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Jaxon's Landing: A Short Novella by dispatch99
"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart—"
The audio signal snapped off as Junior Engineer Jaxon Cade managed to press the switch. Listening to Marcus Aurelius' Meditations was usually a calming, grounding thing when he was in mental distress, but it really, really wasn't helping right now. Besides, he needed to preserve the battery, trapped here as he was. In the pitch black, he felt something brush against the leg of his space suit—the mass of flesh-like biological material writhed and twisted against the leg of his armored spacesuit. Jaxon shuddered and flinched, but eventually the motion passed him by, and he gave a gasping sob.
This last moment broke something in Jaxon, and it all came pouring out. He sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, pounding the metal-coated fists of his spacesuit against the soft but unyielding mass of biological material in front of him.
"Fucking—FUCK! AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
He screamed at the top of his lungs, the noise of his cry rattling against his reinforced faceplate and bouncing right back into his ears like a slap in the face. Tears of helpless terror streamed down his cheeks and onto his shirt, already soaked with cold sweat. Hours of searching, of struggling, of trying to escape or just survive wound up with him trapped here. Probably forever.
Needless to say, it wasn't supposed to go like this.
When the starship Eurydice announced that there was a spot on their journey—to join a massive fleet of ships making a distant run to establish new colonies in the Pleiades—he jumped at the opportunity to take to the stars. Jaxon dropped out of his graduate astro-engineering course and took a shot at applying. Hard work, smart moves, and more than a little luck allowed him to graduate and become part of the crew, eventually being enlisted as a junior engineer on the flight crew. The launch and subsequent starflight was uneventful, even placid for the first 300 years (admittedly, all but a few months of that was spent by Jaxon in cryosleep, but from what he saw in the logs it was still fairly sleepy), until they reached the exoplanet Scylla, during Jaxon's shift as engineer. That was when everything went to hell.
The Eurydice was struck by a small asteroid as they were passing by the planet—it hadn't been detected on radar until far too late. This sort of thing happened: it was nobody's fault, and it was the reason these important missions sent fleets of ships, broken up into separate squadrons, instead of lone cruises. Unable to get any rescue assistance from the other starships in their group, the Eurydice was left behind.
Scylla was not a good place to be stranded at, if anywhere was. The entire planet was covered in a "global hyper-aggressive amalgamating life form"—which was a scientific euphemism for an undifferentiated crazy, all-consuming meat-plant-fungus thing that seemed to eat whatever touched it. A number of probes had been sent onto it, and almost all of them lost contact just after hitting the surface, broadcasting their being swallowed by the planet before the transmission cuts out. It was a planet of high scientific interest and curiosity and a little bit of concern—occasional half-joking suggestions to nuke the thing occasionally made the rounds in astrobiology circles. Yet from a star-shipping perspective, Scylla was no different than any other toxic or overheated or lifeless moon—it was little more than a navigational hazard and a gravitational slingshot target. But now that the shit had hit the fan, the ship had to be evacuated, and there was no other landing spot. They gambled on it, and as far as Jaxon could tell, they'd lost. As soon as he managed to step out of his escape pod onto the soft wet surface, the planet shuddered and enveloped him, burying Jaxon alive beneath meters and meters of splotchy purple pseudo-flesh.
He'd failed the mission, he'd failed his crew, he'd failed mankind. And now he was going to die alone.
Jaxon considered the suicide tablet in his suit: a small piece of yellow paper lodged in a switch in his helmet, coated in a deadly neurotoxin that would kill in less than a minute but only if ingested. It would be easier than hypoxia, dehydration, or starvation—all of which were staring him in the face at this moment, to say nothing of what might happen if Scylla's anomaly broke through. Who know what sort of horrors this thing was capable of inflicting on a hapless human body… Jaxon was grateful for his protection from the unknown, but it was a very cold comfort. Tears and sobs continued to be wrenched from his chest.
"I don't… I don't wanna die here…" Jaxon's teeth gnashed with determination. None of that shit with the suicide tablet for him. "I am NOT going to die here!"
But just as he was beginning to lose the last sparks of hope in his soul, something unexpected happened: Jaxon began to hear a voice, thrumming through the Scyllan flesh trapping him, and into his helmet.
"…ckson…"
He strained his ears. It didn't sound like any of the gurgling or whirring he had been hearing for many hours now.
"…axon…"
Was that his name? He listened closer…
"Jaxon…!"
It was! Someone was calling his name—and despite the fact it sounded like it was passing through layers and layers of the Scyllan anomaly, he recognized the voice—it was Dr. Lyra, the Eurydice's psychiatrist for his shift!
"Jaxon?!" she called out, "Are you there!? Can you hear me?!"
"YES!" Jaxon shouted back, desperately and without thinking. "Yes, I—I think I can! Please—I'm stuck, I need help! I can't get out of here!"
Suddenly, the biological matter that had been keeping him and his spacesuit pinned in place began to fold away and retract like a muscle. Around him, a dark clearing opened, as dangling bioluminescent bulbs filled the space with dim blue and green light. Rising like a specter from the floor and slowly taking shape, was a bespectacled woman in a white coat—under what remained of a shredded pressure suit.
Jaxon blinked silently for a long moment.
"Oh god," he finally muttered, putting a hand to his faceplate, "I'm hallucinating now, aren't I?"
Oddly, he started laughing. There was something weirdly liberating about realizing you've gone insane. It removed a lot of responsibility.
"I'm hallucinating!" Jaxon shouted, a deranged joy and unhinged anger twisting his voice and face. "Of course. Of COURSE. Why not. WHY FUCKING NOT! WHY SHOULDN'T I LOSE MY HEAD LIKE A STUPID FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! FUCK!"
The thing that looked like Dr. Lyra couldn't help but shake her head and chuckle at the outburst.
"Oh Jaxon, Jaxon Jaxon. Don't worry." The apparition said calmly. "You haven't gone crazy—at least, not yet. All of this, all of what you see, is completely real. You really did see me emerge from the Biota."
To emphasize her point, she reached out and flicked a switch on the wrist of his Super Heavy Universal Suit for Hazards—the SHUSH, that was armoring Jaxon's body against the planet. There was an electronic chirp as the flashlight came on, illuminating the image of Dr. Lyra in a harsh fluorescent light, and Jaxon could see the indicator on his HUD light up along with it. It was true: he wasn't going crazy. This was real.
