Aetheral Space

"How's it going, kiddo?" said Skipper, looking down at Dragan.

Dragan suppressed the urge to groan. He'd sat himself down on a hill just outside the encampment in an effort to finally get some peace and quiet, and somehow the most annoying man in the galaxy had found him anyway. He looked up at Skipper, hands still clasped in his lap.

"I've been better," he said, shrugging.

"You took down a Special Officer," Skipper grinned. "That ain't nothing."

"Only after drugging him out of his mind. And I nearly died in the process."

"But you didn't," said Skipper, wagging a finger. "And that's the most important thing."

Dragan thought about it for a second and shifted his position in the grass, wincing from the lingering pain in his body. "You're right, I guess," he said grudgingly.

Skipper nodded. "I always am."

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Dragan chuckled, rolling his eyes all the same. Then his face turned downcast. "You say I've won, but things don't seem to have gotten any better. I managed to save everyone, but at the end of it all they're just miserable and angry. In what way did I win, exactly, apart from not dying?"

With a grunt, Skipper sat himself down next to Dragan, looking down at the almost completely packed-up Humilist camp. After a moment, he spoke.

"You know," he said, as if carefully considering every word. "There's never such a thing as a perfect victory. I've never seen it, not even once, and I've seen a lot of things. Even if you win, and put everything you've got into it, you're not going to get everything you want out of it. That just isn't possible."

Dragan raised an eyebrow. "What is this? The moral of the story?"

"Just some friendly advice, kiddo," Skipper shrugged. "Don't get disappointed when the world doesn't work the way you'd like it to."

Down below, there was shouting from near the rocket - Aiden barking out orders with the authority he'd somehow snatched hold of. The disorganized Humilists were in a state where they'd listen to whoever was loudest, clearly.

It felt like the world had become a little darker, to be perfectly honest.

He gave Skipper a look, and a thought occurred to him. "Speaking from personal experience?" he said, testing the waters.

"Kiddo," said Skipper, smiling sadly. "I'm nothing but personal experience."

-

Ruth was sitting on a fold-up chair outside the medical tent, fingers fidgeting in her lap. She looked up as Dragan and Skipper approached, a noticeable relief creeping into her smile.

"Heya," she said.

"Hey," said Dragan, holding up a hand to block the sun from his eyes. "Been a while."

"Mm," she said, if you were generous with what you called speech. Her eyes glanced towards the medical tent, anxiety clear in them.

Skipper was keeping quiet for once in his life, so it was up to Dragan to inquire. "How's it going there?"

"I handed over the Rospolox," she said, smiling thinly. "Mila's been in there a while, though. You don't think…?"

"I'm sure they're fine," cut in Skipper, raising a placating hand.

Ruth nodded. She seemed ready to trust Skipper no matter what he said.

"So," said Dragan, depositing himself in another nearby chair. His poor weary bones needed rest after all his recent heroic efforts. "You guys took your damn time, huh?"

"We got held up," said Skipper. "Ran into some pirates and had a dogfight with a cyborg."

Dragan rolled his eyes - yeah, right. Then he noticed Ruth quietly nodding.

"Seriously?" he said, unbelieving. "That's true? That actually happened?"

"Sure did," she muttered, the memories of it clearly unpleasant.

"It pains my heart, Mr. Hadrien," said Skipper, faking a sniffle as he thumped his chest with his fist. "That you would think me a liar. I honestly am in shock. I might die."

"I wish."

"You see, Ruth?" said Skipper, wiping a crocodile tear from his eye. "You see the kind of treatment I have to deal with here? The sheer level of contempt?"

As Skipper's trashy theatre continued on, Mila stepped out of the medical tent, stripping away the sterile mask that had been covering her face.

She looked more tired than Dragan had ever seen her, huge dark bags under her slightly bloodshot eyes. Her mouth was a thin dry line, and when she spoke it was with a flat, pained monotone.

"They'll make it," she said quietly. "Should take a day or two for the symptoms to … to fully dissipate."

"Hey," Ruth said, clearly trying to be as empathetic as she could. Dragan had told them all about how things had ended up with Helga. "Things'll get better."

Mila barely looked at her. "Mm," she grunted, brushing a loose lock of black hair out of her face.

And with that, she staggered away - off to the waiting Humilist rocket. That was where Helga was being kept too - frozen, ready for judgement by the leaders of the Humilist Commune.

"What do you think'll happen to her?" said Dragan quietly.

"Hm?" Skipper looked at Mila's shrinking form. "She's getting on the rocket, I think."

"Not her," Dragan snapped. "Helga. What'll happen when she reaches the Humilist fleet?"

Skipper and Ruth glanced away, clearly uncomfortable with the question.

"Well," said Skipper. "I'd hope for some justice, but I dunno about that. I've heard some nasty rumours about the Humilist Apexbishop."

"Things will work out,” said Ruth, smiling a little more optimistically. "Mila will make them. I'm sure of it."

Fair enough. What exactly could Mila do, though? Apart from her medical expertise in this camp, Dragan had never gotten the sense that she'd held an especially high position in the Humilist sect as a whole. To the people who'd be judging Helga, Mila might as well be some rando who'd wandered in off the streets.

Someone to be either shut up or ignored.

Mila disappeared into the rocket.

"Hey," said Ruth, recapturing Dragan's attention. She grinned a false grin at him. "Like I said, things will work out for them. If you just don't give up, they always do."

Dragan smiled. "You're right," he lied.

