Solana is available to help Alara out of her chair and onto their sofa. She’s in the middle of an old Earth series called Jersey Shore right now, and sometimes, if she’s lucky, if the moons smile upon her with enough blessings, Solana will stick around, sit by her side with her arm around Alara, and laugh about the show with her. Silly humans and their silly antics. Life was so different back then. It’s so alien to them. They laugh, but the laughter grates and peels back layers until sadness eventually bleeds through; how did they live this way?
Alara wonders if she will be blessed tonight.
Solana wraps her arm around her sister, her other hand hooking underneath Alara’s armpit and holding her steady as Solana lifts her from the chair. She’s so strong, oh. She’s so beautiful, she radiates the scent of Earth vanilla and dusts of lavender, she touches Alara with warmth and care and enough love for her baby sister to smother a wild animal. As Solana carries her—
She reaches up and brushes Solana’s soft blonde hair behind her ear. It’s sisterly, of course. Wholly innocent. (Of course.) (Alara is not in love with her sister.) As she does so, the side of her palm gives an accidental bump against Solana’s forehead ridges, and oh, oops. Oops! Solana’s eyes close for a moment, her eyebrows rising in surprise. It takes too long for Alara’s hand to recoil.
Xeleyan forehead ridges are erogenous zones. She—she didn’t mean to, really. She didn’t intend for this to happen, and it’s inevitably going to happen when such zones are exposed. Solana’s face twists still, and Alara feels her stomach growl within.
“I’m sorry!” she says. “I didn’t mean to—”
Her eyes flicker open. “Don’t worry about it,” she replies. “It happens.” Alara tries not to sigh out as Solana drapes her gingerly over their sofa, her touch tracing down Alara’s arm on complete incident, eliciting a true abhorrent shiver through Alara’s entire skeletal structure. “Just between us, hm?”
What the hell does that mean?
Alara is not in love with her sister.
What the fuck—just between us? And why was Solana touching her arm like that, her index and middle fingers running drips down Alara’s inner forearm? Why? Why would she inflict this torture upon Alara? How could she be so cruel? Isn’t it clear that Alara lo—
Alara is not in—
“So,” Solana continues, as if she hadn’t just shattered each cell composing Alara’s eternally-sick body, “what have you been watching lately?”
“Oh, um,” Alara replies, looking away in humiliation, studying the vibrant greens of their house plants towering from their pots, the vibrant brown-reds of their painted walls, anything but her sister and her sister’s beauty and her sister’s words before, “it’s an old Earth reality television show called—”
“Reality television? I thought television was about fiction.”
Alara laughs. “Reality TV is…. something else. Do you want me to show you?”
“Well, of course,” Solana says, and it’s the most natural thing in every universe. She opens her mouth to continue, but before words can be released, there’s a chime from the communication screen in the dining room. “One second.”
Solana walks away, her scent trailing behind. She inhales until she can’t smell it anymore, until the presence of her sister has faded away in its entirety, not even a ghost of her remaining. She isn’t in love with her sister. She isn’t in love with her sister, she simply likes the scent. She has a nice shampoo. It’s normal.
She hears faint talking beyond the walls. It’s probably her research supervisor on Jintann 9, contacting her with some results. She can’t remember what Solana is studying—she makes a mental note to ask about that later.
She fucking hates Jintann 9.
Solana’s ship is scheduled to head back there in one week. She only has one week left with Solana. She’ll be back for the wedding, but that’s three months away. She’ll be stuck here with her mother and her father for three months. It’s taking her longer to warm up to Ildis and Drenala; Solana never judged her, never spoke down to her, but her parents were never able to truly witness her until now, and it’s taking everyone a while to adjust.
Alara jolts up when there’s the sudden shock of a distant wail. She almost forgets that she’s supposed to be unable to walk, catches herself before Solana walks in and notices and stops touching Alara like that to transfer her out of her chair. “Solana?”
