Dead Star Dockyards

Donovan glared up at the ceiling of the bedroom, unable to close his eyes. Diana was sleeping soundly at his side, her feinting having turned to slumber a long time ago. Given her imitation of a rock on the trip back to the Barracks, he could only assume she had been incredibly exhausted. 

He, on the other hand, couldn't drift off to sleep for the life of him. By all accounts Donovan should have been exhausted, or otherwise prepared to sleep. He had trained with his squad. He had been involved in a fight for his life. He had carried Diana back from the Inner Sanctum. He had even gone so far as to take a bath after his gruesome experience at the hands of the Arboreal Maiden. All of that plus the routines he had been taught to force sleep were not enough to steal consciousness from his mind.

Planting a kiss on the back of Diana's neck, Donovan slid out from underneath the covers and donned a pair of shorts he had left by the bedside table. What could he possibly be doing at the moment to make use of this restless night? ARC would tell him off if he tried to work on the tablet, so he would have to be physical. Exercise? Night exercises? That was certainly more productive than nothing, but he wasn't exactly in the mood to go for a jog or do pushups. 

Donovan grabbed his sword, not bothering to bring along the belt to attach it. He wasn't planning on walking around in public, so it would just be a hindrance to him while he moved. On second thought . . . wouldn't Titanyana tell him to bring it along so he could learn to deal with the weight?

No, that didn't matter right now. His objective wasn't to practice for real, it was to waste energy and clear his mind. Maybe he would try to move some Split around as he did so, no, that was definitely what he would do. He was years behind the pack, a fact he needed to remind himself of even now. Titanyana's bouts during the tournament had been all the proof he needed.

Taking a moment to silently bid Diana adieu and slip his Split Crystal into a pocket, he made his way down to the courtyard.

- - - - -

Titanyana's ears flicked once, twice, three times as she picked up on a set of footsteps heading down the stairs. This wasn't a suspicious occurrence to her by any means, in fact she knew exactly who it was based on cadence and magnitude. Why Donovan had decided to take a trip downstairs at this late an hour was her primary concern. She could never imagine some sort of spat between the two of them requiring Donovan to leave. Besides that, Diana was asleep right now, wasn't she? Did he maybe need a glass of water?

Titanyana decided that now probably wasn't the time to pry. Either it wasn't important enough for her to bother, or a personal problem she had no business with. If she left her room to investigate, Petunia would absolutely hear her and come along. That would be too much of a pain to deal with this late. 

She did slip into clothing that was a little more appropriate for walking around in, just in case.

- - - - -

This was one of the rare occasions Donovan would elect to close his eyes while moving about. This would normally be dangerous considering the fact he was holding a weapon, but there wasn't anything particularly complicated going on. He was repeating an overhead swing, over and over and over. This was the simplest, and arguably most useless, move he had been taught. All he had to do was raise the sword over his head, and swing straight down in front of him.

In a real fight, trying to pull this one off would be an excellent way to get stabbed or slashed in the gut. People were just too fast, and such a telegraphed attack would be parried quite easily. What this move trained was form, grip, and control. All of those were things that Donovan had a pretty tight handle on, which made it the perfect swing to gauge his performance while he concentrated on the little center of power in his chest. 

This, he had found, was a level of multitasking he had yet to truly grasp. The simple act of swinging a sword in tandem with merely stirring the Split in his core was enough to make him nauseous. How anybody managed to make tens of fully fledged strings of Split whilst actively swinging around a sword was beyond him, it just didn't seem possible. Donovan opened his eyes in the almost perfect dark, staring down at his barely visible hands.

Why was he here? To train? To get stronger? To learn something? Discounting the Arboreal Maiden's pushing, he didn't know anymore. Split, as useful as it seemed, wasn't something he could ever see outpacing traditional firearms as a primary method of attack. It could certainly be a useful aid, he had little doubt that increased speed and the possibility of deliberately dodging bullets would be a boon on the battlefield, but he imagined it would be incredibly difficult for even the most experienced of combatants to approach a machinegun nest relying on Split alone. 

For that matter, forget about firearms. What chance did they stand against lightly armored vehicles? Sure, some of the stronger individuals might be able to poke holes in them with a sword, but vehicles are not incapacitated with that sort of damage. They would somehow have to kill everyone inside without being cut down by the supporting infantry and vehicles surrounding it. Donovan didn't care if that person was faster than a bullet, eventually they would get hit. At the moment, he could not find a decent reason to devote so much time to training this new ability.

