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Raph was standing by Mona's side, clutching the cold table she was on for dear life. He could feel the others' stares burn into his back as he waited for Fugitoid to work his magic, but he couldn't care less. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered right now aside from Mona. Right now, he didn't care for how she'd betrayed him and then helped them anyways, and he certainly didn't care for the way his heart ached , he just needed her to be alright.
Fugitoid had said she would be alright again, but Raph would only believe that once he saw it.
She'd almost died . He had almost been holding her corpse.
Almost.
Mona was still alive. She was still lying right in front of him, breaths slow and even as Fugitoid healed her with whatever kind of space magic he had. It didn't matter what it was, it just needed to make her be alright again.
He didn't care how long he'd been standing there for when she finally opened her eyes. A moment passed as she registered she was alive, another as her eyes flickered around, taking in her new surroundings and finally, another moment in which she recognized him.
Pain and guilt flashed through her eyes, raw enough that Raph could barely bear looking, but he refused to turn away. She was alive. He wouldn't turn away from that.
Mona pushed herself up into a position between lying and sitting, eyes locked with him the entire way. "I am so sorry, Raphael." She paused for a beat, and Raph could tell she was forcing the next words out of herself: "Will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?"
Hearing her speak again, hearing her say his name again, was enough to make the world around them disappear. It was just the two of them again, just like when this day (and it hadn't even been a full day yet) had started.
Raph placed his hand over hers and nodded. He'd already forgiven her, even as his body was being torn up from the inside.
The stares of everyone else managed to pierce their little bubble and Raph suddenly felt like he was either going to punch someone or throw up.
"I need some space." With that, he turned and left.
Mona watched Raphael turn his back to her. She understood that he needed his distance, that he couldn’t bear to be in the same room as her, and yet she had to force herself not to call after him.
Instead, she pushed the words down into the same cesspit her emotions were coming from. After betraying him like this, she had no right to make him stay. No matter how much her heart ached at seeing him go. No matter how final the closing of the door sounded, even after his words had confirmed the opposite.
Fugitoid said something, but it didn’t register. The others were talking as well, maybe to her, maybe calling after Raph, but that didn’t register either. Only the sudden cold on her hand where Raph’s had been moments prior was on her mind. She tried to cover it up with her own hand, but it wasn’t the same.
Everyone was still talking, looking at her, staring at her, judging her and it was all too much. She couldn’t take this.
Like a coward, she got up. Her legs were unsteady and almost gave in, but she pushed forward. One step, then another and another and she was finally at the door. One of the others, her mind couldn’t make out which one, moved close to her, but when she turned and glared at them they quickly stopped their approach.
She left.
The door fell shut behind her, just like how it had done for Raphael.
Raphael.
Which direction had he gone in? Would he be heading for his personal room, or one of the community areas? Mona stood at the first branch of the suddenly claustrophobic corridor, paralyzed by indecision. Everything inside of her screamed to look for Raphael, and yet she couldn’t do that. It would be even worse than having begged for him to stay.
Even then, she couldn’t help how her mind tried to figure out where he went. She ignored it.
Once she could no longer take her own inaction, Mona jumped back into gear, taking random turns, marching through the hallways as if that could stop her thoughts from racing. Mona was used to ships—preferred them over being on a planet even—and yet everything suddenly felt too small. She needed to bring more distance between herself and everyone. She needed to be alone .
Her frantic escape eventually led her to a small room, hidden away in some far away hallway that looked like it hadn’t been used in ages. She closed the door behind her, pressing her back against it in hopes of calming her racing heart by standing completely still. She’d closed her eyes before she could take stock of the room, instead focusing on her rapid breathing.
Mona’s body acted like she’d just been in a fight and it threatened to overtake her, her heartbeat speeding up even further. Somewhere in the back of her head, she heard G’Throkka’s voice teach her about panic attacks and flashbacks, telling her how to calm down again. And yet, all it did was make the cacophony in her mind even worse.
