A Term of Endearment
Qwark sat in the broom closet, staring up at Nefarious' cadet photo. He couldn't remember the last time he saw Nef smile like that. The first few years of having Nef on the team were some of the best. Nefarious' technological and tactical genius made the Galactic Rangers as a whole a force to be reckoned with.
The last three years were no different in that regard, but… at some point, something changed. Nefarious grew quieter, he holed himself up in his lab more, and there were times where Qwark wouldn't see heads or tails of him for a week straight. Nef stopped smiling, he stopped cracking jokes, and even the weapons he would build for them all started to change. They went from being ingenious and crazy and cool to just missile launcher after missile launcher. Which wasn't to say missile launchers weren't cool. The Warmonger and Negotiator were a lot of fun to use and very effective, but compared to weapons like the Sheepinator or even that weapon's funky (and finicky) predecessor the Morph-O-Ray, it just wasn't the same! The Warmonger and Negotiator didn't have that flavor of straight up weird and yet brilliant at the same time!
And when Qwark would try to seek him out, to try to spend time with him, things wouldn't exactly go well.
As it turned out Nef wanted nothing to do with him. At all.
He would slam the lab door in Qwark's face, he would avoid him in the cafeteria, and he even skipped out on Movie Night Mondays! Nef loved Movie Night Mondays!
Was it the budget cuts? The fact that they had to move Nef's lab into a broom closet? They had to, or they wouldn't have had enough bolts for Pizza Night twice a week! Maybe Qwark had been working Nef too hard? Was he putting too many projects on his plate? But he never said anything…
(Nefarious did in fact, have plenty of things to say about this, and the budget cuts. However, the problem was that Qwark never listened to him when he did say something.)
Qwark ran his thumb over the edge of Nefarious' cadet photo. It was hard to reconcile the fact that the smiling man in the photo was the same one who looked at Qwark with such hatred as he tried to atomize Aleero City. It was hard to reconcile that fact that that same man was now dead.
He'd gotten the news last night. Nefarious was killed during a prison escape, his body completely vaporized. They wouldn't even be able to have him in a casket. It was a nightmare just to get the prison to give the Rangers Nef's ashes.
Qwark would never again be able to wake up Nef in the middle of the night so they could watch the season finale of Lance and Janice together. Qwark would never again be able to barge into Nef's lab to bring him meatloaf because the doc forgot it was lunchtime for the millionth day in a row. Qwark would never again be able to affectionately call Nef "King of the Nerd Herd."
Qwark liked Nef. A lot. More than the doc ever knew. And now he would never know. Nef was gone. Taken away forever, in just an instant.
While Qwark had the rest of his team… he never felt more alone than he did right now. Qwark hugged himself and tucked his legs up close to his chest. A sob escaped him and he buried his face in his arms, unable to look at Nef's cadet photo for another second.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's almost Valentine's Day and I keep forgetting that fact. I don't trust myself to remember to post this on the day of, so you're all getting it a few days before instead. Hope you all liked it!