Saudade
Trade w/ @artistanilu who wanted Ballista just as much as I did.
ProxiVus, GrimNight, and ProxiMaw. NSFW
In which Proxima tells Corvus about Butcher Squadron, and recounts a few stories about the people she used to know.
* * *
You are Proxima Midnight.
You’re in love; not for the first time, but you suspect this will be the last.
* * *
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Close your eyes. Are you thinking of someone else?”
You look down at him. Here, in the safety of Corvus’ quarters, you feel you can be honest with yourself, and the bond it forms between you is an afterthought. “Of course not, but I will not lie—the familiarity is often distracting. There was another before you.”
“You’ve never spoken of them.”
“Why would I?” you say. “It was a long time ago. Besides.” You reach down and stroke one of the sharp blades jutting from his skull. “You are such a jealous creature.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll heal.”
He snorts. You laugh, a rare and precious thing, meant only for him.
He puts his hands on your thighs and spreads them open. “I want you to watch.”
“I am,” you say. “You have my attention. Always.”
* * *
Years ago, Ballista collapses next to you in bed, and toes off her boots. You’re sick off cheap whiskey and damn near broke because you both kind of suck at Stellar Split, but the assholes who fix the engines in C-Sector suck worse and don’t know when to quit. In nothing but your garments, the air from the vents runs over you, and Ballista mentions how it could be cooler in here.
“Hey, Midna,” Ballista says, shucking off her pants, “do you have any fears?”
“None.”
“There has to be something.”
“Nothing,” you tell her.
Ballista rolls over and kisses your neck. Sucks a blue bruise into your collarbone.
“Mm… Why? What about you?”
“I’m scared of a lot of things.” Ballista’s hands are curious, bunching up your undershirt and her lips find the soft blue skin beneath. “What happened to Infesti really—I mean, I’m just gonna cut to the chase. I don’t want to lose you.”
“That’s how it is.”
It’s all you can conjure up, hearing something like that, and so suddenly. You tilt your chin up and let Ballista leave a trail of love bites on your chest.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything you’re afraid of?”
You close your eyes so you don’t have to look at Ballista’s face.
Then,
“Like I said, Lista. I’m not afraid.”
* * *
“I hadn’t meant to say it that way. Not like that.”
Corvus is listening to you talk. He’s laid out beside you, like he’s meant to be there, looking at your face, and you think this might be what kills the spark you feel when he’s near. You might say the wrong thing.
“Did you love her?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” you say to him. “Still, I cannot help but imagine…this is what I should have felt, and this is how she felt. What does that say about me?”
“I think it says nothing.”
“But it does.”
But it isn’t your fault this has happened. It isn’t your fault, when your hands tremble and your stomach sinks to your knees and your scars burn under the promise of his claws. It’s fear and it happens. But his words are soft, and he likes you in ways Ballista didn’t—through the bloodshed, the violence, the death. He continues to look at you long after she would have looked away from what you really are.
You have a split lip from the battle earlier today that undoes itself from the strain of you biting it, and Corvus takes your cheek and licks the rivulet of blood from your chin to your mouth and kisses you in a way that will haunt you forever.
You think you aren’t afraid of him, only of what you feel for him.
And what you feel for him means facing what you did.
* * *
The girl’s name is Gamora and you hate her, but she is Thanos’. It doesn’t stop you from thinking her better off dead, somewhere else.
Still. It isn’t all bad. You know children and nobles both can be easily bribed, so you set to work—you dip thin fiberglass strings into sugar water and leave them to crystalize in a cold oxygen chamber overnight, and in the morning you scrape the pale candy into a bowl and take it with you to lunch. You don’t care for sweets, but Gamora is a child, and it only takes a few minutes of her leering at you from across the room before she approaches.
“Got enough to share?”
You almost laugh. She’s got no manners, though you learn quickly this is the closest she’ll ever come to asking you nicely for anything.
“Don’t you know the rules?” you say smugly, popping a piece into your mouth. “Everything has value, and what is valued can be traded for. Secrets are worth the most.”
So she tells you, “Maw keeps those rice cakes he likes up in a jar by the air vent. I break in sometimes and take a few. Don’t tell him I said that though.”
You say, “Good. Keep this in mind.”
You give her a piece. She looks down at it, carefully rolling it in her palm. “That’s it?”
“Fine.” You give her another. “Just this once.”