She knew what she needed to do, how to get out of this useless state, but it slipped through her fingers whenever she tried to reach for it. Everything was too much . She needed to get out, to get away, to be alone , but her head was still too loud.
Before she’d even realized it, Mona had opened her eyes, desperately scanning the small room for something to ground her. There was nothing in here aside from some storage boxes stacked on one side. She was distressed enough that, for a moment, she seriously considered rummaging through them just so she had something to do that was not focusing on herself, but before she could do that, she caught sight of something else.
The wall facing the door wasn’t black like she’d originally assumed, it was transparent. If she strained her eyes enough, she could see outside .
Mona exhaled, already feeling herself calm down. The next breath she inhaled was still shaky and too short, and yet she could feel the air fill her lungs again.
Without even realizing it, Mona had felt her way around the wall until she found a switch. The lights in this room had turned on automatically as soon as she’d opened the door, but with a quick flick of her wrist, they turned off again just as quickly, bathing the room in darkness.
Her eyes took a few moments to adjust, but once they did, she could properly look outside. With another exhale, deeper this time, Mona sunk down until she was sitting, keeping her gaze fixed on the window all the while. Despite her racing heart, Mona felt herself start to regain control.
This was what she’d grown up with. At the same time, it couldn’t be more different. The ship she was on was nothing like her own, the cold, indifferent metal feeling wrong in a visceral way, and even the view was nothing like the one from her childhood. The Riverbed1 and even the Harvest2 had been stretched and warped to distortion, their stars scattered in all cardinal directions. And yet, if Mona tried, she knew she could still find them. The same was true for her home star. The whole system she’d grown up in, her planet, her moons, all of that was condensed into one infinitely small spot of light, far away enough that she could glance over it without even realizing.
And yet, this right here was just as much her home as the familiarity of her childhood.
Remembering each pattern the stars took from each planet, each system, each galaxy was impossible, a fact that Mona has had to reconcile with for years. And yet, she still tried to commit everything to memory, even as stars moved past her as the ship propelled itself through space. Chances were, she’d never get to see space from this exact place ever again. This moment, like all the others, was fleeting.
As Mona sat, watching countless specks of light pass by that held the potential for a history just as rich as that of Salamandria, her heart slowed down again and her breathing evened out. Whatever chemicals had caused her vitals to spike like that were dissolving, her body working to disassemble them once more. It still left her with a bone-deep exhaustion and the knowledge of what she’d done.
She’d betrayed Raphael.
She’d betrayed Raphael.
Sure, she’d thought she was doing it for the good of Salamandria, but even then she should’ve known that she couldn’t trust Dregg, lying, scheming Dregg who’d used his words to warp the minds of his victims for as long as Mona had known of his existence. And he’d gotten her to betray the one person she’d chosen to die side by side with. A feeling that had clearly been mutual. Had . Past tense.
Mona wasn’t sure if Raphael still felt that way. She wasn’t sure if she could accept him still feeling that way. After all, he’d already put his trust into her hands once, and she’d gone and turned on him, ready to sacrifice his life—and the lives of the people he cared about—for her home planet. He shouldn’t offer his life to her like that again.
And yet, the thought of their bond breaking was unbearable. Mona had never met anyone who made her feel this safe, this understood before. Fighting by his side had given combat a new edge. He was ferocious, reckless, utterly brilliant and a master of his weapons. He was the one person Mona trusted to have her back the most.
Granted, G’Throkka would do anything in his power to fight alongside her, but this wasn’t even close to being the same. He was her mentor , he’d taught her everything she knew. With Raphael it was… different.
And now, maybe, it wouldn’t be anything at all.
He’d nodded—a gesture that meant agreement, she’d learned already—after she asked if he could find a way to forgive her, but that didn’t mean he had to trust her again. He shouldn’t trust her again.
Even if that thought was enough to make her want to claw out her insides.
Mona breathed, slow and steady.
