He was running now, breath burning in his throat, his little toolbox clutched in his fist, clicking and clinking with every step he took. Other crew members were running too, in the opposite direction to him, sprinting in fear and determination, running from a beast of smoke and sparks chasing them through the hallway, filling it with smog.

Still breathing faster than he should have been, he pulled his mask down over his face. He had a few extra, but stopping to hand them to his fleeing crewmates potentially meant letting the whole ship come crashing down around them. He couldn’t possibly allow him to make such a stupid mistake. He wasn’t a novice anymore, though he was far from the level of his seniors. That’s why he was sent down into the thick of it to begin with. The older crewmates were too valuable and the newbies wouldn’t know what to do. So, it was up to him. The middleground, perfect to be sacrificed in the heat of battle.

Right as the plume of noxious smoke roiled over him, burrowing his vision in black and grey, the entire ship keeled again, the artifical gravity generators only barely able to keep up with the sudden turn.

Something, somewhere exploded. He didn’t know what, and he didn’t need to know, either. Right now, his only duty was to fix the lateral, starboard thrusters. Without them, their escape would be practically impossible, and he knew that.

Poking a few buttons on the side of his helmet, he was able to change the settings, making it shift to smoke-vision, giving him a better look at what he was actually running at. The corridor was partially collapsed in its places, the metal walls partially crushed into web-like patterns, like a creased sheet of paper. More worryingly, he could spot at least three corpses, splayed out, their spacesuits slashed open, blood spreading across the hall in odd, straight patterns as a result of the ship leaning back and forth.

He didn’t have any choice but to simply run past them, squeezing his eyes shut to keep it out, to focus on what was important. Unluckily, he didn’t get far enough before the ship shifted again, turning almost a full 90 degrees, making him tumble and slip on a streak of blood, crashing him to the floor, right on top of a body. His eyes flew open and he released a silent scream. Worst of all, the one thing he had no choice but to notice was that these people had not been killed by accident or coincidence.

They had been stabbed.

He gulped. Despite his current mission, he had never wanted to die. Not before, and especially not now. Regardless, once the ship regained its balance, he shakingly brought himself to his feet, picking his toolbox back off the ground, staggering back into a run. The lights above flickered, the bodies seemed to gaze longingly after him, but he had no time. This wasn’t about him.

Down the hall, he could finally see the thruster operating room, smoke belching out of it in great plumes. He didn’t have the privilege to slow down as he continued sprinting, almost slipping once he reached it, only keeping his footing by grabbing a hold of the doorframe. Warning sirens were blasting in his ears, the room filled with the red lights of the flashing exit sign. And in that great smoky nothingness, standing hunched over a ripped-open panel, illuminated only by the red light, he saw them.

He froze in place. The tool box slipped out of his hand. A pair of shining, green goggles turned on him.

Before he knew what had happened, he’d been grappled down onto the smokeless floor, the vibro-blade of some off-system world pressing against his neck, and maybe he was faster than he would have thought of himself, because before they could gut him like a fish, he’d pulled off his mask in one fell move, exposing his face to the room and to them. The blade halted, still pressed against his neck. The edge of it had already sliced through his suit, now mere millimetres away from slicing open his neck. He could feel the heat from the friction of it hum against his skin.

The knife wouldn’t leave his throat, but as he laid there on the floor, panting, trying not to breathe in any of the smoke hanging only a metre above them, they reached up to their face, and with a few small button presses, their mask released its grip on their face. It really was a hideous mask—black, with green eyes of glass, like a death’s head. But that wasn’t what the face below was like. Not in the least.

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She was so pretty. Just like she’d been all those years ago, back on Titan, where they first met. “...Lilith?”

She was breathing quickly now, her eyes twisting up into uncertainty. It felt as though an eternity passed, him on the ground, her above him, pressing a knife to his throat. And then it actually slashed a line in his throat and she leapt away from him like a jumping spider, the vibro-blade sheathed before he could so much as understand what she’d done. Compared to her, it took him several seconds before he was able to get back on two feet, forced to re-equip the gas mask or face suffocation. She didn’t stop him.

