#my dm and bestie made a joke about a hypothetical nat 1 after our session and my brain went fucking bonkers dude

[maxillis]

The hardest part is remembering that the heat on your skin is only a memory. You can try to take it from there, if you want, but instead you focus on water; something cool, something comforting, before you turn to something harder to soothe out the muscles that ache from two marathons—one of endurance and another of fortitude.

The heat rises from your chest to your face, where a sturdy bump on your forehead is threatening to grow. Still, it hurts less than the sight of a little girl stuck in an active Cressidium war zone. You know you’ll see her gift to Alaska in FACTORY-RESET’s cockpit by your next deployment, whenever that is.

Best to clear your mind for now—or fog it away, given how many drinks you find yourself taking from quite the unassuming bartender. They don’t recognize you in the slightest. This is another comfort you don’t take for granted; the prosocollar around your neck masks your true voice, and your paranoias about eavesdropping or confrontation die. You haven’t said anything incriminating, but you’ll be damned if you take a step out of your mech that isn’t calculated. And this stress, this constant vigilance, metastasizes.

You’re drinking with a man, you realize. He’s dripping blood on the floor and the noise is only unbearable to you. Quietly, splat, splat, he drips, not yet glancing over. His glass raises between you, waiting to meet your drink with a cheers. In clear defiance, you refuse to raise your hand to the red-stained glass.

It bleeds onto you, crimson on your palms and under your nails. You don’t blink away the consequences of what you’ve done, not even when you feel droplets drying in your hair. You continue to drink, ignoring the metallic taste that you know isn’t alcohol. It doesn’t make a difference to you.

“That’s fine. You don’t have to look. It’s only us.”

It’s something that man, that son-of-a-bitch in the specter would have never said, you're sure. The only words out of him before had been “kys” and you hold little belief that he had anything nicer to add after the fact of his death. It couldn’t be him that came to drink with you tonight.

Before you know it, you are looking up at the seat next to you, searching for what you are certain to hear next.

He’s gone.

You tell yourself to forget the first time you heard those words, and the second time, and the third. It's been a long time since you were young, green, and unsure. Back when you couldn't bear to look, you always had someone to look for you, to charge ahead, or to take a life. Still, the memory of sickness and disgust reviles you. 

The taste in your mouth is your own blood, as it turns out. You've been biting your tongue for the better part of two minutes in the best interest of not freaking out every person you're drinking near, or saying something to your own bodied memories that you might regret. You take your drink to the end of the bar before the bartender can think you look too sick to hang around. 

We all learned it from the best, you think. We as in a long-gone squadron, as in a colony home in ice-ring orbit, as in a family of people who are carried on by the only one remaining. This is why you accept the clap on your shoulder, the memory reverberating with a "Well done!" that you couldn't misunderstand if you tried. You did well today. You've always done well, even when you didn't. And like a school game between children, you were the last to look, so it's only fitting you'd be the one to carry it all home. He says it again to make sure you heard it full and well.

“That’s fine. You don’t have to look. It’s only us.”

There is no us anymore. Just like there is no we, and truthfully no you.

⤝⦽⤞ What secrets do you know?

You shoot him cold between a double-barrel and a pillow. You don’t even blink. But, you do sit with him, still caught in whatever celestial dream that turned out to be his last, as you pat his knee.

“Well done.” It is the only thing you can bring yourself to say. For a long time, you cannot, cannot, look away. In your heart you know that it’s only a matter of time before someone comes in to check on the noise, yet you remain there, and when the door inevitably opens—

Pop. Your shotgun flies up to the headline of the now-open door frame, and another body hits the floor. You don’t look at this one, your gaze still fixed on the man in blissful sleep. It isn’t how he would have wanted to go out, being put down like a dog. That was how they wanted him dead. Not you, but that person who owns the shotgun you grip with white knuckles, cocking back and launching a pretty red shell onto the bed. The dead man catches it with his cheek.

You look at him instead of the other corpse that regrets joining you.

“You don’t have to look,” the dead man says. He’s looking at you and he’s trying, somewhat, to smile. It all comes up cracked skin and blue veins. “It’s only us.”

You swallow your heart down your throat, but it all comes back up.

Standing at attention in front of your Field Commander only seems easy because of the mental preparation you have bounded through on the ride from the dropship, back to your base. The noise of your shotgun still rings in your ears. You don’t realize that your team has left you until you hear the door close; the disorientation is not letting up, only staved for now by the red-hot brand of your former Lieutenant’s medallion-lined jacket in your hands. You’re keeping it as a souvenir. You hold on for dear life, like this alone can keep you from falling over. It’ll work well enough for now.

“You’ve done excellent work this week.” In all your months of working with this company, you’ve never received such praise. From anyone else, it’s a praise that might even be received warmly. Work had been agonizingly slow; intel was hard to come by and politics kept you from blazing your guns for longer than you ever felt comfortable. In the end, the very person that you had been searching for had been the one who kept you closest. You can’t ration it into a victory.