And yet he did anyways. He didn't know why he felt the way he did, but this training was, well, enjoyable. Sure, Split was frustrating to work with, but the feeling he got upon successfully doing anything was something he hadn't received in a while. This was new. This was exciting. 

Donovan pulled the crystal from his pocket, focusing on feeling it rather than seeing it. He had sort of forgotten in the wake of everything, but he could 'see' without his eyes. It was an uncomfortable way of viewing the world, probably because his brain was still unable to parse it completely, fuzzy and ill-defined compared to what he was used to. Of course he wasn't looking at colors or anything like that, what he was receiving was something he vaguely recognized to be 'intensity'.

There wasn't any radiation here, no wavelength emitted by high concentration objects. His proof of this was the ability to see the crystal through objects. For example, he could cover the crystal with his hand, but he could still 'see' the crystal very clearly. He could also see his hand. It was important to note that what he was seeing wasn't the sum of the crystal and his hand, but two independent entities separated by distance. 

Donovan didn't quite understand the mechanism behind this. One theory he had was that each Split entity recorded some distance that he could make out. Another theory he had was that this sense wasn't like sight, which presented a two dimensional projection of the three dimensional world for the brain to process. Instead, Donovan thought that this sense of his was a dimension more complex, rendering a three dimensional image of a four dimensional reality. Actually, it might be even more than that, a perfect representation of the four dimensional realm.

His hint for that was the 'intensity' aspect. There was the obvious three dimensional component, space being something he was intimately familiar with, but the concentration of Split could be a fourth dimension, sort of like how elevation lines on a topographical map provide information about a third dimension without making the map three dimensional.

He tossed the crystal up a few times, trying to keep track of it. The blur it left in its path was rather nauseating, but this was something he needed to get used to. 

- - - - -

Titanyana looked down into the courtyard from the window in her room. It may have been dark outside, but Titanyana could still see the figure outside move around. He was swinging his sword, in all likelihood releasing stress and frustrations. This was something she had done a few times herself.

As a princess and future leader, she found it difficult to voice her frustrations at times. So much was wrong, and nothing could be done about it. At the very least, there was nothing she could have done about it. Whenever she got into that mood, feeling particularly hopeless about life as it was, she would sneak out of her room and swing her sword about. Even if she was tired, even if she wasn't supposed to, Titanyana would prefer the temporary distraction to the immeasurable weight of her own thoughts and worries. 

Donovan was probably going through something similar, the events of the day likely being something he needed to think through. She wasn't there to see it, but his experience with the Watcher was likely to be incredibly stress inducing. His talk with the Arboreal Maiden could have been a sizable source of stress as well. Now that she thought about it, Donovan's life was full of these stress inducing events. Her people's existence was a stress inducing event to him, not to mention the problems he had to face with regards to his own people. How did he do it?

Titanyana's ears perked up. Donovan was muttering something to himself, probably something about his frustrations. As much as Titanyana didn't want to creep, she was curious.

'Titanyana, go to bed.'

Her ears flattened and tail straightened, how did he see her? She had been very careful not to make any sound, so he couldn't have heard her. She had even made sure not to expose most of her body, only her eyes and ears poked above the windowsill. That would have been difficult for her to notice even at night.

"Do I have to?" She opened her window and made her plea. If he wanted privacy Titanyana would oblige, but if it wasn't really necessary she wanted to keep watching. It wasn't very often she got to see him without a shirt.

"I guess not." Fortunately, Donovan didn't seem to think much of being watched. He probably only wanted to know what Titanyana was doing, right? Right?

"W-would I be able to join you?" Titanyana decided to press her luck. Diana was asleep right now, so the usual sink for his emotional frustrations was not available to him. Diana told her to start getting closer to him, right? Wouldn't this count?

Donovan shrugged. The unenthusiastic response wasn't exactly music to her ears, but Titanyana accepted it as progress. Now the question was what she should be wearing. She knew she had prepared something appropriate to walk around in, but would it be acceptable for her to go out in one of the nightgowns she bought with Diana?

- - - - -

Donovan shivered a little, not because he was cold but because of the implications of what he had just done. He hadn't seen anything particularly revealing, but he had absolutely seen Titanyana through a wall, from a distance. How could that be anything but a massive invasion of privacy? What if she was naked? Did it even matter if she was naked?

