She spent more time amidst the wreckage each day. It didn't take long for nature to embrace it as its own and finally overbear it. Vines and roots were growing all over the bones and machinery. Weeds that had crept into its very heart.
At first she thought it'd been an animal. She could almost see a spine. The two mirrored ruins resembled a cracked ribcage and there was a tail and a wing she'd found on the other side of the jungle she swore must've once belonged to the same ship now burnt to rubble and ash in overgrown craters.
The captain had told her where to look. They told their girl to leave him alone but every day she kept coming back. And he enjoyed her company so. He knew she'd like what she would find, just as he did. And each night he told her stories of the stars.
Heavy breaths bore down on him and often a coughing fit stole his voice and he'd be sore for days. He couldn't see. He'd said his eyelids had been scorched along with his eyes.
He told her he was glad he couldn't see what had become of him. He was better off in the dark, lest he was tempted by his former glory.
He thanked the girl and her father for finding him and bringing them to their home in the field. It took him many months to recover and the burns would never fully go away, not without proper medical care. But the captain made them swear not to get the Peacekeepers involved. He just wanted to rest.
"Let them forget me," he said.
After several months of sterile captivity the little skin he had left had become stronger. Painkillers became routine. He couldn't even feel the artificial implants which he'd rejected at first. The good captain wondered whether the new skin came with a new life.
He found himself circling the buildings at night just to smell the hay, just to taste the mud, even if he could not hold his own weight or see any of his surroundings.
The family invited him to the dinner table and he'd listen to their conversations. He'd listen to the son brag and the father worry. He'd listen to the daughter complain and the mother stress. And at the end of the day they'd sit around a table and eat what little was left of the harvest they could reclaim for themselves. The rest was collected by the Peacekeepers.
He enjoyed it while it lasted.
Then one day he asked the girl to take him with her into the jungle. He begged her. And without telling her father she took his hand.
It wasn't a long or strenuous journey. The girl would become weary of dragging him and picking the old man up. He could feel the dawn approaching. The twinned sunlight hurt his skin.
When he found Talyn's remains he stood still for quite some time trying to picture the daunting beast in his mind's eye. What a magnificent creature he truly was. They both were.
"I'll stay here for a while," he sighed as he told her to run back home. "Go on."
He waited until he could no longer hear her run. Then he walked his way through the red corridors in his mind. He could still vividly see the DRD's whir past. Hear them. Just a moment there he was back in the past.
He knew the picture he had in his mind was in no way accurate, nowhere as idyllic as his emotions would suggest. There would always be this lingering darkness. And he had only himself to blame.
There were probably dangerous animals nestled here somewhere. The good captain didn't care. He found the access console to the Command. He hovered his hand across it as he leaned with the other. There were no doors to open. Only the jungle and the cold sky.
He saw the viewscreen. The neural interface. The Hand of Friendship that once rose up from the ground to join with him. He turned on the spot and smiled at the morning light.
Somewhere out there he could smell the reseeded fields, the crops and the fertilizer. He could hear the kick of the engine and the father teaching his sons how to work the soil.
The brothers would work hard competing for their father's favour. Their hands dirty with the weight of the work, the smell of the mud, the sweat on their brow...
Again, his memories fooled him. Those simpler times probably never existed. He smiled.
He finally let go of the breath he'd been holding on to for so long. A whole weight was lifted from him as he collapsed in a bed of vines. Finally all things were as they should be.
Everything in its rightful place. He rested.