“...Okay. I understand. I… okay. I love you. Goodbye.”
“Solana, are you okay? Is someone there?”
She’s been, admittedly, a little paranoid since the incident. Solana almost lost a finger. Alara thinks about her fingers, sometimes. Slender, the nails painted red, a ring around her right middle and a curved one around her thumb. She wonders what they—
When Solana does walk in, she’s entirely dejected, her face wet with agony and her body sinking to the ground like drowning, an anchor tied to her ankle, unable to swim upwards for breath. Her head is being held underneath the unbearable lonely weight of her own salted tears, her own ache, her own regrets. Her hair is in front of her face again, and Alara cannot in good conscience brush it away now. Just between them.
“I’m sorry… Terlus called… there was an accident in the lab.”
“Oh my… What happened?”
“Equipment malfunction. It all exploded when we booted the machines up for the second time,” Solana explains, her voice shaken. “Some sort of crazy… I don’t know. But… Alara, the entire place… and everyone there. Including Dr. Carmala.”
Dr. Amabel Carmala had been her research supervisor, Solana’s favorite professor in college, her mentor, one of her closest friends post-graduation. She recommended Solana for the job, a shining star of a letter. She was everything to Solana, sometimes closer to her than even Terlus. Her confidant, her platonic soulmate.
Solana sits down beside her, and Alara pulls her in for a hug, feigning weakness. “I’m so sorry,” Alara whispers into her neck, stroking her sister’s back with a strong, warm hand. “I know how important she was to you.” Solana’s sob wets Alara’s top as she cries into Alara’s shoulder. “What do you need from me right now?”
Alara does sigh when Solana finally pulls back, wiping at her eyes with her sleeves. “I…. I think I’d like you to show me what reality television is, sis.”
She’s clearly trying so hard to be strong. That’s what Solana is: a fighter. She always has been. Alara may be a soldier, but Solana is a fighter. She possesses strengths that Alara just hasn’t developed yet. Alara wants to hold her, wants to grow beside her, wants to shelter her from the bad spread out through the universe. She finally has her sister, and her sister is grieving. Of course she’s going to do what she can.
“Okay,” she replies. She turns to the monitor. “Resume playback.”
The screen lights up with Jersey Shore. As they watch, Solana grabs Alara’s hand for comfort, and Alara—
Alara isn’t—
She’s not in love with her sister. Alara Kitan is not in love with her sister.
…
…
…
Here's the thing: Alara Kitan is not in love with her sister. It's just.
Let's say, entirely hypothetically, though, that she is in love with her sister. What would that even look like? How do you fall in love with your sister?
How could she (hypothetically) do this to Solana? What sort of sickness could this (hypothetically) be? She isn't a scientist; she is a soldier. If Solana knew (hypothetically), she would want to study Alara, to dissect this aberration with her beautiful scientific mindset, the impressive set of skills she keeps at her side. And oh, Alara almost wants it, almost -- hypothetically -- wants to be torn up by her hands to be analyzed. What makes someone do something so abhorrent? And how can - could - she - hypothetically - beat this out of her, erase what she feels? Could she find Dr. Finn again, have her do a memory wipe? No, she would have to admit that she's in love with her--
Here's the thing: Alara Kitan might be in love with her sister.
The realization hits her like a bone cracking at Kaylon strength. She imagines climbing to the highest mountain on Xeleyah and jumping, allowing her body to truly succumb to the planet's gravity and crumble pathetically on the ground below. She imagines slicing herself open, regaining her stength just to diminish it permanently. She is disgusting to her core, cursed by the universe to tarnish everything she touches. And nothing she touches will ever be Solana---Solana would never feel the same way, could never witness Alara with the same fervor that Alara sees her with. Her, in her entirety. Her, wholly. She’s seen more of Solana than Terlus has, even in their difficult childhood. She understands Solana more than anyone else in present existence could ever understand Solana. She spent her youth yearning for her parents to love her as much as they loved Solana, and now that she has the love of her parents, she’s gone greedy, she’s not going to stop. It’s not like that with them; she only loves Solana, only her.
