“Was that the plan all along?” Maddy asked. “Attacking the entire team just for Arana seems extreme.”
Lilea shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I think they were after Ryker, too.”
“What? Why?” Maddy asked, and the answer hit me.
“Fuck, his mom’s. They’re politicians,” I said.
“Politicians have a lot of high-earning enemies,” Maddy whispered.
“And they must have learned enough about us to know Ryker was here, figured they’d snatch them both with the captain being an unfortunate bystander. Guess the score is big enough to kill us, or at least those of us who went out today. They might have left the rest alone, and made our deaths seem like unfortunate accidents.”
“Regardless of their plans, I think it’s settled. The three of us will go. The rest of your team will stay to protect the habitat. If the pirates had another way to get off-world, they would have left by now, meaning we have time to get our people back and make those fuckers regretever stepping foot on this planet.” Maddy shoved past me to load herself up with weapons.
I saw her wield a blaster throughout most of our childhood. Our parents ensured we knew how to protect ourselves long before we had to make use of that training. That didn’t make the decision to let her tag along any easier.
“Lilea, give us a moment,” I said.
Lilea looked at Maddy, then me, her gold eyes sympathetic. But she said nothing and walked away, claiming she’d inform the others.
“We aren’t debating this,” Maddy said before I had a chance.
“We are because I am not taking you along. I’ll take one other militia member. The three of us have worked together. We’re better prepared.”
“My team needs as many trained militia members to protect them and the habitat as we can manage. You and I both know I can handle myself as well as the rest of you.”
“Then you can stay and protect your friends. I am not risking your life! I just got you back, and we finally have an opportunity to be something, fucking anything again, and I will not risk that. You’re staying here where it’s safe and nothing bad will happen—”
She hugged me. Fiercely. Pouring all the years into a single crushing hold that had us both gasping on a broken sob. I didn’t know what to do, torn between breaking us apart because I didn’t think I deserved the affection, or clinging to her because that was what I wanted. What I needed.
“I’m not a trinket you can hide away for safekeeping,” she said. “You may think you are doing me a kindness, but it isn’t fair to ask me to send you off, either. I want… I do want us to have some semblance of what we once were, but that won’t happen if you treat me like an animal to becaged.”
“It isn’t that… I just…” My arms draped around her, returning the embrace I always yearned for, and I feared I would drop right there. “If I can leave you, I can leave anyone, and it might happen again.”
She laughed. Not humored or joyous, more astounded, then sad. “Is that not a self-fulfilling prophecy? You say you left your sister behind, so you should leave everyone else behind to—what? Prove you made the right choice? To placate your guilt? I know you saw an opportunity and took it. I can’t say whether I would have done the same.”
“You wouldn’t have,” I interjected because there had been countless times where I got in trouble and Maddy was the one to drag me out. She was the eldest and took on the mantle of being a parent, as best she could, after they died.
“I’d like to think I wouldn’t have, but none of us knows what we are or aren’t capable of until we’re looking death in the eye. We were children, severely fucked up children, mind you.”
That encouraged a weak laugh from both of us.
“I know it was hard because we both had it hard. Some days the anger and the hate aren’t there at all, and others I look at you and it all comes…” She winced as if she relived the moment, the pain and horror of seeing herself broken there on the dock.
Maddy stepped back, arms still around my abdomen. The pain faded from her expression, replaced by a stubbornness she wore more often than not. She caught the hem of my visor to tug it free, leaving me exposed, like a torn, bloody nerve.
The air stung my cheeks, and I realized then that I had cried, and more followed when she whispered, “There is nothing for you to feel guilty over anymore, Ethin, so please, let it go.”
There had been a weight, a decade old, smothering me, and in a single sentence, she shattered it. I took a breath so free that I choked on it. Achild curled up alone in the dark wasn’t alone anymore, even if the hug was tense, even if we had forgotten how to fit together. She tried. I tried. And that was all I needed to destroy the walls I built myself, brick by terrible brick.
Maddy smudged the tears across my face, as rough as ever, then tugged my visor on. “Come on, we have people to save. I am sure your boyfriend will find your heroism especially attractive.”
She shoved past me into the hall, where she called for Lilea to get whatever she needed. We would leave in five.
Maddy was right. All those years, I thought it would be better to remain alone. Being alone meant distance, safety in the sense that I wouldn’t feel the pain of losing her again. I would never be put in a predicament where I would lose someone I cared about if I only ever cared about myself. I wrote the prophecy and played it out myself.
There was a risk on every path I took, and I decided I would rather risk myself than live the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I had gone after Roys, Arana, and Ryker. I didn’t want a world without them in it. Simple as that.
I grabbed what more that I could when an idea hit me. We may need over five minutes, but I knew the best person to get this potential plan into action.
