I took each step slowly as I climbed up the cargo bay stairway, feeling the rough metal pattern of the catwalk flooring beneath my bare feet. I didn’t want to do this, and even though I’d worked up enough nerve to do it anyway, I couldn’t help but drag my feet and try to talk myself out of it. Dr. Yates would definitely have told me I needed to do this if he were here. I wished that Ray was awake so I could come find comfort in both her physical and emotional warmth instead of the captain’s pointed observations and practical advice.
Aisling was waiting for me at the helm. She was probably somehow aware of what I’d been doing this whole time and that I’d end up coming to see her in the end, after all. She just knew stuff like that, somehow. Part of me wondered if she was psychic too, but that would be even more absurd. She was just uncommonly aware of how people worked, something I was practically blind to. I took a deep breath as I started into the crew quarters and had to stumble back, almost crashing right into Mouse.
He glared up at me, unphased by nearly colliding with me. He looked more tired than usual. The teenager stepped past me without a word, but I could see the hatred that constantly burned in his eyes, and it hurt too much that it was aimed at me today. He was still angry at me for what the turbulence I caused did to Ray. In a way, I was too. I bit my lip, turning as he walked past and speaking quietly, “I’m sorry.”
He stopped and planted his feet in place. He clenched his fist tightly for a moment before it twitched and he released it. Tiny malfunctions in his cybernetics weren’t uncommon since he was still piecing together some of his repairs. He spent a moment gathering himself and then turned back to me. “Did you really have to swing around like crazy like that? Huh? I could tell you weren’t easing into the end of those turns you were making. You don't have to make sudden turns when you're coming out of evasive maneuvers, you know. Were you even paying attention back there?”
I looked down at the floor, unable to meet his gaze. I wasn’t used to practicing combat maneuvers with Theseus in reality, I hadn't been able to practice for awhile because Skygraves burnt out the system blade with the sims on them, and some of my skills I'd learned from it didn’t transfer as cleanly as I wanted from the simulations that used stock vessels. That included the ways I was meant to keep the crew safe. It didn’t help that I’d been emotionally thrown off balance by Lily before-hand. Maybe I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I could have been in that fight. But I don’t think Mouse wanted or needed to hear that right then, and I didn’t feel like I deserved to defend myself from his ire. Instead, I sniffed quietly and repeated, even quieter than before, “I-I’m sor-sorry.”
“And I heard Joel on the intercom too, down there where I should have been. You pushed the reactor past its limits. You’re lucky we didn’t just explode! I thought you were ready to do this kind of thing!” He was raising his voice higher as he spoke, getting more worked up as I shrank down. He must have seen me practically cowering because he composed himself slightly, taking a step back and letting out a deep sigh. “She could have died, Meryll.”
“I know.” I sniffled again, staring down at the ground between us. I wanted him to sling harsh words at me again. He should have stayed seething mad at me, not backed down. He was well within his right to ream me out. I knew he was helplessly assisting Doc in his effort to keep Ray alive during my flailing, after all. There wasn’t a whole lot he could have done to rectify the situation. It had all been on me and he was right. I had nearly gotten her killed.
“That all you have to say for yourself?” Mouse muttered, sounding bitter again. He grunted and tamped down his anger again. “It’s over now, just... do better next time.”
“I did w-what I had to- had to do.” I muttered out before I could think too hard on my words.
There was a long pause before he gave a perplexed “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I lifted my head up and picked up my voice while tears formed in my eyes. It was terrifying, but I needed to say it. “I d-did what I had to do, Mou... Mouse!”
He looked taken aback at my uncharacteristic outburst and mixed emotions. Biting my lip again, I sniffed in, not realizing that I’d started drooling snot from my nose, then let out a quiet sob and looked down again, lost at what I was even doing now. I was so confused and uncertain about what I wanted to say or what Mouse even wanted me to say. I wanted to hide away again, away from everyone, and shove my thoughts back down as well. The courage and distracted calm I’d gained from my talk with Joel was spent. I had to hide from it all. I had to flee to my core module before this got worse. I had to run away again.
