Chapter 21
TASK
SFS POLARIS
Task stands in the same place he did last week, at the same time.
It took him seven whole days to return to the sundome, to work up the nerve to stand here and wait for her.
Of course, he’s seen her during the day.
He is a consistent presence at the ambassador’s bedside, which means he’s constantly with her as she tends to him, but they don’t talk then.
And he sees her in the dining hall, surrounded by her friends, her family, Finn.
Part of him hopes she’ll come back. Part of him is certain he well and truly scared her away. He’d lashed out like a wounded animal. He’d wanted to make her retreat.
Allowing her in wasn’t a part of his plan. And when she touched him, when she was so gentle with him, it felt like she cared. She couldn’t care. Not about him, certainly. Not when he had a job to do. When she was critical to ensuring Draven lived.
He resumes his vigil at the window in the sundome.
He looks out, the galaxy spreading out before him.
It is extraordinary, how there is nothing surrounding them for miles.
Just the wink of stars in the sky, the faint glow of Oraxis, which he can just make out to the north.
They’re still far from Nexarium, and part of him is relieved.
He doesn’t have to do anything just yet. He can bide his time a little longer.
And things feel different for him, a bit.
Perhaps the craziest thing about being trapped on this ship with Mids and Lows is that he is starting to care less about the power differential than he thought he would.
He didn’t want to be stuck with such useless people, but all things considered, it matters less here.
Nobody is better or worse for it when they’re simply trying to make it from Point A to Point B in one piece.
He knows Draven has his reasons for the hierarchy; it makes sense on Nexarium, and it makes sense in the context of the Consortium.
Power makes you powerful. The more power you have, the more control you have, and control means peace, comfort, and stability.
Things Task has longed for since his parents were taken from him.
And yet it is, dare he say, nice to disassociate from it all for awhile. To not be required to use the pain echo daily, to have the agony ebb for a moment. To breathe more deeply, even if the recycled air is stale.
He hears the door slide open behind him, and his heart rate increases just slightly. Could it be her? He will not turn around to look. He refuses.
But he can almost feel her presence washing over him, trailing the scent of gardenia and brown sugar in her wake. He tries to make himself stony again. He wanted this, didn’t he?
He feels her come up beside him, the warmth of her arm next to his.
He turns to her. She looks radiant, her soft features glowing in the moonlight, her brown hair left loose down her back. “We have to stop meeting like this.” It’s sarcastic, meant as a gibe.
Kit chuckles. “Then stop coming to my spot.”
“Your spot?” Task asks, incredulous. “I thought we’d clarified the other night that nobody owns this spot.”
“You clarified,” Kit says. “I didn’t.” She shrugs, a little petulant, which she has every right to be. He knows he hasn’t been exactly pleasant, even if it’s for good reason.
He’s built his walls high; they’re practically towers now.
With the pain echo, it’s easier to keep everyone at arm’s length.
But more than that, since he lost his parents, since he lost Noemi, since he learned about Draven’s condition, he doesn’t know if he can tolerate more.
Connections, attachments only yield more pain. Why bring that upon himself?
“Would you like me to choose another time?” Task asks her.
“No,” she huffs. “Come whenever you’d like.” She turns away from him, pointedly looking out the window in the opposite direction.
There’s a long silence. Task isn’t sure what to say, how to repair whatever it is he broke last week, or whether he should.
“Are you alright?” he finally asks. Not his most suave follow-up, to be sure. He’s usually much more poised than this. Something about her makes him a bit loose, a bit off his game.
She sighs loudly, as if breathing out the weight of the world.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m just tired and frustrated. And thinking about the fact that we’ll be trapped on this ship for the next hundred days. No way off. No fresh air. Food in those weird silver packets.”
“Yes, those are abominable,” Task says, smiling slightly. And then, before he can think better of it, “I’m sorry.”
Kit’s head snaps to him, shocked. “You’re what?”