She’d made her choice. Now she had to live with it. She’d decided to trust Dregg. She’d decided to betray Raphael. She’d decided to be responsible for his death in order to save her planet. That wasn’t something she could change anymore.
Despite knowing of all the mistakes others had committed in the past—or mistakes others were committing right now—it still felt like nobody had ever been as big of a fool as her. She had battled alongside Raphael, and yet she’d turned on him the first chance she got.
Raphael might forgive her, but Mona wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not after she’d betrayed everything she’d believed in.
She hugged her knees close to her chest. Never before had she felt so utterly powerless and overwhelmed. So soul-crushingly lonely . And she had no one to blame but herself.
Now, more than ever, Mona needed Raphael to be by her side. She needed his presence to reassure her, to show her that despite everything, they could get out of this too if they just worked together. At the same time, she had no right to demand any of this from him, not after what she’d done.
Tears welled up in her eyes. Mona blinked them away before they could fall, her emotions threatening to overwhelm her. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d cried.
Before she could dwell on it for too long, a knock on the door right behind her distracted her. Mona quickly shuffled out of the way, wiping at her eyes again for good measure.
The door opened.
Raph hadn’t really expected to find Mona so soon. Not after he’d gone back to the others and they’d told him how she’d stormed out, moments after him. And yet, when he’d opened the door to what was clearly a glorified storage closet, the lights turned on and revealed her, crouched on the floor and looking just as messy as he felt.
“Mona Lisa.” The words had left his mouth without him realizing, loaded with more emotions than Raph wanted to think about.
Mona sounded equally surprised as she answered in kind. “Raphael?”
Her voice was shaky, uncertain in a way Raph had never heard her be before. He took a closer look at her and, with horror, realized just how close to crying she was. Maybe the lights had been turned off for a reason.
He gestured to the light switch. “Should I, uh, you know…”
“Oh, yeah.” Mona gave him a curt nod, a movement that looked awkward on her, like it wasn’t something she was used to. (And she probably wasn’t. As far as Raph knew, her species could use a completely different gesture as affirmative.)
With a flick of the switch, the room turned dark again. Raph fumbled around for a moment, sitting down close to Mona as his eyes adjusted to the absence of light. They weren’t quite touching, but the gap was small enough that it could be bridged without a second thought.
Raph wasn’t sure what to do now. He’d wanted to talk to Mona, but now that he had the chance to, he didn’t know what to say. She was right here, and yet still out of reach.
He shook his head. Not if he could do something about that.
“So, uh,” Raph forced his awkwardness down, “how are you doing?”
For a few moments, he thought that a sigh was all he’d get as an answer, but Mona decided to talk after all. “I will be alright, Raphael.”
He didn’t bother stopping the disbelieving huff that left him. “Bullshit.”
Despite the darkness, he could still make out Mona turning to face him. “Excuse me?”
Raph had grown up with Leo , he knew when someone was just trying to pretend. Not that it was particularly hard to guess that Mona wasn’t okay after everything that just went down. “You wouldn't be hiding down here if you were alright.”
To his relief, Mona’s voice sounded ever so slightly lighter as she replied again. “I suppose you do have a point.”
“Of course I do.” Raph exhaled. This really wasn’t his forte, but he also couldn’t just let this silence hang between them. “So, do you wanna talk about it?”
Mona didn’t reply at first. When she did, her voice was quiet, barely even audible. “I am so deeply sorry, Raphael.”
He still lacked an answer for that. Back when she’d woken up, he’d just nodded. He couldn’t do that again. If Mona was anything like him, apologizing was about the hardest thing in the world, and he didn’t want to dismiss her efforts by not even gracing her with a reply. That didn’t mean he knew what to say, though.
Unfortunately, his silence had been answer enough for Mona. “I… Please know there is nothing I regret more than misusing your trust. You do not have to forgive me, but-”
“Stop.” Raph interrupted her, much to his own surprise. But now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Mona, of course I’ve already forgiven you. I- you almost died . You still saved us. You saved us even as Dragg threatened your entire planet! You could’ve just let it happen, but you didn’t .”