Jaxon didn't celebrate the evidence of his sanity. He was still extremely concerned by what he saw—Dr. Lyra's skin was all wrong. It seemed to be discolored—vampirically pale in some parts, slick and black like fresh tarmac in others, and a whole grotesque rainbow of bruised and splotched colors across her exposed skin. Thick red and blue veins pulsed across her entire body like the tentacles of an octopus and tree roots had a demented child, and the veins went down and out onto the floor. She still seemed to be somehow… attached, to Scylla.
Jaxon stared at the thing in front of him, frozen, unsure what to think or do.
"The… The Biota?"
The Dr. Lyra Thing waved a hand dismissively. As though leaves brushed by wind, the biological matter of the planet waved with her. "It's what we're calling the Scylla anomaly. The 'super-aggressive blah blah blah,' whatever." She grinned. "You can tell which term I prefer."
He stared warily as the flashlights on his suit helmet illuminated the waving walls.
"How did you avoid being absorbed by… this Biota thing?"
"Well, we didn't," she said casually. "I definitely got absorbed. Not that we had a choice in the matter—our pressure suits were punctured and dissolved by the outer skin of the Biota before most of us were able to figure out a way to fight back. Those that did manage to last longer…" Her face darkened. "They typically made panicked decisions, poor choices that wound up being deadly. That's what Harold did, among others." The Dr. Lyra Thing sighed and shook her head, taking off her glasses and putting a hand to her face. "Lighting themselves on fire, busting open acid casks and pouring the contents everywhere, even on themselves… God…" She put her face in her hands, and sighed—deep, pained grief came through from her. "Just… so senseless and horrible. We tried to stop them, we really did, but rarely will the Biota voluntarily hurt itself, even to save something precious… I'm sorry Jaxon."
Jaxon's stomach turned and his jaw dropped in horror, as images flashed through his mind: astronauts—his friends and colleagues—dousing themselves in fuel or burning acid, as the tendrils of this planet took a hold of them… all to avoid this, whatever happened to Dr. Lyra—or, to avoid whatever was making this thing that LOOKED like her. Who knows how this could even be happening…
After a moment, she continued.
"Those that are left, we're all a part of it now: all one with the Biota, physically and mentally." She put her hands out in a reassuring gesture that did not. "I won't lie and say it's all fun and games, but it really is not that bad. We can all feel each others' emotions and a read few of their thoughts, we don't need to eat or drink or sleep. I don't know if it's better than life before, per se, but it's definitely alright."
The Dr. Lyra Thing took a few wet, sticky steps to get closer to Jaxon, causing him to step back in horror.
"The Captain let us know you had put on the SHUSH before getting into the escape pod. Smart move, if ultimately misguided… we almost missed you, if it hadn't been for that audiobook. Senses are so strange now-they're planetside, hard to isolate… The planet had no idea what you were until then." The Dr Lyra Thing shook her head. "That hazard suit is no longer needed—you'll starve to death in there, eventually."
She smiled sympathetically and looked him in the eyes. "Jaxon… I know this is a scary idea, but you are going to need to come out and join us—"
Jaxon yelped in terror and scrambled backwards until he was pressed up against the fleshy wall.
"NO! Whatever—whatever the FUCK happened to you, I want nothing to do with it!"
The Dr. Lyra thing pulled back her hand and sighed as Jaxon snarled.
"GO AWAY!" he roared, equal parts fear and anger in his voice. "Go away, or I'll—I'll—"
There was an electric zapping and a crack as a blade emerged from the wrist of his SHUSH—an industrial tool, but versatile. Instead of lunging at the Dr. Lyra Thing, however, he put it behind his back pressed it against the pack that contained all the suit's life support systems… and its under-pressure, explosive fuel.
"I-I'll use my fuel tank to blow us both up!" He gave an angry, hostile grin. "That's right! Whatever the hell you are, I'll take you out with me! I won't let you take my mind and get access to the people on the ship!"
The Dr. Lyra Thing shook her head sadly. "You won't, Jaxon. You physically can't. Even if you DID manage to puncture the tank and blow yourself up, I would come right back—the only casualty would be yourself, and maybe a few square meters of lost biomass."
She readjusted her glasses. Opening her arms, the room suddenly became a balcony: beneath them was now a brilliant vista. Bizarre balloon-like creatures floated and flew through the air over rivers and falls of water and other strange liquids; animals galloped below in all sorts of grotesque and beautiful designs, chasing and being chased. Plants—or something that looked like plants—grew and shrank, waving in the air. Even to an engineer by training like Jaxon, it was clear he was looking at a diverse, full-fledged ecosystem, protected from the dangers of space and the surface by what he had just been stuck in.
"One of those—the biomass—is very easily replaceable by the Biota, of which you've only seen just the skin of so far: the other, you, not so much. You'd die, and die forever, just like the others. As for the ship, a couple of things: first, we want it to stay where it is, though I know I can't prove that to you; and secondly, if we DID want to bring it down and crack open the pods like some sort of grotesque space oysters, we already have everyone we need to do that—Captain Alex and 'Lilah are in here too."
This gave Jaxon pause, but only for a moment. "Prove it," growled, tapping the blade on his back.
As though they were hiding in the walls, things resembling Captain Alexander and the nurse Delilah emerged and split off in the same way Dr. Lyra Thing did.
"Heya Jaxon," the Delilah Thing said, with a faint smile. "Good to see you. I know this is freaky, but… it really is okay!"
"Sorry for getting you in this mess, son," the Captain Thing said. "But it's true. It's alright here."
This did not settle Jaxon at all, though. He stepped back, now brandishing the electric blade forward.
"H-How do I know you're not lying!? You—the thing, Scylla, the Biota, whatever—you could just be replicating them to try and trick me!"
The Delilah Thing groaned. "I knew this would happen with him… He's so uptight!"
The Captain Thing grimaced in thought. "Beats me, honestly. I was never good at this riddle crap. All I know is what I know."
"Whatever you would like us to do," Dr. Lyra said softly. "We'd like to prove it. What do you think would be the best idea?"
Jaxon hesitated, thinking hard. "You… you said you all have your own memories still, right? How about… how about you each tell me something only you and I would know?"
The Captain Thing shrugged. "Works for me."
The Delilah Thing nodded. "Okay, sure!"
The Dr. Lyra Thing grimaced for a second then exhaled through her nose. "Alright, have it your way… In fact, I'll start."
She focused on him.
