AN: Thanks to EMZ, CaptainBuzzLightyear and Heather for ideas and help.
Several days passed. Buzz grew more and more arrogant, cooking in his mind only dark sentiments. He rarely visited his teepee during the day's hours, but roamed aimlessly alone in the near forests, or briefly visited his team on the other side of the village. More and more he cursed his days. Why was he trapped on this idiotic planet, and could not find his way home? More and more uncanny were his emotions that kept racking him. Dark, dark, with the hollow howl of the beginning venom…
"They have made a conspiracy against me. This must be a very evil scheme of some new, raising villain! Blast, and so it is! Maybe there was a bomb in my ship, or someone had sabotaged the hyperdrive, so that it directed me into a wrong wormhole and brought me here! And what if that was planned, too? What if I was planned to get trapped on this stupid planet, so that I would not be there when the diabolic unknown menace attacks?" Even now, the mentally disturbed captain hiked in the woods. He circled one single stone, mindlessly banging new misinformation into his head. The stress piled on his shoulders, pushing him down. "My ranger instinct never fails, and it tells me, that horrors are going to happen, if I'm not getting out of here!" Maybe he guessed partly right, if thinking of King Nova's threats, but this time he was construing his feelings absolutely wrong. "That's it! The chief must be in the plot, too. He keeps me here in a sort of an unphysical prison, forcing me to drag that woman after me! They're all against me! Craters!"
Lightyear began thinking the rest of his team. Why were they so comfortably living together with the other villagers, like nothing had happened? Why did they do nothing to help him get out of here?
Buzz was obviously blind to the facts. He did not understand that Mira and Zarah did their best to contact somehow the outer world. The engineer her back sweating repaired the poor android as well as she could with the primitive tools. Because of her wish, Mira had made friends with Ilmarinen. He with knitted brows forced new parts for the broken robot, not even knowing what he should do. The problem was that Zarah could not go alone to him and ask what she wanted. As Vainamoinen had set once his prejudge on her, she stayed as a low servant. Mira, Sininen, was a suuremo, she could go and ask anything, though.
But, with his biased, frenzy mind the Captain could not behold through the haze. He began feeling that even his squad-mates were against him, somehow. Maybe they were secretly turned to the dark side! They seemed nice… although that Mira had been repeatedly mentioning him about his odd behavior.
"My behavior is not odd! She is odd, if I'm asked!" he growled, stomping around the rock. "What are you staring at?" he asked the grey, lifeless boulder. What if even it was against him? An agent of evil that was spying him in the form of an innocent stone! He winced a bit to note the absurdity of that suspicion. That was just a normal piece of nature, nothing more. But completely convinced he could not be of his crew. They were acting too friendly with the villagers.
And why had no one even attempted to find him from Star Command's side? He briefly rememberized how he had once been Zurg's prisoner, and long, long forced to wait for help. But that was completely a different case, was it not? He had asked for a holiday. That had been a cover. No one could have even suspected that he was in a fatal danger, then. But now… he and his team were evidently missing, evidently gone. What was Commander Nebula doing? Tracking him or… loitering?
As what came to the girl he was obliged to keep as his roomer… she harrowed his guts more and more. Seeing furthermore only the demerits in her, he possibly could not comprehend how he should take a stand to this person. A tornado kept his teepee in its claws? She had an opinion about everything he did. And always yakked with that strange, devolved claptrap. Whatever he tried saying, she did not seem to understand. Did she do that on purpose? Buzz did not feel himself comfortable in female companion in any case, and even less with someone who he saw as the worst person of the village. Under the extremely mixed feelings, he did not actually hate her. However, neither could he see with his blackened mind the amount of work that Yoka toiled to make his settlement comfortable in the tent. Food, hunts, cleaning, washing… but unfortunately his beginning arrogance considered those more or less teasing. Why was his jumpsuit hanging somewhere wet and cold, when he wanted to put it on to warm his limbs? What was the obsession with venting? Always the hut was cold like the North Pole. The fire, where she fried some strange-tasting noshes, reeked and made him cough. In addition, he did not want to eat those. The foods that Vellamo's family had made him, were a billion times more delicious. And he was not allowed to do his own rations, either. She was shooing him away from the kitchen corner, if he searched for some 'more civilized' eatables. Yes, here was no Cosmic Chili available. No hamburgers, pizzas or Cocky-Cola like on Capital Planet. Well, those all added together formed a tangle that annoyed the living meteors out of him. Little, irksome details that gritted his already sore temperament…
---Capital Planet---
The time did not exist as the same in the Core of the Alliance. Faster it flew, the days growing cloudier, the grizzled autumn dying for the winter. Commander Nebula and the whole Star Command lied on red-hot coals. The astray hero Captain was not the ultimate reason for this, but… a certain king that had no sense of proportionality. Threats, threats, threats… the Princess shone with her absence. The Tangean heir of throne was more important than some Space Club for low-browed apes. Father Nova huffed and puffed around the base, not willing to listen to Zeb's pleas. What could the old Commander do, but his best under the circumstances that were given?
