Chapter Text
She would be leaving soon. So soon.
Veta knew that this visit would likely be the last for quite a while. Osman's tone hadn't left a lot of room for interpretation to the contrary. There had hardly been time to process everything - Gao felt entirely lost to her now...she was effectually dead...the nondescript grey uniform she wore still represented a sinking mire of emotions. A lot of pain and confusion to lock away in what will surely culminate as a torrentially unfortunate future reflection. She was so tired of facing devastation alone. She would, as a duty to herself, and to the Gammas who now relied on her to lead them, but it still hurt. She was convinced it always would. That it should.
A distant banging thumped from somewhere deeper in the ship, pulling her back from the darkened repose, reminding her of what little time she had left.
She couldn't step off that Prowler without telling him goodbye. Without thanking him.
As she walked down the corridor to the Silent Joe's Infirmary, an overwhelming scent of dirt and gunpowder filled the hall, even as the hint of clinical sterility became ever more apparent. The mingling...conflicting odors, while evident, somehow didn't seem important. There was a deeper, pressing, sharpness about something more...the air...the lighting. There was an overt brightness to it that she suddenly felt she was hearing more than seeing...a florescent buzzing creeping behind every sight and sound. It permeated the floor and vibrated over her skin.
She was nervous. There were a handful of reasons why, but it wasn't for any single one of them. Rather, it rest likely amongst the tangled knot looping end over in her chest. How could she address all of these things - any of these things now? There wasn't time...there wasn't words. They certainly existed, but right now...right now, they were written in a language she didn't know how to read. Every step grew lighter - sensations feeling amplified as they dulled - solid bulkhead walls yielded against the smooth, transparent, pane abutting the sliding entrance to the Infirmary, where she stopped. Stood. The ballistic plasteel glass shivered. Faceless personnel milling around beyond the surface...never quite touching. Never looking towards her.
Veta tilted her head to the left and listened to the buzzing again. It had grown to a baleful humming that carried itself in a consistent breath...like wind passing beyond an open window.
Distracted by the sound, she never noticed herself crossing the threshold; didn't feel the steps taken beneath her boots. Looking past her right shoulder back towards the door, it stood distant by thirty paces, and steadily began to submerge.
She was in the middle of the room. Just her.
She turned back to the expanse of the room - it had become filled with smoke. From the blurred right edge of her sight, stood Mark, who seemed to be caught in a temporal anomaly...just reaching the apex of shouldering his BR85 battle rifle, and pulling the trigger in quarter-time - the silence erupted into a heavy metallic ring that reverberated and became trapped. Between blinks, this new reality flashed and rippled...titanium walls skipping into forested wilderness...and back again. A shimmering visage of Olivia imprinted in the space like an after-image for a fraction of second. Reality was as unstable as a dream, and yet Veta walked forward into the wavering landscape carrying no impression of danger. Auxiliary lighting dampened everything in a ghostly amber glow, and coming to a stop, she felt her right palm rest against the lightly starched sheets of his bed. It was quiet again. Veta looked up, and met a deep, clear, ocean gaze - the tangled knot tightened, becoming no more resolved, yet radiated a completing sense of...simplicity.
An arm of corded steel, belied such gentleness, and warmth, as he cautiously encircled her. He was also nervous - the sense of such innocent trepidation coming off of this mythic warrior chased a genuine smile over her face; it reached her eyes just as they closed, and she pressed her forehead firmly against the comfortable heat of his chest. The wind outside grew closer, more fervent, and carried an audible bite of resistance, but it did nothing to steal her warmth - it spread.
A lifetime reflected, lingered, and passed in heartbeats as she held him. She knew it was just a breath of a moment, but she wanted to spend another lifetime to feel it all again. A slow, contented, exhale breezed by her ear, and every calamity she'd ever known disappeared. The purity of her calm was the edge of Nirvana.
But, the bed was empty now...tucked neatly together and lacking any...warmth. The walls darkening from sight, and somewhere behind her echoed a clatter - a banging thump that she'd heard sometime before...it felt like months ago. Turning, she saw a helmet that lay discarded on the impossibly white floor - an SPI helmet. Crusted in dirt, sporting the telltale sign of a single large impact to the left temple, the visor spidered.