The betrayal had broken his heart. There was no point in pretending otherwise, not when Mona had seen it with her own eyes. And yet, the moment she’d decided to sacrifice her own life to let them escape, the moment she proclaimed her love for him, all of that had been pushed away. “You still made the right choice.”
No reply came.
When Raph turned to look at Mona, she was staring out the window. As if noticing his gaze, she finally said something again. Her voice was still quiet, but something new had been mixed into it. “You saved me as well.”
“What?”
She glanced at him. “After I had been stung by the Scorpinoid. There had been no reason to protect me.”
“Of course there was! I-” Something tightened in Raph’s chest. He didn’t want to yell the next words. “I love you, Mona.”
Now, she fully turned to look at him, her eyes so piercing Raph couldn’t have turned away if he’d wanted to. “But- after what I did, why did you still decide to save me?”
“I wasn’t going to let you just die there!” Raph glared at her, suddenly angry for no clear reason. “Do you know why it hurt so much that you were the one who lured us into Dregg’s trap?” He didn’t wait for her to reply. “Because I care about you! I trust you! That’s not just gonna change!”
“You should not trust me.” Anger had raised his voice, but Mona’s stayed as quiet as ever, spoken with a certainty that threatened to break Raph’s heart again.
It was even enough to shock him out of his rage. “What?”
“I have already betrayed you once!” Now Mona was the one yelling. She sounded unsteady, like she was about to cry and Raph wanted to do nothing more than pull her into a hug.
“And yet, Dregg still took all of us prisoner, didn’t he? He trapped you just as much as he trapped us!” Some part of him—the part that Raph had been trying to shut up ever since Mona had woken up again—was wondering what would’ve happened if Dregg hadn’t double-crossed Mona and Sal Commander. But he forced that down just as quickly. There was no use thinking about things that hadn’t happened. “You were- you were still ready to give your life so we could flee.”
Mona didn’t seem to have a rebuttal for that. Both of them stayed quiet. Raph pretended not to hear how uneven Mona’s breathing had suddenly gotten, or the way she was trying very hard to stop her eyes from leaking tears. He still wanted to reach out to her, though.
Eventually, once the silence between them had gotten excruciating, Mona finally said something again, her voice still quiet, but still filled with hope. “How do you know I am not going to betray you a second time?”
It was as simple as it was complicated. He trusted her. Despite everything, he still trusted her. If she’d truly thought of him as nothing more than a bartering chip to save her planet with, she wouldn’t have stayed to fight for their safe escape. She wouldn’t have confessed her love for him and she most certainly wouldn’t have told him to save his world.
He looked at her eyes. If she listened to only one thing he had to say, it needed to be this. He needed her to understand. “Because I trust you.”
Mona’s eyes darted away, but found him again just as quickly. “You shouldn’t. You cannot know that I will stay true to my word this time.”
If that really happened, they’d cross that bridge when it came to it, but Raph had his doubts. “You don’t seem like someone who’d repeat the same mistake twice.”
For a while, there was no reply. Mona was still staring at him, refusing to turn away, and Raph wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand watching all the emotions flicker through her eyes. She opened her mouth, then sighed and closed it again, instead opting for taking one of his hands into her own. “I- Raphael, I-”
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep watching the way she hurt , the way she tried to push through it to keep looking at him. He closed the distance between them and engulfed her into a hug, startling her out of whatever sentence she was trying to force out, if only for a moment. “I am so deeply sorry.”
She returned the hug then, her strong arms wrapping around Raph as she buried her head into his shoulder, hunched over. This close, Raph could feel her erratic heartbeat and her uneven breathing, even the slight tremble running through her body. “I do not wish to lose you, Raphael.”