"I have given you time to find my daughter… this is not one of those silly space games you play here in your club. But as a merciful man I may give you still a change. But the last one it will be… and then, the Galactic Alliance can continue on without my kingdom. I did not join it to sacrifice my daughter to some lower beings." Those impish words haunted Nebula wherever he went. He had directed the King to go to keep his harangues to Madame President. But even if the object of blustering changed, peace could not lay its mild wings over the foaming political life.
The late November's downy snow fell upon the yellowed, frosted grass. A thin ice layer made the small paved garden path of Warp's autumnal yard slippery. But two pairs of heavy boots did not much care about slipperiness. Even hard winds could keep the owners of them standing erect. The house behind there looked lifeless, as if its spirit had been extinguished. Clouds of sorrow seemed to hang above everything, and even the white, sparkling snowflakes could not brighten up the suffering plains of minds.
"How long has it been?"
"I dunno. I lost my count of days."
"And I had hoped…."
Darkmatter let his daughter slip away from his arms, to patter among the falling white fluff. She let a wee delighted squeal, and ran to explore a leafless bush further there.
"That poor thingie can still take it easy…"
"I never… never thought I would bear such woe about him… I lost myself, I lost him, I found him again, I found myself again… and now I am losing him?" Zurg, walking beside his ex-henchman, kept on cudgeling his brains with atrabilious sentiments. His usual pose had changed to flopping shoulders, and his inner glory seemed to be washed away with the rain of solemn. Fallen down from the thrones, from the palaces, he was essentially just an old man. An old man, whose heart was now punished with anxiety.
"You truly love him now as a father, don't ya? An'… I can pretty well remember the times ya were sendin' me to kill him", Darkmatter frowned at Zora.
"Feelings change… men change… the future clouded is, no one shall see it… As it was, I wanted to rule everything. Enjoy my dark, dark glory, share my destiny with the dark side. But deep, deep somewhere in my subconscious I sometimes thought, what it would have been like if I had chosen another path… left the path of the dark side…" the taller man mumbled, shaking some snow away from his thick, black hair. "And… honestly said…" Warp peeked at Zora sideways, and palpably saw the Emperor wiping the corners of his eyes. "Honestly said… I… I sometimes wanted to k-kill him. But… but… I was the pawn of the dark side! I could not control my doings sometimes at all! I had stupidly chosen to be its servant, and it kept me in its cold hands like some slave. I was its slave!"
If someone in this galaxy ever had seen Emperor Zurg shedding tears, he could verifiably notice him doing it now.
This former villain had indeed woven a tight band of father-son-love with his scion. Although he sometimes, and actually not so rarely, tended to scold Buzz and treat him like a five-year-old, he deeply cared for him inside his molten heart. The iron bands of his conscious were unlocked. No more was his deep-buried mildness under six feet of coarse sand, but had been granted with a resurrection. Otherwise he could not ever have developed humanly love towards his young wife. During tens of years, women had meant almost nothing to him, except… except that the souvenir of the departed one had baited him at nights, in days…
However, the sons of men do change, the emotions do change. For Warp, it was falling in love in the most impossible occasion he could have imagined. For Zurg, it was morbidly finding out how very mortal he was, and that the claws of death could grip him any time. Yet, the icy Šeol was present in both cases. Darkmatter's mind had broken after seeing something so fragile being tortured so inhumanly. And the Emperor himself had obviously for the first time in the course his of days tasted lethality.
Now, the bitter reality struck back. Zarah was gone, Buzz was gone. Where, where, where? Alive… or lost for forever?
