Chapter 47 #2
“I missed you, too, Fi. So fucking much,” he sighed, dropping his eyes from hers. “And you missed a lot. You missed Marius getting out, you missed C having her baby, you missed— Look, you could have said something. Anything. I might have understood.”
Fia nodded, looking up at the ceiling. She was trying to stop some welling tears from falling. He knew the move. His heart twinged, and he wanted to reach out to comfort her. But they needed to talk. For once, he was the one tempted to stifle a difficult conversation with physical contact.
“I did not want to—” she began, then paused and shook her head. A streak of a tear escaped down to her jaw. “Hate and disappointment are easier than giving you false hope. There was no path forward that did not risk you being burdened with misery because of the choices I made.”
“I am fully capable of making myself miserable, thank you very much, space pirate princess. Don’t need to worry about that with me.”
“Yes, but I could not stomach it if I were the catalyst of your misery,” she said, her voice wavering.
“If I stayed, remained in Tau Ceti and watched my Fleet leave, I would have abandoned my people. I do not know if I could live with that. And what life could I offer you? You would be trapped with a coward. Worse still, one who puts you at constant risk of imprisonment.”
“I’ve said it before. The best culture is on the low-sec stations, anyway,” he said with a somewhat exasperated scoff. “I’ve played the martyr card myself. It’s a shitty excuse. C’mon. Try again. You’ve got a better reason.”
He sank back into the chair a little, rolling his neck. All he wanted was more context, something to understand the why. He wasn’t fishing for a full-throated apology.
Though the thought of a literal full-throated apology did flit across his mind and gave him a wildly ill-timed throb.
“Fine,” Fia said as she rose from her chair to face him.
The cockpit was compact, and the top of her head was nearly brushing the ceiling as she stood. Her arms were held out towards him, palms up, fingers slightly curled. A gesture he had seen rarely used as some Icthian expression of vulnerability.
“I can — I could — imagine many paths. Many beautiful, beautiful paths, with you.” She slowly flexed her fingers again, and her eyes flicked between his gaze and her own palms.
The words with you rang in his head, repeatedly. That tiny validation that was not the only one pining made his cheeks flush, but he did his best to keep a straight face.
“But,” she continued. “All those paths I could imagine were unacceptable. If war came to Tau Ceti, you would watch your world crumble away. And if I stayed behind while my people fled, you would watch me unravel and become purposeless, scared, and stranded.”
Her shoulders rose in a tight display of tension.
“All converged into one unavoidable and unacceptable future. One where you stayed with me out of obligation. Not out of affection. Bound to suffer because your soul cannot see someone hurt if you have the means to help. And you would see my hurt, and you would stay to help me. Not because you—”
Her fingers curled in tightly, cutting off the words before she found her mettle to speak again.
“That. That is why. I could not live in a world where you put yourself second, out of kindness, for me.” She smiled, but her tone was quiet and choked with pain.
“And worst of all, you may be too gentle to ever stop me. If you are just silently yielding your life to me, then I have snuffed out the most beautiful spark I have ever known.”
Davik reached forward to cup both of her hands. Not interlacing their fingers, just resting beneath hers and rubbing his thumbs along the sides of her palms.
“Okay, so … That’s—”
He rolled around in his psyche for some decent words. This was a good time for words, if he could find them. He took a breath, shaking his head to try to free some of them.
“Well, that die has been cast. We blew up the Karnel. War is here, there’s no un-ringing that bell,” he began with a laugh.
“But, we can work on what worries you. We’ll make sure you aren’t stranded, purposeless, and uh, what was the third one?
Scared? Okay, I can’t promise a life where you’re never scared, as you really like to get into some insane situations.
” He curled his thumbs into her palm, pulling her closer to him.
“But, I think Tau Ceti is going to be full of opportunities for you to have one hell of a purpose now. And we’ll workshop how to keep you from feeling stranded once we get our bearings.
And I promise to be a little selfish, and tell you if I ever feel like I am being ‘snuffed’. How does that sound?”
“A curious proposition.” Her posture softened, easing into a slightly less formal stance.
Her eyes were on his fingers, her lids low with a thoughtful gaze.
“I … did not think I was worthy of a proposition, after all you have been dragged through. I just knew I owed you, that you deserved to know the why. Why I did not come back with you. Why I could not.”
Davik shook his head. “You know me, Fi. I’m a solutions-oriented man,” he chuckled and looked up at her.
This tall, ethereal, and curious creature was all in knots because of him.
He wasn’t exactly happy seeing her apologetic and vulnerable, but it stroked a distant part of his ego that was used to being on the other side of these things.
“And let’s be honest,” he continued. “Six months of silence is pretty brutal, but I can’t not try. This is worth working to make work. At least, it is to me.”
He tried to keep the need out of his words, but it was there. Bare and raw.
“Solutions-oriented man,” she murmured, smiling. “I like this plan. So, what do I do to ensure your happiness? What do you need from me? Aside from not dragging you into the front lines. Again.”
“Shit, that’s gonna be fun to navigate,” he said, shaking his head and letting out an incredulous chuckle.
“Warfare aside, I need you to not hide when you’re hurting.
I need you to not disappear on me. I need to know you won’t one day decide I’m better off alone.
You have to let me decide that, alright? ”
Fia nodded. “That, I can do.”
“And!” Davik continued. “You can’t skimp on your meals if we’re broke!” He heard the “we” in his words before it registered, but he plowed on with a growing, beaming smile. “I found out you’re supposed to have, like, three hundred grams of protein a day?! I was starving you!”
“That is a bit towards the top end of the nutritional guidance,” she said with a soft chuckle.
“But I will comply. I will not let abject poverty stop me from consuming everything in the kitchen.” She nodded astutely to punctuate the statement.
“Anything else? I feel that is not enough to make up for things.” She grimaced, looking away.
“This cannot be anywhere near enough, Davik. Not after how I hurt you.”
He leaned forward and rose to his feet, still holding her hands. “The hurt was because I thought you didn’t care.”
Her lips were a little parted as he spoke, and he lost track of his words momentarily. Kissing her sounded like a much easier way to convey the meaning.
He cleared his throat and returned to look directly into her eyes. Those soft, mossy green and blooming irises he had first seen almost a year ago, peeking out from that cryo pod.
“That was what killed me,” he continued.
“I thought this was just a convenient thing for you, and that you truly didn’t give a damn about me.
And look, there are a lot of ways to show you care.
Talking, like this? That’s a good way. But I think it pales compared to committing grievous war crimes to save me. ”
Fia rolled her head back and let out a delighted laugh before looking down at him, a fiery gleam in her eyes. She laced her fingers with his, pulling him against her and dragging her lips along his ear.
“Davik,” she breathed, and he felt her words travel down his spine and find a throbbing home between his legs.
“If anyone ever tries to harm you, ever again, they will find themselves prostrate and bloody at your feet, begging for your mercy, if they are fortunate enough to find me in an altruistic mood.”
He leaned into the touch, letting her hands wander.
She traced lines down his back, and he could just barely feel the hint of her claws leaving a path of goosebumps in their wake. The soft brush of her breath across his skin before she spoke again made him nearly gasp, and she tugged his hips against her as she murmured soft words in Teelish.
He couldn’t fathom them, but the rumbling and soft movement of her lips on his skin was making it hard to remember what the hell he was trying to say, what he was trying to ask.
He needed her. She needed him. The details of the why, the how, the guilt, and the pain were a far distant priority.
Their arms tangled around each other, and their lips met.
First soft, hesitant, but both of them were already gasping.
Then, he felt her lips part, and he tasted the warmth of her tongue on his.