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There were a lot of things Huggy never told her. Why he was flying to Earth twelve years ago (why he crashed on purpose when he saw her on board); why Lexonite existed (why he was so scared when Earth found it); why he never fixed the 'secret spaceship hideout' as she called it (why he never told her the name of the vessel); why he insisted he was a monkey (despite humanity's constant confusion, almost revulsion, toward a creature they did not recognize).
As he watched the orange Earth sunset (that was still so foreign to him) for the thousandth time, part of him wished he had Lexiconian vocabulary abilities just so he could explain why it struck him. (Maybe so he could pretend to understand half the words they said, maybe so he wouldn't have to constantly ask her (the lone star, the last child) to define words he only half deciphered… maybe so he could teach her about herself, her people… but he'd burned those history books a long time ago. His library was halved overnight, partially ejected into the atmosphere as they 'spiraled out of control' and hurtled toward the soft, untouched, green planet.)
He could never grieve on Earth: Not while she could hear him. Sometimes he asked to be taken to the moon so he could sit in the moondust and stare at the uncountable (but quantifiable) stars and the empty black spot where one was missing (or would be, once the light from the explosion reached Earth). When she came back and saw the tears on his face, he pretended it was about his brother (it was. But not in the way she thought).
She always believed him.
And it burned hotter than a neutron star, hotter than the thousand points of light that were snuffed out by that once great planet, once great people.
They were rubble and stardust and ashes now.
He had a feeling they would appreciate that.
Not that he could ask.
She tried teaching her family how to understand him, but it was useless. They couldn't hear the pitch she could. They couldn't hear half his words.
He preferred it like that most days
Sometimes, when she was off-world and roaming through space to enjoy the silence, he talked to the Botsfords, just to get rid of the horrible writhing weight in his chest. Sometimes they laughed, but sometimes they stared at him with inquisitive eyes, so sharp and familiar he almost thought they could understand every word he said; that they were only pretending to be clueless. That they were laughing at him and his futile attempt to keep the last Lexiconian safe.
He couldn't help but stop speaking when that happened. He pretended he was hungry. They laughed.
When she got home and saw the tears on his face, he told her it was about his brother.
She always believed him.
There were more clouds on Earth than there used to be on his home planet. Large and white and fluffy, they dozed lazily through the sky, the tops (just out of view) roiling and writhing like a hot spring. He imagined there was something to be learned from them; a proverb, perhaps, or a song. He had never been good at poetry, that was always someone else's department, but the more he stared at the giant fluffy clouds that turned dark in a moment, the more he thought that just maybe he could try, for the sake of poets that would never get to see them.
He thought about his charge finding the poems.
He decided against it.
She would ask about Lexicon, and he'd have to lie again. He hated it. He hated every bit of the situation. She should've been a normal Lexiconian kid; wrestling with the thick, tough trees of her homeworld and competing to see how far she could throw them, playing tag around the world, racing around the rings. She deserved to shake someone's hand without holding back all her strength. She deserved to hug someone without the fear of breaking their spine. She deserved a world where she wasn't a hero, she was just a little girl.
She deserved to know who her biological parents were…
No.
No, he could never tell her that.
She couldn't know what her mother was. Her father… she might stand to know.
But seeing what his contributions to the cause had yielded, seeing how her worst enemies made twisted use of the corrupted material, she could never forgive him. Even if Huggy could tell her why her father did what he did (he couldn't) she would feel misused, afraid of herself (more than she already was), afraid of turning out like the most broken Lexiconian Huggy ever knew… the greatest Lexiconian he ever knew.
He wished she could’ve met her father…
But Lexicon was gone now.
Lexiconians were hunted to extinction because they were too dangerous to be kept alive, too strong, too fast, 'too bloodthirsty'… all of them. Even the children were, according to the traitors, ticking timebombs born with the innate desire to conquer. So they killed them all.
Well. All but one.
And when Huggy looked at her, he saw her mother's bite and her father's kindness. Sometimes he almost missed them (not her mother). But her father was the first to die, and Huggy saw to her mother’s death himself.
