Four Years
Four years. Four years of claiming you were over her and now this happens.
You're lying down on the bed of your captain's quarters, finally removed of the comforts that its previous owner cherished so much. It's been like this for quite awhile but you can still remember how it used to be, right down from the marble faucet to the lush blankets. Every detail is as fresh in your mind, from finding out how decidedly 'un-Spartan' your new dwelling was upon hijacking the Hyperion to the events that led up to said capture.
You can't stop thinking about the day she died. Not captured, not infested, but died. A wound as painful as when you lost Liddy and as bitter as when Johnny 'died' in a shuttle accident. Still, like the Ghost he was meant to be (and for all you know, became), the wound inflicted five years ago and became a scar a year after that, has been re-opened. You've seen the vids, you confronted her on Monlyth and even now, you have trouble believing it. You feel like an idiot, a feeling not helped by the fact that only a select few knew of your feelings and most of them are either dead or missing.
Rubbing your hands across eyes that display exhaustion that stems from more than regular warp travel, you reflect on how quiet it is. No alarms, no rumblings, no...nothing. You've fought on planets, you've killed on moons, you've done both on space platforms but out here in the void between star systems, there's nothing. Empty space surrounds you in stark contrast to a mind that's anything but. A mind that keeps harkening back to a certain desolate world four years ago and at times, even going back another year to a far more temperate one. Still, the time is academic really. It's the content that matters. And like a X-rated holo, while you know you should look away from the images being played, something compels you to keep watching.
Your stomach is sinking and not just for the inevitable diarrhoea that stems from what counts for food these days. You're scared, you feel helpless, you know that on one level history is repeating itself yet something else is coming. Her words keep coming back. Words that, like the fool you are, you believe somehow. Words that as striking as they were, reverberating around the ruins of Monlyth, are, were at the back of your mind when coming face to face with her.
Four years is a long time.