Task looks at her, a bit sheepish. He rakes a hand through his icy blonde hair and blows out a long breath. “Are you going to make me say it again?”
Kit grins. “I don’t think I heard you properly the first time.”
“Fine,” Task says, shortly. “I’m sorry. Did you get it then?” The second time he says it, the apology feels like something he has to pull out of himself. He’s rarely had to apologize in his life, not since he gained control of the pain echo. It’s strange, to feel the words on his tongue.
Kit brings her lips together, rolling them a bit as if she’s thinking it over. “Thank you,” she says, after what feels to Task like a hundred years. “You’ve behaved like a total prick the last few weeks. I was starting to think you didn’t like me.”
Task blanches. “I don’t like you,” he says. It is a complete and total lie. Utter bullshit.
“Hm,” Kit intones, her full lips turning down slightly. “Whatever you say.”
He tries to ignore the way her gaze is igniting something in him, but he lets himself imagine it for a second — the way she’d feel in his hands.
Task clears his throat, attempting to banish the image from his mind. Nothing good can come of this line of thought. He tries to regroup, redirect to something, but his brain feels foggy. He can still feel her next to him, waiting.
“Let’s sit,” he says, gesturing to the grassy patch behind him.
He’s still trying to think of a direction to take this, to keep her here and talking to him.
He throws himself down on the ground rather roughly, as if punishing himself.
The grass is cool underneath him, the blades scratchy through his trousers.
She sits next to him, careful to keep her distance, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He doesn’t blame her, after the way he’d snapped at her last week. She wraps her arms around her knees and says quietly, “What if we can’t fix it?”
Task looks at her, and he feels like she could do anything.
He’s seen her in triage, seen her staunch bleeding, change an IV, resuscitate a person that had coded.
Finding an antidote doesn’t seem that far outside the boundaries for her.
She’s capable, and ambitious, and compassionate, and he finds he could go on for days about all the things she is. “You will,” he says.
She gives him a small smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I appreciate your completely unfounded confidence in me.”
Task lays back on the grass, staring up at the ceiling of the sundome, the window extending upwards from the front to let in the starlight.
He feels Kit lay back next to him, sees her arranging her hands on her stomach, still being so careful.
“It’s not unfounded,” he says. He turns his head to face her.
She’s already looking at him. Their eyes lock and a lick of heat surges through him.
“I see what you do every day, Kit. You’re better than most, I’d hazard to say. ”
He knows why she’s better than most, but she doesn’t — at least, he doesn’t think she understands yet. Why would she? Power is not prized on Lumaria as it is on Nexarium, so there would never have been any incentive or reason for her to dig deeper.
“Thank you,” Kit says, and she sounds as though she means it. She’s silent for a moment longer. “Can I ask you something?”
Task is caught off guard, but since they’ve somehow managed to reopen this dialogue between them, he tries to buck his instinct to shut down. He keeps his features open, his eyes still locked with hers. “I suppose.”
“The other night…” she starts. Task’s stomach tightens. He doesn’t want to talk about the other night. He’d hoped the apology would be enough. “Did you mean what you said?”
He thinks about it. He told her to stop touching him, to stop trying to know him, but selfishly, it had felt so good to not be alone with his pain for one fucking second of the day.
And despite Task locking his emotions away most of the time, he’s aware that he has them.
It feels suffocating sometimes, keeping it all buried inside of him.
So of course he didn’t mean it. And of course he did. What is he supposed to tell her?
He sighs again, loudly. “Yes. And no,” he says. “I meant it — you shouldn’t want to know me. There are things about me that you can’t know. But I also don’t want you to stop trying.” He swallows, his throat dry. “I know that’s selfish.”
Kit ponders this for a second. “What if I was okay with not knowing?”
“You shouldn’t be,” he replies, his heart galloping in his chest. If she knew, really knew what he was doing, she would hate him.
“Okay, I get all of that,” she says. “You’re this big, mysterious major of the Nexarium Force, and you have secrets that nobody can ever know.” She swats her hand in the air, as if to say pish-posh. “You honestly are such a cliché.”