Atop your Field Commander’s desk is a large metal suitcase, closed and facing you. She continues to ignore it as she speaks to you with gusto and a smile so kind that any fool too trusting might think her to be an angel—she knows, and you are grateful, that you are no regular fool. The smile won’t hit her eyes.

“I can only commend you for eliminating our…old friend. Plenty of people in this building wouldn’t have the guts.” Not like your guts, she means, but you do remember how you spewed them all over the old motel room and opt to keep that part to yourself. It isn’t like the cleaners would say shit. “I’m not sure how long he was planning on staying alive, though, as long as he kept giving you his keys.” 

What else can you say?

“I’m not sure either, ma’am.”

It seems to satisfy her well enough. She hums, nods, and seemingly decides that she isn’t making too big of a gamble by passing on this gift. What a mistake it would turn out to be, but for now she is the one in blissful unawareness.

When the suitcase pops open, a snow-white shotgun glares your reflection back at you. The truth is, you don’t look like you’ve just come back from killing your closest companion, the only other living legacy, other than you, of a galactic disaster that everyone else forgot—you’re smiling, softly.

“I’m glad you can appreciate a weapon worth admiring.” Her voice grates down on you. You’re certain she’s aware. Knowing her, she could smell it like a shark in the water.

“Thank you.” When your voice catches, you pass it off as pure admirance for the craftsmanship. It is a gun you could put on a wall or display in a case, glistening and smooth, certain to catch the eye. A closer look would tell you that it’s a working shotgun just the same. “Was this custom-made?”

“Without a doubt. She’s all yours. I shouldn’t have to tell you to watch out for the recoil on this one, right?”

You only pause for a moment. It’s enough time to remember the red shell hitting your dead Lieutenant's cheek, and the sure feeling that he would wake up to ask, fuck was that for?

You wonder if you should kill her now, judging the weight of this new model in your grasp. You don’t care that the dirt from your hands leaves prints and smudges. The pride must come from the intense amount of cleaning that would be necessary for this weapon to keep its luster. You know you aren’t wasting a second of your time on anything that isn’t gun oil.

You have hesitated too long to do what you want to. Your following answer is mechanical.

“No, ma’am.”

“Stellar. I’m expecting you at 700 hours tomorrow. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant. ”

It’s the first thing to hurt you since you left the ice.

⤝⦽⤞ Where is the rest of your team?

What do you wanna be? I dunno, I kinda wanna fly one of those airships. You know, the big ones. The ones with a bunch of cargo? You wanna be a space trucker?! Maybe I do! I could just go out and fly until the end of the galaxy. They’d pay me good. Come on, that can’t be all you care about. Stupid. You’re not gonna get anywhere if you’re not making money! I’d rather hang out all day. Why work out there when we could just stay here? You can’t hate me so bad that you’d run out of the galaxy. …Nah. I’d come back. I know you would. You’d miss all this! 

When he threw his arms out, you laughed, and you punched him square in the chest.

Ow! Fuck was that for? I have more than just you to miss. Fine. I won’t take all the credit. I’ll just take most of it. You can have a solid five percent of the credit. If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were saying you loved me. 

When you wake up, your head is throbbing in more than one place. You go through your memories for over an hour in the bathtub; how you got to the bar, who you were with, how you ended up leaving—not everything comes back. The man from the specter does.

I’m ripping your spine inside out. If you say it loud enough in your head he has to hear it, right? If you get angry enough, if you kill him with enough blood and luxury to satisfy a king, he has to appreciate it more than being executed in his sleep, right? If he knows the person doing the killing, if he can look in their eyes and give one final scream, then it would be better than dying a coward’s death, wouldn’t it?

You storm out to your closet, to the pockets of your Lieutenant’s old jacket—the one you still wear everywhere you go—and you pull a long, metal chain from the breast pocket. It jangles as it hangs from your hands, and even more when you unclasp it.

You’re grateful no one else was in that cockpit with you. You ripped that pilot’s tags straight from his neck and shoved them in your pocket when you pierced through his heart. 

Coward’s death or otherwise, there are certain things you would chase to the end of the galaxy. Your anger, for one. Your past, for another.

His tags join the collection you’ve amassed. You can’t count how many names you’ve stolen (though you could, if you could manage to rifle through all of their names)—or how many bodies were probably buried unnamed, or who might've been lucky enough to be found by their family. What does it matter, when there’s no one left to remember yours? 

You return the chain to the jacket's left breast pocket. The pilot from the specter claps your shoulder. Instead of saying the only thing you believe you’ll be hearing next, he kisses you.

Then, there is nothing. You are alone.

You feel that, in a world where your luck is dictated by dice, you’ve come up snake eyes.