Disclaimer: They belong to people who are not me.
Feedback: is a girl's best friend. Constructive criticism is, as always, actively encouraged.
Notes: Un-betaed, unbound, uncensored. May be revised upon Jossing by The Peacekeeper Wars. Also, points of reference re: character ages would be much appreciated if any errors are noted.
Rating: G
CHASING THE YEARS
She had seen thirty-two cycles come and go before she came to Moya. Old enough, she supposed, but not very old when Sebaceans lived to be over two hundred, if they were careful.
Peacekeepers, of course, were rarely careful and never kind.
He cried, sometimes, at night, those first few weeks. She thought him weak, but in the morning he would bounce into the mess or command with a bright smile and spouting a rapid patter only he seemed to really understand. He liked her and that confused her even more.
Human. The word sounded strange and wrong on her tongue but she grew used to it. She grew used to a great many things.
The first time they lay together, bodies intertwined, he did not cry. He held her tight, as if she might be the only real thing in his world. Which, they would soon learn, she was. The incident haunted him always, though he rarely spoke of it.
He went mad, for a little while. She was surprised at herself, at how much it hurt to watch him slip away. Peacekeepers did not form attachments. They did not love. They lived for themselves.
But she was not a Peacekeeper anymore and so it didn't matter that she loved him, even when he was sick, even when he was lost. She knew that he would heal and come back to her because hope had followed a strange and winding path to find her.
She had never known hope before. She immediately seized it and locked it away in a heart-shaped box. Every once in while, she would take a little key and open the box, marveling at its beauty, before closing it and tucking it away once more. Nobody knew she had it, so no one could take it away.
The second time was less clear. Count it with the one who died? Or the one who lived? Thirty-four cycles seen, give or take a few days death, and she felt no wiser. He had found her hope after all, nurtured it, gave her a few fleeting moments of laughter before killing it without remorse.
Except he didn't, because he lived and that hurt, too.
It wasn't actually his baby, the one who lived, but it was close enough for both of them and she gave her heart-shaped box a little polish. She learned English, enough to get by, but he would always tell her that her grammar was terrible. She told him his Sebacean was worse and they both spoke the truth, so that was all right.
They went home. He walked away wounded when he gave it up and she could hear him crying at night again. Only now, sometimes, she would come into his room and hold him and be confused all over again. Except she didn't mind so much anymore.
She chose to have their daughter when she was thirty-six. He had only three cycles over her but seemed older. Or maybe it was just because he had seemed so young when they first met. Zhaan once called him innocent and though she could certainly attest that that was no longer true, she missed it a little sometimes.
She never told anyone that, just tucked it in next to her hope and locked the box again.
There was a war, as was inevitable, and they both had a few more scars to count and a family to come home to when it was over. He wanted a wedding like his father's, open air under a shining sun. They settled for the view of a gas giant off Moya's bow. He gave her a ring, simple, as all good symbols should be. She gave him her name, which delighted him no end. He liked to refer to himself as "the little missus."
She didn't understand it because she never fully understood him but she laughed anyway. She liked being able to laugh with him.
Their daughter grew up pretty and strong, a devastating combination. Since the first had turned out so well, they decided to have another. She was born the morning he discovered the grey at his temple.
He said it made him look distinguished. She smiled but it never reached her eyes.
A third child followed, a boy, and then they both took a look at themselves and decided enough was enough. She had seen forty-two cycles by then and had started to notice that the lines at the corner of her eyes were a little deeper than they used to be.
The babies grew into children. They possessed all of their parents' best traits and a few of their worst, although no two parents loved their children more. And then they weren't children anymore, but grown. Young people ready to make their way out into the universe and find their own families to tend to.
He looked at her. All grey now, but stronger than anyone thought and his eyes still the brightest blue she'd ever seen and he'd asked, "Okay, what's next?"
She shrugged because she had no idea, but that was okay, because she had a heart-shaped box that was still full.
They roamed. They had always roamed but now they didn't have to worry if Scarrans wanted them dead or if Peacekeepers wanted the secret histories trapped in their heads or if madmen wanted whatever it was madmen always hunted them for. They saw tragedy and beauty and sin and virtue and it was nothing new except when it was.
At seventy cycles, she learned her youngest daughter was dead. An accident. It seemed anti-climatic, they who had gone through so much to be robbed by something so pointless.
He cried at the funeral. She saved her tears until they reached their bedroom where she could collapse to the floor and weep. He held her, saying nothing.
They mourned and it hurt like so many things had since she met him, but it lessened over time. She often wished it wouldn't, even though she knew that was how it had to be.
Their son asked them to stay for a while, so they did. He spoiled the grandchildren, taught them how to play football, a mind-numbingly complicated game. She watched from the windows as they played in the yard and when they came inside, she told them all of the stories she had collected.
The end crept on them, insidious and unstoppable. He needed a cane while she still stood straight and though her hair was as grey as his, she didn't feel it in the same way he did. He gave her a smile and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.
She should have been prepared, the good soldier, ready to embrace the fallen comrade who had told her that he would never live as long as she did. As was a particular failing of hers, she had heard, but not listened and death came too swiftly for her, while almost everyone else saw it coming well beforehand.
She held his hand as he breathed his last, history repeating itself twice over in half-remembered dreams of other loves and gardens nurtured by her hand.
He lived much longer than he said he would but it still wasn't enough. It never would be.
She observed the day of her birth, one hundred and three cycles before. Her son said stay, again, and her remaining daughter offered to move closer. But she declined them both with distant politeness and set out for the unknown frontier she loved in a way beyond passion. She found Ka D'argo tending to his farm and they spoke for a time but the grief held words still between them and she knew she would not stay for long.
Chiana she found after another cycle had passed and the girl had become an old woman. They embraced as friends and laughed about it. Chiana told her about Jool and how Stark died and of Rygel's continued sporadic rule over a people that had long forgotten him. They didn't speak of lost loves or regrets and though she thought she could stay there, if anywhere, something else beckoned and she left.
Her ship moved toward the stars, map fibers and old, hand-written star charts in a familiar scrawl laid out before her. She took out her heart-shaped box, blew the dust and cobwebs from it, and opened it to see if there was anything left inside. The rusted hinges squealed and she thought a hole had emptied it of its contents. But, as it turned out, a small bit of hope remained wedged in the corner after all.
Decision made, she choose the direction he had been searching for a long time ago and headed out. Without wormholes or starbursts, it would take at least sixty cycles to get back home and give him rest. She didn't mind.
She had time.
FIN