Alien Avatar: An Alien Sci-Fi Romance Page 11

  “And if things don’t look good?”

  Marko shrugged.

  “Then we’re fucked.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Marko finished packing his bag with the supplies he’d taken from Tariq’s ship. He hadn’t taken much. More food, a light plasma repeater that he’d decided was finally worth the trouble of hauling around, and some new maps of the terrain ahead.

  Naeesha had been keeping her distance for the last hour, and he got the impression that she wasn’t all that pleased with him. Understandable, but regrettable. He couldn’t help but worry for the conversation that he knew was coming though. All he could do was hope that she would understand why he’d spared her some of truth.

  After all, it didn’t change anything. Everything he’d told her had been true. All he’d done was left out some of the details of how and why and what did all of that matter anyway?

  They didn’t talk much as they kept walking towards the distant treeline. By the time it came into view over the horizon and they stopped to set up camp, they still hadn’t said more than about ten words to each other.

  The campground they’d chosen was mostly clear of debris. There were a few big trees that had fallen over the bare ground, but nothing that they wouldn’t be able to move once the rest of the group arrived.

  For now, they kept themselves busy by getting rid of some of the small stuff littering the ground.

  Marko watched Naeesha out of the corner of his eye as he walked around collecting armfuls of dead wood, piling them up for using in a fire later. She was going far out of her way to avoid talking to him, or even looking at him. Maybe it was worse than he thought.

  He tried to figure out what to say to her. How to start the conversation. But the words weren’t coming to him, and neither was the courage. He’d never been able to stand up to her when he felt like he’d let her down. For all the ways that he’d grown, that hadn’t changed at all.

  Before he could figure anything out, she turned around and climbed onto a tall stump, looking out onto the horizon. He followed her eyes and saw a long line of Halians making their way across the flattened landscape. It would still be an hour or two before they made it. They were still just little dots on the horizon.

  He was glad they’d made it. He’d feared that they’d see the smoke from the airship attack and stop and turn back.

  Marko followed Naeesha as she climbed down from the stump and went back to collecting debris.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She pretended not to hear him.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you everything earlier.”

  Still, no response. His hands started to sweat and he could feel his throat getting tight. He hated when she got like this. It made it so hard to tell her everything that he had to say. It made him feel like she would always be angry, and that there was no point in trying to fix things.

  “The truth is, I’m really not working for Tariq. I mean, I’m trying to help him, and if I can find a way to save some Alderoccans, I will.”

  He was pretty sure that even if he started jumping and screaming about another cluster of evil death lizards, she would still ignore him.

  “When I came out here to try and understand the Halians, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It started as a mission, just like Tariq said. But that all changed. I saw who they were, how they lived, and I fell in love with them. I realized that I didn’t care about the Alderoccans anymore. It was the Halians that I wanted to see through all of this.”

  Every word that fell on deaf ears hurt him like a dagger to the heart.

  “Are you even listening?”

  Naeesha didn’t look up.

  “No. Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I’m trying to tell you the truth.”

  “Why start now?” she said, dumping an armful of wood onto the pile.

  “Because you deserve it. I mean, you always did, and I’m sorry that I held things back from you. I don’t know why I did that. It was stupid. I guess I was afraid that you wouldn’t believe me if you thought I was just undercover. I wanted you to see the Halians for who they were. I wanted you to understand that I really am one of them now.”

  She turned and gave him a glare that could have set the whole forest ablaze.

  “And why did you think that lying to me was the best way to get me to believe you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. Maybe you can tell me why you couldn’t trust me then? Twenty-five years of watching your back, no matter what. And you can’t trust me?”

  “I… I can trust you. I do trust you.”

  “Clearly.”

  Marko rubbed his temples and sat down on an upturned tree, watching the Halian procession as it creeped ever closer to them. He took a deep breath and tried to center himself. He needed to find a new way of approaching all of this. Naeesha was right. He hadn't trusted her. He’d lied to her. He was going to have to do better if he ever wanted her to believe him again. Time would help, but she needed something from him. Needed something that she could believe.

  He just didn’t have anything left to give her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Halians arrived and spared Naeesha from the agonizing silence that followed her argument with Marko. She was glad that he’d stopped talking. She hated fighting with him. But just because the silence was preferable to him trying to explain what a shitlord he’d been, it didn’t mean that she enjoyed it.

  It didn’t take her long to realize how isolated she was in the Halian cmap without Marko. Before, she’d been able to get by through him and through Kiran. Now she couldn’t talk with anybody.

  Still, she kept herself busy by helping people unpack, moving more logs out of the way, and setting up the tents. There wasn’t much room for anything besides the dining hall and the sleeping tent, and with all hands helping, it didn’t take long before those tasks were finished and she found herself standing around with nothing to do and no one to talk to.