She wishes that she could say it developed only after she moved home, but in all honesty, it’s always been there.
When Alara was younger--about fifteen, when Solana was the age she is now--she would go into Solana's room when she was in class, recline on her bed, her fingers travelling to her inner thighs, gushing at the thought of her sister walking in and finding her there, bare in her own sister's bed, fucking herself on her fingers with Solana's soft blonde hair bent over her deep in her thoughts. She'd repressed this, believed it to be the resulting effect of watching too much 21st century Earth fantasy television. She buried it deep in the graveyard of her thoughts, next to the corpses of her father and her mother and her sister and all of their love for her, love that died in the womb. As soon as Alara's "difficulties" became evident, Solana was the only focus. She was the sparkling constellation of the Kitan household, soared in an orbit above them all that Alara could never even lift herself up to reach.
Now they’re closer. Now she has Solana in her entirety.
It’s terrible, what happened on Jintann 9. Truly, truly terrible—and it is. Alara mourns them with authenticity. Dr. Carmala was a family friend, and was always so kind to Alara when they interacted, even if her kindness felt patronizing at times. To the friends of the Kitan family, Alara wasn’t a Xeleyan; she was a blemish. Now she is no longer a Xeleyan, maybe she never was, but for a different reason: no normal sapient being feels this way about a family member. She is less than it all. Her parents see her and Solana as equals now, and Solana has always seen her as an equal even if she allows the praise to get to her sometimes, but Alara is beneath even the mite.
At the same time…
Solana isn’t leaving anymore.
Alara’s been sorting out her room since she got home. She’s been doing it late at night, while Solana is asleep, so she doesn’t catch Alara walking. But there’s so much stuff in here from her youth, so many things that point to this revelation—she had pages in her childhood scrapbooks dedicated to pictures of her and Solana, drawings of the pair together made in Alara’s middle school years, songs she’d write down in high school to show her sister later because she thought they were beautiful, beautiful just like Solana herself. In childhood, it was simple admiration. In her teenage years, she both hated and desired her sister, wanted to wear her sister around her and become Solana externally and within, wanted to push Solana out of the spotlight and be the only one left to be proud of, hated herself for every negative thought she felt towards Solana because at the end of the day she
has
always
been
in
love
with
her
sister.
It’s simply intolerable.
This journal proves it.
She started keeping a journal at the age of sixteen and wrote in it daily for six months, but eventually forgot about it. Or perhaps it got too overwhelming; she found it in a locked box hidden in the back of the closet that she, thankfully, still remembered the override code for when she fished it out.
Day one.
I’m keeping this thing because I don’t really have anyone I can talk to. I have friends at school, but they’re all smarter than me. No one is ever purposefully mean about my… deficiencies.. but I’m reminded of them everywhere I go! They’re all getting into special programs at well-known universities and being offered one-of-a-kind research opportunities, and they just tell me to keep hoping something will work out. That’s it. Their advice is to hope. Pray, as they might say on Earth centuries ago.
Today dad took Solana to the simulator for an experiment. He said he was going to help me with my homework, but aiding her experiments is always more important, of course. Even if she doesn’t need it. I mean, she’s a xenobotany student, what’s she need the help with? She can do it herself or with a fellow student, I know she specializes in carnivorous plants, but they can’t be eating her up that much. She still has time to be the perfect daughter. And she really is fucking perfect.
Oh, that’s right. Solana is a botanist. How did she forget that?
Day two.
I’m going to replicate a safe and keep this journal in it from now on, because I really need to get this out. I did something bad. I watched Solana and her boyfriend have sex. Okay, not like that. I was going to get my shirt - the one she stole - back when I heard them in there, and the door was open a bit. I was curious. No one really… wants to do that with a girl like me. I just wanted to know what it was like outside of a simulator. But also…. What she would look like. For some reason.
