Chapter 20 #2
But I'd answered without hesitation, without fear, by rising from my seat and walking across that chamber floor, past rows of Council members who watched with barely concealed curiosity and speculation.
I'd crossed the distance between us and taken my place at his side, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched, close enough that everyone in that room understood exactly what my answer was.
Now he enters the bridge from his ready room, and the crew snaps to attention with a precision that speaks of respect, not fear. He's out of his armor for once, dressed in fitted black tactical gear that somehow makes him look bigger, more imposing without the additional bulk of plating.
His void-eyes find me immediately.
He crosses the bridge in long strides, and the crew suddenly finds reasons to focus very intently on their stations, giving us the illusion of privacy in the occupied space.
I turn back to the viewport, watching the nebula's lazy spiral, feeling the way it resonates with something in my chest. The colors shift, purple bleeding into deeper violet, and I realize with a start that they're responding to my mood.
To my contentment.
My fingers touch the reinforced glass, and the nebula swirls faster, brighter, cosmic gases moving in patterns that shouldn't be possible, that suggest consciousness or at least awareness of my attention.
"It knows you," Haid murmurs, stopping beside me close enough that I feel his heat through the small space between us. "The nebula. It's been dead for centuries, just drifting matter. But now..."
Now it dances.
I spread my palm flat against the glass, and the entire visible spectrum of the nebula brightens in response, colors I don't have names for swirling in complex fractals that make my eyes water if I look too long.
"My power is changing," I whisper, voicing the fear I haven't let myself examine too closely. "Since the bond. I'm affecting things I shouldn't be able to affect. Nebula gases aren't alive. They're just hydrogen and helium and trace elements."
"Everything is alive if you look at it the right way." His hand covers mine on the glass, dwarfing my fingers. "You were designed to terraform planets. To transform barren rock into thriving ecosystems. Why shouldn't you affect the space between worlds?"
Because it's too much power for one person to hold, too much responsibility for shoulders that still sometimes shake when I think about the weight of what I've already done.
Because if I can change the fundamental nature of cosmic phenomena, if I can make dead gases dance and respond to my emotions like they're extensions of my own nervous system, what else might I inadvertently alter?
What other fundamental forces of the universe might bend to my will without my conscious intent?
What happens when I get angry, or grief-stricken, or lost in the kind of despair that used to make the plants in my mother's gardens wither just from my proximity?
Because I'm terrified of becoming like my mother, of seeing everything—everyone, as resources to be manipulated and controlled.
Of looking at living things and thinking first about their utility, their potential, what they could become if I just shaped them a little differently.
The memory of her hands in the soil, transforming genetic code with the same casual certainty she used to rearrange furniture, still makes my stomach clench with something that might be revulsion or might be recognition.
Haid's thumb strokes across my knuckles, the touch grounding me in this moment, in this body, and through the bond I feel him reading every fear, every doubt that spirals through my mind like the nebula spirals beyond the glass.
"You are nothing like her," he says quietly, fiercely. "Demeter shaped life to serve her vision. You nurture it. There's a difference."
I want to believe him.
Outside the viewport, beyond the reinforced transparisteel that separates us from the void, the nebula pulses and shifts with bioluminescent light, great sweeping waves of colour that ripple through the cosmic dust like auroras made manifest in the darkness of space.
The light responds to something, to emotions I can't quite name or articulate even to myself, feelings too vast and complex to fit into the neat categories I've always used to organize my internal world.
The patterns seem almost alive, almost sentient, as if the nebula itself is trying to communicate something I'm not yet ready to understand.
Haid releases my hand and moves, the motion drawing my attention. When I turn, he's kneeling on the bridge deck, his massive frame folding down with surprising grace until those void-black eyes are level with my sternum.
The entire bridge goes silent.
He takes my hand in both of his, cradling it like something precious and breakable despite the calluses I've earned from weeks of working in the hydroponics bays, the soil-stained crescents under my nails that won't quite scrub clean.
"The Tartarus Belt is free," he says, voice carrying across the quiet bridge. "Free because you gave us the means to survive without Apex's scraps. Free because you fought beside us when you could have run. Free because you chose to stay when staying was the harder path."
His thumbs brush across my knuckles, the touch reverent.