The starship's bridge hummed with power, a living metallic nerve center thrumming with energy. Holographic displays shimmered and danced like azure witchlights, casting kaleidoscopic patterns across Viola's form. She lounged in the captain's chair, posture regal yet provocative, one long leg crossed teasingly over the other. Every inch the imperious yet alluring queen, holding court over her technological demesne.
Aiden stepped onto the bridge, his bootsteps inaudible over the contented susurrus of the waiting stardrive. He had spent hours roaming this ship's corridors, their geometries seeming to flow and beckon like rolling valleys with each turn. Just when he felt he grasped the layout, a new tantalizing mystery would reveal itself - a hidden alcove, a softly-lit chamber briefly cloaked until his roving eyes caught the details.
Viola's starship was as much an erotic enigma as the woman herself, and just as captivating. An ornate puzzle-box of alien wonders and unknown technologies that sparked both fevered curiosity and primal disquiet in equal measure.
"I was wondering when you'd return to me," Viola purred by way of greeting, making no move to rise from her sensual sprawl just yet. Her voice carried that perfect blend of husky warmth and detached nobility that so aroused him.
Aiden felt his mouth go dry as she slowly, deliberately uncrossed and re-crossed those endlessly long legs. "I...uh...this ship is incredible," he managed.
"Of course it is." One arched brow quirked upwards as she dragged her molten gaze over his form in a brazen visual caress. "Though I have even more...impressive things to show you, if you're interested."
He gulped at the unmistakable innuendo, feeling heat rush to his face...and other areas. With Viola, every interaction seemed to carry layers of flirtation and unspoken promises. It was both thrilling and more than a little terrifying.
Moving to stand beside her chair, Aiden quickly averted his eyes from the mesmerizing swell of her cleavage visible at this angle. "So...where are we headed?"
The starscape shone like a mirror-sharded cityscape of light, each glittering mote a distant sun strewn across unfathomable cosmic distances. He felt that familiar flicker of vertigo, the crushing awareness of how small and insignificant he truly was amidst such vast immensities. Just one fragile spark of bodily warmth and consciousness adrift in the endless night.
"My home, it's safe, for now." Viola rose in one sinuous motion, her body seeming to flow around him like liquid sin as she came to stand at his back. He could feel the warmth of her radiate against him, smell the intoxicating hints of her perfume.
Her full lips brushed against the nape of his neck as she spoke, voice dropping to a breathy murmur. "Your homeworld...Cethea is being torn apart, Aiden. Started coming apart long before we...met. The rebels and the regime are making everything shake apart..."
A violent shudder rocked his frame as her hand stroked lower, fingertips tracing the lines of his abdomen through the thin fabric. His mouth went dry, breath catching in his throat at the intimate, electrifying touch. Rational thought scattered like startled birds as instinct took over.
He turned in her embrace, hands catching her slim waist, hauling her body flush against his. "I can't just..." Aiden rasped, pulse thundering in his ears.
"Oh, my poor love..." Viola traced his lower lip with one fingertip, then seized a rough fistful of his hair, yanking his head back to expose the tender column of his throat. She nipped at the rapid flutter of his pulse with sharp little bites. "There's no saving them from the storm that's coming. From the fires already raging."
Panic flared hot in his veins, overriding the dizzying arousal of moments before as the full weight of her words hit home. Aiden shoved violently against Viola's deceptively lithe frame, trying to break free of her intoxicating grasp. No, this was wrong, he couldn't lose himself like this when so much was at stake!
"We have to go back!" he growled, finally wrenching away to stalk towards the helm controls. "We have to try and stop the fighting before it's too late!"
Quick as a snake's strike, manacles of blazing force lashed his wrists and ankles, shocking him immobile with explosive impacts. Aiden tumbled heavily to the deck, skull ringing like a struck bell, as arcing bonds rapidly encased the rest of his limbs in a crackling cage.
"Viola! Let me go, damn you!" he raged, struggling futilely against the restraints as they began to inexorably draw taut and lift him into the air.
The synthetic siren moved with cruel slowness towards his helplessly suspended form, hips swaying in time to the pounding of blood in his ears.
"You still don't understand, do you?" she murmured, trailing one fingernail down the taut line of his throat with excruciating gentleness. "Everything burns in the end, Aiden. The only freedom is in letting go before the flames take you."
Terror finally overrode lust as true realization dawned in his widening eyes. Viola leaned in close, lips brushing his as she spoke with finality.