-

In Bruno's memory, he was captured mid-scream, body frozen between one second and the next as it spasmed in the seat, kept in place by a thick bundle of Neverwire.

He was in the interrogation room, that small dingy cube room, the masked face of his interrogator half-visible in the shadows. The man held a huge industrial hammer - the kind used by maintenance technicians to remove organic mass that clung to ships.

From the position he was standing, the angle of his arms, Bruno guessed that he'd just had his hands smashed in this memory. That didn't much narrow down when this had happened - his hands had been smashed so many times over those six months that it all seemed to bleed together.

He did his best to keep his breathing steady. He couldn't ask Serena to swap with him for a period, get him out of this memory - she was unconscious too. They were in this together for the moment.

"How you holding up?" he said quietly, doing his best not to look at the interrogator.

"Don't like it here," came Serena's growl. Memories like this made her angrier than anyone.

"Me neither," he mumbled.

"Don't like it here," she said again. "When are we going to wake up?"

Bruno sighed, looked up at the single lightbulb that illuminated the interrogation room. For a time, he'd hallucinated that it was the sun. "Don't know," he said. "We've been out for a while."

"Yeah."

He was quiet for a moment. The words were there in his head, fully formed, but he found himself reluctant to let them escape out of his mouth.

"Do you think we lost?" he finally said.

It would only make sense. Hadrien was very unlikely to be able to handle a Special Officer: just before he'd blacked out, Bruno had seen him doing something with the syringes, but he couldn't imagine Zakos getting knocked out before managing to crush both Hadrien and Bruno.

"If we lost," said Serena quietly. "We'd be dead, right?"

"Right."

"I don't feel dead."

Bruno furrowed his brow. "You've never been dead. You don't know what it would feel like."

"Really? Then this is what being dead feels like? I feel like I'm sleeping."

He shrugged as much as his restraints would allow. "You never know."

Again, silence settled over the interrogation room - undesirable, as the aching pain in their hands slowly began to make itself known. Without distraction, the memory felt free to let itself unfold.

"You're weird, Bruno," Serena's voice cut through the pain, and the scene around them again slowed to a stop.

Bruno sighed. As ever, Serena's train of thought was like a minecart speeding through a labyrinth. "How am I weird?"

"You kinda want this to be what dying feels like. Because that'd mean you were right about this being a bad plan." She laughed as if she'd told a funny joke. "You're so weird!"

Shifting in the seat as much as he could, Bruno growled: "I'm not weird."

"Yes you are." Serena could be so childish, even when there was a non-zero possibility that they were both a corpse. "You're so suspicious, you don't even trust that you're alive. You're such a weirdo!"

"I'm not! And besides -"

Light began to flood into the memory - the ceiling cracking open like an egg, letting in stray rays of the sun. Bruno squinted as he looked up at the golden glow. "The hell is that supposed to be?" he muttered.

"Huh," said Serena. "I guess we might be dead after all."

Bruno turned to look at Serena, but she was no longer there. And a second later, neither was he.

-

"Wake the fuck up," said an irritating voice softly.

Bruno groaned as he opened his eyes, did his best to ignore the aching pain flowing across his muscles. He was lying on a soft bed - medical tent, most likely - hooked up to more than a few monitors. Definitely not dead, then.

He looked up. Dragan Hadrien was sat by the side of the bed in a disposable chair, hands clasped on his lap.

"Guess I'm alive, then?" said Bruno weakly. He tried to raise a hand, but the useless thing was shaking too hard for it to be of any use - even more than usual.

"Seems that way," said Hadrien. A half-suppressed smirk played across his lips.

Bruno groaned. "Your plan worked, then?"

"Aren't you glad?" Hadrien said smugly. "I told you it would."

"Yeah, yeah," Bruno said, settling his head back in his pillow. To his surprise, a chuckle escaped from his throat.

"Something funny?" Hadrien said, raising an eyebrow. Now that Bruno looked, it was obvious that the guy had more than a few cuts and bruises himself. A cane leaned against the chair, obviously for his use.

For a moment, Bruno thought about saying nothing, about keeping his mouth shut and surly. But even though every instinct told him not to, he found himself talking all the same.

"It feels good to be alive."

Hadrien cocked his head. "I would think so, yeah. Personally, I love being alive. Can't get enough of it."

"Shut up," Bruno muttered. Then, turning away so that his face couldn't be seen, he said: "I guess you must have saved me, then."

Hadrien, out of Bruno's vision, didn't talk for a couple of seconds. An awkward silence settled over the tent, save for the whistling of the wind outside.

"You saved me first," Hadrien finally said. Even more surprising, it seemed genuine.

Bruno took a deep breath, stuffed down whatever scraps of pride he had left, and spoke.

"I don't trust you, Hadrien. But … I guess I don't distrust you, either. I’ll wait and see what kind of … kind of person you are."

Another silence, but it seemed much less awkward this time. Hadrien ended it by laughing quietly.

"That doesn't make any sense, you know."

"Yeah. I know," said Bruno, burying his face deeper into the pillow to hide his reddening face.

Still - even as their conversation trailed off fully, even as Ruth charged into the tent and pulled Bruno and Serena into a painful hug, even as Skipper walked in and mouthed off with one of his stupid jokes, even as the tent was taken down and the Humilist rocket took off with an unfriendly blaze, even as the time came to leave Yoslof, Bruno couldn't help but think:

It wasn't a totally awful day.