Martinez paused Inside the guest house once the door closed behind him, wanting to think about what to do next.
Yes, he knows to follow Lysa into the bedroom, but after she slammed the door so hard that paintings fell off the wall—he wanted a rough plan of action.
Breathing deeply and stacking the fallen artwork against the wall gave Martinez enough time to prepare.
After all of what he had seen and what Nelya had told him, Martinez knew he had to be the problem. He was sharp enough that even with the language barrier, he could tell Kyroll was focusing on him: pointing, glaring, and snapping teeth.
If Martinez were a betting man, which he was, he would bet that Lysa was trying to stand up for him.
If her standing up for him led to her doing something she already regretted—it was his turn to confront her Father, well, after he settled her aching heart. Lysa deserved that much support and more.
Slowly opening the door, Martinez could barely make out the sounds of Lysa sniffling. For a moment, he wondered if she might not be crying, but he thought that until he was close enough for her meek noises to overcome his tinnitus.
His Ruh'ah was sprawled out on the bed, burying her head deep into the plush pillows. Her hair draped around the pillows, engulfing her shoulders, upper torso, and the surroundings. If not for seeing her heaving chest, he could think she was trying to snuggle up because she was cold.
Walking over and sitting beside her, Lysa’s body sunk against his back. After sitting down, Martinez laid a hand on her shoulder and gently rubbed it, shockingly causing her to recoil as if he was about to hurt her more.
Thankfully, after a few moments of soothing contact, Lysa seemed to realize it was Martinez giving her beatific reassurance and not her mother, father, or some other specter she conjured in her mind; at that point, she somewhat settled once again, but her hammering heart was like a fist repeatedly striking his palm: it was steady, powerful, and unyielding in its presence.
“How are you feeling?” Martinez questioned, unsure of any more appropriate way to broach the topic.
Lysa looked over her shoulder at him. Her usually soft face was contorted with puffy eyes and was as sopping wet as the pillow. With an almost anguished look, Lysa attempted to smile, hoping doing so would help her look strong and capable, but that lasted only a heartbeat at most.
“Henry—am I detestable?” Lysa questioned with shocking earnesty.
It did not seem like the other times when she called herself a monster; at those times, Lysa was parroting the treatment from the aliens surrounding her. This was in no way like that. No, it was a question pulled up from the darkest dredges of her soul. The mere act of asking the question burned her throat.
It was the result of years upon years of doubt, self-hatred, and external hostility finally catching up to the vampiric woman. Her finally lashing out against the core of her hatred shattered any bulwark against the thoughts like glass.
“I don’t think you are,” Martinez replied, genuinely smiling at her, finding the question frivolous.
He would not have laid with her, cared for her, or traveled half a planet away to know her family if he believed her to be detestable.
That was not the answer Lysa wanted to hear. In her state, she was likely reaching out for his assurance—even if it was for a delusional reason.
Instead of looking uplifted and happy, Lysa twisted back to the pillow and screamed into it, unleashing her fury at the plush silencer.
“Babe, it’s alright. It was a moment of passion,” Martinez said after a moment of pause, wanting to phrase it to not sound like he was laying the blame at her feet.
Lysa whined and grumbled, pulling the pillow tighter, kicking the bedspread, trying to release all the pent-up emotions.
“After that?” Lysa questioned, barely peering out of the pillow.
“Yes, it’s alright,” Martinez assured. “We can get through this.”
Martinez only assured her of that because they still had each other. In a way, both were alone, but they still were there for one another.
“Genuinely?” Lysa sniffled, shifting around in the bed and grabbing Martinez’s waist while laying her head across his lap.
She wanted some amount of skinship from who, at this point, seemed like the only person there for her. Yes, Nelya would not abandon her, but Lysa would never want to bargain with the idea that it was her or her father.
“Of course,” Martinez replied, running his hand through her hair.
Lysa fell nearly silent save for a few sniffles every few seconds, enjoying Martinez’s tender touch, warmth, and support. At this point, he and her Mother were undoubtedly the brightest stars in her life.
Yeah, she had Teacher, Lira, Feinel, Ivorn, and a few other acquaintances she enjoyed having around. But with them, she found them and tried to go out once living in Draun.
“Can we go home?” Lysa whined, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Martinez sighed and looked out the window, enjoying the babbling brook past the portal. He personally did not want to go back yet. They were barely halfway through the time off both took, and Martinez genuinely wanted to know Lysa’s family, even if her dad was an ass.
His own desires to stay aside, Martinez believed Lysa would regret leaving now and not giving her Father another shot. All he had to do was get his foot in the door so he could help her. As it stands now, there was no way they could make up without both him and Nelya there.
“Can I try to meet your dad first?” Martinez questioned.
“Why? He hates you—and me,” Lysa argued.
“I doubt he hates you. Me, I could see. But what father isn’t protective of their little girl?” Martinez replied, looking down at his Ruh'ah, “Even if he hates me. I won’t know unless I try.”