“I am not a cliché,” he retorts immediately, defensive.
She shrugs, a small smile on her lips again. She’s teasing him, he knows. Then she says, more seriously, “Everyone has secrets, Task.”
Not ones like this, he thinks, but he doesn’t argue with her.
“Tell me something I can know,” she says. Her hands still rest gently on her stomach, and Task so badly wants her to put her hand on him again, to touch him.
He thinks about what to tell her, running through what he considers to be safe for her to know about him.
“There’s a place I like to go on Nexarium,” he says eventually.
“I know you’ve never been, but it’s mostly desolate.
Lots of desert. Big rocks everywhere. But there’s one place that my uncle brought me growing up, not many people know of it.
It’s a short flight away from the capital city and there’s green.
” The words fall from his tongue with a hint of admiration.
“Trees, vegetation, a river the deepest shade of blue winding through the canyon. I learned to swim there when I was little. I still go there sometimes, when I need to get away.”
“It sounds beautiful,” Kit murmurs.
Like you, he thinks, then catches himself yet again. He settles on, “It is.”
They’re quiet for a moment, and Task wonders if he could do it. Touch her. He won’t after the last time, not when she doesn’t know what he can do, what he can sense. But god, does he want to.
“Tell me something about you,” he says.
Kit laughs. “Me? I’m boring. There’s nothing to know.” She shifts to her side so that she’s laying in the grass facing Task, her head propped in her hand, the top half of her scrubs riding up just slightly, so a sliver of her stomach is exposed.
Task tries to avoid looking at her skin. He feels hot. “You are far from boring, love.” If only she knew the half of it.
Kit’s cheeks color in the dim light. “I really like to dance,” she says finally.
“Any specific type?” Task asks her.
“All types,” Kit says. “Nevis and I sometimes go to this club next to the Center on Fridays, and we dance all night.”
Task pictures Kit out with Nevis, maybe in a little black dress, a pair of heels, her hair swept up from her neck.
Dancing, a drink in her hand. He imagines running into her there, coming up behind her, lowering his mouth to her ear, whispering something to her.
Her hand grabbing behind his neck, pulling him closer.
His cock starts to harden, the traitor, and he has to cut off the train of thought, think of blood and murder and the fact that he has to kidnap her to try to get himself back in line.
He turns on his side to face her, and also to try to hide the fact that he hasn’t even touched her and he’s at half-mast.
“I like ballroom dancing too, though,” Kit’s voice breaks through his thoughts. Had she been talking the whole time? Shit, shit, shit. She’s shifted onto her back, not looking at him anymore. “Something about the steps, the music, being led around the floor…it’s majestic, in a way.”
She’d fit right in at Draven’s court with a love for ballroom dancing. “Oh?” His lip quirks up. “What’s your favorite?”
“The waltz,” she says immediately. “My dad taught me growing up.” A small smile passes over her face.
“I saw him and my mom dancing once in the living room, after they’d put my brother and I to bed, and it was just this lovely, measured thing.
I burst into the room and demanded they teach me. My mom was so annoyed.” She laughs.
Task smiles, picturing the scene. Then repeats, “the waltz,” quietly.
They fall into a comfortable silence, Kit looking up at the stars above her and Task trying very hard to avoid gazing at her. He hears her breaths slow and he chances a look over at her.
She’s fallen asleep, her eyes closed, lashes brushing her cheeks.
She looks peaceful, he thinks, the crinkle between her brows smoothed away.
He should wake her, walk her back to her room, but he doesn’t want the moment to end, doesn’t want reality to come crashing back in for either of them.
He decides to give her ten more minutes and rolls on to his back, staring up through the domed glass ceiling.
Syndaris twinkles in the distance, taunting him.
It looks far away, but it’s closer than he’d like.
Because the closer they are to Syndaris, the closer they are to Nexarium, and the closer he gets to everything changing.