  There were still a few hours before the circles, and most of the Halians got around to making the most of their time and trying to enjoy themselves. There was music and laughter and dancing and talking, but it didn’t fill her with joy or compell her to happiness the way that it had the previous two nights. Even though she could feel how content and grateful the Halians were, the emotions couldn’t make it through the wall that she’d put up to protect herself from Marko.

  So she sat on a stump outside of the celebrating Halians, and moped.

  What the fuck was she doing? Five hundred miles from home. Or the quiet place with lots of whisky in it that passed for home. Either way, it was better than here. Where there was only one person she could talk to, and that person happened to be a lying asshole.

  And she thought she was ready to spend the rest of her life with him and his band of three-eyed, red-skinned aliens? After three days? It took her back to when she’d met Marko. The younger version of him, anyway. She’d felt inexplicably drawn to him. To his mystery. To his quiet calm. After only really knowing him for all of a week before they’d gone into the Dynasty compound together.

  Those two hours changed both of their lives forever. In a way, that failed mission ensured that they’d spend the next twenty-five years together. Who else could understand what they’d gone through but each other. And even though the conflict between the Alderoccans and the Halians created a whole new generation of horror for her fellow soldiers to share in, none of it had come close to the first moment when hell came to Alderoc.

  Through all of it, she and Marko had been together.

  And why? Because he was a good fuck? Because he was as fucked up as she was? If that was all, then why hadn’t she just found someone who could outdo him on both counts. There were plenty of them around, it wouldn’t have even been that hard to do.

  After all, she’d found dozens of them. All those times that something had pushed her and Marko apart, and she thought it would be the last tim
e, and she tried to move on and find something or someone else to fill the space. She always did. And then those things went away. And then she found herself back alongside him again. How many times? And here she was again.

  It was pathetic. Disgusting.

  She wouldn’t let it happen again. And she certainly wasn’t going to let herself wind up going through some ridiculous interdimensional hole in space-time to travel to another planet with him. Fuck that.

  She was going back to the capital, and she was going to go back to her apartment, and get her wallet, and go to the market, and get some good whiskey and drink away a few more years.

  The last three had been the easiest, most peaceful years of her life. No, she didn’t remember much of them. She hadn’t accomplished a great deal of anything. She hadn’t grown or changed in any real way either.

  And that was fine.

  She also hadn’t wasted any tears on Marko. She hadn’t nearly gotten killed a half dozen times either. If she wanted to talk to somebody, she could. And more importantly, if she didn’t want to talk to someone, she didn’t have to.

  No. The last three years had been perfect. Not some bullshit fantasy version of perfect that had never existed in the real world. The had been perfect in the only way that reality could ever be. Free of pain, and free of want.

  She watched the Halians dance and sing along to the mockingly happy music, and started to plan.

  It wouldn’t be hard to pack up what she needed and sneak out during the night. She had a good sense of what direction to walk to get back to the other side of the flattened wastes, and in the morning, she’d find the trail. After that, it would only be a little more than a week’s walk back to the point where the ‘fisherman’ had dropped her off. She still had the radio in the bottom of her bag. She could probably reach him from the tops of the Andar, and arrange to get picked up the minute she made it back to the river.

  Her pension would have piled up nicely in the time that she’d been away, and she’d sell all the bullshit equipment that she’d stashed up, thinking that she’d want to play soldier again one day.

  If she budgeted right, she could live and eat and drink on that money for another twenty years. That was more time than she wanted anyway.

  It was a good plan. All she had to do now was wait for everyone to get to sleep and she could be on her way.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Marko was having second thoughts. He’d left the capital three years ago thinking that he could take Naeesha out of his life and fill her space with work. And then he’d found the Halians, and thought that they were all that he needed.

  And then she’d shown up, and everything seemed perfect.

  But now she was distant. He was losing her again. He’d lost her so many times before, and always found a way to get her to take him back.

  How many more times could he pull it off? How long until she realized that she was better off without him. He hoped it wouldn’t be this time. He hoped, selfishly, that she’d stay long enough to get to the portal. Just another week. Enough time to win her back until they made it to Hala.

  The further he took her from the capital, the harder it would be for her to leave him.

  He felt awful for even thinking it. He didn’t own her. If she wanted to leave, then that’s what she should do. But he couldn’t bear the thought of it. Couldn’t stand the thought of watching her walk away again, knowing that this time, it might be the last.

  Would he be able to fill that hole one more time? Before, he’d only ever been able to patch it up. He’d gotten better at it over the years, but how much more of it did he have the patience for? Not much.

  He sat behind the dining hall helping with preparations for dinner. It was something to keep his hands busy, and he could watch Naeesha while he worked. She was sitting alone at the edge of camp, just staring off into space. He wished he could know what she was thinking. He wished he knew the right thing to say to win her back, to convince her that he still loved her and still needed her, and that she needed him too.

