Edited by Nick Coghlan.
I'm not sure at what point I found myself back there.
I know it wasn't sudden, but I can't remember the leadup. Whatever my path was that took me there, it gradually, naturally led me back.
Back to Junto Daas.
I was held immobile by two of the stormie's slaves. Their faces bore no expression, but there was fire in their eyes, a fanatic's gleam. On one side of me, some more held Randel Nax, whose face, though alive, was a study in fear and rage. On the other, a mirror.
The slaves cast no reflection - in the mirror, I stood alone, to attention, the same light in my reflection's eyes that burned in my captors'. My reflection shot me a glance, and I knew it was waiting to claim me. Waiting for me to become it.
And then Junto Daas, sneering at the communications screen. A barely perceptible tightening of Nick's otherwise impassive face as Daas found the chinks in his armour and dug his blade in. Junto Daas was a monster, but his favourite weapon was humanity. Not his own, of course - he had none - but that of others. And though my friend kept his humanity well-shielded, he still left a few weaknesses exposed, and Daas homed in on them like a vornskr.
Daas brandished a scalpel and stepped away from the viewscreen, letting Nick get a good view of what he did next - he slashed Randel's throat, ear to ear. The doctor gave a bubbling cry, even as arterial spurts broke free of his neck. The slaves held him still, and I watched as the light in a good man's eyes died.
Daas spoke again to Nick, with Randel mutely dying behind him, but Nick's resolve did not falter.
And then Daas turned to me. But this time, he did not use his scalpel. This time, he did not cut out my eye. This time, he drove his hand into my chest, and I felt the palm of his hand on my shuddering heart. My reflection stepped out of the mirror, reaching for me. The hand of Junto Daas squeezed my heart, and pulled it free of my chest -
- and I awoke. I was still in the mattress's embrace, and my heart was frantically thudding against my ribcage, which in the circumstances was reassuring. I hadn't had that nightmare in ages, and still my memory found ways to embellish it. I lay, staring at the canopy of the four-poster bed, waiting for my pulse to slow, my breathing to steady, and to not dread the prospect of going straight back to sleep.
I realised, after a few minutes, that at some point my hand had found the holdout blaster under my pillow. Princesses might be annoyed about peas under their mattresses, but me, I find pillows too soft without some lethal hardware underneath them. But as I lay there, I took stock.
Junto Daas was dead. I'd made sure of that. I'd twisted his head 180 degrees until I heard the snap, crackle and pop. Then, when the opportunity presented itself, I'd cut it off with a surgical saw. Then I threw it in the incinerator. If I'd had holy wafers or a wooden stake I'd have used them too - I may have only gotten to kill him once, but I'd wanted to make sure I killed him hard. So the Junto Daas in my nightmares was just that. A nightmare. A figment.
He'd never pulled my heart out. My eye, yes, the sick bastard, but that's all he got.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Coming back to Earth had dredged up a lot of memory and feeling, and so it was probably inevitable that some less appealing sediment would be stirred as well. And, of course, I'd had that chat with Syl before going to bed. I'd hoped that if I saw her again that she'd be different, that I could tell that stubborn part of me "Look, you see? She's different now. Let her go." But she looks just the same. New tattoos, sure, but otherwise...
Damn it.
Though the dreams brought a small mercy. I didn't seem to be sharing them with Syl. All that seemed to have come to an abrupt halt after that trip to Atlantis. I'd fulfilled my part in her destiny, so her destiny didn't need me any more, apparently.
Must be nice, having a destiny. Maybe that's why she forgave me so easily, after what I did to her. It took her one step along her grand design. And I know it's not been a bed of roses for her, but at least there's some meaning. She broke a curse, or something, if I understood that business with the leg and the sword. Me, the best I can say is I killed a bunch of people who might have been bad. Yay me.
Arrek didn't know about her destiny, though, and so he didn't forgive me anywhere near as easily - hell, for all I know, he still hasn't. I can't say I blame him.
He'd threatened me, to my face. I'm usually not the sort to let that stand, but it kind of was in front of the comatose body of his sister, all her life-threatening injuries courtesy of moi. Trying to stand up for myself seemed a little tacky, to say the least, and that's not mentioning the crippling guilt and shame. I'm still not too comfortable talking about it, truth be told. The last real in-depth conversation I had with Arrek was shortly before Syl collapsed and Fes whisked us off to the home of the pointy-eared ego freaks.
It hadn't been an accident. I'd found him in the gym, earphones in, playing galley slave on the rowing machine, so I invited him to chat. He declined - or at least, ignored me, pretended like I didn't exist. I'd waved. Nothing. So I produced a blaster and pointed it at him. The kid had good instincts. He noticed me.
Through gesture and significant waggling of the blaster, I got him to take his earphones out and go into the locker room. "Is this what it's come to?" he asked, turning to face me. "You're just going to gun me down? I thought a bully like you wouldn't hide behind a blaster." His gaze had nothing but hate in it. He was brave - facing down what he thought was going to be his final moments defiantly. But that wasn't what I'd brought him here for.
I reversed the blaster in my hand and offered it to him.
"You and me," I said to him, "We need to talk."
He blinked at me, then eyed off the blaster with suspicion. "This is a trick," he said.
"No," I said. "No trick. Take it, you'll feel better."