Zoxedasžeĉ peeked at his wrist communicator timer. The late afternoon was changing to evening. "Darkmatter, I have to go. Smoopsiepoo waits." A sigh followed. "I know… Buzz really does not like her, what is a sheer pity. But she has been a wonderful support for me during these dark, pathetic days of this abyss…" Waving his gloved hand for goodbye, the Emperor vanished behind the pear-tree.
Warp watched Ay'noh running around the teensy bush for a while. The toddler caught the falling snowflakes with her tongue, then eating them as whatever candy. The polar night made the days dim in this part of Capital Planet. The grey clouds indicated that the sun had passed away beyond the horizon already a long time ago. The red light crystals that were illuminating the garden, had been kindled.
"Alright, lassie, it's time to get in." He went to heave up the girl, who laughingly tried to escape her father's huge appearance. "We're going home tomorrow, yar scary alien daddy has stuff to do in Xaneda."
"Snow!" the wee one squealed.
"Yep-o-yep, I know, snow is cool. But I gotta put ya li'l frolic to sleep."
Darkmatter creaked the French horn open with his scythes and stepped into his living room. The chairs were empty, and not even a squeak reached him from the dozens of halls the immense mansion kept inside itself.
"Zarah… where are you?" the blue man sighed to himself, as he dragged himself up the stairs. Ay'noh, who was carried by his left arm, also caught his silent moan.
"Mom? See Mom too-mowwow?"
"No, Ay'noh. We won't see Mom tomorrow."
"Whewe is Mom?" the girl looked at his glum mien with her innocent green eyes.
"Quasars, I wish I'd know… if she is somewhere or… nowhere." The toddler could not understand this expression with her childish mentality, so she stayed quiet. At the end of the second floor's murky hall, Agent Z kicked ajar a woodcut-decorated, oaken folding door. Behind there, was the Darkmatters' marital bedroom, with dark-red curtains cloaking the paneled walls. With his now bare feet, Warp could feel the almost sinking red carpet rubbing his soles. Beside the giant common bed of him and Zarah, was a little spare one for their daughter. The child usually slumbered in her own diminutive cabin, but now… the latest weeks the master of the house had felt so desolate, that the girl's presence was almost requisite for him to get even some kind of rest from his comfortlessness. Dropping stooped to sit on the edge of the bedstead, he attempted to collect somewhat his synapses together. Tomorrow, Xaneda, work. Work. Mr. P'Osankka from Trade World was sending a new stock of parts for the T-ray surveillance cameras. Stocks, capacitors, nano-flip-flops… His afterthoughts rambled, and his tired regard set itself to lie on the black locks of the wee lass. She was still perching in his lap, initially playing with the platinum buckle of his belt. Her round features brought nothing but images, mementos of Choi in his mind. Those emerald green eyes… just like Zarah's… Warp could hear her merry laughter in his ears, as if she had been present in the room. Memories… The milk-white skin contrasting with that beryl… Her warm whisper in his ear… Abruptly the man felt as if an iron claw had twined itself around his neck, ready to choke him. A terillium band was put to strangle his scull broken. Sorrow, memories… Tetanoid shakes began vibrating along his massive thorax, pushing him down, and making him burrow his face into his solitary palm. Burning, salty tears nettled in his eyes, and he could not hinder them trickling down his cheeks.
"Zarah… My tiny poor Za, where are you?" he sputtered through his sobs, smearing his face with his palm. The loads of stress, the barrels of agony on his shoulders had crushed him now in the very meaning of the notion. Brave men do not cry, do they? Or is it moreover bravery to show the feelings openly? In any case, what came to Darkmatter, he let himself fall in the valley of lacrimation. No sarcasm popped up to brighten his mood, as usually. This time the joke basket had been emptied. Only a word, only a minor word saying that she was alive somewhere would have turned his tribulation to praises of extreme joy. Yes, the dubiety is often the most horrible state… whether to live in hope or not.
With a wondering stare, Ay'noh watched at the tearful daddy for a while. A petty whine began reaching from her mouth, too, and she grapped his arm, nuzzling towards him. In a few seconds, she was whimpering even louder than the male, wetting his sleeve with her tears. In her naïve world, she felt unsafe, defenseless, sad. Why was Daddy like that? Why didn't he any more play with her? Where was Mommy? In the solemn cabinet they both writhed, until the day died away and the tapestries of sleep were drawn over the view.
