Hello All,

This is a re-posting of a story I tried putting up here quite a while ago. After some very helpful comments I decided to take it down and do a bit of work on it before re-posting it. I'm thinking it'll be a pretty quick roll-out since it's basically done, baring a few final edits. Hope it's an enjoyable read. Please leave comments in the box below, as I find them very helpful!

When the smoke cleared it seemed at first that there was nothing left, a full room suddenly emptied. The Claxton still sounded, red emergency lights throbbed, acrid smoke stayed sharp and pungent in the nostrils.

But they were all still there, in some form or another, just sprawled on the ground, instead of standing upright. Blood slashed the walls and floor, decorated the bodies, stiffening black uniform fabric and leather and flesh as it cooled and darkened.

Necks craned slowly down, eyes scanning limp extremities for any twitch of movement.

In the center of the room, two figures, laying one on top of the other, an almost protective posture taken by the man on top, his now empty hand outstretched towards the blaster still warm from his touch.

By the time Sleer entered, with all the splendor befitting the President of the Terren Federation, Ruler of the High Counsel, Lord of the Inner and Outer Worlds, High Admiral of the Galactic Fleets, Lord General of the Six Armies, and Defender of the Earth, most of the troopers had reached the conclusion that cleanup would be a shorter job than recounting her collected titles.

She took in the piles of black-clad bodies, the unnamed troopers she mourned the loss of not at all.

Next, she scanned the rebels, Villa, hands still clutched over his chest, crumpled to his knees and over onto his face. Dayna, on her back, an almost comical expression frozen on her face. Tarrant, legs tucked awkwardly under him, blood smearing across his young face and curly tangled hair.

A stray memory told her that those closed lids hid a pair of vivid blue eyes, and she felt the phantom brush for warm sand across her skin.

The blonde was there as well…Soolin? Dead as she had lived, efficiently, without fuss. She lay straight, arm pillowing her head, blaster still held firmly in her hand.

And Avon.

Sleer walked slowly to the center of the room, weaving a trail through a hazard of draped arms and legs. The alarm had been silenced, but clouds of blaster smoke still hung in the air. The light remained red and dim. Shattered plass and twisted metal crackled with each footstep, ringing loud in the eerily quiet room.

Using an immaculately polished pump, she pressed the leather-clad body over onto its back. It resisted at first, and then tumbled with momentum off the body below him, head falling free to hit the cold floor with a thud, one hand still firmly grasping the tattered shirt of the man under him.

Blake lay prone, blood pooling around him in an even, uninterrupted circle.

She snapped her fingers at a group of troopers standing at the edge of the room, and two hurried over and hauled him over onto his back, disrupting the angelic symmetry of his death pose.

Sleer took in the yawning wound in his gut, the crimson hollow, still seeping, cooling now and charred around the edges. Avon's hand remained knitted into Blake's shirt, gripping with almost inhuman strength.

"Separate them," she ordered. "Break his fingers if you have to."

One of the troopers stooped to pry Avon's fingers open, while Sleer turned to the other. "Who shot this man?" She asked, pointing at Blake. "Did anyone see who killed him?"

"Him." The trooper pointed at Avon. "He had his gun out when we came in, and this one at his feet." The trooper nudged Blake with is boot. "No one else could have done it."

Sleer felt something akin to awe glimmer to life in her chest, diffusing her with warmth.

A small groan escaped from Avon. His head titled slightly.

My God. Her eyes widened with joy. Only Avon.

For the first time in what might have been ever, Sleer did something that would irretrievably ruin her dress. She knelt at the living man's side, drawing her hand along his cheek, turning his face towards her.

"Avon?" she breathed, her voice slipping into an intimate, knowing tone. His eyes fluttered open, unfocused. So confused. He seemed beyond anything tangible, even pain. "Oh, Avon."

It was almost reverent. His glazed eyes came to rest on hers, and something dim flicked through. Recognition perhaps? "I would have been disappointed if it had ended any other way."

His hand twitched, weakly scrabbling for something.

"Oh, no Avon, I'm afraid that's all over now. Your Blake is dead. He's mine. You're mine. And I am going to reward you for serving me so well, in all of this."

Avon's eyes closed again, his head tilting back, away from her as far as he could. Blood ran in streaks across his face, but whether it was his own or Blake's no one knew, not even him.

"No, Avon, you can't die from wishing, I won't let you. Though I promise at first you'll pray for death. And then, you won't care. By the end I'll make you love me, just like everybody else."

Avon's breathing was shallow, but rhythmic. Life clung, even against his will.

Sleer ran long-nailed fingers through his sticky hair, thrilling at the waxy texture of his tender skin. She stood, turning to her personal guard.

"Get him to a resuscitation pod. If this man dies, you all die with him. Tell my personal physicians to leave him broken, but able to undergo torture. I want him to have visible reminders of this. The rest of you," She turned to the waiting men, shuffling on heavy-booted feet. "Their ship, the Scorpio, where is it?"

A Squadron Leader stepped forward, singling himself out. "Sensors registered a crash site, Madam President, several miles away."

"Find it. Begin salvage operations immediately. I want everything stripped from the ship and moved to our laboratories at Space Central Command. And what about ORAC?"

A long silence followed.

"A computer!" She gestured the shape with her hands. "A personal computer. Visible interior? Far too much attitude?"

There was a chorus of shaking heads.

"Find it!" she snapped. "It's either on the ship, or hidden somewhere between there and this base." She turned furious eyes back down to the body at her feet. "Where is he, Avon? Where have you put him?"

It might have been a trick of the light, but she could swear she saw a faint smile flicker across his lips. It was too much. She pulled back and kicked him, kicked the smug smile right off his smug face. She regretted it at once, of course, realizing that all she had done was deliver him from his current suffering. His muscles sagged into unconsciousness, an un-responsive sleep, innocent as a bloody child, ignorant of future pain.

"What was Blake doing here?" Sleer said, smoothing her dress in an attempt to salvage the situation.

"It looks like he was recruiting." The Squadron Leader offered, gesturing around at the make-shift installation. "Our computer techs are cracking the encryption on their data files right now."

"Good, there'll be a list of names somewhere. Find them. I want everyone who had anything to do with Roj Blake hunted down and exterminated. Start on this planet, and work your way outward. As far out into the Galaxies as you need to go. Whatever resources you need will be supplied."

"Yes, Madam President."

The Federation wounded were ushered out into waiting shuttles. Rebel corpses from here and other parts of the captured building were dragged through the halls outside to be burned and forgotten.

Sleer took a deep breath, looking around at the shambles that was the true start of her new Empire, a new citadel, to be built on the bones and jointed with the soft flesh of the bodies littering the ground.

And Avon. Glorious, unattainable, devious Avon, hers to have and to hold and to do with as she pleased.

The final obstacles to her new everlasting Federation, all laying helpless and cold and bloody at her feet. She looked forward to the future, to the myths that would become truth, from mouth to ear on a thousand planets, and saw her own grand place in the story. With an long exhale she strode forward to meet it.