"I don't think you did right by him, Jaxon," Dr. Lyra said bluntly, folding her arms. "You didn't go after him, so neither one of you got the closure you needed, and now you both have suffered for it. Both Theo AND you deserved better."
Jaxon caught a glimpse of himself in the window of a train that passed by. He checked his appearance in the makeshift mirror: short blond hair trimmed and styled just as it should be, jacket clean and fluffed against the early spring cold, fair face clean shaven, blue eyes bright and clear. He was ready—albeit about ten minutes late for their rendezvous at the station. Squinting, he searched the crowd…
Finally, he saw the one he was looking for: a young man his same age—dark olive skin, buzzed black hair, similar bomber-style jacket in different colors… and a smile that stabbed right into Jaxon's gut, in a good way. It was Theo.
They caught sight of each other and ran into each others' arms, having a long and warm embrace, their breath clouding in the cold air.
"Took you long enough," Theo said, pulling away, grinning and looking at him happily with bright brown eyes. He tapped his watch sarcastically. "And here I thought you were supposed to be on a tight schedule tonight, Mr. Spaceman?"
Jaxon shook his head and laughed, kissing Theo on the cheek. "Shut up, dude…"
Theo was Jaxon's boyfriend—they'd been together for three years, after they had met at the bar where Theo worked as a bartender: surprisingly, Jaxon's cheesy, joking pickup line somehow worked on the handsome server: they wound up laughing and exchanging bad pickup lines, and then they wound up exchanging stories, and then numbers. Jaxon truly did love Theo: he was big-hearted, funny, caring, creative, and just so full of life that Jaxon couldn't help but be drawn to him. And, most importantly, he loved Theo back just as passionately (if not more so). Theo was the most important person in Jaxon's life, and Jaxon wanted to spend his last free night on Earth with him and only him.
The couple went out to one of their favorite restaurants, a fancy place downtown that was usually only frequented by the ultra-wealthy. Though visually out of place in their casual jackets and jeans, neither Jaxon nor Theo cared a bit, chatting about Theo's work and family and Jaxon's excitement for the mission as the two picked everything they wanted from the menu. Champagne, truffles, exotic questionably-legal seafood, wagyu filet mignon, all sorts of crazy deserts—enormously expensive despite the small portions. Yet it was no matter: Jaxon was able to pick up the tab using the sign-on bonus he got from the shipping company, which was more money than he knew what to do with… although Jaxon did reflexively gag out loud when he saw the figures on the receipt, causing Theo to crack up at the table and drawing stares from the more staid, polite diners.
Afterwards, they went out on the town, window shopping before winding up at the club where they had their second date (the first was in the nearby domed nature reserve, bright as the Moon on the skyline). They weren't planning on going too crazy—despite Theo's tempting him, it wouldn't be a good look if Jaxon showed up to quarantine hungover—so they just had a couple of drinks, danced together both to fast and slow music, and when it was getting too late Jaxon and Theo took a robocab home, snuggled up against each other in the backseat.
To wind up the night, they went back hand-in-hand to Jaxon's apartment. It was mostly wrapped up for processing, since Jaxon was about to be ending his lease and wouldn't be renting again for at least another few centuries—some stuff would be split among his friends and acquaintances, other stuff would be sold or donated. But there was still a couch, a smart TV, and a bed—and it was much closer than Theo's place, so that's where they crashed.
Jaxon turned on the TV and got comfortable with Theo on the couch, but they only managed to make it through about twenty minutes of one of their favorite movies, before Theo and Jaxon got a bit… "distracted" by each other, lost interest in the show, and decided to move things over to the bedroom.
They spent quite a bit of time that way, enjoying each other—in each other's arms and legs. A while later, they were still drawn up against each other, kissing and laughing, before finally they rolled on their backs, panting and satisfied. Breathing deeply, Jaxon nuzzled against Theo, who reciprocated lovingly.
"I love you, Theo," he cooed happily, his lover in his arms, "I love you so much…"
"I love you too, Jaxon, but…" Theo's pleased smile faded. "Do you really love me back, though?"
"Yes," Jaxon whispered, "always." Noting Theo's tone, Jaxon frowned. "What's up, babe?"
Theo sighed. "I just… I can't believe you're really leaving. That come tomorrow, you'll just be… gone."
Jaxon's exhaled, and his tone was flat and emotionless as he replied. "I gotta do this, Theo. The mission is important for humankind."
Theo hesitantly nodded. "The mission is, sure—but why do YOU have to go?"
"Because I was selected," Jaxon said, with strained faux patience. "That's why anyone gets to go."
Theo stared at Jaxon for a moment, then fell on his back, putting his hands on his eyes. "I… I knew it. You aren't listening. You aren't…! God. God damn it, I fucking knew it!"
"I'm sorry," Jaxon snarled suddenly at Theo's outburst, sitting up and looking down at him, "where the fuck is all of this coming from, exactly!? You've never said anything about it until now!"
"I tried!" Theo exclaimed desperately. "I tried, like, a million times! You never listened—every time I brought it up, you changed the subject or shut it down. And between my work and your training, I could never get us to just..." He shook his head. "And you know what, I let it happen—that's my fault."
He rolled over on top of Jaxon, and grabbed both of his hands, holding them tightly. "But now, you're here, and you HAVE to listen to me! So please: I really don't want you to go, and I really don't think that you should."
Jaxon took his hands, even as he scoffed. "Alright, Theo, what do you want me to do? You just—you want me to just call up the fleet, let them know it's not gonna work out, that they can give my ticket to someone else!?"
"YES!" Theo replied in exasperation. "Or whoever you need to tell! Tell them you've gotten too sick, that you changed your mind for religious reasons, that you somehow found a better paying job, that your family needs you on Earth—that one could be kinda true, if we went and eloped—just, anything!"
Theo looked up at him, pleadingly.
"Jaxon… please don't leave me behind here, okay? I want you with me. I NEED you with me. I don't know what I would do if you weren't here. Just, please…"
Jaxon stared at his boyfriend in angry disbelief. All this time, he thought Theo understood him, but now...
"No. Absolutely not."
He shook his head. "I'm sorry Theo, I love you, but this means more to me."
Theo's eyes widened, and he fell silent as his hands slid out of Jaxon's. Face twisting with grief and anger, he suddenly sat up out of bed and left from under the covers, quickly putting on his clothes.
"Theo, wait, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like—" Jaxon stammered, "Wait—Where are you going?!"