Well he hadn't exactly seen any skin, only a blob in the vague shape of her peeking out the window, but he felt certain that the image would become clearer as he got became more sensitive to it. At what point of detail was a monochromatic the same as seeing something for what it was? Donovan didn't know, and right now he didn't want to. 

swoosh

As if to cut away the indecent thoughts, Donovan performed a lateral slash at an invisible foe. He couldn't be caught up in that. This was a sensory organ that everybody else was supposed to have. Clearly there was some form of courtesy at play when it came to its usage, or some way to disguise, conceal, or otherwise interfere with the detection of one's figure. As far as Donovan could recall, he couldn't detect the Watcher of the Nameless through such means. Presumably, this meant that either Titanyana didn't feel the need to conceal herself at the time, or she didn't know how given her lived experience on Nekh. 

"Hello?" The doors here were annoyingly well kept, so much so that he couldn't pick up on a squeaking hinge. 

"Good evening."

"I-I'm sorry for watching you without permission."

"You didn't do anything wrong. The courtyard is a public place, anything I do here I do with the understanding I could be seen by others." Donovan swung his sword again, paying more attention to his form now that Titanyana was here. "I was serious about you going to bed, though. Your body needs proper rest."

"Does the same not apply to you?" 

"I know my limits, Titanyana. I've been worked to the bone for practically my entire life, a day or two without sleep doesn't mean much at this point." Donovan recalled a few of the events that justified Doctor Helmsguard's nickname as 'Warden' in his mind. "I'll either make up for it with more rest later, or deal with the consequences."

Donovan closed his eyes once more, swinging his sword as he did so. 

"Is it not alright for me to do the same?" Donovan wanted to roll his eyes. "I mean, I'm a monarch now, so shouldn't I get used to the stress as well?"

"With all due respect, Titanyana, you are a woman. You might be a formidable woman, one accustomed to combat and the rigor that entails, but you are still a woman. More importantly, you are at a point in your life where the health of your body is far more important than a man's. I may not have a complete understanding of the differences between Terran and Nekh biology, but excess stress is known to harm fertility. I don't mean to come off as callous or make you into an object, but your reproductive health is an asset Diana and I would rather not damage. You hold a position as royalty, the last of your lineage. Should you pass without an heir viewed as legitimate by your people, Diana and I may find it difficult."

"But . . . isn't Diana as stressed as I am?"

"Arguably, she is more stressed. I have been trying my hardest to take burdens away from her, but there are certain areas of work where her expertise outclasses my own. I am willing to make some concessions as a means to guarantee success." Donovan swung once more, attempting to pull a string from his core as he did so. "Don't sacrifice your future for a bit of satisfaction or relief in the present, Titanyana. I only do so because I don't have a choice."

"Couldn't you choose to sleep then?"

"I tried. I couldn't. If I am to be awake, I would rather not waste my time with nothing."

"Hm, I suppose not." Titanyana sat on the edge of the porch. She was slightly dissatisfied that Donovan had not taken a look at her, but she thought it incredibly likely that he wouldn't even see her if he did. "Is there anything I can do to help? If possible, I'd like to share some of the burden. We are already sort of, you know, dependent on each other?"

Donovan stopped upon hearing Titanyana's request. His gut instinct was no. At the moment, there was nothing on his plate that she could handle in a manner satisfactory to his standards. However, he knew this would not be true forever. With time, she might be able to handle the more menial tasks (such as managing timetables) with Arc's assistance. The only problem was that she might not reach that level of competence in a reasonable time frame. 

"Maybe." Donovan sheathed his blade.

- - - - -

Titanyana found that her tail was swaying when Donovan turned to face her. She didn't know if it was from the positive response, the slight glistening of his toned figure, or the faint scent of his that had wafted her direction. What she did know was that it wasn't about to stop.

"You would have to work hard. How are you faring with English?"

"Better! It's become a lot easier now that I can hear the words for what they actually are instead of just gibberish." She flinched a little bit, would he take that mention of gibberish as an insult to the language? It was a word she had learned fairly recently, so it felt like a good way to demonstrate her progress in the moment.

"Good . . . I might have you cut back on the number of physical training sessions you attend and focus on learning mathematics and English under Arc's supervision. If possible, I'd also like you to act as an instructor for the others in some capacity, teaching them what you've learned in order to cement your own understanding. Would you find such an arrangement agreeable?"

"Yes!" Titanyana didn't hesitate to respond. She recalled Diana saying something about not being a pushover who agrees to Donovan's propositions without resistance, this request just seemed too important to decline if she wanted to get in his good graces.

"Good." Donovan began to walk toward her. "In that case, lets go to my office so we can get started. The sooner you can do some of Diana and I's jobs, the better."

Titanyana froze a little. There would be light in the office. Wouldn't he see her like this there? No, wait, wasn't it her intention to be seen in this revealing clothing? She was beginning to have doubts if that was really the best idea.