#destroyer asks

Apollo treated each of them. He was getting to be very good at it, somehow immune to the desolation of the facilities. His resolve only strengthened over time. It took Delta too long to realize just how strong he was; how wholly relentless. In the darker part of the night, Delta wanted to cling to his cloth, to pray. There were so many debts that could never be repaid, and it was never for lack of trying. For now, he settled with sitting with him. For now, it had to be enough.

Apollo went over his notes by candlelight.

“I admit,” he said. “I don’t see the point of you leaving Galatea at all, if Levon lets you keep up the same projects.”

Two bright lights returned the fire.

“…It’s my project,” Delta said from across the table. His arms were folded, and he rested his chin against them. “Levon couldn’t have kept me from it if he wanted to.”

~

exiterratum: why are you sending me these?

exiterratum: i don’t get what point you’re trying to make. you know i never wanted this.

exiterratum: never in a million years would i have ever let this happen to you 

nodiving: i wasnt trying to make a point 

exiterratum: i don’t want to see gore all the time it makes me uncomfortable 

nodiving: sorry 

nodiving: i wasnt trying to upset you i just wanted you to see it

nodiving: this is like my whole life right now and you said you wanted to come back into it so i thought it made sense to tell you what im doing 

nodiving: there are not many people i can talk to about this

~

Graves were dug uniformly, far away from the labs. Some poor intern went through the trouble of contacting the families, of trying to find some record of the victims’ wills even after they’d been so thoroughly violated. Hundreds of funerals went by, sometimes twice in one day. 

Delta cried. He hardly felt shame about it anymore. There came a thin undercurrent of fear instead, but even that faded with practice. Nobody ever hit him anymore. Nobody scolded him. Apollo ran his hands through his hair, and pulled him in tight to his chest. The grief was larger than entire worlds. There were no words for what had been lost. The dead alone brought the reckoning, and the dead were the lucky. At least, he’d thought so once.

Out by the beach, Delta sat motionless for hours at a time. The air tasted like salt. He watched the waves break up against the sand, endless. Forever, the tide would come in. Forever.

~

nodiving: hey

exiterratum: hey !!

nodiving: sorry did i wake you up

exiterratum: uh, yeah, kinda. but it’s fine. what’s up? did you need something?

nodiving: yes i needed to ask you something 

nodiving: did you have access to my file or anything that would have any clues about where i might have come from

nodiving: i was just wondering mostly cause you kinda implied my parents gave me up

nodiving: like. did they

exiterratum: fuck oh my god

exiterratum: no im sorry that was just me being horrible 

exiterratum: im sorry 

exiterratum: i don’t know what happened to your parents, the files never said anything about it, but i can’t imagine they gave you up willingly. just based off the time period i’d guess you were separated during the war? or taken deliberately as part of the imperial project. 

nodiving: oh

nodiving: okay

nodiving: what war

exiterratum: like any of the efforts to colonize the aquatic sphere, i think probably Celadon? i don’t know for sure but i think that’s where the population was most heavily concentrated and where most of the fighting took place 

nodiving: wait

nodiving: do you know what species i am

exiterratum: you’re a naiad

nodiving: a what

~

Delta rolls the word around between his teeth.

“Naiad. Did you know?” He looked to Kali. Little sparks ran through the circuit of his veins. He felt giddy, almost. There was a rare and precious pride. Delta studied the curve of his own claws. He paid careful attention to the webbing of his fingers. He counted to see how long he could hold his breath.

“…That’s quite a broad term, isn’t it?” Kali said gently. She’d been wearing a swimsuit beneath her clothes lately. Everyone he was brave enough to confide in had turned out to be very indulgent.

Naiad for water-spirit, for the forgotten war. It was the closest thing he had. Kali had a point: It didn’t narrow it down very much. 

