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It had been Years.
Years since she'd heard his voice, the fear rattling through the field as he begged for her not to do it. Not to drag him into the unknown and seal his fate in a rocket destined for Unknowns and the Unexplored.
Years.
Wrinkles got deeper. Grey hairs multiplied. The Loneliness stayed. It always did.
She guessed she deserved this.
The emotion, the one where it crept up the back of her neck and settled in her jaw...it startled her. She wasn't used to feeling this way, feeling the flush of regret, even after all this time. Now, he was star lengths away, out of touch, out of grasp. The joy he had so briefly brought into her life had been snatched away by her own hand, by the Logical Eva Stratt. The "For The Greater Good" Eva Stratt.
She wasn't used to this.
She'd always been the one to get things done. The Manager. The Enforcer. Her word was that.
But now.
She felt like her insides were trembling as she watched Grace and the Eridian (Rocky, she reminded herself) bicker back and forth about the prebiotic chemistry of the taumoeba. The traded words between the two were muffled, exasperations streaming from the speakers as she watched on the screen.
He looked the same. Rugged. Handsome. Chaotically brilliant.
She brought her hand up to rub at her sternum, to ease away the pain, to banish it. She did not have time to this.
She had felt like this before, she realized. This pent up emotion that now sat in her teeth, that begged her to scream, to throw something, to rage. But she was silent, unmoving, as the video played before her. Logical Eva Stratt would push this emotion away, to call it impractical and move on. But she remember the last time she felt this much emotion. Singing a pop song and making eye contact, trying to apologize with lyrics and melodies for what she was about to do. For what had to be done.
All for the Greater Good.
Fuck the Greater Good, she decided.
But it wasn't hers to decide. The Greater Good had won as soon as the Beatles Probes had been detected in their solar system four months ago. The Greater Good had ripped her from her quiet job in Germany and had put her in charge of the World's leading scientists, to save the World. The World, the World, the World, the World. All for the Greater Good. What was good about this? Wasn't she allowed to be self-
Stop it, she scolded herself. Eva Stratt took a deep breath.
So.
This emotion.
This emotion was her war prize. It declared her the defeated, while the World thanked her for her efforts. Those voices didn't matter, though.
The only voice that mattered to her was sixteen light years away, and she knew he'd never forgive her. Maybe they would move on to reluctant allies, but the trust was gone. She didn't deserve it anymore. She knew that. He had so easily trusted her, and she had betrayed him, forcing him to do something he didn't want to do, that he was scared to do. All for the Greater Good.
Who was she to decide what that meant? What it took? She was playing a God, making decisions and moving pawns like a deity from a fictitious book, and she had no right to do so.
But she was the Manager. The Enforcer. Her reality was that.
In her field, you left no room for regrets. You did what you did, dealt with the consequences, and you moved on.
But this. The videos held echoes that ate at her, could-haves dancing along her thoughts like nymphs in a Greek myth; the ones that, when she closed her eyes, she could picture; the ones that made her ache to think about. Echoes that were the savior of life on earth.
These were echoes that she was left with. This was her prize. Just the echoes of potential.