_ _ _Hiiro
"To all mercs of the Stalking Shadow, regroup and sit tight. The client is dead so the job's off. Don't engage anyone or anything and await further instruction for how to get off world."
Leeroy had looped that message on just about every radio frequency he could manage the day Celio's estate had fallen. Of course, being Leeroy with all his damned plans, I knew it was botshit. But it bought us some time, which was all it was supposed to do. Convince the enemy there was no need to chase us down and stomp us out while we were too disorganized to fight back. Meanwhile the dispossessed mercs would head into the city and keep fighting for Celio's damned ego.
I managed to get the truck to the beach and a little further inland than that. We abandoned it in an irrigation ditch and hoofed it from there. The non-combatants scattered, each going their separate ways. Leonor suggested a nearby farm, Ambar agreed. They took Zoe-Esther's body with them so they could lay her to rest there. I trailed along behind them, after all Zoe had done for me it felt like I owed her than much. Her final words echoed in my head.
'Hiiro, I think I love you.'
My radio crapped out and died before we reached Leonor's orchard. The mercs had gone to ground, battered bloody but nowhere near beaten. I couldn't help but admire that kind of tenacity, even if I didn't share it.
We made our slow way across the brightening forest of dates and plums, Zoe's body swaying in Leonor's arms with every step we took. It all seemed so pointless. She had died for Celio's greed. A romanticized dream that she would never see, even if he did realize it. If she'd survived to see Celio become king of the world like he wanted, Zoe would still be a maid, a plaything slaved to power hungry criminal's ego. Maids were just another type of furnishing to a man like him, but she'd been my friend— even if I hadn't appreciated it at the time. And now she was dead.
'Hiiro, I think I love you.'
Why did she say that? We barely knew each other. She was a maid. It's not like we'd come together outside of working for Celio; our chance meeting was just part of the job. And what about the way she'd taken care of me, was that just her doing her job? Or all the times I'd noticed her peering in on my work and taught her, had that been more than just mentoring a colleague? I'd never considered Zoe as anything more than a diligent caretaker too clever for the life she was given.
For the life taken from her.
We'd never seen each other that way… so why? Because I gave her a day off? Because I treated her like a human being instead of a servant or a thing? Because maybe some part of me really did admire her as more than just my caretaker? I'd never had one, but if I did have a little sister Zoe-Esther would have been more than enough. Maybe, in that way, I loved her too. And now she was dead because I had been too blind, too slow, too weak.
Because I couldn't save her.
Hours of walking got us to Leonor's farm, my thoughts spinning in sluggish circles the entire journey. It was a mix of an orchard and a vineyard lain out in mostly-straight rows. It was almost time for the harvest, the trees and vines all heavy with growths that would have been beautiful had all the color not been drained from the world. Ambar found a shed half-lost in the fields. We piled in and collapsed. I don't think any of us were still awake by the time we hit the ground. In my dreamless slumber, I saw her paling face as she whispered to me.
'Hiiro, I think I love you.'
I woke dazed and depleted to the sound of shovels nearby. Ambar-Lucia and Leonor-Sammara were outside, digging in the fields. I limped outside and saw a third woman there digging with them.
Not Zoe. Of course it wasn't her. But this woman reminded me of her other friend, Khloe. The stiff-backed woman we'd left to rot in one of Celio's garages. Ambar saw me staring and made introductions.
"Hiiro, Isidora-Olivia-Emillia. Isidora, Hiiro."
Isidora looked up from her work and waved sheepishly. I saw the resemblance in her plain face. She didn't share Khloe's stately grace, but there was no doubt this was her older sister.
"Umm, hi." I started. "I know we're trespassing-"
"You're a guest." Isidora said bluntly, returning to her work. "And Zoe is family."
I stood there like an idiot, trying to put the pieces together.
"Not by blood." Leonor huffed. "But we're sisters. All of us."
