Sorry for the long wait, Christmas and New Year had me busy and I'll be taking an exam soon as well as having poorer health, so yet again another wait is coming. I hope you don't feel cheated by this chapter, I felt we needed to remind ourselves of other plots going on as well as pausing the feels for a second. Ickabar's friend's stories are tied up soon after this.

Lifeforce: Chapter 38

"Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid."
―Langston Hughes,The Collected Poems

Fragments

Memories of him, small and giggling, toddling clumsily across the sand towards them. Curled in his arms, his youngest brother. Clinging to him, full of life.

He could not stand the pain.

He did not want to feel ever again.

He'd failed them both.

...

The barrier was growing thinner by the hour. Never had she felt so close to the living world. She had seen but never touched, never felt. Now she could smell the air, hear the heartbeat of the one who would set her free. She had waited so long, agonisingly long, that she'd almost gotten ahead of herself. She had grown too close. The last time it had set her back. The one that had discovered her had been frightened like so many others before him, frightened of the unknown that grew closer to him every time he slept.

But this one had no choice. He had to save his precious universe, however terrifying her presence was. He hadn't noticed her yet, but he was beginning to piece it together. He swam through the memories that he viewed, praying for answers, and she rewarded him with more questions. He was sinking further and further towards her.

She had not smiled in a very, very long time.

...

Clank awoke with a start. It was quiet. With a quick glance he saw that the ship was moving steadily through space; Qwark sound asleep. He lifted his head slowly, and at the front of the ship he saw Trisby standing upon the control panel before it. Her figure was still and shadow against the light of the stars, and in the quietness, he almost felt a jab of unease. Her hands where behind her back; the front of her body alit by the stars and the back darkened, casting a tall, almost mangled shadow. Clank stood up slowly, his antenna bobbing to the side with a soft tingle.

Trisby hummed absently, the tune barely fluid or jumpy. More like a sing-song phrase from a playground, more of a chant than a melody. Her head turned slightly away from him as she eyed the stars.

Clank approached slowly, and paused before climbing up onto the control panel beside her. "...Trisby?"

He saw her eyes flicker his way and then back again. "Is everything all right?"

"Not used to quietness, Clank?" She implored smoothly, her gaze still ahead and not on him. "Perhaps with the company you keep, it's not surprising."

"Perhaps being so alone made you more used to silence." Clank replied, a hint of wit in his. Good natured, but he didn't feel being outright cheerful was needed. He beamed none the less.

Trisby turned her head towards him at last; the shadows on her face sharp. Clank's smile nearly faded. It was at times like this he felt he was looking at someone different entirely from Trisby.

"...I know you sense something, Clank. But you won't get your answers." She turned her head once again, eyes lidded loftily. Clank paused for a moment, mulling over her answer.

"I do not feel any contempt or threat coming from you, Trisby. But at the same time I feel your motives...change now and again."

"I have made up my mind, Clank." There was a note of offence in her voice, sharp and cold, but faint still. She smirked lightly, "It's not like Zoni to be paranoid."

"I am a creation of the Zoni, really. Rather than one myself." Clank corrected, a finger lifted. Trisby's look was almost scathing, a slight grin on her face.

"Made by them, so a lot of them is in you, Clank. Your body is only the vessel for your soul, made by Orvus himself."

"Do you...know Orvus?" Clank inquired, the faintest trace of hope in his voice. Trisby breathed out slowly, eyes sliding shut.

"...Long Ago."

Another pause. Clank finally turned his head to follow her gaze, but saw nothing but stars.

"...Ratchet and I would talk often below the stars. I do not know what awakened me, but I...feel odd." He idly wondered if the Zoni had stirred him...but why?

Trisby smiled vaguely.

"You will again, soon."

...

It was oddly quiet in the cockpit of the Battleship. Various drones hovered here and there, carrying out menial tasks of technical prowess that the creature upon the throne bore no interest to. Why would he, when they were but the inner, mindless cells of a greater being?

