Page 79 of Fighting Gravity
The odd confession caught me off guard. It wasn’t said with remorse. In fact, it sounded a bit cold and matter-of-fact. It made me furrow my brows.
“What does that mean?” I asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
The faint vibration of his Thel trickled into my awareness. Knowing what it was, I could control or ignore the ways it affected me while I mustered my thoughts.
The last thing I wanted to do was show weakness. I didn’t want to seem vulnerable because that gave people room to hurt me. I welcomed pain… it didn’t mean I wanted it. I contemplated my next words, wondering if I should even say anything. Then I measured Rhone’s words. He confessed that he didn’t want to hurt me anymore and that, in its own way, was a display of vulnerability, too. It meant he wasn’t as terrifying. It meant he was conflicted.
“I don’t want you to hurt me anymore,” I muttered.
Both our eyes lifted at the same time, meeting with a sense of understanding. And yet we both seemed to understand nothing. Words served no more purpose. We just stood in each other’s presence basking in utter puzzlement.
33: Quinn
Days blended together on the Shadowbreaker. Without a sunset and sunrise, I had no idea how long I’d been with Rhone and his crew. I didn’t have my Buddy anymore either so time was impossible to tell. And with the times I was unconscious added to the mix, everything was a total blur. There were only a few things I was sure of. I knew that I was alive. I knew that I was a long way from the Nexus. Lastly, as much as I wanted to deny it, I didn’t want to kill Rhone anymore.
I would have given my middle finger to stop feeling those damn butterflies in my stomach when he was around. He was infuriating, demanding, and confusing, and he’d put me through more than I ever thought I could handle. And yet, the more I got to know the ship and the crew, the more I realized I wanted to see him more often than I didn’t.
On some days, I caught Lin and her son Tohr in the mess hall during their meals. Apparently, after what happened at the embassy on Firr, Rhone was unwilling to hand them over and they’d become part of the crew. For how long, I wasn’t sure, but the fact that he kept them was just another reason for me to stop seeing him as a heartless brute, as much as I still wanted to.
I was beginning to understand that gek had very specific times in which they ate and it usually had to do with whatever god they related to the most. After many attempts at communicating with Lin, I started to pick out the names of their gods. Cehthos, which I’d heard Rhone say once or twice, Fjor, Ranak, Djelik, and Opherion. I wasn’t quite sure what each represented, but Lin’s chosen deity was Ranak and I grew increasingly curious about whether or not I’d seen a monument to the god in Kahten’nak.
Tohr was a quiet one. He would say a couple of hushed words to his mother now and then, but most of the time, he was a watcher. An observer. He was conscious of everything around him but wasn’t fond of talking about it, even to Lin. I admired that, but sometimes it worried me. Quiet children were often holding something dark inside them if I was any indication. As a child, I didn’t talk much and I wished someone would have forced words out of me. Once I reached adulthood and experienced those emotions on a different, more damaging level, I began to regret how I carried them as a young girl.
More days passed and I entered into a routine. I didn’t expect to acquire a routine on an alien ship, but there I was, adapting to a schedule of eating, wandering, talking to the crew, and working on my little shuttle. The only thing missing from the routine was Rhone.
Rhone wasn’t the guy that was going to come to my room and see how I was doing. He also wasn’t the kind of guy to seek me out, give me gifts, rub my shoulders, or hold my hand. Luckily, I wasn’t the kind of girl that cared. I did, however, find myself caring that he was crossing my path less and less as the days went on. So, I coped with my iffy emotions by working on that damn ship in the cargo hold. Even when I was stumped and had nothing to fix or assemble, I found myself sitting inside the shuttle just to think in silence where most of the crew never went.
On daysomething,I found myself walking down a hallway that I knew never really had traffic. Along it were rooms, none of which the crew chose to occupy. But the empty rooms and quiet hall were not why I took that walk so frequently.
At the end of the long passage, there was an observatory with a dome that looked out into the starry expanse. As soon as I discovered it, I knew it was going to be someplace to clear my mind and though the air was filtered through the ship’s systems and recycled, somehow it felt fresher there. My little shuttle got stuffy, but the observatory was vast and open. I was looking forward to spending a few quiet moments in there staring into the dark, infinite void I loved so much.
When I turned the corner, however, I found Rhone standing in the middle of the chamber, arms crossed over his broad chest, staring up at the black. I stopped as soon as I saw him, but I hadn’t been trying to stay quiet and I was sure he heard me. My immediate thought was to leave. Things between us were so damn perplexing, I wasn’t sure how to face it yet. Swallowing, I took a step further into the observatory, watching Rhone stand there like a statue. When he didn’t acknowledge me, I took back my step and moved away, about to turn and leave.
“Why did you decide to become a pilot?” he asked.
I tensed, pivoting back toward him. I hesitated to answer for a while, wondering first why he wanted to know and then how to answer. No one had really asked me before…
I started a slow, quiet stride toward him. “It’s funny, actually,” I scoffed. “I liked the idea of freedom. The idea that I’d be able to fly around unexplored places. Places no one has ever seen.”
I stepped up beside Rhone and looked up at the side of his face. He was still staring into the expanse, eyes reflecting the white glow of the stars around us. My heart started to race a little and it wasn’t because I wanted to stab him in the face.
“Why did you decide to become a commander?” I said. “Or a captain. What are you anyways?”
His head turned and his eyes met mine, exotic and dark.
“Urok,” he said.
“I still don’t know what that is exactly.”
“It is similar to a commander. I controlled a fleet in my younger years. Then I was assigned to a specialty ship. The Argos.”
“The one the pirates took?”
He nodded. “Designed to avoid detection. Clearly, the damage done by the valerian ship that came to your aide negated that feature.”
“Do you have others like it on Gat…Geth…”