“That’s enough, Mouse.” I heard from behind me, sniffing loudly as I whipped around to see Aisling turning the corner. The first of my tears fell and my eyes were forced closed at the sight of her. I stood stock still, hunching my shoulders and clenching my teeth as if bracing to receive a heavy blow, but I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. I did my best, but I gave heavy, broken sobs as I tried to at least keep the appearance that I wasn’t on the verge of a complete emotional meltdown. I failed spectacularly.
Aisling slowly walked past, taking care not to make physical contact with me. I watched on my sensors as she approached Mouse, leaning over and whispering something into his ear, too quiet to hear over the internal microphone. Whatever she said made him grow pale and lose all the rigidity in his stance all at once. He turned his attention back to me with an expression I’d never seen the teenager make. Sadness. Regret. Apprehension. It only lasted a moment before he nervously looked down at the ground himself, his scowl returning half-hearted now and a haunted uncertainty in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else to me, but he stopped and clenched his teeth instead. He shook his head, made a quiet scoffing noise, and turned back around, slowly stepping out onto the cargo bay catwalk and hurrying down the stairs.
I stood there, awkwardly convulsing and swallowing down my sobs with my eyes screwed shut tight. Aisling stepped up to me and gingerly pressed her hand on my shoulder. I didn’t flinch because I saw her coming through the sensors, but I couldn’t keep myself from letting out a brief loud wail before I contained my noise again. Aisling let out a gentle sigh through her nose and put an arm over my shoulder, beginning to guide me forward. My legs obeyed without thought and my arms moved to cradle my head, trying to hide myself away. She turned me, guiding me into her own chambers and closing the door behind us. She sat me down on one end of her bed and I put my head down into both my hands, still struggling to keep myself from erupting into a fountain of emotions I didn’t deserve to feel.
The room had been rearranged back into a living space after our impromptu debriefing last week. A table was thrown to one corner, the contents of a chess set scattered across the floor in the chaos of the battle. Some books were likewise thrown from the toppled bedside table. The bed had thin off-white sheets, dully stained with hints of blood and sweat tucked into the corners of a mattress, unmarred by my flailing. A few small piles of clothes sat in one corner, but that wasn't my doing. Aisling ignored the mess and sat down next to me, lifting a thin beige blanket to place over my shoulders before she patted me on the back and said, “Cry. Let it out. That’s an order.”
That wasn’t fair. The moment she said it, I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I let my tears fall and I bellowed out a terrible, blubbering cry. Folding my legs up against my chest, I rested my forehead on my knees and wrapped my arms around my legs, curling up into a tight ball as tears and mucus dripped down onto my shirt and onto the mattress beneath me. I let myself cry. I didn’t think I should have been allowed, but Aisling told me to, and I couldn’t tell her off for it, not in my state. It felt like I wept and wept for hours. Aisling’s hand rubbed gently at the top of my back, which only made me feel worse.
I didn’t think I’d ever stop feeling filthy for what I did. Knowing that I could have done more to keep Ray safe and telling myself over and over again that I didn’t have to demolish that starship the way I did made me feel like there was so much more I could have done in my time as a space pirate. I could have remembered Fuller’s notes and told Lily that Foundation was lying to her. Maybe I even could have done something to stop everyone’s cybernetics from malfunctioning in the first place back on Venus too. I could have shot Skygraves. I had a gun in my hand when he activated the EMP. Everything that I could have done and didn’t was a glaring failure in my life, and I didn’t deserve pity or reassurances. I deserved to be scolded and berated and... abandoned. I didn't deserve this crew. Did I even deserve to be Theseus?
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I cried and cried until the tears stopped and I was reduced to quiet sniffling sobs, hiccuping quietly in my gross human ball of fluids and misery. Aisling sat by my side the whole time. When I thought I was spent, I stared numbly down between my legs, thoughts too muddled to make any sense of what I was feeling anymore. Nothing made sense at all. I felt like a spent shell of a human being, and I once again had to wonder if it would be easier if I was just an ordinary, emotionless, thoughtless core. A normal core would have accounted for the crew in its maneuvers. It wouldn't have hurt Ray.
