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“Forever’s not enough time to love you the way that I want ‘cause every morning I find you, I fear the day that I don’t. You say that I won’t lose you but you can’t predict the future ‘cause certain things are out of our control. If you ever move on without me, I need to make sure you know: you are the only one I’ll ever love… if it’s not you it’s not anyone.”
Anyone by Justin Bieber
He wasn’t a betting man anymore, the days he’d found himself brazen enough to wager his belongings were long since outgrown, and now merely a memory of the past brought up too frequently atop relentless jeers from his brother, Fives. The purgatorial hours after curfew but preceding the sleep, saw Domino Squad sprawled across a table, discarded face cards tossed aside as the boys bickered with each other over who lay claim to the prize pot anchoring their fun. Echo was only too miserable to watch his prized possessions float from his clutches, lost to the treachery of one bad poker hand after another, the certainty of his impending win often betrayed by Hevy’s nearly inscrutable bluffing skills. “Just lucky, I guess,” the broad shouldered soldier would coo across the table with a wink, smirking as his fingers draped themselves eagerly around the mountain of contraband that he’d won.
Time and experience had seen a shift in priorities. Life… war… had quickly reinforced the notion that the distribution of Lady Luck’s attention was entirely unpredictable, and trying to elucidate her choices could send a man spiraling into an anguished insanity. It was far simpler to just swallow the bitter pill of unreasoning: sometimes you simply had her favour, and sometimes you did not (and Hevy, somehow, seemed to always have it).
Departing the protective bubble of Kamino’s isolation had proved less of a challenge than Echo anticipated thanks to the unexpected comfortability of their first posting. Surveilling the Rishi system from the stillness of a desolate moon was barely a challenge for the squad’s capable hands, especially after years of conditioning had endowed their expectations with images of carnage and violence, but despite the perceived insignificance of their objective, their overseeing officers were no less regimented or dogmatic than those whom had raised them. Tactics and strategy continued to be encouraged at every possible opportunity; obedience enforced, and discipline expected. “Segregation from the front lines is no excuse for complacency,” their sergeant would iterate repeatedly. “Any brother would be lucky to have landed this posting. Take it seriously.”
Between inappropriately fluffy songs, Clone Nation Radio recounted the events of battles fought across the galaxy, perfectly mirroring the sergeants continued pleas. Seemingly the only squad member willing to heed the advice, the quiet hours on the distant moon saw Echo pouring over schematics, the memorization of regulation manuals presenting him with the perfect shield against the potential chill of Lady Luck’s cold shoulder. His brothers’ snide remarks about indulging in this new ‘strange’ habit, simply rolled off his armoured shoulders. “We’ll see who gets the last laugh when these ‘dumb manuals’ help me out-survive all of you,” he would always chirr back with a roll of his eyes.
Yet his incessant need to retain information had unknowingly only sharpened a double-edged sword. In his earnest to ensure a complete competency, his shield of preparedness had rendered him protected on one hand, but preoccupied on the other, with the unknown shift in his awareness exposing a notion shared by many troopers: that the monster of mortality is all-too happy to lay-in-wait long enough for him to be forgotten about, pushed to the back burner a overly confident soldier’s mind.
The Rishi posting was quiet… until it wasn’t. Kamino seemed a fortress impenetrable to external threat… until it wasn’t. Both events had struck Echo with a hard blow of realization that tactics can only ensure a portion of one’s safety, schematics will not prevent an invasion, one must learn to expect only that which is unexpected, and there are variables far outside any one man’s control. Lady Luck will ultimately always get to play her game…
And sadly, he’d seen too many brothers had crumple at his side, their torches snuffed in a fraction of a blink, many of them with packs and pouches full of treats that they’d won in a game the previous night. Why is it that Luck had caressed them then, only to fatally betray them hours later?
No, his betting days were behind him… and then there was you.
Now? He’d have bet everything he ever owned that your hair was the softest the universe had ever seen. Even after hours of fervent frolicking between the sheets, your bodies entwining with the desperate desire to reacquaint after so many rotations apart, and each strand having been tugged, bunched, knotted and tossed in the name of a passionate routine so mesmerizing that time itself seemed to pause, it still felt like silk draped between his fingers.
He’d have wagered every credit in the galaxy that history had never seen a hand fit more perfectly into another like yours fit into his. It was as if the Maker had initially sculpted your bodies as one, only to have it fall from Mortis and fracture, the pieces seamlessly fitting together to reestablish his physical rendering of love.
And he’d have bet that, in all the systems he’d traversed, none of them orbited a sun even remotely as radiant as the twinkle in your eye. A luminescence shining from deep inside of you unrivaled by any charted celestial body; a lighthouse that he was all-too willing to let endlessly guide him into your embrace… back home.
Definity now seemed attainable. He had never been surer of anything or anyone in his entire life, and such a certainty had been achieved without the memorization of manuals, and without the aid of instructions, tactics, or strategy. Embedded with the impenetrable protection of your belief in him, his shield now seemed the perfect match for redirecting every potential blow of Lady Luck’s unpredictable tantrums; his irrefutable love for you unwavering despite the external chaos.
But always a double edged sword, the ‘distraction’ of your love ensured that the undoubtability of your union walked hand-in-hand with unpredictability… with fear and anxiety. The monster of mortality, while frequently concealed behind dense clouds of bliss and enamoring twinkles of light, was never again truly absent from Echo’s awareness, and the harrowing chirp of a deployment transmission ringing from his wristcom acted as a stark reminder that the monster was always waiting patiently for an opportunity to rob the universe of such beauty.
