Hye was playing with the space jellies. As a marine biologist, space animals were not his area of expertise, but that didn't mean he didn't have a special place in his heart for them. Coming home from work (helping arcadia scientists to populate their new inland sea with exciting new marine life to create a stable ecosystem, more complicated than it looked) he had made a habit of taking some time to feed the jellies. Once, back at his old university, he had done the same thing with a flock of crows that gathered in the park. And just like the crows, he had made friends with the Jellies, and there was a small float of them waiting, by the time he made it home.
He fed them from his hand, patting each one in turn and saying words of encouragement. He had given all of them names, and though he vowed that he didn't choose favorites, deep down he knew he did.
She was an elegant lady, pearl white with streaks of delicate gold running through her body. Her tentacles were unusually long and graceful, two of them longer than the others and ending with gentle feathery protrusions that rippled in the slight breeze. Though she was his favorite, he never gave her extra treats lest the others be upset, but he did give her maybe one or two more pats.
They trailed after him for a ways, up the walk and towards his new little house, on the outskirts of the Noxumber suburb, looking out over a vast plane that was slowly, overtime, going to become a forest. The door hissed open as it sensed him, and he stepped inside to find the room mostly dark. Flames danced within their glass prison along one wall, lighting up the room in a comforting orange glow. On the couch, in the middle of the room, he found both the large jellyfish plush, and the orca plush he had gifted to his....
He paused
He almost said late wife.
And while that was technically true, it wasn't quite the same.
She was dead in the traditional sense of the word. More than three years ago, he had witnessed her untimely death at the hand of Kazna only minutes after being sworn in as president of the UN. For the longest time he had worried she had been lost forever only to learn that she was..... Alive?
Alive but not undamaged.
It had taken years for him to get the full story out of her, how she had floated in an infinite blackness for what seemed like an eternity, thousands upon thousands of years seeming to pass away while she forgot who she was and what she had once loved. In the end it had all been an illusion designed by the void to cause her to go insane, to prove that they could corrupt members of the last cohort. Luckily for them Lord Celex had been there, and she had made a mistake in being unable to break him.
The emperor had been in captivity for a significant amount of time before she showed up, but Kazna hadn't exactly perfected her craft at that point.
The man had saved her sanity, and both of their lives, and was now welcome in their house whenever he so pleased. He was plight enough not to make good on the invitation, but Hye insisted he come over for sunday dinner when he could get around to it.
Hye set down his bag and looked around the room.
Tala was nowhere to be seen.
He frowned with concern and headed towards the back bedroom.
Ever since her return, his wife had been on the slow road to recovery. For the longest time she had not spoken, longer than that, and her body seemed to phaze in and out of existence, now she was almost back to her more human selfe, but the matter of her long term recovery was questionable.
He still worried about her.
He opened the door into their bedroom, and was relieved to find her standing before the mirror. He opened his mouth to say something but paused when he saw what she was doing. She was wearing a grey uniform, tight around the shoulders and sinced around the waist. Metals glittered on her shoulders. In her white gloved hands, she held a cap slowly rolling it between her fingers.
Hye paused.
This was the most human she had looked in a long time.
But at what cost.
He approached softly, carefully so she could see him in the reflection of the mirror.
Her long, dark hair was pulled up into a tight bun, her spine stiff and straight, like she had always been until what had happened to her. He could see her face in the mirror expression flat an unreadable. As he watched, a momentary glitch passed across her skin zeroing out her face and leaving behind a blank canvas of stars before reverting back again. They had both hoped that would go away, but while she was mostly human now, it seemed she would not remain untouched from her ordeal.
He walked up behind her, standing at her side where, together they looked in the mirror.
WHen did he get so old?
Kelly, for the most part looked unchanged, in the prime of her life, which he had always thought as her late thirties rather than her early twenties like most people.
"I always liked you in a uniform." He commented, and it was true, not just because of how it fell on her frame, and accentuated all the right places, but how it made her feel, powerful, competent, expert, and other complimentary adjectives that he couldn't list just at this moment but would have added in a heartbeat.
She had always felt more alive wearing that uniform, and he had loved the way her eyes burned, the determination she always had. He liked watching her climb and navigate through military politics, like the expert she was, and standing here he remembered how she was as a young pilot, a newly commissioned officer.
How simple those days had been.
When intergalactic travel was still a dream.
Now here he was living on a terraformed planet without a sun.
Strange how these things can happen.