"If this mission is so fucking important to you," Theo spat venomously, voice breaking with rage and grief. "Then really, you should be focused on THAT tonight then, and not ME."
Boots on, he turned around, wet brown eyes above a deep, furious scowl. "Clearly, you think I'm nothing but dead weight for you and your precious career, so I'll do you the favor and cut myself out of the picture!" He began to throw on his jacket. "Can't have anything trivial like THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE getting in the way of your stupid fucking space trip, huh!?"
Jaxon started to get out of bed, hastily pulling off a sheet to cover himself. "Theo, come on—please, stop!"
Theo shook his head and laughed darkly. "Fuck it—you know what? This is for the best, anyways, isn't it? I respect myself too much to spend a fucking millennium pining over someone who can't even PRETEND to give a shit about me. Well, I'll try and forget about you just as easily."
Theo glared at him, tears of hurt and anger streaming down his cheeks.
"Goodbye, Jaxon."
Theo took off running, leaving an half-naked Jaxon behind in the doorway, listening helplessly as the footfalls disappeared down the hall. Even as his tears fell, a sneer came across Jaxon's lips. To hell with him. If Theo couldn't understand, then they'd never be anything anyways. He felt betrayed, humiliated for even having ever been with him—or, at least, that's what Jaxon's broken heart was telling him to coat the bitter grief in a sweet layer of righteous anger.
"Gh… good riddance…" he muttered, and slammed the door behind him. That night's sleep did not come easy, but it did. The next would be in quarantine—and after that, in the stars.
"Do you think I did the right thing—not chasing after him, I mean…?"
Dr. Lyra pushed her glasses up on her nose, giving the slim, diplomatic smile that the older woman always used for her patients. Jaxon laid down on her couch, counting the seconds as they painfully passed by.
"Well, relationships are always fraught. You're certainly not the only person who's been pushed to the breaking point by this sort of thing—Century Missions have that effect on people. But at the end of the day, what's done is done—I know it only feels like a couple months ago, but on Earth it's been almost four hundred years, Jaxon. I'm sure he has moved long on by now. You should try and do so too." She sighed. "Frankly, on the crew shift, your options for coping are fairly limited—I might recommend some media if you would like a list."
"That's… that's okay. I've started listening to audiobooks while I work," Jaxon said, words coming out like footfalls into thick mud. "It's uh… there's this one. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Has a lot of wisdom, I guess. That's what the reviews said anyways."
"That's a good one," she said with an approving nod. "Plenty of young men find solace and meaning in those ancient words."
Jaxon stared at her. She was sounding like a bot. With a slight huff, he checked his watch. "Well, that's time, I guess… These sessions help. I think."
It was an obvious lie. They always left him unsettled, feeling like he needed to explain himself but would always be unable to. He didn't think she was a bad therapist per se, but she certainly wasn't a good one for him—but he didn't have any options, and he needed to talk over things to someone regardless.
Dr. Lyra gave him that same polite but empty smile. "I'm glad. Feel free to see me any time, Jaxon."
Tears welled up in Jaxon's eyes again. He really had been trying to forget him, especially after everything. But now, all the pressure he had been holding inside, it came hissing out. He put his helmet-clad head in his hands and began to weep.
"T-Theo, I'm sorry, I'm… y-you were right… fuck. FUCK!" He sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry Theo…"
"What the hell, Lyra," the Delilah Thing growled, shaking her head in disapproval. "You really had to break out that one? Like he wasn't suffering enough…"
"Yeah, I know, pulling the 'bad breakup' card was probably a bit cruel," the therapist admitted with a sigh. "But he needs to know it's me. I highly doubt he told that story to anyone else: He barely wanted to talk about it in his sessions."
Jaxon swallowed, composing himself.
"Sh-She's right. I didn't tell that story to literally anyone else. Hurt too much."
He gave a slight, sardonic grin, despite the pain. "You know… I don't think we ever got along, Dr. Lyra. I don't like having you as my psych at all."
Dr. Lyra laughed. "Yeah, I didn't need any psychic powers to detect THAT. I would have referred you to someone else, but I was the only psychiatrist on that sleep shift. If we had made it to the colony, there would have been a few more available, but hey. What can you do?" She shrugged. "I think our relationship would probably be better suited talking about books over coffee, as opposed to doctor-patient. I can be a bit more honest with you, that way."
Jaxon nodded. "I-If this works out, if you are what you tell me you are, that sounds nice," he said, quietly.
"Speaking of honesty," the Delilah Thing said, smiling faintly, "I believe it's my turn." She grinned, poking a finger into Jaxon's chest—literally, as it turned out: the finger exploded into an organic, fungus-like blossom, and stuck to his chest for a second, leaving behind a purple star of spores. Jaxon flinched, but the Delilah Thing hardly seemed to care.
"Whoops, sorry. Uh anyways." She smirked playfully, flicking his faceplate. "YOU have something to confess, too! You're one of my accomplices—the high crimes and misdemeanors of stealing beer from the hold and gossiping about our passengers! You remember that, just three shifts before the meteor, right?"
Jaxon did remember.
"Uh, Delilah? What are you doing?"
The woman glanced up at Jaxon, mid-drink. He had been passing by when he saw her: Delilah, the cryosleep care nurse on duty. Martian, female, twenty-four years of age—same as Jaxon and Theo, coincidentally. Jaxon had read her personnel profile (as he had for the others on his shift), but mostly he knew her by reputation as a party girl… a reputation this did nothing to dispel. She was sitting and having a drink, talking to the blank sleeping faces of a row of passengers, taking their 400+ year long nap behind the safety of a thick set of metal and glass. Curious and concerned in equal measures, Jaxon took a break from his boring routines to step inside.
The nurse was somewhat surprised, but didn't seem to react with guilt.
"Drinking beer with my friends," Delilah said. She waggled a can at Jaxon—the design was nice looking, but generic, so people didn't get homesick or obsessive. "Wanna join?"
Jaxon tilted his head to the side. He was not, by disposition, a no-fun teetotaler… but Delilah was being extremely cavalier about theft from the starship. It was one thing to misappropriate something from some office or factory: it was quite another to steal from a starship to go drink in a medical facility. Every single component had been agonized over and was perfectly calibrated—yes, even the beer cans.
"Does the Captain know you're doing this?"
She grinned, kicking over an empty cardboard six-pack that had been hidden behind the desk he was sitting at.