"We all worked this farm as girls." Ambar added. "Us, Khloe, Zoe. We're women of the land. We're all sisters, and when we-" Her gaze flicked to Zoe's body and she choked up. She couldn't bring herself to say it.
"Pass," Isidora said neutrally. "When a sister passes, we return her to the land. That way, she's still here with us, gifting the soil with life so that we can carry on. I know it seems strange to an outsider but-"
"No," I blurted. "Not at all. We had a similar custom on my homeworld. The dead were rendered into protein slurry and mineral compounds for the terraforming efforts. I probably built more roads out of bone concrete than I did out of anything else when I was younger."
All three girls paused to look at me, faces aghast.
"You used their bones for roads?" Ambar asked in quite shock.
"Wait, what's a protein slurry?" Leonor whispered.
"It's kind of like a chalky mush that tastes… well it's more bland than anything. Eating it for weeks at a time got old fast though." I said with a shrug.
"You eat the dead?" Ambar whispered in horror.
"Deus a maldito." Isidora cursed under her breath.
"I think your way is better." I blurted quickly. "It's more… Natural."
The women shook their heads and went back to work. I meant it. Being buried in a field certainly seemed a lot more appealing than just getting tossed in a recycler five minutes after your wake was over. It probably wasn't as efficient, but if I had a choice, being planted under a sapling seemed like the way to go.
The hole must have been two and half meters deep by the time they finished. It was a good soil, black and fluffy and crawling with insect life. I couldn't help but wonder how many dead girls and women were buried under this field. Thousands? Millions? Generation after generation for hundreds of years that number kept growing. And now, we were adding one more to the sum.
We returned Zoe to the land.
She seemed so far away once we'd lowered her into the pit. Despite the broken arm, I did my part. I owed her that much. Someone must have cleaned her up while I was passed out, because if I ignored the holes in her stomach she could have been sleeping down there in the shade. It was like I could finally see color again since she'd died in my arm.
Zoe-Esther made for a beautiful corpse.
"Should we…" I started, "should we say something?"
"What's there to say?" Leonor said bluntly. "It's not like she can hear us."
"What about 'goodbye'?"
"It's too late for goodbyes." Ambar said misty-eyed. "Even if it wasn't, I don't think I'd want to."
"I never imagined she'd be the first one to keep our promise." Isidora said vacantly.
"What promise?" Leonor asked, earning her a frown.
"The one we made before we all came of age, back before you all into you're beauty and left to work for Celio." A hint of spite crept into her voice, but faded quickly. "You all promised that no matter what happened, you'd remember where you came from. We all promised each other that no matter what, we'd come back here to join our mothers and each other here in these fields."
"Oh yeah… that promise." Leonor said bashfully.
Ambar found an interesting bug to look at in the meantime.
It felt like I should have said something. I should have known the answer by now but I didn't and there was no point dragging this out longer than we had to. She thought she had loved me and no matter what answer I came up with now, it was too late. Nothing could change that.
With nothing left to say, we took our last looks and started filling Zoe's grave. Zoe-Esther made for a beautiful corpse and one day, I'm sure there'd be a beautiful tree to mark her grave. It wasn't much of a send off, it was certainly less than a girl like her deserved, but it was kind of nice. Though it was mostly sad and it pissed me off more and more with every bit of soil we replaced. By the time I'd lost sight of her under the dirt, I was simmering with rage.
She had died Celio's dream. What right did the land have to take anything else from her? Wasn't her life worth enough that she could finally stop taking care of other people? Hadn't she done enough!? After she'd been reclaimed by the land would she finally be done or would there always be one more thing demanded of her, even in death?
It wasn't fair, but neither was life. I knew that better than anyone.
We ran out of soil but none of us made a move to leave. We stood there, just staring at the plum sapling we'd planted on her grave. It made me think about the orchard we were surrounded by, thousands of trees in this one farm. Did all of them have someone resting within their roots? Probably not all, but a lot of them did. The thought alone made this farm feel like a sacred place. Maybe it was, or maybe a farm was just a farm no matter how many souls lay beneath.