The next evening on Xaneda was as inconsolable. The day's work was over, and much had the stock unloading not set the bleak thoughts aside. The hours under the ground felt even more desolate than in the Grand Mansion. The delicious supper Warp had steaming attractively in front of him on a table, felt sickening. Oh, how many times he had enjoyed tidbits at this same table… how he had held her on his knees, fed her playfully with confections or grapes… and carried her then to his chambers, to show her his love. Darkmatter's heart felt so hollow, so apathetic. The seals of his union were broken, the second half of him had been ripped away.
Not even the drink tasted. The chef had brought him good brandy, but his throat signaled it to be like dishwater. Death. Death… more and more that morbid word had spun in his mind. What if she… what if she was dead? No… no… that could not be possible. So cruel the heavens could not be to him. The one who he had saved from torture, from yetis, she… she had to be alive, somewhere. Although lost, but alive.
With one swipe, Darkmatter threw the dishes off the table. Shattering to tens of pieces, their tinkle was left to echo for a long time in his subconscious. The sturdy man collapsed to lie half on the table. Memories… they would not leave him alone. Her laughter… her kiss on his cheek… her white tiny hand squeezing his one… an illusion. In an illusion she was with him.
A knock on the door.
He sullenly slumbered up to open the exit. Mrs. Adlene, the mid-aged stout woman from the lower levels had brought Ay'noh back from the nursery she kept.
"Mr. Darkmatter? Are you all right?" she worriedly asked, passing the toddler to his shelter.
"I… I don't know." He shook his head, thanking her for taking good care of the wee one. Solicitously she left him, yet not fully understanding why that high-ranking community member was so funereal. Well, she did not know about Zarah.
Darkmatter slowly limped to his bedroom. Ay'noh had had an exciting day with the other Xanedian tots, so she had serenely fallen asleep in his arms.
"You're blessed with the gift of slumber…" he sadly muttered to himself, smoothing her fluffy hair with his big hand.
Dream. Eternal dream. Death… death. Nauseous association welled out in his imagination again. "Will you stay as my only memory of her?" he asked the puffing child. "My sweet little Zarah… No, you can't be dead."
Across the stars, beyond the solar systems, she was also awake, thinking of him. Days faded away with the course of sun and moons. Hands numb of cold, she still repaired the broken robot with the backward tools. XR was the last hope, the last possibility to contact the outer world, if he could function at least partly. But his circuits stood timid, the cold metal parts only shimmering faintly in the firelight. If the android had had happened to be some kind of old sewing machine, it would have been quite simple to put him in shape. But nanotechnology required also relevant repairing instruments. No one could fix a little flip-flop with a hammer.
Zarah blew into her cold hands, rubbing them together. The pelt around her shoulders did not help her fingers from turning stiff. The crank kept dropping from her hold, and the fire was definitely not enough illumination for spit-and-polish work.
"I guess this is enough for today…" she sighed in her mind, and watched across the tent floor. Under a decorated tapestry, Mira had fallen asleep ages ago. Choi added some logs in the smoldering fire, and threw herself on her back on the mattress.
The sorrow returned. Familiar names, places and faces spun around her head. When had she lastly heard his deep, soothing voice whispering gently in her ear? Or her jingle laughter, felt her tiny hands reaching her cheeks? Warp, Ay'noh… what were they doing? Had they everything all right somewhere behind the asteroid fields? Zarah convulsively squeezed her cushion against her bodice as if it had been something sentient. But… a pile of hair, linen and wool could not sense or be aware. It could not embrace her back, it could not dry the tears of her crying heart.
Night… The wind howled outside. It narked the wooden framework of the teepee. Mira lazily opened her eyelids, getting the vision soon used to the dimness.
"Zarah? You're still awake?"
" Yeah…" Choi's voice stirred. Nova scrambled up, and came to sit at her bedstead.
"Can't get sleep…? You're… missing them, aren't you?"
"Hmmh…"
"I know, it must be terrible… if I'd be a mother, I'd…" Nova illustrated something in her mind. But the human redhead did not want to sink into self-pity, and shifted the topic. Technobabble eloined her bale at least partly.
"I've been trying to fix XR here. Dunno… half of him is gathered up, but he's mostly still with no function."
"Have you figured out what's the problem?"
"Yeah, I know it perfectly, but can barely do anything in circumstances like this. He's out of power, and would need a good voltage pulse to recharge some of his circuits. But where can you get electricity here?"
The Princess played with a lock of her hair. "But couldn't you put something up with your engineering skills?"