He went willingly, which almost brought comfort. It was his experiment, designed to permanently get rid of the Lexiconian empire… and someone had to make sure it worked. Not that he knew how far the others would take it. They took his banner and held it high as a sign of permission for the genocide.
It burned.
The horizon was almost dark now, save the thin strip of gold and purple that reflected off the glass buildings and whispering trees. He still missed the blue sunsets of his home world, but… he could get used to these.
His mind wandered to her mother, as an angry vulture hissed at nearing hikers. The twisted triumph and anger wormed in his gut once again, and he looked back at the horizon as the gold began to fade.
If her mother could see her now she would've been proud, in her own twisted way; but Miss Power was an angel of light in comparison to the ravager of worlds, and it brought him a near-malicious sense of pleasure to know she would never get her hands on his ward. She would never be able to corrupt her, never be able to punish her for being kind. No, she would gaze up from whatever hell she was sent to and watch as her only child grew caring even as she grew strong.
Some days he wanted to tell her, just so she could triumph with him, but he never did. It would break her heart to know. So he lied again (and again, and again, and again) and wiped the ship's memory ("the crash must have affected the systems."), and scratched the name and number off the hull ("must have burned off on reentry…"), and hid the black box ("I'm sure I put it here somewhere… well we don't need it anymore, right?"), and jettisoned the library ("I've never been much of a reader. Besides, old manuals are much more interesting."), and turned the bomb bay into a sauna (“I never used it, y’know? Plus, it’s air-tight in here, no way for the steam to escape.”) and lied and lied and lied.
He missed telling the truth. He missed flying through asteroids and around nebulae, he missed repairing the ship instead of pulling out an engine to replace it with another toy (not that he would tell her. She deserved nice things. She deserved a place where she wouldn't shatter doors by slamming them. She deserved a toy that wouldn't break). Most of all, he missed his people. He missed his community.
…he missed his brother.
He didn't miss the fights. He didn't miss the gas flood that poured over a (for the first time) helpless, almost innocent planet. He didn’t miss having to steal her father's ship, laden with fresh poison, after his own ship crashed into the crumbling city. He didn't miss the dogfights through the rings, or the way the suddenly irradiated planet started glowing an ugly, angry red to match its sabotaged star.
He didn't miss the traitors turning on his people as the moons collided and fried their systems.
He didn't miss the way the planet itself reacted to the material; or the way it shuddered and stood still for a moment before exploding into a hundred billion shards.
He didn't miss the war.
Huggy rested his face in his hands, holding back the wave of nausea he felt whenever he remembered that day; the way his ship rattled from the shockwave, the way he held back his own mess of emotions because there was one hope and she was a prime target, easy prey; the way his own fleet was shredded to pieces by the traitors baring her father's flag, the way his hyper jump pulled the irradiated, contaminated, debris with him, waking the last hope of the Lexiconian race from her spot beneath the console…
Huggy drew another breath.
He could grieve later.
She was going to fly to Saturn and back tomorrow, and he was going with her. Normally he let her travel alone, (he never liked unprotected space travel, and it was her instinct to the inverse) but everything rushed back after Miss Power, and she could tell he was on edge whenever she left the planet alone. (What if Miss Power recognized her species? What if she told people? What if she came back, armed with the reason Lexonite crippled her?)
The last Lexiconian asked him to come, and for once he didn't say no.
He had no doubt she could handle some things herself… but he wasn't ready for the inevitable crusade if they found her.
He wasn’t ready to lose his child.
He took another breath, and slowly climbed down from the pine tree. (He tried not to think about his own planet's trees. He tried not to think about her planet's trees. They were both gone now, nothing but stardust and ashes, and he'd mourned enough today.) As he neared the forest floor, he hid his claws and teeth, hid the way his pupils moved, the way his fur shifted, and took another breath.
Huggy stepped on the prickly ground, his stomach emptier than usual, and picked his captain's helmet off the ground, staring at the faintly embossed lighting bolt rank on the forehead. He wanted to hate it, sometimes. Today…
Today, it just burned like stardust and ashes on his skin.
The last of his kind, and he was a war criminal…
And he could never tell her.