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"What should we do now?" Ambar asked.
"I've still got work to do." Isidora said, brushing the dirt off herself. "I'll be back by suns down with some food. You can stay in the tool shed as long as you need."
I was so lost in thought, I barely heard her leave.
It was a good question. I didn't know what to do next, but what I did know was that I was sick of women dieing for me. I was sick of pulling the trigger. I was sick of being forced to kill or die with no room to compromise. Years of painting houses flashed to mind and it made me sick. The smell of gunsmoke and blood clawed their way up my throat like a bile aftertaste.
What should we do? I was hungry, I hadn't ate anything since Sophia's stir-fry yesterday. The thought hit me with a wave of vertigo. Yesterday. Everything had all fell apart in a single day. Months of effort and what did we have to show for it? The scattered remains of a whole heaping shitload of nothing. Zoe was dead. Sophia was dead. How many people had Bim killed to rescue me? How many of the mercs had died fighting? How many of Celio's men had been cut down while I was running away? I didn't know, and what surprised me more, I didn't care.
I was done fighting Celio's war.
"Do whatever you want." My words sounded lifeless, almost as hollow and empty as my soul. "I'm done being someone else's pawn."
"What about your friends?" Ambar asked.
"What friends!? You mean the murders who abducted me and brought me to another fucking planet to play killer for some rich asshole I'd never heard of before!" Both women bristled as I insulted Celio.
"Celio is going to change the world!" Leonor snarled, clenching a shovel in her burly fists.
"He said he'd save everyone-" Ambar said, but there was no conviction behind her words.
"Just like he saved Zoe? And Khloe? How many of your friends did he save back at the palace? Hmm? Not a fucking one. He left you to die so he could save his own skin! Same as he did to me. Because we're replaceable to him."
"That wasn't his fault-" Ambar mumbled while I pressed the attack, lashing out at her because Zoe was dead and life wasn't fair and she was there and someone deserved to be hurt.
"Why not?! This entire crusade of his, all of the fighting, started because Celio owned half the world and it wasn't enough for him. He can't stand being the richest man on the planet because that wasn't enough for him and nothing ever will be. If he really wanted to save anyone, he'd buy an island and build a paradise of his own. But no! Instead he brings in guns and mercenaries and girls like you to fight for him because he and his men don't have the balls to fight for themselves, all so he can take this island from someone else. He's just another rich selfish prick who stays in power by walking all over people like you."
"People like us?" Leonor growled, her voice little more than a whisper.
"Yeah, people like you." I sneered. "Blind, trusting, gullible idiots who kiss the boots bearing down on your throats. People like you who give your lives so some lying asshole can make a buck off you!"
"If that's what you actually think after all this time, then you haven't learned a thing about him." Ambar said softly, voice quivering— holding down a quite hatred. "Or us."
"I know you're both too blind to see it, but Celio's not the savior you think he is. He's just a spoiled rich bastard throwing away other people's lives to get what he wants! You think he even knows your names, let alone gives a rat's ass that you're still alive? Do you honestly think he give's a shit if any of you 'return to the land' or not? For all he knows, you're both dead. So do yourselves a favor and keep it that way. If you go crawling back to him, he'll get you both killed." My final words were little more than a whisper. "And who will bury you then?"
"Hey, Hiiro." Leonor said stepping close and stabbing her shovel into the loose dirt of Zoe's grave.
"Wha-" A fist like a sledgehammer caught me in the gut. I doubled over and went to ground, trying to catch myself on an arm that folded like a dry twig.
"You'd better have a different answer for us by tomorrow. Come on Ambar."
They walked away, leaving me sucking wind on their sister's grave— on my friend's final resting place. It didn't matter if they thought I was a prick, I was right. If they went crawling back to Celio, they'd be lucky if poor Isidora could plant two more trees next to Zoe's grave. More likely than not, they end up like Khloe. Abandoned where they fell in a pointless battle when they had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
They deserved better than that. Why couldn't they see that?