"Who do you think helped me down the first round?" She laughed. "I know the rules! Gotta give the old man his due, of course. He only helped, though. It's true what they say about long-haul captains: they can't hold it down."
As Jaxon grimaced, Delilah sighed and leaned on her side. "Relax, buddy. I know these are supposed to be for the colony, but they won't miss a few beers. Besides, if you DON'T think that the very first thing the colonists are gonna do is establish a brewery, then you don't know these crazy bastards."
Jaxon fell silent, gazing up and down the hundreds and hundreds of blue lights coming from the display plates for the cryosleep pods: every single one, a hopeful, skilled human, looking for a new life among the stars.
He turned to face Delilah. "…you really know all these people?"
She nodded proudly. "Sure do! Had to interview every one of them. Took almost two years to complete. All of them are alright, but there's quite a few characters in there." She looked at Jaxon and smiled. "You wanna meet them?"
Jaxon paused for a moment, hesitating, before finally deciding—what the hell.
"Sure," he finally said, grabbing a beer. Delilah grinned as he cracked it open and took a long swig. He smiled and wiped his mouth. "Why don't you introduce me to everyone?"
Delilah smiled broadly, she did—the pair spent a lovely few hours together, laughing and gossiping and gasping and sometimes even coming close to crying, all over stories about all the people that the two of them were there to protect. In the end Delilah helped the mission feel… real, for Jaxon. Before all these names and faces were abstractions: now they were his city, his people. After that night, he had a new spring in his step and sense of purpose.
"For the record," the thing that might be Captain Alexander muttered once the story ended, "I am not a lightweight, and I did not have anything from that first six pack." He grunted and folded his arms. "Actually, funnily enough, I believe the true culprit for Delilah's first accomplice is right here with us: Dr. Lyra."
Dr. Lyra and Delilah—or the things acting like them—looked at each other and chuckled. "Guilty as charged," she said. "What can I say? I needed a break, and her offer was just… SO enticing…"
Jaxon blinked. Something about the way Dr. Lyra said that last bit was…
"Wait a second," he said, pointing at Delilah and Dr. Lyra, "are you two… together together?"
Delilah laughed, taking Lyra's hand and pulling her closer, causing the doctor to give a stifled giggle. "Yeah, it's true—I know we're here to tell you things you knew, but that's something you DIDN'T know."
As Jaxon gave a disbelieving, open-mouthed smile, Captain Alexander smirked and shook his head. "Stiffing the captain so you two lovebirds can make off with the goods, eh? For shame. That's coming out of y'all's paycheck."
He exhaled. "But she's right—we did have plans for a brewery, and it also really didn't matter in the end. Most of the rest of our alcohol reserve was destroyed in the impact, so I suppose it's good someone got to enjoy it before it got degassed."
The Captain chuckled and shook his head. "Well, I suppose it's my turn, but it should be obvious to you—Jaxon, I'm exactly the reason why you're even in that SHUSH. If I had known, I would have never gone through all the bother…"
Jaxon was resting between shifts on his cot. He had just finished his scheduled shower, and was now laying down in casual shorts and a t-shirt, playing some mindless cookie-clicker game on his phone. He was immensely bored, but at the same time Jaxon was grateful for that: it meant everything was going well.
Because the universe has a very fucked up sense of humor, it was as Jaxon had that exact thought that a piercing alarm screamed through the ship, followed by Captain Alexander's voice shouting into the intercom:
"INCOMING INCOMING INCOMING — BRACE BRACE BRACE!!! IMPACT IN FIVE, FOUR, THREE—"
Doing as he was trained, Jaxon threw himself onto the floor and crouched into a ball, grabbing on desperately to the metal frame of his cot. He closed his eyes, opening his mouth so his lungs wouldn't rupture from the inverse pressure if his room got depressurized. It would let him last a few seconds longer, maybe just long enough to get to an airlock…
"TWO, ONE—"
There was a horrible noise: something like someone slamming a baseball onto a sheet of metal held against your ear, mixed with an echoing gunshot. The whole ship shuddered, lights flickered then turned red, and a whole choir of alarms and sirens began to wail up and down the corridors. For a few terrifying moments, the atmospheric regulators hissed and whirred, trying to stabilize the air pressure in the vessel and minimize leaks. Jaxon's stomach dropped as he heard his ears pop—a very, very bad sign in space—but eventually the barometric readouts stabilized.
Wasting no time, Jaxon stood up and ran out into the hallway. Everyone on the ship had responsibilities in the event of a catastrophic failure. Jaxon's, as the Junior Engineer, was to check on the radioisotope generator that kept the ship running and, if any radioactive material leaked, do whatever it took to contain the fuel and prevent it from frying the ship—and everyone inside. To his immense relief, upon his arrival in the control room, it was clearly fine: of course the power grid was screaming bloody murder from all the downed systems and sheered cables, but whatever had happened left the generator itself alone, which meant they were safe on that front.
Satisfied the generator would be okay on autopilot, Jaxon then ran to the rendezvous point in the inner bridge: there, he would meet up with the rest of the crew and Captain Alexander, for further instruction. When he made it, he found most of the crew huddled around a red surface screen display, expression's fearful and grim.
"Junior Engineer Cade," the Captain said, grey eyes meeting his. "Glad to see the reactor is okay. Good work, son."
Jaxon nodded, then he hazarded: "How bad is it?"
"Bad," Captain Alexander said. "Very bad. The damn thing tore right through our rear—almost a critical hit. We've lost access to engines one, four, and nine through sixteen. The rest are probably compromised—we're extremely lucky it didn't hit fuel. Storage and medical are both wrecked too: completely depressurized, all systems down. Worst of all—"
Delilah stormed into the room, screaming and sobbing.
"FUCK! NO NO NO NO, OH MY GOD OH MY GOD—I—IT—I COULDN'T—"
Dr. Lyra rushed forward and grabbed the girl, holding onto her. "Hey, hey—'Lilah, calm down—calm down, okay! We're here. Take a deep breath, tell us what happened!"
Coming down slightly, Delilah managed to get it out through sobs: "Th-The meteor struck part of the cryosleep chamber! I-I managed to stop the die-off and seal the rest, but we lost three hundred sleepers," she sobbed, "and the rest—now they're trapped…!"
Captain Alexander sighed. "What she said. Still asleep, thank God."
This sent shockwaves through the crew gathered there.
"What!?"
"No, no, NO!"