"I always liked me in this uniform too." She said softly, glancing down at the little UNSC pin on the front of her uniform.
He wrapped an arm around her, and together they contemplated the people they had become. He was looking older, though he liked to think he was aging well, and she....
Another shadow passed over her body, glitching her out for a moment before returning.
""You Okay?" He said, trying not to prove to deeply but hoping to gage her reaction.
"I'm..... angry."
That was a response he had not expected. He glanced at her face, and then at her, "You are doing a pretty good job of hiding it."
She sighed and turned to look at him. He paused for a moment, taking the cap from her hands and gently placing it on her head. He rested a hand on her cheek. Tala was shorter than him, but every time he held her, she had always felt larger than life, taller than him by several feet. Being married to her was parallel to being married to a Drev in some ways, "Why are you angry..... Is this about kazna."
She rested a hand over his and shook her head, "No, I am mad because.... Of what has happened to earth. All of the things it has gone through in the past few years could have been prevented if I was there, if I was there to protect people. Hunt has ruined everything." She took a deep and regrettable sigh, and then shrugged, "I don't know. I guess I'm just being dumb." She turned back to the mirror, "thinking about the past."
Hye paused, reaching out again to take her hand. There was a long silence for a moment before.
"I just wish I had had the chance to do some real good." She looked down at her feet.
Hye stared into the mirror, looked at her in hr splendor with all her medals, and watched another glitch pass over her body.
"You can still do some good."
The words were out of his mouth before he had really thought about it, but even now that they had passed his lips, he didn't bother to retract the statement.
She turned to look at him, "What?"
"This isn't over. You... in fact, this could be the beginning of something. You have maker power, you are basically immortal now. Why not do exactly what you intended to do?'
She frowned at him, still not following.
"What are you talking about."
"You could still do it!" he was growing excited now, agitated with the audacity of his own idea.
"Could do what?"
"You could be president!." there was a silence around the two of them, and she stared at him with a slowly widening expression of shock and surprise followed by confusion and concern.
"Are you ok-"
"No no, hear me out, you were elected weren't you, fair and square and he was only appointed because you died, so just show up back on earth and reclaim your position."
She stared at him with a look of incredulity on her face, "WHAT! Hye that-"
"No no, hear me out."
She shook her head at him, "Hye you listen to me, that would never work." She pointed at her body, and the soft glitch that took over the right side of her face before vanishing, "The people of earth would never let me back in a state like this, and I am pretty sure one of the rules to being president is that you have to be legally alive. Besides, the end of my term would be lapsing anyway."
"Then run again, on a new platform. Anyone could beat Hunt at this point. He has so royally screwed up, the people of earth would probably elect ME in a landslide, but if you were to return, to explain to them that you understand the cosmic threats we are facing have great ties with he GA, well it would be a no brainer NOT to choose you."
For a moment, the look on her face almost brightened , her eyes widening slightly with the prospect. Behind her eyes he could see the cogs turning in her head weighting the possibilities, but as soon as they started, her thoughts ground to a halt and she shook her head, "No."
He frowned, "What do you mean no."
"I.... Im not ready for something like that Hye."
Generally speaking Hye was the backseat in this relationship, the cheerleader and the support team. It was usually her encouraging him to do things, to ask for a promotion, push him to take on more responsibility, to run the department at his university. All his success had been due to her encouragement.
But this time it was his turn, and he reached out to grab her by the arm, "Tala..... No one is ever ready. You weren't ready or prepared for what would happen on the Enterprise, you weren't ready to take on being an admiral and you won't be ready for this. Anyone who thinks they are ready is kidding themselves." he took her hand in his and squeezed it tight, "No one is ever ready, but even if you aren't you are what earth needs right now. You are what she deserves, and after all she has gone through...."
There was a pause.
"I will support any decision you make, you know that. If you want o live out here for the rest of my life watching me grow old until I become a maker too, than we can do that. We can live the simple life. If you want to become a professional ballerina or become the queen of arcadia, Adam would probably let you, I will support you in whatever you chose, but.... I do think that earth needs you, after all shes been through these last few years, you could do some real good."
Kelly lifted her head eyes staring hard into the mirror, to her pristine uniform.
He could see the memories pass along on her face and squeezed her hand, giving her some time to think.
It wouldn't take her long to reach a decision.
She had never had trouble deciding .
There was a pause and then.
Tala gave a slow, thoughtful nod, "You're right,
I owe Earth enough to try."