Both of Tachyon's pincer-like hands, encased in smooth dark gloves, where curled around his sceptre. To an onlooker it would almost seem that he was leaning on it, his head slightly bent forward and his eyes closed. Not screwed shut as if in pain or discomfort, but almost as if asleep. Rare moments of calmness where just that to him; rare. Tachyon didn't relish in quietness or peace, he craved activity. Peace was all very well when he was distracted by an entertainment, not when he was left to his own thoughts.

He would not detail just why that was. An odd feeling had come about him. Not coldness, though the idea had come to his mind. All of a sudden the boil in his blood that had made him ready to achieve all of his tasks in a second if possible had faded, and he'd found himself in an odd state of boredom. His nose wrinkled and he gave an indistinguishable noise of annoyance, aware no one else would hear it. Not that he cared.

He glanced over the controls, and a lift of satisfaction brushed over him. The forces against them had been taken by such surprise that they still hadn't completely rally against them. Most fled – without knowing that he'd made sure the usual routes to other galaxies where blocked. Anyone trying to leave would fly smack into their net.

Percival chortled to himself. However, he found it fading, and he did not know why. He resisted the urge to grumble. Perhaps he was just bored.

It was far too quite where he was.

He didn't like the quiet. The cragmite drummed his hands on his sceptre, watching each finger curl in its rhythm. Old faces that he'd despised fluttered in his brain. His brow furrowed. He didn't relish in thinking of past enemies, however much he'd made them suffer. They where a thorn in his side. Fergus especially.

How odd it was, to say his name in his mind only. It had been so long, he almost didn't seem real. As if he'd never existed, the foul pale rat.

His grip tightened. His eyes narrowed. Why now, did he remember them all? How much he despised him. And how the earliest memories made him sick. Most people would look back on their childhoods for comfort, for days of innocence. But his where plagued by the utter lie it had all been. All the times he'd thought he'd been happy had been taken from him. And in all his childhood memories, he was always there. He hated how he remembered every last detail of him, since the day he'd first seen him. A tiny infant, crying alone and abandoned in the night.

He growled to himself.

Why must the universe think itself so witty? To return that burden to him, even if he himself was not there? The Lifeforce and all its supposed power was a blessing. And who had discovered it? Him.

He didn't remember Raymas as much as he remembered Ickabar. He doubted anyone did, if there was anyone left to remember either of them. His lip curled and he found himself laughing, lowly, but laughing all the same.

The little he did remember of Raymas consisted of images. Images of an empty, paranoid and fretful being scared of his own thoughts to the point where he made himself feel nothing. Scared of his own wrath and other people's, which he chose to ignore the things that caused it. A doormat who had no motivation to do anything that risked causing trouble.

In other words, an empty little weakling and a coward. Percival scowled to himself. Raymas was despicable in the sense that he basically imprisoned him and Ickabar – not that he cared for the purple fluffball at this point – so he'd have little followers to look at him as if he was the strong leader and stern, knowing parent. When he was nothing of the sort.

And when he'd left, he'd been as passive as a tree trunk and done nothing to stop him. That was his only redeeming quality – Raymas had done nothing to stop him.

His chortled merrily to himself, unaware of the unnerved glances the mechanical crew where giving him. Perhaps he simply needed rest, with all this excitement.

As if to counter that thought, the alarm sounded. Tachyon's head jerked to the screen ahead of him. Located near one of their bases was the armoured menace; he could see his long metal-covered ears clearly. He wasn't too far away.

His blood boiled and his hand slowly went to the controls on his throne. Perhaps he would have something to do after all.

It had been a long time since he'd had the pleasure of killing a lombax.

...

Raymas had gone quiet in the last moments. Then his body slumped, curling in a crippled manner around the limp form in his arms; a dying snake entangling itself around what it held. But it was useless. No grip could have caught the life that had drained so quickly from the man on the ground. Raymas's sobs where soft and quiet, but so heavy and broken that they shook his chest. His face was masked from them, buried in Ickabar's shoulder.

Daveed cracked first, but his cry was not soft or quiet. He shrieked with the pain, as if it bled from a wound within him and was tearing him apart. As if somehow, in some way, crying out would bring some aid. As if enough tears and begging could make the Universe relent its cruelty and take it back.

