He woke, as he often seemed to do, in terror.

Pain.

His chest was on fire. There was liquid that seemed to permeate every pore and crevice in his lungs, and he felt as though he was drowning. Confused he tried to scream as he exhaled the heavy weight in his chest, only to gasp in another. Lungs refilling with liquid yet again.

His body thrashed as his eyes opened to a blurred vision: he was completely submerged. Flailing wildly he felt the walls of his container.

Then he realized he could breathe.

He wasn't drowning - not really, it just felt as though he were.

Slow shallow breaths followed, and he fought the urge to cough the liquid from his lungs with everyone single one of them. Torture beyond imagining, yet... it was fine.

Somehow.

Looking out through blurred vision, he could see outside of whatever liquid filled container he had been placed in, and outside he saw there were several others like it. Oval pods, each containing what seemed to be wounded crew members. Turning with a start, he recognized a familiar face peered over the top of his strange confinement and the muffled humming of a happy song. If he could trust that his eyes were functioning properly, he felt safe to assume his optimistic companion had survived, and was doing far better than he was.

Letting himself drift back down into the pod, he felt the confusion settling. The the pieces fell into place.

They had won the battle, and the ship was safe. He was still alive, despite being extremely uncomfortable.

A soft noise issued from somewhere near his feet, and slowly the liquid in the pod began to drain away, putting him into a bizarre limbo of coughing and gasping as the liquid left and the air returned.

The unpleasantness of the situation returned.

His lungs could be made to breathe the liquid, but they certainly couldn't be made to like it, and the rush of cold air didn't help matters much either. He hacked up the substance, as the last of the slick liquid was drained, and the ceiling of his pod dissipated with a sudden click, allowing him to sit up.

He did so quickly, trying to leverage the final bit of the strange fluid from his throat and nose.

Though it was probably only a moment, it felt like an eternit before his coughing settled and the man was able to get his bearings. Slowly he began to pull in the scene of activity around him.

It was a scene of silent motion.

Crew bustled about the room, checking on machines that all seemed to be broadcasting some type of holographic display. Looking towards the one on his own pod, which was the closest, the man could see what seemed to be a complex scan of his body. Muscles and blood vessels blinked into reality, as he recognized the shape of organs and bones: all of which seemed glowed with the strange and artificial illumination of the projected screen.

It seemed in real time, as well. He stared with morbid curiosity as his heart beat in synchronization of the display.

Behind the display, though, were several crew members dressed in white clothing. With quiet songs of singular alert notes to one another, it seemed they were in heated discussion as others monitored similar pods spread out around the room.

A light touch upon his shoulder brought him to turn and find two pure green eyes disturbingly close to his face. He flinched back which brought a strange laughing song from the alien. As she stared at him, she pointed to her leg, and cocked her head slightly to one side. She spoke again, and pointed to him, and then to his throat. She was looking for some type of response, maybe recognition? Of course he recognized her, he had spent half a day keeping her alive on his back while listening to her sing him into battle after battle. He instinctively tried to speak, momentarily forgetting about his scarred throat.

And found that he could.

The scar tissue on his neck was still present, but his voice croaked out a greeting. Not one that made much noise, or even sounded familiar, but it worked.

The green eyes widened, and a rapid number of notes rattled through the air as his visitor ran off, favoring her uninjured leg, with others in the room jumping out of her way in surprise.

The man sat stunned, as he tried to speak again. His voice was rough, but it was there.

“I can speak.” The statement carried more meaning than he had ever imagined, and he repeated it as he felt his throat. Oh, the scars were still there, but they were hardly constricting when compared to before. There was no longer a knot of disorganized flesh, but in its place, only thin marks that seemed only surface deep. As he looked over his arms and chest, he realized he realized that was true for all of him. All of those horrible wounds, now minimized to the point where he could barely make out the burns which had covered him.

The evidence of his previous fighting was still theren, but only in the same way a scar might be after years of fading: barely recognizable.

A new voice entered the room, as his companion lofted back into the room. Turning the corner into the medical bay, his visitor came followed by several others. Trailed in with hushed emotion, indistinguishable to him in any true sense, but with a clearly tense posture, he recognized that the last of them wore a cape of scales.

The leader, with the brace.

His lips curled into a grimace, as the man felt at his neck again, and realized that the collar was still there.

In fact, it seemed to have melded. No longer was there a clear definition between his skin and the metal, as if it was slowly becoming a part of him. With a light touch he tried to slip his finger along it's edge, but found none, and he doubted it could ever be removed without taking his head with it.