A few paces off, his repair kit laid, open. He took a step towards it but only had time to begin reaching down to it as a knife was once again pressed against his throat. He gulped. “Just… let me clear the air.”

She didn’t respond. Her face was hidden again, but she hadn’t stabbed him yet, and after a few seconds, she retreated her weapon.

He reached back down, and with only one eye peeking over his shoulder, he grabbed the small box. Actually fixing the console to make it stop belching smoke would have been next to impossible, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have allowed it, either. He could feel her emerald eyes burning into his back as he worked. But, true to his word, within a few minutes, the smoke began to clear as the ventilators began working properly, clearing the air and making it breathable again.

She stared at him. He stared at her. Slowly, he removed his mask. She didn’t do the same. “Please,” he said, but the tainted air still made his throat burn. “Lilith, I-,”

The next moment, the knife was once again pointed at him, right between his eyes, only inches away. He blinked at it, feeling the sweat beading on his brow.

Behind her emerald goggles, her eyes burned coldly. He knew they were supposed to be blue, but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see them at all. “Do not call me by that name,” she said. Her voice was garbled, different, tainted by mechanical filters meant to hide her identity fully. “I am not her.”

“You are!” he cried. “I know it’s you, but…” He gulped again. He would have wiped the sweat off his brow if there wasn’t a knife there, threatening to cut his fingers off. “What happened to you?”

“Me?” she said, almost jeeringly. “What happened to you, Carth?” There was something new in her voice. Something that hadn’t been there before, not when they first met so many years ago, not mere minutes ago. “Why are you on this doomed Republic ship? Rubbing shoulders with neo-humans and Earthlings?”

“We all have to make do, don’t we?” he said simply. Easily.

“No,” she growled. “That’s not it. That’s not who you were.” The knife in front of his eyes began to tremble. Her shoulders were the same. “We… we promised, didn’t we?”

He pulled his lips tight. Then, he took a step forward. Any other Rebellic Shade would have let him pierce his own head on their vibro-blade, but not her. As though in a choreographed dance, she took a step back as well, mirroring his movements yet unable to relinquish her pride. “We did,” he said. “But that was back on Titan, and we were young, and… You have to put those kinds of thoughts aside at some point, don’t you?”

“Not these!” she said, jabbing her blade toward him again. “Not your ideology, not your pride!”

“Are those all that you have?”

She went still, quiet as a statue. She said nothing for several seconds. All he felt was pity. Endless, malevolent pity. Reaching up, he took a hold of her hand. The knife clattered out of it, the vibro-gyro automatically turning off as it hit the floor. He could feel her hand tremble in his, but it was small, much smaller than it should have been.

“You used to be so much more,” he said in mourning. “You were strong then, yes, but…” His other hand reached towards her helmet. She didn’t move to stop him as his hand slipped beneath her chin, pressing the same buttons, only moving back once the helmet opened up to reveal her face, as pale as a white lily, her eyes as blue as the sky, covered in clouds of crystalline tears. One such tear slid down her cheek, nestling inside the lower part of her helmet.

“No,” she whispered, her voice low and trembling. “This is all I am, and all I ever was. You don’t remember me. Not really. What you remember was the pupa before the chrysalis. I’m different now. And unlike you, I have stuck to my promise.” With that, her face regained some form of resolve, a hardness finding its way into her features like ice in snow.

He placed one hand on her cheek. He could feel it melt within his grasp, her features softening once more. “You are as beautiful as you always were, Lilith.”

She seemed as though she wanted to rebut him, to disagree, to tell him that she was now so much more than that, that there was more purpose to life than simply being oneself, but it wouldn’t come out. Nothing would, except a sob. She fell into his arms, weak at the knees, weak in the heart in a way she had never been before. It didn’t help that instead of pushing her off, instead of telling her to get back in line, all he did was embrace her, gently, firmly, her arms big and warm and just the right size to fit her small but taut form.

It was just enough for her, and everything he needed, too.

That was all.