I left after a few moments of watching her on top of him. I didn’t see anything except Solana rocking up and down over Quill as he brushed her hair out of her face and licked her forehead ridges. I felt sick and almost threw up so I ran away and now I’m writing this.
Another thing she had forgotten, but the memory floods back in perfect clarity now. She can recall everything about her sister on top of her old boyfriend. She’d left him for Terlus, but she got together with Terlus so quickly after their breakup that Alara always wondered…
She didn’t see anything. She didn’t see Solana’s chest or anything else; she was clearly naked, but it was all obscured by his head from the angle she was at. Alara is thankful for this. She imagines what it would be like if she had seen Solana, an entirely new kind of witnessing; she would never be able to recover from it. Her emotions would personify, twist around, suffocate the adoration out of her like vomiting up all internal organs onto the ground. Her love would suck the love out of her.
She did see her facial expression. She didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but now, on rewind, it makes her tremble as she recalls it, Solana’s eyes half-lidded in bliss, her mouth ajar in overstimulation, her lips wet. And she remembers the noises Solana makes, the little high-pitched moans and yelps she can elicit when she feels good. She wonders if Solana still sounds like that.
Day three.
I snuck into Solana’s room because I knew she was at the carnivora lab for the next six hours and I touched myself in her bed. And it felt so, so good.
Her mind slips back into the memory of Solana riding Quill. She’d repressed the memory of the fire, and she’d repressed this memory, but now that she has excavated it she’s never letting it slip away. She transfers the old diary into one hand and begins to stroke herself with the other beneath her lounge pants, her fingers spreading circles over her thick clit, already so agonizingly wet from reminiscing. Her eyes roll white for a moment, but she continues reading.
I thought about her and Quill and how it must have felt for him to be inside of Solana. I’m honestly not sure if I imagined myself fucking Quill or fucking Solana. I don’t know. I think maybe both. I think I’m a terrible person for this, but I’ve been watching old Earth shows lately and I think it’s getting to me. I’m at an age where I can explore myself, so I’m going to explore myself. What’s wrong with that.
Oh, young Alara. So, so many things.
Her other hand begins to shake. She shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t think of Solana like this, should burn herself up in the fire she’s terrified of to avoid feeling this way about her sister. Her hand shakes, the pages ruffling in her grasp. She’s getting her strength back little by little, and her strength is threatening to crumble the entire journal into pieces with this grip, so—instead of allowing herself to destroy the evidence of her love, the righteous thing to do—she sets it aside and lets her imagination roar even louder.
Suddenly she is in Quill’s place beneath Solana, looking up at Solana like she’s an exploratory vessel herself, something for Alara to study, the only kind of studying Alara would willingly put herself through again, familiarizing herself with her sister now that things are different. Alara wants to enter the bridge of her sister, to waltz around her inner observation deck and see the world the way she perceives it. Alara wants to be her sister’s security officer, to wield a weapon in protection once more, to save Solana’s life again like she did when she first got here. Alara wants to walk through every inch of her sister’s mechanics to understand how her gears turn, how her mechanisms work, what powers her and what makes her weak, everything that her resentment blinded her from considering in her youth. Her obsession was formed from the toxicity between them, but now it has grown, now it has been given life, a frankenlove stitching a holistic understanding onto genuine adoration and creating a greater consciousness. She isn’t obsessed anymore, no longer wants Solana with any trace of spite. She only wants Solana, Solana in her entirety, back home.
Alara reaches orgasm with tears invading her eyes. Her underwear is drenched. The thought of Solana is far too arousing. She locks the journal back up and shoves it back in her closet.
She has to go to sleep. She’ll feel better in the morning. She convinces herself that she’ll be better in the morning, that she’ll move on from this eventually. She’ll get older if she can bear it; even if her feelings have evolved, she is still very young. She’ll meet someone nice, settle down. She has to.
