TWELVE YEARS AGO

There were fireworks, exploding with colors and variant sounds against the night sky. The stars, though far, couldn't compare to the light show ahead. Reds, blues, yellows; the designs simple spheres and the colors basic, but from where Leda sat in her mothers lap it looked like one magical rainbow, and where the spheres intersected so did the colors brightening up the sky even more.

With a cheer, she reached a pale grey hand, squealing at the painted sky. Around her others did the same, elders watching the youth dance, and the youth dancing their life into the planet from every end. The lights were beautifully simple against the festivities, the people plain in their dance and appearance though covered by the tints of the explosions above. They glowed bright yellows, others fiery in the red, but the blues were masked as a purple hue fell to the sky and on their skin. Festivities immediately replaced with fear. Leda felt her mothers arms clutch around her child body. Before she knew it, they were all screaming.

Orange fire replaced the colored light show in the sky as the purple descended. As her mother ran with her tightly held in place she had time to look at the surrounding faces, at those who made barriers with their hands and watched them fell, and those who multiplied their grey frames to fight until all mirrors of themselves were stuck down. She could see the blues now, but it wasn't from the stars; blood striking the ground in dangerous splatters and even on the skins of others. The chaotic fire reached the planet and Leda found herself beginning to cry. It was too hot now, her mothers grip too tight. With a tear, she reached a pale grey hand to the surrounding, dwindling crowd, crying at the sky.

"Leda? Leda!" amongst the screams came a familiar voice and she found herself pushed into her father's arms. Her mother apologized, her father screamed, and then she watched as her mother bolted back into the crowd, disappearing into the fires. She was confused, continuing to cry and thrash against her fathers hold. It was too hot.

Like her mother before her father ran with Leda tightly in his arms. He whispered things, false things like the idea that they could be okay, that it would all soon stop. It was still too hot, and her fathers grip too tight. She wailed now, thrashing against her fathers hold until he finally let go.

Leda fell from her father's arms as he was pulled by the collar of someone cloaked in a purple hue. She hit the surface of the planet with a smack and her eyes drew to a close, though beyond she could hear her father screaming her name amidst the rest of her peoples' wails. She remembered the heat, but as the blackness covered the sights and sounds she was suddenly hopeful that it was all a dream—if not, she could be comforted by the nothingness wrapping itself around her.

TODAY

She escaped the nothingness.

Opening her eyes Leda came face to face with a metal ceiling, yawning as she blinked. It was slate and unlike the sky, colors or not, distinguishable from any nightmare she could have. The memory always seemed to come as a nightmare after all, so it helped she could wake up reminded that she was no longer trapped.

When she sat up in her bed she faced a wall full of marks, tallies in the shape of crosses, x's, every which way and that, though by the right corner of the wall there was just a lone line. Leda considered grabbing a blade to cross it out and begin on the next wall, or maybe a rock to just dent the corner entirely. Or, she reminded herself, wait for the rest of the day to see if we need a pair. She smiled at her own optimism for a second as she stood, though her lips twitched, taking in the rest of the wall once more. There were over a couple hundred tally's separated into mindless spots in the wall, what's stopping her from adding one more?

Eyes closed, Leda exhaled. Over two hundred light cycles ago she crashed onto the current planet, any chance of rescue more likely a capture by any incoming Galra fleets or the brutes of wayward pirates. Leda was never one to be a mechanic but remaining terrain-borne began to bother her after the first ten light cycles—but the planet was barren, save for rogue mammalians and any incoming garbage coming loose from the atmosphere. The next five cycles she ran into said mammals and found that they held dietary similarities; where they lived off of her, she could live handsomely off of their own well-cooked corpses. The next two cycles and she actually learned how to defend herself from the carnivorous creatures; three more cycles and she was given the hope of rescue.

As in routine, she found herself climbing through the maze that was her ruined ship-turned-home, crawling where the pieces were just too heavy for her to further lift and jumping over spots where planetary bugs began to hibernate—they had a deal: she didn't disturb them and they didn't disturb her. Leda became quite the acrobat to accommodate this unspoken deal, necessary for her to properly exit the rubble. Climbing atop the wounded vessel she now faced her hope: a fallen satellite. When it initially crashed down it took her nearly another ten cycles to locate and drag the mass of metal back to her ship, even more so to attempt to power it. Now Leda wasn't even sure if it was still powered by anything; the crystal in her ship long broken and thus powerless, yet every day she found herself awake at the same time, climbing the same metal structure, and sitting atop the crumbling ship while staring up at the sky.

Every day she expects something—a color, a star, yellow, blue, red. Sometimes she finds herself wishing for a purple hue to fall over the planet just so she could be anywhere but there, no longer lost and anything but alone. Every day she hopes for some sort of appearance, friend or foe, but nothing prepared her for the lights that did appear, large and fiery as they ascended upon the planet. Immediately, Leda stood, squinting at each of the two ships.

"Ships…" she muttered in realization, the fire dying out revealing two distinctly colored vessels, one red and one black. "Ships!" yelling with a slight jump, she scrambled off of her fallen cargo. Ships, they're really ships... At every acrobatic climb, she reminded herself that there indeed were ships and they were, in fact, coming to this planet, repeating the phrase out of hope and nearly squealing to the bugs in the corners. She wasn't spending another cycle on this planet so help her Gods, and if the incoming travelers wouldn't aid her in an escape than she figured she could just hijack their ships. That's something people did, right? Out of desperation, it wasn't an impossible idea, right?

Leda didn't have the time to consider the minutia of her plan and where it coincided with her morality, packing a sack of the important things: food, water, a weapon in case. It would be fine, she would get off this planet and by any means necessary. Tying the sack around her back she stopped again to look at the marked-up wall, x's drawn with fury, desperation, fear, and in the corner an incomplete line begging for its pair.

She smiled at the view, and for the last time, she turned away from the wall.

AN AHEAD . . .

hey, thanks for clicking on my oc fic. if you're getting this update from following me, welcome back to my sinkhole! if you're just wandering through the ff.n search engine, thats cool too! this is a fic i have already completed the outline for beyond my normal 'general idea' of where the story is going so please stay if interested! should i not separate more things there will be about ten chapters, poorly written if need be! i am very dedicated to finishing this project by any means necessary so, should you be willing, bare with me on this one! i've had this idea for a long while but starting college has really brought me back to finishing this. the central arc of the fic is identity, found in multiple forms beyond the character leda (cough, klance, coughcough) relating to my own personal mess as i venture into adulthood and realize who i am and where i'm going myself.

as always, reviews and pm's are welcomed as i get email notifications! thank you again for reading!