“Please make no attempt; that man is not worth the effort. We can pack and be home by tomorrow morning. At least then, we will not have wasted our trip; we could do plenty of things closer to home. Perhaps camping?” Lysa argued.
Moving his hand from the top of her head to rub a thumb on her soft cheek, Martinez knew he could not accept just giving up. “Let me try. If I can’t get him to at least give me a chance by tomorrow night, we will leave, alright?”
Lysa clutched his waist tighter and grimaced, trying to think of how she could convince Martinez not to. They could just vanish into the night like she had done years ago—Mother would get over her just vanishing again, and it was not like Father would care.
“Fine, I will trust you to try, but I am not returning to the main house,” Lysa said.
“Alright, I will bring you some food then,” Martinez replied, moving to find Kyroll. However, Lysa stopped him by not letting him go.
“After I have some more cuddling?” Lysa cooed, pouting slightly. “I wish for more.”
“Alright,” Martinez replied, laying down and snuggling until she had entirely calmed down.
—--
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They lay there for several hours, and Lysa initially vented and told him more about the treatment Kyroll had done to her; the stories were not treading new ground, but she wanted to say to them, so he listened and listened and listened, never interrupting his loves stories until surprisingly Lysa ended up muttering a few incoherent phrases and passed out.
Martinez slipped out of the guest house after wiggling out from Lysa’s loving clutches and covering her with the blankets. The cool air and light snow on the ground were refreshing after having a living heater clinging to him.
It was not that he did not enjoy it, but after an hour, he was sweating, yet he would not say anything to interrupt Lysa’s enjoyment of the moment.
Martinez had not even closed the door leading to Nelya’s kitchen before she had already gotten his attention.
“How is she doing?” Nelya questioned, looking up from her datapad and the small snack platter.
Martinez was surprised to see her sitting in their luxurious dining room. It had a long oak table, chandeliers overhead, and well over a dozen pre-set dinner sets. He had expected Kyroll to be here, with Nelya forcing her husband to apologize or at least reign in his bullshit.
But no, it was just her, dressed as casually as normal and likely pecking away at her next novel while waiting for Martinez and Lysa.
“She is asleep for now,” Martinez replied, sitting in the chair across from her.
Nelya relaxed her shoulders, her sharp four pink eyes setting into their typical ease. “That’s good; I was afraid she was about to slip off into the night again.”
“Well, she did mention wanting to do that,” Martinez awkwardly admitted.
At this point, Nelya knowing what Lysa was thinking was in no way a shock; the two seemed to be able to read each other's minds. Her guessing her daughter's desires was to be expected, especially since it would not be the first time Lysa scurried away in the dark.
“I was afraid of that,” Nelya sighed, “did you convince her otherwise? Or are you just telling me you two will be leaving when she wakes up?” She finished with a depressive drawl.
Today was stressful for the poor woman; just after her daughter finally returned, her husband had ruined it and undone any progress made at reconnection from the previous week.
“We aren’t leaving yet. I convinced her to stay another day and let me attempt to break the ice with Kyroll. It was easy enough to tell after that screaming match he was focusing on me—So I figured that would be the best course of action.” Martinez explained, looking around for Kyroll.
“He went out,” Nelya replied, annoyance oozing off her lips. “But how did you understand the fight? I thought you didn’t speak Aviex.”
“I don’t, but he was glaring at me, not Lysa.” Martinez explained, “But that’s not important right now; I need your help.”
The older Aviex woman tilted her head curiously. “My help? Are you certain, my plan fell apart before even starting?”
“I’m aware. Honestly, whatever you had planned before told Lysa and me little. But now it’s my turn to try and make a plan. I need you to tell me everything that was your plan, why Kyroll is so hateful towards non-Aviex, and anything else you think is useful,” Martinez implored Nelya.
Nelya sighed, and a forlorn look came over her face as she looked almost sheepishly away from Martinez. “Will you tell Lysa what I tell you?”
“Yes, I'm not going to lie to her,” Martinez replied without hesitation.
“I will tell you everything, but once I do, you might understand why I would rather you not tell Lysa,” Nelya muttered, barely loud enough for Martinez to hear.
Martinez doubted anything Nelya could say would have been that horrible. Almost every Aviex he had met was kind, cordial, and fit well within the GU. Sure, they had their cultural quirks, but so did every other sentient across the galaxy.
That was until her plush lips parted, and she weaved him a tale that might as well have been an Arthurian tragedy.
Nelya explained that the Aviex is one of the oldest species in the Galactic Union. If Martinez’s understanding is correct, they have been in the GU for several thousand years.
At one point, they were not the species in shambles that the GU knows today. Over five hundred Standard years ago, they were the mightiest individual military force in the galaxy.
That power naturally led the Aviex to a particular sin Martinez was all too familiar with—Pride.
Pride led to a feeling of superiority, allowing an Aviex man, whom Nelya refused even to say their name, to come to power. She declined to name them because the GU and the Aviex government have taken drastic steps to wipe that history section out of existence.
Why was evident when she explained what this mysterious Aviex did.