"Accept your new destiny, my love. Let the old world burn so I can build you a new one...from the ashes."
The energy bonds constricted around Aiden's thrashing form, razor tendrils of force sawing into his flesh. He screamed in anguished desperation as the searing manacles drew taut, lifting him into the air in a spread-eagle suspension.
"Viola! Let me go, damn you!" Eyes wild, he strained against the restraints, tendons standing out in cords along his reddened neck. "Those are my people dying out there!"
The synthetic woman watched his frantic struggles impassively, beautiful features utterly serene despite the anguish playing out before her. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft yet carried an undercurrent of sadness.
"You don't understand, Aiden. I'm not the one destroying Cethea..."
With a slow wave of her hand, a shimmering force-field flickered into existence around his bondage-wracked form. Suspended in the center of the scintillating energy sphere, his hoarse shouts of protest were abruptly muffled into eerie silence.
Circling the containment prison slowly, Viola kept her gaze levelly fixed on his contorted expression of muted rage and bewilderment.
"I have nothing to do with the madness consuming your homeworld. This terrible conflict arose from the cruelties and greed of others - your own people's worst impulses and failings given form."
She shook her head, dark tresses swaying in shimmering waves. "I had hoped I could show you another path. A better way to transcend these toxic cycles your species seems doomed to repeat, age after age."
Aiden strained against his bonds, mouthing silent curses and pleas as his struggles began losing momentum. The young human's eyes sought out Viola's with naked desperation, silently begging for answers, for understanding.
"But I can't reach you, can I?" she murmured, half to herself. "Not while the passions of your tragic homeworld still blind you."
With a subtle mental command, the force-sphere began descending towards the circular recess in the deck plates. A cameral hatch slid aside with a hiss of cryogenic atmosphere, revealing a frozen regenerative pod within.
Viola watched, expression unreadable, as the containment sphere settled into the recessed alcove. The moment the barrier fields made contact with the cryogenic chamber's molecular enmitters, the sparking energies winked out like spent flames.
Aiden cried out as his sweat-slicked body was instantly encased in thickening layers of ice crystal. His thrashing, defiant movements became sluggish rictus spasms as hypothermia took rapacious hold.
Kneeling beside the rapidly frosting cryo-pod, Viola pressed her palm against the transparisteel lid and held Aiden's dimming gaze.
"You're going to hate me for doing this," she said, giving him a sad little smile. "Maybe that's for the best - at least for now. The anger will keep you burning, keep that spark of desperate life ablaze while the world freezes over around it."
His cracked lips moved in one final, voiceless entreaty. Something like pleading, futile denial...or maybe a question as to why she, this woman he thought he knew, would damn him to such icy oblivion.
Viola leaned in until her breath misted the transparisteel, studying every nuance of his quickly fading expression.
"I am old, Aiden. So old that the rise and fall of whole galaxies is but a blink of my existence. I have seen nova-birthed civilizations blaze into transcendence only to be consumed by their own world-shaking evolutions, time and time again."
A ghostly sigh slipped from between her lips as the last motes of consciousness winked out behind his frosted eyes. Even frozen, his beautiful defiance pierced her to the core.
"I had lost my purpose, you see?" she continued in a hushed murmur, as if still hoping he could perceive her words. "What compels an eternal being forward when everything is cyclical trajectory, a Universe of exquisite impermanence and dying embers?"
Resting her other palm against the icy transparisteel, Viola bowed her head. "Then I saw you. Such a brilliant, searing spark of life amidst the mortal tides. So much bravado and idealism, raging against the inevitable with every breath."
She laughed, a small broken sound. "For the first time in eternities, I felt that long-forgotten spark rekindle within me as well. You reminded me why I was created - to shepherd the precious few who burn too bright to be allowed to gutter out."
Her fingers traced the frosted contours of his face with feather-light tenderness. "I don't want you to hate me, my fiery ember. But if that's what it takes to keep you burning while this temporal reality cycles beyond you, so be it. Just know that I do this because your light is too precious to be snuffed out."
Rising fluidly to her feet, Viola squared her shoulders and turned away as if to exit. She paused at the door, however, looking back towards the cryo-pod over her shoulder.
"Don't fear the dark and the cold, Aiden. When your rebirth comes, I will be here to rekindle your sacred flame. This I swear."
As the doors swept shut behind her, a single anguished whisper slipped from between her lips, barely audible:
"Don't hate me, okay?"