"Jesus…"
Captain Alexander gave a piercing whistle and clapped his hands. "Okay, okay—focus, people, come on! We can't all lose our shit now: we still have twelve hundred people who need our help!"
"The silver lining is that our self-sealing containers FINALLY managed to work: we've stemmed the loss of water, air, nutrition and fuel. Still, the hit was bad: we lost about seventy percent of our critical material."
Jaxon's jaw dropped in horror. "S-Seventy percent!? That means—"
Captain Alexander looked at him with darkened eyes. "That's right. Barring an evacuation, we won't have enough to make it."
Immediately, it was decided that they should try and reach out to the rest of the flotilla for help. Commander Maria, the leader of their squadron, immediately replied, though her news was not good.
"Sending shuttles or attempting to rendezvous would push our flight path beyond parameters," she explained, showing the flight path diagrams on screen—every single one resulted in catastrophic mission failure. "There's simply no way to make it work."
"I see," came Alexander's numb reply.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Captain. We've already beamed your distress signal at full strength back to Earth and every nearby colony. I am confident they will organize a search and rescue expedition as soon as they can, but… the nearest star-worthy colony is twelve light years away."
"I understand," Captain Alexander said, stoically. "Thank you for relaying the distress signal for us. Good luck on the rest of the voyage, Commander."
"Yes," Commander Maria replied. Her voice choked up for a second, which she disguised by clearing her throat. She glanced away from his screen, unwilling to look Alex in the eyes. "And… good luck to you, as well."
The screen cut out. Leaning forward, he exhaled. "Alright," he said. "We need to crunch some numbers now…"
Half an hour of arguing and calculating later, Captain Alexander waved his tablet with all the numbers and projections they had done.
"Okay, it's over. We've done the math: you all have seen it. With our current supplies, we can make the ship's remaining complement last for the surviving cryosleep pods for twenty-five years. Just barely enough time for a rescue mission."
He cleared his throat. "However, if we stay on board, eating and drinking and breathing, our awake metabolisms reduce twenty-five years to five, at best. We'd starve to death, and then the rest of the folks sleeping would follow. Putting ourselves to sleep isn't an option: medical is wrecked. We no longer have the capability."
Captain Alexander let the words sink in for a moment, but then continued. "Now, there's sixteen of us in this room. Onboard our ship, in cryosleep, there are twelve hundred and fifty-six individuals still alive—down from fifteen hundred prior to impact. If we want to save them… we need to leave."
The Captain closed his eyes and sighed. "Scylla is an unknown quantity—probably a bad one—but it does have a few things going for it: it has a breathable atmosphere, and the average surface temperature is a comfortable sixteen degrees Celsius. We can land our escape pods there, and await rescue."
He straightened up his back and cleared his throat. "I'm not asking you all to commit suicide. But I am asking you to take an extraordinary risk, very likely but NOT certain to result in death, all in an effort to save the lives of twelve hundred helpless people. Rather than starve everyone here, or strangle ourselves, I say we take a shot at having our cake and eating it too, and we aim for Scylla. All opposed?"
Silence was their ascent.
"Okay, good," Captain Alexander said. "Since we are all in agreement: Abandon ship. Now."
They began to do so. It was all very calm. It was all very orderly. It was all very professional. But there was no mistaking or sugarcoating what had just happened: their mission had failed catastrophically, and most (if not all) of them were certainly about to die. One by one, though, they filed onto the pods—Delilah volunteered first, followed by non-engineers.
"Alright, next," called out Captain Alex, "Junior Engineer Jaxon Cade. Your turn. Let's go."
He didn't move. "Sir?" Jaxon said, hesitantly. "I… I thought I was going to remain on the ship, Captain."
Captain Alexander stared at the engineer in blank confusion. "Now why on God's Green Earth would you think that, Jaxon. Were you even listening back there?"
"I was, actually. But, I'm a full systems engineer," he explained earnestly. "I need to help you seal the ship. You need someone to complete damage control, help put the Eurydice into a stable orbit, redirect all remaining support systems to the cryosleep pods—that would take you forever to do alone, and it's time we probably don't have."
Captain Alexander shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. I'm not forcing a Junior Engineer to stay aboard a doomed vessel. You're getting into the escape pod."
"Captain, please," Jaxon begged. "I-I've been useless this entire trip. I've been useless before the start of the trip." He gritted his teeth. "I came here to do good things for people! Let me work, let me DO something! I need to help here, I couldn't live with myself without that. I'll go down to Scylla, of course I will—but not before I can guarantee the safety of all these people, help YOU guarantee it!"
"Oh for Christ's sake…" Alex pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Fine! I don't time for this—if you wanna stay behind, go ahead, it's your funeral. Next up, come on!"
One of the crew—a comms technician named Harold—stepped forward angrily. "Hey, hold on a damn second! How do we know he's not just trying to back out of the Scylla landing? He might WANT to stay behind, to die in the comfort of the ship!"
Jaxon turned on Harold with a snarl. "Are you fucking kidding me!? I'm TRYING to help here! Do you really think I'm that stupid and selfish!?"
The accuser didn't get to reply: instead, Captain Alexander raised his hand and silence the clamor.
"I wouldn't worry about it, Harold," he said, his tone level, slow, and calm. "I've seen Jaxon's personality profile, and I judge him trustworthy enough. He's right—I could use some help."
He then patted the rail-pistol on his waist: the only fully activated firearm onboard (the rest were deconstructed and sealed away), and also the grim, final guarantee of the Captain's authority. A chill ran through the room, on top of the blanket of dread.
"Besides," the Captain said coolly, "I'll be keeping an eye on him either way. We all agreed to land, and land we will, one way or another."
The message to the doubtful crew was clear: if Jaxon was indeed lying, he sure could remain on the ship like he wanted—as a bullet-strewn corpse. The same deal went for anyone at all thinking about getting cold feet and causing a mutiny now.
Harold nodded, satisfied, even as Jaxon glared daggers at him. The rest of the evacuation proceeded without incident, and without a single word from anyone but the Captain. They watched as one by one, the pods made their fiery arcs down to the purple surface of Scylla.
Eventually, they were alone. Captain Alexander took a deep breath, then nodded.
"Alright, kid. You got what you wanted—you wanna be useful? Let's get to work."