He snatched the blaster out of my hand like he thought I was faking, and levelled the barrel at my face. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't use this," he said.
"That's what I'm talking about," I said. "If you want me dead, go ahead."
Arrek's face shifted, and I empathised. I was a dumb young man, once - hell, looking back on it, I see that I was just as dumb, right then, just in a different way - and Arrek'd clearly given a moment like this a lot of thought. I'd be at his mercy, and I'd see the horrible error of my ways, and I'd weep and beg for forgiveness, and realise just what kind of lowly scum I was before he took revenge for his sister. I wasn't following his script, which probably went more like "Hello. My name is Arrek Lorrdain. You hurt my sister. Prepare to die."
I hadn't told anyone what sort of script I was using. I didn't want anyone else to feel guilty, should I have played it wrong. Of course, my therapy had been interrupted by a freaking space pirate invasion and I'd watched my doctor get executed in front of me shortly before I lost an eye, so I guess I still wasn't making good choices.
"Do you know what it's like to lose a loved one?" he asked me, the blaster in my face wobbling slightly. "Do you know what you did to me when you..." He couldn't even bring himself to say it, it seemed. Snap.
"No, I don't," I said, simply. "I can only imagine."
"How can you just stand there?" he demanded. "How can you act like nothing happened?"
"The miracle of life," I said dryly. "It just keeps going, one day at a time."
"You don't deserve to live!" he yelled. "Nobody does that to my sister!" The blaster was wobbling quite a bit now. If I'd wanted, I probably could have taken it off him.
"So do something about it," I said quietly. "You've got the blaster."
He took a few steps away from me, nearly hopping with his anger, and dropped his aim to my crotch. "Maybe I should just take your balls," he snarled. "Leave you a little reminder of what you did to Sylvana."
"I wouldn't, if I were you," I said, trying not to flinch from the threat. I'd been kind-of expecting it, but threats to one's testicles are still pretty potent. "If you shoot me, and I don't fall down, I'm going to kill you. An AT-ST couldn't kill me all at once. Don't leave Sylvana without a brother."
That brought the blaster back up to my face. "Don't you dare speak her name!" There were tears forming in Arrek's eyes - and not weepy I-just-saw-a-chick-flick-tears, but the tears of stymied rage, where the anger's so overwhelming it tries to get out however it can. I had to admire his control. Pre-stormie, I'd have lapsed into incoherence well before this point. Post-stormie, well, I'd have shot me dead where I stood the moment I took the blaster.
"What's your game, Nolan?" He half-screamed, half sobbed, but he kept the blaster pretty much aimed at my head. "What are you trying to pull?"
"I nearly killed Syl," I said, daring to speak her name, but I'm not sure he noticed. "She, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to think that's a big deal. But she's not in this room." I looked around to confirm the room was empty. "Sci, Nick, the rest, they all disapprove, but they think I wasn't myself. But they're not in this room." I patted myself on the chest. "I think it's one of, if not the worst, thing I've ever done. You seem to agree." I nodded at the blaster. "So here we are. In this room."
He stared at me, took a few deep breaths, and the blaster steadied. "You want me to be your executioner?"
"I want to live," I told him, looking him in the eye. "But you said you were going to kill me." I shrugged. "So choose."
He lowered the blaster. "You think I'm going to kill you when you expect it?" he said quietly. "No, I'm going to wait -"
"Cut the crap!" I barked. I put my diaphragm into it, and I think I heard an echo. The impact of such sudden, enormous volume startled him into silence. "This is your shot, Arrek," I said, much more softly. "This, and only this. Because we're supposed to be a team. And if the team can't trust you to watch my back, then you might as well turn that blaster on yourself." I stepped up to him, invading his space, staring him down. "If you think I deserve to die, then you better damn well have the guts to do what's necessary. And if you don't, then face up to yourself."
He stared right on back. "You want me to forgive you?" he snarled.
"I want you to decide," I snarled on back. Testosterone made it come out like a challenge. I'm actually kind of glad no-one else was in the locker room, because we must have looked so very, very stupid. Probably with good reason.
"Maybe I shouldn't use the blaster," he said, narrowing his eyes. "Maybe I should tear you apart with my bare hands."
I nearly snorted in contempt, but caught it in time. "Your sister was berserk and had weapons. How did that go for her, again?"
That clearly scored a hit on his self-preservation instinct, so I eased the pressure and backed off a step or two, giving his ego an excuse to listen to it. He raised the blaster to my face again and held it there. I stared him in the eye, trying to stay as calm as I could. "I can't forgive you," he said eventually.
"Not asking you to," I replied.
He lowered the blaster, then reversed it to offer it to me in a mirror of the gesture I'd used. "It'd hurt Sylvana if I killed you," he said. "I'm doing this for her, not you."
I nodded at him, and took the blaster off him. As I turned and walked away, he said, "Anyway, you wouldn't have given me a loaded blaster."
I didn't look back, so I didn't see the expression on his face when I fired a bolt into the ceiling.
************
A siren somewhere beyond the palace walls jolted me awake. My hand was still on the blaster, but I hadn't squeezed off a shot in echo of the memory. It would have been a stun bolt, in any event, but it likely would have singed the linen. At least I'd managed to avoid the inevitable barrage of 'nocturnal discharge' jokes.
I wasn't going to get any more sleep tonight. I went outside to look out at the stars.