Scars Among the Stars

Most would think that being blind would disable one from being able to truly view the beautiful spectacles of the nature of life. And in a sense that can be true. While she laid in the brig of a ship hurtling through space toward where, she was nearly certain she knew, she could not see out of the small porthole windows and see the wonders of the universe the way that he could. The son of the Mourning Star, the dejected and rejected former general of the very crew that now captained them toward certain painful death saw the faintly flickering stars, whose light hit them from millions if not billions of years ago, sending an oddly cold feeling spreading throughout his chest. The beauty of twirling planets, streaking comets, swirling galaxies, the universe in all its miraculous splendor, send the man deep inside himself. His heart was frozen. He felt nothing.

Meanwhile, the young woman in the cell across from him, feeling the pain of yet again being separated from the people she had learned to call her family, had a heart that was still aglow. Her eyes left her in perpetual darkness, nothing but a black abyss in front of her and around her. Yet, after many a year, she had learned that there is so much left to be perceived with her other senses. This kept her warm while the man, the monster responsible for her blindness, grew colder still.

Her hope resided in the faint warmth of the astronomical bodies, stellar, planetoid, and other, that silently remained in place around them as their ship dove through the vast emptiness. Her hope rested in the life that surrounded her and her worst enemy. And most importantly, her hope resided in the fact that her friends always found a way to reach her, no matter how long it would take, no matter what the cost. And that even if they did not reach her in time, she could accept her own death whole heartedly. She would die for her people in a heartbeat.

In this instance, they would have to traverse the large stretch of emptiness between Earth and wherever they were going. She had a few guesses, but the largest guess was not the one that most would have ventured.

All was silent and still around them, the only sound, the faint buzzing of the ship’s thrusters and an occasional footstep above their heads. Their cells were surrounded in a very much impenetrable glass as well as a cacophony of other violent countermeasures should either of them get the idea to attempt escape. Even if they could, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, nothing to do but wait. And that they each did, backs against the bulkhead of the ship, her staring blankly at nothing, he staring blankly through the porthole over her head.

They hadn’t spoken one word to each other since being put on the ship. In fact, neither had spoken a word since their respective capture: she out of self-preservation and duty, he out of heart-brokenness and defeat.

It had been several days since their departure. They had no means of telling the time, whether it was night or day relative to where they had once lived. They each took naps on and off, as that was the only thing to do and each were in dire need of a heavy sleep.

“Do you remember?” The man nearly peed himself, jumping to his feet at the sudden sound after not hearing anything for days. He glared at the young woman, and then realized she had not opened her mouth to speak, but had spoken telepathically to him.

“Remember what!?” He screamed at her. She didn’t even flinch, her eyes remaining in the same spot affixed to the back wall of his cell.

A voice resonated down the hallway, screaming angrily in his native language. The woman didn’t understand the words, but she got the message. She felt the man writhe angrily at the order. He didn’t enjoy being told what to do by someone who used to be way beneath him. She could feel the anger further ignite when she didn’t answer him. He very much didn’t like repeating himself either.

But given that she would be his only company for some time, he eventually asked again, “Remember what?” this time at a much more reasonable volume.

“When we met. It’s strange, that of all the memories I have of you, all the unpleasantness, fighting you, trying to kill you, thinking you were dead, even hating you, that this one moment in time still persists to overwhelm me now. A soldier from either side, scouting out for the perimeter of each other’s armies, coming across one another on either side of a lone stream in the middle of the woods. We sat and talked for hours, forgetting we were enemies, forgetting we would likely never see each other alive again. It was a time in which I pitied you. A time in which I partially considered you a friend.”

The man felt the warmth and depth of her thoughts penetrate the wall of his mind, at first fighting it with every morsel of his being, but the further she persisted, painting the once beautiful picture of their past innocence, the less he attempted to force her out of his mind. He remained guarded, fearful she was trying to lure him into exposing his innermost mind for attack, but he allowed her mind to be figuratively at arm’s length.

“We were foolish children. Two young, stupid fools.” He said gruffly, glaring at wall next to her as he slumped back to his original position against his own wall, his long, unkempt hair making him appear an angry mop of black streaks and sadness.

“Perhaps. It is definitely difficult to remember how we used to see the world through those younger eyes. It makes one ponder how we will perceive the world now in older eyes. Perhaps we will say the same thing once more in the future.” The man thought he saw a smirk overcome her face, but upon closer inspection, convinced himself he imagined it. Her expression was stoic.

To him, his brig-mate seemed to have withdrawn inside herself, not looking at him when she spoke, refusing to change where her eyes looked, even refusing to use her own voice. In reality, she had spread her awareness far beyond the walls of her physical form. Being blind gave one that advantage, making it much easier to focus on things outside, up and around the corporeal form. Her ghost stayed put, but her mind stretched to the far reaches of her consciousness. While she focused on things floating in and around the ship, the bodies moving about in other rooms, the heartbeat of her fellow prisoner, she also envisioned the memory she had depicted so elegantly for her former friend, clear as day.

The man decided to say nothing. He didn’t want to think about that far into the past, and he had a sinking feeling that his future didn’t extend that far either. At the present moment, he was so far fixated on the recent past, the last week to be exact: his worst enemy taken captive, a palpable hit on her team resulting in the death of one of her companions, his immediate mutiny by his own people. What had he done wrong? Had he become so engrossed with his enemy’s defeat, by his obsession with causing her pain that he hadn’t seen the signs leading up to his being overthrown?

“Do you remember what it was like? Being that child all those years ago?” His enemy continued, unprompted. “It’s terrifying to think that every second that passes escapes to one of two places: either memory, or a forgotten void of nothingness. Even this very moment transforms into nothing but a memory even as I finish the sentence.”

She couldn’t let him at peace. Even after her capture, she tortured his every waking moment. “So what?” He said at a volume that was just quiet enough not to be humiliated again for being too loud. “What should I give a damn about anything going on in your head? You’ve been captured and you’re going to die in a matter of however long it takes us to get home. Then you’ll be nothing but a memory.”

“I could say the same thing about you old friend.” The feeling that she projected onto him in that moment was so unsettling that he was physically rocked. The amount of confidence behind her statement shook him to his core.

“I’ve come to terms with my fate!” He whispered harshly. Even as he said it he knew it was true of his enemy, but not of himself. He shivered as her gaze whipped to meet his and a humorless smile upturned her mouth. She didn’t have to say anything.

His heart fumed further at the realization. He lashed out, "I have a memory for you then dear," his whisper gravely and nearly painful in his throat. "A badly broken leg, and you bleeding out in the snow, thinking you just escaped the woeful, horrific fate of your comrades only to be dragged back by an observant tracker into the depths of a dank, dark, hell pit. There a year you faced the worst of your fears until they were surpassed by new ones greater than you could have ever imagined. Only to escape to find that the darkness that had you in its cruel tendrils will be with you for the remainder of your life, no matter how far you run." He couldn't help but sneer, his voice raising to the end of his description. This prompted another shout down the hall, followed by a violent banging on the bulkhead behind him.

The woman's gaze shifted and suddenly she caught his eye, seeming to stare deep into his soul. For a brief moment, he believed that she could see, believed that she had escaped the damnation he had condemned her to. Then she spoke the last words she would say to him until they had reached their destination, "And yet it compares not to the darkness that you've crafted around yourself and now must lay in, alone, and able to see it all with no reprieve."

While she was the one he had forever scarred, the man realized how much more deeply he had been scarred himself, and by his own hand. He drew his knees up to his chest and wept silently, thankful that she could not witness his true weakness.