An odd sensation to say the least, but on the bright side it didn't itch.

A six fingered hand reach out and brought his attention away from the collar, back to the happy humming of his friend in white. She pointed to her mouth with her other hand and made a motion with a single note. She then pointed to the alien wearing the scales as she tugged lightly on his arm, pulling him from his perch on the residual medical pod. Rising from his seat, he set bare feet upon the cold metal floor, doing his best to push aside the  intense vertigo as the world seemed to sway.

It was as if, suddenly, he was alone.

Only him, and the figure with the scaled cloak. Unable to steady himself he fell to his knees and found himself staring up at them, too confused to properly manage his own body.

Emotion.

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That's what it was.

Familar... angry... fearful...

He recognized it. That horrible rage that had been taking him over not all that long ago. That external influence on his decisions, was present yet again.

A scarred tail was greeting him, the blue fur that should have covered most of it was gone for the final length. In its place was a simple, pale, flesh. Scarred tissue, that coated the unarmored legs, as well as almost all of the scaled cloak's visible body. It seemed as though the leader's wounds had not faded as well as his.

They stared down at him, indifferent.

Alien...

Tendons and muscles screamed in agony as he pulled upon himself, to match, and then surpass them. He towered over that scaled cloak now, and as he faced her, he could barely keep anger from rolling out in tidal surges.

This was all her fault.

She was the reason he had been in such pain. She was the reason he had felt like an animal on display. He wanted nothing more than to give back with interest, but he didn't.

Something held him in check, as he stared at her scars, and the memory of what had happened leaked through him.

She stared back.

A long breath left his chest as he mentally willed away his anger. It would serve him nothing to act on impulse and rage, the time for that was past. Instead he simply asked the question that had been on his mind since his first true moment of clarity in this strange existence.

“Why am I here?”

Quiet murmurs came from the crew, and few notes of pride came from his companion gripping his arm with slight but determined strength. The one with the scaled cloak shifted, and reached into a pouch at her waist. Stepping back uncomfortably he cautiously raised on arm in his defense, last time she had reached for something he had been put in more pain than one could ever wish to experience. It wasn't something someone simply got over.

She seemed to notice, because she slowed immediately, and then handed a small device carefully to his companion, who then passed it to him.

A small game of trust. The scarred tail seemed to swish nervously.

It was a small hollow ball.

Metallic, polished, it slid open to show two small disks, which looked as though they were made of thin clear rubber. Carefully, his companion took one from his hand and slowly lifted it to his left temple. It stuck there with a slight tingle of static, and began to usher in a strange list of sensations. The kind of which, one could only really describe by using sound for color and smells for sight.

Then, at once, the vertigo returned with a vengeance. His brain felt as though it had been lit on fire. Tiny shocks were running though his skull. He tried to back away, but stopped in shock when he heard her.

“He is so frightened Yitale." She said. "He barely trusts me.”

His friend was speaking a familiar language.

He could unstand her, perfectly.

It was as perplexing as it was amazed.

Perhaps his friend mistook the pause as acceptance because before he could stop her, she quickly lifted the other disk to his right temple. At once, It sealed quickly with another short sensation of electricity. The pulsing feelings in his skull intensified.

“For a being of such strength and bravery in combat, it seems surprisingly skittish.” The cloaked alien replied. “How soon until the disks take effect Di'her?”

“I believe...” the green eyed face stared at him now, her solid green eyes meeting his own. “I believe that they already have.” She waited patiently now, staring at him with deep concentration and a gesture that he was suddenly able to interpret as optimism and hope.

She had given him a translator.

She had realized he was intelligent.

He took a deep breath and tried to speak. “Yes. I believe so.” Those were the words that emerged from his lips as he imagined them, but his voice seemed to fly into the air in a much stranger pattern. He clamped his mouth shut in shock. To think in a familiar tongue, but to speak in the melody of an alien language was disconcerting to say the least. In fact, the sensation was downright unnerving, as if a stranger was using his voice. He ground his teeth slowly as he came to terms with it.

Di'her gasped in shock, and leapt in excitement, dragging his arm as she did “I knew it!” She turned to the cloaked one, named Yitale if he had understood correctly. “I told you: he isn't some feral beast!”

“Well what in Sio's blue rings is he then? A creature built for combat, a being of war? This creature killed an entire raiding party of Sikka shock troops by itself! Why haven't we ever heard of such a species before? The machines still can't identify him.” Yitale turned to him now, and her blue eyes studied with careful distance. “What are you?”