Raph wanted to reply something about how he was impossible to get rid of, or how he’d make sure they’d stay close, but the words died in his throat. The truth wasn’t that simple. He didn’t know where their paths would take them. He needed to save Earth from the Triceratons, Mona needed to save Salamandria from Dregg’s forces. He didn’t know if they’d ever see each other again.
The only thing he did know was an echo of Mona’s words. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
He didn’t want to say goodbye to her. He didn’t want this to be the last time they met. He most certainly didn’t want their last memories to be of this whole mess. But it didn’t feel like the universe particularly cared about what he did and didn’t want .
While he’d started the hug to comfort Mona, Raph had to admit he needed the reassurance just as much all of a sudden. Both him and Mona knew they had their own destinies, their own missions to carry out, but that didn’t make it any easier. She and Sal Commander might stay with them for a day or two longer, just to make sure Mona would be alright after nearly dying, but after that, their paths would diverge again.
If there was anything Raph wanted to say to her, he best do it now, while he still had the chance. While it was just the two of them, hidden away in their own little corner of the ship. “Mona?”
“Yeah?” Her voice still shook, but the physical closeness seemed to have calmed her down again a little.
“I…” he desperately searched for the right words to convey his feelings, “I really care about you, okay? I love you. Can you… can you forget about Dregg? About what happened today?”
Mona pulled back a little, looking at his face in confusion. “You want me to forget how I betrayed you?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“Why?”
Raph wasn’t sure either. He sighed and, despite himself, just started talking, hoping he’d arrive at a satisfying conclusion. “I’m- look, it’s tormenting you, right? I don’t want that to be, y’know, the only thing on your mind after we say goodbye.”
From the looks of it, it now dawned on Mona that they’d split up again soon. They were back in space. Soon they’d be back to their individual missions. Mona’s face softened, something that made her look much more vulnerable than usual. “I shall try. For you I shall try to move past it.”
He nodded. Raph didn’t know what else to say now, didn’t know if he’d even manage to form the words around the sudden lump in his throat, so he stayed quiet.
Gradually, he and Mona had shifted positions, until their desperate embrace had turned into something lighter again. Raph’s body was still pressed close to Mona’s, his head resting on her shoulder while she’d leaned her hand onto his, both of them staring out into space.
They’d have to go back to the others sooner or later, but for now, it was just the two of them, watching the universe through their little window. It was nice. After all the horrible excitement of the day, this moment was the exact opposite, calm and cozy in a way a dark, metal room floating through the unforgiving void of the universe really shouldn’t be.
One of Mona’s hand was tracing patterns onto his, a gesture that didn’t stop even as she suddenly spoke. “Raphael, I will honor your name with my blood and write letters about you.”3
“What?” The question was already out of his mouth before Raph could even fully comprehend what Mona had said.
She didn’t sound angry or disappointed when she talked again, only slightly bemused. “I love you, Raphael.”
Those words he understood. “I love you too.”
For a few seconds, Mona’s hand stopped moving, as if she was still a little surprised to hear the words. It continued again almost as quickly, though, and Raph let out a pleased sigh at the gesture.
He knew this moment was fleeting, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying it. From enjoying Mona’s presence while he still could.
- The Riverbed is a constellation in the upper hemisphere of Salamandria, representing draught and loss of direction, alternatively, it's also often read as meaning change is about to come, and not being stuck in your old ways. [ ▲ ]
- The Harvest is another constellation, this time from the lower hemisphere of Salamandria, representing the concept of 'you reap what you sow', or the end of of a long time of waiting. [ ▲ ]
- A slightly altered quote from an ancient poem by Z'Apptho. Traditionally written letters are still of importance to Salamandrians, with ink colors playing a big role. Honoring one's name with blood is a reference to the act of using ink made up of your own blood to write/highlight important passages of text, in this case a declaration of how deeply Mona cares for Raphael. Writing letters about someone means they're close enough to you that you want to tell others about them. It's also a way of honoring someone's memory, often said to dear friends/partners that you won't see again for a long time. [ ▲ ]