He and the armies of the Aviex attempted a rebellion against the GU, dragging along with them anyone who was just as prideful and power-mad. This led to a war that, to her best knowledge, lasted over a hundred standard years.
On the low end of estimates, that war led to quadrillions of sentients dying. Be it from direct combat, planet cracking, starvation, or, worst of all, why the Aviex remnants have their horrible modern moniker of Vein Slicer.
The Blood Camps.
They were locations where slaves were used as cattle, ready to be slaughtered, harvested, and consumed by the ever-growing mass of the Aviex militaries—and their allies.
The Aviex military did not use solid food for the war, opting to use their uniquely efficient blood-processing organs to fuel their armies. They did this for two reasons, at least Nelya hoped it was.
The look of shame and guilt on her face made it evident which one she could stomach, and it was not rooted in twisted logic.
Firstly, eating and drinking your enemies saved on logistical needs, and not having to ship food with your army resulted in no long logistical lines.
Letting slaves act as blood bags until they died was more accessible on long campaigns. The first reason was barbaric, twisted, and vile, but Martinez could, in a fucked up way, understand the logic, even if the idea made him sick to his stomach.
The Aviex of that time were not ravaging the local flora and fauna; no, those were people they were eating for god's sake—that's something entirely different.
Martinez thought the idea was bad enough, but it held nothing to the second reason for Aviex’s consumption of the other sentients.
Although Nelya only knows the few details Kyroll was willing to tell her or what she could dig up through the dataset, it painted a picture.
Women, children, warriors, commanders—it did not matter; all were fair game and sought after for their own reasons. The higher-ups in the Aviex military essentially granted accolades for their favorite types of sentients to try to draw power from drinking from and eating them.
What kind of fucked up tribalistic warfare was this? Yeah, Martinez had heard of the messed up things Humans did to each other in the past, from African cannibal warlords, the mass slaughter of farmers, all the way to horrible death camps from all sides of the world wars.
Did the Aviex leaders of the time genuinely think they were taking power from eating other sentient creatures?
“What the fuck?” Martinez choked out, picturing scenes of Aviex soldiers stringing up helpless victims over vats to drain their blood.
“After the war ended and the Aviex were reduced to our current numbers, the remnants of the Aviex and the GU eventually came to an agreement.” Nelya sighed, undeterred by the Human’s shock. “At least as far as I am aware, this knowledge is not commonplace, so I only know what I do because Kyroll was at one point a bodyguard for the Aviex GU representative and overheard this.”
Nelya leaned in close as if she was telling him the most dire of secrets despite them being alone. “All public knowledge of that war was to be suppressed so the few hundred thousand Aviex remaining would not be slaughtered to the man. The Aviex could never rise above a red status species, and of course, from our end, we could maintain only two military forces: a small planetary defense force and the section of special forces that works under a joint Aviex and GU command. That is where Kyroll and his team worked.”
“So what did they do?” Martinez questioned, grasping at straws and drawing lines to similar Human history. He guessed that there might have been some suppression force or possibly a force meant to show the best of the Aviex to new species; that might explain the Human Marine flag in the basement.
“I am not certain; a lot of what Kyroll and his team did they keep quiet about—I’m sorry,” Nelya said. “But I know he treats other species like he does because they regularly run into the remnant effects of that old war. Finding sentients who were out for revenge hundreds of years later.”
“So he hates me because he thinks I will do whatever he saw to his daughter?” Martinez questioned.
“Yes,” Nelya nodded, “I know you won’t hurt our daughter. I wanted to introduce you to him, with you and Lysa being sweet to one another to put him at ease—when he showed up, that fell apart. I’m sorry, this is all my fault,” She finished hanging her head.
Martinez stood up and walked over to her side, reassuringly patting her shoulder. “It’s alright. I know you meant well. But I need to go and be more stubborn than your husband. Where is he?”
Nelya told Martinez where to find Kyroll, an old military bar on the far side of town. It would be easy enough to find, and the name “Battle Booze” was distinct enough.
“Thanks, Nelya. Don’t worry; I won’t mess this up,” Martinez assured, turning toward the door.
As Martinez pulled the keys to the rental SUV off the hook by the door, Nelya stepped up and stopped him. “Henry, before you go?”
“What is it?” Martinez asked, turning toward her.
Nelya gently pulled Martinez into a hug, attempting reassurance. He would not be alright with most people making such sudden contact, but Nelya’s was different. Like her daughter, her mere presence was calming and put him at ease.
“Do your best, little hunter,” Nelya softly whispered as Martinez returned the gentle embrace.
Having Nelya call him what the equivalent of a son in Aviex indeed held weight for him. The gesture made him pull her plush body a bit tighter, wanting to show some return of the feeling. While he was not ready to call her mom or anything, this short time together meant a lot to him.
“I will do my best,” Martinez said, separating from the buxom woman and opening the door. Before he left, Martinez turned around. “Can you make sure Lysa has some dinner? And tell her not to wait up?”
“Of course, I can,” Nelya smiled.