#「 file. → 002. / cherished memories with friends . › saved . 」

[heseventh-blog]

tags uwu

[syxjaewon]

👀 + "What are three of your most favorite memories?"

favorite memories, ones he holds onto when the cold seepstoo far into his bones, when space gets too wide, expanding out faster than thespeed of light, when the ghosts come down the corridors in the darkness,calling his name, howling about spilt blood and horrors and war. favoritememories, ones he clings to with eyes nearly sewed shut, too-sharp vision withnothing he wants to see, pain bursting in his head like supernovae. notnecessarily important memories, not just the snippets of his life that have createdhis iron-plated skin, his mountaintop persona, the pricks and bruises that haveshaped his heart, colored it violet.

there are so many of those. ones he thinks about too oftenand ones he’d rather just ignore ( i wish i could forget you the way you forgotme… ), ones he knows are embedded in his ribs as deeply as the axe that wasonce shoved into his side, as deeply as the slave numbers branded on hiscollar.

but his favorites?

001.

he clings to the rooftop like a small animal, a boy with afake name and a fake birthdate, the vallurian skyline dark and dotted withmillions of stars he has never been able to touch. he’s made it all the way upto the top of this tower, fighting and shooting his way up, bullets cursed outfrom the guns he knows how to steal and use before discarding and gatheringanother. he has no gun of his own, one doesn’t need it when everyone else hasso many to pick over after they’ve died. he falls in line with a group offreedom fighters, star-dwellers he’s never seen before until tonight, and hedoesn’t know why he’s running with them, only that he has nothing left to goback to.

his reason comes over them like a god, engines whirling,lights shining, it’s presence kicking up a slew of whirlwinds that drag andpull at his hair, his clothes, his limbs. it’s a machine, a ship, large andbuilt into a peculiar shape, come around the edge of the top of the building,too close, close enough to shake the ground, shake the tower they stand on. andjaewon is on his knees, nails in the ground, eyes wide and awestruck, dustblowing into his mouth but he doesn’t cough—you’re not a true vallurian if youcough at a little dust.

the space ship lands a few meters away, its crew approachingthe docking area and jaewon sits still because he is not crew, he is not them,he is street rat, he is ghost, he is sand from the desert, sifting between thecracks of the world, between fingers that want to tear at him desperately.

a woman turns and stands before him, scars on her face likebattle trophies, her eyes cold and steady as stones, her jaw sharp enough tocut a man in half. tight lips, thin arms, a gun over her shoulder almost aslarge as she is. “which side are you on?” she asks, her voice like steel, thelights of a thousand stars burning behind her and he knows this is his onlychance.

he doesn’t hesitate. “whichever side gets me the hell offthis planet.”

002.

he stares at the blinking red light and knows this couldvery well be the end of everything. he hasn’t even started yet, hasn’t evenbeen given enough time to prove himself, but he knows well enough that he’llobey a direct order. if she tells him to come back. if she demands he returnher property. if she disowns him. his stomach twists into knots, his spinemelting into jelly; too many ifs. he doesn’t want to answer this, but he can’tignore it.

he pushes the light and stands straight up to attention, theway being an army sergeant has burned into his posture.

“jaewon,” she says, and with those two syllables, he knowsshe’d frustrated.

“okay before you start, let me just explain myself a littlebit, alright? i have three reasons for why i’ve done what i have, and if you’lljust listen to me, you’ll understand.”

she pauses, her dark eyes unblinking, contempt in the lineof her lips. “good reasons?”

“well, we’ll see in a minute, i’m making them up right now.so basically,” he begins. “i’ve more or less grown up here on this boat, i knowher ins and outs better than anyone else who’d try to buy it from you, and whilei can’t pay you back immediately, i can certainly send things back eventually.secondly,” okay now things are getting a little bit muddier inside his head. hehasn’t really come up with a strategy for this conversation—he really is makingthis up as he goes along. “i’m already off-world; henry and jonas and mina arewith me, we’ve taken the ship to yeret’s moon, where we’re working on thingsand reconstructing things—we’re going to have her back to operational very soon.so she won’t be unsafe or breakable out in the black, she’ll be completely new;i’m even going to rename her—”