Choi left a sarcastic chuckle. "I'm just a human, just a poor human. A girl with no proper tools to put up a power plant. Sure I could do some tricks with conductive chemicals and metals, but there's no enough voltage. A good, old-fashioned plug box would help a lot. Drat, here's no use for skills relying on nanotechnology and bioscience. Unless I'd decide to be Benjamin Franklin with a kite."
Mira stayed speechless. No road home was in sight.
---------
A little grub dressed to purple and Burgundy red tuxedo pattered inside a half-lit room. He was carrying a tray high up in the air, and a tiny butler's linen was hanging from his arm. Entering, the wee beetle winced. A horrible bluster and roar was to burst his ears. But this was not the certain izzard-admirer having a tantrum, but an action movie rumbling in the holo-telly. "Ziuung! Swiish! I can hear it coming! Swuush! Look out, he's got an ion blaster! Zoinks! Zuuf! The emergency hatch, come on!" Opposite to the multimedia corner, Zurg sat in a sinking violet armchair, his poise stoop. He was watching elsewhere than towards the television, his gaze distant, hypnotized. The world seemed to have lost its existence around him.
"Uh… my evil Empr… uh, my ex-evil Emperor, your ultimately glorious Imperial Bunzel muffin is here with a cup of evilly spiced… umh… sweetly and lovely spiced tea!" the insect wheezed and offered him a plate. He had some trouble to arrange his words, because the master was not in the dark side any more, and did not want to be called 'evil' either.
Zora startled. The brawl of the b-class movie turkey filled his ears like a sudden thunderstorm, as the reality awakened around him. Pushing the remote control, he put an end to the hullabaloo in a nanosecond. But he truly did not seem to be himself. The grub could perceive the wrinkles on his face being deeper than ever. His pallid skin contrasted nastily with the blue shades under his tired eyes. The piercing stare had vanished, elbowed out by tiredness. The old man looked back at the minion and the muffin, sighing,
"No. Although the taste is splendid, caressing my sore taste buds with its exotic brilliancy, I shall leave it this time. I am not hungry. You can have it if you want."
"Whee!" the grub bolted away, enthusiastically disappearing in some nook to eat his treat.
Now the room shone with its silence. Its lodger flopped down to loll in the chair like some abandoned flour sack. The imperial pose was gone, worries were squeezing his heart.
"Is this the final price I smart for my evilness?" he asked himself. His son's shadow felt so eternal, discolored… dead. Was he dead? His thoughts were exactly similar to Warp's ones, yet the relative was a different one.
Zurg imagined himself being back on Planet Z, in the dark throne room. Sometimes, in the very lone moments, his subconscious even there had fished out pictures of Buzz. Yet, as initially being a reformed man, the situation was completely different. But back then… back in the days of the Empire, he did not know such thing as love. He was deceased to goodness, his blood and flesh was his worst enemy. An enemy that had to be destroyed with any means… or turned to serve him. Every plan Zora gobbled to please the dark side, was foiled. By him, by the one he had wanted to finish off so many times, the one he deeply loved now as an old father.
"How, why did I do this to myself?" He let a finger slide along his cheek. He could feel the grooves the black years had brought him. What would his life have been, if he never had listened to the commands and propaganda of Emperor Zidár? Would he have made a difference? Perhaps not. The malice had sucked him in, arresting his mind in the quods… in the prison of hellish agony. But… he could have done it otherwise. Years, years, again years he could have shared with the light, watching him grow, feeling pride as a virtuous man. Yet, where was that imaginary life? Wasted, fretted, tossed away… and then a mid-aged man was kicked out of nowhere. Fifty-three minus twenty-six… that made almost half of his existence.
"I wanted to kill him… how could you have done this to yourself, Zoxedasžeĉ Zora Lightyear? Where was your brilliant supreme intelligence then? Why did you make yourself a living Satan?" From under his thick eyelashes he hazily stared at the holo-TV corner. No one else but he and those butlers were at home. He and his self-accusations… the stars up there showed nothing but emptiness. Where was his son, if alive at all? Would the crushed father spend his last days again in the darkness? Adi-Gaia was gone, and now the only thing she had ever given to him? Zora still in his conscience remembered the deceased frail being with gentle… although he was re-married. But some mementos never blanch, neither this one. Nevertheless, was it meant to be that Buzz would be gone for aeons? It could not be true. Or… how would he know the course of the galaxy? In no wise.
…to be continued…