“What’s on your mind, love?” you would ask in those moments, when the surging heat of your frenzied entanglement subsided and the stillness of the night exposed his resurging anxiety. But your query needn’t ever be spoken; the cause of the deepening crease between his brows and the frown tugging at his lips was a mystery to no one, and part of him wondered if you only uttered the question aloud knowing that the sound of your voice would soothe him in a way that nothing else could.
“You are, Cyare,” he would always answer, too aware that the unnatural smile hitched to his lips would provoke nothing but a skeptical cock of your eyebrow, yet too willing to deny his fear its chance in the light.
This routine transpired only a handful of times before you’d successfully pulled the truth from him, his desire to remain a pillar of strength simply no match for the knowing twinkle in your eye, its majesty quickly summoning the anxiety from the depths of his gut and out past his lips.
The truth finally spoken: that he was scared to lose each other, to lose you, intensely fearful that every sorrowful departure preceding a deployment would be the last. His tactical mind was painfully aware that the probabilities of him safely returning home varied largely from one mission to the next, the chances laced with a risk that was incalculable… unpreparable despite his every effort.
But even fatality seemed a welcome alternative to his greatest fear of all: that he would return home from a long deployment to find the twinkle banished from your eyes, that he would find a person no longer blind to the fact that a life built on the shoulders of a soldier was one laden with an unavoidable and potent neglect, and that you’d become a person no longer willing to suffer the solitude that accompanied his absence.
“I’m not going anywhere, Echo,” you would always reassure him. “It’s you and me, my love. Until the end of the universe.”
The mantra never lost its purity despite how often you chorused it to him with your fingers intertwined tightly between his, or your forehead pressed to his in a motion of complete connection, but tonight felt… different. Despite your recited promise and the intimate swaddle of your body around his, Echo could not shake the feeling of dread simmering in his gut.
“What is it?” you probed in barely more than a whisper, your hands stalling their thoughtless swirls atop his skin, fingers instead nestling themselves between the swells of his heaving chest.
“Nothing, Mesh’la.” He couldn’t quite quantify the intensity of his anxieties tonight, for even unspoken they seemed baseless and irrational. How could he express that the gnawing of his upcoming deployment felt more formidable this time, when he knew his words would serve no purpose other than plaguing you with worry? He had no desire to let his malignant fears rob you of the listful peace that he so badly longed for in these moments.
You hummed quietly, toes shifting to gently glide along the top of his foot, the sensation grounding him enough to tighten his grasp around your shoulders. “I’m not going to call you a liar,” you snorted as you nuzzled into his side, “but it kinda smells like your pants might be on fire.”
He should have expected such a response; you’d always been quick to wit, quick to humour, quick to ensure that, even in the enshadowed bedroom where the only light came from the patchwork quilt of a million other windows scattered from here to the horizon, he felt utterly seen.
A small sigh stalled his explanation, his plagued mind still attempting to grapple for some semblance of justification. “I don’t know,” he posed, pausing to press his lips to your forehead, the familiar fragrance of your hair wafting into his nose easing only a fraction of his worry. “Something feels… weird. I can’t shake the feeling that something is going to go amiss during this next one.”
“Sounds like a bad case of the ‘send-off scaries’,” you chuckled, shifting your head on his shoulder to watch your fingers resume their mindless doodles across his skin.
“No, Mesh’la,” he protested, the ghost of misunderstood frustration dancing across his tense features as he retracted his arm from around you and pushed himself into a seated position. “It’s more than that, but… I can’t explain it.”
You shifted your posture to mirror his, scooping his hands into yours and squeezing his palms tightly to prevent him from shielding his face. “Perhaps it’s because this one is a little riskier than some of the others?” you proposed, trying to catch the eyes that he’d deliberately averted from you. “You were saying the Citadel is pretty heavily fortified, right? Maybe it’s the fact that the archive maps are dated and incomplete that has you a little more anxious than usual.”
“Yeah… maybe,” he sighed solemnly, only barely resisting the urge to shake his head and argue.
“You and Fives are an unshakable team,” you persisted. “Especially with Rex and the General beside you. You all have an innate call to protect each other. Just have faith… trust your instincts. They’ve never led you astray, my love. In fact–” a gentle guiding finger under his chin pulled his anguished gaze back to you, “–they led you right to me.”
There it was, dancing in your eyes as if fueled by starlight, the twinkle that reminded him time-and-time-again that nothing could rob him of his home… of his home in you.
“You’re right, Cyare,” he conceded, leaning in to graze his smiling lips against yours. “I love you. It’s you and me to the end of the universe.”
No, he wasn’t anymore… but if he was a betting man, that lingering moment of quiet assurances with breath dancing atop each other's cheeks and lips moving to convey an unspoken message, he’d have wagered that the very stars aligned the night he met you. He’d have bet there wasn’t a force anywhere in this galaxy stronger than his connection to you… and you can bet that if only an ounce of his courage remains intact when he returns home from that wretched fortress, the first place you’ll find him is in your doorway, perched on one knee with a ring in his hand and a plea in his eyes. You can bet that, if Lady Luck’s cold shoulder ever robbed you of each other, his love for you, and only you, would be a promise more steadfast and unwavering than time itself.