The Black Captain was sitting by the fire, and the silver streaks in his dark hair shimmered in the dancing light of the flames. A cigar sat between his fingers, and thin wisps of smoke gently rose from the burning tip. He distinctly remembered the smell; it was heavy and earthy, like burning leaves on an autumn's evening. He also remembered his eyes; the Captain's brooding must have been profoundly dismal, for as the old soldier stared into the heart of the fire, his striking, golden eyes were drawn to such a dark shade that they seemed to absorb the light as if they were bottomless holes of deep black. He sat so still one could think he had stopped breathing.
The Captain's exceptionally sporadic presence among them outside of training warranted some degree of disquiet, but they, by this point, had grown accustomed to his distant ruminating and paid no heed to his nescience. Despite his literal close proximity to the rest of them as they camped planetside that day, there existed a gulf - a deep internal chasm that separated him from everyone. Like an island in the middle of a great lake, one would sometimes see the outline of a man on its shores but could never get close enough to hear.
Around the fire, the rest of them had been eating and conversing with one another with some gaiety, happy to have survived another day under the Captain's tutelage. Slowly, the dark of night descended upon the forest they camped in, and the silent stars overhead hushed the liveliness of their camaraderie. As what often happens, a pensive mood emerged, and topics of love and loss began to surface. There were some stories of heart make and heartbreak, some of the loved ones waiting for them lightyears away, and some of the ones who were lost to the living and could no longer be found.
There came a moment deep in the evening where a natural lull in the conversation had occurred, and the sounds of the forest around them had risen slightly; the rustle of branches, the night cries of nocturnal animals, the flowing of distant water. At this inflection point, the Captain, suddenly and without cause, spoke.
"I was married once."
The shock among them was instant, and all attention bore down on the Captain; each surprised by the sudden, personal detail he had just shared with them, completely unprompted.
"I was fifty years old," he began, oblivious to them, still staring into the flames. "She was a medical officer, serving at the same station I was. She had beautiful black hair, darker than mine, almost as dark as night, yellow eyes like stars, her touch... unlike anything I had ever felt. We bought a house on the outskirts of Oxadria… with plans to turn it into a home."
They all looked at each other in puzzlement. Oxadira was the name of an ancient city. A great cataclysm had hit it thousands of years ago, and it had never been rebuilt.
"A few years later, right out of the blue, I hit critical sustainment; I stop aging. I've been blessed, they tell me; late-onset senescence is very rare. She tells me she's happy for me, for us - we'll have more time together."
He took a long drag from the cigar and exhaled slowly. The cloud hovered for a moment before drifting upwards.
"I get drafted. I get deployed again and again. Years pass. Without realizing, I begin turning into something... harsh."
He paused in his recollection, and they waited until he continued.
"She begins to tell me she is afraid and worried. She says I am like a god now. I tell her I don't think there is a god, and if there is, I am nothing like him."
He takes another long drag, blowing light smoke into the air. The rich smell of the haze invaded them, settling deep into their heads.
"I tell her I still want her... and that I always will. As I lie to her, it is nearly two centuries since we married. At a drop not much later, I find myself in a bind with a much younger woman. Her figure... her smile... she is strong and deadly in both beauty and passion. We end up in each other's beds."
The ash falls from the ember.
"She... accuses me of unfaithfulness. She bursts into angry tears, asking me if it's because she's getting older. It was true. She was aging more noticeably every day…"
Another pause. Another long drag.
"... while I am standing still."
The Captain's voice took on a strange edge.
"You make jokes, ridicule, envy, but you do not know how it is. You wish for life, but you will see nothing but death. You wish for more time, but you will drown in it. The universe harbours a cruel sense of irony."
He closed his eyes.
"You," he said to the young soldier with the green eyes. "You once asked why I lived alone on that planet for so many years. I preferred the stillness there; I was tired of these places. These people. I was tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."
The Captain opened his eyes and resumed his stare into the flames. He shut his mouth and did not open it again for the rest of the night.