Fergus knew how cruel the universe was. He knew it would not pity them. Ickabar's hands were still encased in his, cold and still. He stared at it, the fingers that had held his not moments ago no longer tight. Limp and unfeeling, his hand almost slid from his. He felt the emptiness in his chest spread through him, his eyes stinging.

Ickabar's face was peaceful, as he'd said it was. The faintest trace of a smile lingered along his lips, but he knew that it was a facade. Ickabar was gone to somewhere he could not follow.

His hand slid away from his.

...

Boddo watched the communicator with red-raw eyes. Hours had passed, too many to count. They had not eaten or slept. Fastoon's signals where an incoherent scramble. From outside, all they could see was the blackened sky. Call upon call, he, Marlo and Canter had left on Ickabar and Fergus's communicators. None of them had been answered.

Marlo sat opposite him, looking far older than he was. He'd stopped trying long ago. Canter had gone off, pacing, unable to make any assumptions. More like not daring to. Canter reappeared, moving from the doorway to the left to the doorway on the right. His fists clenched, he muttered aloud.

"Why didn't we see a freaking fleet coming? I told you, we should have gone to the blasted planet ourselves while we still could!"

The door slid shut with a snap as he left once more. Boddo watched him, his chest twisting at numerous ideas of what they could have done. It almost seems impossible, how the fleet had come from nowhere. A fleet that big hadn't been seen in decades, or even centuries, even with how paranoid Polaris was. After the war, for eons on, it remained a dangerous place.

So how did they not see it? How could the computers see a fleet from afar as some blasted asteroids? How could the lombaxes be taken down...?

Their realization, along with their warning, had come too late. By the time they called the attack had started and no response came from Ickabar.

Even now the people of Polaris, many that could, where fleeing. Without the lombaxes, some had given up and surrendered, knowing they had n time to get out before the fleet got to them. Others who were closer to the outer rim risked taking ships to other galaxies, far away, praying for better luck. Boddo didn't know which fate was bleaker; staying here, trapped for what was clearly a period of suffering that was coming upon them, or being stranded out with little to nothing in a foreign place.

Worse than both was sitting here, praying that their friends were still alive somehow. Boddo swallowed; his hands numb as he lifted the communicator again.

"Icky...? Ickabar, please pick up..."

...

They moved the body attentively and without a single word. Their heads bent, they carried it up the hill. Their hands linking underneath Ickabar to stead him, his head dropped. Daveed's arms were absent, too weak and shaky to help, and he followed after them. Their figures where black silhouettes against the sky. The city behind them was blackened like cinders. From afar it was like watching shadows against the wall.

Far away, Kaden placed the dimensionator down for a moment. As important and precious as it was supposed to be, holding it was like holding a murder weapon. He no longer took pride in the thing he protected. The thing Tachyon had destroyed half the city's oldest buildings to find. The thing that had ironically banished his people away like it had the criminals before them.

How meaningless the hat seemed now. Now he knew why people scoffed at lombaxes sometimes. A ridiculous hat that had a few good tricks. Barely a scratch on it.

His wife was dead, and after this, he was certain he would be, too. His mind slipped to Alister, but the burning anger he felt to him still overpowered the pity he had for his old friend. His mind went to his son, far away and alone in a universe that had no clue of his history. Kaden's eyes stung as he imagined him alone and frightened.

Kaden, after thinking of everyone he knew, thought of Ickabar. He had not returned. He had to close the portal.

He knew first hand that his son would not see him again.

...

The pounding on the doors of the court ascended into blasts as the doors tore down. Kaden yelled for the masses to push forward, the last of the crowd disappearing through the portal. He ripped the dimensionator off his head, heart pounding – and halted when he saw a familiar purple figure staring down the hall.

The mechs and drophids stormed forward, screeching and clinking in unison; their battlecries a cry of a beast. Raym's mouth was ajar and his eyes broadened, his little body stiff. He had waited, the last one, for his father to return.

But he had not. Kaden knew what he had to do. His heart tore with it, and he'd never forgive himself for the hate the child would have for him after it, but he would take it over Ickabar losing him anyday. He lunged forward, scooping the boy under his arm and charging for the portal. Already it was shrinking without the dimensionator to keep it open, and as the drophids ran at them he tossed the boy into it.