Gamora is a quick study. She learns that secrets will earn her candy, or more, if you happen to have it—cool knives, neat trinkets. She tells you mostly about Maw and his grandiose ideas of mutiny.
You listen. Intently.
* * *
One of the things you’ve never told Corvus is what happened with the Ebony Maw, so you tell him that too, since the mind leech is in the picture now. It makes no difference how Corvus might feel about the memory. He is listening, holding you against him, and you are talking.
* * *
You walk in on Maw sucking off one of the crew lackeys who unloads the old cargo from E-Sector and you know you shouldn’t interrupt, so you stand in the shadow at the end of the hall and wait for them to finish. The Human tucks himself back in and leaves. He doesn’t see you, but Maw does without having to look.
He zips up and says, “Enjoy the show?”
You scoff. “Only if you consider beating a dog with a club enjoyable.”
“He did make an awful cacophony of noise, didn’t he?” Maw sighs. “To be quite honest, I’ve given better, and I don’t feel any worse than when I started. This night is simply full of tragic stalemates, isn’t it?”
“Cut the shit. Want to drink?”
Maw raises his eyebrow. “Just us?”
“Yes.”
That’s never a good idea.
You drink with him anyway and polish off a bottle by yourself. Neither of you feels like socializing in the lounge or anywhere near the flight crews, so you go to his room and sit on the floor with your backs to the bed, and you talk.
“Had a fight with Lista.”
“Oh, I’m fully aware. She was in the shooting range with the brothers, venting about the whole situation.” Maw chuckles, and drinks. “You’re a cold-hearted woman, Proxima.”
“I know.”
“Need to let it out?”
You’re ashamed to admit that you consider it for a moment too long. It’s a bad idea. The fight with Lista was over her leaving and it’s not that serious, not right now, but you keep drinking and it seems like it could be.
So you say yes.
It’s not half-bad though. For once, he listens to your instructions, fucks you with three fingers and is even smart enough to put his thumb on your clit to make you come a few times; he only touches you where you tell him to, and almost kills the mood boasting about gods-know-what. Still, you’re having a bit of fun, even if it is Maw, and it does the trick.
In the morning, you take him up on his offer to shower together, where you go down on him to return the favors of the night. It doesn’t really mean anything, but it takes the edge off.
After you’ve dressed, nothing changes between the two of you, though you do notice he brushes his shoulder against yours sometimes, and you surprise yourself by not immediately pulling away.
Ballista comes to apologize. You two make up by the end of the day. When you reflect on it, you realize you were being selfish—always so goddamn miserable and biting and selfish. The guilt almost kills you. It bores a hole into the very goddamn center of your chest.
You don’t tell her about Maw.
* * *
“You can be selfish with me,” Corvus says, and you look at his sharp teeth. He’s missed the point. Or maybe he’s ignoring it. Either way, he kisses you and it unsurprisingly turns into sex for the third time that night. He gets on his back and lets you ride him until you’re both spent, and he touches you the way you couldn’t describe until now—as if in worship.
Afterwards, you lay curled up together. “I understand now,” you say to him. “I fear losing you, though you are quite immortal, and that should make me feel otherwise. Do you fear losing me?”
Corvus kisses the back of your hand. “Do not misunderstand. Though you are and will always be important, as you are everything, I have learned that there is more beyond mortality. When I am gone, I will wait for you in death.”
“What if I go first?”
“Will you wait for me?”
You touch his cheek. “Of course.”
“Then, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Ballista always used to say how if something feels important, it should be remembered. So you commit this moment to memory because gods above does this feel important.
“Will you marry me, Proxima Midnight?”
* * *
Years ago, you were under threadbare covers, with your head on Ballista’s chest, counting her heartbeats. She smokes a stick and strokes your shoulder and makes you feel wanted. The threat of mutiny leaves a bad taste in your mouth most nights. It becomes difficult to be around her without wanting to escape through the window. You know it isn’t her doing, but it eats away at you regardless.
“I can’t wait to get out of here,” she tells you. “You should come with me, when this is all over. We can find work just about everywhere else in this vast and empty void.”
“Maybe.”
That’s all you can say, all you want to say.
She adds, nonchalant, as if casually peeling a vegetable by a kitchen window, (and you wonder now why you imagined that), “We could get married.”
You don’t know how that makes you feel. It should feel important.
It doesn’t.
“Yes,” you say, just to hear words spoken in the quiet. “But first, let’s just get through tomorrow…”
