*hums to self* Well, it's another one of those "action-less" chapters. Be prepared for a few of these.
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"Why do you wish to remember so much?" he asked. "I would think that you would want to forget more than you would wish to remember."
She shrugged, a little uncomfortable. "I need to be able to remember everything. It's important when you do complicated tricks. You leave out a step, or do something wrong, and that's it, you're dead. There's not much room for error. A lot of early training is focused on memorization, on memory training. I took it a bit farther than most; but then again, I needed to. Most people don't spend their entire lives fighting, not even on my world.
"My mind is incredibly organized, from my earliest memories to my lessons to my experiences, all collected in neat little rows of synapses. It needs to be. It's useful, to be sure. And necessary."
"There are never things you want to forget?"
She shook her head. "Sort of. I mean, there are things that I wish I had never done, so I wouldn't have to remember them, but there are no memories I would erase, given the chance. I am the sum of my experiences, and I don't want to beggar myself by tearing pieces of my life away. Not to say there aren't days that I feel differently, but for the most part, I recognize that my memories are all I'll ever really have. To lose them is to lose myself."
"Hmm. There are things I wish I could forget." She heard him sigh and roll over.
"What?"
"Hmm?"
"What do you wish you could forget?"
"What do you care?"
She thought it over. "Well. It's late, I'm procrastinating, and you're basically fascinating anyway, so I want to know what you meant."
He paused. "I'd love to forget certain people."
"Who?"
He rolled over again and glared at her. "I don't see where it's any of your damned business."
"I guess it isn't, but the concept of a private life has never seemed to stop you."
"I'm a superior being. I don't need to follow your vermin rules for accepted social behavior," he said loftily.
"But I do?"
"You are one of the vermin. I will hold you to your social code."
"Thanks," she drawled sarcastically. "You are too kind."
"Don't mention it. I'm happy to help you in your interpersonal development."
"Out of the goodness of your heart, to be sure."
"Of course."
The conversation dropped, neither party feeling the need to keep it alive. Kiley lay back in the sand and stared at the stars again. They were so pretty, always had been one of her favorite things about the sky. Great big twinkling balls of gas, huge superheated nuclear reactors roaming about space. Any time she wanted to feel small and insignificant, she merely tried to calculate the speed at which they traveled. Through the cosmos. Really, the number is enough to boggle the mind, especially when you feel that you are sitting still. And aside from being fast, the stars came in such pretty colors, blues, reds, yellows… She looked again for a constellation she recognized and still failed. Sighing, she traced patterns in the sky with an index finger, lazily looping it about as she tried to come up with a few of her own.
"What are you doing now?" Knives had sat up again and was watching her.
She dropped her hand guiltily and denied any knowledge of doing anything at all.
"You aren't going to find any familiar star patterns here. We're too far from earth. Most of the stars are the same, but they have shifted in your field of view."
"Should have known you'd be able to guess," she said sheepishly.
He rose and crawled over to her. "Here," he said, taking her hand. He fought with her fist for a moment, then raised the hand with index finger extended towards the sky. "See these stars?" he asked, tracing a pattern in the sky. She nodded. "Those are the turtle. And these over here? The hunter."
"Orion?" she asked.
"No, just a random hunter. He has a gun instead of a spear."
"Oh. I see," she said, and somehow she did.
Knives pointed out a few more, and then allowed her hand to drop. What he didn't do was let go of her. She didn't complain. She could feel his warmth radiating against her arm, a sharp contrast to the chill of the night. They sat that way for minutes, neither willing to break the fragile moment. Both tried to ignore the connection between them, the feel of flesh lightly touching flesh, his fingers clasped around her wrist, but it was impossible. All they could ignore was what it meant.
"What are we now?" she mused, almost to herself.
"I don't know," he said equally quietly.
"Are we enemies, anymore?"
"I don't think we're friends."
She sighed. "Opponents maybe? I'm not going to let you kill off all the humans."
"You can't stop me." A long pause. "Opponents. We can be that."
"No enmity, right? Just… cross purposes."
"Sure." He slipped his hand in hers, and they sat and stared at the stars for a while. They spun above, slowly arcing through the sky as the planet turned, and the moons danced below them. The scar on the fifth moon mocked her. How was she supposed to fight against that much power? She couldn't, not the way she was used to fighting, head on and no holds barred. She was going to have to learn subterfuge and obfuscation and other sneaky ways of reaching her goals. Sneaky. She hated sneaky. It was too close to lying.
"Am I the only one carefully avoiding long-term plans at the moment?" she asked, turning towards him. He had been staring at her, and she flushed. She wasn't used to this much attention.
"No," he said quietly. "You aren't the only one at all."
"One day at a time?" she asked, needing some assurance.
"I think I prefer the nights," he said, smiling.