She took a few steps back. “Marik…I…”
The words would not come. She could not tell him she belonged to another even though she should. Had to. She had to tell him but she couldn’t because saying that would make it true somehow.
It was true.
It didn’t matter that she had no idea if Ben still lived. Until she knew for sure, she could not give him anything, and yet she had.
Her heart hurting and her spirit battered by her actions, all she could do was say, “I hear screams.”
His face crumpled into lines of disappointment, but all he did was fasten his trousers and give her a nod. “As do I. The work never ends. Come on, let’s…” He paused. “Jenny…”
Before she could answer, that scream she had heard before turned into an ear-splitting shriek. She turned, her feet already moving toward the door. He followed behind her and the moment was lost in the rush of caring for those who needed them so badly.
Jenny sat back on her heels, her eyes taking in the face of the man who lay on the floor. He had just come staggering to the door, his body huddled down and blood showing on the upper right-hand side of his tunic. She said, “I can’t believe that it is you!”
The man on the floor looked up at her with a big smile. He said, “I can’t believe it’s you either.”
Jenny stared down at Ben’s face. It had been such a long time since she had seen him and she expected to feel a rush of emotion. She expected to feel all the love that she had felt for him before to come rolling back in and sweep her away. Only she felt nothing but a gladness that he had survived the terrible atrocities that had been brought upon the planet. Fear started as she realized that she felt absolutely nothing but that gladness.
She busied herself with the bandages that she had brought to put over his wound. “You’re lucky. It was a minor wound. You must’ve ducked out of the way just as the weapon went off.”
He gave her a wry smile. “No, actually it hit a wall or something first they think.”
She pressed the bandages down and began to fasten them into place. His hand caught one of hers, and she paused in her task. She looked down to see his eyes staring at her intently. Ben asked, “Where did you go? I mean, when you left. Where did they take you?”
She looked away. She continued to fasten the bandage in place, choosing her words carefully so as to avoid causing him pain. “I was placed on a bride ship, but it was taken by wreckers. I was taken to Orbital by the wreckers, who gave me two choices: work off the debt that I now owed them for my safe passage and the removal of my name from the manifests that ship held, or make my own way throughout the universe.”
She finished taping the bandages now, and she sat back, staring at him with a sense of wonder. He had lost weight, and his face wore a faint flush of tan. There was something about him though that seemed off; she just couldn’t put her finger on it. He seemed nervous and upset, and not just because they were meeting again for the first time. Something in her stomach, some small warning system, went off, but she had no idea what it meant.
He asked, “And the people who brought you here?”
She said, “They own a small private planet. Because I had already repaid part of my debt to them and because… Because they thought I could be of use, they asked me to become an inhabitant of the planet. One of the owners is the being that helped to first create the rebellion and then halt the advance of the Borlites.
“They are good. Perhaps…”
Her tongue ran over her suddenly dry lips. She said, “Perhaps instead of staying here, we could return there. It’s a primitive planet, and there are no cities or governments to speak of. It’s hard to live there. It’s cut off, for the most part, it has very little to do with the other planets in the galaxy, but it’s beautiful has clean air and its new.”
Tears came up in her eyes. She loved it there. If she had not known before that moment that she truly wanted to return to Revant Two, she knew then. She no longer wanted to live on Old Earth. She wanted to help her people of course, but some small part of her had already realized that if she stayed on until everything they needed was given she would die there without ever having truly lived. It seemed selfish. But it was true.
Hard on the heels of that thought came another.
She wanted to be with Marik. Yes, she had been promised to this man lying on the floor before her, but that promise had been broken by someone other than herself. Things had changed a great deal in the time since she had been taken from him and that moment that they were now in.
Ben sat up. His smile was wide, but it seemed false. Had he somehow sensed what she was feeling? Did he somehow know that her heart belonged elsewhere now? Unnerved by that and confused by her defection from her feelings for him, Jenny looked away, but Ben’s fingers captured her jaw and turned her head back toward him.
He said, “How much stuff did they bring? I mean, do they have a lot of food and things? I heard that they were bringing credits to help rebuild it. And a whole lot of them to boot.”
Discomfort set in. “Most of the water and food is gone. It went to help the people here in the hospital, and a lot of it was distributed out on the streets. People are starving. The Federation has given nothing despite all their promises of aid. Everyone says that they came and it was a big ceremony and then they left and there’s been no word. Is that true?”
Been dismissed her question with an impatient wave of his hand. “Yes, of course, it’s true.”
She blinked. He didn’t seem upset about it. Then again how would she know how he felt? She had been living a fairly peaceful existence even while on Orbital, and especially after going to Revant Two.
A pang of guilt struck. It wasn’t her fault that she had not been here for all of the terrible things that happened. She had had no choice in that matter at all. But she still felt guilty that she had not been there. An even larger strike of guilt came when she realized that he had had to live through all of those things. That he had had to suffer. Her hand tried to take his, but he pulled it away slightly.
His eyes burned brightly as he asked, “And the credits? Are they real? Do they really have them?”
“I… I don’t think so. I’ve never seen any.”