Aisling broke the uncomfortable silence, breaking me free from my internal self-loathing with what felt like a bomb. “So you killed a man.”
I hiccuped and tilted my head to look at her, speechless and wide-eyed in horror that she would bring that up now. Her eyes were fixed across the room, like there was something she could see that I didn’t. It wasn't an accusation, just a grim observation. She was waiting for a response, so I did the only thing I could do and nodded along slowly, putting my head back between my legs and muttering hoarsely, “Yeah.”
Aisling drew in a deep breath. “Mouse said some things he shouldn’t have. I’ll talk to him later. But he’s emotional too, right now. You did your best, and you saved all of us. The whole crew, yourself, and Theseus. No ordinary core would have been able to manage what you did there. Not with this ship. Maybe it wasn’t the ideal outcome, but it never is in our line of work. It’s always messy. Someone always gets hurt. People tend to die. And you’re always gonna beat yourself up with what ifs, at least a little.”
I sniffled, refusing to look up again or say a word back to her. I killed a person today. I took a life. Everyone kept telling me that changes a person and that it’s a terrible personal tragedy to try to overcome, but knowing that couldn’t possibly have prepared me for how I felt now. I had so many thoughts swimming through my head. Terrible things about myself, justifications that made me hate that I could possibly think that what I did was okay, the dissonance that came with knowing that I accepted my closest friends all being killers while stepping into that role myself was forbidden, and confusing primal self-hatred that branched out and made me judge everything I’d ever done.
It was a nightmare I couldn’t wake myself up from. It didn’t feel like it was something I’d ever be able to escape. This was a limbo of emotional torment that I didn’t deserve to pull myself out of. I was a monster.
I heard a dull clacking noise and pulled my head up, my eyes darting to see Aisling snapping her fingers next to my head. She pulled her hand back and stared into my eyes. I couldn’t look away now. “You’re not okay,” she said slowly, letting out a sigh. I shook my head in agreement and tried to put my head back down, but she tutted at me and thrust a hand down to hold my mucus-coated chin up, making me flinch at the sudden move and sit paralyzed with my head in her hand. “Nah, up here. Don’t retreat.”
I sniffled and somehow pulled more tears to my eyes. I mumbled out, barely coherently, “Whu-What else do I do?”
“You face it. You feel things. Painful things. You acknowledge what happened. And that it’s gonna happen again.” I let out another loud sob at that, but she continued to speak. “You recognize that next time, it’s going to be easier. It leaves scars on your soul that protect you from feeling like this. And I know that sounds painful to hear too, but it means you’re gonna grow stronger. Wiser. You don’t just grow numb to it, either. I know I haven’t. It’s still a fucking tragedy every time I have to shoot some dumb bastard in the skull. I just got better at managing my emotions. At tempering my expectations. It still hurts. Back there on Venus, I shot and killed three, probably four people. I didn't get to see the state of the last guy on account of the whole bleeding out thing.” She let out a quiet exhalation, apparently unable to resist injecting a touch of gallows humor, but she returned to her somber tone in a flash. "Still remember all their faces. It's haunting. And it's kinda scary how easy it is to not think about it in the heat of battle. Adrenaline numbs you to the horror of what you have to do."
She paused, and I sobbed again, neither able to nor caring to control myself. “Would... f-feel nice to fe...eel numb right n-now.”
Aisling shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t. You know what feels nice? Not carrying around that weight. It’s gonna take a while to let go of it. Especially this time. But it’s important you do. It’s important you face it, not hide away, not bury it down deep. You have to face it.”
“S’what Ya-Yates sai-said too...” I sniffled quietly. “It’s different... s-so much worse tha-th-than my amn...esia.” I let out another wail. Those were all the words I could manage before my cries took over my throat.