Raym's dark eyes widened as he flew through, arms out and his screech blurring into nothingness as the portal closed forever. Kaden kept running, up the stairs and away through the halls, the dimensionator under his arm.

Both of their sons sent beyond their reach forever, Kaden wished he could have explained to Ickabar why he had to do it. As he ran he wondered if he'd be thanked or despised.

Kaden's head fell as he ran, feeling more alone than he'd ever felt in his life.

...

The daybreak was a blur. Fergus did not remember how they had gotten Ickabar to the top of the hill, nor notice how dark the sky was getting. Clouds. The rare rain was coming to Fastoon, perhaps brought on by the chemicals and dust in the sky. Fastoon was not itself. It was not anything.

Ickabar's lay on the ground, his hands placed over his chest. Fergus's hands curled into fists, fingers digging into his flesh until they drew blood. Suddenly he felt everything. The pain in his leg; the shattered bone, the ache in his chest, all of the cuts and bruises, his burst lip. The dirt coating his fur and the cold sweat lingering on his skin.

He had always seen the monster in Percival. He had said so but done nothing. He should have seen it coming. He didn't take his own warnings seriously. And this was his punishment. Alive and alone, Ickabar dead below him along with his broken family. Like it had been before. Fergus knew that it should have been him that died, both times, yet the universe took the innocents and left him with the ache.

And he blamed the universe again, as if some being was pulling all the strings for sick amusement. No. The universe was not responsible, Tachyon was. And Fergus was responsible for not being quick enough or smart enough to protect Ickabar and his family from a threat that had been hovering for years.

His legs shook with the pain and thunder cracked above him. He felt the rain, cold and bitter as it began to fall around him in showering finality.

He gagged as the pain in his fractured leg sped up him, and he fell to his knees, his hand lashing out to steady him.

He stopped.

Fergus's head was drooped over Ickabar's. He lay the other way; appearing upside down to him, their foreheads and eyes still paralleled. Ickabar's eyelids forever closed. Fergus stared down at him as the rain hit against his back; the braid hanging limply past his temple.

His forehead fell against his, and he felt the tears spill at last.

...

The images came in fragments now. Ratchet lay near the graves, half awake and half asleep, drifting in and out between them. Dislodged and foggy, it seemed that without Ickabar they no longer held together. They where blurred, dim, less colourful. With each memory that came, they grew fainter. Despite the sickness side-effects, Ratchet almost tried to cling to them. He knew nothing of what happened to the others. Knew nothing of where Ickabar had placed his work. Perhaps he'd never know, now that he was dead.

His eyelids too heavy to lift, his mind spun. Why had he been shown this? What was the Lifeforce's plan? To merely cause him pain...?

Getting closer.

Ratchet's body jerked. His mind snapped back to the notes on Ickabar's desk. Something getting closer. Wake me up. The sickness he'd felt as he'd lain here, every second he'd been falling further and further into this dark place to the point that the last time he'd been with Clank felt like years?

No!

He pushed himself onto his hands, then his knees. The ache he felt was like a weight or chain trying to keep him down on the ground. His eyes lifted and he saw Ickabar's grave. In his mind he saw him lying there, eyes fluttered shut. How could he bring him justice, bring them all justice, if he gave up like this?

Ratchet was finally on his feet, feeling more nauseated than ever, but doing his best to clear his head. He'd search Ickabar's house again, if this was a dead end. Find another lead – follow the others to the library where that book of his apparently was. If this was a waste, maybe he'd just have to get over it.

Ratchet took a step. Something knocked him over; a sharp gust of wind slamming him back onto the ground. He gave a grunt of annoyance.

What the heck?

But as soon as he'd gotten to his feet again, the real world dissolved. Ratchet's eyes felt like the only thing still working, yet all he saw was blackness ahead of him. His whole body had lost its feeling, and he couldn't even breathe. Petrified.

He tried to move, cursing in his head. He couldn't stay here. This whole thing was messed up and he didn't have time for it.

It is not over. There is still more. At the end, you will know where to go.

Like reading words on a page, the sentence appeared in his head. Ratchet's eyes stung as he tried to blink. The blackness around him began lightening into a familiar landscape.

Only at the end will we wake up, Ratchet.

...