John Lamarr used to make fun of her for finding a reason to break up with every guy she dated. Now she understands.
She falls asleep, for a little while. In her dreams: still Solana. Still her. Now she understands. Always her.
She falls asleep, for a little while. In her dreams: Solana slipping into her room the night before her wedding, touching Alara in her slumber, all the ways Alara wants Solana to touch her. The way Alara has always wanted her sister to touch her, without Alara ever knowing. She saved Solana’s fingers from being sliced off, and in her dreams her sister touches her with them to show gratitude. Now she understands.
She falls asleep, for a little while.
And then there’s a gasp. A whisper. It sounds like her own gasps when she thinks of Solana, when she imagines. Alara jolts.
“I’m so sorry. I saw the light on and I thought you were still up.”
Her sister. Her beautiful sister. She peers through at Alara from outside her bedroom door, her blonde hair tied in a messy braid on her back, her pink shorts and intentionally-oversized nightshirt revealing far too much of her frame. She gives a soft sniffle, her eyes still wet from the sobbing. Alara’s still a little wet, too; she rubs her fingers against the velvet of her pants and tries to pretend nothing is wrong. Her wetness isn’t from crying, but it might as well be. It’s the result of a horrific fate, the dementedness of her nature. They were always right about her—she is different, and there is nothing pure about Alara Kitan. Agony, arousal, it’s all the same.
Alara sits up, straightens. “Sorry, I was really tired, guess I just fell asleep with the lights on.” She gives an awkward laugh. “Do you need to talk? You can come in.”
The door opens, and Solana sneaks in. She stops with hesitation before climbing into bed next to Alara—brief, ephemeral, but Alara can notice it, chews on her caution with a hungry heart and a starving mouth. It’s like she’s thinking maybe this is a little weird, and oh, Alara’s still-weak body cannot take that right now. She stops herself from considering it even further, focuses only on keeping her composure around Solana as she makes herself comfortable in Alara’s bed. She wriggles around, curls her arm around Alara’s and rests her head over Alara’s lap as Alara—
As Alara—
Alara freezes. Solana doesn’t seem to notice, doesn’t look up in concern. She feels her pants begin to soak with her sister’s tears as she resumes crying, Solana enveloped by the comfort of her younger sister now, enveloped by the one aspect of her life she has always wanted to have but never could possess. It’s weird, Alara thinks, if she freezes up. This is Normal Family Touch. Solana wants comfort. She has to give it. She wants to.
She loves Solana.
So she reaches down, wipes Solana’s tears away, tries to suppress her own. “I’m so sorry, Solana.”
“You know how close I was to Dr. Carmala,” Solana manages. “She was—-she was like a sister—to me.”
Oh. Like a sister. So that’s how it was. Dr. Carmala replaced her, and the most pathetic aspect of it all is the fact that Alara can’t even blame Solana for looking elsewhere. She left. She enrolled at Union Point. She became a soldier. She couldn’t even remember what degree her sister had. She is a terrible friend, a terrible sibling (for so many reasons), and a despicable Xeleyan.
But now Solana only has one sister again. Now Alara can fill the void Dr. Carmala leaves in her absence, and now Solana will lean on her in her sadness. She might touch Alara like this again, might seek Alara out in the night again, and she’ll be the one Solana turns to when she needs someone. That’s a unique kind of closeness.
“I know.”
God, that’s fucked up. She’s fucked up. But it’s been established that she’s a terrible person by now—she might as well lean into it.
“Can I sleep here tonight?” Solana asks, so innocent. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Of course.” She nods, rays of her smile beaming down against her sister’s soft flesh. “Lights.”
The lights flicker off, but Alara remains awake, aware of her sister’s heavy breathing and the way her snoring vibrates against Alara’s thighs in such a beautiful holy way. Alara remains awake, terrified to move, terrified to fall asleep because when she wakes up this will all be over and Solana will get up and Solana will go see the man she is marrying and Solana will leave and Solana will stop touching her.