Veta inhaled deeply, turning back towards the bed - gone. Not a trace remained; there wouldn't be.
The flooring cracked and scored, caked in dirt, and oil, and blood. The tangled knot felt present still, but distant, as the core of it's billowing warmth began to cool. The room brightened again, a shock of overwhelming white that lept from every surface; so oppressive, she felt like she was tasting it - it was metallic. Repeated swallows gathering in a thickened film behind her tongue as her breath shortened with each pull.
The wind was a gale, punctuated by faraway voices screaming incoherent words - no shape or meaning. Veta wanted to shout back, to answer, but the piercing lightening film in her throat lost brilliance, and degraded...coalescing into a shape that grew, and grew, filling her lungs, before flooding, rampant, through every organ. Every artery. Every vein. A mass of ice, and mud, and rotting wood that fed pain to every inch of her. The agony should have wrenched sound from her throat - any sound - but, a fog rolled in. She felt strangely overwhelmed in a blanketed notion of total apathy...for the pain, and for the fear that knelt, coiled, just beyond.
The wind disappeared.
She wondered if it'd ever actually been there. All thoughts suspended, when the silence unzipped, and rushed back like a tide under softly spoken words that finally broke the surface...
It'll be okay, Mom...
It took force to break the rough, crusted, seals over her eyelids, but she was rewarded with the tall points of beautiful pine trees, back-lit in dramatic silhouette by the melting amber gradient of Gallant's setting sun. Gallant. A planet largely only occupied by disparate clutches of fanatical Keeper cells. Veta's mind swam in the colours of the sky, as she absently reached for that definitive knowledge. It had been her reason for coming here - she and her Ferret Team.
The sky was so beautiful...inexplicably so. Like liquid fire opal pouring out of heaven...but she would trade the beauty of it all away for...
...for one more moment at his bedside. For one more shot to wreck a punchline and see him smile. For one more chance to be too afraid to say so many things.
She wondered if he'd ever known how much she wanted...
Turning her head to face the voice that'd brought her to the sun, she met a pair of golden chestnut eyes - glassy, and framed under a deeply furrowed brow. Skin smooth between etched scars, and pale...and dirty.
It's going to be okay, Mom...
This whole time she'd been moving - quickly. Running? Her head turned to face forward, eyesight catching up a full second later, and affording her the blurred sight of her bent knees. The surrounding world at eye-level was traveling by too quickly to focus on, but ran perpendicular to her gaze. Seeking answers, her head lolled back to the left until it met resistance; heavy, but metered, breathing overhead. A strong arm at her back - another under her legs - and her right arm gathered over her abdomen, where the movement of her fingers felt sticky and, somehow, hollow; like the limb was made of styrofoam, coated in grease and honey.
Veta reached with her left hand, up higher...higher...and carded her fingers back through his wavy, brown hair - just along his temple. Her armored hand was blasted carbon black. His hair was wet.
"...it's so long...it's gotten so long..."
She didn't immediately recognize her own voice.
"I know. I'll get it cut, okay? You can be there too - to tell them how you want it, okay?"
He sounded under pressure.
Letting her wrist go limp, it rested bent against his shoulder, as her whole left side seemed to sink. She felt his grip tighten.
"No. I like it...it's handsome, Ash. Just...run a comb through it..."
He was looking at her again - eyes curved slightly in a happy almond shape...but his brow still tightly knit together, betraying the fleeting glimmer of levity. She rolled her eyes back to memorize the sky...and closed them.
They weren't running anymore; her back was flat against a hardened surface and everything was in motion. Ash was talking, but every word was carried away in an rushing current of howling wind and gnashing gunfire.
The oppressive chill crept up through her rib cage, and laid bare it's final demands, having offered her the graceful mercy of those last moments of lucidity. A rail of tremors preceded needles of what she knew should be pain, but they arrived instead as little more than a disembodied vibration, traveling up her thighs, carrying away any remaining physical perception with them as they ascended. The cold water rose above her head, and all sound disappeared - the trembling continued...
...and ended.
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