“Human.” His voice sang from his throat, yet again.

It was difficult to tell the difference from speaking now, which just added to the strangeness, it seemed to be solidifying in some way.

"Where do you come from?"

"Earth.” He paused for a moment, memories giving him nothing more than the name.

"I see."

Across from him, Yitale tugged at her cloak in a motion he could now understand: body-language filtering through the odd sensation in his skull.

She'd grown uncomfortable.

Her hand rubbing at the metal brace on her arm...

Was it... guilt?

Perhaps it was. The feeling or regret for inflicting pain on another intelligent species. Or, perhaps, she was remembering that the brace on her wrist was broken as thoroughly as he could possibly have managed, and wasn't certain how he was going to react. Clearly, that had been the only power she possessed that could bring even a measure of control over him.

In her position, he would find that quite unnerving in her position, but instead of providing insight for these observations she simply asked another question.

“Where is Earth?" Yitale asked. "I have never heard of such a planet.”

Earth...

The name... the importance... these were both clear, yet his mind provided nothing further.

“I do not know.” Honesty seemed to sing from him. Their language seemed to emphasize emotions as much as words. Another similarity to mankind, true emotions. “I remember little with certainty.” He glanced to the porthole window of the medical bay and looked at the strange glimmer beyond it. "To travel as we are now... it seems... beyond what my kind were likely capable of."

He honestly wasn't sure if that was true, but it seemed to be. As if a subtle recognition, that only registered when he spoke the words aloud.

Looking up he saw disbelief upon the faces of everyone around him.

“Your people are not true space-fairing?” Yitale asked in shock.

"I... am not certain. But, I feel this is likely the case."

“What technology do your people possess? Can you remember any details?” She seemed flustered now, and the body language seemed to filter through to provide him more information, even as the words remained controlled.

He stared at her in confusion now.

These were strange questions. His head throbbed all of a sudden and bits of memory seemed to leak into his thoughts. There, behind his eyes, he felt a slow growling song drop from his lips as the visions flew through his mind's eye.

As if the static between his temples were contacting all pieces of broken information, at once.

Giant battle cruisers decorated the space orbiting the colony, explosions and death among the stars.

Lights flashed.

He remembered his fighter, his decelerators failing as his ship spun away from the battle.

He remembered his blood leaking onto the control panel as the bio-gel sealed his wounds, and his radio crackling with the sounds of a losing battle.

The cold, the chill: the terrible sealing that came from a forced cryosleep. Bitter, biting, freezing...

It was painfully obvious to him now why he might not remember- why he might not ever remember.

“I can not. I have tried, but I can not.” The lie was obvious to him as it must have been to them. He didn't realize how much his language lacked until he had spoken theirs. An image of his home planet being surrounded by the burning light of the sun hit him like a physical blow, and another low growl of pain sung quietly form his lips.

“You attempt deception. Why is this?” Yitale's voice was cold and clear as she leveled her gaze. “To lie is considered a great offense in our culture. Most of all to a shipmaster, while on board her very vessel.”

“When you put this collar on my neck, and brought me to this ship, what purpose was I to fill?” He gasped the question, as he let his hands run over his forhead.

Across from him, the scarred tail seemed to flutter again. The nervous whipping had returned.

“I brought you to be a ship-beast, a personal guardian for myself and my ship.” Yitale's voice was steady as she replied, but her hand was once again holding at the brace on her wrist.

"I'm not a slave." The man stared at her for a moment, as his statement sunk in. The nervousness combined with the strange foreign insight provided by the translator was confirming his suspicions.

She knew what she had done was wrong.

He let his hands return to the pod behind him, flexed them both along the edge of a pod. Slowly, he rolled them into fists, as the audible pop of his knuckles reverberated in long dull clunks.

The tension in the air clung thick.

"It is alright." Beside him, his friend, Di'her, mumbled a song of peace. "It was a mistake, was it not?"

"Yes." Yitale answered, scaled cloak perfectly still as she stared him down.

He stared back.

The emotion was there again.

Nervous... anxious... uncomfortable... The anger was forgotten, and replace.

The man frowned.

None of these things belonged to him... so why were they in his head? Towering over the scaled cloak Yitale, he let in a long breath of air, as his eyes narrowed.

There, he felt the recognition of a single thought passing through his mind's eye. As if mirrored and reflected towards his own.

Recognition he was clearly no beast...

And fear that he might be much worse.