Note: More introspection and rambling from Mega, as well as vague, sort-of spoilers. As an aside, everyone wish a happy birthday to Calen Maiava-Paris on June 3rd.

They say that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. This is an outright lie. I only see two or three things of great importance- the death of my parents, when I thought Slade had left me to the proverbial wolves, and my twenty-first birthday, almost exactly a year ago. I take a moment to reflect on the irony of dying a few days before what would have been my birthday, and miss somebody saying something awfully profound. Not that it matters, I haven't been listening anyway.

I was sitting in the control room of what served as our third temporary base of operations that month. It was late at night and I was alone, which was not unusual for me. What was unusual for me was not working. I sat before a crowded desk in one bland, featureless room in a string of many, staring into the flickering light of the tiny candle I had managed, with no small difficulty, to find in the last town we passed through. I dug a little hole for it in the top of my standard-issue chocolate bar, and had been watching it melt down to nothing for the better part of an hour. Next to me was another item that had been difficult and, in the end, entirely unrewarding to procure. A thick glass bottle of vodka, barely opened. I had cracked the seal fifteen minutes ago and taken a tiny sip of the vile liquid. I couldn't bring myself to drink any more and set the bottle aside, resigning myself to another sober evening in what was likely to be, if that small sample was any indication, a lifetime of sobriety. I had just begun to wonder how much damage that tiny flame was likely to do to my fingertips if I touched it when I heard someone clear his throat embarassedly behind me. I turned around in the chair far too fast and nearly overbalanced, surprised by the sudden sound. Jay stood in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot and staring at me. I guessed that he'd been standing there for a long time, and wondered if he'd heard me talking to myself earlier. I hoped not.

"Hello," I said, after a few moments of staring contest, in which it became apparent he wasn't going to initiate a conversation.

"Hi," he'd replied, a clear note of relief in his voice. Probably he thought I'd be angry or sad or... or drunk, more likely. I waved him over and he entered the room hesitantly, squinting in the darkness that the light of the tiny candle only served to accentuate. "I was making rounds before I locked up, and I saw a light in the control room." I heard a high-pitched whine running counterpoint to the soft breathing of the computers, and glanced down at his wrist gun. Sure enough, it was on, though only set to 'STUN'. He followed my gaze and blinked guiltily, powering it down. "Sorry."

"It's all right." I gave him a smile as best I could, a sign of friendship that had always come awkwardly for me. "Just don't shoot me." The joke went right over his head and he just nodded. I'd always found it amusing, that guileless sincerity of his, and it was then that I realised I found it to be endearing as well.

"So." His eyes moved to the candle and to the open bottle of vodka. I winced as I imagined what he must have been thinking. "Are you celebrating something or mourning something?" The question surprised and pleased me, and I think I must have given him a real smile.

"Celebrating. I'm twenty-one today." He nodded understandingly and smiled back at me. My heart gave a little jump and I coughed to cover it.

"Happy birthday, then, for another hour." Was it really eleven o'clock? I glanced down at my watch and was surprised to find that Jay was right. I must have been staring at the candle for longer than I'd thought. "I actually thought you were younger than that." I glanced up, startled. His voice was much nearer than I had expected it to be. He laughed, not unkindly, at my expression as he slid into the chair next to mine.

"Until today, I always have been." My second joke in as many minutes and probably also in as many weeks. I'd never been much of a joking person, as a rule, and it surprised me to tell them as much as it must have surprised Jay to hear them. I turned towards him, chair squeaking its protest against the linoleum, and leaned forward to see him better in the darkness. "How old are you?" I'd wondered but had never, until that moment, found a chance to ask. I guessed he was around twenty.

"Twenty-two." I nodded and sat back in my chair, satisfied with the verification of my suspicions. That put him at one year above me and two above our commander, Ram, whose age I only knew because I had been the one to enter his file into the Technos' database. This was right after I had joined up, before the long string of promotions that led to my position of third-in-command. We sat for a while in what I considered a comfortable silence, me watching him watch the candle burn its way towards a slow death. I had grown so used to staring at him and listening to nothing that I flinched when he finally spoke up. "Have you made a wish?" I must have been staring at him like he was mad, because he laughed and clarified for me, "on the candle, I mean. Have you made a birthday wish?" I hadn't done, and I told him as much. "Do so," he commanded in his best imitation of a real General, and I was torn between laughing and snapping a salute. I turned back to the candle instead, now barely more than a stub. I pursed my lips, aware that I looked like a perfect idiot, and hesitated. Lists of lofty ideals and unrealistic ambitions ran through my head before I finally settled on a wish, simple and yet entirely unattainable without some kind of supernatural interference. I wish he'd kiss me.

The thought caught me by surprise and I sputtered as I blew the candle out, no doubt spraying it and the bar of chocolate with a good deal of spit. He had the decency not to laugh at me and I risked another glance at him in the near-perfect darkness. I could barely see the outline of his face and the the jagged mess of his hair, but it was enough to drive my heart rate up to an unhealthy level. I realised then, with a slightly unpleasant sense of futility and a far less unpleasant burst of warmth, that I had fallen in love with our commander's paramour.

The vision fades into a void without stars, without the light at the end of the tunnel I had been brought up to expect, without so much as a single, solitary angel, except for the one whose voice I hear as I slip inexorably into the darkness. Jay. My last thought is that this isn't such a bad way to die.