~

nodiving: do you know what happened to simon

exiterratum: lol fuck that guy

exiterratum: sorry i genuinely could not stand that wishy-washy motherfucker he pissed me off so bad

exiterratum: no i don’t know what happened to him, i swear to god i was only on the ship like another week after you disappeared and i spent most of that locked in my room

exiterratum: but i would guess he just retired? he was always threatening to and i guess after you left he didnt have anything else to pretend to be principled about

exiterratum: good fucking riddance honestly like why would you want to waste any more fucking energy on that guy

nodiving: he was nice to me 

exiterratum: …

exiterratum: lemme ask around 

nodiving: thank you

~

Delta’s skin was cold, and it tasted of salt. That was according to Kali, who had laid with him through the endless interplanetary nights. The bedroom was kept dark, illuminated only by the scattered stars outside — and by the ambient light that their bodies would produce when either was excited enough. The poor thing had been glowing unsteadily all night, and little pained mews escaped him even when unconscious.

“Baby,” Kali said, dreamlike intonation, a meditation: “You’re in the throes of fever. That’s all. Wake up if you can. It’s just the dream and the dark.”

When Delta cracked his eyes open in the sweltering hypnagogia, the blue light traced eerie waveforms against the glass panes. 

“…It’s not a dream,” he answered, a little sleepily, a little sullen.

“Hm?”

“It’s not a dream. It really happened,” he murmured. “It seems too horrible to be real, but it all really happened.”

“Whaddya see?” Kali’s eye’s widened a little in the dark too. She cradled his body closer, craned her neck to look for signs of somniloquy. It was impossible to know. She felt as though she might be trespassing, that this was more than he’d ever say while awake. He could be so quiet.

“Beds. Bodies. They buried them out in the yard. They beat me when I cried.”

But she knew that, didn’t she? Kali could have guessed. The psychic pain she felt in that instance was sharp and stinging, enough to kill if she was not careful with it. But it felt dangerous to dampen all the same. A strange energy came over her as she attuned to it.

“What else?”

“Piano lessons. I killed a cat. I think I’m horrible, Kali. I can’t come back.”

“Don’t speculate. No judgement. Just what it was, what you saw.”

“…The rooms were clean, and it felt nice to sit by the open windows.“ Delta flinched in his sleep. Saltwater. “I miss my mom.”

~

She was right that it was easier in daylight, when the shadow receded. Apollo brought an easy warmth to any room he entered and was already so naturally attuned to any instance of suffering. Delta did not want to worry him, but he said such worrying things.

There were a lot of files to sift through. Apollo did so out of necessity, going through with a highlighter for each proper noun, for every unexpected word. He’d gotten quite good at parsing the information by now. What had once been such an incomprehensible nightmare was now sedated by the sciences, by routine and by understanding. 

Apollo could probably rig one of these himself by now. 

Delta got a sort of unpleasant titillation in his stomach at the thought of it.

Delta, who had no interest in — and was frankly a little wary of — medicine, did not need to review the files with half as much rigor. For him, it was mostly morbid curiosity, looking for something he couldn’t name. Maybe something to hurt himself. Apollo seemed reluctant to hand over the worst of it.

It took Delta a long while to become aware of what his eyes were scanning for on each page. Not until he already had a mental catalogue of names and addresses.

~

Delta was ready to end it all over again. It always had to be like this. That first detachment had really made his mark on him, led him to believe the only way to ever exit was by blowing a hole through the ceiling. 

The heartbreak of that came for him long before he was able to even give voice to the rebellion. He’d been preparing for a fight. But in the end, he plead his case to only one person, and left nearly everyone else in the dark.

Kali’s eyes glistened without tears, captivated rather by some internal guiding light. He waited for her to bite him.

“…I think you should do it,” she said instead.

Delta faltered. These days, he expected more opposition than he ever got. It made his fortifications feel childish — if not excessive, then at least misaligned. He never knew what to protect himself from anymore.

“You mean it?” He tilted his head, felt a painful pressure travel up his brain stem. Too much tension. Too many nightmares.

Kali nodded, and she did not smile. She said: “You think that you have to, and I think so too.”

~~~

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