I sat myself upright and just kept staring at Zoe's grave. This was the part of my paintings I'd always avoided. In all my years of pulling the trigger, I'd never once stopped to face the emptiness that followed. This wasn't war, it wasn't backalley justice or art or just the way of the road.
This was tragic. It was a hole in my life and the lives of others that nothing would ever fill. It was like the world have just lost a color from its palette. It didn't seem right, we'd barely known each other but she'd loved me and even if I couldn't return those feelings, in my own way I'd loved her too. And now she was dead. Just like Sophia was dead. Just like Shenhua was dead. Just like every other person I'd murdered. Just like the thousands I'd burned alive with ungodly hellfire.
How much color had I robbed from the universe? How many years had been ripped away because I walked into someone's life? I stared a Zoe's grave through a flood of tears. It should have been me in the dirt, not her.
She had loved me and I couldn't save her.
I reached for the flames that had threatened to consume me months ago. The killing heat that had once been so overwhelming, so omnipresent in my mind that all I'd wanted to do was let it burn me hollow. The radiant fire that would cleanse my soul, burning away my shame, terror and regrets. The inferno that would consume everything and free me of all the tragedy of life. Everything I was, am and ever would be, could finally disappear and the universe would be all the better for it. I reached within and opened the valve that would send me to oblivion…
But there wasn't a spark of fire left in me. I was already hollow and exhausted and starving. All that I was couldn't light a campfire, let alone cleanse the universe of my mistakes. I was too weak. I was nothing but the culmination of all the fuck-ups I'd been to stupid to let kill me.
I ran out of tears long before I ran out of self-pity. It made sense. I hadn't had anything to eat of drink in something like forty hours. My grumbling stomach made that clear. Starvation was a long death coming, it was a good thing dehydration would get me first— I was probably already halfway there. If I was a real man I'd have stayed right there until I died, but I was a coward.
I would have killed for a pack of smokes just then. A coward's long suicide, one coffin nail at a time.
Instead I picked myself up and snapped some low-hanging plums off the trees surrounding me. They were huge, way larger than anything that grew back on Intatenrup. It could have been the sun, but I figured it was probably the soil. I took a bite and sour tears fell from my eyes once more.
It was so sweet and so sour all at once. Kind of like life. If I hadn't been starving, I don't know if I could have ate it. Every bite made me think of the the woman who might be buried under this tree, feeding it so it could feed me. Every drop of sweet syrupy juice flooding my mouth reminded me of little moments with Zoe, months of tiny kindnesses all adding up to a mountain of compassion. The sour tart aftertaste mirrored the absence I felt now that she was gone. There was no reason to it, no highs and lows, it was just sweet and sour all at once.
The entire time I was eating, tears and snot and sobs I couldn't hold in.
It wasn't very manly of me, but I didn't care because all I had left of her was a few short months of sweet and sour memories. That was just how life was and it was tragically beautiful.
The same could be said for my time with Bim. A pang of guilt jolted through my stomach. I was a piece of scat for thinking about another woman at Zoe's grave. That didn't stop me from doing it.
Hours passed like that. Me just staring at Zoe's grave and thinking about her and about Bim. Ambar came back to check on me and give me food and water. I barely noticed when she set my broken arm and wrapped a splint around it. I was surprised she hadn't just left me. I guess her and Leonor still waiting for a better answer to her question.
When the twinned suns started coming back up, I went back to the toolshed and slept like the dead. When I woke, I went back to Zoe's grave and kept thinking about her and about Bim. That became our daily ritual. I'd sulk and lick my wounds, feeling like I was rotting from the inside out. It reminded me of radiation poisoning but out here in the sticks I didn't have a shot in hell at finding a doctor, let alone the proper chems. Even if I did, chances were they wouldn't make a lick of difference. I wasn't sick, at least not like that. Meanwhile Ambar would play caretaker and Leonor would prowl around working off her anger on the land around me. She never went too far though. She couldn't bring herself to abandon me, just like I couldn't bring myself to disappear in a final blaze as my strength returned.
