“Weapon! Disarm!”
His voice was harsher now, louder. But Lornia did not hear him, did not listen. Above in the sky, more of her power burned. It shot from her outstretched arms and her legs and center of her being. It poured from her mouth, from her eyes, and even from her elegantly carved nostrils. Time stopped. Nothing moved. He was aware of that fact, aware of what was happening, but unable to break past the sudden cessation of time itself to move toward her and to give her that order yet again.
Then time came back. It jolted, rocking the world around them with a clap somewhat like thunder and a lot like a sonic boom. People lurched forward, as time did as well. He managed to move, and that time his fingers, still tightly wound into her hair, lifted her head up toward her shoulders and then turned her face toward his. The force of her power hit him, withering the skin away from his face and burning him like fire. Everything in him said this was death, that he was fighting against his own death and it was stupid and pointless. To let her go.
But his heart said if this was how he died, if he’d died with her, then so be it.
His mouth came down on hers. Her power flooded into him, shattering every bone, destroying every organ. He could feel himself breaking down to nothing but a series of molecules and atoms, becoming dust and ash on the wind. Her lips fastened to his, and the keening of the wind grew higher, stronger, and louder. His eyes were gone now, and he was unable to see. It didn’t matter. He could feel her body against his, what was left of it, and he was dying.
The Federation was gone. Swept away from the universe and sent into the other. The door was forming. Lornia was forming the door that would keep this universe safe, and he was dying, dying right there in her arms. And it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter if people forgot his name. It didn’t matter that there was no glory in such an ignominious death. It didn’t matter that he was in so much agony behind his kiss and the scream that he could not voice. It did not matter that he would never see her again because for one heartbreaking, heart-stopping second, a tiny little space somewhere between the loss of space and time, his body actually melded into hers. They were one. One creature; one being with one purpose.
Disarm the weapon. Disarm the weapon. Disarm the weapon.