They wasted no time, because there was no time to waste. Even though it was just the two of them, the ship quickly became noisy with activity. The surviving engines roared as Jaxon manually fired them to put the Eurydice in a stable, safe orbit—guided to the second and centimeter by Alexander. Alexander directed Jaxon to everything that needed to be done with the materials: sealing all the water and chemical tanks, redirecting the power supplies. It was scientific work and industrial work at the same time: very technical, and very physical: it required a lot of pushing and pulling and cutting and welding and building and breaking and turning. By the end of it all, Jaxon was sore inside and out, his muscles screamed with fatigue and his heart begged for sleep, but he pushed himself forward because he knew Alexander was too: the old man worked right alongside Jaxon just as physically and just as sharp. Less and less of the ship became habitable as more and more of the oxygen and water was piped towards the seemingly bottomless pit that was the cryosleep systems: weld by weld, cut by cut, wire by wire, the Eurydice was converted from a crippled interstellar cruiser to a space station dedicated solely to keeping the frozen humans trapped inside alive.
It was a heroic lifesaving effort, and if nothing else, the two deserved to be written into the history books for that alone. Some would call it superhuman: but really, it was purely human. This was what people could do when they were allowed to help.
Finally, they were finished with their work. They originally had estimated a week before material would dip below acceptable levels: Jaxon and Captain Alexander converted and sealed the ship in four days of nonstop work. As a result, there was just a tiny bit of material left over: enough to take a long twelve-hour sleep, one final quick shower, then one last meal before their final descent. Jaxon shared it with the Captain—the meal of course, not the bed or the shower—and they ate in silence, in the empty cafeteria. When they were finished, Captain Alexander directed Jaxon to close the door behind them and reroute the oxygen from that too: without a word, he complied and did so.
Day five. The moment of truth had arrived and, true to his word, Jaxon put on his pressure suit and went to the escape pods to meet Captain Alexander, depressurizing and checking whatever was left all the while.
However, what he saw in the pod hangar confused him. It looked like Captain Alexander was using a forklift robot to load one of the Super Heavy Universal Suits for Hazards—the SHUSH suits, every engineer's wet dream—into a pod. He had already done so, in fact, and seemed to be welding on some jury-rigged supports to keep it stable.
Jaxon's brow furrowed. "Captain? What are you—"
"Jaxon, listen to me," the Captain said with feverish energy, striding towards him. "Don't worry, it's under the weight limit. Now that SHUSH suit is damn near indestructible: an engineering marvel. It's even built better than most of our probes—I've seen one take a railcannon round to the chest once, and the guy inside was still standing. If you equip it, you'll have a fighting chance against Scylla, and if you can make it to one or more of the escape pods, maybe there will be a transmitter you can use to find the others. There should be enough battery power to—"
"Stop! Captain, please, just… slow down," why are you telling me all this?" He swallowed, looking at the Captain: uncharacteristically sweaty and agitated. "And… aren't you coming down?"
"Of course I am! Just listen, when you get there, it'll be—"
"No, NO!" Jaxon growled. "YOU listen, Alex! Tell me why aren't you taking the suit instead!? If survivability is a concern, wouldn't it make more sense for YOU to be the crew's last chance?"
"God damn it…" Captain Alexander growled. "Because… Because I have Parkinson's, alright!? There, are you happy now!?"
He gave a low, humorless chuckle at Jaxon's dumbfounded expression. "Oh yeah. It's true. I… I got diagnosed a week before quarantine. I didn't want to die on Earth, so I covered it up, falsified my medical records. Yeah, yeah, I know. A real piece-of-shit move. I figured, what the hell, these things practically fly themselves anyways, and I probably wouldn't really lose my touch for another biological year or so, so if nothing went wrong…" He shook his head. "Stupid. So fucking stupid. I should have known I'm not that lucky…"
Jaxon tried to make words. He knew that Parkinson's disease was one of the few things that interstellar medicine just couldn't deal with: too many points of failure. Even in the future, it was eventually a death sentence. "Captain, I'm…"
Alexander shook his head. "Save it. Regrets are a waste of oxygen. And before you say it, no: this isn't a ploy. I'll get in my pod and send off before you."
He sighed, lowering his head. "But, yeah. Thanks to that, for a long term survival situation, I'm nothing but dead weight. You, on the other hand—you're young, you're healthy. You can easily keep going another twenty five years."
Captain Alex's expression hardened. "More importantly, I've seen what you can do here. You know these systems inside and out, you know these people inside and out. I'll admit—I had my doubts about you to start with, but… you've proven me wrong. You'll be able to help these people. You're their best chance, Jaxon."
He put a hand on Jaxon's name badge on his shoulder, which gave a blue flash and electronic chirp in response.
"I've promoted you to Main Support Officer—an emergency position, rarely used. Gives you everything I would have access to, in case you need to get access to any locked systems." He smiled tiredly. "And if by some miracle we ever make it off the planet… you'll wanna put that on your CV—qualifies you for a shot at bridge officer in any star-shipping firm. You'll make a fine freighter captain one day."
There was only stunned silence coming from Jaxon for a long moment at first. All of this, everything he had sacrificed… it was being recognized. He could feel himself being uplifted by the people he had put his trust in.
"I…" he finally managed to gasp, clenching his fist. "I won't let you down, sir."
Captain Alexander smiled and patted him on the shoulder. "I know, son. It's time to go now."
Captain Alexander strapped himself in, while Jaxon watched from his own pod. As he did so, they did a final check:
"Power?"
"Routed only to cryosleep life support, emergency orbit adjustment suite, and the distress transmitter. All other systems cut off, awaiting emergency signal."
"Water, chems, oxygen?"
"Water is all in reserve for cryo. Chems are too. O2 is… 99% in reserve. Escape pod bay is scheduled to move it's air to reserve in… thirty minutes." Jaxon grinned. "I really hope we get this check done soon, Captain."
Captain Alexander laughed. "Don't worry. That's it. Closing door now. See you down there, son."
The pod door spun shut, hissed, and then began to move away from the door. There was a soft "thoom", and a flash of light as the rockets fired to push it away from the ship.
Jaxon watched as it sailed away. And then, the SHUSH suit chirping and whirring to life has he boarded it, it was his time to go too. Taking one last look at the Eurydice, his ship,
Jaxon followed along to blaze a fiery path, all the way to his landing…
"So, there you have it," Captain Alexander—the genuine article, Jaxon was convinced—said. "I hope that was good enough."
"We want to help you, Jaxon," Dr. Lyra said quietly. "I know it's… weird. I know it's fraught. But please, do the right thing."