When I slept, I had nightmares of being captured and coming to in my interrogation cell, but it was never the brief torture that got to me. No, what woke me up in a cold sweat was Bim and the single-minded obliteration she'd wrought to rescue me. I tried to tell myself it wasn't her. That my Bim would never be so callous or destructive, but no matter how often I told myself that I couldn't bring myself to believe it. Not fully.
I should have paid more attention in all the chaos that fateful night. I should have done something different. Should have been better but I hadn't. Zoe was dead and I had to live with that, but that didn't mean Bim was a lost cause. I'd pulled her back from the brink, at least partway. Maybe she needed me now. Maybe she was gone forever. Either way, I'd know it when I saw her next and that wasn't going to happen if I sat around feeling sorry for myself.
Six days after we'd buried her, Zoe's dieing confession still echoed in my head. It echoed the words I'd been planning to say to Bim. As much as I hated myself for it, I was glad that Zoe's death had given me perspective. The way I saw things now, there were only two choices worth a damn.
I could stay out of the way, live a quite life and keep to myself. It wouldn't be all that different to how I'd used to live back on Intatenrup. I could drink and smoke myself into an early grave a few years down the road. A long slow death from cancer or poverty or just enduring without living. Was that even a life? I didn't know but that was what waiting around and staying out of the way would get me. I could take the coward's way.
But wouldn't it be better to go out in blaze of glory fighting for something than to slowly waste away? The end of the line was death either way, so what difference did it make? A long slow life of hating myself or a chance to hold the woman I loved in my arms. It was a risk, a hell of a risk, but Bim was worth it. I'd walk into Hell so long as I could hold her hand when I got there.
This wasn't about me. It wasn't about the mercs and it sure as hell wasn't about putting Celio's fat ass on the cruising throne or whatever. Fuck honor, Fuck money, Fuck this place. Bim was what mattered. She'd rescued me, paying a price I couldn't even being to imagine in the process. How could I call myself a man if I did any less for her?
If my Bim was still in there then I'd rend mountains too. Just thinking about her, I could feel the same little tug on my heart pointing me towards Crucibab proper. It was probably stupid, maybe even foolish and definitely a touch crazy, but that was love. Zoe had known that.
Doubts still lingered in the back of my mind. Was she really still Bim? If she was, I owed it to her to try. If she wasn't… well, I'd just have to burn that bridge while I was crossing it. The first step either way was finding her.
If I'd had any money on me, I would have left Isidora a king's ransom for the well-used satchel and blanket I stole. I started stuffing the satchel with anything I might need for a few days travel on foot. Ambar must have heard me rummaging around in the shed, because she dragged Leonor with her and they stood blocking the door together.
"Where are you going?" Ambar demanded.
"To the city." I answered.
"Could you be a little more specific? Crucibab is kinda a big place you know."
"I'm going wherever Bim is. Probably with the mercs, maybe with Celio."
"And that is…"
"I'll know it when I see it." I said with a shrug.
"How-"
"Give it up Ambar." Leonor said, abandoning the door to start packing a bag of her own. "At least he's not moping around anymore. Besides, for a fine piece of ass like that I'd walk over coals too."
"How long will it take us to reach the city?" I asked her.
"A few days by road. An extra two if we stick to the countryside."
"Good call. Once we reach Crucibab, I'd imagine it will take some time to find the mercs or Celio's goons. Maybe a little less time if we had an extra set of eyes…" I said, looking to Amabar.
"Cállate, toro en celo!" Ambar cursed, before grabbing a bag too. "Ugh. You're both a couple of stupid dykes. If I get killed, you'd better bury me properly or I'll haunt the shit out of both of you."