Chapter 17 Evo
The pulse is all I know. Its two-beat pattern resonates through my scattered mass.
I am not alive, not dead. I am not here nor gone.
I am in liminal space, a dimension between, filled with stars and darkness, nebulae and black holes, the same place Eon and I go when we fight together.
Only I am not stardust and vengeance this time.
I am fragments, fragile glass, energy, emptiness, disaggregated by self-disgust.
Aera cannot—should not—love me. But I want her to. I want her for myself, but that is not a Titan’s job, nor a soldier’s. And I burned her when my lust climbed too high and got too hot. Fear of hurting her made me want to shatter.
So I did.
Her voice sends my name echoing back and forth in my fragmented cloud above the land. The beat of her heart thumps through every fragment of me. She has captured a piece and holds me close. It is the only reason I can feel her like this.
She stays with me through the darkness, only leaving to get herself a blanket and sit out under the stars with me. Aera talks to my cloud, my essence, like I am still a person who can speak back.
Aera reminisces about ice cream with gummy bears, coats she made for her dog as a child, and learning to shoot a gun when she was just three years old.
She laughs about how hard it was to hold up what she calls a “pea shooter.” And then she starts crying again.
I want to comfort her, but my pieces do not want to come back together.
“So many of my friends are gone,” she says, her voice resonating through the fragment of me she holds close. “Solcrue killed them in battle, took them as anajas, or they died from starvation on Centurion. And now you?”
Aera cries harder. Then her sobs turn into a growl. “I hate this galaxy! It’s fucked up! It takes everything from me that I care about! Fuuuck!”
It’s a feeling I know well, Eon, too, after his years adrift in space alone.
She grows quiet for a long time, and all I hear are periodic sniffles.
Still, Aera doesn’t lie back or fall asleep.
She forces herself awake, gets up, paces, works on the ship, anything to stay with me.
Then, finally, as dawn paints a thin blue line on the horizon, she sits on the ramp again, wiping her hands on a grease rag.
Aera draws my fragment from her shirt pocket and settles it into a hand.
She sighs and swipes loose hairs from her face.
“Guess we’ve all made mistakes. Even me with my special ancient resistance nanos or whatever.
I could’ve pushed harder for a relief mission before things got as bad as they did.
But we had Solcrue patrols in places around us that just made it look like we were going to die no matter which way we went.
We were always trying to find Toriszi’s group or any of the others.
“Judgment got impaired because we were taxed, starved, battle weary, and scared.” Aera sighs. “Even the best of us fuck up. But there are a few things I feel like I’ve done right.”
A strange heat spreads through my fragments as I listen.
“Caring about good souls like my family, my colony, and you. And protecting those I care about from abusive alien dick heads. Whatever it takes. I don’t regret any of that. I’d do it again if given the chance. Guess that’s love for you.
“It makes us do dumb shit because we’re so desperate to hang onto what matters most. Funny how the one thing the universe can’t create on its own is the most chaotic, unpredictable driving force. Leave it to humans. If we can overcomplicate something, we will.”
As the sun crests the land, Aera holds my fragment up in a beam of light.
Heat fills my essence.
Her whisper cascades through the pieces of me with powerful force. “Love you, Evo. Wherever you are.”