"It would really suck if you died," Delilah said with a sad smirk. "I liked getting to know you almost as much as I liked talking with some of those popsicles up there. That's a high complement, coming from me."
Jaxon agonized over what to do. It made sense, but he was scared—what if he was wrong? Or what if they were wrong? What if something happened that would make all of this nothing more than a tragedy?
He remembered the suicide tablet that was in his suit. One bite, two minutes and thirty seconds for the neurotoxin to take effect, then it all would be over. He could just sleep…
No.
It was still true: he didn't want to die. Life was worth living, even one as strange and potentially twisted as this. Jaxon was ready to try and join them. He was brave enough for this. He… just had a few more questions.
Jaxon hesitated, hand over his suit's exit switch.
"Will it hurt?"
"Sometimes," Dr. Lyra admitted. "And sometimes it will feel better than you can imagine. And sometimes, it will feel normal."
"It's life, son," Captain Alexander said. "nothing more, nothing less. We're not promising you heaven or hell here. Just… existence."
"And belonging." Delilah said. "You won't be alone here anymore, Jaxon."
Jaxon swallowed and nodded. He slowly opened the suit, took a deep breath, and stepped out into the Biota.
And he was accepted.
"How's that memoir coming along, Captain?"
Captain Jaxon Cade of the Pleiadean medical starship Lazarus—with its full complement of Biota-derived medical technology—sighed, staring at the laptop in front of him. He'd spent the entire voyage (the parts of it he was awake for, anyways) trying to write the story about what happened on Scylla.
True to their hopes, a fast-moving starship screamed out from the nearest colony and made a mad dash for the Eurydice, arriving just in the nick of time—a few pods had already begun to die out, but only a few. The rest were saved, and were eventually towed to their destination. They arrived about fifty years late, sure, but those that survived made it there.
The rescue on Scylla was more tricky. It took another century before the transmissions from the mysterious planet would be actually heard (the star and the planet caused quite a bit of interference), and a few decades more before anyone came to try and land on what was thought to be a death-planet. Things were okay, though: the Biota made them biologically immortal, and there was so much life and interesting phenomena on that world that they never got bored of studying or exploring it. But, when an advanced landing ship arrived in orbit and returned their call, they all decided it was time. Jaxon used his deep connection to the Biota to construct a massive, organic landing pad for the ship on top of the Biota's dermis, built out of a bone-like organism was harder and tougher than concrete. It was constructed right on the spot where his pod had crashed many, many decades earlier. The spot—creatively dubbed Jaxon's Landing—was where the new ship managed to land, and they were shocked to see the survivors of the Eurydice there. Contact established, the scientific community moved in, and the crew tried to figure out how to move out.
As it turned out, Dr. Lyra wasn't fully correct about the Biota: while it wasn't aggressive or destructive, it was not super thrilled about letting them go. When they tried to separate from the planet, the planet tried to take them right back with tendrils and howling monkey-like antibody creatures—and when 50cm thick steel plates and flamethrowers prevented that, their bodies quickly began to waste away from a lack of connection. But with some clever bio-engineering and cybernetic surgery, eventually they managed to make some kind of detente with the planet that allowed them to leave. They lost their biological, neurological connection with each other and with that biosphere… but the memory of that connection changed them, and united them still, even light years and centuries away. They were no longer together: but they still belonged with each other.
Some of them wondered what it would be like to try and rejoin society. Fortunately, the close-knit group of friends didn't have much to worry about once they were cut out of the Biota: in the intervening decades and centuries as they traveled, the Pleiades colonies their fleet had helped found became a bustling, prosperous, and peaceful interstellar society. The close proximity of all the stars to each other meant that they became expert space-farers: spacefarers who knew all about the legend of the Eurydice and of the Scyllan landings. It was almost shockingly easy for Jaxon in particular to get a job: Pleiadean star shipping firms practically tripped over themselves trying to grant the guy who Jaxon's Landing is named after a captaincy on one of their ships. He ultimately picked a freighter, heading for Earth, carrying the medicine that was the fruits of the Biota.
And now, he was trying to put all of this to paper, and honestly, it was a struggle.
"I think it got away from me—the story's far, far too long…" Jaxon finally admitted. "I really need an editor."
The ensign laughed. "Well, I'm afraid I can't help you there, sir."
He cleared his throat. "I, uh, just wanted to let you know that we're now in comms range of Earth. The crew's all getting their transmissions, uploading and downloading everything like mad—just wanted to make sure you were using your share of the bandwidth." The ensign grinned excitedly. "Apparently, Earth movies are really something else… ever seen one? I know you were an Earthling, once upon a time."
Captain Jaxon thought back—way back, to a hazy half-remembered twenty minutes of a movie he watched back in Earth, almost one thousand years ago. A movie he put on to watch with the person he thought was the love of his life.
He sighed. "Yeah, I did, a long long while ago…"
Jaxon paused for a moment. He still had that number from all those centuries past, sitting around in the old files that survived from the Eurydice. Bringing them up on his screen, he began to look around.
"Hang on, actually—I will be taking my bandwidth, actually. There's someone I would like to call."
Jaxon began to dial the number, then glared at the ensign, who had gotten closer and was smiling excitedly, eager to eavesdrop. He liked the Pleiadeans—a culture that hadn't existed when he left Earth and that he had helped create—but was annoyed that they seemed to have no sense of personal privacy.
"Alone, please."
The ensign winced, grinning sheepishly, backing out of the room. "Right, sure—sorry."
When the ensign was gone, he exhaled. Jaxon couldn't help but smirk with the irony of it all as he pressed the video call button—a smirk that was wiped clean off his face when it rang, and he saw the caller ID listed for the receiver.
When the video call was received after a few rings, there was a familiar face on the line, the noise of crashing surf from a beach visible in the background. Some aging and quite a bit of augmentation (life extension, age reversal, natch) had made their marks, but it was still a handsome and still easily recognizable smile. Especially those sweet, wide, bright brown eyes, somehow still unchanged after all these years—all these centuries.
Jaxon's jaw dropped, and tears filled his eyes. He wanted to say something clever, something smart, something sweet—fuck, anything at all—but he couldn't have made a sound if life and honor depended on it.
Jaxon didn't need to. A small, wry grin spread across Theo's lips before he could speak:
"Hey, Jaxon. Took you long enough."
The End: Thanks for reading!
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