“jaewon—”

“and thirdly!” he’s stumbling all over his words now, barelyable to maintain eye-contact. young sun-dried boy, 21 years old, still burningfrom the war, desperate now for something steady in his life, grasping ontoanything that is familiar. he wants to lock everything up into his chest,before he inevitably loses it all, because if the last four years of bloodshed,of killing and dying and horror, has taught him anything, it’s that he absolutelycan lose. “thirdly… i love this ship. it’s… home.” the only home he’s evermanaged to get. the closest to heaven he’ll ever tread. there is a hatefultremor in his voice, a weakness in his clenched teeth, and he’d rather die thanlook up at her right now. he cannot meet her gaze.

the silence that pours into the room is only a beat, butfeels like an eternity. finally she sighs. “jaewon. have you looked into the topright hand corner of the cabinet there?”

“i—what?”

she points to the cabinet off to the side of the bridge, theone carrying most of the paperwork for the ship, paperwork jaewon knows allabout, but knows not to mess with. he walks over and opens it up, pulls somefiles out, takes his time reading the documentation for the legalities of thespaceship. his name is littered throughout it.

“you…. you left it to me?” an inheritance?

“figured it’d be easier for you to make your way, if youdidn’t have to forge the documents.” she sounds unsurprised, unshaken, unmoved.

meanwhile jaewon falls apart at his seams, his teeth lockedtogether, his chest tightly wound, but that does nothing to stop his lungs fromshaking, his nose from stinging, his eyes from watering. he looks up at herthrough brimming tears, gold eyes uncharacteristically soft and shining. “yougave me the ship…?”

lost boy, street rat, desert orphan, born of sun and muckand trash, abandoned by faces he can’t remember, given nothing, saved for nothing,not even a name to go by. the families he creates keep dying or falling apart,losing friends, losing home, losing the war; his purpose, his ideals, hismorals shattered. golden eyes useless now, haunted only by the screams ofentire planets as they explode, his shoulders heavy with the weight of havingnothing.

vera lets a corner of her lips lift, a rare smile, a rarelight in her aged eyes, an unspeakable bond between them—mother and son. theyare not related and yet, they are. “take care of my boat, kid.” the screen cutsout.

003.

the third is not a memory of anything specific, not a singleset of dialogue or one interaction between himself and anyone else. it is ahodgepodge of views, the way jaewon sits at the head of the table in the messhall, reading over the cortex, day in, day out, his leg propped over the edgeof the arm of the chair, his posture slumped and comfortable. he reads andsometimes actually pays attention to what is there, but then mostly he’s payingmore attention to what’s going on around him, the way the crew and passengersinteract with each other as they meander through the room with the kitchenette andcouches. from this spot, jaewon can hear most things that are going on aroundthe ship as well, everything echoing off the halls; laughter and conversationsand shouts.

 “do you put your gorram feet on my countertops!?”

“i specifically remember you saying no standing on thechairs so i can’t use them. feet on counters it is.”

“i have some nice relaxing medi-packets if you are ‘stressed’CAP-tan…”

“well, I think you’reover-looking a third option: the brightest thing of all is my smile…”

“sorry, did you say plant? or planet?”

“or maybe you were dreaming. you dream of me, kafka?”

“oh like, could you teach me the tea stuff? and calligraphystuff you do too is like super pretty…”

“well?! is it a massive picture collection of dogs or apicture collection of massive dogs?!”

“i would totally sacrifice at least twenty cows for you…”

loud crew, noisy crew, alive and healthy and boisterous,some of them still wide-eyed, some of them with pasts drenched in blood, butall of them here, all of them safe under the wings of a ship named for abattle. jaewon’s people, a set of faces he won’t call family out loud, butinstead with every beat of a heart he swears doesn’t exist. their voices fillhis days to the brim, jokes and rumors, music and awkwardness, familiarity andquiet bonds stronger than the cohesion of atoms.

his crew. as long as they’re still flying, these are thememories he clings to, the ones he cherishes silently, the ones he lives for.at death’s door, these are the moments that will display across the universe ofhis life. and that would be heaven enough.