  But that was her decision to make. If he wanted her to stay, he needed to give her a reason. And he couldn’t even pretend to have one.

  The elders announced that it was time for the small circle. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much news. Marko updated the group on their plans for the next day of travel, and told them what the cause of the huge plume of smoke had been. He’d lied and said that he’d used an Alderoccan weapon. Everybody believed him because nobody believed that he would lie. Nobody except for Naeesha, who sat outside the circle glaring at him as he spoke.

  Big circle was over just as quickly and they went to eat. He was one of the first to sit down, finding a place that was off to the side. Somewhere that there would still be a seat for Naeesha when she came to get dinner, somewhere quiet that they could talk.

  But she didn’t come.

  He sat alone, pushing food around his bowl and trying to figure out what he’d done to fuck up so badly. Naeesha probably wanted her space, but he couldn’t sit there doing nothing any longer. He decided to take a chance.

  There was still plenty of food, so he filled up a bowl and carried it out of the dining hall. He found Naeesha sitting where he’d seen her earlier, on a log just outside of camp, staring up at the stars.

  “Go away,” she said as soon as she heard his footsteps approaching.

  “I brought you dinner.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “You need to eat. You need to keep up your strength.”

  “Put it on the ground. I’ll come and get it when you’re gone.”

  He put the bowl on the ground and started to turn away. But something in the way that she was looking out at the darkness made him stop. He knew that look. It was the look that she always had right before she disappeared from his life.

  “I know you don’t want to talk to me, and you don’t have to. But I have some things that I need to say, and I hope that you’ll hear them.”

  She didn’t do anything to let him think that she was listening.

  “I’m sorry for lying to you earlier. You don’t deserve that. You’ve given me every reason to trust you, and I didn’t. I regret that, and not just because it put distance between us, but because you worked hard to earn that trust and I threw it away.”

  He could hear her crying softly. If he was a better man, he would have turned away and left her in peace. But he wasn’t a better man. He still needed to be heard, even if that meant hurting her even more.

  “I can’t make up for what I’ve done to hurt you, and you have every reason and every right to leave. If you want to, I hope that you’ll tell me and let me help you. If you want to go back to the capital, I want you to get there safely.”

  If she was still crying, he couldn’t hear her over the sound of his own sobs.

  “I wish I knew what to say. I wish I could give you a reason to forgive me, a reason to stay. I’ve spent all day trying to think of something, but I still don’t have anything for you.”

  He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself so that he could say the last thing that he needed to before going back inside.

  “I just want you to know that I love you, and that I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done to hurt you, and that I just want you to be happy, even if that means you can’t be with me.”

  Marko stood with tears in his eyes, waiting, watching, hoping for some kind of sign that his message had been received. He prayed that Naeesha would turn and run to him, or call him to her side. But he knew she wouldn’t. And she didn’t. She just sat there, crying softly, staring up at the stars.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Naeesha wanted to to call out to Marko, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even begin to talk. All she could do was sit and cry it out. There had been thirty years of tears that were waiting to be let out, and she wasn’t going to stop them anymore.

  The tears poured out of her eyes and each drop that fell from her cheeks was a terrible weig
ht that she didn’t have to carry anymore. She freed herself, there on an upturned tree, looking out at the night sky in the middle of nowhere.

  The Halians were all in the dining hall, only a soft murmur of their noise escaping and making its way to her. She was alone. Perfectly alone.

  And that was alright.

  She kept crying, kept letting out all the pain and sorrow and anger and suffering, and when she was done, she was ready to heal. To be happy. To forgive. To go to Marko and tell him that his lies had hurt her, that his lack of trust had made her afraid. That she wanted to run away, but that she knew that it wouldn’t fix anything. She wanted him to know that she loved him too, and as long as they both loved each other, they could fight through the hard times. Hell, they could fight through anything, because they had each other and that was all that mattered.

  The last heavy tear rolled down her cheek and she breathed in joyful air. She wanted a minute. Just a little more time alone with the stars. The world was so sublimely beautiful, and she knew that this moment would pass and she’d never experience anything quite like it again. That was fine. There would be more beauty and more wonder, she just wanted to take this in a little longer.

  And when she was done, she would go to Marko and tell him that she loved him, that she was grateful for him, and that she was sorry for doubting him. She would ask for his forgiveness and he would laugh and tell her that there was nothing to forgive her for and they would kiss and sit together and be happy.

  There would be pain. There would probably be more tears. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, not tonight, not ever. But the price would be worth it, because that pain was the price of a shared life, and of happiness that she would never find at the bottom of a bottle.

  As she was taking the final cleansing breaths and trying to piece together what she would say to Marko, Naeesha saw a light on the horizon that didn’t match any star she knew. The light flickered and swayed, and what she thought was just a trick of the eye turned out to be something else. She wasn’t sure what, but there was no doubt that the light was moving.