She nodded. “It is. Still gotta deal with it. Don’t hide. Don’t escape. Don’t look away.” She adjusted my chin to make sure I was facing up and paying attention to her. “You killed someone.”
I whimpered, trying to push my chin back down, but she wouldn’t let me. She held onto me and looked me in the eye, even when I closed them tight. “I know.” I managed to whine.
“And I’m not judging you. You did what you thought was best in the moment. In a fight to the death, you can't shoot to wound. That's not a thing. Not for anyone who wants to live through it." She repositioned herself on the bed, scooting closer to me so she could keep holding me up after her arm got tired. "What I want you to take from this is that you did something bad, but it wasn’t wrong. You killed someone, but for a good reason. Because if you hadn’t, there would probably be a lot more people dead right now. You protected us. You killed for a cause, and I hope that it’s a cause that means something to you. Something that means more to you than that stranger’s life did. More than the other lives we’re all gonna take together before this is over with. What did you kill that guy for, Meryll?”
“F-For Theseus... For the cr...ew.” A fresh wave of tears washed over me as I finally faced reality. There was justification for what I did. I didn’t kill because I wanted to or because I made a mistake or because it was convenient. It wasn’t even just me protecting myself. I destroyed that ship and killed its crew because Theseus and everyone on board meant way more to me than holding back on someone who was trying to kill us did. I tried to tell myself I was just making more shallow justifications, but I told that part of me to shut the fuck up. What better reason could I possibly have?
Aisling nodded at me. “There you go. You’re getting it.” She let go of my chin and I didn’t try to hide away again. I still cried. I cried so much that day, and I knew that I’d keep crying over and over until that emotional wound scabbed over, and even then, the wrong words or just a passing thought might rip it open again. But if I didn’t hide it away and didn’t let it fester and let it heal instead, I wasn’t going to be trapped by it forever.
I nearly froze when the captain reached in closer and I felt her arms wrap around my shoulders. I let my legs drop down and dangle over the edge of the bed, uncurling from my ball as she held me tight. She was so warm. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been held by someone like this. A vague shadow of a memory told me it would probably have been from Lily, if we’d been allowed physical contact where we came from. If not, then I’d probably never been hugged before in my life, outside of vague simulated memories. No wonder Ray's physical affections always felt so nice to me; I was ridiculously touch-starved. I wrapped my arms around her as well and held her as tight as I could, and in that moment, I felt like the crying became easier. More comfortable. I felt lighter. The weight of my deeds still hung heavy over me, but for just a moment, the dread abated and gave me a small respite that I desperately needed.
I wanted her to hold me forever. I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted her to do a lot more than hug me there on her bed, in the privacy of her quarters. What I wanted in that moment of rampant emotional release was far more carnal. I wanted to feel her touch across every inch of my bare skin. I wanted to feel her breath on my most intimate parts, and I wanted her to show me she was far more experienced than me in a much different manner than just talking. I was probably pretty pent up in that regard too, when I thought about it. But that would just be another form of escapism, and I’d just worked up the presence of mind to avoid that, so I folded that desire away for another day, perhaps. I wasn’t even sure if the captain was into women, regardless, so I pushed down my libido rather than my trauma and just enjoyed the warmth of a friendly body pressed up against me, helping me feel wanted.
When we finally parted, I had a smile on my face. It was a sad smile, but I felt some amount of peace thanks to her.
“Better?” she asked.
I shook my head, still smiling. “No.” I croaked.
She nodded knowingly and moved to stand up. “You just lay here for now, as long as you want. Cry all you need to. Don’t worry about making a mess. I need to clean my sheets, anyway. I’ll get you some water, okay?”
I nodded and slowly slid down onto my side. Unable to resist the last dregs of my suppressed lust, I stared at her butt as she walked away, until she closed the door again behind her. I sighed and closed my eyes. Was it the right thing to do, if I could somehow make myself feel okay again by immersing myself in what I’d done? I just had to trust the captain. I opened the recording of the battle again, this time focusing on the external sensors. A quiet shudder escaped my lips as I started the playback, ready to cry as much as I had to.